(orchestral music)
Fame used to be an elite club, to which only the beautiful,
rich, or supremely talented were invited.
For us ordinary people, it was a distant fantasy,
something we could only experience in our dreams.
But times have changed.
(grunting)
Hi, guys.
So this is my first video blog.
(yelling)
- Come on, let's go. - It's going viral…
- on Facebook and Twitter. - Social media.
- I think it's an overnight celebrity.
(funky music)
Hi. My name's Dave, and I'm a really ordinary person.
- David. - Look at Daddy!
In my lifetime, I've experienced
this celebrity revolution first hand.
- Kelly Clarkson. - I binged on reality TV,
built my first PC in the council of amateur tech gurus,
and saw my soccer captain go viral after getting
sent off for a penis ring. - Ridiculous.
-Fucking ridiculous.
Having grown up in this
strange new era of instant celebrity, I've also wondered
what it would be like to become famous.
(grunting)
And who could blame me?
The pursuit of fame or at least recognition
has been normalised and built into
the very architecture of our online communities.
In a world defined by likes, shares, and going viral,
fame is not only celebrated, but encouraged.
But is fame really all it's cracked up to be?
What is fame, anyway?
And is it reasonable for an ordinary person like me
to want it?
This was my home, and where it all began.
- Testing.
That's Lachy, and behind the camera there,
is Louis. They're my best mates,
and they're the ones who put me up to this.
For everyone who doesn't know who Dave is,
this is Dave.
And that's also Dave there.
He's the guinea pig in this little experiment of ours.
His name's Dave, he's 26 years old, and he's untalented.
The mission is to make this boy here famous.
It's not going to be easy.
It is really not gonna be easy.
Because this is what we've got to work with.
(guitar strumming)
I think we were obsessed with filming Dave before
we even had this idea.
We've always filmed Dave.
We've been filming Dave for years.
(laughing)
OK, we need to find… Let's… we'll find a rank.
I don't know what it is about him.
Even other people who've never met Dave before
remember him instantly.
What's his name?
Harry Potter.
There's something about his look.
It's the big, thick glasses with the huge eyes.
It's the pale lankiness of him.
It's the otherworldly alien look.
So why this project?
Dave deserves to be out into the world,
for all to see and all to enjoy.
We were a makeshift team,
somehow committed to the absurd cause
of making me famous, but the question
that loomed over all of us,
was not so much why, but how.
We need to set up a framework,
otherwise we're just gonna be some guys trying to make
some dude famous on the internet,
and it could go on forever.
Louis and I had an idea.
That we haven't run by you yet.
- OK.
But it's like a full-on commitment.
You have to push the boundaries for what
you're comfortable with doing.
I'm willing to do whatever it takes, pretty much.
Like, I'm up for doing something, anything.
Well... how about moving to Japan?
Yeah.
(rock music)
What do we know about Japan?
We really don't know much, considering we've booked
our flights, but nothing would make me happier
in the world than seeing Dave on a Japanese game show
doing something absurd.
For me, this is the most ridiculous thing...
I've ever done.
It's gonna take balls that I don't even know
that I have yet.
(indistinct singing)
But I'm gonna do whatever it takes.
(cheering)
Got myself a place to live, stationed myself
in this nice little suburb called Higashi Nakano.
I've done my job training, so like most foreigners here
I'm gonna be an English teacher.
We don't know what the right way to do this is.
We're gonna have to try a whole bunch of different things.
And as far as I know, I don't think three guys
have ever sort of sat down and made it their goal
to make one of their mates famous.
Dave show us, show us one of the moves.
No.
(singing) I've got coconuts... I've got coconuts…
I've got bananas... I've got bananas…
Would you want your child coming into a classroom to this?
I've got coconuts... I've got bananas…
So this is what our life is gonna be like.
A mixture of this like teaching
little Japanese children English,
and working to get famous in Japan.
(ethereal music)
Our goal of making me famous had landed the three of us
and our girlfriends in an unlikely celebrity heartland,
where it was said that ordinary people
could achieve incredible fame.
But we had no idea if the rumours were true.
I'm trying to become famous in Japan.
(laughing)
I don't know what for yet.
(laughing)
You could be an actor or something.
- Comedian. - Comedian?
(laughing)
Comedian.
