Brian Pritchard and I start with music this week, Presidents of the United States of America's Supermodel, Kaspar Babypants, why modern production makes every genre sound the same, Polyphia's Tim Henson chasing his final form, and the Dream Theater album that got even better after Mike Portnoy came back. Then things get heavier. We trace a line from Fight Club straight into nu-metal and the incel movement, and I get honest about how close I came to going down that path myself after college, and how discovering libertarianism ("nobody owes you shit") pulled me out of it. We also get into envy, generational wealth, and why the money never survives three generations. Closes out with a TV and movie catch-up: Reacher, Tulsa King, Silo, Ted Lasso, and why Matinee might be the ultimate love letter to why we watch movies in the first place.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where a couple of Ohio dads who make video-game-adjacent music sit down with two guys who actually built a whole band around it. This week Brian and I are joined by Saker and Rick from Masterhand, the Smash Bros.-costumed, nu-metal-meets-nerdcore-hip-hop supergroup that's somehow only two years old and already headlining, touring, and about to share a stage with us at Bessie Fest. We start where these things always start, a rabbit hole about the last time I stood on that exact Cove stage in Geneva-On-The-Lake, auditioning for a band called The Bentreys back in 2006 in front of a packed room, getting the gig, and then getting lied out of it by my own drummer. Twenty years later, same venue, much less humiliating circumstances. From there Saker and Rick walk us through how Masterhand actually came together, a Discord-era Voltron of a hip hop comedian, a prog-metal singer, a session drummer nobody's ever heard play, and a guitarist so good the whole band jokes he could've done all five parts himself, and how they went from a self-titled bedroom album to a five-city van tour opening for actual nerdcore legends within about a year of existing. That leads into the real meat of the episode: the identity question every band like ours eventually has to answer. Are you a comedy act or a real one? Masterhand plants their flag on the Protomen side of the VGM-versus-nerdcore divide, writing songs inspired by video games rather than covering the soundtracks, and Saker and Rick get honest about how differently that hits each of them, since half the band came from dead-serious projects and half came from goofball ones. Brian's take on it, that sincerity in the delivery is exactly what makes the joke land for the people paying attention, turns into one of the more quietly profound moments of the show, and it pays off hard when Saker admits the heaviest song on Masterhand's upcoming record is about Bubble Bobble. We also get into the origin of "Funny Money," their surprisingly sharp anti-capitalism anthem disguised as a Monopoly song, which they're sending us to close out the episode. Then, because we can't help ourselves, we detour into Longlegs versus The Substance and where a movie earns the right to go off the rails in its third act, a shared love of Oddity and Caveat, and a long, mournful conversation about what happened to Weezer and the Barenaked Ladies once their driving creative force either left or coasted. This one's for anyone who's ever had to defend a genuinely silly project as genuinely good work, and for anyone who'll be at The Cove on August 23rd to watch us find out together. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen, and follow along for more conversations about the films and music that shape our lives.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where two dads with a podcast and a band try to figure out how to be both at the same time. I'm Nicky P, here with Brian Pritchard, and this episode isn't really about a movie, it's about the business of trying to be a band, which somehow still manages to turn into a bit about writing a Halloween III song on the spot. We open up honest about where things actually stand right now, Brian's professional world eating his bandwidth, me trying to be the one pushing the band forward on the business side while he gets his footing. No sugarcoating it: this is what it actually looks like to keep a band moving when everybody's got grown-up schedules and grown-up problems. What We Cover:

• Why a "small" schedule change can wreck your creative routine without you realizing it
• Scouting new venues and trying to crack the east side of Cleveland
• Oddmall, Con on the Cob, and using convention culture to cross-promote the band
• The "minimum viable product" version of Puma Thurman: me and Brian as an acoustic duo
• Whether you can turn a convention vendor table into a busking stage
• The Halloween III: Season of the Witch bit — writing a song on demand, then pulling the curtain closed until it's ready
• Patreon-style request tiers and the improv comedy roots of that idea
• Brian's voice memo archive and the song he wrote and doesn't remember writing
• The real story behind how "Labor Day" became As Long As the Snow Falls
• Bodhi, the mystery Point Break riffs, and Brian's total inability to remember which song is which

