Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Centralow. All right, Look, let's say
Speaker 1: you bring in a family out for a meal, right,
Speaker 1: and then let's just say it's Italian and you have
Speaker 1: this large Italian style gathering. Everybody's got a bucket of pinae,
Speaker 1: a gallon of alfredo to pour on top of it.
Speaker 1: But that's not all. You also get a little bit
Speaker 1: of bread with that, because when you're at the Daily Show,
Speaker 1: your family and this podcast is the unlimited breadsticks that
Speaker 1: takes a satisfying family meal to the next level. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Beyond the Scenes where today we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about Florida.
Speaker 2: Florida God's waiting Room. It's home to theme parks, the Everglades,
Speaker 2: your peepole, and of course Florida Poli.
Speaker 3: Report before committing a sexual act on a tree, yelling
Speaker 3: he was a.
Speaker 4: Doctors trying to start a fire. He saw karate kicking
Speaker 4: those birds we attack.
Speaker 2: Every week, there's a new headline out of Florida wild shocking, unnecessarily.
Speaker 5: Sexual masturbating at a bus stop, told police he was
Speaker 5: Captain Kirkkirk.
Speaker 2: But have we ever stopped to ask the question why
Speaker 2: something's happening to men in Florida, and it can't just
Speaker 2: be a coincidence.
Speaker 6: As a future.
Speaker 2: Pulitzer winning journalist, it's my responsibility to uncover the truth,
Speaker 2: to reveal what lies beneath the swamp, to answer the
Speaker 2: question what makes a man Florida man, Florida Man, Florida Man,
Speaker 2: Florida Man, Florida Man.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking America's favorite hero, Florida Man, aka
Speaker 1: people going buck wild down there in America's penis showing
Speaker 1: up on the local news then going viral. Later on,
Speaker 1: we're going to be joined by journalists and author Craig Pittman.
Speaker 1: But first I'd like to bring on two of the
Speaker 1: folks who brought this Florida Man piece to life. Dave
Speaker 1: Show producer Sebastian Demattal, how are you doing good, sir?
Speaker 4: I'm doing great, Thank you, Roy. And I'm extremely offended
Speaker 4: by that olive Garden Italian slam at the beginning of
Speaker 4: this podcast, but otherwise I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Extremely sorry to insult food of your people. It's Penny.
Speaker 4: I don't know how you say it, but it's Penne.
Speaker 1: I'm from Alabama. We call it penee okaye see. And
Speaker 1: then the other voice you hear is my fellow Southerner
Speaker 1: who's about to come on right now and have my
Speaker 1: bag daily show corresponded. But more important, Kentucky bluegrass runs
Speaker 1: through her blood. Deasy lighting. How do you pronounce Penne?
Speaker 3: I also pronounce it penney, but I'm also roy not
Speaker 3: to correct you or embarrass you, but it's Kentucky. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to start to intrigue.
Speaker 1: Who pardon me? I am so prepared now for the
Speaker 1: people who don't have the Internet. And let me preface
Speaker 1: it by saying this. You know Sebastian as a field producer,
Speaker 1: like it's one thing to go out and cover the piece,
Speaker 1: but you have a way I don't know how to
Speaker 1: say this in like the most PC way, but you
Speaker 1: like it's in your heart when you go out to
Speaker 1: gather these pieces in this information. It's like, no, we've
Speaker 1: got to talk about it because they don't understand. We
Speaker 1: have field meetings where we pitch and talk about stuff,
Speaker 1: and Sebastian comes in with the level of emotion like,
Speaker 1: look these people in Florida. I'm telling you we got
Speaker 1: to do something about them. So for the people who
Speaker 1: don't have the Internet, Sebastian, who is Florida Man and
Speaker 1: what was the segment all about.
Speaker 4: So I like to do field pieces that are a
Speaker 4: little bit more abstract and don't necessarily have like a
Speaker 4: good guy bad guide dynamic that a lot of our
Speaker 4: field pieces do so well. And I had this idea
Speaker 4: for this Florida Man theory piece for quite a while,
Speaker 4: and I was trying to pitch it correctly and trying
Speaker 4: to get the tone right. And then, as chance would
Speaker 4: have it, Trevor wanted to do this Florida week for
Speaker 4: the show where he would do shows from Florida, And
Speaker 4: it was kind of the perfect confluence of this piece
Speaker 4: that I wanted to do for a while and a
Speaker 4: reason to do it, because normally we try to do
Speaker 4: pieces that are at least somewhat relevant to what's going
Speaker 4: on or you know, current event. And so since this
Speaker 4: was set we had a whole week of shows in Florida,
Speaker 4: I was like, well, this might be a good opportunity
Speaker 4: for this piece. And so the idea for the piece was,
Speaker 4: I'm like an Internet junkie. I'm a big time lurker.
Speaker 4: I'm on all the chat rooms and websites.
Speaker 6: And so many dms said, there's tons of DMS very inappropriate.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, and one of the memes that has
Speaker 4: been around for as long as I can remember is
Speaker 4: this Florida Man meme. There's like a Twitter account which
Speaker 4: is like this bot that basic we can aggregate Florida
Speaker 4: Man stories. They're subreddits dedicated to them, and they were
Speaker 4: just and they've been around forever. I worked on The
Speaker 4: Old Show with John and we were doing Florida Man
Speaker 4: act ones way way back when, so it was definitely
Speaker 4: not a new phenomenon. But I think at the time,
Speaker 4: you know, Trump had gotten elected and there was just
Speaker 4: kind of this resurgence of really really crazy stories, especially
Speaker 4: coming out of Florida, and I just wanted to do
Speaker 4: a piece that kind of explored not and this is
Speaker 4: in the piece, but not who is Florida Man? But
Speaker 4: why is Florida Man? Why do we hear about these
Speaker 4: stories so much? And that was kind of the impetus
Speaker 4: for starting the piece.
