Buzz Knight 00:00:01
Taking a walk with Buzz Knight. Well, I’m Buzz Knight. I’m the host of the Taking a Walk podcast series, taking a Walk Boston Gems special edition. And it’s if you’re a loyal follower of the show, we appreciate your support. Definitely. Always share subscribe, review, continue to pass the word. Don’t be shy about it. And if you’re new, welcome. I love connecting, certainly with old friends or connecting with new friends for the Taking a Walk podcast series. And so much of Taking a Walk is about the art of storytelling. Everyone has a story to tell. And today’s guest, he’s got quite a story, quite a number of stories to tell. He’s Emmy nominated, award winning, he’s part of the secret society of the Farrelly brothers, I think is what I like to call it was a club. Cool. Maybe we’ll call it under the production banner called Conundrum Entertainment. He’s been part of the team behind blockbuster hits like Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene Shallow Hal Fever pitch, Hall Pass, The Three Stooges the Unbelievable Dumb and Dumber. And that’s about 2 billion in box office sales. Can you say 2 billion? That’s amazing.
Kris Meyer 00:01:32
I don’t think I know what that means. It’s a nice ring, especially with the executives and the folks that invest in us in the past.
Buzz Knight 00:01:41
It’s amazing. He’s co founder, CEO of a new venture, which we’ll talk about as well, called Mudhouse Media. And I’m so happy to be here in the Blue Hills way off the mean streets of Milton, Massachusetts, with Kris Meyer. It’s so nice to see you, Kris
Kris Meyer 00:02:01
Hey, Buzz. Thanks for having me.
Buzz Knight 00:02:03
Thanks for being on taking a walk. 2 billion. How does that really does that really still give you goosebumps when we talk about the impact of those films?
Kris Meyer 00:02:15
Oh, absolutely. And again, I was just a cog in the wheel. The Farrelly brothers are the ones, the true maestros and masters behind it, and I was able to become part of their team and go along for the ride. But when you think about that, less than 2% of folks would go out there to make it, and I’m at the bottom 2% of that. But I pinch myself all the time that I moved out to Los Angeles as a young man with very little and met the right guy at the right time and went on an incredible journey with them across the world. Around the world, around the country and making somewhere 20 plus films and TV shows.
Buzz Knight 00:03:04
Yes, that is a ride. So how did you first meet the guys?
Kris Meyer 00:03:09
I was working at a lounge nightclub. I had run out of money early on in my early days of Los Angeles, living in Venice, California, and I needed a job. And I played a lot of basketball at the time, and I met a lot of the guys I’m still friends with today on the basketball court. And funny enough, I was walking around Santa Monica passing my resume around, and I was at a hot dog stand, and the gentleman of this music club that a few folks had said we should go to, I like the blues and I like music, and was at the hot dog stand, and he had a hat on the name of the club. I said, hey, man, do you work there? I said yeah. I said, I desperately need a job. I’ll do anything. And he said, you play hoop on the beach? I said, yes, I play basketball on the beach. He said, do you want to bounce? I need a bouncer. I’m like, okay. I needed the money. Yeah. So I started bouncing there. His name was Todd Christensen. He became my friend and still my friend today and gave me a lot of leeway in a long leash when I was working for him to try to pursue the entertainment space and the film and TV space while I was there, while working for him. And I ended up bar backing and then bartending. And through my career there early days. The Farrelly Brothers came in there just before they became the Farrelly Brothers, and we just hit it off. Just coming from the same part of town, same sense of humor, and they’re a little bit older than I, but we just hit it off. And they had just finished, I think, Kingpin, and I was getting close to packing it in. I’d been out there five or six years, and just everyone’s lives are growing back here and people buying homes and getting out of law school and MBAs, and their lives are growing. And I’m out in La. Just kind of spinning my wheels and trying to figure find my way. And I came home for a death in the family. And at that point I had made a decision maybe to come back in about six months and start over. And I always thought as long as I gave it a true, valiant effort and if it came back in my late 20s, I’m still young enough to start over and get into something else. And I went back to La, said, I’m going to give myself six more months, because at that point, I was just existing. I wasn’t really enjoying much, doing odd jobs. Yeah, I was working at the bar. I was PA ing. This is funny, too. My first paid PA gig in Los Angeles was on a Maco car commercial with Craig T. Nelson and Charo. It was incredible. And I’m like, we did like, six of them in a row. There’s no work for a while, and then I’d pay on another, mostly commercials and then was she stitched together then? I think she’s been stitched from birth, maybe. She was very nice and spirited. She’s always spirited.
