Creative Space with Jennifer Logue
My name is Jennifer Logue and I’m on a mission to make creativity accessible to all. Through conversations with artists, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, musicians, scientists, and so much more, we’ll be exploring creativity from every possible angle with the purpose of learning and growing in creativity together. New episodes are released every Sunday and you can listen anywhere you get your podcasts. Be sure to rate and review the podcast if you enjoy it, and remember, we are all born creative. Make some space to honor your creativity today.
Creative Space with Jennifer Logue
Jimmy DiResta On the Power of Play and Stepping Out of Comfort Zones
In this special replay of Creative Space, we revisit another fan-favorite conversation featuring the legendary maker, Jimmy DiResta. From his humble beginnings to building a massive YouTube following and starring in Netflix’s Making Fun, Jimmy’s story is a testament to the power of play, stepping out of comfort zones, and following your curiosity.
In this episode, Jimmy and I discuss:
- His journey to becoming a star on Netflix and a YouTube sensation.
- The role of childlike curiosity and play in his creative process and why he believes staying in a state of play is crucial.
- How he continuously pushes the boundaries of his craft and encourages others to step outside their comfort zones.
- The unique challenges he faced along the way.
- The importance of taking risks, embracing failure, and inspiring others to pursue their passions.
Tune in for an inspiring conversation about creativity, risk-taking, and the power of play.
For more information on Jimmy DiResta, visit: jimmydiresta.com.
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To become a patron of the Creative Space podcast, visit: https://bit.ly/3ECD2Kr.
SHOW NOTES:
0:00 — Introduction
1:31 — Jimmy’s Background and Creative Space
3:46 — Early Career and New York City Beginnings
6:17 — Building His Dream Workshop in Upstate New York
8:04 — Childhood Influences and Passion for Tools
12:11 — Embracing Digital Tools for Creativity
15:24 — Lessons from His Father on Hard Work and Curiosity
18:21 — Breaking Free from the “Stay in Your Lane” Mentality
22:45 — Transition from Traditional to Digital Design
30:23 — Journey from Toy Design to TV and YouTube Success
35:38 — Defining Creativity as Problem-Solving
39:05 — The Importance of Creativity
41:33 — The Emotional Impact of Art and Music
53:36 — Daily Routine and Managing Multiple Projects
1:02:46 — The Origin and Success of Netflix’s Making Fun
1:09:54 — Advice for Creatives: Stepping Out of Comfort Zones
Hello everyone and welcome to Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together. I'm your host, jennifer Logue, and today we're bringing you the third episode in our fan-favorite series, where we're counting down the top five episodes ahead of the Season 3 premiere on October 20th. Today's episode is an absolute treat, as we revisit my conversation with the legendary Jimmy DiResta. Jimmy is a builder, designer and maker, widely known as the maker godfather. Whether you've seen him on Netflix's Making Fun or his hugely popular YouTube channel, jimmy has spent over 40 years creating, experimenting and inspiring millions with his work. In this episode, we dive deep into his incredible journey, the power of curiosity and the unique stories behind his creative process. So, without further ado, here's the interview. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together. I'm your host, jennifer Logue, and today we have the absolute pleasure of chatting with Jimmy DiResta, a builder, designer and maker that is known as the Maker Godfather.
Jimmy DiResta:Oh boy.
Jennifer Logue:For over 40 years he's been making things for a living and teaching people along the way. You may have seen Jimmy on his Netflix show Making Fun, or know him from his massively popular YouTube channel, jimmy DiResta. Welcome to Creative Space, jimmy.
Jimmy DiResta:Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh. I have to start off by saying you're so cool and in the process of doing the podcast, I'm getting to explore creativity from different angles.
Jimmy DiResta:And.
Jennifer Logue:I personally don't have any experience with tools, carpentry, everything that's in your world, blacksmithing out of my wheelhouse completely but it's so cool to see you build anything Like you can build everything. It's absolutely so cool.
Jimmy DiResta:I keep experimenting. Yeah, you know what I keep experimenting. Yeah, you know what. The way I put it is if I have a set of skills for one thing or another, I just play a game with myself and see how I could apply that set of skills to some new material or some new process. It's almost like if you could tie your shoes, you could make pasta, and if you can make pasta, you could run a dishwasher, and if you could run a dishwasher you could. And so, like that little game of dexterity and experimentation, I just play all the time.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh, in a perpetual state of play, which we need so much in this world, and so many adults lose that sense of play.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, I've been accused of being a big baby, big child. That's a great thing.
Jennifer Logue:That's something like I'm aiming for.
Jimmy DiResta:Sometimes it's not a compliment. Balance, I guess right, I'll take it yeah.
Jennifer Logue:So where are you calling from today?
Jimmy DiResta:I'm in upstate New York. I'm about 30 miles north of Woodstock, new York, about 30 miles to the west of Hudson, new York, and about 30 miles to the south of Albany. I'm in a little town called East Durham that nobody's ever heard of, but most people have heard of those other three towns, so that's why I triangulate.
Jennifer Logue:Love it. So can you give us, for people who may not know, your creative space? Do you want to give a high level overview of what your space is like?
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, I worked in Manhattan for many years. So I started out on Long Island and in 90, well, I went to the School of Visual Arts, new York City and I graduated the School of Visual Arts in 1990. I got right into the toy business and in and around 92, I moved from Long Island because I was there trying to save money for college. From there I moved to lower Manhattan, east Village, alphabet City, which we were just talking about, and then while I was in Alphabet City I moved around a little bit. I had a shop in a storefront and I had a shop in a basement space and at one point we had a shop at ground level inside of a big garage and then I ended up. We ended up I say we because I talk about my brother and I were mostly working together. Oh, cool.
Jimmy DiResta:But my last shop, my brother got married and moved out of the city and then my last shop was mine alone in the basement of a tenement building. I had the whole basement, which was two tenement buildings combined, so it was a basement that had like a step down because the basements were two levels and it was a fun basement. But occasionally the deeper basement would flood with sewage so I always had that to contend with and then the neighbors would complain about the smells of welding and grinding and resins and stuff. So it was always a give and take. You know when it could work and how noisy it could be.
Jimmy DiResta:And a lot of times I'd go up on the sidewalk and make noise. So I was in that space until 2017. In and around 2004, I bought a farmhouse in upstate New York 40 acres and 12 bedroom farmhouse. I bought it as an investment, where property up here was still very cheap. I paid really. I had a really good price for it, and so I was like you know what? I can swing that mortgage. It's kind of like a second rent. So I was able to keep this house until 2017, when I moved up here full time and gave up all my space in the city. So I've been up here since 2017 full time, and up here I expanded into a big shop I built from scratch with some friends who were better at building than me, but I had hired them to do this big barn and if you happen to ever see the TV show Making Fun, that's the barn I'm talking about. It's on the Netflix show. It's really cool.
Jimmy DiResta:That's my main workspace, so, and. But while that was being built, I rented a big shop down the block really cheap. I rented a shop that was like a rundown warehouse that had been unused for many years no-transcript for just a few hundred square feet in the city. Wow, Location, location, location.
Jimmy DiResta:Yes, and it's so important to have that space yeah so I got a big grungy space down the street which is where I just took a delivery with a forklift. That's what I was telling you about. And then the clean spaces in my backyard I call the TV shop in the backyard. I call it sort of like the television studio, because that's where we shot the TV show, and I keep everything somewhat. Although it's crowded now with projects they're going to be out soon. I keep the place somewhat sparsely full just so I could move things around and make room for cameras, cause I still shoot my own YouTube channel in there most of the time now.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, so you like to have another space, to just keep things a little bit separated.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, so I I said I've been very lucky. And now me and my business partner just bought a house down the block for a business investment and it came with a big barn. It's a real antique barn, so it's post and beam cool post and beam barn, so I'll probably be shooting some stuff in there for fun awesome. I have a lot of places to choose from, which is all stuff I never could have done in new york city yes, now you can spread out.
Jimmy DiResta:That's beautiful yeah, love it. So I have the 40 acre farm here. On the television show is the best example, because we would do all the silly builds in the big new barn and then we would do the third act of the show out in the grass playing around like a bunch of big kids and you could see that on the show. That's all my property. There's birds running around, my chickens are running around and we're all having a goofy time in the grass.
Jennifer Logue:That's absolutely beautiful and we'll talk about the show a little bit later in the conversation, but you guys look like you're having so much fun.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, of course we were. It was. It was a summer of 2021. So it was, it was a great time.
