Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello everybody, Two quick plugs here at
Speaker 1: the top. First, it is the last call for listeners
Speaker 1: to get tickets to the Bechdel cast post Oscars live
Speaker 1: celebration at Dynasty Typewriter this Sunday, March second, in LA.
Speaker 1: There's going to be live and streaming tickets available right
Speaker 1: after the Oscars viewing party at Dynasty. If you want
Speaker 1: to come early and watch the ceremony with us, you're
Speaker 1: welcome to. Tickets are in the description, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be super fun. Secondly, this Thursday, February twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: the subject of today's episode of sixteenth Minute, Liam Kyle
Speaker 1: Sullivan aka Kelly, is workshopping his latest show, a Liam
Speaker 1: Kyle Sullivan Show at the Lyric Hyperion in LA. Tickets
Speaker 1: also in the description. I cannot wait to see it.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the episode. Drag in comedy has a long history.
Speaker 1: I can never have children.
Speaker 2: We can adopt some. But you don't understand.
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 4: I'm a man.
Speaker 2: Well, nobody's perfect, not indigent.
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm a church lady and this is church chat. Well,
Speaker 1: it's so great to be back.
Speaker 5: I've been gone for a while doing missionary work on ABC.
Speaker 1: And drag and comedy have been connected since the moment
Speaker 1: both existed. Obviously, there's a million ways that people have
Speaker 1: interpreted this from case to case over the years. There's
Speaker 1: the point of view that many of these actors are
Speaker 1: sist straight men playing against type for laughs, some would say,
Speaker 1: at the expense of making women look silly. An example
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is Will Ferrell as Janet Reno. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Janna Reno.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Janna Reno's dance party. Coming to you alive
Speaker 6: from my basement.
Speaker 1: See I really like dance.
Speaker 5: Do that soon.
Speaker 1: There's the historical truth that comedy has generally been overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by this men, making drag performance necessary. If theem characters
Speaker 1: were to appear on screen at all again going to
Speaker 1: SNL in the long stretches of time in which they
Speaker 1: never cast a black woman, actors like Tracy Morgan and
Speaker 1: Keenan Thompson would be in drag anytime a black woman
Speaker 1: appeared on the show as a character at all. Here now,
Speaker 1: the preview of her work is Maya.
Speaker 2: Angelou Sina.
Speaker 7: As always you ever vest the sweet aroma of women
Speaker 7: in full bloom like that?
Speaker 1: That's good?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, But drag on mainstream TV isn't really drag
Speaker 1: culture in order to define that, and I'm not the
Speaker 1: person to define what drag culture is. It encapsulates a
Speaker 1: far wider community, spanning class, race, gender, sexuality, location, history
Speaker 1: in general. So for a working definition, I'm gonna kick
Speaker 1: it to Kareem Kupchandani, author of Decolonized Drag, whose drag name,
Speaker 1: by the way is Lahore Vajistan. Incredible, he says, here's
Speaker 1: my take. Drag is a genre of performance practiced in entertainment, nightlife,
Speaker 1: and festival contexts by and for gender and sexual dissidents,
Speaker 1: primarily the people who fall under the umbrella categories of
Speaker 1: queer and transgender, but also many others at the margin
Speaker 1: of normative gender and sexual configurations. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to mainstream culture drag, before drag race, there was a
Speaker 1: genre of drag that was basically, wait, this famous cis
Speaker 1: man shouldn't be in a dress. See Jack and Jill
Speaker 1: or The Nutty Professor. But in other famous pieces of
Speaker 1: mainstream media drag, characters are real characters, and drag is
Speaker 1: used as a storytelling tool about gender and sometimes race,
Speaker 1: culture or sexuality. I think to see missus Doubtfire, White Chicks, Hairspray,
Speaker 1: Juana Man, She's the Man, Tu Wong Fu, The Birdcage,
Speaker 1: Some like It Hot. The list goes on, and there
Speaker 1: are plenty of criticisms of all of those movies to
Speaker 1: be had. However, no matter how many politicians try to
Speaker 1: suppress and weaponize drag performance as dangerous, that is so
Speaker 1: clearly horseshit. Drag has been around for as long as
Speaker 1: we have, although the way it's been presented in mainstream
Speaker 1: culture tends to be fairly prescriptive. You probably know that
Speaker 1: drag culture has gone very mainstream in the last fifteen years,
Speaker 1: in large part thanks to the ever expanding, occasionally fracking
Speaker 1: RuPaul's Drag Race Empire.
Speaker 7: Room.
Speaker 1: While drag race queens are selling out gigantic theaters and
Speaker 1: becoming mainstream celebrities in ways that would once have been
Speaker 1: unheard of. But drag race has its complications.
Speaker 4: Too.
Speaker 1: Many performers would agree that drag is inherently political, a
Speaker 1: case that is carefully made by Kupchandani in Decolonized Drag,
Speaker 1: and he does not spare drag race in this assessment.
Speaker 1: He carefully outlines the ways in which drag race has
Speaker 1: been historically reluctant to change, especially not including trans competitors
Speaker 1: on the show for years, as well as racial tokenization
Speaker 1: and often enforcing this colonial lens of beauty onto the
Speaker 1: queen's whether that means criticizing body hair, fatness, imperfect tucking,
Speaker 1: and just a general reluctance toward complete genderfuckery. Drag Race
Speaker 1: has an emphasis on slogans and marketing based on individualism,
Speaker 1: something that many collective drag communities resist while continuing to
Speaker 1: like any reasonable person would, continuing to watch and enjoy
Speaker 1: Drag Race anyways, because it's drag race. I cannot recommend
Speaker 1: decolonized drag enough. It not only reframed the political nature
Speaker 1: of drag for me and introduced me to a bunch
Speaker 1: of incredible acts I wasn't familiar with, but it also
Speaker 1: includes I think my favorite line in a book ever,
Speaker 1: there is a hunger for critiques of colonialism at the club.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't know, don't go to the club. But let's get
Speaker 1: back to comedy. Drag in comedy is a very complicated topic,
Speaker 1: the kind of comedy topic that will shock you and
Speaker 1: how unfunny it can become. And obviously, my interpretation of
Speaker 1: any of This is certainly not the final word, but
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this episode, let's use the general
Speaker 1: comedy rules of who's the target? Are we punching up?
Speaker 1: Are we punching down? Because there are some drag characters
Speaker 1: in comedy where the target of the joke appears to
Speaker 1: be women or femmes, either a specific person or a
Speaker 1: broader caricature by a sismile performer who did not perform
Speaker 1: in drag. Outside of this, Monte p Ithon does this
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 8: An ugly kind of violence is rife stalking the town. Yes,
Speaker 8: gangs of old ladies attacking fit, defenseless young men.
Speaker 1: On the other side, there are famous comedy drag characters
Speaker 1: that are equally hyper feminine but are actually characters. It's
Speaker 1: pretty commonly agreed on that the kids in the hall
Speaker 1: were a sketch group that did drag a lot more
Speaker 1: thoughtfully without ever sacrificing the funny. Here's Jocelyn, what would.
Speaker 2: You say if aliens came down and tried to pick
Speaker 2: us up?
Speaker 1: Would they pay us in our own money?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: In alien money? No, I'm not fear without the game.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: Dave Foley, Oh my god, what a hotty And it
Speaker 1: will come as no surprise that the kids in the
Speaker 1: hall were a big influence on our subject this week.
Speaker 1: The first drag character to make it big on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to say, in my opinion, built his
Speaker 1: character out with the big personalities associated with drag without
Speaker 1: any contempt for his character or just women and fems
Speaker 1: in general, that a lot of earlier Python style efforts
Speaker 1: were more mean spirited and self conscious about.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Drag had been a fixture in culture for centuries, with
Speaker 1: a long and complicated history, but it hadn't yet cracked
Speaker 1: the mainstream Internet by the mid two thousands. But a
Speaker 1: full three years before Drag Race would debut, a character
Speaker 1: would break through on what would be the biggest Internet
Speaker 1: platform in the world. One day. In early two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, YouTube was just starting to find its footing,
Speaker 1: not as a dating site as it was originally intended,
Speaker 1: but as a video uploading platform. It had its first
Speaker 1: major viral hit in December two thousand and five, shortly
Speaker 1: after its.
Speaker 9: Launch, Placy Sunday check o through the late afternoon capell
Speaker 9: just to see how it's doing.
