David Rees remembers the good old days, circa the mid-'90s when he was in a band and promotion meant hitting the pavement and actually talking to people. So when he was approached with the task of promoting the season premiere of his TV show "Going Deep with David Rees," the new Esquire Network star did it the only way he knows how - by getting in the van and making stops in various U.S. cities.
The second season of "Going Deep" found a new home on the Esquire Network after the National Geographic channel failed to renew it. The show essentially takes Rees' 2013 book "How to Sharpen Pencils" and combines it with the ever-popular YouTube tutorial, then applies it to everyday tasks. Rees and his crew then elevate the how-to format further by consulting experts to really get down to the science and history behind each topic.
Rees' career began as a political cartoonist, with work published in Rolling Stone, GQ, The Nation and Harper's Bazaar. The North Carolina native's most popular cartoon, a series titled "Get Your War On," gained traction during the George W. Bush administration with its satrical take on the effects of the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism. Rees ceased publication of his comic after Bush left office.
He went on to publish his book "How to Sharpen Pencils," and in 2010 he started his own artisanal pencil sharpening business. For $40, Rees will perform manual pencil sharpening and ship you the pencils along with their shavings and a "certificate of sharpening."
Fresh off his "Analog Social Media" tour, HNGN caught up with Rees to talk about his how-to show, why analog beats social networking apps and to gush about his idol, "Project Runway" star Tim Gunn.
"The spirit of 'How to Sharpen Pencils' was obviously to celebrate something that we kind of take for granted or do without thinking," Rees told HNGN. "I really like that spirit of discovery and celebration, taking something that you don't spend a lot of time thinking about and really trying to appreciate it."
Rees applied that spirit to the first season of his True Entertainment-produced show, with episodes dedicated to tying shoelaces, throwing paper airplanes and lighting matches. But there's a smart element to the show that makes it more appealing than the average how-to tutorial typically seen on YouTube.
"I think the big difference between YouTube stars and me is number one, they're very popular," Rees said. "I'm still kind of a niche person, which is fine, I don't crave that type of fame. But the other thing is I don't teach the viewer how to do things, I let the experts teach me how to do things and at the end of each episode, I present everything I've learned to the viewer."
Now the second season of "Going Deep" is set to premiere on the Esquire Network on Nov. 11 and Rees is grateful for the chance to continue taking viewers on a journey as he digs deep and tries to answer the question of why do we do the things that we do.
Rees admitted that he first decided to go into television at the suggestion from his friends Christine Connor and Jo Honig, who had seen him on his live pencil-shaving lectures and thought he would do well as a TV personality. He said he trusted Connor and Honig and their guidance, which led him to the Esquire Network.
"I understand from my TV producer friends that it's very unusual to get a second shot," Rees said of the move to Esquire, a network that is still in its infancy but comes with a very specific aesthetic found on the glossy pages of Esquire magazine. "I'm constantly nervous that I don't dress well enough for Esquire or I'm not cool enough for Esquire. I feel really uncomfortable trying to be cool, but we were reassured 'cause they saw the first season, they know what they're getting basically, a big goofy idiot who walks around and high-fives scientists and talks about toast. We can't change it too much or it's not the same show. We really just tried to be true to ourselves, which is what we tried to do the whole time."
The Esquire Network bills itself as a "lifestyle and entertainment" network. It took over the Style Network and relaunched in 2013 and is in the midst of beefing up its original content roster. Other shows on the Esquire Network include the after-hours cooking competition show "Knife Fight," the craft beer-focused "Brew Dogs" and now "Going Deep with David Rees."
Rees' role as the show's host consists of guiding viewers through sometimes very complex explanations of the science behind bouncing a ball, petting a dog or how to make toast.
"I know nothing about science, like we need to emphasize that I'm pretty dumb when it comes to a lot of this stuff so that's why we reach out to the experts," Rees explained. "So at the end of each episode I present what I've learned, but the point of the show is I'm the proxy for the viewer. I'm curious and I want to be enthusiastic about it but I don't know anything about vintage toasters, so we have to fly in the president of the vintage toaster association to talk to me about it."
The producers reach out to the experts, then are faced with the tall task of editing and condensing interviews to a two-minute segment for the show, a process that Rees said he dreads since it takes some experts time to warm up to the cameras. The best moments of the show, according to Rees, are when the experts gets lost in the moment. That's when their excitement and knowledge for their topic of expertise shines.
"My favorite thing is always going to a cocktail party and meeting someone who knows a lot about something that I've never really thought that much about and just grilling the sh-- out of them and feeling that excitement and them sharing their knowledge," said Rees. "It's such a cool experience of being social and being alive and I feel that in our best interview segments, we have those moments with people. And if we're lucky we capture it on camera."