Jennifer Logue:Awesome. So let's go way back to your childhood. What was your childhood like? Where did you grow up?
Jimmy DiResta:I grew up in Long Island in a town called Woodmere. There's a small town called the Five Towns and Woodmere was one of the five towns but collectively they're called the Five Towns. It's right outside of Queens. I was born in Queens. Right near Rockaway Beach is where I was born and the town is near Rockaway Beach. So I grew up right outside there and my whole family's from Rockaway in Brooklyn and growing up my dad was a carpenter and a fireman a New York City fireman and a carpenter.
Jimmy DiResta:So his workshop was in the basement of our house. So he would be a fireman most of the day and then the days he had off he would do carpentry work for people. So he always had two jobs and I was. Of my two older brothers and my younger sister, I was the one that spent the most time with my dad because I shared the most interest. All of us all four of us to a varying degree have developed skills of building and problem solving through my dad's inspiration. But I spent the most time with him and I took it up the most. And while I was in high school I took on jobs that involved building and making stuff more often than my other siblings. They would take various jobs like restaurants and stuff, but I always try to find jobs that involve building.
Jennifer Logue:So when did you first start working with tools?
Jimmy DiResta:When I was like five or six years old. Wow, yeah, I joke because I'm really good on the bandsaw and I'm always showing off on the bandsaw online for fun and I like cutting out letters and lately I've been cutting out little three-dimensional animals and having fun with that. And I started working on the band when I was like six or seven years old. Wow, and most parents wouldn't let their kid near one of those tools until they were young adults. But my dad was. He was not a helicopter parent, he didn't care. He was like if you get cut, just put some black tape on it and keep moving on Nice black tape on it and keep moving on.
Jennifer Logue:Nice, the toughness.
Jimmy DiResta:Oh my gosh, the 1970s.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh, I'm like the opposite. I can't even work the power drill that I bought. I'm working on it. I'm working on it.
Jimmy DiResta:You can. If you're not confident and you're not you can get seriously injured. With all tools, even just a kitchen knife, you can get seriously injured. But working with my dad, I just developed a sense of confidence and a sense of healthy danger and I had a healthy respect for the danger of the tool and, you know, holding it in the right direction. And my dad also instilled in all of us anticipate what could go wrong. So when you grab something, you know the biggest risk with a drill, especially if you're drilling holes is you know the drill could grab and twist and break your wrist or pull out of your hand. You know twist your fingers. So you know anticipate. Sometimes drills come with that extra handle and it's important to use that extra handle to keep the drill from twisting out of your hands.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, definitely don't want that happening.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah.
Jennifer Logue:And my walls. You know, they look so nice right now. I'm like, oh, so nice right now I'm like oh. So your dad was obviously a huge influence on you back then. Did you have any other influences when it came to building and craft?
Jimmy DiResta:Well, it's my childlike curiosity. I owe it really all to my dad because my dad's still my dad's 83 years old. He's getting a little bit out of there. My birthday was yesterday. He called me the day before my birthday was April 3rd. So he called me on April 2nd. He said is your birthday today? I said no, it's tomorrow. He said oh okay, the whole day yesterday I didn't hear from him. We texted a little bit and he said happy birthday. And then this morning on April 4th he calls me and says I wanted to call you to be the first to wish you a happy birthday. I said my birthday was yesterday and then I had to convince him that I wasn't kidding with him, because he thought I was kidding. So he's getting a little senile, but he's mostly there.
Jimmy DiResta:But growing up my dad had a really childlike curiosity about most things. My dad was the first person I know to buy a computer. I just turned 56 yesterday. Wow, I just turned 56 yesterday. So I was around when the computers became a novelty that suddenly, you know, suddenly became, eventually became a necessity. So when computers were just a novelty, my dad would go to. My dad went to radio shack and bought a computer and I said what are you going to do with this? And he was playing games and showed me like all these high pixelated video games that he was playing and it's like look at this. And he was explaining to me what an app was. I was like I don't, I'm never gonna need that. I make things with my hands. I won't need an app to make things on a computer.
Jimmy DiResta:That was probably 89 90 whoa but my dad had a computer and it's. He would collect apps and him and his friends would exchange discs full of stolen apps off the, you know, off the. I don't even know how they would exchange, I don't even know if the internet was around then, but they would exchange apps on floppy discs and floppy discs.
Jimmy DiResta:And my dad was always proud to show all the new apps he got Like this one can do that and that one can do that. It was like it was almost very similar to the way like the apps are on the phone now.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, it's so funny too, because you're working with your hands now, obviously, building things, but then you also do all this content online, so it's interesting how those two worlds have come together for you.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, I was building things my whole life and then, in and around 2000, I was also always doing photography, taking pictures and collecting video, but not really having any wherewithal to edit it. I never really. Maybe I knew how to edit one day I can't remember exactly, but I knew editing was going to be a complicated situation because there wasn't a digital revolution yet. I was shooting a lot of video and I know you could edit video, but I didn't really know how to do it. And then Robert Rodriguez came out with I forget what the name of his movie was, but Robert Rodriguez came out with a book about just before the digital revolution or right after the digital revolution, about the film he made on VHS and that was inspiring to me.
Jimmy DiResta:And then, right around that time, final Cut Pro became available in 2000, or 99, 2000. And then editing became accessible to everybody. There was digital editing but you had to go rent a suite and you had to go rent an avid. You know, an avid was a computer program that was put up on special computers that you had to go and rent space at, you had to go rent time at, and now you can edit on anybody's pocket phone, but this is 25 years ago. You had to go and know somebody that had access to avid the avid machine, and you you had to go and know somebody that had access to Avid the Avid machine, and you had to go. And then Final Cut Pro came out and it basically put video editing in everybody's hands yes, via Apple. And then, shortly after that, they came up with iMovie, which was a scaled down version of that same app that was accessible to anybody that bought an Apple computer.
Jennifer Logue:I still have iMovie to this day.
Jimmy DiResta:I use iMovie to edit all my movies. I was using Final Cut Pro but there's just so many choices and I'd find myself playing around with spinning a logo and I was like this isn't really. I want it to be about the content, and so I stopped using Final Cut Pro just because it was too many choices, and then I just became used to just using iMovie. I can breeze through and edit really quickly in iMovie and it does exactly what I need.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, if it has what you need, you're good.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, and the good thing is you don't have to pay for it, so I could just pull a hard drive and move it to another computer in my house or even at somebody else's house and open up my movies and still edit, which, you know, on a rare occasion I'm in an emergency situation I have to plug a hard drive in someplace I'm not familiar with and I'm able to open it up and do it.
Jennifer Logue:Oh cool, I never thought of that before. So you mentioned a few lessons your dad taught you Are there any others that come to mind what you've learned from your dad over the years.
Jimmy DiResta:My dad was always just work hard. Be curious. I mean he was almost, like we jokingly called my dad, a worker bee or a worker ant. He worked so hard and he almost didn't even know why. He just worked hard just to pay his bills, really. But you know, I'm motivated to work hard because I'm deeply curious about new processes. I want to bring my audience new, interesting things that I make and create and inspire them to make and create and inspire others. But when we were kids, my dad just worked hard just because he was almost pre-programmed to work hard. And that's how we all work, that way, even though we don't all do exactly what I do, but my siblings, we all work very hard. And it's funny when we meet people that don't work hard or just like end the day at three o'clock and they just go home and put their feet up and do nothing. I don't know how their brain functions.
Jennifer Logue:It's a different mindset. You know, I find when you're doing what you love, it's not even it is work, right, but you put hours into it, way beyond a normal job, but you don't feel it because you're driven by.
Jimmy DiResta:It's almost like if you have a love of solving puzzles. I know people that like to make puzzles and put puzzles together so they have a dedicated table in their house and they just spend hours just trying to search for the right piece. I'm the type of person that looks at every work, every bit of work I do, as a puzzle and I'm just constantly solving those puzzles. So I'm getting the satisfaction of solving puzzles and I'm also getting the satisfaction of completing work and creating work and, at the same time, also creating income.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, and inspiring people.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, and inspiring people, that's a big part. Like this weekend, I met with some people. I I did an event called the make 48. It was a tv show that will run on the internet and I was a mentor helping the people. That's a contestant show where people try to come up with inventions within 24, 48 hours rather, and a couple people that are like asking me because they think I'm famous and I don't think I'm famous the way they do. But they said what is it like being famous? Well, first of all, I don. First of all, I don't think I'm famous. But if I was to give into your answer and think that you know, okay, what's it like being famous or do I like? The question was, do I like being famous? And I said, well, I don't necessarily think I'm famous, but to answer your question in a practical way, it's nice to be able to inspire people.