Buzz Knight 00:06:21
Spirited.
Kris Meyer 00:06:22
That’s 20 plus years ago.
Buzz Knight 00:06:24
Xavier Cugat, who was the band leader, and that was her husband.
Kris Meyer 00:06:32
Did she start on, like, The Ed Sullivan Show?
Buzz Knight 00:06:34
Oh, boy. I’m not that bad.
Kris Meyer 00:06:35
Maybe.
Buzz Knight 00:06:41
Got you there.
Kris Meyer 00:06:42
Yeah. She was a fire. . I was working nights. I ended up for a brief moment, too. Everyone’s got this story right, and it’s a challenge, especially when I was born and raised. I talked to a lot of kids and even adults and mentor them on what you need to have ready before you go and try to prep a network before you go. I didn’t know anything about that one. I grew up when I moved to Los Angeles. I never lived five minutes from my house.
Buzz Knight 00:07:12
And you were married then?
Kris Meyer 00:07:14
No, I was single. Yeah, 23 years old. I went out there with no money and no network going to make movies mad. Jesus Christ.
Buzz Knight 00:07:22
What did he say? He thought you were nuts. Right.
Kris Meyer 00:07:24
What about law school? Not going, dad.
Buzz Knight 00:07:27
So what would you have done if you didn’t sync up with the Farrelly brothers and start this?
Kris Meyer 00:07:34
Good question. I don’t know.
Buzz Knight 00:07:35
What do you think you would have done? Professional basketball?
Kris Meyer 00:07:40
No, I always thought about that, but my heightened ability kept me from that. But I thought about being a firefighter. My whole family’s, firefighters, is in my blood.
Buzz Knight 00:07:55
So that was a possible default.
Kris Meyer 00:07:56
That was a possible default. You know what? I didn’t really think about what I would do next. I had that always in my background because it’s in my blood as the son of a family of firefighters.
Buzz Knight 00:08:10
But did you have in your mind, like, something that you were visualizing that was a definition of success?
Kris Meyer 00:08:19
No. At that time, again, I was young. I was just trying to make a living. Life takes you in certain paths. And I ended up on the producing track. Right. And that’s what I ended up doing.
Buzz Knight 00:08:34
So that started ultimately with the Farrelly’s
Kris Meyer 00:08:37
Yeah, I started as there assistant. They were the first I don’t know about the first, but at that time, there were very few dual directors. I think the Coen brothers were there, but now it’s commonplace. You and I could direct together and brothers, and it’s pretty common. But back then it was rare to have a duo. It was pretty rare. There’s very few of them at the time. So I started as their assistant, and then over the course of 15 years, I moved up to associate producer, co producer, and now partner with them on certain projects.
Buzz Knight 00:09:10
So what was the first just real project with them that you worked on?
Kris Meyer 00:09:16
I tell everybody I was to date myself now, but I was Malcolm Butler coming out of the community college in Mississippi to win the Super Bowl of movies that year. That was Something about Mary.
Buzz Knight 00:09:27
Yeah.
Kris Meyer 00:09:28
So with the success of Something About Mary, the filmmaker’s dream is to have a development deal with the studio. And that allowed the guys to have a studio deal with 20th Century Fox and a first look deal with them, which allows them to hire me and the other folks that we worked with. So that was at the beginning. That was the beginning.
Buzz Knight 00:09:44
Talk about that cast.
Kris Meyer 00:09:46
The cast was incredible. Cameron Diaz. Matt Dillon. Chris Elliott.
Buzz Knight 00:09:53
Steve Sweeney.
Kris Meyer 00:09:54
Steve Sweeney, of course, our local legends in Boston comics. Lenny Clark and Steve Sweeney. Markie Post. Keith. David. Ben Stiller. What a cast. Willie Garson, sadly, recently passed as Markie Post has. Willie Garson was a big part of Sex and the City as well. Great guy. Sarah Silverman’s in it before she took off. Wow. And then Lin Shaye, she’s been a jewel to work with. She played Magda and she also played the landlady in Kingpin. Great.
Buzz Knight 00:10:32
We saw some list recently of the best comedy movies and comedy moments of all time, maybe the top 100 or something. And of course, the movie is on that list. Right?