- Do you think I can do it? - Oh, yeah.
- Yeah? - Oh, yeah.
- Really? - Oh, yeah.
My first interaction with the Japanese public
had left me with few leads, but the phenomenon
of foreign celebrity, known as Big in Japan,
had existed for years.
It started with music.
American rock group, The Ventures,
weren't exactly top of the charts on home soil.
But in the '60s,
they sold more records in Japan than the Beatles.
Soon, the frenzy spread to Hollywood.
A-listers, one after the other, yielded to hefty pay checks
to appear in increasingly bizarre ad campaigns.
And finally, ordinary, unassuming foreigners
were poached by TV shows to become perhaps
the world's most unlikely celebrities.
This could be the perfect safety net for our fame experiment.
- Who's this? - Dave Spector.
Dave Spector.
Spector.
- In the Japanese showbiz ecosystem,
there are 'gaijin' or foreign 'tarentos'.
Why is he so popular?
He stay in Japan for long time.
And these guys are on TV and they're not really valued
for their insight, as much as just their novelty value.
I don't know what he does.
His wife?
Very beautiful.
These are people who are just famous for being famous.
They're like the Paris Hiltons.
They're not really an actor or actress,
they're just a character.
(speaking Japanese)
They're just there.
- Bobby Olugan! Bo-by-Ol-u-gan. - Dante Carver.
- Where is he?
- Oh.
They were names I'd never even heard of back in Australia.
But in Japan, everyone seemed to know them.
- Bob Sapp. Bob Sapp. - Bob Sapp
- I think he's a fighter. - Yeah, he's a fighter, right?
- Bob Sapp. - Bob Sapp. Bob Sapp!
(laughing)
I wondered if I could become
one of these so-called 'gaijin tarentos',
and I was curious about what such
an outlandish experience of celebrity might involve.
(funky music)
Now you're tuning into The Beast.
One, two, three.
We were due to meet American, Bob 'The Beast' Sapp.
A six foot five, 150 kilogram fighter
and 'gaijin tarento' legend.
From being a nobody back in the states,
he'd gone on to become one of the most famous
foreign celebrities in Japanese showbiz history.
But, you know, it's quite funny because growing up, I never
even knew Japan existed, never knew where any of this
country was, never knew anything!
How did I have my adult life in a different country doing
stuff I had no idea I wanted to do in the first place?
(laughing)
Today, Bob was launching a tell-all autobiography,
having spent 14 years in the national limelight.
So I must always have to decide
whether that girl really wants me,
or is she falling in love with the character of the Beast?
(chattering)
You could ask.
Ask a little bit, this is fine.
(speaks Japanese)
They're asking like, you know
Japan is known for all kinds of crazier sex, so they say,
'Hey, did you ever try girls peeing?' I said,
'Yes, I thought that was great.'
So I put this in my book, and so they're
What kind of oshiko play did you do?
What's...what kind of oshiko...
so 'oshiko' means pee.
Nothing, it's just the same thing.
They just pee on me and on my face.
I didn't know what to make of Bob Sapp's
pee fetish, but I found his goofy aura intoxicating.
Yes! Yes! One more! One more!
And apparently, so did Japan.
After a failed career in the NFL,
Bob was recruited here as a fighter back in '99.
The Beast was an immediate success,
breaking viewership records and charming crowds
with his scary, yet somehow cute persona.
So in-between these fights,
do you do other things for money?
Yes. In Japan, I do everything.
Variety, commercials, television shows,
pro wrestling, MMA, and kickboxing.
You name it, Bob Sapp's doing it.
They've had Bob Sapp sex products and they've had
Bob Sapp books...
What's a Bob Sapp sex product?
Yeah, that's the Wild Sapp.
So it's a Bob Sapp dildo and girls back it on up
and drop it like it's hot.
(laughter)
Sticks to the window and everything.
Like, when do you bring the Beast out?
Right, so when I'm in the public -
This is the Beast. Bob Sapp.
(laughing)
You have to have a persona for people to like you.
Bob the Beast is big and dumb or big and scary,
and that usually plays into everything.
That's how that works.
(gentle music)
Were you guys waiting long?
Two weeks later, Bob invited us
to a wrestling match in the southern city of Fukuoka.