Jennifer Logue:Yes.
Jimmy DiResta:As someone that's so-called famous, because I meet people just like the people I was talking to that thought I was famous. They said they do certain things because I did them and it's all good, wholesome, learning, fun stuff, and to know that I'm the type of person that can show how I do something because of my curiosity, because of my childlike curiosity and then they do it because they've gotten out of their comfort zone or I've. I've inspired them to not be scared of doing something, and a lot of people are scared to do something different because they're self-conscious or they might have an overbearing friend or family member or spouse. That's like stick, stay in your lane. You know people say that all the time to other people. People say all the time, stay in your lane.
Jimmy DiResta:And I've heard that so many times time stay in your lane and I've heard that so many times like, oh my gosh and you know, sometimes I say that to myself you know, when you're dealing with interpersonal relationships and you don't like, you know, like, for instance, you know your best friend's cheating on somebody else, you're like you don't stay in my lane this is my you know I'm not going to be the one to blow this out of the water.
Jimmy DiResta:let them figure it out on their own. Stay in my lane. But when it comes to working and designing and developing things, I like being on a four-lane highway and learning all different things all the time. And it's a big problem for most people that they're in an environment that doesn't nurture that need. So when somebody wants to be that type of person, or somebody wants to stop their computer programming job or at least take a break from it and do woodwork, their spouse or their father or their mother might say what do you know about woodwork? What do you know? What do you? What do you? Just stick to what you're good at. And that's and I say it all the time it's that particular person who's being the criticizer, it's the critique, it's the critiques, personal fear that they they don't have the ability to control.
Jimmy DiResta:And they think to themselves go wow, I couldn't do that. I don't have the ability to step outside my comfort zone and step outside my lane so they have to impulsively verbally criticize somebody else that's doing it.
Jennifer Logue:To keep them feeling comfortable and safe. It has nothing to do with your journey, your path. It's all about them and their insecurity.
Jimmy DiResta:And it's sad because I get young students say like my dad wants me to do this, he doesn't want me to do that. And I remind him he's putting his own fear into you. I mean, he loves you and my dad did it to me. My dad, he's like you.
Jimmy DiResta:Sure you want to be an artist, because it was such a blanketed term in the 80s when I decided to go to art school, nobody knew what a commercial artist was, or even what a graphic designer did. I didn't even know when I signed up for school. I just knew like it felt like the right place to be. He's like maybe you want to take a police officer's test so you have something to fall back on. I said I don't know a lot, but I know I definitely don't want to be a police officer. To me, being a police officer is the opposite of being an artist and I was being more compelled to being an artist than being a police officer. I mean, it was something I never wanted to do, but my dad just encouraged it and he pushed my brother John. So my brother John, the comedian actor, he ended up becoming a police officer because he sort of succumbed to my dad's pressure. I didn't't? He did. So you went, you went, walked your own path. I did I did.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, happily so. When you were at the school of visual arts, what did you study exactly?
Jimmy DiResta:I was in school for graphic design for the first two years I didn't really know what that meant, but what we did foundation year. I think most colleges do a foundation year, most art schools. It just gets your hand-eye coordination used to sculpting, painting, spatial awareness, composition, art history. You know all those things. This foundation stuff that's important. We took a couple classes in media, whatever that meant at the time and then, uh, the second year we start getting more into specific classes, like I took a class with a teacher who had designed several packages beer labels, wine labels, potato chip labels, you know like practical things. And then a real deep study of fonts and letter forms and where they came from and why they're popular, serifs and serif. You know all this like a deep education. So that's basically graphic design, commercial art, composition, what an editorial spread is, and doing blocks of type and blocks of font, all this stuff.
Jimmy DiResta:And this was in 86, 85, 86, when you still would get like a photo stat you would have to call out to a company, you'd lay out, you'd inspect the type you want and the columns you want. Now you're just dragging your columns, change shape on the computer right in front of your eyes and you change your lighting right in front of your eyes. Back then you'd have to get a galley, a type galley, which was just a big photograph of all the fonts you needed for that particular layout, which might've been the side of a packaging, and then you'd slice them apart with an X-Acto knife and stick them on a big board and lay them out exactly how you want, and then that gets photographed and the color gets added in the print process. Nowadays you just do it on the computer and hit send and it goes right directly to the print press and they look at, you go oh, they run a two of them and they go okay, it doesn't look right, let's change it again.
Jennifer Logue:I wonder if just the satisfaction of doing it by hand some of the magic is lost. I know technology is amazing because it's faster, it's more efficient.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah.
Jennifer Logue:But I just noticed if I work too long on the computer I feel a little dead inside. No matter what I'm doing Like I always feel more alive if I'm playing music off the computer.
Jimmy DiResta:Well, I'm old enough to be able to say I worked doing mechanicals the old-fashioned way. I never really had a job doing it. I did it more as a student. So the old fashioned way. I never really had a job doing it. I did it more as a student. So I did it as a student mechanicals.
Jimmy DiResta:But then right after school I got into the toy business and then I would look at mechanicals. I would look at for people that were working for the toy companies that I was freelancing for. They'd bring in paste-ups and mechanicals for the packaging, these big boards, and you flip back the cover sheet and you look at where the placement of the photography was and usually there was an envelope in the corner and that had all the proper photography for the printer that the printer had. This whole process that was kind of secret. He did it. And then that artist that was doing our graphic design got a computer and everybody in the office was like, oh, I can't believe they got a computer. It's going to ruin the design process. And the first couple of packages he brought in they were stiff and clunky. He didn't have a paste-up to look at. He would bring in a printed-out thing. It looks a little bit like men on the computer, kind of lost that human touch.
Jimmy DiResta:But shortly thereafter, once the simplicity and the ease of the computer started to really become aware of the practice, once you begin to practice and you get outside of these sort of rigid constraints you think you're stuck inside of. And then as you get you get deeper involved in using illustrator and photoshop and you start to realize you could pretty much do anything your imagination will dictate. But getting there is is the difficult part because the computer programs are so deep. So in the beginning, when we first made that transition in like 93 94, the artwork did look a little clunky, a little like a little sterile, almost clinical. But then as we got on like you learn how to put in drop shadows and deepen the letters and outline stuff and and some of those effects got overused too. But then I used to do these walkthroughs in Walmart on my Instagram and I'd look at all the fonts and type and graphic design and I would say like the different tricks used in Illustrator and Photoshop to accomplish that.
Jennifer Logue:Oh.
Jimmy DiResta:And my fans always liked that.
Jennifer Logue:That's fun.
Jimmy DiResta:I'm just coming off a cold, so my throat's a little dry, oh my gosh.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, I feel you, I just got over COVID. Oh that was fun Not.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, but the the pace of some mechanicals. I'm sure if you speak to anybody that was in between both of those eras, they would tell you that the computer is a lot easier because I could sit on an airplane and design stuff. I could sit in a waiting area and design stuff. I could email somebody a quick what do you think? Here's a screen grab of direction. I love it. No meetings, no having to send the only art board that exists in the FedEx and hopefully it comes back without the damage of being lost. So the digital world has really made life a lot easier, I'm sure, in millions of ways.
Jennifer Logue:For the mobility alone, you know, and just the ease of just getting things done. What did you do after you went to school? What were your first three jobs?
Jimmy DiResta:Well, right after school, right before I graduated school I should say just before I graduated school I took a class called Toys and Games. I had all the credits I needed. So then it was for me. The last semester was sort of a gravy train. I could do whatever I wanted. I was paying my full tuition so I could pick. I graduated with like 10. This is so foreign to me now to talk about credits and graduating with certain, but I knew that I can graduate with a lot more credits because I was always an overachiever. I was just thirsty for knowledge. So my last semester I took a few classes that I didn't necessarily need but they seemed interesting. So I took one class called Toys and Games and I met a guy named Mark Setteducati and Mark became my toy teacher.
Jimmy DiResta:I was going to go into three-dimensional illustration and that involves anything like prop making. Anything with a photograph in an editorial or photograph on a print ad is three-dimensional stuff. You know like, for instance, the great example at the time was all the absolute vodka ads in the in the 80s was like absolute tennis or absolute this, and it was like a 3d model of, like an ad, like I remember, absolute maryland and like the bottle skirt was blowing up and all the letters were blowing off the bottle. I remember that absolute chicago.
