 My name is Dante Luna. I'm a creative from Boston. I photographed 48 or 50 states of documented culture, art, history, nature, pop culture, all over the country. Right now, we're in Providence, Rhode Island. It's where at the biggest show in the smallest state. It's a really small state, you know, and it doesn't reflect the ambitions of the people who put this show together. A place where I get to exercise ideas and meet creative people. I love interviewing artists and craftsmen. And one of the things I love to do here is just ask questions. I like learning from other artists and other people who have dedicated their life to their art. That's what I do with most of my time here. So the convention is usually a three-day weekend. And for most of the time, I'm asking questions and trying to get the most of those situations. What about Island Comic Con? I believe has believed in me just as much as I believe in this show. I think that's the reason why I come back and why I continue to work with them. Me the chance to do what I do. I've come here five years in a row now and I'm growing exponentially. I multiply every time I walk through the doors. Your mom would think about you being all hunked up like that. Well, my mom said, go to college, get a bachelor's degree, and you get tattoos. I finished my bachelor's degree at 20 years old. I gave her my diploma, my degree. I never seen it again. I mean as a human being, you know, for me it's a journey. I tell people confidence is not something you can acquire overnight. I think it's something you build and something you work on. Once I grasped my head around that, I knew confidence was something I'd always need to work on. When I was young, I had to deal with the speech and hearing issue. So I had to overcome it virtually. So basically, every day when it comes down to it, I just love competing with myself, maximizing what I can do, and take it one day at a time. Because if you do that, you're rich, because everything else is secondary. It'd be nice, be nice to yourself, be nice to other people. Don't be mean. They'll be in a hole. You have a really strong relationship with the people. Have you always been that way? At least, I respect people like you, because in a position of power, you continue to talk to the people. To me it's important because nobody's better than anybody. I care what kind of culture you come from. It's just all about being respectful, respecting, because most people, sometimes they become egocentric or money-empowered. They feel like they're superior, which I disagree with them, because I feel like we're here for a short time, and it's all about being nice and judging people for who they are, then not what you hear about the person. I enjoy doing the comic convention because as a child, I didn't have anything like this to attend, and I would give anything to shake a celebrity hand, because I was like a real-life ultimately. So basically, this kind of convention, I feel like the fan get a chance to meet me for the first time, they have a smile on their face, they take pictures, they ask questions, and that connection, because it's a very powerful, good people walk away with that positive effect, and that really affects your whole life. To me, that's why it's important, not here just making money, it's all about that connection, knowing that I can put a smile on people's faces, especially children, because the lack of the of the Hulk now 40 years, and I'm still very proud of it. My incredible Hulk. Oh my God. I have a good relationship with the Hulk. My Hulk was something my uncle drew a lot before he passed away, and it was my connection with him. He used to always draw me the Hulk. Wow. How are you reflecting on being a part of storytelling, having that be a part of your life, you know? It's kind of like, you know, the whole point of being in the film industries, like it's storytelling, and you are bringing characters to life, and you realize, well, maybe in person, I'm not the best at telling stories around a table, but hopefully I can do this through the medium of film, or television, or whatever, you know, but I don't know, hopefully you move people and you make them feel you. Normally, from our point of view, it's like, we have a story that we want to get out and we want to tell. There you go. Well, the advice that I give to everyone that has a dream is similar to, you know, what Walt Disney said, if you can dream it, you can do it. And a lot of people, you know, they don't really understand what that concept means, and that concept means two things. One, if you want to do something, just start doing it. Yeah, maybe you're not going to get paid for it, but whatever that is, whatever you're passionate about, just start doing it right then and there. And the other part of the advice is never give up. So you want to act, I mean, you know, people have phones, start acting on your friends' cameras, you know what I mean? On their camera phones, get together with other people that have similar interests. You want to draw, start drawing. Just because you have a dream doesn't mean you have to like go out there and get the job doing it. You need to gain experience first. So then you'll find out whether or not you really actually love doing that. Because if you love doing it, when you're not getting paid to do it, then you'll love it forever. My name is Brandon, the shapeshifter. I go to different cons all around, like in Boston, New England area. I go to Dragon Con every single year. I do