It would be my first chance to witness
the spectacle of The Beast in public.
It's gonna be a little more crazy because this is
Fukuoka, so the fans are going to be...
nuts.
They've been doing like a whole bunch of stabbings
and stuff, so we want to make sure that then you,
or anyone around me or something like that is safe.
That kind of thing.
So it's you under the threat?
Yeah, he's kind of like a wrestler,
fanatical kind of person I guess, so...
They just like told me yesterday
so I was in the middle and… but he was very nice,
he came and gave us some like gifts and stuff,
but then they were like, OK, you need to stay away
from this guy because he's been calling every five minutes,
every day and that kind of stuff, so sometimes
you get some fanatical stuff like that and you know,
I deal with that here or around the world,
so each one is different.
(chattering)
Bob's fame was unlike anything I'd ever encountered.
Absolutely swarmed. Surrounded by people who adore Bob Sapp.
It's ridiculous.
I like Bob Sapp.
Bob Sapp fan.
(dramatic music)
Here was an American who had mastered
the art of novelty celebrity with a character
of his own creation.
- You are very strong!
You are real Beast!
(laughing)
Please give message for Japanese fan.
The Beast is back.
(laughs)
I'm still strong. And a little cute.
(laughing)
Bob had revealed to us a bizarre alternate
reality of celebrity, where sex fetishes
are whimsically discussed, and being an oddball
could generate mainstream attention.
At any rate, Bob seemed to be loving his foreign celebrity,
and I was ready to take the plunge myself.
Hello. It's David here, I'm a friend of Pop's.
We were at the offices of a foreign talent agency
called Bayside.
- Hello, David. Are you David? - Yeah.
You called yesterday, huh?
Nice to meet you, how you doing?
- Yeah, good, nice to meet you. - I'm Pop, please come in.
We'd heard that foreigners
from all walks of life could get TV work
through agencies like this one.
There were more than a dozen of them in Tokyo alone.
But I wondered if they'd take someone quite as hopeless
and untalented as me.
Let me introduce you to my staff, OK?
OK.
Mr. David, he wants to be a model in Japan
or an actor, whatever he wants to be like.
Nice to meet you.
I am looking forward to work with you very soon.
He's half Hungarian, half Japanese.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
I think he's kind of hungry.
(laughing)
- Good one. - OK.
Please, your height, your width, hips, and
we need it, you know, for like wardrobe and stuff like that.
You're macho.
Yep.
(laughing)
You are very interesting guy.
Everybody that meets Dave has something to say about him.
Everybody, including my parents, my brother,
new housemates, they're like “Dave!”
He's almost like a cult figure.
(classical music)
- What do you reckon? - Brown.
Kind of bluey though, a little bit.
The Daveness of Dave is what makes Dave Dave.
It's the way he reacts, it's the way he acts.
It's just him.
- It looks like brown to me. - No, just put brown.
(laughing)
He's got a look that's a little bit different, so…
I think he'd do well.
- That's the first one. - Wow.
(laughing)
I've got another one for the slide, as well...
but it's like a different expression.
After going for a bit of a walk.
OK.
I think Dave stands a very good chance
of becoming famous, I have to say.
Because he's weird and crazy. And he will do anything.
He'll just give it a shot.
Off to do some day to day stuff, maybe do some study.
Might rain later, so I brought an umbrella.
Can I ask you a question, Pop?
I was just wondering I imagine there's
certain people and they walk in the door and you're like
'Yep, this person, they're gonna get a lot of jobs
they've got this particular look.'
When you first look at David what kind of roles do you
imagine someone like David getting?
Wow.
You know, we, I never know, we never know.
Yeah, he can be, did you see the movie Forrest Gump?
That little boy. He looks like him, you know?
(laughing)
Yeah, the little boy.
You have a specific look. You're not like all the others.
(laughing)
For example, you know, I can get like 50 girls in like,
20 minutes, but for you, you have a specific look
that you don't have to compete with all the others.
- OK.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the talent agency.
But the whole process was ridiculously easy.
All I had to do was sign a few forms…
and get measured up, then I was deemed fit for show business.
(introducing Dave in Japanese)
So that's it.
I'm a member of Bayside now? - Basically.
A freelance member of Bayside.
Nice to meet you all.
- Bye. - Bye.