Jennifer Logue:And like the bottle skirt was blowing up and all the letters were blowing off the bottle.
Jimmy DiResta:I remember that Absolute Chicago and all the letters were blowing off of the bottle. So all the Absolute Vodka ads were all real 3D models that were photographed. They were all 3D objects that were photographed on a set. I actually worked for the company that made those for a minute as an intern, so I got to see them up close. So I was going to go into that world.
Jimmy DiResta:And then when I met Mark, mark encouraged me to stick around the toy business and he said come, hang out with me, I'll give you freelance work. And that's really what I started doing with Mark is freelance work. He would say I have this invention. Take it, give me four versions of the way you see it should work. And then, once we decide a direction of the play, the action or the gameplay, we'll come up with a cool mechanism that will illustrate or show the prototype. And then we'll go and try and sell the product to a toy company. And you go and you pitch the product, just like you pitch a television show or a movie idea. And we go and pitch the product and sometimes you sell them. Most of the times you don't, but in the process you learn how to make anything to to do anything, because toys is just an open-ended game, just anything you could think of I didn't know that I had never thought of that industry before yeah, it's, it's really just like.
Jimmy DiResta:You look like just like, like, really like the tv and game business. Sorry, like the tv and movie business, you're always looking at the other successes and be like, okay, I have an idea that's like that. It's not exactly the same as jaws, but it's similar to jaws. It's like about a dog that kills people on land. So, yeah, so that was what the game business was like. It's. It's like oh, a hungry, hungry hippos. I have another game. It's not hungry, hungry hippos, but it's like. It's like snakes will get you and it's like the snakes are going to eat all the eggs or something. So those I'm just making up examples.
Jimmy DiResta:But in the toy business, like all the explicit examples that were successful inspired people to come up with things, including me. That was similar. You know a lot. You have like an action game for kids where it's like a hundred hippos or it's just like a lot of slap action and it's loud and noisy. And you have games like Monopoly, where it's more of a social interaction game. Those are a little bit more heady. I never really did those type of games.
Jennifer Logue:I loved Monopoly. I'm in my head a lot, though, so probably that's why.
Jimmy DiResta:And those games are difficult to sell because they had to have. You know there's rules and strategy and you know you have to educate the audience. But like a game, like. But that's also like from like 10 and up and hungry hippos is from like 10 and down, you know. So there's age categories. I fell into the category of making novelties like squishy balls that like eyeballs pop out of, and my big success was a toy called gurgling guts, which it's a squishy eyeball and you squish and squeeze on it and it makes a slurping sound like a gross squishy eyeball and it's got a clear skin on it. So you squeeze it and the the ball inside sucks and spits on blood. So it looked like a squishy eyeball you still have a prototype of it uh, yeah, well, I they.
Jimmy DiResta:They kind of deteriorate because of the blood and the rubber. So it was fun. They would go bad and like squirt blood on people. It was great, oh my gosh, it's awesome.
Jennifer Logue:It sounds very nickelonian.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, yeah, it was in 95, 96 when gross was like a big trend in the toy business.
Jennifer Logue:Oh yeah. So your journey? Did you ever have a goal when you came out of college, or have you just organically followed your curiosity?
Jimmy DiResta:My very loose goal and I think about it was more like, even though I got into commercial art and I call toy business commercial art because you've got to sell products, you've got to design, develop and the invention and you've got to design, develop the packaging design and then you've got to design and develop and invent the marketing. So it's very commercial. What I always wanted to do is come up with something that I thought of and was able to sell it, and that's a very broad thing. But to me that encompasses fine art, where you have someone like damien hearst that puts animals in formaldehyde and sells it for millions of dollars. He has the whim to make whatever he wants. He has a gallery that will support him and exploit him and he makes money and then so in a roundabout way through the toy business, then in the television business, then in youtube.
Jimmy DiResta:I got to a point now whatever I make every week, I have to make whatever I can make, whatever I want. Sometimes I have requirements because there's an ad placement in my video. As a matter of fact, this recent video I put out the other day was where I made a model of my workshop to do an exploration of what the second floor would look like, which doesn't exist yet in real time. But in the model I made a second floor In that video I exploited some usage of type on glue and they pay me to exploit the glue and to promote the glue. So in that video it was an excuse to me to do two things Figure out what I want to do with the floor and see it in real time through the camera and uh, and exploit some some type on glue. They're satisfied and and I get to just do whatever I felt like doing and you've built your own empire.
Jennifer Logue:Now it's like this is your. Yeah, you have more control to.
Jimmy DiResta:You know, go where creativity takes you yeah, for instance, in about five days from now, I'm going to post a video and right now I have three loose ideas of what that video is going to be about. Over the next five days, that video is going to get focused, shot, edited and posted. You ask me, right now it's a Tuesday, I'm not sure which one it's going to be.
Jennifer Logue:Okay.
Jimmy DiResta:But I have three ideas. I think I know which one I'm going to go with because it's it's more of a simple video to shoot and I'm going to pick that just because it's more of a practical video. But next week I can pick one of the other two because I'll have a full week to work this, because yesterday I was in kansas city yesterday so I lost monday, which is a critical day to get started. So every week I produce an episode of my TV show One man. It's not huge. It's not a huge production. It's me alone with a camera and some tools, alone in my shop for the most part, but it does get done.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, and it's amazing how you're able to do it all on your own, like when you're not filming a larger production.
Jimmy DiResta:Yep. So the funny thing was is I when I shoot most of the YouTube videos alone, but when we were doing making fun in the backyard, it was two 53 foot trailers. Every morning there was about 40 people in my yard like eight cameramen, two directors, people monitoring the time code. There's so much going on Makeup people and PAs running and getting food and getting props and getting materials. It was crazy. Every day was a chaos.
Jennifer Logue:It's amazing to see the largeness of the production.
Jimmy DiResta:They did a great job. I mean, it was great. It all came together beautifully in the edit. But every couple of nights I would shoot my own youtube movie when everybody left, because we were still, even though it was my, the set of the show was my home, my home, yeah. So everybody was like hey, we're going to the pub over in windham, what are you guys doing? What are you guys? I'm gonna work. I gotta do a video on the outhouse, so you guys go, I'll work. You're gonna work all night. I'm like I want to keep my youtube videos alive yeah youtube.
Jimmy DiResta:You got to kind of feed the monster, but it's, you know, it's a healthy addiction, if you ask me I agree, I agree even with the podcast, like it's just getting started.
Jennifer Logue:But, like you know, my friends will be like oh, you want to hang out. I'm like I'm working my podcast, like you're always working, and I'm like, yeah, I mean but, I enjoy it. It's fun. I get to meet cool people and talk about creativity, so and and consistency.
Jimmy DiResta:That's the only way you'll develop an audience. And, when it's all said and done, we're developing an audience so that we could either share with them great cool things, sell them things, share in selling them things, inspire them to sell things. You know, it's like one big. In a way it's like one big advertising ruse, but at the same time we're all learning and having fun.
Jennifer Logue:Yes.
Jimmy DiResta:People learn from me that they could do things on a jigsaw or a bandsaw or a CNC or a laser and they leave their job and now they're selling laser stuff on Etsy or they're making bandsaw things on etsy, or they're doing pottery on wherever, and so, you know, I sold them in the lifestyle that they bought into, and now they're happy.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, you're, you're planting seeds in people. Yep, they can um grow, you know um. So this is creative space, and I love asking this question of everyone, because everyone has their own perspective on what creativity is. But what is your definition of creativity?
Jimmy DiResta:Creativity, I think, is problem solving. It's as basic as that. I think creativity is problem solving when you see somebody that says I can't draw a stick figure, I don't know how you do it. But then they are the same type of person that could make a beautiful dinner, you know, complicated indian food or something like that. They don't realize they're creative, or they you know. Creativity is really just always outlined to everybody as hands-on creative drawing, painting, painting that's creative. But creative is problem-solving, engineering, making dinners. I think people who can clean a house creatively.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, you know, like I have people like the girl I'm dating. She makes my bed it looks like a hotel room. When I make my bed it looks like I'm covering up a murder scene. We had a joke about that yesterday. But it's like I don't understand the problem-solving ritual that she goes through to make the bed perfectly, versus what I go through. You know I could make a car. She can't make a car, but she can make a beautiful bed and you know she could also read and write beautifully. She writes, you know, endlessly Like. You know, like chat GPT, she could write and I can't. I write an email. We've been going back and forth in emails. I just go, cool, right, awesome, you know, all right.