Kris Meyer 00:10:45
It’s unbelievable. I had never experienced making a movie of that size. I had made a few independence locally in Boston before we had left. But I knew that movie had something special without even knowing it. I was naive as a young man. When we do our test, we’ll test it with a marketing the studio as a marketing company, you test it for the public and you might do that. Hopefully you don’t do it too often, but you typically do it once or twice or three times. And they help write the movie and help tell you. And that’s where the execs come in. PR fo, folks. And it gives you a little reflection of where some of the holes lie in the films. And I was in a row with guys my age, a little younger, a little older at the time. And I was in the line with all the public, all these different kids of all, like, my ages. And once the joke started, I couldn’t even hear half the movie. I was by myself. They don’t know who I am and they’re going across my chest. High fiving. You couldn’t hear it. All of a sudden you see The Execs. Everyone’s head stopped popping up and start looking around the theater and everyone, I think, really knew at that point, we have something special here.
Buzz Knight 00:12:05
Wow. That’s amazing.
Kris Meyer 00:12:07
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:12:07
So that was the beginning of the ride. And that was also it sounds as.
Kris Meyer 00:12:12
If from what I remember, it opened up at number two and it stayed there for like weeks on end at number two. And then I think at one point went to number one. It’s the only number two movie at that time. I don’t know. You have to correct me if I’m wrong, but to go from two to number one, that never happens. Usually movies drop 60% 40% every week. And that movie just kept word of mouth, the legs. It just stayed at one spot and just grabbed momentum, the water cooler, et cetera, right? And it just blew up.
Buzz Knight 00:12:52
But that became part of your education with each you were part of. And it sounds as if then the Farrellys had more confidence in you, gave you more work to do. So what was the next ?
Kris Meyer 00:13:07
Mean, I was a sponge, right. And osmosis the early days when you first start, I do a lot of coverage, which means I basically do a book report, if you would call them in. Now on scripts. I get inundated with scripts to vet. Do we like it? Does it fit our mission? And things like that. So I started early on. They started having me do coverage. Now, the beauty I tell a lot of kids today is if you’re being in the director’s assistant or producer’s assistant or writer’s assistant, depending on which path you want to take. But early on, you might not have a choice. But as a director’s assistant, I tell everyone it’s incredible because you do a lot of the lug work right. In the knucklehead work. But in addition to that, you’re there from day one of the ideation of the script all the way to the release of the film. And you touch every aspect of that because you’re working for the director. So you’re talking to editorial, you’re talking to execs agents, stars, talent, production designers, costume designers, everybody you can think of, stunt coordinators, and they all come through you to get to the director.
Buzz Knight 00:14:24
It’s like an MBA.
Kris Meyer 00:14:25
Yeah, it’s a quick MBA. You learned by fire and trial and error, but that’s the beauty of it. So you’re talking to everybody, because if you’re an editorial, you typically only deal with editorial. If you’re only in the costume department, you’re dealing with costume. We get to touch every aspect of the film. Being on the director’s hip is huge. Not only if you want to direct and learn from that, but also being on the phone with them, talking to everyone. You’re just picking up everything as you go.
Buzz Knight 00:14:58
So we all know that you do learn by mistakes. Ultimately, what’s the worst mistake at that period that you made as part of that problem?
Kris Meyer 00:15:07
There are many that you learn from. I learned how to be Johnny on the Spot. At that point, I was available 24 hours a day, which I never knew what that meant for multiple years, maybe.
Buzz Knight 00:15:23
Before the proliferance of cell phones.
Kris Meyer 00:15:26
Yeah, cell phones. When I was there, it was pre Internet .
Buzz Knight 00:15:30
Right.
Kris Meyer 00:15:30
The cell had just come to be on that movie. That was my first cell phone. It was 1998.
Buzz Knight 00:15:35
Yeah. Probably one of those big qualcomm block phones.
Kris Meyer 00:15:42
Yeah, it wasn’t the big one. It was like half that size.
Buzz Knight 00:15:44
Yeah. Very convenient.
Kris Meyer 00:15:46
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:15:46
And I’m sure there’s still gamma rays bouncing through your system as we speak.
Kris Meyer 00:15:52
So I learned to be Johnny On the Spot available 24/7, which you’re not typically used to. That when you think you put in a full 18 hours day and then the calls still come. There’s only 6 hours to sleep left and you’re still getting calls, not just from them, but a lot of times everyone in the company is calling you because they need you to get to the director so the phones never stop. Now, in addition to that, I have two bosses who are brothers. Right. So you need to make sure you’re constantly debriefing and briefing both at the same time.
Buzz Knight 00:16:32
Right.
