Daniels: Why We Tell The Stories We Tell | SXSW 2024

[Applause] wow thanks Claudette hello thanks sir M che check check mike oh wow there's a lot of people in here um thank you so much South by claudet has been a an old friend just because we've been coming to this festival for so many years um it is honestly my favorite Festival come to because you just get to um hang out with people and eat a lot drink a lot and the Movies are also awesome um how many of you guys cuz I we'd like to know our audience how many of you guys are uh

here in the film section film category film people fil people okay oh okay not that many okay music people music people okay not that mus just like conference people tech people oh yeah interesting this is okay uh other categories entirely School teachers teachers yeah oh cool Cooks food people chefs service industry Stay-at home dads there's one of you okay um so we've been doing this talk and you guys can pull up the uh keynote now if you want to so we've been doing this talk uhuh how we pulled off everything everywhere all at once people

keep asking this question and we've uh we've had fun um but we've been doing it for two years and we're kind of sick of talking about this movie um in fact like we did this exact talk um at the film independent um it's a Really good talk you should watch it later it's on YouTube um we looked good yeah exactly we did it again at the DJ but more with a VFX bent for people who are into that kind of stuff look it up um I'm always on the left yeah oh oh no yeah oh

right I should switch it there you go yeah exactly that's um and then actually two years ago at South by the day after our premiere of everything everywhere we did something with our producers as well um It's it's been really uh beautiful to teach um other filmmakers what we've learned and learned from other people through conversation um but we've honestly recently been really distracted um because everything that we are trying to uh teach people about how we made movies feels kind of like um ancient history um anything that we you would have learned today from

us um kind of feels like it could be obsolete soon the how of it doesn't really um capture what We need to be talking about right now I feel like and sometimes it's like scary to feel like people might be getting the wrong lessons like oh you can have like uh hire fewer VFX workers or um you know uh like budget movies lower um I just wanted to interject and say Dan worked really hard on this PowerPoint presentation I'm so excited to watch it uh and I'm here as moral support and a hype man and

comedic relief and I want To apologize in advance if I throw you off track um but uh it's uh I like improv and he likes prep so this is a window into our process here we go um and so obviously there's a lot going on um and the question of how really doesn't feel strong enough and really what we I started realizing is um we should be asking ourselves why why did we tell this story why did we talk about um why do we talk about all the things that we talked about that went into

the Process of making the film everything everywhere that somehow became like way more successful and way more beautiful than we could have even imagined um that being said if you want to see the other talks this is this is a harder one to find online so there's a QR code if you need it also this one is pretty good as well um for homework at home um so the question of why why do we tell the stories to tell um and this is something that we've been struggling with for a Very long time um basically

our whole careers and uh you know there are a lot of answers to that question you know is it to entertain us is it to heal us is it to connect us is it to help us simplify all the noise in the world um make our parents proud that's one thing yeah my mom loves the a for sure impress love interest yeah um and perhaps it's all these things um but I think the question um shifts uh in times of confusion and Chaos right um that's when You really realize how much of a fundamental need

story is to being a human to being alive uh this is a quote from Philip Pullman uh the author after nourishment shelter and companionship stories are the thing we need most in the world um he is talking U he's basically referencing the hierarchy of needs this idea that you know if you don't have your food shelter physical needs water you can't get to the next one which is safety security next Community feelings of belonging and you move all the way up to the top to this place of self-actualization which is um becoming the best version

of your but also understanding your place in the world and your meaning and your purpose that's where I am yes he spends most of the time there I'm usually down in the loving and belonging still haven't figured that out just kidding I love you K where are you uh I have a family and they love me I think Um one of the things that was really interesting about looking at story through this lens of a a a real human need that is universal uh is when you look around the world right now it's really confusing

our stories are all crisscrossing and smashing up against each other and contradictory and with everything everywhere all at once it's was really important for us to try to capture that feeling um I came across this writer Jamie whe he's an neuro Anthropologist and he talks about the meaning crisis we're in he says that in moments in history when there's too many stories too many counternarratives no one really knows what to hold on to there's no unifying uh myth uh you can move to one of two camps either down towards nihilism where you say well [

__ ] it I don't know what to believe it's all there it's all a mess whatever I'm going to kind of disengage from that question the other side you can go move to is Fundamentalism which is this place where you hold even tighter to the thing you believe because you need to protect yourself and protect your idea from everything that's trying to you know infect your your worldview and what happens when you do that is that Center that normal middle median area starts to collapse and with that trust and coordination all the things that make

Society what it is and so this is obviously um speaking to uh IAL Harari Like famous um thesis of like hom Homo sapiens rule the world because it's the only animal that can believe in things that purely exist in its own imagination such as Gods States money and human rights and stories stories that money god um so it becomes really clear that in times of Crisis and Times of confusion the goal of stories sort of focuses us down um to something far more simple and far more fundamental um and we kind of want to talk

about that but To bring it all back down to earth and bring it back down to us um we wanted to talk first about how we found meaning and how we found purpose within our own work um it's again it's us again um Dan found this thing called eeky Guy online a while ago uh that we're probably going to um explain poorly but uh it's really like resonated with us over the years as like a really simple metric to kind of like ask ourselves like uh why why am I Bummed out this week um uh

and there's four circles that uh have very kind of straightforward meanings um yeah and like the thing the thing that's uh worth noting is this is just a framework that we use that's very easy don't please don't go home and like fill in circles and try to like crack the code of how to make good art that's not how you make good art I mean try it try I mean maybe actually maybe surprise us you might make something amazing um but this is Usually where we would end our talks and today we wanted to start