Jennifer Logue:We all have different abilities, yeah.
Jimmy DiResta:So I think so the reason I bring that up as an example is most people say I'm not creative, but they do other things that I, so-called creative, could never, ever do. But everybody would define me as the most creative because I could do all these physical, visual, artistic things.
Jennifer Logue:Because it's what we you know think of when we think of creativity.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah. So I mean, like people say, you know, a lot of people might argue that a producer isn't creative. You know, producer of a TV show. But no, like, when you see the TV show that we did, it's funny. Derek, who's one of the cast members of the show, he said to me when it began he'd never been on TV. He just goes. What is the role of the producer? Like, what is the producer? Because aren't we on camera? Like, by the end of that show he's like I 100% now understand the creative input a producer could do.
Jimmy DiResta:You know, mike would tell us Mike was the producer of the show, michael O'Dare, and we would do something. Mike would go you know what guys do it one more time, but this time say this at the end and then when you see it in the edit, you're like, oh my God, that lands so much more funny. And so he problem solved that through a creative process. Process, he didn't build a dinosaur, he didn't get up there and paint and screw and cut wood. He gave us a couple of ideas to say something in a funny way or move in a funny way, or hand this to him and then, when he's done, hand it back over there and then that gets a laugh. So you know, and then, as far as the whole entire overall reach overarching concept of the show, mike thought of the of me being grumpy and me taking pictures from kids about what they should make and being grumpy and mean to them because I don't like kids. You know that was all mike's vision, yeah the show was so well put together.
Jennifer Logue:I just thought it was crafted brilliantly thank you.
Jimmy DiResta:so it was by the. You know, I just showed up and did the best I could, but the guys did a great job and they did a great job with the edit. The edit won an Emmy.
Jennifer Logue:Wow.
Jimmy DiResta:Congratulations, yeah Well, congratulations to them.
Jennifer Logue:They did a good job yeah. Why do you think creativity is important?
Jimmy DiResta:Well, creativity is important because it's what the world innovates. The world is innovating all the time. It's the reason why 20 years ago we didn't have an iPhone, and now the iPhone is a critical part of everyone's life. It's the reason why the computer didn't exist, and now it's. How could we live without a computer? How could we live without GPS? Like I didn't even know, how did we get anywhere 25 years ago? I don't even understand it.
Jennifer Logue:I don how do we get anywhere?
Jimmy DiResta:25 years ago. I don't even understand it. I don't even know I can go. You just listen to dad's directions and try and write them down. It's like crazy. Look for the red flag and make a left.
Jimmy DiResta:It's like crazy yeah, I'm lost without my gps creativity is important because it makes the world go around. And then, but you might want to say, why is art important? Because art is important because it expands people's consciousness, it expands people's curiosity. It expands, you know, like, there's mechanical jobs, like guys that are creative in a way that they could, you know, keep a hospital clean or keep a library clean. I believe those guys are creative because some people are really good at that, uh, but they might not consider themselves artists and so, you know, people might say why is art important when the world goes around all these other ways?
Jimmy DiResta:If it wasn't for art, we wouldn wasn't for art, we wouldn't have cool-looking objects, we wouldn't have cool innovation, we wouldn't have pottery. People say pottery, pottery was such an important part of society 100 years ago, 200 years ago. Pottery was the beginning of saving seeds and developing farming techniques. And now pottery people think it's something you do at the rehab to keep people busy, but pottery was such an important part of the evolution of humanity. There's so many little things like that. So when you see it in an artistic ceremonial urn that has decorations on it, you're like, oh, isn't that cute. But they don't realize that was a pivotal part of, like, that culture's existence yeah, part of.
Jennifer Logue:Well, I'm not sure if they're earned as part of survival but what I meant to say?
Jimmy DiResta:like, uh, like a pot, like a pot that, would you know, carry seeds and stuff yeah, so I um, I also think, like the emotional.
Jennifer Logue:There's people who don't think of themselves as creative. I feel I forget who said it, but music is the emotional life of most people, you know, cause I've encountered people in my life who don't have any. They're not able to look within, but when they listen to a song, that's how they feel, like the song connects them to what they're feeling which is beautiful.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, I, I listen. I love music, all kinds of music, and so many times in a day it'll happen to me at least once a day where I'll hear a song and it kind of pings me emotionally and I didn't bring a tear to my eye, even though it might be just like an instrumental yeah.
Jennifer Logue:Do you have any favorite artists in terms of music or?
Jimmy DiResta:I like everybody. You know it's I really do. I can find some pretty good reasons to like most bands, most music. There's a couple of indie bands that I listen to and I could find, you know, like you get like a tape from somebody like what is this, am I gonna really listen to this? And you're popping like, oh, wow, there's actually something cool. And then you say to your friend, do you know? Know Stevie Stiletto and the Switchblades, they're like who I'm like? Never mind, you know, like things like you'll never. But in general I like if I had to live on a deserted island with one musician, it would probably be jazz, like Chet Baker oh nice, coltrane and that kind of music and Nick Cave. So it would be Nick Cave, coltrane and Chet Baker. Those would be my musical.
Jennifer Logue:Your soundtrack.
Jimmy DiResta:That would be my soundtrack.
Jennifer Logue:I love it. What drives you as a maker? You talked about this a little bit.
Jimmy DiResta:Curiosity? Well, there's a couple of things. There's some practical things that I have to keep my audience intrigued and I have to keep myself intrigued. And curiosity, and trying to find new interesting things to do every day. I keep peeling the onion a little bit more and more and more. Sometimes I'm out of age now. I'm repeating things, but I'm doing things that I did before, but I'm doing them differently. I'm doing them with a better education, having spent so many seven or eight, nine years later doing it again and I could say I did this this time, but now I'm doing it differently because I have so many more resources or so much more learning under my belt. So what keeps me going is just curiosity and the need to just really keep myself entertained and keep the dollars coming in honestly. But more than anything, what drives me is not money, not fame. None of that is really just my own personal curiosity. It's like I get an old machine and I'm like I wonder if I can get that to work again. Let me see what it takes to get that to work again. And that's really the other question start Can I get that started again?
Jimmy DiResta:The other day we got a year ago I bought a 1920s Johnson boat motor. It's a little tiny, it's all aluminum. It looks like something that would be hanging in a museum. It's beautiful. Me and my sister, rob, rob rob, polished it up, so it's beautifully aluminum and brass. It's like gorgeous. And we just got it running. Whoa, it's like we literally like resurrected a dead object, like a dead person. We like brought this person back to life. It's crazy, because it was just like a beat-up, dirty thing that would look like it would never be clean and, piece by piece, rob cleaned it a little bit at a time and then, boom, beautiful what is that feeling like?
Jimmy DiResta:it's great. I was away in kansas city over the weekend. Rob sent me a picture of it running. He's like watch this videotape starting it. It was great. A big smile on my face I love it.
Jennifer Logue:Um, so do you think it's harder for people today to be creative with the distractions from technology? Like, technology is a tool, but do you think it can sometimes take away from us being present?
Jimmy DiResta:Well, I think you know what you and I are comparing. I mean, I don't know how old you are, but if you might remember a time before iPhones were prevalent, I think you know. You might be asking me because we're comparing it to when they weren't around, but young people they're in an environment now where iPhones are there. They can film themselves singing. When we were kids we had to sing in a bar Hope.
Jimmy DiResta:Somebody noticed us, we had to record, we had to rent space in a recording studio, like all those hurdles, and we still were creative. Now somebody can literally point the phone at themselves, sing a song and become a hit singer overnight. So I don't think creativity is hindered in any way. I think, if anything, the rails are greased, but people who are doing it don't realize how the rails are greased. So I think human creativity is going to find a way. It doesn't matter what it takes.
Jimmy DiResta:So, like I said, back in the day, when there was a million gatekeepers and a million hurdles, we had to find a recording studio. We had to find someone. They knew how to run the board. We got to find two inch tape and we got to this. And we got to that, we got to this, we got to I remember when I was a teenager and I wasn't a musician but I had lots of friends were and then when they got the coveted four track recorder, like the task cam they got the TASCAM four-track recorder and it was just like you don't understand the possibilities.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah.