Speaker 7: Hollo, what a pause?
Speaker 2: Sand Park, what's blacked in?
Speaker 4: Did you want to say.
Speaker 2: This?
Speaker 1: Is almost a twenty year old sketch. You guys sorry
Speaker 1: about that. This was a Lonely Island digital short starring
Speaker 1: Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell that originally aired on SNL, and,
Speaker 1: like a fair amount of early YouTube, the platform then
Speaker 1: relied on broadcast institutions to prop up their site, where
Speaker 1: users did not yet have the tools or the incentive
Speaker 1: to upload content of their own. And just months after
Speaker 1: Lazy Sunday, a character named Kelly came along an independently
Speaker 1: produced sketch by Liam Kyle Sullivan.
Speaker 2: Shut Up, duk skig, I'm gonna botslap yes, shat back.
Speaker 1: Maybe you remember this video And if you're thinking no,
Speaker 1: this other video I remember must have gone viral first.
Speaker 1: Probably not. The only real contender and it would be
Speaker 1: a hard tie is a video uploaded by comedian Jackson
Speaker 1: Lapley called Evolution of Dance, a video so that Lapley
Speaker 1: himself uploaded to the site in April two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: And we'll leave it at that because I hope to
Speaker 1: make an episode with him in the future. But that's
Speaker 1: about it. Most of the early YouTube hits like.
Speaker 8: Candy Candy, Mountain Chardy, Charlie, We're going to Candy.
Speaker 2: Mountain, Josh m.
Speaker 1: Some stay Dry and feel the paint. Wow, Chocolate Rain
Speaker 1: two weeks in a row. Pretty amazing. All of these
Speaker 1: clips came out at least a year after Shoes, and
Speaker 1: the only reason that I can't tell you the exact
Speaker 1: moment Shoes first became a hit on YouTube is because
Speaker 1: its first upload no longer exists. The video first appeared
Speaker 1: on the writer, director, and star's website early in the year,
Speaker 1: after what he describes as months producing the video with
Speaker 1: friends on the weekend and featuring a character that he
Speaker 1: honed on comedy stages in Los Angeles between acting gigs.
Speaker 1: That character was Kelly profoundly mid two thousands in her aesthetic,
Speaker 1: wearing a blonde wig with bangs, fingerless gloves, nick black
Speaker 1: rimmed glasses, a mini skirt, and a pleathor vest over
Speaker 1: a pink T shirt that says super femme. This would
Speaker 1: later be replaced with an iconic black T shirt that
Speaker 1: simply says betch. The character is played by Liam, but
Speaker 1: Liam is not a known entity at this time, so
Speaker 1: to most fans of this video, it's not Liam, it's Kelly.
Speaker 1: The most popular upload of Shoes now includes an opening
Speaker 1: sketch that establishes a wider world of characters. Two conservative
Speaker 1: New England parents with teenage twins, a boy they're obsessed with,
Speaker 1: and Kelly, their daughter, who they demean at every opportunity.
Speaker 1: But in the original video it cuts right to the chase.
Speaker 1: A droning club beat kicks in after Kelly storms out
Speaker 1: of the house.
Speaker 2: Kelly, what are you gonna do with your life? I'm
Speaker 2: going to get what I want?
Speaker 1: And what does Kelly want?
Speaker 3: Cheers? Cheers, cheers, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Cheers Liam Kyle Sullivan a k A. Kelly. Your sixteenth
Speaker 1: Minute starts now.
Speaker 7: Joy, stay get the Claim.
Speaker 3: Sixty six.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
Speaker 1: a look back at the internet's most famous characters of
Speaker 1: the day and figure out how their moment changed their
Speaker 1: lives and what it says about us and the Internet.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and I consider taking Taco
Speaker 1: Bell up on their seven hundred dollars Vegas Dinner, marriage
Speaker 1: and Elvis impersonator deal for two whole minutes this week,
Speaker 1: before realizing my mom would literally break me in half
Speaker 1: if I did that. And this week we're returning to
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands to catch up with an Internet celebrity,
Speaker 1: All Heimer, Liam Kyle Sullivan and Kelly. And while the
Speaker 1: Internet had been around for some time, by the time
Speaker 1: we met the gorgeous Frankenstein who is Kelly, the concept
Speaker 1: of celebrity that began online was still very new, making
Speaker 1: our girl nothing short of a pioneer. So come with
Speaker 1: me if you dare to. Early two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Steelers win the Super Bowl. Go Yinsers. It's
Speaker 1: the year that Junior Highs would be shaken to its
Speaker 1: core by poor Borat Impressions and Liam Kyle Sullivan's character
Speaker 1: Kelly became a star on YouTube, although Liam himself was
Speaker 1: basically the last person to know because, as I said,
Speaker 1: he didn't upload the Kelly video himself. So where did
Speaker 1: this mysterious uploader? Rip Shoes and Liam's other massive viral
Speaker 1: had from this year, muffins from Well, they downloaded it
Speaker 1: from his website PSA to my listeners. Under twenty five,
Speaker 1: there used to be this thing called websites. Children would
Speaker 1: have to learn how to make them on a different
Speaker 1: website called neopets dot com. Some of us still have.
Speaker 1: I have an updated mine in two years, and that
Speaker 1: was only because my diabolical ex agents wanted me to
Speaker 1: take their names off of the site. At the time
Speaker 1: Kelly went viral. Liam was kind of a technophobe. He
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen seventy three and, like many Gen
Speaker 1: xers with him, was punk rock skeptical of the Internet
Speaker 1: for some time before it involuntarily changed his life. And
Speaker 1: to be clear, so let me be clear, whoever uploaded
Speaker 1: shoes to YouTube wasn't doing it in order to make
Speaker 1: a quick buck before the creator could realize that he
Speaker 1: could make that same quick buck himself. Liam actually really
Speaker 1: encouraged people to download Shoes, Muffins and other videos.
Speaker 10: Come to Pleasant Valley Road in Santa Rosa. Well, you
Speaker 10: can have a warm picnic under the sun. It's always
Speaker 10: a beautiful day here at Pleasant Valley Road in Santa Rosa.
Speaker 1: Which I can tell you for sure because when I
Speaker 1: visited his site on the way back Machine, clicking on
Speaker 1: the Muffins sketch automatically downloaded it to my computer. He'd
Speaker 1: first shown this sketch during his live shows because he
Speaker 1: literally did not know that YouTube existed yet. And what's more,
Speaker 1: there was no quick buck to be had on YouTube
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six. Like so many moments in
Speaker 1: this story, you'll find that it is very arguable that
Speaker 1: Liam Kyle Sullivan went viral just a little suits because
Speaker 1: this was not YouTube as we know it now. This
Speaker 1: was over a year and a half before YouTube accounts
Speaker 1: could monetize goddamn anything. It's months shy of Google's one
Speaker 1: point sixty five billion acquisition of the platform in late
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. There wasn't really a path for
Speaker 1: virality yet at this time, because the site didn't financially
Speaker 1: incentivize successful users to stay, and mainstream entertainment still viewed
Speaker 1: web sensations as kind of entertainment second class citizens, although
Speaker 1: it never stopped them from trying to do something. Here's
Speaker 1: Kimmel in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 4: We are back.
Speaker 9: Patherine Bell is here with us. This song has been
Speaker 9: covered by the likes of John may or Trey Coole,
Speaker 9: has gotten more than four million views on YouTube blown,
Speaker 9: and it easily gets my vote for Song in the
Speaker 9: Summer from Minneapolis. Please welcome Tayzon Day with the song
Speaker 9: Chocolate Rains and Tonight's Internet Talent Showcase.
Speaker 1: But before we can get to what Liam did with
Speaker 1: this unprecedented, nearly uncharted kind of success. Let's get to
Speaker 1: know him a little better like all of our greatest artists,
Speaker 1: and I'll say it people. Liam Kyle Sullivan grew up
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts and went to a weird congregational church. By
Speaker 1: all accounts, his childhood was really nice, although elements would
Speaker 1: end up inspiring Kelly's family In his future work in Shoes,
Speaker 1: Liam plays Kelly's father, Kelly's twin brother, and Kelly and
Speaker 1: told me that he developed the exaggerated sibling dynamic based
Speaker 1: on how his older sister was treated in comparison to
Speaker 1: him when they were growing up. While they were similarly
Speaker 1: good kids, didn't drink, didn't do anything, Liam remembers that
Speaker 1: his sister had imposed rules and curfews that he never did,
Speaker 1: an exaggerated fate that he would later assign to Kelly
Speaker 1: in the sketches extended intro.