Kris Meyer 00:16:33
And make sure they understand what’s going on because sometimes they’re separate from each other. That’s a balancing act, which is great. And then just learning how to you have to be very resourceful as an assistant. Suddenly you’ll get a task out of the blue. Will be sitting here doing this interview and I would get a call that I have to go to the airport and show the movie to Tina Turner. Now, that’s pretty cool. But if you already have plans and you’re in the middle of something that could be a little difficult to explain.
Buzz Knight 00:17:08
How great was it reporting for work every day and getting to smile at Cameron Diaz every day?
Kris Meyer 00:17:15
Yeah. Not a bad thing because she’s a great lady and she deserves all the success she has. She could not have been anything but just a lady. Just Etiquette. Spirited, one of the good ones.
Buzz Knight 00:17:34
And I love how graceful she is to this day.
Kris Meyer 00:17:37
She is. And I just heard she’s coming out of retirement and it’s nice. She took a ten year break to enjoy her life and raise her family. And I saw somewhere in the trades recently she might be coming back with Jamie Foxx to do a movie. It’s a nice life. Yeah, she’s great. Her family is great. It’s funny, people don’t remember, too, when you talk to them locally. Here she went to school with Snoop and with Willie McGinnis. So that’s why you saw Snoop in and around the Patriots on their ten year run. And she went to high school at Long Beach High with them.
Buzz Knight 00:18:12
Wow.
Kris Meyer 00:18:13
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:18:13
It’s amazing.
Kris Meyer 00:18:14
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:18:14
And now she’s with those Good Charlotte boys.
Kris Meyer 00:18:17
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:18:18
So what was the next movie after that?
Kris Meyer 00:18:21
After something about Mary. We did Me, Myself and Irene, and we shot actually, I don’t know if it was before. I think we shot here, actually the Blue Hills at the top of Big Blue. Osmosis Jones, which is a great kids movie. That’s great. The first half hour is live action and the rest of it goes to animation once inside the body. And we shot around this location.
Buzz Knight 00:18:46
Who is in that?
Kris Meyer 00:18:47
Everybody? Bill Murray. Chris Elliott again. Molly Shannon Brandy David Hyde Pierce.
Buzz Knight 00:18:55
Oh, wow.
Kris Meyer 00:18:56
Lawrence Fishburne.
Buzz Knight 00:18:58
Wow.
Kris Meyer 00:19:00
Chris Rock. Yeah. Wow.
Buzz Knight 00:19:04
What was it like working with Chris Elliott?
Kris Meyer 00:19:07
Chris Elliott is a great guy. Great guy. Again, down to earth. Really fun to be around. Yeah, pretty simple.
Buzz Knight 00:19:16
I can just look at him and laugh. I don’t even need him to say anything.
Kris Meyer 00:19:20
He played woogie.
Buzz Knight 00:19:21
Yeah. I mean, just looking at him. And I was a fan of his late father and Bob and Ray partnership and everything like that. But Chris is amazing.
Kris Meyer 00:19:33
He was great, too. Especially at the end there when they all come in. Brett Farmer and Wiggy and Lee Evans, great English actor who played the pizza delivery boy. Fantastic. He’s a big English comic. That was a great movie to be a part of.
Buzz Knight 00:19:51
And tell me about the experience of Dumb and Dumber.
Kris Meyer 00:19:54
Dumb. And dumber two. Bringing back the original classic to life was just incredible. It was ironic because I was just having a child at that point. So I had to leave quickly from Atlanta halfway through the movie because my daughter was being born.
Buzz Knight 00:20:14
Priorities. Yeah, right.
Kris Meyer 00:20:16
I remember I got a call in the middle of the night from my wife that her water broke. And I said, are you sure? She said what? Because I was half asleep. We had been doing nights and we just switched over. So I was like, oh my God, Frazzled. I said false alarm. She said, no, my dad’s coming to get me. Get your ass home. And I couldn’t get a flight because it was three in the morning at that time. So I went to set the next day and I said, guys, you want the good news or the bad news? They’re all stern, oh my God. And I said, well, the bad news is I have to go. But the good news is I’m having a baby. I said, everyone’s cheering and fun. And I flew back to Boston and my daughter was born.
Buzz Knight 00:21:01
Wow.
Kris Meyer 00:21:01
But yeah, working with Jim Carrey and the gang again, just around royalty at that point. Yeah, comic royalty. Yeah. It’s tough to explain because when they all get together and Jim’s a pro is one of the best, like you said, a legend. And the guys, they all came up together, which is pretty cool, right? And they got to bring it back and come full circle.
Buzz Knight 00:21:33
Amazing.