multiple costumes, because it's so fun. I'm known for doing Maleficent, Zeus, Poseidon, and now Dazzler. So last day, the last day, tonight. Raymond Ramis, cosplayer, artist. I like to go to the conventions. I like to dress up and my superhero stuff. I like to make superhero stuff. I've been doing this since my first costume in back in 2007. And I went to my first show, which was basically people who put this one on their first show. I've been going to every one of their shows since. And you know, just represent the cosplay community the best I can. I like to share a lot of my work on Facebook, you know, so people can see what I'm doing. If they're doing anything similar, maybe I'll give them some ideas, help them out. I was talking to the promoter and I said, I have an idea about maybe doing a panel or a workshop, more of a workshop than a panel, about building cosplay. Just 101 stuff, nothing too major, major, but just enough to give people an understanding of what it takes, what they'll need, the procedures that they're going to need to do resources, tools, whatever you might need to get started. Does anybody ever use contact cement in here? Yeah, if you have, you know, it works really well. And basically, you have to put it on both sides of whatever it is that you're going to, you want to bond together. Let it dry for about like five minutes. It'll actually, that's the first piece of iron I ever knew that applied while it was dry or drying. You want to give a slight tack to it. I am Carly Wynn. I do a lot of sewing. So that's a lot of my cosplay work. Sewing recently got into some warbless stuff. But I've actually found that other plastics work as well for some things like armor. This is actually used to be cat litter to the cat litter and clean it up and you can just it's plastic plastic, you can melt it, you can change its shape, you can form it into things. You got to kind of have to keep going with things, like take scraps of stuff and make it into other things. Well, I've been in the comic books forever. Since I was a kid, I'd watch X-Men on TV, I started reading comic books, started reading Sonic, I was really into Sonic the Hedgehog comics, Archie comics. And then actually, I went to Japan, I got into Lolita culture. And that's where I learned all the sewing because they have a lot of how to choose on how to sew all these dresses. And then I started going to cons and it was like, oh, I would like that costume. Well, I can sew. I would like to dress up as Harley Quinn. I would like to dress up as magic. I would like to help other people dress up as things, too. We kind of trade off on skills. I got going a lot of props and stuff. I'm able to just throw a leg together like this is actually a Raymond's doing a demo on this right now. It's really just EVA foam, what you see in like exercise rooms. Take a hot knife to it, take some heat to it, you can shape it whatever you want. And then she can do all the sewing work and all the stitch work. So together, we can throw together pretty good costumes. I can do the work on like hard solid props. She can work on any clothing or cloth when you're together. And some things are trickier than you think like sewing this stuff is the final. It's like for a couch. And most people don't know how to sew the, the leathers and the leathers through a sewing machine. It gets very It's kind of break your needles, break your machine. Yeah. This was a sword that was in Kmart, but magic has this like really silvery stuff. So we spray painted a sword and it looks perfect. You know, it's deemony. It's like we didn't need to do much with it. So sometimes you can find like little things to sort of augment that you can just buy really easily. You don't have to make them fast. These are my cooking gloves for you know, cast iron and cooking the woods. I just kept those on. Another real important thing you want to keep on you when you're doing cosplay. Sure, it looks like an apple to the past. But right here, bottle of water. I always have water on you. You're gonna be at it real fast. Before the sun sets on a 16th birthday, she shall prick her finger in the middle, the spin of a spinny wheel and die. He's like talking you up. I'm like, is this hard? I love new mutants like you don't even know. It's my favorite. I brought some comics to get signed. So you're forged? Yes. Yes, she's just a girl whose intentions are good. But she's misunderstood. It's really inspiring to be here at this comic con convention. I think there's so many talented young people with brilliant ideas. And I just I love I love being around that energy and being inspired by it. And, you know, to me, the key thing about being creative is just doing it and not thinking just doing and just being fearless. And it's nice to be around that. But I've always been had my hands on different things. I think that creativity and art sort of comes in waves. And sometimes I feel like doing music. And sometimes I feel like writing or painting or lately, it's been directing and filmmaking. And then acting has always been my bread and butter. And it's just nice to be creative and have different avenues and different aspects to to dive into. So I for me, that's what art and creativity is. I got to change it up constantly. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Can't believe you're here. All the black makers here. Which one is the sex? Appreciate it. Stay safe. All right. Thank you. Much love. You didn't see this coming in. It goes like all the way up the block and around another way up the handles, right by the way off ramping. Yeah. And then it doubled back around again. Like it's crazy. Right. Exactly. Hey, hey, man. Yeah. Like when I showed up, it was like this. Yeah, no, we're on the way there. We're in the car on the way there. All of us. J. Prison post. That got a smile. Awesome. This is very cool. It's beautiful. Yeah, my favorite my favorite superheroes. I was a big wrestling fan. So I followed all of that. In fact, I would come here and watch a lot of the wrestling matches. I'd follow it all at WWF, then a little bit into WWE. But superheroes that I liked, I always liked, I always liked Batman. And I was like Spider-Man. Spider-Man always seemed to be just an average guy. He was out to, you know, he, he had, you know, certain superpowers, but not, but not fully. He, you know, he everyone loves the webs as well. So, you know, those are the those are the two that I follow the most, a little bit of Superman as well. But I'd say Batman and Spider-Man the most. My question to you is, you know, you perceived as a hero for me, especially, like, how do you, how do you handle that? How do you handle being perceived as as a hero to people? Well, that's, that's a tough question. But I think, you know, you always try to live up to what you would expect yourself, you know, like, you have your own heroes growing up. And someday, if you're fortunate enough to find yourself in the same, like, in that heroic kind of role, role character, whether you're a policeman, or a physed teacher, or whatever it is. You have to look at it from the same way you did as a kid. You know, you never want to disrespect yourself kind of thing. You, that's how I always judge everything. It's like, what I, you know, like, how would I, how would I, like, when I meet somebody, or how would I would have wanted to meet me, someone like me when I was a kid? You know, I've met a lot of like, rock and roll guys and people that were my heroes before I saw them, then after I saw them, they weren't my heroes anymore. You know, sometimes the worst thing to do is to find they actually meet your hero. And you find out that they're not such nice guys after all. But I've always had a different approaches that I try to present myself in a way where when somebody sees me or they find they meet me that I would treat them the way they, the way they want me to, the way they imagine it, like before it ever happens. And, you know, like signing autographs for fans or walking to your car after a show. You know, it's easy to tell some kids to fuck off and you're too tired and you're going to go to bed. But I always remembered being one of those kids. Christopher, as much as I love Doug Brown, like, you were one of, you played two bad guys, my favorite bad guys of all time, which is the bad guy, Roger Rabbit. And one of my favorite bad guys was psychologically printed in my head as a kid, the bad guy at Dennis Jimenez. And that, it's stuck in my head, that image. And as many different times have I seen you, that image is stuck in my head. So I want to get your thoughts and your feelings on those two roles. What was the first one? The first one was Roger Rabbit. Roger Rabbit, Roger Rabbit. Well, it was a comic strip of detectives and they keep supporting each other, screwed up. Mad Magazine, Spy versus Spy? Yes. Two crows. Two crows. And it's kind of the way, you know, the way the hat was, it wasn't a beach, but I felt like that with that black thing on, because it made me feel like I was supposed to look. So that was cold. And on the Dennis the Menace. Dennis the Menace, I got into that. But I have a scene where I'm going through this front score in the middle of a pretty high end neighborhood. There's a boy sitting on the other side of the fence on his private property. He's got an apple. And I come up and I lean over and I take a big knife and I stab the apple and I take it. That boy, for the rest of the run, could not look at me. I'd be out of makeup, out of costume, walking and he'd be walking up with his mom and he would completely shrink. He never got over it. He never got over it. And I don't care. Can you tell me any stories of the jobs you had before you were famous? Well, I did a lot of stuff, you know. I was a bouncer at a nightclub. I was, you know, at the nightclub. Yeah, big guys, right? So I was starting to do stand-up comedy and people say, well, you're a big dude. So if you do the door, you keep the room, settle down, you know, you do all that stuff. And then when the big, you know, stars are done with their work, you get to get on stage or somebody doesn't show up, you get to do their stuff. So Richard Pryor was a great comedian and he was doing all these movies of his performances, live on the sunset strip, that kind of stuff. So I was kind of the guy to walk up to eight dudes, making a big commotion. You fellas are going to have to settle down or I'm going to take you all out of here. You know, just pray please don't hit me. Please, nobody do anything bad. So so I did that for a while. I moved Oriental Rugs at this factory with like, like, you know, nine by twelve gigantic rolled-up Oriental Rugs with a bunch of big dudes. You know, hike up the whole rug on your shoulder and your camera rugs like all day. And if anything will convince you to use your brain, you know, and not your back, man. Carrying around rugs all day, you're thinking, I got to get a new gig, man. This is not, you know, this is no good. So, you know, so the