Speaker 1: It's this mysterious Bigfoot type thing, because there isn't a
Speaker 1: Kentucky Man, a Kentucky Man. The only thing I think
Speaker 1: close as Texas where they just go Texas, but Texas
Speaker 1: just kind of covers everybody as a whole like, this
Speaker 1: is very specific. It's like it's Florida and its men
Speaker 1: who are screwing up. As a former Florida resident, what
Speaker 1: are the qualifications, Daisy to be a Florida man? Because
Speaker 1: you know, I lived in Florida for five years for college.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Tallahassee. But I like, do you have
Speaker 1: to be super stupid or is it just inherently down
Speaker 1: because you're in Florida, you're automatically an idiot?
Speaker 3: Well, I think what we learned from our expert that
Speaker 3: we got to sit with, Craig, is that there's there's
Speaker 3: a lot more underneath it.
Speaker 6: There's a lot going on in Florida.
Speaker 3: And there's a quite a few reasons why we see
Speaker 3: those headlines so often. But I think it usually involves
Speaker 3: a gator, something illegal, usually beer, and something unnecessarily sexual.
Speaker 3: Usually every Florida man story has all.
Speaker 6: Of those elements.
Speaker 4: That's right accurate, Ye.
Speaker 3: But no, I think like my favorite pieces that that
Speaker 3: I get to do on the show are pieces where
Speaker 3: we think it's about one thing and then somewhere in
Speaker 3: the piece we discover it's about something else entirely.
Speaker 6: So we kind of go into this piece.
Speaker 3: With our with envisioning these you know, Florida Man memes
Speaker 3: and think that we're going into kind of poke fun
Speaker 3: at Florida men, and then quickly realize like, there's a
Speaker 3: lot more underneath it. There are a whole list of
Speaker 3: reasons for why we see these headlines in the news,
Speaker 3: but most importantly, towards the end, we discover the Sunshine
Speaker 3: Act and we end up kind of landing in this
Speaker 3: place of you know, it's it's not just.
Speaker 6: That these things are happening.
Speaker 3: In Florida, but we are hearing about them a lot
Speaker 3: more in Florida because of the Sunshine Act. And really
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of Florida Man everywhere, which I
Speaker 3: didn't know coming into it. So that's I mean, that
Speaker 3: was my favorite thing about that piece? Or was this
Speaker 3: nice arc and discovery that people aren't really talking about.
Speaker 1: I want to go back, Sebastian to what you said
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier about you liking to live in
Speaker 1: an abstract, which is true. You did one of my
Speaker 1: favorite pieces on the show that I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: every piece that I'm in is my favorite, but one
Speaker 1: of the favorite pieces that I was not in you
Speaker 1: Runnie Chang, and you had Runnie in the Uma Thurman
Speaker 1: kill Bill Too Yellow. What was it the nunchucks were illegal? Berustally?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did like a kung fu movie
Speaker 4: basically for a piece that's very tertiarily about kung fu.
Speaker 1: Hey, is it a little weird that I'm playing this guy?
Speaker 1: He's like super white running. If a white guy does,
Speaker 1: it's problem. It's cultural appropriation.
Speaker 4: If you do it, it's fine, is it?
Speaker 3: I honestly I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, whatever, let's fight. So with this piece, you went
Speaker 1: into it creatively, with this true detective angle. Talk to
Speaker 1: me a little bit about that production style and when
Speaker 1: you're actually sitting down with these actual because you all
Speaker 1: went and talked to actual Florida men who have been
Speaker 1: the focus of news stories while at the same time
Speaker 1: you're trying to have this conversation but also trying to
Speaker 1: frame it in a way that the viewers haven't seen
Speaker 1: before so that they can at least feel like they're
Speaker 1: getting something, you know, a little different. Totally.
Speaker 4: I am a hack when it comes to originality or creativity,
Speaker 4: and I truly consider myself just like bound to parody
Speaker 4: as much as I can be because everything's been done
Speaker 4: all the time so much better than I can do it.
Speaker 4: And so rather than trying to reinvent or recreate something,
Speaker 4: I lift from a lot of things. And so for
Speaker 4: this we were going into it with a True Detective vibe.
Speaker 4: The first season had been out for a couple of years,
Speaker 4: and I loved the first season of True Detective. Originally
Speaker 4: I had pitched this. I don't know if you remember Roy,
Speaker 4: but this is with you and Desi. Roy was the
Speaker 4: Woody Harrelson type character and Desi was the Matthew mcconnellay character,
Speaker 4: and I was so jazzed about it. And you know,
Speaker 4: in one of the pitch meetings, Trevor was like, that's great.
Speaker 4: I don't think we need Roy for this. DESI can
Speaker 4: do all of this. Not to mention, there's going to
Speaker 4: be so much stuff here, you won't have time for
Speaker 4: both of them doing those games as well as the
Speaker 4: Florida Man. And he was absolutely right, And I'm glad
Speaker 4: that we just did it with Desi because we wouldn't
Speaker 4: have had time for exploring your guys' relationship and all
Speaker 4: that stuff. But to your point, I loved how True
Speaker 4: Detective was filmed, and I just I was a big
Speaker 4: fan of that first season especially, and so I wanted
Speaker 4: when I go into pieces, I like, I have an
Speaker 4: idea for what I wanted to look like and feel like.