The Real Talk: This episode is less "let's talk about a movie" and more "here's what it actually takes to keep a band alive when life gets in the way." But because we can't help ourselves, even the logistics talk turns into a bit about busking a Season of the Witch song for a stranger at a convention table. Deep Dive - The Curtain Bit: What starts as a genuine question, could we perform at a vendor table at Con on the Cob, spirals into a full comedic bit about writing songs to order, complete with an imaginary army tent curtain we pull closed when it's "writing time." It's a perfect example of how this show works: real logistics conversation, then immediately off the rails into a movie reference nobody saw coming. The Songwriting Archaeology: Brian's got a backlog of at least ten unfinished song ideas sitting in voice memos, including one Lindsay found on her phone that Brian has zero memory of writing. We also get the real story of how a song called "Labor Day," which sat unfinished for the longest time, eventually became As Long As the Snow Falls, and why Nicky was hesitant to touch Brian's guitar work until Brian basically forced his hand. Key Moments:

• The "minimum viable product" version of a live show, explained
• Why performing at a convention table might be "almost like busking, but why the hell not"
• The full Season of the Witch bit, curtain and all
• Nicky forgetting which Point Break riff is which, in real time, on mic
• The origin story of As Long As the Snow Falls

The Bottom Line: You don't need a movie to talk about movies. This episode is proof that the film-and-music intersection isn't just about analyzing what's on screen, it's baked into how this band thinks, jokes, and builds. Sometimes the best bit of the episode is two guys workshopping a fake gig for a horror sequel nobody else remembers. Also Featured: Tangents about Oddmall, Cleveland venue geography, Patreon tiers, improv comedy roots, and Brian's ongoing inability to remember his own riffs. This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered what actually goes into keeping a band moving between tours, and for anyone who wants to hear two grown men seriously debate busking a Halloween III song at a mall. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen. Follow us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, movie recommendations, and more conversations about the films and music that shape our lives.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where two Ohio dads with a podcast and a band try to figure out why art means something different than what it was actually built to mean. I'm Nicky P, here with Brian Pritchard, and this week we went from Chris Nolan's most confusing movie to the dumbest, most brilliant songwriting origin story in our band's history.

We kick things off with Tenet, Brian's watched it five or six times and still isn't sure the plot works, but he's landed on peace with it by treating it as Nolan's heightened spy movie homage. That gets us into director's intent generally, which leads to one of my favorite movie facts: The Orphanage was designed to be Peter Pan told from the parents' perspective, a kid just vanishing one day. You'd never guess it watching the movie cold, but once you know, it recontextualizes the whole thing.

What We Cover:

• Brian's ongoing complicated relationship with Tenet and Nolan's "heightened spy movie" defense

• Guillermo del Toro's Presents The Orphanage and its secret Peter Pan concept

• Why "dancing about architecture" over-intellectualizing can ruin a David Lynch movie

• The after-the-fact mythology bands build around their own songs (including our own "Brown Coat Man")

• Easter eggs bands hide inside live performances: Ween's Chariots of Fire tease, Tool dropping Suspicious Minds into Stink Fist, Mars Volta's genre-hopping detours

• Dome's "Blood on the Borderline" and dropping Game of Thrones, Terminator 2, and Always Sunny's Dayman into a breakdown

• THE EMILIO STORY: how a mumbled, meaningless lyric became the entire political concept behind "Two Faces of America"

• Puma Thurman's own hidden Nights in White Satin sample buried inside "1212"

• Cover songs as a handshake with the audience, and why Weezer's note-for-note Africa cover missed the entire point

• Between the Buried and Me's cover album and how they made every song unmistakably their own

• Chad Kroeger's surprising ownership of a Santana song and the Lifehouse version that got there first

• Sinatra, Louis Prima, and why phrasing is the whole ballgame if you want to learn how to actually sing

The Real Talk: This episode isn't really about movies or music separately, it's about the space between what a creator intends and what an audience actually experiences. Sometimes that gap is a director's carefully hidden Peter Pan metaphor. Sometimes it's a guy mumbling nonsense syllables that somehow becomes your band's entire political statement. Either way, the meaning shows up whether or not you meant to put it there.

The Emilio Deep Dive: Dome's "Two Faces of America" started as literal gibberish, a singer mumbling something that sounded like "Emilio" in the chorus. Instead of writing real words, the band leaned all the way in, built a chorus around Emilio Estevez versus Charlie Sheen, and ended up with one of the more overtly political songs on the record. None of it was planned. All of it worked.

