The Making of Dead Eyes (Live in Belgium)

April 17, 2023·1 hr 24 min·5 clips

On March 12, 2020, Connor went backstage and was told 'don't check your phone' — Tom Hanks had just tested positive for COVID.

April of 2022 is the frame. Connor opens a live recording from Belgium, where he, Mike Comette, and Harry Nelson have come for a keynote at the DS Podcast Festival. The audience already knows part of the story. After Ben's unrecorded introduction, the group starts explaining what Dead Eyes is and, more interestingly, how it kept changing while they made it. The answer is messy in a useful way. They talk about walking into interviews with a plan, then hearing the tape later and realizing the episode had become about something else. That seems to be the job. A conversation can show up with one purpose and leave a stranger, stronger shape behind, if the producers are paying attention. One abandoned idea still hangs around. Since the whole project began with a judgment about Connor's eyes, they tried making an episode about eyes. It had the parts. They spoke with an eye surgeon, a visual effects person, and someone who offered intuitive eye readings with a tarot-like feel. The episode was finished. Then, after living with it for a long time, the team had to say the thing nobody wants to say: it was dry and boring. Connor could live with that. The producers, less sold on releasing a boring installment just because it existed, seem to treat the job as a gentle refusal. That feels very Dead Eyes. The room is funny, but the laughs keep circling back to craft, taste, and the nerve it takes to cut something that technically works. Near the end, the shape loosens. There are jokes about ad reads, grooming products, interns, and the red light that sends everyone back into the festival like regular people.

As heard by us

A candid live keynote that turns an abandoned eyes episode into a lesson in how Dead Eyes was built.

This live keynote from Belgium follows Connor, Mike Comette, and Harry Nelson as they trace how Dead Eyes took shape, how the idea kept changing, and what had to be set aside along the way.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a festival keynote on how Dead Eyes came into existence.

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