Speaker 4: And our DP on this who's an amazing DPS my
Speaker 4: good friend Joel Joel Sadler, an incredible cinematographer. He so
Speaker 4: I basically showed him shots from True Detective and things
Speaker 4: that I liked from that show, and he was able
Speaker 4: to basically recreate it almost to a tea. And so
Speaker 4: when you're trying to replicate that, it's great if the
Speaker 4: audience knows what you're doing, like, oh, this is like
Speaker 4: a True Detective thing, that's great, but it's equally as
Speaker 4: satisfying if they don't and they're like, this is really
Speaker 4: interesting and cool. But at no point do I ever
Speaker 4: want people to think I came up with any of
Speaker 4: these artistic or aesthetic choices. These are all other geniuses
Speaker 4: that I'm just trying to replicate. So that was the
Speaker 4: idea for Florida Man, because there was a lot of
Speaker 4: similarities between these Florida Man stories and True Detective, which
Speaker 4: is horrifying because that shows about a psychotic serial killer.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, that's kind of how I went going
Speaker 4: into it and yeah, I'm all of the elements technically
Speaker 4: that made this really work were all of the things
Speaker 4: that were really out of my control. And as a
Speaker 4: testament to our team Joel Desi acting obviously, our editor
Speaker 4: Nick Johnson was incredible and brought so much great ideas
Speaker 4: to make it work. And then not to mention, you know,
Speaker 4: our segment producer Matt got so many of those bookings.
Speaker 4: One of our camera people down there, Kelly was he
Speaker 4: had all these locations in mind. So it was a
Speaker 4: true team effort to really pull this off. And I
Speaker 4: think is a testament you can tell how good or
Speaker 4: bad a pieces based on how many people are on
Speaker 4: board providing or contributing their art, and for this one,
Speaker 4: it was like a full team effort, and I think
Speaker 4: it shows it's just yeah, it's my favorite people.
Speaker 1: Forget is that you know this We're not the local news.
Speaker 1: It's not just a reporter and a cameraman and go
Speaker 1: like this is miniature, full short film production type shit
Speaker 1: going on here. Desi, When you were talking with these people,
Speaker 1: how much did it feel like to you? Because the
Speaker 1: question we always get is correspondence, allre the people you're
Speaker 1: talking to and on it where to me, it's never
Speaker 1: been that that style of conversation. It's just tell me
Speaker 1: your truth and we're going to have a conversation about
Speaker 1: the way you see the world. But within that, did
Speaker 1: any of them realize what they were saying or do
Speaker 1: you feel like they felt like, well, maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be talking to the Daily Show.
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I think all of them were extremely confident in their
Speaker 3: Florida maneness. I think they felt really good about who
Speaker 3: they are and what they had to say, and that
Speaker 3: makes it so much fun for us. I mean, for me,
Speaker 3: it was like the perfect cocktail of Sebastian being so
Speaker 3: specific about his vision of what this piece should look like,
Speaker 3: the style of it and the tempo of it, in
Speaker 3: the mood, and then casting all of these great, really
Speaker 3: genuine and authentic and very funny characters to just do
Speaker 3: their thing. All I had to do was step up
Speaker 3: and just listen and react to all of it and
Speaker 3: play straight person.
Speaker 6: It was like, I mean, you know, that's.
Speaker 4: Why, which for this was not an easy test to do.
Speaker 4: I mean, Desi's credit, I was throwing her into these
Speaker 4: situations with these a lot of the times, actually crazy
Speaker 4: men and there were. It was not the amount of
Speaker 4: straight facedness that Dosi had to perform for this is
Speaker 4: astounding compared to what these people were talking about off
Speaker 4: camera and on camera. So that was no easy fee.
Speaker 3: This is where Nick comes into play, because Nick could
Speaker 3: edit out all of my breaks and mental breakdowns in
Speaker 3: between each shot. But no, I got that alligator man.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but he was. He was just the greatest.
Speaker 7: He's been hit with charges after pictures in this video
Speaker 7: showing him handling an alligator, which he posted.
Speaker 5: We're seen by law enforcement a real.
Speaker 7: Name Jordan Bedford, but I go by the alligator man.
Speaker 6: Okay, alligator man.
Speaker 3: What's the common factor among all Florida men were all different?
Speaker 7: Well, I'm different from the rest because I do the
Speaker 7: wrong thing in the right way, if that makes sense. No, no,
Speaker 7: see you're not for Florida, so you don't understand my
Speaker 7: language what I'm talking right now. But I do the
Speaker 7: wild things. Anything you think of, I'll probably do it.
Speaker 7: Catch like I tell you, anything, I catch gators, anything, anything, well,
Speaker 7: not anything, but basically anything.
Speaker 3: He was definitely my favorite. I to this day wonder
Speaker 3: what he's up to. I almost left my family, but
Speaker 3: he wouldn't have me.
Speaker 1: I thought that Costa and I got kind of the
Speaker 1: short end of the stick when they were a sign
Speaker 1: in Florida field Pieces for Florida Week, because we have
Speaker 1: to cover the green algae.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I remember that. Oh there, it is a dead fish.
Speaker 1: It's pretty gross. Yeah. What's the smell like to you?
Speaker 5: Smells like dead fish.
Speaker 1: And we rowed a boat into some of the algae
Speaker 1: plumes and like our eyes were watering in shoes. Like
Speaker 1: we had planned to be there thirty minutes, and like
Speaker 1: ten minutes in we were like, mmm, I think we
Speaker 1: got everything we need. Let's let's fucking get out of here.
Speaker 1: How what was the worst part of your shoots? Because
Speaker 1: I noticed that a lot of yours were outdoors. Costa
Speaker 1: and I at least had a couple of indoor situations.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was hot. It was really hot.
Speaker 3: It was I can remember sweating just and I am
Speaker 3: not I know, I'm from the South, I am not
Speaker 3: a lady when it comes to heat and sweat. I
Speaker 3: was dripping and sweating profusely. And for some reason, I
Speaker 3: chose to wear a black heart wool suit in the
Speaker 3: in the ninety degree weather with that humidity in the
Speaker 3: middle of an orange grove.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was I mean, that's partially my fault because
Speaker 4: I wanted to look. I wanted you to be this kind.