Speaker 2: Happy Birthday Twins A computer and a car. Thanks Mom
Speaker 2: and Dad.
Speaker 3: Kelly, go ahead and open your present.
Speaker 1: How the how would you expect? Condamns It's a gigantic
Speaker 1: toy dinosaur And before the needle drops for the beginning
Speaker 1: of the song, Kelly's parents both call her fat and
Speaker 1: Sluttie or Liam was a theater kid and went to
Speaker 1: Emerson College in Boston, wisely dropping out after a year
Speaker 1: like I should have, and that's because he was already
Speaker 1: accomplishing what he was going to school to study. He
Speaker 1: quickly started getting parts and became a fixture of the
Speaker 1: Boston theater scene at the time, focusing on straight ahead theater.
Speaker 1: I'm talking The Grapes of Wrath, A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Speaker 1: the Threepenny Opera, all pretty heavy stuff. And after a
Speaker 1: few years of that he did what all perfect people do.
Speaker 1: He moved from Boston to Los Angeles, and by the
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties, Liam is a working actor trying to
Speaker 1: build out a career for himself. He appears uncredited in
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety nine episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Speaker 1: also in Drag. He is in a Dick Wolf show
Speaker 1: called Players question Mark. He's in a sun Dance indie,
Speaker 1: and he's in a bunch of commercials for Guinness, e Trade, Dell,
Speaker 1: and PlayStation. A very solid resume, but not exactly creatively
Speaker 1: fulfilling in the way that playing al Jode in Boston
Speaker 1: was so. Liam did what most actors who don't get
Speaker 1: into recreational sports or Cooke do. He started taking comedy classes.
Speaker 1: When I learned this, I realized that there were a
Speaker 1: few things that I had made false assumptions about with
Speaker 1: Liam before I met him for the first time. After
Speaker 1: watching the Kelly sketch for years, I felt sure that
Speaker 1: he had been doing comedy for years and years when
Speaker 1: this sketch came out, And I also felt sure that
Speaker 1: he'd done a lot of drag work. But neither of
Speaker 1: these things were really true. The Kelly costume isn't winning
Speaker 1: any drag race challenges anytime soon, but Liam embodies this
Speaker 1: character fully to the point where he says he was
Speaker 1: almost never recognized by his voice or appearance in public.
Speaker 1: And as for comedy, that was something he began doing
Speaker 1: around two thousand at the recommendation of a friend to
Speaker 1: branch out a little bit, and he ended up falling
Speaker 1: in love with sketch at the now shattered Acme Comedy
Speaker 1: Theater in North Hollywood. So Kelly actually comes from his
Speaker 1: serious training as an actor and his personal life experience,
Speaker 1: and it's at Acme Comedy Theater that characters like Kelly
Speaker 1: begin to take shape. By the early to mid two thousands,
Speaker 1: he was performing and taking classes there regularly, leaving dramatic
Speaker 1: stage work mostly behind, while taking on guest roles in
Speaker 1: film and TV where they came what's your favorite early
Speaker 1: Liam Kyle Sullivan role, Jamie Well, thanks for asking. That
Speaker 1: would have to be the photographer in season five, episodes
Speaker 1: thirteen and fourteen of Gilmour Girls, Wonderful.
Speaker 2: There we are, Okay, everyone in just a little closer.
Speaker 2: That's perfect.
Speaker 1: Hold that good job, Liam. But if you asked Liam,
Speaker 1: he was probably most excited about his first meaningful recurring
Speaker 1: guest star role on TV, on ABC's hit comedy eight
Speaker 1: Simple Rules. He made these appearances in two, two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, and two thousand and five while he worked
Speaker 1: on developing a solo sketch show simply titled a Liam Show.
Speaker 1: On the side. The role on eight Simple Rules was
Speaker 1: a big break after years of hustling, but he managed
Speaker 1: to balance it with a Liam Show as he continued
Speaker 1: to build out new characters, many of which would appear
Speaker 1: later on his YouTube channel in some form. Obviously, one
Speaker 1: of these characters was miss Kelly. So this all starts
Speaker 1: as a stage show, the kind of sketch show that
Speaker 1: involves a humid black box theater and running backstage to
Speaker 1: change wigs while top forty music plays between characters. It's
Speaker 1: a humble beginning many such cases, but what made the
Speaker 1: difference was Liam's decision to start adding interstitial videos into
Speaker 1: the show to help them flow a little better. And
Speaker 1: Kelly was a popular enough character with his audience, and
Speaker 1: he enjoyed playing the character enough so he decided to
Speaker 1: make a video with her. We talk about it in
Speaker 1: our interview in more detail, but here's how Liam described
Speaker 1: the production of Shoes on his website in February two
Speaker 1: thousand and six.
Speaker 6: Then I had some ideas for funny short films. I
Speaker 6: thought if I could borrow equipment and shoot them with
Speaker 6: my friends, I could put them together and put up
Speaker 6: a show and have a whole lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 6: I called my friend Eduardosis Naros, and we made a
Speaker 6: whole bunch and then I put them together, and here
Speaker 6: I've got a show and a website. I write, produce,
Speaker 6: and direct everything, but Eduardosis Naros and Rich Briglia have
Speaker 6: helped a lot with cinematography and co directing. I also
Speaker 6: edit everything myself. A bit of a control freak, yes,
Speaker 6: but in my experience, collaboration with friends always makes a
Speaker 6: better product, so I listened to my friend's ideas.
Speaker 1: This text appears alongside a picture of a young Liam
Speaker 1: reaching toward the camera with the caption area actor gropes
Speaker 1: for career. Other stuff on this site includes the sale
Speaker 1: of a comedy DVD question Mark he really was not
Speaker 1: an Internet guy anyways. This dvd sold for ten dollars
Speaker 1: and featured a collection of video sketches that he'd worked
Speaker 1: on with friends over the past few years. Most of
Speaker 1: these would eventually end up on YouTube as well. Titles
Speaker 1: include Doctor Oulay, Sex Therapist, Fever, Bitch, Muffins, and wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, Let's circle back to Muffins muffinss Okay, this
Speaker 1: episode is mainly focused on Kelly and the phenomenon that
Speaker 1: was the Shoes video, but we should take a quick
Speaker 1: side quest to talk about Muffins because it was wildly
Speaker 1: successful as well, and was also originally re uploaded to
Speaker 1: a primitive YouTube by someone who had originally downloaded it
Speaker 1: from Liam's website. The joke of Muffins is a little
Speaker 1: more straightforward than Kelly Lore, but it does feature another
Speaker 1: Liam drag character, one he says was loosely based on
Speaker 1: his mom. Missus Cunningham is an eager, older homemaker in
Speaker 1: a short gray wig, a pink mumu, and an apron
Speaker 1: forcing a series of bespoke muffin experiments on her unwilling
Speaker 1: test subject, her son Johnny.
Speaker 2: What would you like for breakfast, Johnny? Muffins? That's right,
Speaker 2: at Cunningham muffins.
Speaker 3: We know that muffins make.
Speaker 5: The best breakfast, so why not try all of exciting
Speaker 5: new flavors.
Speaker 1: A bunch of you were like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: remember that, Yes you do. So the meat of the
Speaker 1: sketch is, and how weird and eventually sinister the muffin
Speaker 1: flavors get For every fan of this sketch, everyone has
Speaker 1: their favorite muffins. Here are mine, paper clip, nosepaper fire.
Speaker 1: And at the end, you'll eat a muffin.
Speaker 11: You'll eat it and like it.
Speaker 1: God, describing the jokes and a sketch is so miserable.
