The amount of bizarre, and sometimes worthless, news on the internet seems to have no limit. In fact, if one pays attention to what’s trending on social media, news stories of lesser importance are probably read more than stories that really impact the world in a significant way. So where does that leave the story of a man and his quest to collect millions of VHS tapes?
Ryan Beitz has gained international attention this week as news of his mission to collect every VHS copy of the 1994 blockbuster Speed has proliferated through the media like rain through my roof. What started out as a Vice article on Monday quickly expanded to include Good Morning America, NPR’s All Things Considered and dozens of other media outlets, all clamoring to cover his confusing mission to collect every copy of a movie that matters less than Heaven is for Real.
I met Beitz last summer when his former punk/hardcore/grind band Dislich played a house show in Richland, Wash. I attended. His band eventually made a trip to Laramie to play a nearly vacant show at my house, and that is when he first told me about his ambition to collect every VHS copy of Speed that exists – not DVD or BluRay, he makes sure to clarify. Laser disk copies are only held onto for bartering for more VHS copies.
We had a good laugh and I said I would dig up any copies of Speed I could come up with. Now it seems if I had taken my empty promises seriously, I could have been part of a cultural phenomenon to do utterly useless things as a joke, that somehow digressed into being art.
I spoke with Beitz yesterday to ask him about the fervor his peculiar quest has reached. Enjoying his newfound notoriety, he was kind enough to squeeze me in between interviews with arguably more notable media outlets.
Hey dude – what’s up?
You’re an interviewing a famous person now.
It’s funny because I have this guy that I’m doing a podcast with now and I told him I had to call you to do this interview and then I also did two radio stations this morning and the local news came to my house.
How did it all start with the media? Where did the dam break?
It was the Vice article. This lady contacted me a few months ago and said she was interested in pitching the story to Vice. She called me back and said she was coming to my town to do a story on me.
Where is she from?
Georgia Perry, she writes for a Santa Cruz newspaper, I think. She wrote the article and Vice put it up. That day, it became the most read story on Vice, like it was the editor’s pick on the homepage. If you searched Vice and went to their page, the first thing you’d see was my face; it was so ridiculous.
What happened then?
That day, a few of us were all like, “This is awesome,” so we started just taking every interview and responding to every negative comment on Vice immediately. I didn’t get off the internet until three in the morning. Then I got an email from a radio station in Toronto wanting to do an interview for his morning radio show. So I did that at 3 a.m. and while I was waiting for that, another radio show called Kidd Kraddick and apparently it’s one of the most listened to morning shows, like it’s syndicated all over the U.S. So I had to stay up till five to do that. I only slept for four or five hours and I woke up and Good Morning America had emailed me; a bunch of British newspapers, tons of messages everywhere, even a Japanese corporation got a hold of me to do a reality show!
What? Are you serious?
Isn’t that f—ed up? They emailed me asking how I would want to do the show, what I would be comfortable with.
So the Japanese producers want there to be a show just following you while you travel?
That’s what they implied. I am going to write a proposal. They said in an email, “There’s got to be a lot more than 500 copies around the country” and left it at that. I think they want me to go around searching for them.
What do you think it is that they find so fascinating about the project?
I think I put on the character well enough. When I was talking to the Vice lady, I was just like, “Make me seem crazy.” I think it’s that people want to live the fantasy. They want to believe there’s a guy who’s a zealot for Speed and just weird and off and being from Idaho-I mean, we’re from Idaho and Wyoming, so we can tell people we are from those places and they will go, “What?” and just be confused. It’s like with our music and making people think it’s the most brutal thing they’ve ever seen and it’s all just a fantasy people are eating up. I sound professional whenever I respond to emails, but when they get me on the phone, I just try to seem as nutty as I can and I never acquiesce to the idea that I won’t get them all. I say, “No, I’m going to get them all.” My analogy for that is you can never know if you’ve really made the world a good place, but you never give up.
I notice you’re halfway to your Kickstarter goal – what’s going to happen when you’ve met your financial benchmark?
Once the van is up and running, we’re gonna do a phase two where we run another Kick Starter-unless the Japanese corporation pays for it-and then we’ll do a World Speed Project tour; similar to what we do with the band. We’ll do gallery shows and hunt the nation for copies.
Would you ever do spoken word or anything like that? I think you’d be great at it.