there um so this is uh a really um reductive westernized version of this really beautiful concept from Japan called iigi which basically is is this search for fulfillment um and purpose at the top you have the circle for what you love the selfish things that you are really you know running after um what you offer that's sort of uh yeah your history your context your your talents Your skills what what you have been given on this Earth um next is what will get you paid uh it's you know the starving artist does uh is is

fine but like really if you want to be serving the world and serving your stories and finding F fulfillment you actually have to eat and you have to live um and the last thing is what the world needs um and this one is us usually the trickiest one to talk about um how many people here feel like in your everyday work you Are finding a balance between these four things okay a couple you okay wow fulfilled audience I love it they can y'all can go um we never we we we never feel this this is

it's impossible especially in the film industry to find that balance um often times this is usually what our life feels like um we don't have a phrase for this not yet guy key e there you go We're good um it's honestly a life's journey to find where you where where you sit in these circles and find making sure that you're always in this balance um I think that uh like one of one of the first examples I'll sh is a is a a thing that we did that is like clearly just in the green circle

of what we get paid we got paid well um and that was it yep to shoot a a Commercial where people with dog heads go to a party with people with cat heads and then uh sugary drinks make them get along so clearly clearly not something we loved it's not we weren't really good at it the effects aren't even that great and then um who knows maybe the world needed it I'm not sure I I haven't gotten much feedback um that was positive yet um something in the red circle something that was firmly just for

us and literally no one else in the World wanted it or asked for it yeah this is this is our Kanye West music video we made for fun lights stop lights flashlight spotlights strob lights street lights turn up the lights here okay that's enough for some reason that didn't get us paid the world didn't seem to need it um and then the this last Circle was like you know just really uh meat and potatoes what we have to offer what was Our backstory or at least for me I I used to do this thing where

I'd cut together all of my iPhone videos from that year into a little montage and it was very personal and it was very like just a fun exercise to see what kind of random connections I could find with my footage um again it was it was fun and it like it it showed off my editing skills and my life at the same time but beyond that it was uh everyone though actually it ended up being really Instructive and we came back to it over and over over the years but it started with just like you

know an accidental art project yeah um which brings us to the the blue circle which is like I said it is the hardest um Circle to really tackle because you know either you're way too Earnest and it's a little cringey or um you might um Mis uh be misguided and chased after something that is like really well-intentioned but actually maybe not the best for the World it's it really or it takes two years to make your movie and two years later your movie is toned deaf and exactly right um and so this was the only

example we could think of one time we nailed it turn but otherwise we've never made anything useful and so obviously uh it's hard right it's really hard we've been doing this for about 15 years and I feel like there's only one moment in which we Really felt in the the pocket of these four circles and that was for our film everything everywhere all at once um thank you yeah thank you but you're not allowed to applaud for the movie again for the next 4 that's that's enough thank you okay there we go get out of

your system that's good yeah um and the beautiful thing about this is I felt this even before the Movie premiered even before we got the reviews and even before the box office I felt so beautifully fulfilled by the process and the final product and what we're trying to do and um I just want honestly I'm giving this talk cuz I want you all to experience it too if you haveen and I want you guys to find a way towards that whatever it is whatever freaky little thing you're trying to do in the world I want

you to be able to really um sing those high notes um and Stretch your stretch yourselves to the full ability and so we're going to break down each of these circles with our movie in mind and it's going to be a lot it's very dense it's going to be very fast uh but hopefully it'll wash over to over you in a nice way kind of like our movies um okay I should have used this slide with the Applause okay um but don't don't first Circle what you love this is the easy one this is uh

the selfish U Beautiful fire that really draws you to something um I call this the Quenton Tarantino Circle cuz clearly Tarantino is only making what he loves and it is beautiful um if you ever get the pleasure of watching a movie with him in the theater he is set he's sitting in the best seat and laughing at every joke louder than anyone else and I I love him for it we got to see in glorious bastards that way and it was yeah amazing but unfortunately it doesn't Always work that way when it's just an isolation

often times you can really make something weird that no one else wants and that's okay there's a place for that but it's not really going to bring you to this middle section of uh balance um and so for us one of the things really simple gut it's easy we love action movies we love Kung Fu we love just the old um Hong Kong films um usually with the choreography from yunwu ping um this was something that we Imitated early on this was like us out of college [ __ ] around with uh yeah with no

money trying to imitate that thing um but it's like easy to forget this part of the process too uh and and I find myself often times like uh struggling to get excited about a project until there's something deeply immature and selfish and personal that I get to like touch on along the way and and and only then I'm I like okay I can survive the next few months or years It's a marathon you got to give yourself these like little um speed boosts Mario Kart the movie was so hard but the fact that Michelle yo

was there made me work 10 times harder it was like oh my childhood Heroes right there so I I'm not going to complain about anything you know and so but one of the things that we we realized for this talk is like taking these circles and pulling them into the blue circle intersection this the what the world needs really produced A lot of really interesting stuff for us uh and so one of the things we asked like hey but does the world need another Matrix sequel probably not um actually I don't know I really really

like the fourth one I know not everyone does but I was I was into it the fifth one's going to be crazier okay exactly we're going to direct it that's not true um don't make that a headline we already did this okay everything and so this is really Interesting cuz look we love the Matrix we love all this stuff but really does the world need another action movie or does it need a hug right now and I think and we kept asking ourselves like when is violence the answer and and our answer was like basically