Speaker 1: Of yeah, look like a detective. Detective. Detective we were.
Speaker 4: And that Yeah, that day was so hot. And Craig
Speaker 4: will tell you the guy that's on the show later
Speaker 4: because we were interviewing him. We wanted to be at
Speaker 4: outdoors because we had an orange grove available to shoot
Speaker 4: in very Florida and Droll's really good at working with
Speaker 4: natural light. But man, that was so hot. I needed to,
Speaker 4: like between takes, like go into the car cool down
Speaker 4: a little bit.
Speaker 3: We all were running into this tiny pickup truck just
Speaker 3: to get like a little taste of the ac and
Speaker 3: then run back into the field. At one point, we're
Speaker 3: in the middle of filming towards the end, and I
Speaker 3: looked down in my sweat stain on my chest just
Speaker 3: like grew to about this size.
Speaker 6: It was. It was a problem. It was very hot.
Speaker 3: And then do you remember Seth you came up with this.
Speaker 3: We were we were clearly going for this true detective,
Speaker 3: very noir feel, and at some point we were like,
Speaker 3: DOESSI should smoke?
Speaker 6: Does he should smoke cigarettes during this piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I thought, yeah, that's that's a great idea,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to commit, like I'm really gonna show
Speaker 3: them that I'm a smoker. And I really committed to
Speaker 3: it all the way through. I'm coughing, I can't breathe. Yeah,
Speaker 3: at what point, Sev, did you decide that's let's dosi,
Speaker 3: let's put the props down and not do that anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, we got the one shot of you smoking I needed.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I was definitely like there were a lot
Speaker 4: of suspect props. We had unpasteurized orange juice that like
Speaker 4: we were gifted from an orange grove that I was like,
Speaker 4: DESI just start chugging this orange juice on camera.
Speaker 1: And it's just fresh out of a field, fresh out
Speaker 1: of a field.
Speaker 4: So there were a lot of questionable props and probably
Speaker 4: dangerous things that not to mention, you know, putting Deisi
Speaker 4: in like the middle of nowhere with this pirate man
Speaker 4: that had guns and knives on him.
Speaker 6: Wait, but he was also a landscaper.
Speaker 4: He was also a landscaper though.
Speaker 6: The pirate who was also a landamer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh, missy, I am Captain Silki super.
Speaker 3: Chips cool and you're pirate.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm a pirate most of the day. When I'm not,
Speaker 5: I'm a landscaper, I.
Speaker 1: Think to your point.
Speaker 4: Without him, Roy, I think the big draw of Florida
Speaker 4: men is that they a lot of them want and
Speaker 4: like notoriety, and two of our guys kind of were
Speaker 4: like all three of them were kind of like that,
Speaker 4: but our first guy, Robbie, was definitely more on like
Speaker 4: the I don't know how much of this I can
Speaker 4: talk about, but Jordan the alligator man and Jamie the
Speaker 4: landscaper pirate were very like. They loved it and they
Speaker 4: want They talked to us forever and we had to
Speaker 4: be like, all right, that's good. So they were really
Speaker 4: willing and we didn't have to you know, coax them
Speaker 4: or feed them, you know, any type of direction to
Speaker 4: go to, because they were just all in from the
Speaker 4: beginning absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, after the break, we're gonna be talking with a
Speaker 1: man from Florida. That's there, you go, that's the appropriate
Speaker 1: way to separate the two. There's Florida man. But then
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to a man from Florida who's a
Speaker 1: journalist and Arthur and I feel like he knows Florida
Speaker 1: the way Miami knows cocaine. This is beyond the scenes.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Beyond the scenes. We are back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Florida Man. We already have Desi Lighter
Speaker 1: and Sebastian Dina Towle in the chairs joining us now.
Speaker 1: Is a Florida man, not the Florida man. He's a
Speaker 1: man from Florida who doesn't do Florida man. Shit. You
Speaker 1: understand what I'm trying to say right now, journalists and
Speaker 1: author of the state You're in Florida Man, Florida Women
Speaker 1: and other wildlife. He's an expert witness who was featured
Speaker 1: in the original segment that Daisy did. Craig Pittman, welcome
Speaker 1: to beyond the scenes.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me now when.
Speaker 1: We talk Florida. And this is the thing that I
Speaker 1: learned when I was at Florida A and M for
Speaker 1: college up there in the Panhandle. The Florida that people
Speaker 1: think kind of happens south of like Orlando and all
Speaker 1: points south. That's postcard Florida, that's TV Florida Panhandle was
Speaker 1: kind of a different feel like where in Florida are
Speaker 1: you from? Are you from North Florida? South Florida. They
Speaker 1: split that shit up like the dakotas well.
Speaker 5: I'm from Pensacola, but I now live in Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 5: so I've been on both sides of that line, and
Speaker 5: I think it's I think it's more of a coastal
Speaker 5: versus inland thing. You know, people people see the postcards.
Speaker 5: They think, you know, it's all beaches everywhere, and they
Speaker 5: don't realize, Oh wait, you know there's cattle ranches and uh,
Speaker 5: you know, lumber mills, and you know, crazy people doing
Speaker 5: stuff at the at the liquor store.
Speaker 1: Got people trying to speak into horse stables in Okalla,
Speaker 1: all of that in Areana. You've been Highway ninety on
Speaker 1: me right there, Florida. I know all of that. Ship
Speaker 1: Baby Walton Beach destin Florida, Baba. So let me let
Speaker 1: me start with this Daisy Sebastian kickback and watch two
Speaker 1: Florida boys kicking second.