The Cover Song Philosophy: We get into why the best covers (Between the Buried and Me's Bicycle Race into their gutting Day I Tried to Live and Colorblind) succeed by filtering someone else's song through your own identity, and why Weezer's technically perfect Africa cover felt so hollow by comparison.

Key Moments:

• Brian's five-or-six rewatches of Tenet and his eventual peace with "it's just a heightened spy movie"

• The Orphanage's secret Peter Pan framing device

• The full "Emilio, he's no Sheen at all" origin story

• Puma Thurman's own buried Nights in White Satin sample in "1212"

• The Weezer Africa cover takedown

• Chad Kroeger's unlikely ownership of a Santana song

• Sinatra and Louis Prima as a masterclass in phrasing

The Bottom Line: Whether you're a director hiding a fairy tale inside a horror movie, a singer mumbling nonsense that becomes a political statement, or a band burying a 60-second riff for the diehards to catch live, art keeps generating meaning long after it's "finished." Maybe it's never actually finished at all.

Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen. Follow us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, movie recommendations, and more conversations about the films and music that shape our lives.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where two pop culture nerds and band geeks sit at the apex of music & film, except this week we actually let a third weirdo into the room. I'm Nicky P, here with Brian Pritchard, and this episode we're joined by Joey Steele, a man Brian has known since they were 13-year-olds destroying their hearing in a band called Nosferatu, and who has since spent the last 20-plus years fronting All Torn Up, Cop Out, and Bowhead. This is only the second time we've had a guest, and Joey did not come to play nice. He came in hot with a theory of music as community organizing, stayed hot through a debate about whether punk audiences actually agree with anything, and left us with a metaphor involving methamphetamine and Malcolm X that I'm still thinking about. What We Cover:

• Joey's 20-year run fronting All Torn Up, and the very different mission behind Cop Out
• Why "music is community organizing" and musicians who deny that "suffer" for it
• The Commitments and the difference between showing off and actually connecting
• How three bands (All Torn Up, Cop Out, Bowhead) let Joey express anger, playfulness, and pure surrealism separately
• Punk scenes, masculine energy, circle pits, and who gets left out of the room
• Night of the Living Dead as an accidental political awakening in eighth grade
• Spike Lee's run of films (Crooklyn, Clockers, Bamboozled) as a suburban wake-up call
• The "moment between thought and action," Nicky's slow-down theory vs. Joey's speed-up-and-hit-a-brick-wall theory
• Malcolm X as the shared reference point for both approaches
• Whether arguing has ever actually changed anyone's mind (spoiler: rarely)
• John Waters vs. anger as competing strategies for getting a message across
• Bowhead's surreal lyrical world, insects, conjoined twins, and a Joshua tree watching the world burn
• The upcoming Bowhead / Puma Thurman tour dates later this year

The Real Talk: This episode is proof that our best conversations happen when somebody disagrees with us in a way that actually sharpens the point instead of just being noise. Joey and I don't agree on much, politically, temperamentally, or otherwise, but that friction is exactly what made this one worth recording. Deep Dive: The Moment Between Thought and Action: My whole framework is "slow down and think before you act." Joey's is "speed up until thought and action happen at the same time." Different roads, same destination: Malcolm X, who Joey credits with mastering exactly that synthesis, and who's quoted on every single All Torn Up record because of it. Deep Dive: Three Bands, Three Emotions: All Torn Up is anger. Cop Out is joy and resistance together. Bowhead is pure surrealism, a song about insects leaving a waterfall shelter, a song about conjoined twins in a car accident, and a song about being a Joshua tree watching fire roll down a mountain toward you. Same guy, three completely different emotional registers. Key Moments:

• Joey's Nosferatu-induced hearing damage and the song "Lost Monkeys"
• "If you wanna wank, use that thing in your hand, not your sax," Nicky's Commitments reference lands perfectly
• The circle pit vs. the political slogan: why Nicky's punk roots were about the room, not the ideology
• Night of the Living Dead: an eighth grader's first real political thought, delivered by Tom Savini
• The meth/Malcolm X exchange that anchors the whole episode
• Joey teasing Bowhead's "The Burning," the Joshua tree song that closes out the episode