But the crew does run into the occasional problem where the expert is talking about such a complex branch of science and isn't able to convey it into simpler, TV-friendly sound bite terms. Rees recalled a moment while filming the "How to Throw a Paper Airplane" episode from season one where he interviewed the chief engineer at NASA, who is an expert on flight and wing design.
During the interview, the expert delved deeply into the science of flight and what causes a plane to lift into the air once it hits a certain speed. It resulted in a lengthy segment, most of which would not make it onto the show.
"Ninety minutes into our conversation I said, 'Just out of curiosity, if we really wanted to really, really explain how planes fly, how long would the episode have to be?' and he said it would have to be a whole season," Rees explained. "And that's really the message of the show. Once you go down that rabbit hole about toast or dish washing or petting dogs, like you could be gone forever because everything connects in a way.
"It just becomes this really really concentrated deep web of interconnection. So it's heartbreaking editing it. I hate it."
There's also the excitement of learning new things. In one of the episodes for season two, Rees confronted his fear of dogs head-on and walked away with an understanding of how to interact with the canine species in a way he hadn't thought of before.
"I do feel more comfortable around dogs," Rees said. "The big thing I took away from that episode was learning how to read a dog, so yeah, there are episodes that have changed the way I live my life in these subtle ways."
Another moment that stood out to Rees happened while he was filming an episode about how to sign your name. An archivist from the New York Public Library rare manuscripts room presented Rees with the most rare signature on the Declaration of Independence, by a man named Button Gwinnett. Above the archivist's copy of Gwinnett's signature was another David Rees, and the present-day Rees said the experience was so surreal he thought he was lucid dreaming.
But there are also moments of clarity on the show where connections are made and everything clicks.
"The moments I love the most are when I finally finally understand something that I should've learned in elementary school science," Rees continued. "When I finally understood what fire was or when I finally understood why an airplane flies through the air. Or when I finally understood like, where dogs came from - we basically invented them - or when I finally understood why toast burns so quickly, because dark surfaces absorb heat more quickly than light surfaces. Those are the moments I really love."
And Rees is excited to share those moments with his audience, so much that he decided to go analog with face-to-face promotion. He visited 12 cities, placing fliers in local businesses complete with pull tags that advertised a "Going Deep" info hotline number to a New York-area code burner phone, a promotion campaign that seems lost in the age of Twitter retweets and Facebook shares.
"Oh yeah, I have voicemails that I haven't listened to yet," Rees said. "It worked. And I hope that all those people that we met will actually tune into the show or that they'll see something about the show and go, 'I think that guy came into my dry cleaning business a couple of weeks ago.'"
Rees was in the van nonstop for 13 days with his producer Corey and sound guy Ray, and said he made them listen to the music he recorded with his "white guy indie rock" band along with some of his own mashups, which have earned him a lot of buzz. Rees' Aphex Swift project (a mashup of British electronic composer and pop darling Taylor Swift) exploded on the internet last summer and was covered by Pitchfork and NPR.
He started the project in the downtime in between seasons, when season two was still up in the air. The point of the mashup, to Rees, was to point out the similarity between Swift and Aphex Twin. They are both pop songwriters but create pop music in very different ways, with very different outcomes.
"Also I like the spirit of mashups, which is kind of like the spirit of our show, 'oh there are connections here, there's a logic,'" Rees continued. "When you put things together, whether it's Taylor Swift and Aphex Twin or it's a physicist talking about bouncing a ball. When things mesh it's exciting, you feel like you've made a connection which I think is healthy and stimulating."
Another recent connection he's made was with his hero, "Project Runway" star Tim Gunn. Rees was doing press at AOL, which is in the same building as the Huffington Post where Gunn was being interviewed. Rees, who had just dressed up as Gunn for Halloween, stopped to meet his idol and pose for a picture, which he uploaded to Instagram.
"I just love what he did on TV, he really comes across as himself," Rees explained. "I find him so attractive because he feels like somebody who did not compromise at all to be on a TV show and that's very attractive to me. Not to get too heavy about it, but sometimes I do wonder 'is that guy on the screen me?' I know it's me plus 5 percent or whatever, but like the people who can really pull it off like Tim Gunn, that's a real talent. I think it's done by the people who must, on some level, be very comfortable with themselves - which may be what I envy."
Rees had a previously scheduled meeting with his therapist shortly after meeting Gunn, and gushed about it to his therapist and revealed his fantasy that he would become friends with the fashion guru.
"She looked at me and said, 'Maybe if you dressed better,'" Rees laughed, "and I was like 'oh great, now i need another two years of therapy.'"
Be sure to catch Rees on his show "Going Deep with David Rees," airing Wednesday at 10 p.m. on the Esquire Network.