never like I I how do you make an action movie when you don't really believe in violence as an answer and so right here in the middle is this beautiful intersection this Paradox that we had to really um work at And try to reconcile and that's where we came up with one of the fundamental building blocks of our film it's what we call the empathy Fight This Moment In which Michelle's character Evelyn is working her way up the stairs doing all the same kind of fun action dopamine hit kind of um playfulness but all for

the sake of rather than hurting their enemies understanding them instead um and that was this really beautiful aha moment that suddenly became something we Were building into the entire film trying to get to this this moment yeah it's like I love bringing up contradictions because a lot of times we we'll find a problem and it'll take us months to crack it but then it'll become like yeah the north star that we Chase so the whole movie was like oh how do we set up that fight how do we set up empathy okay I guess we

have to have a character like Wayman who's nice I guess we have to like have Michelle be extra Uh stubborn at the beginning whatever um and this is another similar thing if you know our work this is sort of our thing we love just dumb stupid things from the internet um Shiner intern for Tim and Eric um and so dumb dummer is genuinely a huge influence on us everything we write um but then obviously like we look at the movies out there and the ones that we really love and we really resonate with are the

ones that are giving us something truly um beautiful And trying to pull pull away from all the noise and give us something quiet and gentle to really celebrate um and so uh we were like okay can we somehow do both right and this is uh this has become one of our signature things this is what we try to do with everything we do now um starting you know swis Iron Man was a big version of this but it's why absurdity is in all of our work is because it uh first of all it just makes

us laugh and makes us cry at the same Time but also I think it forces people to lean in because they're not expecting it that doesn't fit to a clean genre and I think that's really beautiful um so this Paradox this tension is actually where we found our voice and so again seeing where these circles intersect sometimes they feel problematic or they feel like um roadblocks you don't want to go towards but I say Chase it right um and so one of the things we've learned from this specific intersection Is that story can reconcile Paradox

and this is something that I think art can do better than anything else poetry music um film whatever it is um when you take two things that are opposed to each other it actually is really um a generative beautiful Act of Creation um another thing that it can do that we try to do with our film is like transcend the binaries even the fact that there is a this versus that is is not how the real world works and actually it's a Little bit more threedimensional four dimensional and I think uh the stories that we

are drawn to um tend to be the ones that successfully pull that off where you can where both things can be say true at the same time um and then even that the false dichon isn't enough it actually uh there's there's the world is just so complicated um and so for our film we were like what if we made a a very queer celebration that starred a homophobic Homophobic mother or what if we tra try to create an indie film that could compete with the Blockbusters what if we made a pacifist kung fu movies these

contradictions are really um where the movie shines in my opinion and I think as story tellers and I I mean that for everyone here whether you're a teacher or cook or whatever we to be human is to be a Storyteller chasing after those contradictions that is where the universe is showing you the seams and That's where the universe is asking you and calling you to go to play to fix to heal um and I think that's you know some of my favorite movies are like that like the Barbie like Barbie doesn't make sense like it's

a big commercial for a toy company but this beautiful uh feminist Manifesto that is so playful and dumb and somehow it works and like that those kind of things are the things that are really um only born from chasing after those those contradictions What do you guys think of my new bus idea I was thinking about having these bumper stickers that say bumper stickers lack nuance and then it comes with like a set of 20 other bumper stickers that go under it where you talk about like what you care about but you acknowledge the other

side and their humanity and talk about like uh anyway like it would work best on big cars I guess which I'm not a fan of but that's good uh anyway another contradiction you're going to Have to figure out something show hands should make the bumper stickers all right okay I'll sell like yeah there we go okay um and the last thing it does is it if all else fails if we can't find the the beautiful Synergy between the Paradox it forces us to sit in uncertainty um F Scott fitgerald the test of First Rate intelligence

is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to Function um this is something that I don't know if our movies do well yet but we're working on it um but there are so many beautiful stories that I know of just that leave me completely U without words um because the words are not enough sometimes um and I think that is something beautiful that should be looking for oh sorry well whatever um all right yellow circle yellow circle what you're good at you are sir

thank you thank you what you have to Offer um I think like uh this is like um I think about this in film school terms a lot like like when I when we went to film school like everybody wanted to be a director and I I kind of wish like a teacher had said at the beginning like um not everybody is going to like every job on set and it's super important to experiment and figure out like what what do you have to offer like what are you good at like you might discover along the

way that like uh you really care About the details and the props and the sets a lot more than you like pitching and trying to like raise money or whatever uh and it's such a beautiful moment when you realize uh your your superpower and the fact that everybody has one and not instead of being a of who the best filmaker it should just be like a journey of discovering what kind of artist you are you know yeah and one of the things that we realized pretty early on as a Duo is um as a Duo

what we Offer is that we are constantly chasing after things that we do not know how to solve on our own we're biting off more than we can chew um um this is partially because we have a combination of his background improv my background in animation um we both come from the MTV era I mean post MTV era of music videos when there was no budgets and you had to really just um figure it out best you could with very little time very little money um and it made us uh really good At being lazy

filmmakers uh we do a lot of fixing in the post we do a lot we basically do all the things you're not supposed to do um because we're the ones fixing the post right we're the ones who are we have to deal with the consequences of those kind of things but all of these are things at first we thought we were bad at yeah you know and it it took time to be like wait I think us fixing in post is our power and like um Um yeah like this is what's unique about us it's