Speaker 6: Got it?
Speaker 1: Why are these New York elites always coming for us?
Speaker 5: Because they envious? They want to be us, They want
Speaker 5: to have that freedom. That's why they want to.
Speaker 1: Florida cocaine and then judge Florida.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, it's all it's all. It's all hating. They're
Speaker 5: just hating because they're indianas man, That's all it is.
Speaker 1: But in all seriousness, what is it that makes Florida
Speaker 1: seem crazier than the rest of America? Like? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that reputation justified? Or is it really that much crazy?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Oh heck yes, oh definitely. Listen. My basic principle
Speaker 5: is you find weird stuff happening anywhere you find humans,
Speaker 5: but more of it happens in Florida, and it tends
Speaker 5: to be weirder. And I think that's because we have
Speaker 5: certain elements here that you don't find anywhere else. We've
Speaker 5: undergone this wrenching demographic change where we went from the
Speaker 5: least populated southern state in nineteen forty to now being
Speaker 5: the third most populous state, and everybody's kind of crammed
Speaker 5: into this thirty mile wide swath along the coast and
Speaker 5: along the eye for where the theme parks are. You know,
Speaker 5: we've got this, you get these weird elements to the
Speaker 5: state where we've got you know, this invasive python population
Speaker 5: eating everything in sight in the Everglades. We've got actually
Speaker 5: have people who are professional mermaids making a living as
Speaker 5: state employees in Florida, which you don't find in any
Speaker 5: other state.
Speaker 1: It is grows in iguanas falling from trees when they were.
Speaker 5: Showing up in toilets. They show up in toilets too.
Speaker 5: I mean, the crazy stuff just happens here all the time,
Speaker 5: and people in Florida who've been here for a while
Speaker 5: are like, oh, yeah, that's just you know, that's just Thursday. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't remember Sebastian if it was you
Speaker 1: a daisy earlier that was talking about the sunshine laws.
Speaker 1: But can you go into that a little bit more
Speaker 1: for us? Sure?
Speaker 4: So, uh, you know, I read Craig's Book of Florida
Speaker 4: for this in preparation for this piece, because that was
Speaker 4: like my bible for a lot of this because it basically.
Speaker 5: Had my son thank you it had.
Speaker 4: It was like also the first nonfiction book I had
Speaker 4: read it like ten years, so I was really just
Speaker 4: absorbing all this new information.
Speaker 1: Did it still feel like fiction? Though?
Speaker 4: It did?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: It did absolutely. I was like, there's no way. But
Speaker 4: Craig really broke down very nice and neatly all of
Speaker 4: these factors, like the ones that he just said and
Speaker 4: the one that stuck with me the most was and
Speaker 4: Craig will also tell you it's certainly not the the
Speaker 4: the reason we kind of elevated it for the piece
Speaker 4: to you know, end the piece basically because we needed
Speaker 4: an ending. But the Sunshine Act, this law that Craig
Speaker 4: can probably speak to a lot better than I, basically
Speaker 4: allows for a ton of this transparency in Florida when
Speaker 4: all these misdemeanors or sometimes felonies happen, where a lot
Speaker 4: of peap journalists especially can go and get these records
Speaker 4: of these incidents's incidents very easily. And that's the amount
Speaker 4: of Florida Man's stories. Because you talk about, like we
Speaker 4: do this whole montage in the beginning and the end
Speaker 4: of all of these stories. We didn't have to, like,
Speaker 4: we didn't have to make up any of those stories
Speaker 4: because there were so you just googled Florida man stories
Speaker 4: finding like literally like dozens to hundreds of headlines on
Speaker 4: camera anchors reading these stories, it was clear to me
Speaker 4: and us that like the Sunshine Act definitely plays a
Speaker 4: part in why these stories are so accessible and talked about.
Speaker 4: Because after doing the piece and after researching it more,
Speaker 4: I realized not a ton of other states. Almost no
Speaker 4: other states have as expansive transparency laws about these types
Speaker 4: of misdemeanors. So that was for me a nice button
Speaker 4: to kind of put the whole piece together, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, there's weirdos everywhere, like Craig was saying, but
Speaker 4: I think in Florida, all of these factors plus this
Speaker 4: idea of complete transparency just really tickled me as a
Speaker 4: really nice way to summarize why this kind of person
Speaker 4: is so rampant.
Speaker 1: Craig, I'm about twenty years out of you know, last
Speaker 1: pain rent in Tallahassee, but I remember distinctly in the
Speaker 1: corner stores. I don't remember what it was called, but
Speaker 1: it was like the crime paper.
Speaker 5: In oh yeah, the most mugshot paper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So like, I don't know of another state
Speaker 1: that just publishes mugshots for just random misdemeanors and solicitation
Speaker 1: of prostitutes. You taught me with the crown of myth. Like,
Speaker 1: does that pulling into it as well in normalizing that
Speaker 1: behavior for locals?
Speaker 5: Uh? Somewhat. I mean, you know, obviously somebody figured out, hey,
Speaker 5: we can use the Sunshine Law and make money off
Speaker 5: of it by publishing these these little ratty pulp mags
Speaker 5: full of the latest mug shots because people will buy
Speaker 5: it and go, oh, yeah, it's mister Johnson. I knew
Speaker 5: he was up to something, you know. But there's been
Speaker 5: a sort of an ethical debate about that too, where
Speaker 5: there were some newspapers that were making money off of
Speaker 5: running mugshot websites. And then there started to be a
Speaker 5: sort of a backlash to that of saying, you know, well,
Speaker 5: a lot of these folks they just got arrested, they
Speaker 5: haven't been convicted of anything, you know, and these mug
Speaker 5: shots are going to be there for a while. Do
Speaker 5: you really want to highlight that? And so people started
Speaker 5: pulling back on that. Let me just respond to Sebastian
Speaker 5: real quick though, that that, yeah, the Sunshine Law is
Speaker 5: a reason why a lot of this these stories wind
Speaker 5: up coming to light. But after Florida passed at sunshine Law,
Speaker 5: some other states passed similar laws. You don't see weird
Speaker 5: stories to the volume of Florida's coming out of those states.