arts, man, the arts saved my life. And it's, I don't know, it's just been, as I said, it's been so fortunate I can't even believe it. Look, I'm from Philadelphia, you know, and I'm thinking, I'm going to go to New York. I'm probably going to get kicked in the teeth, you know. It probably won't work out. I don't know. But you're going up against the big guys, the big actors, the big everything. I'm going to just try it. I'm going to try it. And then I'm going to go home and, you know, whatever happens, you know what, I gave it my best shot. And I have a couple exciting stories. And I went home and, you know, they got a job or whatever. So I'm as surprised as anybody that I just kept getting jobs. You know, not like, oh, he's a big superstar. No, but just a working actor, you know, a working performer, that stuff. I can't believe it. So I'm still doing it. I worked at a gas plant. I was a maintenance man out there. I was, I worked at a graveyard where my brother Olin's buried. I worked there when I was a kid, raking leaves and keeping the graves clean and all that. I worked at a steel mill. Of course, there's a referee for about a year before I got into wrestling. And I used to have my own little silk screen company where I used to make t-shirts and stuff like that. But I always, you know, I worked hard, I think, I tried to anyway. And I think all those things served me well when I finally became a wrestler. I worked as a bartender when I was about 16, serving high balls at a big fancy hotel. Just simple jobs, but like I said, they all sort of make you who you are. You know, I'm real lucky. I was a bartender at an Oldies But Goodies album recording. I was a bartender for Bette Midler and David Bowie at a Universal Amphitheater in LA. I've got to be the bartender in the VIP room. And I was a busboy at a 50s coffee shop outside of Hollywood for a couple of years. But that's it. And I kind of said to myself, if you're going to be an actor, be an actor. Too many people stay in Hollywood, or they stay in Chicago, or they stay in New York, and they don't take jobs outside of town. Now, of course, you can make a living in Atlanta, you know, because Atlanta is booming. It's like a new Hollywood, or Vancouver, Canada. But you've got to be able to, you get a job in, I don't know, in Florida. Or you get a job in Georgia. You get a job in Minnesota as an actor or a musician, or as a photographer, or as a reporter, and a writer. You take it. You take that job. Because if you're writing in Minnesota, you're a writer. If you're acting in Florida, you're an actor. If you're sitting around waiting tables in New York, and you're calling yourself an actor, you're not. You're a busboy. You're a waiter. That guy that went down to Florida, or that guy that went to Minnesota to write or to act, they can call themselves a writer or an actor because they're doing what they want to do. You're waiting tables. That's not acting. I shipped the boxes in the warehouse. I worked in a market. Get up the cracker door, my fingers were freezing cold, put in the store lot. I worked in restaurants, bar man. I was an entertainer. The hardest thing I've ever done is I was an entertainer at children's parties. That is humiliating, let me tell you. Particularly if you're working for actors and people who are your age or younger and making a ton of money. Nothing is beneath my dignity. I think, you know, work is dignified. Get out of your house and do something. When you start creating a vision for yourself, like maybe outside of that, I used to work at Wendy's and the manager came up to me one day and she was like, Dante, you're going to be a manager here one day. I never went back. I had another vision for myself. I'm not shitting on Wendy's. I'm noble to have a job, but I knew that wasn't for me. I knew I had a bigger vision for myself for you. When did you have a, you know that you had a bigger vision for yourself? I went to college to study law originally and I was doing it and I thought I should do everything as a hobby while you're at college. Take advantage of anything. Always say yes. Regret the things you've done, not the things you have. Never say no. So I said yes to everything and I tried to, you know, do anything I could and one of the things I thought the students did, my cliché there is they did a play. I thought they read philosophy books and they, you know, they drank French wine. I don't know. I tried to do a bunch of stuff and so I did a play and I suddenly found I was in a room and I felt for the very first time in my life like it didn't matter where I came from when I wasn't self-conscious about anything. I wasn't always thinking other people had the key. Other people had been to that class where life was explained that I'd missed, you know. And so I did play after play after play. I just followed my passion and just for a second I began to think, you know, there are some people that do this for a living and I applied for drama schools and I made what I thought was a tough decision which is I wasn't going to do a sensible job and I probably was going to be poor but I was going to be happy and fulfilled. I never thought I would survive. I never thought about, you know, anything to do with finance. I thought if I could do this all my life there was food in the fridge I'd be happy. It so happens I've ended up making a good living but mostly what I did is I followed my gut and I followed my passion. I followed the one thing I did where I felt like I was myself. My name is Dante