okay that I don't love my screenwriting classes and I don't love like sitting and carefully nitpicking the dialogue apart that's that's okay it's just not my strength um and then lastly you know we we were both like weirdos who um you know I came from an Asian-American family obviously that got put into the movie because that was what we had to offer um but also I would always uh I would steal my sister's Clothes all the time she hated it and Daniel was the only person in Alabama doing drag at the time um um I

was Miss Deep South in a beauty pageant there and uh they had the audience actually vote we did the show 10 times and I never won uh so maybe this is not what you offer okay that's fine no it's but one of the things that we do as a Duo is we are constantly surprising each other and what's beautiful about that is if we can surprise each other there's a pretty Good chance we can surprise you and I think that's something that's really um again with the intersection of what the world needs I think the

world needs those kind of things that will knock us off our trajectories and really um show A New Path through surprise through Wonder through curiosity um another thing that we're really good at and what we have to offer is we love and are good at organizing chaos and messes and um we are maximalists often times the common Wisdom says to simplify everything and and that is partially true but um I think the world is so complex and chaotic I want to hold as much as I can in in our stories um you know this is

uh a music video about a fatherson relationship that goes through time and um during a car crash and it happens within like four minutes and so just a lot of density in our work this is a five character um your phone's ringing um there's a five character or there a 10 character music video for The Shins um again moving through time it's like running through a mansion as you run through your memories and then the house gets demolished and then they try to uh in a silent film version reconnect as the house falls apart again

very dense for just a four-minute thing um here's a short film where we took a bunch of um rejected yeah interesting ball woo the one person who saw it um uh it's about a very interesting ball yeah but we took Five or six different stories that had nothing to do with each other and were they were actually all rejected stories this is him getting sucked up my butt I heard you stephs you where are you that g giggle um and again we were like can we can we stick it all together in one thing I

don't know let's try it out and I I think a sort of successful we're good this is very emotional um um so but that movie was also made like as far as what we have to offer like With favors and friends and community and just like we just ran and shot at each of our friends houses and and it turned out better than our big budget commercials turned out at the time and there was there was like a lesson in that and so and this this intersection is really interesting because um rather than the contradiction

I found a Synergy between what we had to offer which was just complexity and and depth and and Chaos um and I it came across this quote From Joseph Campbell um from his power of myth series he did with PBS and Bill Moyers and this is something that really stuck out to me you can't predict what a myth is going to be any more than you can predict what you're going to dream tonight myths and dreams come from the same place they come from uh realizations of some kind uh that have then to find expression

in symbolic form and the myth the only myth that's going to be worth thinking about uh in the Immedi mediate future is one that's talking about the planet not this city not these people but the planet and everybody on it that's my main so he he could basically for those of you guys maybe couldn't hear that really the ending is he's saying the only myth that's going to matter in the in the near future is the myth of the planet the collective myth of the the global ecosystem including all the humans and animals and creatures

or whatever which Like as a filmmaker is kind of like exciting to hear and then like so obnoxious and impossible to be like what like I how do you tell a story about 8 billion 8 billion people um but we were like great let's try let's see what happens um let's try to capture it all and one of the things that again again we we stumbled upon another um quote that really resonated with us it was like as we tried to chase that feeling we were like this is impossible and this Hurts and we came

across this beautiful quote from Ann L uh an an Maro Lindberg who is a pilot and a writer and she says but just how far can we implement this planal awareness we were asked today to to feel compassionately for everyone in the world to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print and to implement in action every ethical ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and Minds The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more People than our hearts can hold this was written decades before the internet was ever um invented imagine what

she would be feeling right now um you don't have to because we're feeling it right now um and so this this was really like okay this is interesting we we we're we're we're getting somewhere with this Joseph Campbell prompt um I then I read this um quote from Nate Silver's book The Signal and noise he talks about information Overload he thought so Alvin Toffler thought our defense mechanisms would be would be to simplify the world in ways that confirmed our biases even as the world itself was growing more diverse and more complex and so this

is how we react to this problem of our hearts not being able to hold it all we simplify we compress right and uh obviously we were seeing this everywhere this is this we started writing this movie around 2016 a lot was happening um And we were even shooting and editing around the pandemic a lot was happening and we could see the world just compressing each other and themselves into manageable um stories to make up for the fact that there's no way they could hold it all um and so so it suddenly felt like a a

cool aha moment to be like okay we like maximalism we we're good at putting too much in there the world feels maximalist And like it's too much these days uh it would be great to talk about the whole world but it's also impossible and we become numb to it and also when we do try to talk about it we oversimplify it and all of that became kind of like the prompt of like okay that suddenly that's our take on a Multiverse film which at first scared me and did not sound like a movie I wanted

to make but then it became kind of personal import like useful and uh played to our Strengths yeah and I I do think because of that a lot of people were able to connect with the the speed and fury of the film because this is what it was a reflection of of Modern Life um so some things we've learned about this circle um stories can be a compression algorithm and there are good compression algorithms and there are bad ones you all know when the jpeg is compressed terribly because you're not really looking at the original

image stories do This all the time and we have to be really careful as storytellers and again no matter what field you're in you are in when we are trying to tell a story because you never know what kind of uh you you never know what kind of um unconscious biases you're You're Building into the algorithm um oh yeah there you go for those who don't know um Einstein kind of speaks to this everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler um I found this Really beautiful quote from Monique whid who is

a the French feminist writer she says it is the attempted un universalization of the point of view that turns or does not turn a literary work into a war machine universalism has the power to reduce to silence to excommunicate to consign to Oblivion and so this was really interesting because this butts up against this idea of a global myth right the global myth like I was chasing after This Global myth and I realized uh how wrong it was um this is the kind of thing that could really um do a lot of danger I mean