Kris Meyer 00:21:33
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:21:35
So what do you think of the state of the film business these days? Obviously it’s had immense challenges. Is it ever going to come back as it used to be?
Kris Meyer 00:21:47
No, I don’t think so. That’s a tough thing to do now. It’s still in flux. With the advent of Netflix, it changed the world. In the streaming services now we have all seen, obviously because of the climate, maybe covered, but the climate with the dawn, with Netflix. Finally Disney and all the other studios have come up to know that they need to get in a streaming game. I just read somewhere the other day that they think linear TV may go away in the next ten to 15 years. It’s digital. Most kids under 30, most folks under 30 they don’t watch TV. They watch everything on the laptop.
Buzz Knight 00:22:27
But you must, like me feel it’s impressive to see what Tom Cruise was able to do with his current success.
Kris Meyer 00:22:36
Oh, yeah, right.
Buzz Knight 00:22:37
I mean, that’s really astounding it is.
Kris Meyer 00:22:40
It’s Tom Cruise, too. Right.
Buzz Knight 00:22:41
But there’s no guarantees of anybody.
Kris Meyer 00:22:44
No, but I haven’t seen Top Gun, but I hear it from older folks and younger folks that it’s fantastic.
Buzz Knight 00:22:51
People talk about it.
Kris Meyer 00:22:52
Yeah, it’s the first time since Covid. And that’s the beauty. Now that people are going back. I went and saw Minions with my daughter in the theater on a Tuesday at noon. It was packed. Because I am a bit of a purist still in that I still love going to the movies. It’s a great night out. It’s a great escape, all that. And I still love watching movies on the streamers, on the big screen. But it’s different. It’s given multiple I think there’s 457 TV shows out there, whether it’s on linear TV or the streamer or whatnot, which is great because it’s provided a lot more work for everyone. But, yeah, the world has changed. I mean, luckily the studios are all they’re a little behind the eight ball now. They’re catching up because Netflix is dominated forever.
Buzz Knight 00:23:42
So what’s the general rule of start to finish on a major movie project? Is there a general time frame rule of thumb?
Kris Meyer 00:23:54
No, I mean, it’s all specific to the filmmakers. A lot of times we’ll make a movie, we’ll prep late summer, early fall, to shoot through the fall and finish for Christmas. And then a lot of movies don’t start until after the New Year prep and then shoot in the spring, or prep in the spring, shoot in the summer. It all depends on what you have, what’s going on in your world. Sometimes the studio dictates when it’s going to get made, depending on what they have coming out on their slate, depending the cost. There are a number of different factors that come in, but by the time you decide to write the script, and if it gets greenlit, that’s about an 18 month run from the beginning to the end, maybe even longer sometimes. I mean, sometimes it took years to get off the ground, as we know.
Buzz Knight 00:24:46
And you’re bullish on more movies coming to Massachusetts, aren’t you?
Kris Meyer 00:24:50
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:24:51
How does that happen? It seems to be cyclical. Is that true?
Kris Meyer 00:24:58
I don’t think it’s cyclical. It is to a certain extent. But now that we’ve had the tax credit here, and now we’ve lifted the sunset clause, I mean, I think there were 30 productions here this year, and there’s 15 more to come.
Buzz Knight 00:25:09
And are you actively part of any group that recruits that, or no, it’s.
Kris Meyer 00:25:15
Just a lot of that. No, a lot of that is the Mass State Film Office, right? And then people coming here I mean, Handmaid’s Tales here, Julia, I think it’s called finest kind. A lot of people think because I make movies, I’m involved with every movie that comes here.
Buzz Knight 00:25:34
I do. You’ve dispersed my bubble.
Kris Meyer 00:25:37
How could you possibly but a lot of people think that in that you have your own camps. Every director brings their team. But Massachusetts is an incredible place to make a movie. And now that the tax credits here, it’s got everything. I think we have some of the best crew base and some of the best content creators. I mean, I’m a little biased, obviously, but the dawn of American literature starts here in New England. Right, but we have some of the best writers and screenwriters in the world here. I mean, Andres Dubai wrote hussle, hint, sand and fog. William Monahan. Screenplay just wrote. Tender bar and departed. Paul Trembley just became the new face of Sci-Fi fantasy horror. His last book, Cabin at the End of the World, is being made into a movie by M. Night Shamalan Chuck Hogan. There’s just a plethora of talent here in addition to the locations you can get everything from. We look like New York, but we can also look like Alabama. We have the old and the new, contemporary, present day past little Women shot here all the way to Free Guy. So we’re on the ocean. We can get to the mountains, the hills. We have a little bit of everything for everyone and we have a great on top of that, we have great people in the city of Boston in Massachusetts and a great place to pace yourself out of Boston while you’re making a film. Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:27:03
The artists seem to like to come here and take these projects on.