- Thanks guys. - Thanks.
(gentle music)
So, last night I got a call and I have been selected
to play an American designer in a show about the Olympics.
So I'm... pretty happy about that.
(foreign language spoken)
My first job had come much sooner than I'd anticipated.
(chattering)
But as an inexperienced nobody, who just set foot
in Japan, part of me wondered why I'd been selected.
Would you look at this?
What is this?
This is my work.
I want your frank…
Right now, over there, I'm being witness
to one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Dave has never acted before.
And he's on a professional Japanese film set.
(crew talking in Japanese)
I want your frank opinion.
Everyone knows what's happening.
The other actor is this professional actor.
And he's looking at Dave, and every time he looks at him
he's got this little smile kind of creeping up on his face.
Why don't you draw an ukuyoe?
The director's just getting pissed off
because he's had to do the same scene about 80 times.
Why don't you draw an ukiyoe?
Despite my casual sabotage of an otherwise
professional TV show, I managed to struggle through.
Although, I did have the dreaded feeling
that we were out of our depth.
I mean, why don't you try to incorporate
the ukiyoe into your own design?
At the very least, I needed to know if my small time
acting gig could lead to something bigger.
(upbeat music)
Today, I'm on the set with about 100 foreigners…
and I'm commenting on funny videos.
After just three months in Japan…
I'd already reached the lower leagues of foreign celebrity.
I was an extra appearing regularly on national TV.
Something I couldn't have dreamed of achieving
back in Australia.
So I'm not sure what my role is today, but I'm in this
incredible church with about 10 other foreign extras.
I didn't know this would lead to fame,
but I was having the time of my life.
And more importantly, I could see that…
the Big in Japan pathway was real.
(upbeat music)
Japan is unique in the sense that it has
this homogenous culture.
When someone gets home from work,
they turn on the TV, and they want to see something
that they don't see every day.
And foreigners are one of those things.
For them, a foreigner is a foreigner.
Especially a white guy. All, they look like each other.
You can be famous just for being not Japanese.
So it's really your best shot.
And if you don't make it there,
you're not gonna make it in your own country!
Anyone can be big in Japan.
Just as fame was evolving, so too was 'Big in Japan.'
(Japanese cute music)
A new generation of Japanophiles
from cosplayers, pop stars, to anime enthusiasts,
were taking celebrity into their own hands
by building their fan bases online.
Kelsey Parnagoni was one of them.
At just 19, she'd left Canada to pursue
her lifelong dream of becoming a type of Japanese pop star
known as an idol.
For the sake of my own experiment,
I wanted to find out what had inspired Kelsey
to take such an unusual path towards fame.
So I decided to visit her at the Rabbit Cafe
where she worked part time.
- Hello Kelsey. - Hi, how are you?
- Good, you're, are you a rabbit?
- I'm a rabbit. - That's so cool.
- So this is where you work. - Yes.
- Wow, so what's your favourite rabbit?
Churro.
Churro!
He's my very favourite.
Why do you like him?
He's got such a little fluffy face.
(laughing)
He seems pretty friendly.
So this is like, essentially, your part time job.
Yes.
But I have two, so...
Yeah, what's your other job? - Over there.
- OK, and what happens there? - People take pictures.
One thing that really struck me
was just how bizarre this whole situation seemed.
A girl taking care of rabbits,
with this goal of becoming a famous J-Pop idol in Japan.
They'll like smell you and they're all like 'oh'!
- You've got to wonder how that kind of thing happens,
you know, it's not moving to Hollywood to get famous,
it's flying across the Pacific and integrating
yourself in the foreign language and culture.
When did you first have the idea of becoming an idol?
It started when the chef at my ramen, the ramen shop,
said you should go to Japan before you're 20,
because in your teen years, it's very important
if you want to be idol or if you want to be
a singer or anything like that in Japan
it should start out in your teens,
and the older you get,
the less of a chance you have, I guess.
(singing in Japanese)
But, the idea of Japan, I guess
was always in my head, like, I don't know,
I was probably in the womb like “Japan”.
I don't really know where it started or how it started...
I'm really tired and stuff. And I have my show coming up
and I have so many things to do. And I've been busy.
But you became quite popular.
I have 4,000 followers I guess.
That's not a little amount.
