Arts Interview: HERE'S THE THING's Miska Draskoczy and Jennifer Howd

ARTS INTERVIEW: Here's The Thing's Miska Draskoczy and Jennifer Howd

Producer and filmmaker discuss the upcoming season of the successful web series as well as their stop in Las Vegas itself

Vegas Outsider: To begin and provide a bit of context for the reader, could you give a brief description of the show’s concept itself and then discuss your reasoning for visiting Vegas for the upcoming season?

Miska Draskoczy: The show itself is a web series I’ve been doing for about a year now. I live in New York City, so most of the episodes were done there and a couple in the area where I grew up. It’s gotten a really great, grassroots response so far; people are really into the show and have been looking forward to seeing more. My whole vision for the show overall is to do it on as wide a range of people as possible, young, old, gay, straight, rural, urban, everything I can get.

My vision then for this trip was that even though New York is very diverse, it still only is just one city within the country. For it to grow, I really wanted to get an even larger slice of the pie so to speak. And thus, this road trip was born where we would go across the country and find as many people as we could to profile. Las Vegas is one of the classic American cities and one that no trip across America would be complete without that. Because of that fact, we were definitely drawn to stop in.

VO: I see, well I know that in the Vegas episode you guys speak with one Kye Brackett, who is Barry Manilow’s backup singer as well as choreographer, and I’m curious to know how you found him in the first place and what drew him to you as a potential subject?

MD: Well Kye is someone that Jennifer knew through friends of her. From what she told me, he sounded really interesting in that here’s someone who works in the Las Vegas entertainment industry. Las Vegas has this sort of casual eye, comprised of illusions, surface, whatever you wish to call it, but I was curious to learn the deeper story of the people who actually live there. The way this show is setup is that when an episode begins you are only provided with the subject’s name, where he or she lives, and that person’s occupation.

It invites you to make projections as to who this person might be based on that initial information. So if you hear about this person who lives in Las Vegas and works in the entertainment industry, you may have one idea about him right off the bat. But then the big reveal comes and you see this full, eager person behind it. Kye just blew us out of the water, he’s an incredibly spiritual guy, a musician with a deep philosophy about his life and career, as well as some very interesting stories. He’s in his fifties now and has traveled all around the world with Barry and shared a lot of cool stuff with us. He was great and it turned out to be one of the best interviews we conducted on the trip so far.

VO: Seeing Vegas as it stands now during the recession as well as through Kye’s insights, what are your impressions of the city now versus any preconceptions you may have had before making the trip?

MD: Again, Kye had a really interesting story which was that he wanted to buy a house but was the kind of person who never saw himself as settling down, didn’t know if he could afford it, etc. However, he set this very, determined intention of wanting his own house, so he wrote this very specific manifesto and tacked it up on his wall. Within just a couple of weeks, he found this amazing house which was a part of the mortgage bust situation and really made it work. His place is beautiful and he’s living a very homey life. This isn’t a guy who fits the stereotypical Vegas image of being very transient, living in hotel rooms or having some weird, shadow life. Instead here’s a guy who’s very happy, entertains a lot, and lives a robust life. For me, it was interesting to see how people are actually living in Las Vegas and how things work behind the scenes if you will.

Jennifer Howd: And in terms of visiting Las Vegas, I’ve actually been there many times. My previous business partner and I used to go to Vegas for retreats, because we didn’t have a lot of money. We loved being able to stay in some big, fancy, awesome hotel for relatively little money, live really well and take in the night life; but then during the day drive out to Red Rock and Valley of Fire and spend the day in the beautiful nature that is literally minutes away from this incredible, urban landscape. So there’s this really interesting dichotomy that you face when visiting Vegas that I haven’t really experienced in any other city. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time on this trip to go out to the desert but it was definitely on our list and for me is one of the bonuses of visiting that town if you don’t have a lot of money in this economy.

VO: Finally, as you have traveled across this country and interviewed a wide variety of subjects, what ideas or themes have emerged that are common to them, if any at all?

MD: I’d say that two big themes have emerged so far. First, we saw a lot of interest in so-called green or natural things, which cuts across political demographics. We spoke with a hawk owner in South Florida and an eighty-nine year old rancher. These people were not card-carrying Democrats, but on both sides of the spectrum this same theme emerged of basically how are we managing our resources? What are we really doing to the environment around us?

Tangential to that was a real hunger for spiritual connection, whether it was a Southern Baptist woman with an intense belief in God or another woman who runs the UFL Watchtower, whose beliefs are somewhere between traditional religion and believing in aliens. She’s a very spiritual person though and exemplifies what happened during these interviews. We were able to cut to the heart of people’s souls and reveal their spiritually and how it guides them through life. You can argue that those are the results we found because of who we are and sought out, or see it again as a larger theme that runs through all of our lives as humans and the show has tapped into the meaty core of it.

JH: I completely echo everything Mizka just said and to add to it, an overarching theme I’m seeing as well through our interviews is the sense of interconnectivity that we all have but may not easily realize. We’ve interviewed people from completely different ends of the political spectrum and any other spectrum you can think of. However, every single one of these people opened their doors to us, let us photograph the most intimate objects in their homes, let us into their lives, and completely poured out their hearts and souls to us telling us what is most important to them in life. That really blew me away; the possibility that exists for people to have these deep connected conversations with strangers and it’s really changed my life I must say.

To learn more about the series itself as well as check out past episodes, go to http://www.heresthethingtv.com/ Expect the upcoming season featuring Las Vegas and other locales this Fall.