Speaker 1: Just go watch it. It's still up. It's good. The
Speaker 1: premise is very simple, it's well written, William's performance is great,
Speaker 1: and it's clearly independent. Filmed on a random day in
Speaker 1: someone's crummy kitchen. Within a year or two of Muffins release,
Speaker 1: there would be early YouTubers who would create similar, generally
Speaker 1: less good comedy for YouTube and other platforms, but seeing
Speaker 1: an independent sketch like Muffins or Shoes breakthrough at the time,
Speaker 1: made by someone no one had heard of before, was
Speaker 1: a pretty new concept. Keep in mind, the only other
Speaker 1: sketch to have been super successful on YouTube at this
Speaker 1: time had literally been on SNL. But in these sketches,
Speaker 1: which are still Liam's most successful, a few consistent things
Speaker 1: stand out. They're independently produced, they're dark but can be
Speaker 1: enjoyed by anybody, they feature drag characters, and they were
Speaker 1: not written and made with YouTube in mind. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to Shoes and enjoy the glory of the
Speaker 1: video itself. So we know the general setup, with Kelly
Speaker 1: as this neglected, rebellious daughter and a middle class neighborhood
Speaker 1: whose shoe shopping to stick it to her parents. But
Speaker 1: the majority of the song is Kelly's shoe shopping with
Speaker 1: her friends in multiple locations across LA, appraising.
Speaker 4: Shoes like this bes rule facious sock, beacious rural facious sock.
Speaker 1: The aesthetic here could not be more mid two thousands.
Speaker 1: There's all of these, like quick zooms on Kelly's face.
Speaker 1: The shots are very high exposure, high contrast of her
Speaker 1: Doc Martin slamming the pavement of Melrose Avenue, and the
Speaker 1: camera will often cut to her friends in similar hot
Speaker 1: topic waste chain, low rise khaki pants. Those were so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: It's this hyper feminine shopping montage. But the best part
Speaker 1: is that it has no patience for men whatsoever.
Speaker 3: I think you're shoes.
Speaker 8: Shut up.
Speaker 3: I think you have too many shoes. Shut up. I
Speaker 3: think you have too many shoes.
Speaker 8: Shut up.
Speaker 3: I think you have too many shoes. Shut up. Stupid boy,
Speaker 3: stupid boy. Let's get some shiites. Let's party.
Speaker 1: During this sequence, Kelly is literally stepping on men. She
Speaker 1: steps on the camera at one point as a male
Speaker 1: shoe salesman cowers in fear. And then we cut to
Speaker 1: this huge pool party full of scene kids, and then
Speaker 1: back to Kelly to put her parents into debt once
Speaker 1: and for all.
Speaker 3: These shoes are three hundred fucking dollars.
Speaker 1: Let's get them, and as many remember. Kelly ends the
Speaker 1: video by mouthing off to a snobby sales rep in
Speaker 1: the most iconic way possible.
Speaker 4: This style runs small I don't think you're gonna fat
Speaker 4: I mean your fader kind of bag.
Speaker 3: Oh oh.
Speaker 4: Oh, by the way, fuck you fuckwuck.
Speaker 1: This whole sequence is intercut with random high exposure shots
Speaker 1: of hot girls and leather bikinis with flaming fula hoops.
Speaker 1: It's a whole vibe. And sure, is this a very
Speaker 1: two thousands Sex and the City parody way of describing
Speaker 1: feminine liberation through shopping. Well, yeah, but that's the point.
Speaker 1: Kelly is a drag character that's commentary on oppression experienced
Speaker 1: in white teens. Suburbia might not be the most radical
Speaker 1: thing in the world, but it was really different for
Speaker 1: this time during the Bush administration. It would be pretty
Speaker 1: unlikely to see a character like Kelly become this prominent
Speaker 1: by being supported by traditional media engines. And what's more,
Speaker 1: you can't help but root for Kelly. Her parents treat
Speaker 1: her like shit, and so she puts them into credit
Speaker 1: card debt. It's a recession era of fantasy. In decolonized drag,
Speaker 1: Koreem Kupchandani draws attention to a far more diverse group
Speaker 1: of drag performers doing their equivalent of this, building out
Speaker 1: the world of their drag characters by pulling from their
Speaker 1: personal life, as Liam did from his New England childhood
Speaker 1: with Kelly. And when Kelly and Shoes hits YouTube, it
Speaker 1: goes nuts. But Liam doesn't realize this right away. He's
Speaker 1: staying on his normal actor grind, He's getting a bit
Speaker 1: part on Alias, He's continuing to perform on stage at ACME.
Speaker 1: The Internet is a part of his plan to grow
Speaker 1: his career, but it's not the plan. And unlike today,
Speaker 1: where the viral life of a video can rise and
Speaker 1: fall in the space of a couple hours, it took
Speaker 1: Shoes months to catch on when the pace of the
Speaker 1: Internet was much slower. In Liam's recollection, it was weeks
Speaker 1: before he heard his videos had been both uploaded and
Speaker 1: extremely successful on YouTube. And it only even heard of
Speaker 1: the platform because someone he did comedy with had told
Speaker 1: him about it, and once he found out, he had
Speaker 1: to figure out what to do about it. I have
Speaker 1: tried so hard to figure this out, but it is
Speaker 1: unclear exactly when the first upload of Shoes disappeared or
Speaker 1: how many views it had when it did. But the
Speaker 1: primary upload of the video is now on Liam Kyle
Speaker 1: Sullivan's channel, uploaded in April two thousand and six. His
Speaker 1: upload of the shorter Shoes music video is made in
Speaker 1: early May, and according to a Vice ten year retrospective
Speaker 1: of the video from twenty sixteen, Liam wasn't convinced it
Speaker 1: was big, big until that September, when the video was
Speaker 1: featured on a Los Angeles early morning show called Good
Speaker 1: Day LA shows.
Speaker 3: Oh I got this is shoes.
Speaker 11: This is my new favorite song.
Speaker 3: Oh this shooz.
Speaker 2: Cheoz Hello Kelly, why God cheers?
Speaker 11: Oh my god, Kelly's drag quay.
Speaker 3: Let's get some shit and she lives here. Some shit.
Speaker 3: Let's get this shit pool, Let's get this shit shutally what?
Speaker 1: And Liam was so excited about this that he actually
Speaker 1: uploaded this clip himself, which was quickly followed by shout
Speaker 1: outs on TRL and more and more press in the mainstream,
Speaker 1: not just to say have you seen this video Shoes,
Speaker 1: but just as much to say, have you heard of
Speaker 1: this new thing called YouTube? And boy would we? Liam
Speaker 1: seems to understand in the moment that in the short term,
Speaker 1: his newly minded YouTube channel is where people are going
Speaker 1: to go to see his work, and so he starts
Speaker 1: planning to release new videos featuring Kelly. Was this always
Speaker 1: the master plan. Turns out not really, he told Wece
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 6: I had written a bunch of songs and actually had
Speaker 6: to be persuaded by my friend to shoot a video
Speaker 6: for Shoes. But I had no idea I'd be doing
Speaker 6: so many different things with her At some point, I
Speaker 6: was just throwing everything out there, like what else can
Speaker 6: I do with Kelly?
Speaker 1: Turns out a lot, but again keep in mind that
Speaker 1: the trickle of viral content at this time worked much
Speaker 1: much slower. Liam filled the space it took to produce
Speaker 1: new Kelly videos by uploading his back catalog of sketches,
Speaker 1: including a re upload of Muffins and other videos that
Speaker 1: it appeared on his DVD. In June two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: Liam released an entire album of music from Kelly, including
Speaker 1: a lot of hits that would later translate to future
Speaker 1: music videos, like such as.
Speaker 2: You Couldn't Do Him.
Speaker 3: Persons Playing Up.
Speaker 1: This one features major Kelly fan Margaret Show as I
Speaker 1: Think a dominatrix. Liam would actually go on to tour
Speaker 1: with her. As an opener shortly after the Shoes video
Speaker 1: first blew up. Then there's no booty.
Speaker 3: Calls about what he's saying. You want to get together.
Speaker 3: I want you to comb overall dressed up and leather.
Speaker 2: They used to do back in out too, Give me.
Speaker 3: Nice dreams, make me want to stream.
Speaker 4: That's not happening again. That was back then, and now
Speaker 4: I'm interested in bigger and batter men. Nobody coll Zach,
Speaker 4: Nobody call Dach. That's not happening.
Speaker 1: And I think most successfully, let me borrow that top.
Speaker 3: Let me borrow that toss. Let me borrow that toss.
Speaker 3: Let me borrow that toss. I want to borrow that top.
Speaker 1: And while these hits didn't hit the heights that Shoes had,
Speaker 1: they were all successful to the tune of millions of us.