That's a lot of people. - Well, compared to some
it's a lot, compared to others it's not,
so I guess I don't know. - Wow, that's so cool.
It was these online credentials that led to Kelsey
being recruited by a newly formed idol group
called Hajirai Rescue.
(singing in Japanese)
Though I'd heard of headline idol groups
like AKB48, it occurred to me that I knew very little
about what being an idol actually involved.
(upbeat music)
This feels a bit like a pyjama party.
So you guys must be Hajirai Rescue.
Yes.
(laughing)
- That looks really hard. - It is really hard.
Because we just learned it, so.
It's something totally different than I would imagine.
What would you describe it is that you're doing
and what kind of group you are?
Idol is more like a model than anything else.
- Right. - Because a lot of idols,
well smaller groups, they don't have to actually sing
and they don't have to actually dance.
But they're supposed to be cute.
What's your kind of character then?
Well, our group is actually called Hajirai Rescue.
Which, hajirai means shy, so I'm shy.
But most of the songs are about like…
“I like you but I'm shy.”
I guess we haven't really thought about it.
(speaking in Japanese)
Like flowers, she says.
I like that.
It's becoming spring, so flowers are gonna bloom.
(speaking in Japanese)
(dance music)
(singing in Japanese)
As Hajirai Rescue waited to take the stage,
I was struck by how at ease Kelsey seemed already,
having only been in Japan for three months.
(applauding)
What had started as a dream on the internet
had now materialized into a real life idol scene,
and I was curious about where this new path might lead.
(upbeat music)
What do you want to achieve with Hajirai Rescue?
Like, I don't want be a group that just never gets noticed,
never goes anywhere.
(foreign language singing)
I want to be kind of like Britney Spears,
or like, if you say that, everybody knows who she is.
(applauding)
What's up, Dave?
I got another extra gig.
That's what's up.
You should be excited, right?
It's just...
It's just I've got to make that call again.
Utsu, Utsu, is it Utsu?
It's David.
It'd been six months since our arrival in Japan,
and the initial euphoria of appearing on television
had been replaced by a growing anxiety
about losing my teaching job.
I'm feeling very unwell this morning.
To be honest, I need to be near a toilet all day.
With the sick calls as frequent as once a week,
I began to question my full time dedication
to the fame experiment.
I'm not only treading on thin ice,
I'm also worried that I'm...
upsetting people…
which I have a big problem with.
I've been teaching this kids' class,
it just started up a few months ago,
and the kid's just started to trust me,
and her English has been improving so much…
- How old is this girl? - She's four.
(laughter) - Sorry.
Yeah, right?
But she's just gotten used to me as a teacher,
sub comes in, she won't go in the classroom.
And I don't like lying, either.
I don't like this campaign of lies.
When the documentary finishes you'll...
you'll be out of Japan. You won't ever meet these
people ever again. Why does it matter?
I don't think it's right, what I'm doing.
What would you do in my situation?
I wouldn't give a fuck.
About any kid.
I'm in Japan here to shoot a documentary,
that's my priority, that's what I want to invest
my emotions in, that's what I want to invest my energy,
my effort, all my time. Teaching English allows me to do that.
Clearly, we were all feeling the pressure.
But there was an even bigger problem at hand.
As an extra appearing for a few seconds in the background…
of TV shows, I wasn't getting any closer to fame.
If we were to make any further progress
in our fame experiment, we would need a new approach entirely.
Alright, so we're gathered here today
to talk about how to make you famous, Dave.
We need to take a more systematic approach, as well.
Figure out the different ways that people do become famous.
And I've created a list of those ways…
So one of the biggest considerations in coming up
with this list is “what can Dave do?”
Yeah, not a lot. So…
There's a lot of things I think we can just
cross off the list. You know. He's not a Brad Pitt.
He's not even a Michael Cera.
He doesn't have, like a Nobel Prize in him.
No, he doesn't have he's not a Rain Man.
So the first three I've got,
probably like the typical ways people become famous.
You achieve something.
You could like invent something,
you could cure a disease,
I don't think you're gonna do that.
Being the best. Are you the best at anything?
Alright, we'll cross that one off.
(laughing)
And do you have some type of talent?
Well, that's the point, isn't it?
I don't have any talent.
Yeah, I think that's the point.