Luna. I like educating people and empowering people to reach their full potential but I'm really inspired by hearing what you guys did for regular jobs you guys had before you were famous. We don't have all day. This is going to be a long one. Listen, my resume of survival jobs is long. Weighted tables, slung drinks, delivered laundry. I worked at farm camp when I was 13. That was my first job because I thought I was going to be a veterinarian actress. So I helped birth cows and tag pigs and like took chickens home in inner city Detroit and my parents were like, what the is this? But yeah, I mean I've done a lot of stuff. I did, does anyone remember the village voice from? Was it not around anymore? Is that not around? Well they closed the print division but in my day, before I was the best personal ad taker for the village voice. So I had, I was so good that Geraldo Rivera actually interviewed me for 2020. Shut up! And I was, literally I would write these personal ads and people would call in and have me write their personal ads for them. For everything? How many did Frank call in for you? No, I think, what's this? 7,162. Seeking woman with big feet. And how do you say big feet in a nice way in a personal ad? A size 12. I sold that lingerie for mature women. Very lucrative. Angela Lansbury was you number one. She was my top, she was my top, my top, my top. Don't out Angela, come on, don't out, oh my god, just calling names, name droppers. I missed those days, like you miss education, I miss selling that stuff, because I like to put a smile on people's faces. That was good. You got to get the right fabric, got to be the right fit, it's not as easy as it looked. You measured them, you took the measurements too didn't you? Naturally. He's always got tape measure in his pocket, now it makes sense. Unless, I do, I still carry the tape measure in case I bump into some customers from the old days. So if anybody's looking. If anybody's looking. Yes, and I always, and I still carry my fabrics, my laces, so anybody's looking for something comfortable and form sitting. Forum seat. Oh yeah, forum seat. Just skip the inseam part, don't, don't get your inseam. Just don't do the inseam. Theo, what about you? Job. Everything, I've been working since I was nine years old, so I started delivering newspapers. I hustled a lot. I did, I did, I did whatever I had to do. I was always geared towards money. Define hustle. I don't want to, I don't want to get, I don't want to get, I don't want to incriminate myself in any moment. But what was your job at nine? I delivered the Islander on saturday on the newspaper. Yeah. That's a nice bike. It was a nice bike. And I had a huff before. He stole it. He stole that bike. Yes. I might have sold that bike. Might have stole it. I definitely stole the pegs. I might have stole something on that. And then, you know, everything, literally everything. One of, I mean, weird stuff. I was, I had to dress, like, not dress fully as Sonic the Hedgehog, but kind of for Christmas in KB Toy and Obby. I was, like, wearing, like, Sonic the Hedgehog gear, but not the actual thing, like, just the vest and stuff. I was hawking, like, Sonic the Hedgehog Sega games. You know, I, but you got to understand, I started as an extra in this business. I had to do three extra jobs to get a sad card to, like, so then it was, like, one line on the TV show, four lines on a guest star, then this. So I've been through, like, all that stuff until, like, Sun's, you know, came. It was, like, I was the dude who was on doing every guest so I just kind of did everything to kind of get to wherever. And, like, you say survival jobs, which I love that term. You do whatever you had to do. And it was, like, whatever. When we got to LA, we would, like, we did this thing where you seal envelopes, you know, to make money. What did I know about that as a job? They send you a bunch of stuff, you just seal, you put them in and seal them thousands of envelopes and you're making, like, no money. So whatever you got to do, that's why education is important, guys. So you don't have to do this. Yeah, you don't have to struggle. You're not a type. You might be able to sit in the office or something, but I didn't know how to type, you know. I was, like, those type of classes, I took them for granted. Yeah, not good. Look, these long fingers going to waste. So, yeah, survival jobs quickly. I had a few, I did, I worked with Group Home Kids in LA for about a year. That was tough, but that was that. I learned a lot from that. And I worked with a lot of restaurants. I did Labor Ready, which was the bottom of the barrel. You guys know what that is. You show up with your idea, you work for a day for a minimum wage. And it was after I had a master's degree, so I still was, you know, couldn't get a job immediately. And then one of our more embarrassing jobs before I was waiting tables, I worked at Fridays in grad school, right out of grad school, or in grad school, and you knew how to do your flair, I think, is a flair thing. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was, I had a cowboy hat on because that's all I could find. My roommate had a big old white cowboy hat. And I could have, I was just, that's all, that's what was there. And I said, well, I had had no money, so I wore it. So my whole thing became a cowboy. And cowboy hats, suspenders, and I had all this, you know, flair all around me. No shirt. No shirt. No shirt. No shirt. Obviously, no shirt. Lots of baby oil. And then almond butter. Almond butter. I got recruited from there, you know. You gotta do what you gotta do, man, you know. I remember my first job in order to raise money to buy an outfit, a wrestling outfit, or gear was, and I don't think my parents ever found out about this. Right up the street of my house, there was a gas station and this was in Tijuana, Mexico. And as a matter of fact, there's, kids are very accustomed to roll up in cars with the do-rag and offer to clean the car so you can tip them. So I did that for a couple of hours trying to make some money. I worked in bars. I was a delivery guy. I did, you know, paper round, but most of his bars and cafes and stuff like that for the rest of the jobs. I worked as a cleaner at drama school and stuff like that. So I did all those jobs really. At the drama school I was at, I sort of cleaned the building as well. So that's, that was one of the things I did. I collected the carts at Big Apple supermarket in the parking lot. That was my first job. Then I, then I heard, you know, minimum wage was $1.25. We're going back a while. So I heard, I heard they were paying $1.50 for dishwashers at the Jewish temple. So then I went and worked there for a while. But I, you know, I worked my whole life. I, you know, I bartended. I, I did, you know, I waited tables. I worked in the restaurant business. I was a kitchen steward. I, I did a lot of stuff like that. And then my first acting job was in Bucks County Playhouse in, in Pennsylvania. And, and while I was, I had a, I had a little part in 1776. And while I was there, I got a job chauffeuring businessmen from New Hope to Trenton and from, Trenton to New York and stuff. So I mean, it's just, you know, I'm an Italian kid. My father's a garbage man and the, and the work ethic was very important. Oh my God, I had every regular job in the world. Like I, when I was younger, especially in high school, I begged to get my first job when I was like 15. And my parents like, are you sure you want to do that? I'm like, yeah, I want to. So I've, I've been a bus boy at a seed food restaurant. I was a waiter for a really long time. I worked at a video store. I worked for a small airline in reservations. So I was the person that you'd have to talk to if you needed to change your reservation. So I got yelled at a lot. Although I also messed with people a lot. That was always fun because I had all the power. I could change their flight or not change their flight. So I could just chill out. God, what other jobs I have. I was a kind of marketing director at that small airline for a while. Everyone else told me what my vision was supposed to be because when you, your voice drops from a really high pitched almost female type voice to a very low voice overnight. Almost to the voice I have now, like in seventh grade. Everyone tells you, you got to get into radio. But you know, there was no internet back then. I couldn't look up like how to get into radio on the internet. It just sort of had to figure these things out. And I was really young, of course. So I'm still 12 and everyone's telling me I need to do stuff. So I just kind of followed whatever, I kind of followed whatever path was in front of me. I went to school as an opera major, actually originally because that's where I got my scholarship at University of North Texas. But then changed my degree to radio television film. And it was before I graduated that I was offered the job to work on Dragon Ball Z. And they paid me literally nothing. I think I got paid more as a waiter than I did when I first started working at Funimation. But it seemed like a fun thing to do and it seemed like a good way to use my voice. And it ended up being a pretty good decision. The character Roger Rabbit is, you know, a part of my soul. Because the line in the movie only when it's funny, you know, it makes people laugh. And I'm a stand-up comedian so I relate to that. It's why I do what I do because artists have touched my soul and that empowered me to reach out and try to do the same to others. I've always, you know, done stand-up or... When I was in high school, I sold small appliances. But I used to just sell odd numbers. But I could never get even. Yo, man, this guy caught me off guard. Like, everybody else, I can compose myself. I can't even keep a straight face. You don't have to compose yourself. I'm a composer. I will take the needed line. I will take the needed stance, advance the place to make advance. Enchanting. But not all blonde. What? I'm blonde. And I got a Davida. Am I the reader? Well, Soder and I lived together in New York City and both at the time we were just out of school and scraping by to find job. I had worked at a jazz record store in the back distribution, packing jazz records and sending them out when orders came in. You got me my first job, working behind the pen counter of a stationery store on the Upper West Side. And then I became a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum. Right, right. You were waiting tables. Waiting tables. Bar tending at a place called the Hotel Galvez. Which was fun. So we could always go down and you'd shut down but we could still drink out of the frozen margarita machine because the boss wouldn't know how much was gone. Right, right. That was when I was allowed to tap beers in front of the margaritas. And we closed the door and they had a little stage on the side and we'd go just for each other and kind of try to do late night stand-up for each other and work on some jokes. Yeah, and