The Bottom Line: Whether you slow down or speed up, the goal is the same, actually thinking about what you're doing instead of running on conditioned autopilot. Joey's spent 20-plus years trying to force that moment through music. This episode is us trying to have it out loud, on mic, in real time. Also Featured: Tangents about bass players never counting, System of a Down playing to stadiums full of people who don't share their politics, and whether Nicky is secretly more of a John Waters guy than he's willing to admit. This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered whether art changes minds faster than arguing does, and for anyone who's ever had a band practice end in a broken hand over a political disagreement. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen. Follow us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, movie recommendations, and more conversations about the films and music that shape our lives.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where two pop culture nerds and band geeks sit at the apex of music & film, except this week the "film" part is literally about us. I'm Nicky P, here with Brian Pritchard, and we just got back from Puma Thurman's first out-of-state, multi-city run, which means we also just got back from watching a rough cut of an actual documentary somebody made about it. Look, it's a weird thing to process. Brian's kid Ben directed it, and it's genuinely good, like, "holy shit, we caught lightning in a bottle" good, especially the New Haven footage. But watching yourself be the subject of a movie hits different than watching a movie about somebody else. There's a whole conversation in here about what it's like to sit there cringing at your own seriousness on camera while doing the exact same seriousness on a podcast every single week. What We Cover:

• Why we're finally moving toward video accompaniment for live shows (and Brian's Second Half / Jurassic Park comparison for why we've had no excuse not to)
• Getting Max acclimated as the newest member ahead of a December show
• Reviewing the rough cut of the tour documentary and what it's like being a first-person subject in someone else's vision
• The New Haven footage that captured, in Brian's words, "lightning in a bottle"
• The final slow-motion shot connecting this year's tour footage to Puma Thurman's first show in 2005
• Jay Bombalicki, the Denver host Brian's known for 30 years, and what it means to keep a friendship going that long
• Nicky's perspective as the relative outsider watching two decades of the same guys still showing up for each other
• A candid, wide-ranging conversation about growing up in very different environments, Brian in an affluent Cleveland suburb, Nicky in rural upstate New York, and how those different paths somehow led to the same place

The Real Talk: This episode started as a routine "how was your week" and turned into an actual gut-check about legacy. Brian's been going out on stage with the same "try hard" energy for twenty years, and watching that captured in slow motion, the exact millisecond he and Levante lock eyes on stage in 2005, echoed by the same connection today, is the kind of thing that sneaks up on you. Nicky, who's only been in the fold a fraction of that time, spends a chunk of the episode sitting with what it means to watch other people have that kind of continuity when almost nobody in his own life has stuck around that long. Deep Dive, Becoming a Movie Band: Brian's been talking for years about wanting video accompaniment behind the band live, name-checking a local act called Second Half whose guitarist used to "duet" with pre-recorded footage of himself, like something out of Jurassic Park. With the tour documentary now real and the band's mythology expanding (yes, there's a church now, long story, next episode probably), the video component finally has a reason to exist. The Bottom Line: Sometimes the most interesting thing you can talk about on a film-and-music podcast is the film that got made about you. This episode is for anyone who's ever looked at old footage of the people they love and realized how long you've all actually been in this together. Also Featured: Getting the drum kit reassembled after the tour, Max's new house and future home studio, why Nicky's never met anyone in his life who's stuck around as long as Brian's crew has, and a long, honest conversation about growing up in very different worlds and ending up in the same band. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen. Follow us on social media for tour footage, documentary updates, and more conversations about the films and music that shape our lives.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where two band dads talk movies until it somehow turns into a life lesson. I'm Nicky P, here with Brian, and this week we brought on somebody who's built an entire second life out of a question most of us have asked exactly once and then forgotten about five seconds later: "Wait, is that a real place?" Ryan Albanese runs a YouTube channel dedicated to finding real-world filming locations, and I mean finding them, as in FBI-level, old-newspaper-archive, Google-Earth-Pro-for-three-hours finding them. Brian's been a fan of his work for a while, and honestly I get why. This isn't a guy chasing viral clout. This is a guy who will fly to a forest preserve in New Mexico with no Street View coverage because a book from 1992 said the trees from Last of the Mohicans might still be standing. What We Cover:

• How Ryan fell into the "is that a real place" rabbit hole starting with Field of Dreams and the apartment from Singles
• Why his YouTube channel exists because a Gen Z coworker basically dared him into it
• The difference between chasing views and chasing the thing you actually love
• How his scrappy, run-and-gun filming style accidentally became his resume for a job as a breaking news photographer
• Using ChatGPT to identify a Malibu high school rooftop from a single shot in seconds
• Old newspaper archives, ancestry.com, and how he tracked down the actual houses from Remember the Titans
• The Braveheart field in Ballymore Eustace, Ireland, a stranger, a Facebook group, and three hours of tea with someone who thought he was crazy
• Cold-DMing Paul Walter Hauser on Twitter and landing his first celebrity interview
• Brian's own detective work trying to track down the tree from The Killing of a Sacred Deer using a decades-old City Beat article
• Why "put yourself in the position to be lucky" might be the actual thesis of this whole episode