Yeah, so the first three we'll cross them off.
I think we need to think practically about this.
What are the tools available to us?
What are the platforms? And how can we build a fan base?
- Alright, so the next point is
I think it's the quickest way to become famous,
It's the most effective way,
and we don't really have to do much.
It's to go viral.
And I think a classic example of this type of fame
is Alex from Target.
He's a normal guy, a little bit attractive,
and then he wakes up the next morning,
and he's got 300,000 Twitter followers.
And now he's going on a YouTube tour.
Hey, guys, what's up?
Welcome back to my YouTube channel.
We shouldn't dismiss the viral thing.
- Question mark? - Yep.
This kind of leads to the two things
that I think we should like try and do,
which actually involve hard work.
And one was based on like what Bob was telling us, you know?
Create a persona, and amplify it.
- Times 100. - So what've you got?
- Well, he's got big fucking glasses.
I began with this sketch, which doesn't look like Dave at all,
so I just ended up being like an obsessive girlfriend,
drawing his face heaps and heaps of times.
Given our desperation to build an audience,
we needed to give my persona license to do anything
in the name of fame.
We eventually hatched Mr. Jonesu,
a wild and eccentric version of me,
built for the Japanese market.
wanna be the big shot for…
We walked in here about two minutes ago,
and found you like this. What's up?
I don't think it's very fair because you…
pretty much forced me into this situation, Lachlan.
Mr. Jonesu was my twin brother,
separated at birth, and raised by viral videos.
There are a lot of people in that space,
making videos, a lot of those videos are weird.
Let's make weird shit, let's make it weirder.
Inspired by Japanese pop culture references,
the Jonesu franchise included an obsessive
nose-bleeding tourist, and a daikon…
who would eat anything out of a blender.
But for our wildest creation of all,
we took inspiration from the onigiri,
a common Japanese snack made of rice and seaweed,
to create Japan's weirdest superhero, Onigiri Man.
Let's see what I look like.
Shit.
Oh no.
(laughing)
It's bringing him to that line,
the boundary that he sets for himself,
that every human sets for themselves,
and then pushing him over it,
and going, “no, that's not your boundary, mate”,
keep going, keep going.
Oh my God.
(laughing)
Holy shit.
Oh Jesus.
I don't know. I don't know, Irwin.
- We're doing this. - Oh, God.
I already am kind of pushing boundaries a bit.
(laughing)
We gotta do this.
Whether I liked it or not,
Onigiri Man was to be launched later
that very day at one of the busiest places in Tokyo.
You nervous?
A little bit.
Once we get started, I'm gonna want it to be
as fast as possible.
In the event that we are, I am kind of…
I mean, this is extreme case,
but in the case that I'm arrested or something,
you guys have got my, er…
It's not full nudity, is it?
I mean... - No, it's not.
Alright.
Go, go, do it, go. He's off!
But just one thing.
When you were put forward as the one who had to be
the character, would you have allowed that to happen had
you known then what you know now?
That's a good question.
I said I would do anything…
and that's been the premise behind it.
If I want to become famous...
I have to put everything out there.
Do you think I'm making a mistake?
Am I making a mistake?
(laughing)
(speaking Japanese)
(laughing)
It's alright. I'm just not looking at the people.
As Mr. Jonesu's launch loomed,
it dawned on me that what I was about to do was irreversible.
OK, so we've got Mario, we've got Ampan Man,
we've got beers, and we're about to launch Mr. Jonesu.
This is maybe the craziest thing I've ever done.
Give me a pity like as I sell my soul to the internetz.
The release, in the end, was oddly cathartic.
Mr. Jonesu was a character, just a character.
And I took comfort in the fact that he wasn't really me.
And we're rolling.
We began to take YouTube very seriously,
imagining ourselves as an agile fame building unit.
So we've snuck into one of the parks in Toyko,
because it's got this nice forest.
And if we're caught, we're fucked.
And action.
And for the first time,
we felt like we had complete control over our destiny.
(chiptune music)
(chattering)
But no one watched our videos.
We're still under 100 subscribers
after two months on YouTube.
That's pretty pathetic.
It's fucking deflating.
We need to… we need some kind of support,
beyond just our friends, which are our
98 supporters so far, beyond the advertising
we've poured into it ourselves.