Kris Meyer 00:27:08
Yes.
Buzz Knight 00:27:08
So I often wondered why Boston has been such a hotbed of so much entertainment, so much comedy as an example. And then you just think about it from the movie perspective. You just think it’s because of the great education that’s around the great surroundings. Why do you think it or is it just that everyone’s tortured from sitting in 2 hours of traffic every day?
Kris Meyer 00:27:31
Yeah, probably a little bit of all of it. I mean, obviously our academia is world renowned and our educational universities and colleges are bar none throughout the world. In addition to that, I think the people of Massachusetts and Boston bring a certain it’s a panache. Yeah, a panache. Exactly. Is the term. Panache and palate that brings in a collective diverse group of people. It’s funny if you just think of all the folks that are from Boston that are out in La that are hugely successful other than maybe New York or Chicago. I don’t know. Or even La. A good portion of those come from our area. And why is that? Right. In all facets and then comedy? I think because we come from a great world of sarcasm and grit that lends itself to sarcasm.
Buzz Knight 00:28:31
Yes.
Kris Meyer 00:28:32
In that blue collar kind of working class that’s it vibe in origin story, if you would lends itself to that comedy.
Buzz Knight 00:28:43
And I don’t even grow up here.
Kris Meyer 00:28:46
I agree. Does that make sense?
Buzz Knight 00:28:47
Yeah, it is. And it’s a bit of.
Kris Meyer 00:28:51
I think.
Buzz Knight 00:28:52
Sometimes the relationship between Boston and New York and the competitiveness. Obviously, it existed in greater degrees in the sports world, but there’s always a little bit of this back and forth.
Kris Meyer 00:29:06
I think I always liken us to a smaller New York.
Buzz Knight 00:29:09
Right.
Kris Meyer 00:29:10
We have our villages and our boroughs and this and that. But it’s also like most of the guys I gravitated towards when I moved to Los Angeles or from New York, we all come from the same yoke, despite if you were the sibling rivalry of our sports teams and this and that and the competitiveness. We’re like minded, I think, and like persons to a certain extent. Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:29:34
I think there’s that sense of New York and Boston. I think certainly Chicago has elements of it, and Philadelphia does as well. That sense of camaraderie, but also kinship. But the ball breaking, too.
Kris Meyer 00:29:51
Yeah. Which is fine.
Buzz Knight 00:29:53
That’s why all those places are some of my favorite places.
Kris Meyer 00:29:57
Yeah. And we need to get back to a little bit of that because we need to laugh at each other and ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously.
Buzz Knight 00:30:04
Well, from what I understand, comedy in general these days is hotter than ever, meaning the clubs and everything like that, obviously, because people are just starved for.
Kris Meyer 00:30:15
Something to entertainment and to get out. Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:30:18
Really? So when did you first know you were a great storyteller?
Kris Meyer 00:30:22
Fully complete storyteller? It’s always a work in progress, but.
Buzz Knight 00:30:26
A work in progress.
Kris Meyer 00:30:28
Great question.
Buzz Knight 00:30:30
Or that you knew at a point in your life that storytelling was going to be part of your career?
Kris Meyer 00:30:35
I think probably four or five or six years into my career with the Farrelly brothers, I knew, like, oh, I’m starting to get it. I’m starting to understand it. And I think I have the talent or the know how and the knowledge on how to tell a great story. A lot of that came from my background, like you said, back to a little bit of the grit and grind and the drawing back and forth with each other and as you’re growing up and with your siblings, et cetera, that lends itself to the storytelling, too. Yes. I mean, most of the funniest guys I know are the guys I grew up with still to this day.
Buzz Knight 00:31:11
Right?
Kris Meyer 00:31:12
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:31:13
And you won’t see them for X number of years, and then when you see them, you pick back right up.
Kris Meyer 00:31:17
To, like, riding the bike.
Buzz Knight 00:31:19
Right?