we were always showing out at each other's jobs, screwing around. But yeah, supporting each other, yeah? Yeah, it's cool. We'd go to Burger King and we'd get Whopper Night. It was a 99 cent Whopper Night on Tuesdays at this one Burger King so we'd go and buy 25 Whoppers. And stuff our freezers with a Whopper Slip and Mount Doom Whoppers. Those are the days. Ah, good stuff, yeah, yeah. I started as a 12-year-old kid rubbing the fat off of a butcher's block. Hey Pitbull, can you keep it down there? I started rubbing the fat off of a butcher's block after he killed chickens and stuff. Literally at the end of the day because the fat would accumulate and bacteria and all that. So I was 12 years old and almost threw up every day. And I used to get the meat from the basement that was roach infested and bring it up. And then I delivered newspapers, sold door-to-door subscriptions to magazines and all kinds of stuff. And he's talking while I'm talking so I'm going to find out where he lives. And done everything, including winding up being a sixth grade teacher, working for the Puerto Rican Interagency Council in New York, the assistant to the director, obviously the assistant to the editor of Vogue Magazine, checkout guy at a restaurant, you name it, been there, done that. Everybody has visions all the time and everybody dreams and everybody has big hopes and all this kind of stuff. So I urge everybody never to give up on their dreams because anything is possible. I wasn't born in America. I couldn't even speak English. And the idea that all the doors are open if you're willing to put in the hard work, have the right thing at the right place and the right time and a lot of hard luck. And you're going to get shot down many times and you're going to hear the word no all the time. And so did Michael Jordan and so did Oprah and so did Henry Ford. All the winners only got to be winners because they failed all the time. So let me give you a piece of advice. I didn't come up with this. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm telling you. You see a guy like that here. Take a look at the big guy. Take a look at him. Who's going to stop him on a football field? Actually, everybody goes down. Everybody goes down. Whenever you see a champion, they've been knocked out. That's how they get to be champion. So your body kind of gets used to that. You know, you develop hard skin. You use your hands a lot. You'll get calluses. You're supposed to. You're supposed to make your heart pump. If you sit still and your heart doesn't pump, you will die very fast. So get that heart pumping. Get your mind working. Stop living on top of a mountain with mother nature. Nothing is going to happen to you there. You need to be in a big city and just soak up all the knowledge that you don't have that they do. Well, I go back to Chattanooga, Tennessee. And as a kid, my parents were very supportive and asked me to really do whatever I wanted to do. They're not, I mean, with discipline and stuff. But I just kept trying things. I always wanted to act. I wanted to play basketball. I made it to college-level basketball. I was told no by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I made it to the freshman team for one day and then they cut me. So I went to Chattanooga and I got on that team. So just because one person tells you no, doesn't mean it's no from everybody. So get rid of the no people who find the yes people. And little by little, that's kind of the way I've lived. And try things and it doesn't work. I keep moving to something else. I just wanted to be an actor so bad that I was willing to risk everything. And that's kind of what it takes. I had somebody tell me to say by the bell is there comfort food. If they can relax and see it and it makes them feel good. But our show didn't succeed right away. The morning this list was canceled. Then they bought three or four of the characters from that show and took it to say by the bell. And then we only did 20 and we had a rap party. And then they decided let's do some more. And then let's do some more. So it was a long, slow process. It wasn't an instant hit. Then it went to 87 countries around the world. So imagine if we gave up right away. My advice for younger people that don't know how to express themselves or get their voices heard is just you have to be you. You can't sacrifice yourself just to make other people happy. And follow your dreams. We're all going to not always make the right choice. God knows I've never made the right choice. But now I have made right choices. I have not made very good ones too. But in the end of all this, and I am a recovering addict in six years or so, and it's awesome. And so yeah, I've made some mistakes. But they've all come back is just following my dream and doing the right thing, doing the next right thing. It's just we're going to make mistakes. We get it. But it's just how do you recover from that and not keep making them over and over? And just be you. Be true to yourself. I mean it really just comes down to that. And just have fun with life. Don't take it so seriously. And just if you want to go right, go right. If you want to go left, go left. So just that's my advice for whatever that's worth. I grew up and we had baseball, football, soccer, get out of the house, go play. And we'll see you when you get home. That was what I grew up with. We didn't have video games. We didn't even have TV. Back there we just had a stone we looked at for crying out loud. But we got