Speaker 1: And they also expand upon Kelly Lore. We meet more
Speaker 1: members of her family, cleverly integrated by Liam from other
Speaker 1: characters that he did in his one man show, plus
Speaker 1: a cool, hot vampire best friend named Heather, and for
Speaker 1: my money, in these future videos, Liam Hammer's down repeatedly
Speaker 1: on the empowerment of Kelly's character. Even as the people
Speaker 1: around Kelly continuously fail her, whether it's her strict parents,
Speaker 1: asshole boyfriends, or girls who think they're better than her,
Speaker 1: Kelly and her friends always have endless confidence in her.
Speaker 1: It's never Oh my god, I'm so insecure. I'm a loser.
Speaker 1: It's You've wronged me. I know it, and now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat you for fucking dinner.
Speaker 4: My acdient face powered and he plays with his RL.
Speaker 2: I'm put in a game, and if I confused you,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to lose.
Speaker 4: You. Go back to first grade and get yourself a
Speaker 4: blues clue. I don't even know what ever made me
Speaker 4: chanse yet, but I could do better.
Speaker 3: What are you saving it for? You're not even worrying it.
Speaker 2: You're not gonna wear it.
Speaker 3: Let me borrow it.
Speaker 1: And while this round of viral Kelly videos released between
Speaker 1: two thousand and six and two thousand and eight appealed
Speaker 1: to really anyone who was remotely logged in at the time,
Speaker 1: it seemed to appeal to kids quite a bit, I
Speaker 1: think because Kelly was really funny, but she was also
Speaker 1: really cool. You were never ever laughing at her the
Speaker 1: way that you see punching down drag comedy that we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier in this episode. She was awesome. YouTube
Speaker 1: monetization would come around via their Infamous Partners program in
Speaker 1: late two thousand and seven, but In the meantime, Liam
Speaker 1: grew the character and made ends meet in other ways.
Speaker 1: One was touring his act through the country with Margaret
Speaker 1: cho and Solo, appearing as himself and doing stand up
Speaker 1: about being Kelly. Most of the clips from this tour
Speaker 1: were uploaded by fans who attended back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven and feature Liam talking about how becoming Kelly
Speaker 1: made him a better man.
Speaker 11: And so I was like, how do I do that?
Speaker 12: And so it was it was a little struggle, But
Speaker 12: the biggest struggle was finding women's clothes in the stores
Speaker 12: because I had no fucking idea. One size in this
Speaker 12: brand is a totally different size than this other brand.
Speaker 11: What the fuck is up with that?
Speaker 12: Somebody needs to like organize that shit. And then like everything, guys,
Speaker 12: you know why women ask does this make me look fat?
Speaker 12: It's because everything you wear as a woman makes you
Speaker 12: feel fat. It's like nothing comes in your size. Like
Speaker 12: I go in and I was like, you know, I'm
Speaker 12: a guy, but I'm not like huge or anything. And
Speaker 12: I go when I say, oh, this is a nice
Speaker 12: little top here, do you have this in a large?
Speaker 12: And the girls like now, it's like fuck you, okay,
Speaker 12: And so there's that, and then there's makeup, Like I
Speaker 12: found out how fucking hard it is to do your
Speaker 12: face in the mirror, and you know, guys, when you're like,
Speaker 12: come on, honey, hurry up, it's time to go. What
Speaker 12: the fuck's taking so long in the bathrooms because there's
Speaker 12: a lot of fucking worm to do in that.
Speaker 1: And while they're on the lower side of views. Liam
Speaker 1: also made sketches with Kelly between music video releases that,
Speaker 1: in retrospect are sort of reflecting on the experiences that
Speaker 1: Liam was going through in real life while trying to
Speaker 1: translate Kelly's online fame to a more traditional acting career.
Speaker 1: In August two thousand and seven, he released Kelly's Hollywood Meeting,
Speaker 1: where a series of identical looking white guy agents desperately
Speaker 1: try to sign Kelly while having basically no idea what
Speaker 1: she does.
Speaker 4: You too, if everyone's too When you touch it.
Speaker 11: Sinner, Jit said too. I went to Harvard. I have
Speaker 11: you record deal crazy?
Speaker 7: One billion Chinese?
Speaker 3: What's that means?
Speaker 2: Two billion shoes?
Speaker 11: Right, Kelly?
Speaker 2: I saw one set of footprints.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we're carrying him.
Speaker 2: In the other hand, Christ was off making a campfire or.
Speaker 1: Some gay Was that a young Chris Hardwick. No need
Speaker 1: to look him up if you haven't heard of him.
Speaker 1: He was canceled and acquired by Hurst Meeting. Yeah, no comments.
Speaker 1: This sketch continues.
Speaker 11: Kelly the Shoes video, the Shoes album. I mean it's
Speaker 11: a no brainer. We've got to sign you. We need you,
Speaker 11: we love you, we need you to be part of us.
Speaker 11: We want to make money off of well, we want
Speaker 11: to make money for you.
Speaker 1: Let's get some uh huh so yeah. Liam seems to
Speaker 1: be poking at the fact that people were eager to
Speaker 1: profit off of Kelly but didn't really know what to
Speaker 1: do with her. In the sketch, the agents are trying
Speaker 1: to get her to sell cereal called honey nuts chet bags,
Speaker 1: and because Kelly takes shit from no one, she lets
Speaker 1: these guys have it.
Speaker 3: Why Ah.
Speaker 1: The video ends with a woman flipping off the camera
Speaker 1: and a teaser for Kelly's new music video, let Me
Speaker 1: Borrow That Top. The message is clear, Kelly isn't going
Speaker 1: to sell out. Kelly is punk rock. Liam admitted in
Speaker 1: an interview with People that came out this past week
Speaker 1: that he doesn't really feel comfortable expressing anger, but Kelly does,
Speaker 1: and that's empowering for him.
Speaker 6: I get really uncomfortable with anger. It's hard for me
Speaker 6: to express it because I just kind of get scary.
Speaker 6: But when Kelly does it, there's something about it that connects,
Speaker 6: because there's a lot of injustice in the world and
Speaker 6: we've got to address it.
Speaker 1: Around this time, he also stars in a short lived
Speaker 1: VH one sitcom in two thousand and seven called I
Speaker 1: Hate My Thirties, while continuing to upload to YouTube as
Speaker 1: Kelly and himself with his other characters. The in between
Speaker 1: videos are simpler by necessity, mostly tour promotion or fan
Speaker 1: appreciation montages. The last major Kelly music video was released
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight called where do you think
Speaker 1: You're Going In That, where Kelly's mother calls out her
Speaker 1: perfect hot topic outfit and incorrectly translated Chinese character tattoo, Excuse.
Speaker 13: Me, where do you think you're going in that? You're
Speaker 13: gonna march right upstairs. That's what you're gonna do, march it.
Speaker 1: Kelly doesn't even speak in this one. It's just an
Speaker 1: increasingly demented club beat of her mother's criticisms of her outfit,
Speaker 1: while Kelly becomes increasingly glamorous and adored. It's what the
Speaker 1: kids are now calling Recession Core, released during the two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight recession. I'm not sure what's happening now.
Speaker 1: I think it is not sure what to do during
Speaker 1: the rise of fascism Core. Liam also wins a People's
Speaker 1: Choice Award at this time for Shoes, over two years
Speaker 1: after it came out in the category Best User Generated Video.
Speaker 1: Should have e got it. But even if you're a
Speaker 1: big fan of Kelly, which I consider myself to be, Shoes, Text, Mess,
Speaker 1: Breakup and can I borrow that top are as big
Speaker 1: as it got outside of the longtime fans. Make no mistake,
Speaker 1: Kelly's legacy was absolutely cemented in YouTube Loor. Liam says
Speaker 1: that he's been reached out to incessantly to recognize the
Speaker 1: twenty year anniversary of YouTube recently, and that plenty of
Speaker 1: people say watching his work is the first time they
Speaker 1: remember watching YouTube at all. But because of how little
Speaker 1: the media landscape understood the Internet at this time, Liam
Speaker 1: never saw the profit that a creator would today with
Speaker 1: an equal number of eyes and an equal number of eyes,
Speaker 1: we're talking hundreds of millions of views is basically unheard
Speaker 1: of today. It's no exaggeration to say that Liam at
Speaker 1: his peak was commanding Walter Cronkite numbers, but at the
Speaker 1: time those eyes were not perceived as having value. It's
Speaker 1: fucked right. In retrospect, it makes me genuinely irritated how
Speaker 1: it's YouTube that benefits from Liam's creativity while the system
Speaker 1: that legitimized YouTube as a starmaker never nurtured his career
Speaker 1: in the way he deserved. And this is a straight
Speaker 1: white guy. Think of all of the people more marginalized
Speaker 1: than Liam that never stood a chance at this. But
Speaker 1: Kelly continued, as did Liam, posting primarily and most successfully
Speaker 1: as his star character as well as his coterie of
Speaker 1: other characters for the next five years or so, while
Speaker 1: continuing to maintain his mainstream acting career. The most famous
Speaker 1: non Kelly character he did was Aunt, Susan, Kelly's gay aunt,
Speaker 1: who he released a second album as in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine titled Susan Walker's Greatest Tits.