Jimmy DiResta:And like then. You know, even you know I grew up with some hip-hop guys too, and like to them that was like that's it. We are on the road to success with our TASCAM four-track recorder A couple of microphones, a quiet room. Now people can produce an Emmy award-winning album on an Apple and an iPhone. But the people that are doing that don't realize they still have their own hurdles to go through, and it might be more. You know, less often than gatekeepers. Now it's more personal. It's like dealing with that was always prevalent, but that might be more prevalent now because there's less hurdles but there's more. You know, people stepping outside their comfort zone, people inspiring them to stay in the bucket of crabs, you know that kind of thing, that's really true getting out of your comfort zone yeah, I don't really think that because I don't know what.
Jimmy DiResta:I know. I'm a generation x and there's millennials and then I don't know what's after that, but there's two more after that. But I think that group is wildly creative and we're only seeing it on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube now. I don't know where we used to see it before. I guess the TV set.
Jennifer Logue:If you got there, if you were able to break through.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, and now it's. I was talking to somebody the other day, a young woman who's I met when I was in Kansas city, and she's like what do you think about getting on TV? She's trying to promote young women in technology. She's like TV show, this TV show that I say don't even bother with the TV show, because the TV show is going to basically encapsulate these several up if you get there, which is impossible but once you get there, they're going to give you six episodes of this boom, this thing. They're going to air it and then, if it doesn't go well, they're going to bury it. It'll never be seen again.
Jennifer Logue:Wow.
Jimmy DiResta:If you slowly develop your own audience on YouTube. I have 700 episodes of my YouTube video. Do you think any network TV would ever have allowed me to make 700 episodes of anything?
Jennifer Logue:Wow, yeah and never.
Jimmy DiResta:I'm in total control. Wow, yeah, and never control. I'm in total control. Every single day Someone's like, hey, what, how can I do? And I'm like give me a minute and I send them three links to three things I've already done that can help answer some questions, get them on a path. I said to this young lady I was like if you just stop developing content different categories, how to program an Arduino, how to set up a breadboard test model, whatever it is and she's an electronics major like you solely begin a library that's yours, and in five years from now, when production companies don't know what to do anymore because none of them had a youtube channel, they're going to look to youtubers and start licensing their content, and then you will, you'll be ahead of the curve. So I encourage I was like, even though it doesn't seem successful, to like make a rinky dink YouTube video every once in a while. I was like you begin to start developing a library of content that will be more valuable to you than any TV show in your resume, in my opinion.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, I've been a friend of mine is like pushing me to put the video of my podcast online, because I've just been doing audio so far, because I'm so like oh, but I don't have like a cool fancy studio like these other podcasters. You know, it's just out of my room.
Jimmy DiResta:But then you get to see what all of us knuckleheads look like. You know what our rooms look like.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, that's true.
Jimmy DiResta:Are you recording all the videos as well?
Jennifer Logue:I am recording video for everybody.
Jimmy DiResta:Oh, good, so you have it. You have it if you need it.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah. That's good In the beginning I was figuring out, like I didn't have my camera tilted the right way, so, like every video, you see the progression of like just total disaster to like getting a little bit better.
Jimmy DiResta:But you know, in this day and age, and that goes back to you know, are people more or less creative? I think what in the 80s and 90s right now.
Jimmy DiResta:It's the actual, it's the heart and soul of the content. That's most important because you could have an amazing like. This is an example I listened to. Um, well, this is a bad example because I listened yesterday. I I liked the whitney cummings podcast and she had on david tell, who's a comedian I love and I've actually met him a few times and I was like, oh, david tell, and then she patched in somebody on like Zoom call, so it was the two of them together in the studio and then somebody on a Zoom call and it didn't record well, so it was a horrible piece of content. So I said that's a bad example because that's a negative of the point I want to make.
Jimmy DiResta:But we're so forgiving of content these days because it's more about the content of the content and not necessarily the presentation of the content. So if you have some really good interviews, as long as the audio is good, that's really the most important thing in any of this. If the audio is not good like the Whitney Cummings was a bad example of what I was saying If the audio is not good, it might not even be worth publishing. If the video is not great, it doesn't matter. You could get a look and a feel of what's going on, and that's cool. You know, like people want to put a face to my voice if they've never seen me or whoever else. You interviewed Sam right, that's how I found you, because did you interview him?
Jennifer Logue:Oh yes. I was going to say I didn't realize you knew Sam, the legendary Sam Jones. I adore her so much, yeah, so.
Jimmy DiResta:Sam lives in my neighborhood and we made friends this year. In the beginning of at the end of last year we made friends at her bagel shop.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh, I haven't been yet, but like she just creates so many cool things, I mean with her commercials, and then she's making things with her bagel shop, and she's just, and then she's making things with her bagel shop.
Jimmy DiResta:And she's just, oh my gosh, she's so animated when she talks. She's like I'm a New Yorker. I move my hands around, I'm trying not to bang the table. Yeah, she, you know. So I think, even if the video content isn't high quality or you're in your room, I don't think it matters.
Jennifer Logue:Cool yeah, she was on the podcast and she was hilarious.
Jimmy DiResta:I mean like If anything COVID brought us, it was what is the inside of you know, Seth from Live with Seth Meyers house looks like, or what is the inside of Trevor Noah's house look like, you know.
Jennifer Logue:That's true.
Jimmy DiResta:You know it doesn't matter, we're all just humans that have like a weird space we live in.
Jennifer Logue:And it's so true, and it's so true, and it's not, it's not perfect.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, no-transcript. Well, today I got up and today's the day my housekeeper's here, so I kind of stick around with her in case she needs help. But I'm kind of picking up after my own self. My brother lives here during the week because he's up here utilizing my workshop, so he stays up here during the week and since it's like really first nice day of spring, I did some backyard cleanup.
Jimmy DiResta:I had to go out and collect the eggs because I was away in Kansas City.
Jimmy DiResta:So I collected the eggs in the chicken coop, I washed them off, changed the nozzle on the hose because the old one was broken from this frozen winter and, uh, cleaned the eggs off the back deck, drying on the porch, fed the cats, played around with the cats, got rid of some garbage that accumulated, went and picked up a delivery. I got a bathtub delivered to me, a cryo tub from a friend that wants me to look at her cryo tub invention and fix it up. So that's why I had to go forklift off a cryo tub off of an 18-wheeler truck 10 minutes before we started and then I shot back over here and I kind of knew like I didn't want to get too deep into anything because I knew I had 2 o'clock with you. Typically I would get deep into something and completely forget everything, and then I'd get a call from you at three o'clock. You're like are you coming on the podcast? One thing I did tell you when I agreed to do this is you just have to remind me multiple times because I'll forget.
Jennifer Logue:I get it. We get in the zone.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, but I got a new sewing machine so I played with the sewing machine. But after today I guess every typical day is me just putting some of my projects. I have several projects that are long-term, some projects that are short-term. So I have two long-term projects. I'm working on a boat that is actually a bar unit. It's a mobile bar unit that is built in an old boat. It does not come off the trailer, it's just you pull up to an outdoor summer event and you walk up to the boat and order a beer.
Jimmy DiResta:And I'm building that. It's already built but I'm restoring it because it's got quite, quite deteriorated over the years. It's about 10 years old, so I just give it a refresher construction wise. It was falling apart, so fix that up, rebuilt the windshield, repainted it and so that's kind of ready to be put outside, but it still has some work to do. And then the uh, my own boat. I'm building a boat from scratch, so that's another long-term project. That's a rowboat that's going to actually go in the water and I built that from recycled material. So that's a cool little rowboat that I'm building and I might make a set of oars that's in one of my three videos I might make. So just gathering the material for that, my new sewing machine. I played with my new sewing machine today, just to understand it a little bit. I do a lot of playing with things before I actually ever really use them on camera, just to.
Jimmy DiResta:So I get comfortable with see how they work and, you know, see what's possible and so it's the beginning of the week and I might begin to start collecting footage, maybe after we talk on uh, this video idea that I'm going to do. I I'm going to do a video of bandsaw tips how to use the bandsaw.
Jennifer Logue:Oh, your instrument of origin.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, so if you happen to notice my Instagram, lately I've been doing a lot of little bandsaw videos and so a lot of people are asking questions. So it's like let me just answer some of those questions and so that might be this week's video that I was talking about. That's the easiest one to make, so I that's a video where it's like me talking to the camera, so I'll slowly collect. I won't do it all in one shoot. I'll slowly collect the video, because then I'll go look at the footage and be like you know what? This is a good idea, but let me do it again in this angle or so. So I just slowly inch my way through the long-term projects and the short-term projects and now that it's so beautiful like I sat in the chicken coop today for about 20 minutes checking messages with the birds walking around me.