along okay. But I've been so lucky because I've got to live into the technology all the way to my iPhone 6. And enjoy all the whole journey's been totally fun. For me, the best day was when I crashed the audition to do The Voice of Mario. And I had no idea who Mario was or what video games were except Waka Waka Waka Waka. And I walked in the door. I said, can I read for this? He goes, all right, you're an Italian plumber from Brooklyn. So make up a voice, you're a video game character. Make up a video game, start talking. And when you run out of things to say, that's your audition. And I'm like, Italian plumber from Brooklyn, right? Hey, get out of my face. Don't bother me. I thought, no, I'm not going to do that. I'll do something nice. What came to me was Grammy from Tammy the Shrew that I had played in a theater piece a few years before. And I said, that guy said, hello, I'm Mario. Let's make a pizza pie together. You will get sausage. I'll get the meatballs. You put it in the pizza and then you bake it the pizza. And I chased you with the pizza. If I catch you with the pizza, you got to make it the pizza and eat the pizza and chase me with the pizza. And I just started talking. And I was having so much fun with this game, voice, that I didn't stop until I heard stop talking, cop 30 minutes later. There's no more videotape. Thank you. We'll be in touch. And that was 25 years ago of absolute joy and fun and laughter. I love my life so much. I get to come to Comic-Con and meet fans. I get to work with great people at Nintendo. I get to see the world. It's the greatest. And it's always what I wish for everybody, is that you follow your heart. You pursue your passions. You develop your dream because life is so short. And go out there and have as much fun as you can. Bring happiness to people. Bring smiles to people. Bring yourself to people. That's the greatest gift you can give. I want to get your advice to young creatives who maybe haven't heard their voice yet as an artist or as a creative person. That all of your tattoo, this is no excuses. It's spelled wrong. No excuse? No excuses. So it's not two words. Yeah, not spelled wrong. It's two S's. I'm already kidding. Read as much as you can. That's what distinguishes, you know, like the golden age of Hollywood, what's going on now. Because back in the day, people grew up reading. And you know, stay away from the electronics as much as you can. But just read. Read everything you can. My advice to young actors is that they have to discover their own inner voice and their own sense of truth. It's all about truth and honesty. Audiences can tell in a second if you're lying. And even when you're creating another character that's other than yourself, you have to find the truth of that character, the essence of that character. Acting is really about, it's the accumulation of your whole life. It's everything you've been through. It's all your experiences. And as a Juilliard, they used to tell us to go to the museums, to look at great works of art, to go to the theater, to go to opera, to go to ballet. Because the more you're exposed to other great art, the more sensitive you become to all aspects of life. And you bring all that to your acting. So acting is really about finding the truth of the character. And you can't really do that if you haven't found your own truth. My experience in terms of my career has been that you always have to be willing for surprises. I mean, I studied at Juilliard to be a classical stage actor and then discovered that the classical stage, you couldn't live on it. You couldn't support yourself on it. And it's sort of evaporated. There isn't much of one anymore. So I had to get into TV. And then from TV, I was led into voice acting and animation. You have to go where life takes you. John Lennon has a great line in one of his songs. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. And I think you really have to be open to that. You have to be open to what life's going to throw at you and be ready to roll with it. I'm going to take my hat off here because out of respect, I'm going to take my hat off you. It's funny. Spongebob isn't something you really have to prepare for because just doing the character prepares you. My favorite part of the job is being able to portray this kind of positive, happy character that makes kids laugh and hopefully adults and other people laugh. You just step right into it. And it draws you into this positive mindset for four hours. Every Wednesday. And it kind of helps get me through the rest of the week, you know, because the world can be a hard place. I love coming to these events with a million questions. It's the best kind of school you can get, you know, other than like being out on the field during industry experience, being able to being a building with a bunch of people who've had industry experience and asked them questions. It's always been extremely valuable to me. And I think I'll always do it. I come to these conventions to learn and to build and connect and to create conversations that last forever. When it comes to your legacy, what do you feel is some of your best work? Well, this leg I see, but this leg I don't. If you go for armature, then my arm won't do. Arms in the man? Well, I can't say either. My legacy, I want to leave a body of work that will inspire people to become all that they can and reach higher and, you know, touch humanity with love. I know it sounds a bit in love and patient, but it's a real sentiment, isn't it?