Speaker 5: I mean, we we are you know, we produce more
Speaker 5: weirdness than we produce orange juice.
Speaker 1: Basically, Florida's a weird place, though, man like it's this
Speaker 1: weird intersection of retirees, tourists, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of immigrants, locals, and then you just have like regular
Speaker 1: agriculture people. Like there's certain states like Nebraska's for fucking farming.
Speaker 1: That's what we're here to do.
Speaker 5: That's one of those boring square states, you know that
Speaker 5: how can they heck can they be fun?
Speaker 1: So there isn't this convergence of different agendas, not to
Speaker 1: mention droves of it's where Nickeloney, the fact that Nickeloney
Speaker 1: is a Viacom property, which we love very very much.
Speaker 1: Please watch the Paul Patrol movie on Paramount Plus. But like,
Speaker 1: I'm bewildered by so many different things all happening in
Speaker 1: that place at the same time. Like, is there a
Speaker 1: way to decrease these types of incidents?
Speaker 5: No, In fact, I think they're going to continue to
Speaker 5: increase as the population continues. This will this despite our
Speaker 5: efforts to kill people off with COVID. That is the
Speaker 5: you know, the our population just keeps getting bigger and bigger, bigger,
Speaker 5: and we have you know, we have like one hundred
Speaker 5: million tourists coming every year too, on top of the
Speaker 5: regular residents. So and again they're all kind of crammed
Speaker 5: into that same narrow area. So and people come here
Speaker 5: with these expectations too. They feel like Florida is a
Speaker 5: place to get have a second chance to start over
Speaker 5: and you know, make some of the same mistakes they
Speaker 5: made before and maybe maybe make some new ones. So
Speaker 5: that contributes to it as well.
Speaker 4: To that point too, Craig, I think our pirate Silky
Speaker 4: Silver Tips, that was actually his story. He was like
Speaker 4: he was a transplant, even though he kept saying like
Speaker 4: he was. He kept talking about being like born and
Speaker 4: raised in Florida and then immediately says, well, I'm a transplant.
Speaker 5: But that was the Chicago Chicago.
Speaker 4: But the other point that I thought was really cogent
Speaker 4: and a part that I wanted to try to make
Speaker 4: a big center piece for this particular piece is the
Speaker 4: mental health issue.
Speaker 1: And we even.
Speaker 4: Get our first I mean our first Florida man willingly
Speaker 4: tells us like DESI asked, what do you think it is?
Speaker 4: And he just says, right off the bat, unprompted mental
Speaker 4: health issues.
Speaker 3: Isn't there something that all Florida men share. There's something
Speaker 3: behind it mental health issues.
Speaker 4: Then in the piece we get you to elaborate on that,
Speaker 4: Craig that Florida has one of the worst I think
Speaker 4: mental health.
Speaker 5: We consistently rank forty ninth among the states and spinning
Speaker 5: on mental health, which I can only say, thank God
Speaker 5: for Texas.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, yeah, I think that that's probably if you
Speaker 4: wanted a really quick, ten second Florida Man piece, that's
Speaker 4: probably it is that there's almost no mental health resources
Speaker 4: and a lot of these people need those resources.
Speaker 5: Yes they do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then to that point, DESI, when you were down
Speaker 1: there talking to these people, and like I've often felt
Speaker 1: like when you go and cover pieces of correspondent and
Speaker 1: then you go back and you become a consumer of
Speaker 1: media again, on the other side of that, it can
Speaker 1: sometimes change how you view people. Like do you think
Speaker 1: that the people that are in these Florida Man stories
Speaker 1: that are highlighted every day in media are they victims
Speaker 1: of circumstance or are they mental health? Are they dealing
Speaker 1: with addiction issues?
Speaker 6: I'm no expert.
Speaker 3: Craig is certainly the expert, but it seems like there
Speaker 3: are all of those issues at play. I think the
Speaker 3: stories the men that we talk to down there were
Speaker 3: certainly wacky characters without a doubt, but I think in
Speaker 3: the booking process we were also pretty conscious of finding
Speaker 3: subjects that did not have horribly.
Speaker 6: Dark stories in their past.
Speaker 3: So, you know, we didn't want to be making Florida
Speaker 3: men who have mental health issues or addiction issues the
Speaker 3: butt of the joke. Instead, I think we tried to
Speaker 3: very specifically book people who had funny stories who kind
Speaker 3: of were just like a victim of their circumstances, and
Speaker 3: then also on top of that, start a little bit
Speaker 3: of a conversation of the problem in the way that
Speaker 3: the media was portraying some of these headlines in these stories.
Speaker 3: I think part of the joke was also on, you know,
Speaker 3: journalists being kind of the hero of their own stories
Speaker 3: and the way that they were covering all of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Desi's whole like b plot was that she wanted
Speaker 4: to win a bunch of like Pulitzers for this because.
Speaker 6: Well, it's coming. It's coming. I haven't yet, yeah, but
Speaker 6: we have some time. Part two.
Speaker 1: So Craig to that point, like some police departments post
Speaker 1: Florida man stories in the way, Hey look who we arrested.
Speaker 1: This guy was doing some wacky wacky wacky we gotam
Speaker 1: Everybody laugh in the comments. Make sure you like and
Speaker 1: review our police the podcast Lake is there a change
Speaker 1: in perception.