I anyone here who is a woman or queerer person of color experienced this in the '90s and early 2000s this is they did that study where they found if you show TV to kids for you know half an hour everyone left feeling worse about thems unless you were a white straight man um or yeah whatever it obviously things have Changed um but there is still it's still happening every day and we have to be super aware of of what our compression algorithms are doing um and there is one other way of looking at the global

myth that I I found very helpful and that is through the idea of an ecosystem um thousands and thousands of stories all interconnected interdepend dependent churning against each other sharpening one each other contradicting each other but still being held by this uh web of Interbeing and Inter interconnectedness um I realize underneath this is just we talk about all the time that like uh one of my pet peeves is when stories are treated like they're just all great like all Art's great uh but I think art can be so dangerous and such a powerful tool for

good and for evil and it's so interesting to look at the stories we're making and the things we're watching and consuming and trying to think about like what's the collective Direction This is Pointing like and and having these conversations trying to create a healthy ecosystem seems like a really yeah powerful approach yeah um and this is all just a really over complicated way of talking about the coexist bumper sticker um I CH that's one of my favorite bumper stickers for the record it's got Nuance is is um I mean here's the thing there is deep

beautiful truth in it um and it takes us storytellers to Constantly be reminding um the world of those truths um another thing stories can be is it it can be the thing that knocks us off our trajectories um one of the beautiful privileges we've had with this film is getting to hear people tell their stories of watching it and what happened afterwards um often times we have heard stories of people saying that it literally changed their family Dynamic um we had one young man say that his father you know maybe a decade ago Um disowned

him for coming out as gay and he had not heard from him in years until this movie came out and his father saw the film and called him for the first time and now they're working on it and like these are the kind of things that we can no you don't have to Applause um we these are the things that we forget as story tellers we forget we have the power to knock people into new trajectories into New Life paths and I I just wanted to uh remind our all all of Ourselves that it's possible

there's this beautiful um metaphor of NASA has this thing called Dart it's the double asterid redirection test and basically it's summed up as if in case there's an asteroid about to hit Earth what is the smallest object with the least amount of force timed at the right exact moment that will knock that asteroid into another trajectory saving Earth what is the smallest thing that can have the biggest impact and it's really fun to Imagine our stories Heating and colliding with our audience members knocking them off of their trajectories at the right moment and the right

time and how powerful that can be um be practical do the impossible because of you don't do the impossible as I've have cried out over and over again we're going to wind up with the unthinkable and that will be the destruction of the planet itself so to do the impossible is the most rational and practical thing we Can do this is Murray bookin a social ecologist um I think he's speaking in the 80s or the 90s about the trajectory the planet is on how we are destroying the planet and literally if you follow the logical

path we will all die and we will destroy the planet and so he's saying he's he's encouraging all of us um to think impossibly and believe in the power of thinking impossibly um it's really easy for us to get bored of this idea or like tired of this idea that Story is powerful and story can change us and and and and we often become numb to the idea but when you really look at science and psychology and all these studies you really see how um stories and belief systems can change us like when you think

about habits one of the first most powerful things you can do to change your habit is to literally change your identity change the story that you tell yourself about yourself um you think about the placebo effect the Placebo effect lots of people think of it as a a way to look at gullible people who take a sugar pill and get their body changed but really if you reframe that as wait these people believed a story and they were able to affect their bodies um to some degree to the uh to some degree in a similar

way to people who are taking like a pharmaceutical drug that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to uh develop that is Magic that is powerful and like we are not really Tapping into that or we're not personally me even before this movie came out um I I had started to lose faith in the ability of stories um this especially is true for um I've been thinking a lot about some of my friends who have been moving through the step 12st step program um addiction is the hardest trajectory to knock yourself out of and uh I've

had a friend recently move through and he was telling me about how interesting it is um but especially He was talking about how like we were talking about how oh yeah 12ep program yay there's 12 steps I'm not going to read them all um they did a recent study because it's it a sort of controversial thing but they did a recent study at Stanford they they collected uh 40 or 50 studies about addiction and they found across the board in every single one the 12-step program even though it wasn't perfect it was more effective than

any other of the um U techniques that they Used and they attributed it to the community building aspect of it and I think that's really important but one thing that my friend pointed out that was really hard for him that ended up being really powerful was first step is accepting you have a problem second step is and again it's a little controversial came to believe a power that was greater than ourselves could restore to sanity this is uh really hard for secular people who grew up in Liberal households My friend struggled with this um but

they said you don't have to believe in God you can believe in your ancestors you can believe in nature you can believe in the Stars something just tell yourself a story that is bigger than you and so that you can connect yourself to something bigger stronger than yourself to knock yourself out off of that trajectory and I I just wanted to share that cuz it's it's it's something that I've been really thinking about lately Um and how beautiful it is um all right hi you guys let's talk about getting paid get paid okay yeah [Applause]

there all right so this one's interesting you have to be careful with this one because all the incentives are already pushing you this direction right everything is moving towards this direction and also you know like I said we do need to live we need to survive in order to um be fulfilled but you know With great power comes great responsibility um and so we we try to wield that responsibility very carefully in all our work every every day we wake up and we're like what's the responsible thing to do he he begged for this role