Kris Meyer 00:31:19
Yeah. It’s like, unbelievable. Yeah. And it’s a gift. It is a gift, if you think about it, especially I always bring this up, and this goes back to the Farrelly Brothers. Comedies, I believe, are one of the hardest movies to make. You can make a straight drama. You get it right. Not that they’re all hard to make, but that story is pretty clear. But to create a comedy for the masses because everyone has their own sense of humor and make that work, that is a gift. And that’s the gift that the guys have, that they’ve been giving to the world for 20 years. On top of that, could we make Something about Mary today? I don’t know. Right on the outer shell, it looks as if they’re making fun of somebody, but they’re doing the complete opposite, and they’re applauding people in the folks in that world, ie. With Warren and something about Mary. We make those guys in the special needs kids the heroes, even though there’s a joke or two in between there. Yes.
Buzz Knight 00:32:30
It is so hard to know what would fly now. I don’t know you as a content creator, does that frustrate you, that it’s harder to know what you can get away with?
Kris Meyer 00:32:45
Yes, I think so. Because now you have to be understandably, you need to be a little bit more sensitive, I guess, to things. But now you have, to a certain extent, sensor your work a little bit. That’s interesting. Yeah. What was acceptable even three years ago isn’t acceptable now with certain types of comic and humor in dialogue. But again, that’s why we need to get back to laughing at each other and with each other and at each other, because that makes life go around.
Buzz Knight 00:33:20
You want to saunter a little here?
Kris Meyer 00:33:23
That’s another big word, saunter.
Buzz Knight 00:33:24
Let’s do a little take a saunter. We have editorial control of the direction anytime when it’s 95 degree.
Kris Meyer 00:33:34
Can we get into the Turkey Vulture pen?
Buzz Knight 00:33:37
Maybe. I don’t know. One problem is I neglected to bring my speedo with me.
Kris Meyer 00:33:44
Okay, then we should get in with the otter into the otter exhibit. What do you think? Take a swim in the pool with the otters?
Buzz Knight 00:33:50
That would be a scene.
Kris Meyer 00:33:51
It wouldn’t be boring.
Buzz Knight 00:33:53
Police Blotter, here we come. Right. Well, I want to talk about as we saunter. Yeah. Well, first of all, I mention this to you the other day. I know you’re a fan of taking walks with some of your team members at Mudhouse or some of your other folks. Talk about how walking, or in this case is we’re doing in the Blue Hill sauntering. Talk about how that creatively is good.
Kris Meyer 00:34:29
We all go to hotels and coffee shops, everything else, to meet and have meetings. And sometimes I think that’s a bit stale and stagnant and static, and I’m an outdoorsman. I love the wilderness, whether it’s the oceans or the mountains. Look where we are right now. We’re in a little peace of heaven. Beautiful. And I think this lends itself to creativity and people relax more. For me, it works. The team members and even folks I don’t really know, instead of going to, again, a hotel lobby or a restaurant and having an hour and a half meeting. I said, you’d like to take a walk? They said, what do you mean? I said, Well, I know some cool spots.
Buzz Knight 00:35:10
I love that. I love that. And as I think I mentioned to you, too, that was one of of the hallmarks of how Steve Jobs like to get things done and take meetings and that sort of thing that let.
Kris Meyer 00:35:25
You loosen up and get outside the office where you’re always answering calls and questions and people are stopping by. And it just brings a sense of peace not only to you, but to the conversation and to the folks you’re walking with or the business you’re talking about. Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:35:46
And I also just think too moment to just sort of stop and reflect on, like you said, the beautiful place that you’re at and appreciate it and not take it for granted. I know certainly during these last few years, I rediscovered a lot of places that I had not been to either or been to as much in my neck of the woods. I’ve never been here. So this is a new place to discover as well. So talk about where we’re at here, why you like it.
Kris Meyer 00:36:21
Yeah. But I also applaud what you have done. I hope and think a lot of people out there in the world have done where they did get outside. Right. And get out and see the world. You have to. A buddy of mine, Brett Dennen, is a musician, and he wrote his last album during COVID called Get Out and See the World. Oh, wow. That’s one of his songs. And he’s coming locally half a dozen times. He’ll be playing at the headlines. The River Fest Up from 92.5
Buzz Knight 00:36:52
. But he’s a great artist.
Kris Meyer 00:36:54
Oh, incredible. Yeah. In the meantime, what you just said, I love, because not only people are reconnecting right. With nature, which is I think it’s innate in us. Some people might argue that, but it also makes you much more rich, fulfilled, empowering yourself.
Buzz Knight 00:37:19
Oh, yeah. Boy, we live in such a beautiful part of the country once again. I mean, boy, there’s just so many great things you go, oh, my God, the bluebirds are back. Or, Got to feed that hummingbird feeder because the hummingbirds are back.
Kris Meyer 00:37:39
Mr. Robins nest in my door jam with three little blue eggs. It’s amazing.