Speaker 4: That I didn't realize that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and the funny thing that they actually caught a
Speaker 5: guy because he came in and made comments on their
Speaker 5: Facebook posting about him and was haunting them, and so
Speaker 5: then they rible to track him down and arrest him. Wow,
Speaker 5: and he became a Florida manswering.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, after the break, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about where we can go going forward with this issue,
Speaker 1: or do we just need to solve Florida off? Or
Speaker 1: will global warming solve this problem for us? It's beyond
Speaker 1: the scenes. We'll be right back. You know, we could
Speaker 1: just wake this shit out.
Speaker 6: You never know, das just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: We're talking Florida man, Florida men's. A group of Florida
Speaker 1: men together is called a goddamn. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you need that or not.
Speaker 5: I'll notify websters.
Speaker 1: Yea more than three Florida men together is called a y'all.
Speaker 1: More than five as a god.
Speaker 5: Craig, I think it's called a jail technically.
Speaker 1: Sebastian As a non Floridian, do you think it's fair
Speaker 1: that Florida is a punching bag or it's earned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think it's fair that it is
Speaker 4: a punching I mean, I'm from New Jersey, so I
Speaker 4: get the idea of the Florida No, no, no, it's
Speaker 4: very very different. But I will say I guess punching back.
Speaker 4: It really depends on how you approach and view these stories. Obviously,
Speaker 4: if there's a mean spirited, shodenfreude element to people enjoying
Speaker 4: these a lot of the times horrific stories, I think
Speaker 4: that's very problematic and that's not what we wanted to
Speaker 4: do with this piece. We try to approach it with
Speaker 4: empathy but also a type of light heartedness, because a
Speaker 4: lot of these stories are pretty lighthearted for the most part.
Speaker 4: There are some that are incredibly dark, and we didn't
Speaker 4: want to focus on those, and I think.
Speaker 1: That you didn't. You did want to focus on the
Speaker 1: myth band biting faces off in mind. Yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: still try this comedy in eating someone's face under a
Speaker 1: bridge on Tuesday.
Speaker 4: Although to a point, I do think that Florida people
Speaker 4: and Craig could probably confirm or deny this. There is
Speaker 4: a sense of not pride, but there is a sense of, yeah,
Speaker 4: that is us, kind of like we are that insane
Speaker 4: and crazy and colorful and caricature. And I think that
Speaker 4: a lot of the times they lean into that. So
Speaker 4: it's kind of a it's I think it's a celebration
Speaker 4: of that. I might be way off, Craig.
Speaker 5: No, No, I think there's a there's a split. I
Speaker 5: have some friends who like me, or Florida natives, who
Speaker 5: every time they see some wacky story come out nationally,
Speaker 5: they're like, oh God, please don't let it be Florida.
Speaker 5: Please don't lead to Florida. And of course it's always
Speaker 5: it's always Florida. There's always some Florida element, Like the
Speaker 5: woman in New Jersey who was getting on the plane
Speaker 5: with the emotional support peacock. The peacock was from Florida.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's always some Florida aspect to it. But
Speaker 5: then there's others. And this is my point of view,
Speaker 5: which is, you know, let your Florida freak flag fly,
Speaker 5: you know, be proud of the fact that we are
Speaker 5: the most interesting state. You are never bored here, you know,
Speaker 5: it's not like one of those square states where you know,
Speaker 5: you turn on the news every day. It's the same
Speaker 5: thing day after day here. You know, you open the paper,
Speaker 5: you turn on the news, you're like, wow, a guy
Speaker 5: punched a swan today. Hmm, okay, we are the most
Speaker 5: interesting state. I think that should be our slogan, not
Speaker 5: the Sunshine State because it rains here so much. It's
Speaker 5: just it's not funny, but the most interesting state. I
Speaker 5: think we can defend that one.
Speaker 1: How incendiary though, is it for outsiders to attack Florida
Speaker 1: and make fun of Florida and make Florida man jokes, which,
Speaker 1: to Sebastian's point and to your point, even makes people
Speaker 1: wear that difference with a sense of pride to the
Speaker 1: point where they become contrarian. You know, when you look
Speaker 1: at what's happening right now in Florida, would just anti
Speaker 1: vaccine and and well first anti masking, then anti vaccine.
Speaker 1: How much of that is just people being defiant to
Speaker 1: the people that have been made Well, you were going
Speaker 1: to make fun of us anyway, so I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: what I want to screw you.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that's the tapping into this. You know,
Speaker 5: Florida has always had this really strong libertarian streak. You know,
Speaker 5: we don't want the government telling us what to do.
Speaker 5: We were an open range state long after any of
Speaker 5: the Western states, I mean, up until nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 5: You didn't have to fence your cattle here, you know.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's like so so, you know, DeSantis
Speaker 5: has really tapped into that and tapped into that, which
Speaker 5: is ironic because he's the government telling people what to do,
Speaker 5: which is, you can't tell people what to do about masks.
Speaker 5: So he's managed to do a nice little political jiu
Speaker 5: jitsu move on on the situation there. But some of
Speaker 5: it too is you know, there are people here who
Speaker 5: are just that wacky that they're like, yeah, I think
Speaker 5: I'm not going to take the vaccine, but I am
Speaker 5: definitely gonna get me some de warmer medicine from the
Speaker 5: from the horse farm people.
Speaker 1: Daisy. Do you think that everything that happens in Florida
Speaker 1: is it a Florida problem or an American problem or
Speaker 1: is it just the Internet making things seem worse than
Speaker 1: what they are.
Speaker 6: Probably all of the above.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that I loved about the peace
Speaker 3: so much, and like Sebastian said, we definitely highlighted this
Speaker 3: probably more than you could factually say that this is
Speaker 3: the entire reason, but that the Sunshine Law really gave
Speaker 3: me a new perspective on what was happening in Florida,
Speaker 3: and that's it is talked about more because of that law.