I think most of the views are from paid advertising, so...
When you consider that 2.3 billion of us
now use social media, it's not surprising that
our efforts barely registered a ripple.
Alright, so here we are, in front of the elephants.
Cool thing about these guys is that—
Since YouTube first invited us
to broadcast ourselves back in 2005,
hundreds of millions of us have answered the call.
(chattering)
It begs the question, when everyone has a platform,
how are you meant to get recognised?
- Well, right on time. - Good.
- Nice to meet you. - Wow.
I expected you to be nude…
(laughing)
…and onigiri. - Yeah, yeah.
In search of advice, I'd hunted down
an American YouTuber called Gimmeabreakman.
He was the self-proclaimed godfather of a community
of foreign YouTubers in Japan, known as Jvloggers.
We're just having fun, you know.
We have parties, we invite each other to these parties,
and we get these get-togethers, so…
And you'll see overlap, a lot of people
appear in many other people's videos.
So I guess the last thing I mainly wanted
to talk about was my own channel.
It's not doing incredibly well.
Right. Let me see.
Your total views are only 3,000… 8,000 views. Yeah, OK.
98 subscribers. Can I sub here? I'll subscribe to you now.
OK, thank you, I appreciate it.
How to get… how to get more views… You know what?
You know, if you wanted to introduce yourself
to the whole YouTube community,
September 6th is a YouTube party in Tokyo.
- Ah. - If you can make it to that...
Of course,
I went as none other than Onigiri Man.
(chattering)
(laughing)
How often do these events happen?
This is once a year.
This is my event with Hiko Saemon,
'The Two and a Half Oyajis.'
We do this once a year, and this is the fourth year now.
And this is the biggest turn out we've ever had.
Actually, it doubled over last year.
You guys are like the father figures
of this community, right?
Yeah, we're old.
(chattering)
You know what I think it is?
People think, if he can do it, I can do it. And it's true.
I'm not sure what I imagined YouTube
celebrity to look like, but a bunch of seemingly
ordinary people hanging out in a run of the mill
sports bar was not what I expected.
I had to remind myself that some of them
could fill multiple stadiums with their subscribers.
I think the big difference between the way that
fame moves now and fame maybe moved
prior to 20 years ago, but even further back,
is that it has become pandemic.
I love your interview style. So unique and amazingly awesome.
What's the overall goal?
As many things as possible on my head, I guess.
It doesn't situate itself entirely within
the two or three hundred people that we could name
without even thinking about it.
About…
About 400,000.
(yelling)
Social media has more or less produced
the consequence that many, many people
are working and producing and labouring to become famous.
Do me a favour, and just shut the fuck up for fuck's sake.
I didn't want to be famous.
I really didn't want to be famous at first.
I just wanted to make videos that would entertain
people and educate them.
Having met these modern celebrities,
I felt reassured that as an untalented nobody,
I was perfectly within my rights to seek fame.
But on the other hand, I was a semi-naked lunch food
with a fraction of their subscriber count.
- What would you recommend for someone like me?
- Who are you targeting?
Who's your target market?
That's probably the main question, isn't it?
At the very least, we needed a better strategy.
(humming)
I have to take my hiccup medicine.
So, Bob, where are we going today?
Well, today I have another commercial shooting…
with a great friend of mine, Dr. Takasu.
He's also my sponsor and so he puts me
in some of these wacky types of commercials.
Now he's checking his body for a TV commercial.
This is him tweeting his,
talking about what his body looks like
for today's commercial.
So we'll both have our shirts off
I'm quite sure, and he'll be doing that on the commercial.
- Say cheese. Cheese. afsa afdsv
Great.
- We'll put it up on Twitter.
- Yes, yes, great.
Sapp-San. Greetings. Good to see you, how are you?
- Great, great, great, great. - Out of nowhere,
the universe delivered my newest inspiration.
My name's Ladybeard, this is my photobook.
- Hi, Ladybeard. - Hi, lovely to meet you.
- Rick 'Ladybeard' Magarey was a 31-year-old Australian,
whose repertoire included cross dressing,
wrestling, and heavy metal singing.
As a countryman and fellow weirdo,
Ladybeard seemed like the ideal mentor for Mr. Jonesu.