Buzz Knight 00:37:45
It’s amazing. So let’s talk about Mudhouse media. Yeah. Mudhouse is a full service audio production company, right?
Kris Meyer 00:37:56
Yeah.
Buzz Knight 00:37:56
So talk about what’s going on with it, some of the projects within Mudhouse that you particularly love, and where do you want to take this company?
Kris Meyer 00:38:06
Well, as we talk about Mudhouse, we’re walking by the Turkey Vulture exhibit and giving me some inspiration since they each carry on. The next one is the bald eagle. But Mudhouse we started during Covid, which was obviously insane for seven months of our existence. We’re in lockdown and I think the vulture is going after the rat that’s on the street trunk there. And we’ve built it with an incredibly small team, but incredible production team. And we have one called Holding Court with Patrick McEnroe. He’s number one or two or three in tennis pending on the day. We’ve done a couple of incredible we’re proud of all of them. But also we did one with Silverstein Properties. They’re one of the largest developers in New York, if not the country, and they’re the owners and developers of the World Trade Center campus. And they hired us to do an eleven part documentary series this time last year. We released the first episode on July 6, coming out of July 4, all the way up until 911. And they hired us to do eleven part documentary series leading up to 20th anniversary of 911. What it took to rebuild Lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center after 20 years. Unbelievable. We interviewed everybody from Michael Bloomberg to politicians to taste makers, and what it took to rebuild. And what happened just prior to 911 there was just unbelievable. And we were able to do a deal with SiriusXM, Stitcher and Pandora for that. And they’ve recently come back to hire us for another job. That’s great. In the meantime time, we have multiple corporate branded content jobs lined up in the meantime and also original, unscripted and scripted podcast series. So we’ll be doing some with some high profile authors, some high profile filmmakers. We have multiple podcasts with actors, athletes, musicians, celebrity interior designers, celebrity chefs, and we continue to build. We’re lucky we’re still here. Through Covid, large corporations, small businesses continue to collapse. Coming out of the other end of COVID, we remain steady and in growth mode and looking forward to the future when right now we’re ready to go. The horses are all watered and ready to go.
Buzz Knight 00:40:54
It’s exciting starting something from the beginning like that, isn’t it?
Kris Meyer 00:40:57
It’s a little bit of both. Yeah, it’s exciting and terrifying.
Buzz Knight 00:41:00
Yeah, exactly. Both.
Kris Meyer 00:41:01
But you know what? That’s what keeps you alive. It’s just like a movie. I always tell people startups are just like a movie and that movies are startups, whether you’re an independent or a big temple. They start from a very small idea written to a script and then hopefully turns into and blossoms into something beautiful and fruitful for everyone.
Buzz Knight 00:41:22
But there are dark days and there’s dark days.
Kris Meyer 00:41:26
There’s uplifting days, there’s sick days, there’s days you don’t want to show up. Then there’s days all you want to do is show up, right?
Buzz Knight 00:41:34
Yeah.
Kris Meyer 00:41:35
Days you work seven days a week, and then there’s days when you want a month off. But overall, it’s been a joy to work with the team we have and the investors we have and just looking forward to the future.
Buzz Knight 00:41:51
So do you set tangible goals about this project at Mudhouse? I want to be at this particular place with it in two years. Or do you kind of let the landscape one of the take care of itself?
Kris Meyer 00:42:11
Yeah, I hope to double in size in the next two years from a revenue standpoint, but also in a staff standpoint. Which means we’re growing. We’re at a point where we’re growing and we’re getting a lot of work, where we need to staff up and create more content and more folks. More content folks are coming to us for help in the podcast space because it’s still in its infancy, as we know. It’s still the wild, wild west, and people are still trying to find out navigate those waters and pathways. But I think we have that right goal in that North Star that we’re going to stay on.
Buzz Knight 00:42:43
And at its heart, it’s all about Content, which is where Content is. Your heart started with it, right?
Kris Meyer 00:42:48
Yeah. Content is king. Always will be.
Buzz Knight 00:42:51
Oh, man. Well, I wish you the best on mudhouse. And I’m so glad that we got to take a saunter.
Kris Meyer 00:42:58
Yeah. Thank you, buddy. Anytime you want to take a walk. Man, I love taking walks.
Buzz Knight 00:43:03
Thank you, Kris. I appreciate it.
Kris Meyer 00:43:05
Bye.
Buzz Knight 00:43:05
It’s awesome. Taking a Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
About The Author
Buzz Knight
Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.
After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.