Jennifer Logue:That's so nice that was fun yeah. Oh my gosh, how do you spend your free time? I mean, does it?
Jimmy DiResta:Exactly the same way.
Jennifer Logue:Yes.
Jimmy DiResta:Love it, love it.
Jennifer Logue:And you're drawing inspiration from nature, from music, strong inspiration from nature from music.
Jimmy DiResta:Anything in particular lately you know, I went for a walk the other day with my friend. We went to Beacon. There's an art museum in Beacon, new York, called Daya Beacon and there's lots of beautiful contemporary art there. So you know it's contemporary art from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and current day. So I went and looked at all that some very well-known artists, some new artists. So it's good to go get some inspiration from that.
Jimmy DiResta:But I derive inspiration from everything all over the place. A lot from nature because I'm in the country, there's lots of lots of countryscapes up here and lots of driving. I just bought this old house with my business partner that has a graveyard on it that hasn't been used since like probably the 50s. So like the last person of the last, like the last person who knew, the last person buried there is most likely dead. So this graveyard has no connection to anybody living or or alive at this point that I know of there. None of the graves seem to be upkept and there is no flowers anywhere. So that graveyard inspires me. I was in there yesterday Yesterday was the first spring day when I returned home from my flight and I walked in the graveyard to show my brother he hadn't seen it yet. So we were just walking and reading gravestones. I was really relaxed, I really enjoyed that.
Jennifer Logue:It's interesting. I was listening to Dolly Parton's autobiography and she likes, she loves graveyards. Um, you know she'll go there to write, to get inspiration for songs and stuff.
Jimmy DiResta:Oh yeah, Well, it's fine. Now I I a graveyard. There's a graveyard on my property. I don't technically, I always joke. I say I just bought a county, but it's on the property, it's on my property and I will be making sure that I upkeep it and we, we uprighted two or three stones yesterday, oh but we'll.
Jimmy DiResta:I'll do that much more in depth. The this the graveyard looks just like a haunted house graveyard you'd see in disneyland. In fact, I brought a friend to show it and he goes is this a real graveyard? Like? Of course it is. Why, would you think? Because it looks like a fake haunted house graveyard, like made out of plastic stones, because it's so cliche.
Jennifer Logue:Wow, I'm getting a picture in my head of what it could look like.
Jimmy DiResta:Let me see my phone, I'll show you one. But yeah, no, it's a beautiful place and that inspires me just to sit and look, and it's new to me. I know I'm going to really get into it, I'm going to really start to really enjoy it. So this is the house, and the house is is seen across the street.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, whoa, oh, that's crazy oh the stones are broken A lot of them are broken, a lot of them. All those stories Like yeah, who are these people? Who were they you? You know this one particular grave, which it kind of looks like a mess in the picture. It says died at 78 in the year of 1790.
Jennifer Logue:Wow, yeah, amazing so long ago yeah like this isn't like 1900, something, that's, these are really old.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, yeah, amazing.
Jennifer Logue:Crazy.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah.
Jennifer Logue:So now I want to get more into your projects. We talked a little bit about making fun. How did it come about?
Jimmy DiResta:Making fun started in. We started shooting in April of 21. We shot the episodes April of 2021 to July of 2021. But the germ of the idea came when a production assistant or a talent scout for a production company named Intuitive Entertainment found a picture of me in the cast online and she reached out to paul and now this was in the beginning of 2018. She found a picture of us online and said you guys interested in making a tv show?
Jimmy DiResta:She found paul's address and wrote to him and he's like no, we don't want, we're all on youtube, we don't need tv. And she's like well, let me speak to each one of them. Maybe you know, you know, maybe maybe I could talk you guys into something. She was very nice. She was like pushy, but in a good way, and so we she ended up reaching out to each one of us and we were all very kind of like nah, tv is such a pain in the ass. And so she put together, she talked us into it, to at least doing a pitch, and so it took so long they did a sizzle reel based on our interviews that we did and you know some of our existing footage, and that got interest of discovery channel. So then, in the fall of 2019, we shot a physical reel while we were all together, pertaining to the pitch concept of the show, which would have been about us making things for fans ah, okay so we would have made like.
Jimmy DiResta:People would have wrote in it's like you know, whatever you wish, we'll make it. And then we made that and then Discovery passed on it. Once they saw the footage they didn't like the idea, or at least something about it wasn't for them, but they showed it to Netflix, that same reel and Netflix was like I love this show, we love these guys.
Jimmy DiResta:Let's take on this concept and figure out what to do with these guys. We don't necessarily love this idea, but we love this, this group of guys and uh, we were just about to shoot in the uh, going into the into, say, like october of 20. But then covert complications would become more restrictive for shooting shows and stuff and we were going to shoot this idea where we make things for fans. They were like they went with it. But then I got a call from that current producer at the time and he said we're going to put the show on hold until the spring of 2021. And we all like, yeah, it's like every hurdle in the million there's a million hurdles it's not going to happen.
Jimmy DiResta:And so then we started getting calls around february of 2021. It's like, okay, we want to put the show together. We put a new guy on the show named Mike. Mike's going to come back to you guys and interview each one of you and he's going to come up with a new idea for the show. And it was for discovery. I mean, it was for Netflix, and Mike came up with the show where we do shark tank for kids, and then he talked to each one of us individually into doing it, cause we didn't want to do it it oh, wow, yeah, you know, it's just the idea got even better, like I just think it's such a unique concept and, like kids are so creative, they don't have any barriers on them.
Jennifer Logue:Yet society hasn't gotten to them yet as much as adults.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, and so that's and that's really that's how it happened. Mike pushed the concept and then you know the whole, while we didn't know what it was going to look like, ultimately, we did have fun shooting it. We knew there was going to be some special moments, but we still hadn't seen the edit. We didn't know what it was going to look like. Ultimately, we did have fun shooting it. We knew there was going to be some special moments, but we still hadn't seen the edit. We didn't know what the transitions were going to look like and obviously it turned out okay. It's becoming, even though we're not making any more. It's sort of like a cult. It's like a cult. It's got a cult following.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah.
Jimmy DiResta:It put a smile phase. I was watching it. So, um, it's just, it's different and it's refreshing. A funny thing is is derek and I and mostly derek and I spend a lot of time together and paul and pat spend their time together. Graz is a little bit of a of an outlier. He kind of spends time with his wife because we all live in the northeast. We don't necessarily near each other, but we make special time to be together and this weekend we're all going to be together. So it's's going to be funny.
Jimmy DiResta:But a couple of weeks ago Derek and I were in Atlanta for a show having to do with YouTube. We were at a thing called WorkbenchCon and we were walking up and down this esplanade in Atlanta and a couple of kids recognized us Like you're the guys from that show where you act like an idiot. But it was funny because we dress exactly the same as we do on the show, like we just we're just who we are and, especially since Carhartt gave us all the clothes for free, we just all we wear is the same clothes that we wore on the show oh my gosh. And we look the same and act the same. So when we see kids out in the street. They recognize us. We always have a laugh with them.
Jennifer Logue:Because you're just being you. Just being us yeah, now, this wasn't your first foray into television. I mean, you've been doing TV since, like the early 2000s.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, in fact, my first television show was in the summer of 2003. We shot a show called Trash to Cash that aired in September of 03. So this is my 20th anniversary on TV right now. Wow, yeah, we did seven episodes of Trash to Cash was the name of that show on FX network. And then a few years later we got we sold that show based on a video that I made. My brother and I made that video together of us doing garbage picking and making fun stuff. And then a few years later, we made a show that was kind of more like a cooking show, but we were making things not food, but we were making. So we'd be like today we're going to make a park bench and this is how we make a park bench. But all the while, hilarity ensues and problem solving makes things funny and and we shot our own episode and that episode got picked up by hgtv.
Jimmy DiResta:There was no youtube or anything at the time. We shot it and we were going to try and figure out how to put it up somewhere to publish it. We didn't know where. But we had a meeting with hgtv and, like you, got anything interesting and we sent them that and they loved. It took a year but we eventually sold the show in 2005 and we got that on the air in 2006 and seven. We did 28 episodes of that show. They changed the name. It was called making it with john and jimmy.