Speaker 3: My Name is Susan Walker, Go Raiders.
Speaker 1: I Don't Know. Into the twenty tens, the Kelly character
Speaker 1: rolls with the times during a YouTube culture that was
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly popular, algorithmically driven and relying more on search
Speaker 1: engine optimstation then the weird ingenuity that introduced us to
Speaker 1: her in the first place. During this era, we get
Speaker 1: Kelly vlogs with the character taking questions to camera directly, Kelly,
Speaker 1: what do you.
Speaker 5: Think about Kim Kardashian while she's a hot batch? Kelly,
Speaker 5: please talk about Cony Okay? I saw Cony twenty twelve,
Speaker 5: and then I saw all the controversy and backlash against
Speaker 5: this director who made it, and I was all, this
Speaker 5: guy's just trying to help people in Africa.
Speaker 3: What did you do today?
Speaker 2: Bats lay off?
Speaker 1: But by the time the last of these videos were
Speaker 1: released in twenty twelve, YouTube had changed a lot. This
Speaker 1: was a year where pewdie Pie and Jenna Marbles were
Speaker 1: the most successful users on the platform, where being a
Speaker 1: YouTuber was now considered a job, and where users now
Speaker 1: needed to branch out to multiple different platforms in order
Speaker 1: to fully thrive. And by this time, Liam was happily
Speaker 1: married in a story that I'm going to let him
Speaker 1: tell you because it is so great. He was starting
Speaker 1: a family and behind the scenes was struggling with keeping
Speaker 1: the character up during a version of YouTube that he
Speaker 1: was somewhat less than enthusiastic about and so, while Liam
Speaker 1: continued to post videos as other characters for a while.
Speaker 1: After this, Kelly all but disappeared for a period of years,
Speaker 1: and Liam pivoted to a series of full time jobs
Speaker 1: with a skill that he wouldn't have had without Kelly,
Speaker 1: video editing for the Internet, specifically working for the Fine Brothers, Nickelodeon,
Speaker 1: and DeFi Media meaning honest trailers, smash, et cetera. Over
Speaker 1: the next several years and things as Kelly are quiet
Speaker 1: for a bit. YouTube, of course, grows into a behemoth
Speaker 1: over the twenty tens, and by the tenth anniversary of
Speaker 1: Shoes in twenty sixteen, the platform's modus operandi has shifted
Speaker 1: to click baby headlines, vaguely radicalizing content, BuzzFeed video, and,
Speaker 1: to Liam's benefit, content that got people nostalgic for the
Speaker 1: early Internet. This is the year that Liam appeared on
Speaker 1: the then Fine Brothers channel in a video called YouTubers
Speaker 1: React to Shoes viral video classic, in which either now
Speaker 1: canceled or niche YouTubers of your most notably Shane Dawson,
Speaker 1: watched and reflected on the influenced Shoes had had on
Speaker 1: the platform. In Liam's standalone videos, we get a clearer
Speaker 1: idea of who he is ten years later, and really
Speaker 1: who he's always been. A very thoughtful, sweet person who
Speaker 1: is surprised that his creation has had such an impact
Speaker 1: on people.
Speaker 5: When I was looking at all the stuff that YouTube provides,
Speaker 5: like you can look at who's watching and when they
Speaker 5: stop watching, and with that in my head, I became
Speaker 5: like an executive, thinking business rather than creative. I could
Speaker 5: never really get back to that kind of like, all right, guys,
Speaker 5: we're gonna make a video and it's cool.
Speaker 3: It was all.
Speaker 2: It became much more of a business.
Speaker 5: So the YouTubers of this episode talked about this video
Speaker 5: as being one of the most important in YouTube history,
Speaker 5: and some specifically even mentioned how you inspired.
Speaker 3: Them to do what they do on YouTube.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's incredible. Ah wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's so lovely seeing how Liam takes this in. But
Speaker 1: he had his own relationship with the Kelly character, as
Speaker 1: well as the stress and burnout that can come with
Speaker 1: internet churn and the pressure of trying to make something happen.
Speaker 1: While he and Kelly had a solid legacy, it had
Speaker 1: never quite turned into the multi million dollar career that
Speaker 1: we see today with YouTubers who are working with far
Speaker 1: less cultural cloud and it was up to him to
Speaker 1: process that. So for the moment, the character stayed inactive.
Speaker 1: Kelly didn't return to YouTube until all the way in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, when she came back for a Lockdown theme
Speaker 1: mask endorsement.
Speaker 5: Let's wear a mask. Let's wear a mask. Yeah, Let's
Speaker 5: wear a mask. Let's swear a Mask.
Speaker 1: But aside from his few other Lockdown era live streams,
Speaker 1: Kelly didn't really come back in earnest Liam and his
Speaker 1: wife Elana had a second kid and continued on their
Speaker 1: respective career paths. Liam went on to work for BuzzFeed
Speaker 1: Video and is currently an editor for The Try Guys
Speaker 1: fun Fact, but things changed last summer and Liam couldn't
Speaker 1: stay away from Kelly any longer. Last year, Liam was
Speaker 1: contacted by a Pride event in LA asking him to
Speaker 1: perform as Kelly. He hadn't performed as her on stage,
Speaker 1: or really much on stage at all for nearly a
Speaker 1: decade at that point, but the event pushed because they
Speaker 1: explained Kelly was a queer icon. After the better part
Speaker 1: of two decades creating, accidentally becoming famous from and not
Speaker 1: quite making a career of Kelly. Because of timing, Liam
Speaker 1: suddenly saw his creation in a new way, not as
Speaker 1: a vehicle, but as someone who really meant something to people,
Speaker 1: including him. My conversation with Liam Kyle Sullivan. When we
Speaker 1: come back, welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'll be at
Speaker 1: the Liam show this Thursday in Los Angeles, will you?
Speaker 1: Two weekends ago, Liam generously agreed to meet up with
Speaker 1: me at the Lyric Hyperion Theater in LA The place
Speaker 1: where he's currently building out his solo show about his
Speaker 1: history with Kelly Featuring Kelly, is also where I've built
Speaker 1: out most of my own shows over the years, and
Speaker 1: somewhere I think a lot of really special stuff happens. Anyways,
Speaker 1: this is an interview that we did in the Lyric
Speaker 1: Hyperian Cafe. Though it does sound like that, but honestly,
Speaker 1: I kind of like it. We're in a place where
Speaker 1: both comfortable in we're drinking coffee, we're shooting the shit,
Speaker 1: and we're being from New England. So this was a
Speaker 1: pretty lengthy conversation. So I'll share the first part here
Speaker 1: and we're going to air the rest in a second
Speaker 1: part this Thursday. So consider this your invitation to an
Speaker 1: informal sixteenth minute hang with Liam and Jamie Go Bruins.
Speaker 5: My name is Liam Kyle Sullivan, and I'm known for
Speaker 5: the Shoes and Muffins videos on YouTube that I made
Speaker 5: almost twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: That's that feels crazy for me. I can't imagine how.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's like it was yesterday and other times like yeah,
Speaker 5: that feels about right.
Speaker 1: Twenty years at the Lyric, which is where you're workshopping
Speaker 1: your show, is this the first time you're talking extensively
Speaker 1: about your life and like about Liam on stage and
Speaker 1: like your connection to Kelly.
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well yeah, I think it was because last year you
Speaker 5: got an invite to perform Kelly at a club downtown.
Speaker 5: It was a show called What's My Age Again? Oh okay,
Speaker 5: it's a nostalgia show. Nice at precinct.
Speaker 2: I talk about it in the show.
Speaker 5: I at first, I said, in my head, I said
Speaker 5: no because I kind of, you know, closed that chapter
Speaker 5: at least in my mind. I'd made one video during
Speaker 5: the pandemic about masks, but I hadn't performed live as
Speaker 5: Kelly in easily ten years.