this was didn't I didn't he hates that joke um one of the things that we realized early on is uh we were viral filmmakers we came out When YouTube and Vimeo were first started and so we were writing the algorithm this was before anyone even knew what the algorithm was no one even understood that's how we were being shown the content and the order that we were being shown um but we felt it and so we you know this is a video one of our early projects was people skateboarding on dogs um there's there's not

a moral but the internet liked it um even Before we graduated from college the way that we um worked through it was we would subit or work to commercial contests I don't know if they still do these but like basically it was free labor from college students um to make commercials for them and if you're lucky you win a couple thousand bucks um from the we don't need bowls anymore this is my dibs commercial no no Danny what are you doing I'm destroying our Bowls one by one because I bought Dibs that doesn't make any

sense I got paid but uh see dibs aren't normal ice cream for the record dibs with your dibs are just fine support your local ice cream also bought cereal and milk okay anyways sorry there need bols so anyways the algorithm was something that we were subconsciously chasing and basically being trained by um we were like subconsciously um P this having this pavlovian response with the Algorithm and it led us do a lot of commercials um that were do that did well it made us a lot of money I was able to uh pay off my

student loans which I know is a rarity and a blessing um yay oh forgive student loans please um yeah but also we we realize now because we've all been steeped in the internet for a generation how dangerous it can be um if you guys don't know this man on The screen his name is nikado avocado he was a vegan influencer who loved playing the violin and within a few years he became this man um he he decided to become a mukbang influencer and he is eating himself to death slowly because each video gets 2.6 million

views um this is obviously worst case scenario or one of the worst case scenarios but it's become a thing the rage bait where people purposely make things the wrong way um do you all know this word rage Bait it's you'll see it everywhere online like they if they make you upset you'll engage so you'll just see someone like mispronounce things make something wrong say something bigoted or stupid and that's that'll get the click it's the algorithm and so everyone's chasing it you know it's literally led to death um there's a cinematic version of it um

which uh you know it's fun to talk about that could have been us we were on our way like dog Boarding is a fast track to human cede gateway drug um so we did we did again morally responsible things um like turn on for what yeah and but this is why this intersection is so important because you can get pulled by this incredibly strong m magnet this incredibly strong Vortex if you're not careful you don't look at this intersection and and so for us um with all of our work but especially everything everywhere we're like

okay Can we make sure that we are making something that's really personal in Indie within the film world that the kind of things that are getting harder and harder to make but can we also Infuse it with the stuff that was really popular at the time you know all the way back in 2022 superhero movies were popular back then um and it paid off um we were able to actually make some money and for the company and also open a lot of doors for other filmmakers who are Trying to make weird stuff just prove to

financiers that like this stuff can actually be uh fiscally responsible and we managed to like pay our cast and crew better than we had ever been able to on you know a personal project and so even before the movie came out yeah it felt so good and that's like another part of this is like you know for 10 years we were asking so many favors probably a lot of you are asking so many favor and that's that's not rare but it's Important to ask yourself like why why like what can I change to make everybody

have a living wage on my projects and so one of the things that we've learned about um over the years but especially with everything everywhere is uh story can and should try to meet the audience where they are and what I mean by that you know often times people say like don't think about the audience and and there are phases in which we shouldn't think about the audience but every now And then just turn on that brain that like I want to say market research but there's this idea of human centered design which I know

the tech world is probably very familiar with we don't talk about this stuff in in um as directors ever um but you're you're empathizing with your audience you're putting your your shoes your feet in their shoes and trying to really see where they're where they are and how they're going to use your product right Um and so we really had to look at where our audience was um we were losing our attention spans right we are uh very depressed we are exhausted no one wants to watch movies cuz they want to watch mind less binge

watching shows um and I'm you know I'm not pointing fingers this is a screenshot of one of the video games I've been playing recently um and this is in real time I didn't speed this up uh I have ADHD so you know it's I have a little bit of an excuse are you Winning there yes I'm doing so good I'm that see that little purple thing it's about to reach the end and I'm I'm going to lose it's going to be the worst um and so we really designed this thing to give audiences something uh

fun and playful to protect them from all this other stuff that is basically their everyday life so that so we have the genre stuff we have uh the stupid viral things that you know genuinely made us laugh famous people um stun casting kind Of by accident but kind of amazing also that we could capture something really honest and truthful about today and uh give them give the our audiences a a real connection to us as a filmmaker something very genuine um and it might feel kind of um cheap to hijack algorithms and uh things like

that in order to uh you know make art but I would argue we've been doing it for a very long time uh the hero's journey is the first narrative algorithm right it's The first time where we were able to figure out the perfect sequence of events that would lead to a satisfying conclusion and a satisfying feeling um and uh so in some ways I feel like in times of Crisis and confusion um maybe is our responsibility to make things as fun as hell so that we can reach as many people as we can um so

that's why we put the butt plug in there we did it for your your own good it was for your own good Um so last Circle last Circle what the world needs how are you guys feeling overwhelmed overwhelmed yeah okay um so one of the things that we've learned um about carrying about the world and you've all been feeling this as well is how quickly you can burn out um Jamie will has again the neuro Anthropologist talks about this problem where for a very long time we've been Working under this idea of needing to think

globally and act locally and it's so well-intentioned but it's killing us right we are so anxious we're so paralyzed we can't do anything because we're thinking globally all the time and he he offers up a an alternative grieve globally and Thrive Loc Lo Al um to grieve is not to ignore it it's not to say it's not to um you know run away from it it's actually to hold the thing that you're losing and Really cherish it and remember what is so special about it um and if you can do that while also thriving locally