Jimmy DiResta:They changed the name of it to hammered okay and then I got a relationship developed with diy network because it was hgtv and DIY Network was the same company. And then I did a show for DIY Network, because it was called Against the Grain, with Jimmy DiResta in 2009. And then in 2010,. Well, in between we were always shooting ideas, so we had several ideas in the hopper and one of them was a show called Lord of the Fleas, where we find garbage and we fix it and sell it at the flea market.
Jennifer Logue:And that's on my.
Jimmy DiResta:YouTube channel now you can go back and look it up. It's way back. And so Lord of the Fleas became Dirty Money and we shot that show in 2010 and aired in 2000, I think, yes, we shot it in 2011 and it aired on Discovery Channel in 2011. And then the show was doing well in the ratings, but all the executives that were on our team got fired or laid off, and so the new executives had no interest in doing anything that the old team was working on. So, even though our show was doing well in the ratings, they didn't pick it up again, and then I started doing YouTube in 2011.
Jimmy DiResta:Awesome, and when you first got in front of the camera like was there an adjustment period for you, or were you a natural right away? By the time I was in front of the camera for the first time, it was in 2003,. I had been teaching art college for 10 years at that point to art students, to 20-year-olds. I started in like 92, 93 teaching art college, so by that point I was so used to just talking about what I do, how I do it and ways of doing things. I was teaching art college every Friday for three hours from 93 to 2017 when I moved upstate full-time, so I have hundreds of students pass through my class and plenty of time to hone my ability to public speak. I'm not great at it, but I'm not shy about it.
Jennifer Logue:Cool, that's brilliant. And did you ever think you're going to do TV, or is it just kind of?
Jimmy DiResta:No, it's really just like it happened. Here's a funny story. My brother got on TV in the 90s. He ended up doing selling a TV show and he was on a sitcom. He was being a sitcom oh wow, he was being a goofball and he was a comedian police officer comedian.
Jimmy DiResta:Everybody said to me at the time I was young and single and living alone in Manhattan and everybody's like are you going to follow your brother to Hollywood, are you going to follow John to Hollywood? And when people rhetorically ask me the question, I would answer it honestly. It's like I would only do on camera stuff if I could just be myself. I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to be a character Like my brother plays these characters. I said I would only ever want to be myself and I didn't think that I would ever be myself instructing. I didn't know why I thought I would ever be myself at the time. I would ever be myself at the time. I would just be like I would only ever do Hollywood stuff. If I was ever just able to be myself, I guess I might've just thought I would be on some kind of reality show, but I didn't know what and I never pursued it until my brother came up with this idea and he was out there because he was in the thick of pitching shows and I was just beginning to make videos. So the very first show, the trash to cash show I went out there and I shot a sizzle reel of the show, the concept reel. I wasn't in it, I just shot it and produced it and then we brought it to through John's agent. We brought it to Fox, a Fox affiliate programming production company. It's called like Fox Independent or Fox. It was like it was called Fox Independent or something like that. Fox Alternative was the name name of it. It was a production company owned by fox tv and the guy loved it.
Jimmy DiResta:And then in that meeting he said to me he goes why don't we do this thing? Is you guys, you, you, what do you want to be on the show? I was like I just want to be a behind the scenes art director, producer. He goes well, you make everything right. I go, yeah, that's what I do for a living, because I had the toy business resume. He said why don't you just make stuff on camera? Why don't you just be the host? Because you're better at just being yourself, being silly and stupid, and you could just do stuff together. You could make stuff, but mostly you do the hosting duties and you do the building duties. What do you think of that? And right there, where I was, never thought I would ever be on TV for any reason this producer put us on TV together as a duo.
Jennifer Logue:Came together.
Jimmy DiResta:Just like that. And he goes let's shoot an episode and see if it goes. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If it works, it works, he goes. So let's shoot a pilot. We shot that pilot in in like April of 2003. And by July we were shooting the whole season.
Jennifer Logue:Wow, I love that organic journey. It's cool to see how things unfold.
Jimmy DiResta:I really never like I never walked into that meeting, ever planning on being on TV. I love it and I left booked on TV.
Jennifer Logue:I love it and there's so many people out there who have that as their goal, you know, and it doesn't work out for a lot of people.
Jimmy DiResta:It's a difficult one. It's a tough industry, a lot of people. It's a difficult, it's a difficult one.
Jennifer Logue:It's a tough industry and it's, I guess, following that spark. When you follow that unique spark for you, it'll take you places you don't expect.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah, yeah, and I say nowadays talk about the gatekeepers of days gone by. When I see a creative writer or a creative actor or comedian that's not actively producing content for Instagram, YouTube or anything like that, they're just waiting to be discovered. They're going to never be discovered Because they don't discover people. No one gets discovered by somebody being funny online at the bank anymore. You get discovered because you have a silly video that goes viral. That's how Sam got picked up. Sam was a lot of that success of putting stuff on YouTube and being discovered by people. I think she's talented and giving her a shot.
Jennifer Logue:She's awesome, oh my gosh.
Jimmy DiResta:I think it's important. I see people kind of stuck in the old way of being like I'm super funny, but I don't know how to use a camera.
Jennifer Logue:Like you, better learn yeah, if you want to compete, you better learn and they don't jump into that beyond the comfort zone. They stay stuck where they are because this is where we are as a society. This is how you got to do things um, and you got to be disciplined about it. Do you have any projects you want to talk about that are upcoming?
Jimmy DiResta:Well, we have the Graveyard House. There might be a TV show about that. It's just so early right now. I just had a few interviews recorded, interviews to put together a sizzle reel and we haven't even shot a walkthrough of the house yet. But that's going to be next and there might be a potential TV show pitch about the graveyard house. In the meantime I'm going to still work on it anyway for my YouTube channel. And there's another TV show which I sworn to secrecy, but it's another funny, silly show, lighthearted show kind of like that would take place on people's farms, so it would involve animals. It's a fun, stupid show that somebody else thought of and they asked me to be the host.
Jennifer Logue:Love it.
Jimmy DiResta:So that's a pitch. I don't know where it's going to go and in the meantime, I'm buying an antique car. I'm buying a 1947 car. I'm going to restore that Coming up soon. I'm buying this. Well, I bought this house. I'm going to finish my boat, take my boat on the water. Hopefully in the next two weeks That'll be with that little old school motor Perfect timing. Yeah, exactly. So beyond that, I don't know, the house and the old car are going to keep me really busy.
Jennifer Logue:Cool, and do you have any advice for creatives, you know, starting out in their journey? Maybe they want to take that leap of faith, the next step, but they feel a little stuck in their comfort zone.
Jimmy DiResta:Yeah Well, I always tell people don't share your ideas with small-minded people. Only share your ideas with people that you know will respect your ideas. Don't share your ideas with whoever that could be. Sometimes you share your ideas with your closest person to you and they shoot them down. Sometimes it's better off to just do what you want and then show them later.
Jimmy DiResta:Say you want to see what I did, and then they go. I never knew you were so talented. But if you ask them, hey, you know what I want to do. I want to record a song. They'd be like you don't sing, what are you talking about? And that might throw you off your game. Throw you off your game. So ask for forgiveness, don't ask for permission.
Jennifer Logue:Love that Awesome. And what's next for you Professionally, personally?
Jimmy DiResta:I don't know really, Honestly, it's just, I just keep my eyes and ears open and just find cool things to experiment, restore, fix up. I have a barn in the backyard, a horse barn. I want to finish my horse barn. It's half built and so that's fun. I'm going to do some blacksmithing on all the hardware for that. Every day, it just unfolds slowly.
Jennifer Logue:It's like just playtime.
Jimmy DiResta:It's always playtime. It's always playtime.
Jennifer Logue:I love it. For more on Jimmy DiResta, visit JimmyDiRestacom. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Creative Space. Jimmy DiResta's story is a true testament to the power of curiosity and creativity. I hope you found the conversation as inspiring as I did. One of my favorite takeaways from this episode is Jimmy's perspective on staying in a state of play. As he said on the podcast. I've been accused of being a big child and, honestly, that's something I'm aiming for. Staying in a perpetual state of play is what keeps life interesting and keeps the creativity flowing and, wow, that's such a powerful reminder for all of us. Anyway, I'd love to know what resonated with you. You can do that by reaching out on social media at Jennifer Logue. Also, if you don't mind, please leave a review for Creative Space on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your support means everything and it really helps other people discover Creative Space. Anyway, that's all I have for this episode. My name is Jennifer Logue, thank you.