Speaker 3: We just happened to see those headlines a lot more,
Speaker 3: and that these things are happening all over the country.
Speaker 3: So I think when there are huge issues all over America,
Speaker 3: you want to go like, oh, this is a Texas
Speaker 3: problem or this is a Florida problem. And yeah, there
Speaker 3: are certain challenges that ex this there, but it's also
Speaker 3: really opening up a larger conversation of what's happening all
Speaker 3: over the country, and if they aren't addressed there locally,
Speaker 3: they become bigger problems all over the country. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, Craig is the expert on that.
Speaker 5: But well, we've got a writer here named Tim Dorsey
Speaker 5: who I like a lot, and one of Tim's lines
Speaker 5: is Florida is the pace car for national dysfunction, which
Speaker 5: I think is a pretty accurate.
Speaker 1: Incredible. That's incredible, Craig. Then we'll we'll we'll end with this. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got one more thing, but it's silly, but I
Speaker 1: want to do it. But first we'll end with the
Speaker 1: more serious qua less serious question. If we know that
Speaker 1: you cannot shame or embarrass people into better behavior, how
Speaker 1: do we create a sense of empathy for other people,
Speaker 1: including Floridians, especially in this internet age. How do you
Speaker 1: create a sense of empathy for someone because like even
Speaker 1: now with people dying who will like there are anti
Speaker 1: vaxxers who die and the first thing they do is
Speaker 1: pull up their tweet and go now, Andy, boo, boo,
Speaker 1: look what you said three weeks ago. That ain't empathy.
Speaker 1: How do we create a sense of that as a
Speaker 1: way to hopefully, you know, bring the country together at
Speaker 1: least bring Florida closer to the country.
Speaker 5: Man, if I knew that, they'd give me the Nobel
Speaker 5: and the Pulitzer. But but you know, you're you're absolutely right,
Speaker 5: we should feel empathy for these folks. I actually have
Speaker 5: a piece in my new book, The State You're In,
Speaker 5: where I'd argue that instead of laughing at the people
Speaker 5: in these mug shots, we should just every time look
Speaker 5: at them and go there, but for the grace of God,
Speaker 5: go I you know, because one screw up, one mistake,
Speaker 5: and you could be the one, you know, in the
Speaker 5: Little mug Shot magazine being sold at the corner store.
Speaker 1: All right, and so then last question, and this is
Speaker 1: for everyone. Does everyone know their Florida birthday?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Yes? What is your Florida Man birthday? First we have
Speaker 1: to explain, Craig, can you explain that to people?
Speaker 5: What the Florida This was a thing that went around
Speaker 5: a couple of years ago where you plug in the
Speaker 5: terms Florida Man and your day of birth and do
Speaker 5: it in Google and it spits out whatever was the
Speaker 5: Florida Man story for that particular day, because of course
Speaker 5: there is a Florida Man story for three hundred and
Speaker 5: sixty five days, including and maybe even leap day as well.
Speaker 5: Mine turned out to be a fairly tragic one and
Speaker 5: which I don't want to talk about. But that's the
Speaker 5: thing is, some of these stories are not funny. They're
Speaker 5: they're purely tragic. But of course some of the ones
Speaker 5: that turned up, you know, people were laughing about aha,
Speaker 5: you know the burglar and silver Springs who broke in
Speaker 5: and thought that the ashes in the in the cremation
Speaker 5: earned were actually something you could snort. You know, things
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can I just I just did my
Speaker 4: Florida man birthday now, And I think this is a nice,
Speaker 4: not super dark one. But as police arrest Florida man
Speaker 4: for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at a Walmart, that.
Speaker 5: Hits a lot of poss I think, yes it does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's two from my birthday that I I guess.
Speaker 1: One's decent ones a little a little darker. Florida man
Speaker 1: beats at m said it gave him too much cash.
Speaker 5: I remember that. I wish I had that problem.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really good example. Sorry that there's
Speaker 4: almost no logic to any of these stories, because you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: he beat him up because he didn't the machine didn't
Speaker 4: give him enough money, but that he beat him up.
Speaker 4: It's just all of these stories defy any logic or sense,
Speaker 4: and I think that's what's so great about them.
Speaker 1: The other one, the other one, Florida man throws cherot
Speaker 1: child in dispute over.
Speaker 6: Donut over donut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I only read that because he didn't connects fine
Speaker 1: as long as as bad aim.
Speaker 5: That's the important thing.
Speaker 6: You guys.
Speaker 3: I just plugged my birthday in and it came up
Speaker 3: nothing found.
Speaker 1: So wow.
Speaker 3: Is that the saddest Florida Man story of all time.
Speaker 5: Well, that will happen. Something will happen then on that
Speaker 5: date and sometime the next week. I oh yeah, it's
Speaker 5: like a candy man.
Speaker 6: Tis Florida Man.
Speaker 1: Well his book is The State You're in Florida Man,
Speaker 1: Florida Women and Other Wildlife. Craig Pittman, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming beyond the scenes with myself, Daisi Lighted
Speaker 1: and Sebastian Dentel.
Speaker 5: I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: This was great man. Well we did it, and for
Speaker 1: more Beyond the Scenes go to Dailyshow dot com slash Beyond.
Speaker 1: Got to get back down to Pensacola. Man, it was
Speaker 1: some good barbecue. Now, hey, Beyond the Scenes listeners. If
Speaker 1: you haven't rated and reviewed us yet on Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: Drop us a rating, let us know how you feel
Speaker 1: and write a review. Write a review too, because I
Speaker 1: read those to my child at the end of the night.
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