The Real Talk: This episode started as a conversation about movie locations and ended up being about something a lot more useful, how you actually build a creative life without a map for it. Ryan didn't get discovered. He didn't have a plan. He just kept doing the thing, badly at first, in public, for free, until doors that had nothing to do with movies started opening because of it. Deep Dive, The Ballymore Eustace Story: Ryan needed to find one specific field from Braveheart, in a country full of fields, with no usable satellite imagery. So he joined a hyper-local Irish Facebook group, asked a total stranger a question, got pointed to a woman who takes care of the land, cold-messaged her, and got invited over. She thought they were crazy. She made them tea. They talked for three hours. That's the whole internet-era version of "knock on doors," and it still works exactly the same way it always has. Career Longevity Discussion: We get into how Ryan's completely unrelated hobby became his actual career path, how a scrappy YouTube portfolio, built with no crew and no lighting kit, translated directly into a job shooting breaking news. It's a good reminder that the "useless" thing you do for love is rarely as useless as it looks. Also Featured: Tangents about Toronto standing in for half of American television, the Fisher King castle, Kevin Smith's Secret Stash, why rock radio stations are always the smallest stations in the building, and Brian's ongoing plan to track down a single tree in the hills above Cincinnati. This episode is for anyone who's ever paused a movie to Google a building, and for anyone trying to figure out how the hell you turn something you love into something that actually pays. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen. Follow us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, movie recommendations, and more conversations about the films and music that shape our lives.

We told you last time that we'd come back different. Turns out we weren't kidding.

This episode is the debrief nobody tells you they need after a first tour, five gigs, five completely different rooms (an art-space bookshop, a punk bar across from a soccer riot-in-waiting, a Chicago venue, a guy's actual apartment balcony in Denver), and about a thousand small lessons we didn't know we needed until we were living them in real time.

Brian and I get into the stuff you'd expect: how a single show teaches you more than months of practice ever could, why I finally figured out what it means to actually be a frontman instead of just playing one, and the ongoing argument about how much of a setlist should be locked in versus left open to feel the room. (I'm a 10-to-20%-wiggle-room guy. Brian likes to fuck with a song's mood on the fly. We're both right, apparently.)

But this one gets real. Brian gets honest about what it costs to chase this thing in your forties, the "table legs" of creative life, day-job life, and family life, and what happens when the band leg starts wobbling the other two. I get honest about a relationship on the tour that quietly ran its course, because that's what happens when you lock people in a van for ten days. Nobody's mad. Nobody's fine either, exactly. That's just what touring actually does to people.

We also walk through the practical lessons, the PA system we should've brought, the four-act bills that stretched everybody thin, the map we're already building of every venue within five hours of every other venue so the next run doesn't eat ten-hour driving days alive.

If you've ever wondered what actually happens in the gap between planning a tour and being a band that's been on tour, this is that gap, unfiltered.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, where Brian and I talk about the movies and music that keep us sane, and occasionally stumble into conversations that remind us why we started playing in the first place. I'm Nicky P., here with Brian Pritchard, and this week we're joined by Dennis of PsyDefects out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Here's how this episode came to exist: Puma Thurman is going on tour, Brian posted into a local Facebook group trying to find bands and venues in Sioux Falls, and approximately nobody responded. Then Dennis raised his hand. One guy. Out of hundreds. And that's how we ended up with a genuinely great conversation about what it actually means to keep making original music when the world mostly just wants you to play Creep. Dennis plays bass and handles a lot of vocal duty for PsyDefects, a band that's been through the full arc of lineup changes, cover sets, six-year hiatuses, and finally, an album. Mr. Nothing dropped in October with 12 or 13 tracks. The origin story involves a mutual friend, a funeral where Dennis and his best friend from high school looked at each other and said "why aren't we playing together," and a lead guitarist named Terry who can hear a riff once and play it like he's been doing it his whole life. Dennis is a lyricist first, he's got 20 songs' worth of words written with no music yet, and the whole episode is a pretty honest conversation about what that creative process looks like when you're a full-time worker, a family person, and someone who genuinely can't not make music. We go deep on the covers vs. originals debate, the tension between wanting to play your own stuff and knowing that a three-chord banger gets the crowd when a 10-minute prog epic gets one guy in the corner nodding. We talk about Leonard Cohen, Pump Up the Volume, Kuffs, and the moment Brian's future daughter-in-law saw Christian Slater on Curb Your Enthusiasm and said "isn't that the guy from Kuffs?", which is maybe the proudest Brian has ever been in his life. We talk about art inspiring art, what Hollywood is missing when its writers haven't lived enough life to have a lens, and why sometimes the most honest place a song comes from is grief. Dennis also tells the story behind a song called "Olive Juice," which I will let him explain himself, but I will say it is the best etymology of a song title I've heard in a while. What We Cover:

• How Brian cold-called his way into a Sioux Falls tour date and Dennis was the only person who answered
• Side Effects, Mr. Nothing, and what it takes to finally get an album out
• Lyric-first vs. music-first songwriting and why having a notebook full of phrases is the best collaborator's superpower
• The Creep argument, covers, crowdpleasing, and when the "artistic integrity" position costs you the room
• Leonard Cohen, Pump Up the Volume, and a year-and-a-half hunt for a song that wasn't on the soundtrack
• Art inspires art, the Tom Savini documentary that made Brian want to go make something immediately
• Writing songs about grief and why sometimes catharsis cuts out mid-chorus
• Olive Juice, the friend zone, and a brother who wanted the song to sound sadder
• Why it's worth going on tour even when it's objectively a terrible financial decision

If you're a musician who has ever had to argue that playing a song the crowd actually knows is not a moral failure, this episode is for you. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen. And if you're in Sioux Falls, come out and see us.

Welcome back to We Came From Celluloid, I'm Nicky P, here with Brian Pritchard, and this one's a little different. This is the last episode we recorded before Puma Thurman hit the road for our first real tour. And I don't say that as a throwaway detail. By the time you hear this, we're already different people. Whatever version of us is in this recording, that's the old guys. The pre-tour guys. So what do two guys talk about when they're on the edge of something they've never done before? Apparently a lot. We start with the practical stuff: tour prep, backup gear, why I insist everyone bring two guitars so nobody has to retune mid-set in a city where we don't know a single person. Brian bought drum cases for the first time in his life, and the conversation about why, about how the stakes feel different when you're away from home base, away from your tribe, turns into something bigger pretty fast. That something bigger is the idea Brian dropped about the best-band-in-the-world feeling. That moment on stage when you're locked in and you just know it. Not arrogance. Not competition. Just execution. Brian felt it at the Dome show. I felt it last Friday when Joe Petrick and the rest of those guys apparently had to follow us and knew it. And the thing is, when you play like that as an opening act, you make it better for everybody. You set a bar the whole room has to reach for. That's not ego. That's craft. From there we go deep on what actually creates that feeling, and it's not talent, it's pressure. Brian tells the story of being tapped to play in Third World Leader, being a drummer who'd put out records and played hundreds of shows, and suddenly being the weakest person in the room. He almost backed out. Instead, he had what he now calls the greatest creative achievement of his life. I've been doing the same thing my whole career, seeking out bands better than me on purpose, because I love the feeling of having to earn my spot. Hot City Symphony, progressive rock tribute, me learning time signature music I had no business attempting. That's where the growth is. Which leads to maybe the best back-and-forth of the episode: Brian making the case for pleasure for its own sake, and me explaining that for me, the effort is the pleasure. The dopamine isn't in the Starburst jelly beans. It's in finishing something. Pushing to the next level. Breaking through. Brian calling this philosophy a bummer before eventually admitting it resonates more than he wanted to. We also get into substances and touring (neither of us exactly party animals at this point), travel personalities (Brian's a Manhattan-seven-times guy, I don't understand vacations as a concept), and pat Smear's decision to leave the Foo Fighters to spend time with his kids, what it looks like when someone at the big show decides a traditional life sounds better. And then we sign off. "This is the old me," Brian says. "The old me signing off." By the time you're listening to this, we've either figured out what we're made of out there on the road, or we've got some interesting stories. Either way, come find us at a show. We'll be the band that already played by the time you get there. Subscribe, rate, and review We Came From Celluloid wherever you listen.