Speaker 1: I think was there like a specific decision made to
Speaker 1: be like I'm done or it just sort of happened.
Speaker 2: No, it just sort of happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was hot for I don't know two three years,
Speaker 5: and then by year five, I was like, oh, really
Speaker 5: cooled off. And I wasn't able to parlay it Hi
Speaker 5: Jake I into more, you know, traditional television or film success,
Speaker 5: and I just couldn't keep up with how the landscape
Speaker 5: had changed. She had to post so much, and I
Speaker 5: was still kind of operating on the release of a
Speaker 5: music video every six months or something like that. Right,
Speaker 5: I was still in that mind frame, so I just
Speaker 5: kind of stopped. And then when I got that email,
Speaker 5: I was like, Wow, this is something I never thought
Speaker 5: I would do again.
Speaker 2: I ended up doing it.
Speaker 1: How did it feel?
Speaker 2: It felt amazing? It felt really good good.
Speaker 5: There were so many people who I met who were
Speaker 5: just really happy to meet me. And I was under
Speaker 5: the impression that, you know, I was kind of like
Speaker 5: old news, but people told me, no, I saw you
Speaker 5: when I was like thirteen. It just inspired me, you know,
Speaker 5: I thought maybe I could be a YouTuber or I
Speaker 5: can do drag.
Speaker 2: Even somebody told me it helped them to like out.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, it's amazing, right, And I just felt so good.
Speaker 5: About that, and I realized that I hadn't really engaged
Speaker 5: with that audience because I was thirty two when I
Speaker 5: made the video. Talking to kids online seemed inappropriate at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 1: A lot of YouTubers don't seem to realize, well, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: I think maybe times have changed a little.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but at the time, it was new,
Speaker 5: and so it just it seemed like, no, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to engage with a thirteen year old online or
Speaker 5: I didn't know how old people were.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm so glad you had that experience at presume,
Speaker 1: because it does feel like with the Internet, there like
Speaker 1: there is like a different kind of attachment. It feels
Speaker 1: weirdly closer. And I don't know why that is, but
Speaker 1: I think, especially in the early days of.
Speaker 5: YouTube, I think also there was no algorithm controlling what
Speaker 5: you saw, right, so it felt more like I found this.
Speaker 5: It was more like the music business used to be,
Speaker 5: where you go and find records or find bands on
Speaker 5: your own, and they felt so personal to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think maybe that's part of it, because it was
Speaker 5: new and corporations hadn't found it yet.
Speaker 1: When I look back in YouTube history and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, if you were on the for you page
Speaker 1: anytime before twenty thirteen, it was because a person saw
Speaker 1: your video and was like, this is amazing, and it
Speaker 1: just feels like, you know, when a person sees your video,
Speaker 1: there is no agenda other than this video is really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it felt a little like a meritocracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened to that?
Speaker 2: What happened.
Speaker 1: Anyways? Precinct? Yeah, everythinct.
Speaker 2: So that experience was so inspiring to me.
Speaker 5: Then I thought, why don't I do a show like
Speaker 5: go back to because I used to do live shows
Speaker 5: all the time, right, I called them a Liam's show,
Speaker 5: and I do sketches, I do short videos. That's where
Speaker 5: I first started making videos was for my live show.
Speaker 5: It wasn't for YouTube, and so because YouTube didn't exist.
Speaker 5: But I thought, oh, let me try this again. And
Speaker 5: this time instead of doing a bunch of characters and
Speaker 5: like stand up stuff, I could do like like tell
Speaker 5: my story. And it was challenging.
Speaker 2: Because I talk about this in the show too.
Speaker 5: When people know the Kelly character and shoes and then
Speaker 5: they meet me, they're kind of like, huh, you're not slay.
Speaker 5: You know, you're not fabulous or sassy and I'm like, no,
Speaker 5: I'm not, but it's in there. So I don't know
Speaker 5: if you ever saw a Team Wolf with Michael J.
Speaker 5: Fox where he turns into a wolf and he's an
Speaker 5: amazing basketball player, but when he's a human, you know,
Speaker 5: he's just okay. Yeah, I'm kind of in that zone now.
Speaker 5: I'm like, no, I want to play the game as
Speaker 5: a human.
Speaker 1: As myself, and then Kelly's your enterteen Wolf.
Speaker 2: Kelly's my enterteen Wolf.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now is it like about that period of your life?
Speaker 1: Is it about your whole life?
Speaker 2: I mean there's whole life stuff sprinkled in.
Speaker 5: Like I talk about my mother and my father, my sister,
Speaker 5: my friends, people who inspired me, some celebrities that I met,
Speaker 5: the experience in the industry, and how unique it was
Speaker 5: at that particular time. I talk a lot about that
Speaker 5: and where I'm at now and how that experience last
Speaker 5: year at Precinct was kind of a springboard for other gigs,
Speaker 5: Like I'm glad that I can still do it. I
Speaker 5: remember being scared to get on stage again with a microphone,
Speaker 5: and you know, the music and the crowd is all
Speaker 5: like pomped up, and I got there and I forgot
Speaker 5: how to work a microphone, Like there was a little
Speaker 5: on button and I completely forgot to turn it on
Speaker 5: and I just started.
Speaker 1: Talking that long.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So then I was like, oh yeah, oh yeah, turn
Speaker 2: it on. And people thought it was a bit like
Speaker 2: that I was being funny, so I played it off
Speaker 2: that way. The crowd was so warm.
Speaker 5: They just bullied me, you know, they kept me up
Speaker 5: and loving and like I could have fallen on my
Speaker 5: face and they would have been.
Speaker 2: Like, great, okay, it good to see you man.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Hearing people's stories was just like, oh my god, I
Speaker 5: got to keep doing this, you know. And so I
Speaker 5: went up to San Francisco. I booked a gig at
Speaker 5: San Francisco Pride, which was amazing. People would tell me,
Speaker 5: I hope you're getting your.
Speaker 2: Flowers, you know, yeah, and it felt so good. I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, okay, yeah, I'll take some flowers, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've earned them, and like finding them sort of
Speaker 1: this new joy in it. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's a total new joy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because for a while I felt really trapped by
Speaker 5: it because when you're famous for something. Was it Taylor
Speaker 5: Swift who said you'd kind of get frozen in that time,
Speaker 5: like I couldn't seem to break out of it, right
Speaker 5: I had, I had to keep doing it, and I
Speaker 5: think it kind of made me feel like a robot,
Speaker 5: like do the song and then go home, or do
Speaker 5: you know, do something, Kelly, that's it.
Speaker 2: And so I felt I'm not growing at all. I
Speaker 2: feel a little like a little hackish, you know.
Speaker 1: More with Liam Kyle Sullivan when we're back, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to sixteenth minute. Here's more of my interview with Liam
Speaker 1: Kyle Sullivan. I want to go back a little bit
Speaker 1: to that first moment, so Kelly came out of your
Speaker 1: live shows or.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was doing sketch comedy in the late nineties
Speaker 5: early two thousands here in La I was with a
Speaker 5: sketch group called Another Showcase Showdown with the Acne Comedy Theater.
Speaker 5: I think sketch really helped me as a performer, because
Speaker 5: before that I was doing like straight theater like I
Speaker 5: would do in Boston.
Speaker 1: Nicey, oh, I've got questions about Yeah, I've got questions
Speaker 1: about mass jests. I've noticed her.
Speaker 2: Hat oh yeah yeah, Fenway.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I would do plays and I did you know Shakespeare
Speaker 5: and Bricked and Noel Coward and because that's what theaters
Speaker 5: were doing, and so that's where I auditioned, and luckily
Speaker 5: I got cast. But when I moved out here, I
Speaker 5: was like, okay, let me keep doing theater and that's
Speaker 5: what I knew, and I did some plays, but you know,
Speaker 5: I was like, well, I have to get into TV.
Speaker 5: I didn't move out here to just do theater.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I was doing showcases and stuff like that, and I
Speaker 2: was doing a play. I was doing The Missing.
Speaker 5: By Moliere and a friend of mine said, you know,
Speaker 5: you should look into sketch comedy because you're you're kind
Speaker 5: of out there like your characters.
Speaker 2: When you do something, you go balls to the wall.