Totally, we’d be into all that. To me, it’s like with any art project besides music, I’ll just let it go where it wants to go and then I’ll try to cope the best I can in terms of dealing with whatever presents itself. A friend at Santa Fe college of the Arts is talking tot he student body about having me come deliver a lecture. The Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art wants me to come do a gallery show.
Weird. I mean it’s awesome, it’s just crazy how as soon as it’s trending, everyone wants a piece of it.
This artist lady from England emailed me and asked if I had read any Frederic Jameson and wanted to talk to me about postmodern theory and I have Jameson’s book right behind me in my room. People can interface with it on different levels. On one level, it’s just an insane dude and to other people, he’s an artist. I just tell anyone who asks that I’m an artist because then you don’t have to tell them anything else.
It’s kind of an explanation in itself. I’ve noticed the most used quote since the Vice article is the Freud reference. Why do you think they’re so fascinated by it? Does it help them get it?
When I was talking to the Vice reporter, I said, “I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the project.” Totally candid, won’t stop talking and because I studied philosophy I’m bound to talk about it. I’m super used to all the theory stuff so it comes out in my explanations. I think maybe it’s that it was a clear explanation of a Freudian idea that goes beyond, “You want to f— your mother” and people really got freaked out by that. They only see the image that I’m a nut who probably read too much Freud and now thinks he’s an artist.
What do you think they think you are like outside the project?
I’ve tried to come across as insane because insane comes with a certain level of being unintelligible in the sense that if i were if i really easy to figure out, I’d be sane and there’d be a really simple explanation for what’s going on. They’d say, “This guy is an artist who’s simply trying to collect copies of Speed,” but I haven’t been telling people i’m an artist, I just say this is closer to art than anything else and people can take it wherever they want. That lady from England can say, “You are familiar with Frederic Jameson and you’re putting on a synthetic postmodern personality.” I’m very keen to that, but another person can say when they call, “Don’t freak out, I just want to interview you” because they’re worried I’m going to be crazy.
Do you ever think they’re reading too much into it? I remember when you told me about this when you were in Laramie, it seemed to me more like it was just a joke that became funnier the longer it kept going.
That’s always been the agenda. I always just said, “I’m going to collect them all.” It was just stupid and funny. Because someone wanted to do a story on it, I just gave them that in it’s most insane form. Like with you, I know you, so it was just a dumb thing I’ve been doing. It’s a little bombshell you drop on people and then you send me copies, but they wanted a story. I never promoted this until now. Lot’s of people in underground music know about it.
What do you have going right now besides the project?
I’ve just been applying to grad school this last whole year and playing rock music. Then this blew up, but luckily it’s after all my deadlines were due for grad school so I just have ton of free time to be on the internet and do every interview.
What were your detractors’ positions in the negative comments on the Vice article?
I’ve been accused of ripping of the Everything is Terrible Project that tries to collect every copy of Jerry McGuire, but I started my project two years before that. People said I tried to avoid mentioning them or were pissed Vice didn’t do an article on them. One of them tweeted me and said we should do a gallery show together, but the rest just call me a copy cat. It’s the other way around if anything. Besides that, the number one thing people like to say is, “You’ll never get my copy” and my response to that is, “You’re going to die one day and then it will be my copy.”
Do you think you’ll come to Laramie at some point?
Oh yeah, I’ll try. If the van gets fixed and we do a tour, we’re totally coming to Laramie.
Who else is on the team?
Sol [Solo Rodriguez, also ex-Dislich] is called “Muscle Tongue,” because he’s the muscle and he can speak Spanish and French. My friends Clyde and Alexa are the digital media interns. My girlfriend Mary goes through my email and coordinates who I’m supposed to talk to. I actually missed CBS. That’s something a real famous person would do. My sister said she wants to be my publicist.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve listened to All Things Considered almost every day for years. As someone who always knew I would never do anything important or interesting enough to be on All Things Considered, can you explain what that’s like?
Totally, me too. You know, when you see the email, you’re like “What?” You can’t believe it but this is what they do for a living so they’re just normal about it. So I call Art Silverman, the producer of the show, and he says “Do you have any microphones besides your phone?” and I’m like, “I run a recording studio, of course I have a microphone.” And he kept congratulating me on the high audio quality. They are just lighthearted and keep saying things like, “we really enjoy the project Ryan, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.”
Which has been the most thrilling interview you’ve done?
Good Morning America says they have 40 million viewers every morning so that’s insane. That’s the most insane one, I just kept f—ing laughing, but NPR was the one that was really cool to me. One was seriously cool and one was out of this world.