I actually think that is what the world needs for you to be fulfilled for you to become the best version of yourself for you to thrive and this is something we take to our film sets um this Spirit of thriving and fun and connectedness these are like warm-up activities and celebration days and like uh kind of crew morale stuff that we did on set Which I genuinely think made the movie better but I kind of didn't care like cuz we the more we talked about it it's like this is just matters I want to finish

the project and be proud of the process regardless of the product but it made the product better so it's a win-win um and just to give credit regret is due this is something that sharer cares a lot about and he puts a lot of attention to the process of How We Do It um and how we can try to find Ways to thrive locally um while we're stressed out of our minds because it's still hard it's still impossible um something that's been really helpful for me to use when I'm thinking about this this Dynamic of

thriving locally um Tyson Yun por he's a Aboriginal New Zealander who um he's a thinker writer scientist and he he shares in his his book this concept from his culture called the lookout um your Lookout is a person's appropriate sphere of influence And accountability your Lookout encompasses all of your reasonable obligations and activities within your pairs groups and wider networks basically it's about tending your garden and just your garden what is your responsibility what can you have access to what is what is um yeah what has the universe given to you and uh when you

start off it's pretty small and that's okay make that small plot of land as beautiful as you can uh when you get to Uh stand on stage stage like that it become the garden becomes much bigger and the responsibility becomes much bigger um and what I love about this is just imagine an interconnected ecosystem of all of our Lookouts slowly covering the world in the way that allows us to all Thrive locally because everyone's thriving locally eventually the globe takes care of itself So so that's it there it is really simple so take all this

and put it in the box like store it away somewhere deep in your memory don't don't hold on to this um like I said you will not be making good art if you trying to fill box uh fill fill circles um often times what we do is we use this rubric when we are stuck or lost or feeling like something is really missing in in what we're working on um and and it's been such a useful tool for us to Be able to pull ourselves into interesting places that feel uh more truthful more honest and

honestly more fulfilling or pick the next project you know sometimes we'd do something to get paid and be like I have to do something selfish right now yeah yeah um which brings me to this this uh this question that um I've been we've been we've been asking ourselves our whole career okay like first of all how many of you are Here uh because you're hoping to learn something useful that might help make you better at your job okay okay yeah we're all overachievers um and how how many of you is it because of how desperately

you need to be good at your job yeah okay that's some of you guys don't want to admit it okay that's good um because you've tied yourself Worth to your job yeah okay cool okay now now you guys are getting excited okay I saw some very Excited hands um deep down um you feel like if you don't get really good at this if you don't get as good as possible that you will not be worth anything um and that you will not ever feel fulfillment um this is something that I've struggled with my whole life

I was undiagnosed ADHD and that really destroyed my self-esteem um for until I was like well into my 30s and uh I think it's part of the reason why I I needed to be as good As I could be and I think that's why you all in this room as well you are all good at your jobs that's why you got sent to this place to learn things and become better um but somehow we don't ever feel fulfilled I mean some of you I think actually you guys have left the fulfilled people have left um

um which prompts the question like why is it so hard um why is it so hard to find fulfillment today uh I feel like There is a story that the system tells us and that is the story that we are only worth what we can contribute to someone's profit right to someone's growth to someone's um accumulation and this story didn't just happen magically um it co-evolved with our society and co-evolved with our technology and our Innovations um generally our relationship with Innovation is that it's all pretty great and that anyone who stands in the way

of It was kind of dumb like dumb Lites who didn't understand what they're doing and while not all of that's completely wrong we want to provide a bit of a counternarrative to show something that is deeply important important that is being sacrificed every time our story changes every time we are um we move ahead in society um and is often most evident in the stories we tell ourselves the the thing about Innovation Is it gives us things more efficiently with more convenience and that opens up Society to do more things to have more things but

often times the process tips over and we become too good at it there's too much convenience and with too much convenience becomes disposability so and in a way I'd say like every convenience creates disposability like you're going to take whatever that thing is that you made shorter faster and you're making it less Valuable you're making it something to get through something to get past and in order to make something more disposable we actually have to change the relationship with the world around us and change the stories we tell like the earliest cultures a lot of

them all around the world believed in animism and for those who don't know that is this belief this story that they told themselves that every living creature Rock tree River had a soul had a life And a lot of modern people you know kind of laugh at that and think it's a little silly but regardless of what you believe that story is actually really beautiful because it kept things in balance right there is this really beautiful uh relationship with the world around them um when we invented agriculture we couldn't just um Force an oxin to

drag a plow because that oxin had a soul and so we changed the story of The Oxen and said oh actually we're not all beautiful Soulful things we're going to lower the value of this one thing and you see this happening slow through slowly throughout history every new achievement we've done it to the trees the trees are are are incredible beautiful things that provide food Water Shelter um cooling the Earth giving us the oxygen to re breathe and we've reduced their story to $70 of lumber at Home Depot um and like I said some of

this is necessary even the oldest cultures who believe in animism Would kill with CHP chop down trees but there is a narrative where there was grieving and there was uh respect and there was gratitude and that has been lost and we have slowly created an entire world where everything is disposable our shoes our cars our phones um we're all culpable we're all responsible for this um but the worst part is we've even done it to the people and these Norm Deval stories they become normalized and compounded through Generational Amnesia and we slowly move the threshold