Speaker 5: And I was like, yeah, that's how you're supposed to
Speaker 5: do it, right, And she's like, but I think I
Speaker 5: think sketch would really suit you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like okay.
Speaker 5: So that's when I found sketch and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: improv sketch, you know, stand up. All that came later
Speaker 5: and I was like, oh, okay, this is really fun.
Speaker 5: I can write my own stuff. I didn't know I
Speaker 5: could do that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like and you had the hardest part out
Speaker 1: of the way, where you already knew how to perform.
Speaker 5: And later when I found sketch, I branch out into
Speaker 5: playing women because I have, you know, kind of an
Speaker 5: effeminate I'm an effeminate heterosexual. I'll just say it, And
Speaker 5: so I leaned into that and I've I've found much
Speaker 5: more power in that and artistic freedom than trying to
Speaker 5: butcher up and parts that I would never get cast at.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not going to play at Jock.
Speaker 1: Were you a comedy fan as a kid? Did you
Speaker 1: have like favorites as a kid.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I loved comedy. My sister and I used to
Speaker 5: wake up early to watch The Three Stooges because they
Speaker 5: came on at like six in the morning on Saturday mornings,
Speaker 5: I guess later SNL. We were one of the first
Speaker 5: families that I knew to get a VCR. My father
Speaker 5: was a he worked at Channel five WCVB.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he did editing and stuff, and he knew all
Speaker 5: that technology really well. He had to convince me to
Speaker 5: buy a computer really yeah.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: Back when I was like, you know, late twenties or whatever, Like,
Speaker 5: I didn't have email for a long time. Kids in
Speaker 5: the hall too, when I was a teenager. I loved
Speaker 5: kids in the hall.
Speaker 1: A very drag heavy sketch group, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they did it like it was not like
Speaker 5: they were playing a woman, yes, doing a glamorous thing.
Speaker 5: And that's how that informed me too. I got to
Speaker 5: meet Bruce McCullough, amazing, I'm going viral, and it was
Speaker 5: so cool to sit down with him and have a
Speaker 5: conversation like we were peers, Like he treated me like
Speaker 5: a peer, he called me brother. It was so great
Speaker 5: and nothing came of it, but there's just that one
Speaker 5: meeting was so you know how they say never meet
Speaker 5: your heroes, not always.
Speaker 2: He was wonderful, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Montifaison. It's like they do a lot of drag,
Speaker 1: but they're sort of making fun of women in the
Speaker 1: way that they do drag. Yeah, but the kids in
Speaker 1: the hall never were, and Kelly never.
Speaker 2: Was, Like it was just like this is just this
Speaker 2: is the character, and yeah, this is a real person.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I wanted so badly to make her look and act
Speaker 5: like a real person. I mean she's a little exaggerated,
Speaker 5: but just the look especially, and I remember getting comments.
Speaker 2: Like are you a boy or a girl? And I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 5: Because I wanted people to kind of not see it
Speaker 5: as like, oh, here's some guy thinking he's making fun
Speaker 5: of women or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's not what I wanted and I never felt that way.
Speaker 1: Did you originally make these videos to be posted? Did
Speaker 1: you make them to be shown live?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: How did that?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What made you decide to add in video elements?
Speaker 2: Well, I had been making short videos for my live show.
Speaker 5: So I would do like a character on stage with
Speaker 5: a monologue or a song, and then I'd show a
Speaker 5: video and go backstage and change as a new character
Speaker 5: and come back out.
Speaker 2: I had about an hour.
Speaker 5: Another aspect was, well, what about a film festival like
Speaker 5: slam Dance and so shoes did not get accepted.
Speaker 1: But wow, egg on their fucking face, right, No, no.
Speaker 2: And then I had a website.
Speaker 5: And I'd seen what Lonely Island had done, right, and
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, okay, so you make a website
Speaker 5: and you put videos up and then you invite industry
Speaker 5: to that somehow like was it was not a fully
Speaker 5: formed plan at all, right, but.
Speaker 1: Just kind of like an online portfolio kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But it was also like, I want to create
Speaker 5: my own work, because that is a satisfying can be
Speaker 5: really fun. See it gets you working, even though you're
Speaker 5: not getting paid, you're working. So when you're working, you
Speaker 5: have a vibe right when you walk into someplace like
Speaker 5: an audition, that says, hey, I've got shit going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this isn't my whole day.
Speaker 1: The video is taken from your website and uploaded to YouTube,
Speaker 1: not by you originally.
Speaker 2: Originally yeah wow. So how long did it.
Speaker 1: Take you to find out it was a there and
Speaker 1: be very popular?
Speaker 2: It took a month or so.
Speaker 5: Because now things go viral and they're kind of over
Speaker 5: like it takes maybe a day or a week or
Speaker 5: you know, very short time.
Speaker 2: But back then it was still.
Speaker 5: So new, like viral video didn't exist really, so it
Speaker 5: took people time to find things. You know. I think
Speaker 5: you had to like send a link via email. I
Speaker 5: heard about it word of mouth, wild Yeah, someone just
Speaker 5: told me in person, said do you know about this YouTube?
Speaker 2: You're on there?
Speaker 5: And so I made a channel I put my video up.
Speaker 5: So there were so many iterations, so the word of
Speaker 5: it out there. And Muffins too, I remember very specifically
Speaker 5: the one there was an upload of muffins that had
Speaker 5: thirty million views, and it was some other person who
Speaker 5: did it?
Speaker 1: Crazy?
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: What was your relationship with the internet?
Speaker 2: Like before all of this, I had no relationship whatsoever.
Speaker 5: So this like forces you to change that, right, Like
Speaker 5: oh yeah, I had to adapt myself. Yeah, even email
Speaker 5: you didn't want to days to get to back justice people.
Speaker 5: They'd be like, I just emailed just I'm like, I
Speaker 5: don't come on guys, because when you know, things started
Speaker 5: heating up for me. I kind of had to in
Speaker 5: those meetings that I got, kind of explain a little bit,
Speaker 5: like how I got to where I was, how I
Speaker 5: made it to this meeting.
Speaker 1: You've got eyes on you, but they're not on your account,
Speaker 1: Like what? Yeah? What was what did you first do?
Speaker 5: I mean my first reaction was excitement, Yeah, because I
Speaker 5: felt like this was a great thing.
Speaker 2: This was a showcase for me. People were seeing me.
Speaker 5: I was getting attention and maybe they would find their
Speaker 5: way back to my site and know who I was
Speaker 5: or I I loved it. I loved seeing that people
Speaker 5: liked my work. The fact that it was other people
Speaker 5: uploading it didn't even read as like oh hey wait.
Speaker 1: Right, because I wouldn't have been weird done Really, it
Speaker 1: wasn't it?
Speaker 2: Was the Revshare.
Speaker 5: It was like this underground thing, yeah, that the grown
Speaker 5: ups didn't know about yet, and it was really fun
Speaker 5: and cool.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah, I loved it. And only later when
Speaker 2: revshare became a thing did I realize what I'd missed out,
Speaker 2: Like if I'd.
Speaker 1: Waited a year or two, It's like, how could you
Speaker 1: have known?
Speaker 5: But how could I? Yeah, no one could predict the future,
Speaker 5: and I've stopped beating myself up about that. I talk
Speaker 5: about that in the show too, how I needed therapy.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much again to Liam. And if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this and are in the LA area the
Speaker 1: week this episode comes out, I will see you at
Speaker 1: the show on February twenty seventh. I am so excited.
Speaker 1: And Part two of this interview will be released on
Speaker 1: February twenty seventh, this Thursday, and you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: tune back in to hear how Liam and his wife
Speaker 1: Alana met. It's truly amazing. There's so much more I
Speaker 1: could say about Liam's work, about its effect on YouTube,
Speaker 1: about its effect on drag, about its very personal legacy
Speaker 1: for a lot of kids who are now adults, and
Speaker 1: remember Kelly as this cool punk rock, Fuck you Mom
Speaker 1: channel of early Internet anger. But honestly, I'm just so
Speaker 1: personally very inspired by Liam, not just by his creativity,
Speaker 1: but by his willingness to connect with his creation's legacy.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more to come. See you Thursday.
Speaker 1: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and
Speaker 1: iHeart Rodops. It is written, hosted, and produced by me
Speaker 1: Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 1: from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog
Speaker 1: producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and my pet rock
Speaker 1: Bird who will outlive us all. Bye h