of who is valuable and who isn't um for instance modern capitalism and work and the cap and the capitalist Workforce only works if we are able to compel people to work because we can't force them to work and so we had to change the story We Told ourselves and say that your value is your job you are only worth what you can do and we are no longer beings with an inherent worth and this is why uh it's so hard to Find fulfillment in this uh current system the system works best when you're not fulfilled

which brings me back to AI [Applause] what you guys love AI clearly oh yeah and yeah so now we're going to talk about why we love a Ai and why everything's going to be fine um no here's the thing there's going to be a lot of people who are saying how amazing AI is and it it is there it's magic it's probably going to solve cancer it's probably going to give us a lot of climate Solutions this is a powerful thing um but I'm really terrified of what this new story we're going to have to

tell oursel in order to accept this new convenience this new progress It's terrifying right it's to imagine what this what this technology will do within this current system within this current incentive Structure this is the same system that brought us climate change income inequality and the general lack of gratitude and understanding of our worth and the worth of those around us um and if you're anxious about AI while everyone is saying Chase it get ahead of it it's because you know deep down oh we're next most of us are next even if theob job aren't

going to be lost the value of the job will go down right and again like I said it will slowly be Compounded and normalized until we don't even realize it and we're now at a place where everyone is disposable um we are ghosting each other constantly firing each other there's no um longevity between uh employees and employers or even um friendship we are now in a place where we are more lonely than we have ever been um and we all understand it's because of the technology the social media the ways that we are now again

re rewriting our Story and so one of the things I'm realizing we all have to be doing as storytellers is we have to really rewrite the system story and Center what is truly valuable and that might be different for everyone for me I really believe is our humanity and the connection that we have to our communities and our environment and it might feel kind of crazy to think that our little short films or our Little poems might actually make a dent in the in the crack in the system sometimes it feels like throwing little rocks

at at this giant brick wall um but we have to remember that the systems that we have now are just fossilized stories of the past and as this current Fossil is crumbling and showing its crack we actually have an opportunity to rewrite the stories and rewrite the systems for tomorrow we have to undo what the stories have done to us To our value and to the value of everything around us um and so I also want to say we're not saying don't use AI I I don't believe in dogmas I don't believe in that kind

of puritanical um lifestyle it doesn't work AI is here it is going to be rapidly um deployed in every aspect of Our Lives Quan loves it he uses it all the time uh he's going to go home and apologize to chat gbt later I know um but we talk about if you're Going to use it when you use it like really try to think about why you're using it are you trying to use it to create the world you want to live in are you trying to use it to increase value in your life and

focus on the things that you really care about or are you just trying to like make some money for the billionaires you know uh and and if someone tells you there's no side effect it's totally great get on board I just want to go on the record and say that's Terrifying [ __ ] that's not true uh and we should be talking really deeply about how to carefully carefully deploy this stuff and check in on your friends like if your friends are on chat too much like check in on them go on a walk with

them prove to them that humans are fun mhh that's that's the good work um yeah again reconcile the Paradox this there's we are living in an age of paradox and We should be chasing it and really looking at why it feels so wrong to use AI but also how are we supposed to survive in this this uh this current system and current environment that is going to basic basically um have ai everywhere um and so to summarize to end us off we're yeah we're doing good um we're almost done why did we write everything everywhere

we all at once the way we did um and the answer is we did it to save Ourselves um every story and every art that we we make is an active Act of saving ourselves and our value from A system that wants to devalue us um and the people that we care about um the problem is of course right now there's so much to be saved from AI aside like I said there's the climate crisis there's um multiple Wars there's in deepening uh polarization loss of consensus truth the list goes on when we wrote everything

everywhere I was Spiraling about our president and I feel like I was losing my own empathy for so many people you know and trying to understand like what like how to make sense of this really crazy world and my parents generation and myself and so we dove into a project about relating with that generation and and trying to build Bridges and uh it was it was a healing process and one of the things that I'm realizing now is again it's not just our work it's all of our work um this kind Of collective rewriting of

our stories um I've been thinking a lot about something that Mary Jane Rubenstein has said she's a philosophy of religion and science uh professor at Wesleyan University and she said that um if you look at the 12ep program what's fascinating about that second um you look at that second step uh you can kind of look at the world through that we are we are addicted to a system we know how to solve our problems we understand what A lot of the solutions are we just don't know how to actually have the will to do it

and so if you look at us collectively we are on step one we are finally after decades admitting that there's a problem specifically to climate change amongst other things and now we need to be actively thinking about okay what kind of stories are we going to be telling to bring us into that second step um we need to believe we need to believe in something bigger Than ourselves and that is each other we need to believe that we to collectively can build a new global global e ecosystem of myths that's why we're starting a religion

yeah you can got a t-shirt and everything no um but honestly just finding a way to weave together all of our Lookouts into an intricate Network that is both somehow hyper local hyper bi Regional but also super Global and can contain the complexity the chaos of the planet Without reducing without simplifying in ways that can reconcile the pirate paradoxes so that we can meet our audiences where they're at knock us out of our trajectory and bring value meaning and fulfillment to every organism on this planet but most importantly to you the artist the Storyteller your

fulfillment is the first step and helping the world find its own so we are on stage humbly naively but joyfully inviting you to Find your fulfillment by remembering your place in the world the power you hold as a Storyteller and your responsibility to that power we're asking you to remember why we all tell stories we look forward to seeing what you tell next thank you guys real quick thank you guys I want to say thank you to them holy cow I'm sorry we talk so Fast oh you guys are giving us a standing ovation I

thought you were leaving okay thank you guys thank you thank you thank you bye bye bye bye [Applause] [Music] bye [Music]