I think when you're making a documentary about foreigners
in Japan, and a man, a fully grown man
walks through the door and he's got a beard
and a red dress on...
you thank the documentary gods and you go with it.
Despite only being in the country for two months,
Rick had amassed 20,000 followers on Twitter.
(yelling)
So, he's doing, just to put this in perspective
he's doing 50 times as well as I am.
I wanted to find out more about Ladybeard's
self-made celebrity, and how he ended up here
in the first place.
Are you boys heavy metal boys?
(grunting)
(practising singing)
Cool, alright.
It is hot as shit back here, isn't it?
(metal music)
Strangely enough, it wasn't in Japan
that the Ladybeard story began.
When I first did it for the first time in Hong Kong
people lost their minds.
They were like, you are the funniest guy
I ever see in my whole life!
Funny, funny, funny, funny guy! You are so crazy!
They couldn't believe it.
And people seemed to love it so much
and it made everyone so happy, that I was like, you know,
there's got to be… sorry…
there's got to be a thing in this, you know?
And so I kind of, then when I started wrestling
in Hong Kong, I needed a character,
and I was like, what if I put on a dress
and I call myself Ladybeard?
It was during a 2013 tour of Japan
that Rick discovered an audience who simply couldn't
get enough of his adorable destruction.
Ladybeard the brand had found its critical mass.
(heavy metal music)
(cheering)
- That was amazing. - Thank you very much.
- Wow! - Thank you.
-Thank you for coming. - I've seen nothing
like that, man. - Cool.
That makes me happy, that's what I go for.
But I'm, I'm an idiot.
Like I can't do anything.
I can do what you saw on stage.
I can get in the ring and do some wrestling.
That's it.
At real life, I suck so much. Very bad at real life, you know.
So the fact that people appreciate
the one thing that I can do
makes me very, very happy, you know?
Though he played down his popularity
as good fortune, I was left wondering
how could Rick from Australia know what resonates
with a Japanese audience?
(chattering)
We were at the photo studio of Ladybeard's manager,
Naoko Tachibana.
A world renowned photographer of cross dressers,
Naoko took a huge risk in partnering with Rick
in hope that Ladybeard would make it big.
(laughing)
- Oh good job, good job. - Good job, Ricky.
(yelling)
Naoko's photos were just one component
of team Ladybeard's strategy.
The second component involved regular public appearances
in subcultural hotspots around Tokyo.
Alright, here we go.
I know you!
Hey, how you doing? You good?
You're having a good day, I can tell from your face.
(chattering)
He's walked about 10 meters into the street
and he's already making a show.
(chattering)
Existing fans and newcomers alike were flocking
to get a glimpse of the Ladybeard show.
All kinds of people, children, adults, babes.
What we didn't see at the time,
was that an entire other scene was escalating
and unfolding online.
I follow him on Twitter.
Do you follow him, Ladybeard?
Team Ladybeard's grassroots approach
showed me that when properly designed,
fame could be built from scratch.
We've gone from 10 meters in to about 15 meters in now.
I don't think we're gonna reach halfway.
It's not just about creating a persona.
It's about knowing and responding to an audience.
(chattering)
Not many people get to experience that kind of
recognition on the street, so what does it feel like?
- It's awesome, but at the same time
you've got to be on all the time, even right now
talking to you, I still have to be mindful
of these people taking photos.
So no, it's continuous non-stop work.
Do you think there will be a time one day
when you can't do this?
You mean come out in public like this?
Yeah, I hope so, I hope I get famous enough
that it's just too much of an onslaught.
These are awesome, these… some zombie brides.
Just check out the zombie brides on camera.
How cute. So cute!
No, I hope that happens very soon.
I can't go anywhere or do anything
without getting recognised.
I can't go to the grocery store without getting recognised.
Having met Ladybeard, we realised
that if Mr. Jonesu was ever going to get big on YouTube,
we had to turn an open ear to our audience.
But despite our new grassroots strategy,
my first real taste of fame came from
an avenue we'd long since neglected.
- Hello. - Hey, there he is.
- Hey, how you doing? - Good, good, good.
You've got a big one now.
It's confidential, so I can't say the name but
'T' company from cars. You know, Japanese 'T' company.
- It's fucking huge. - Yeah?
You get almost a month's, more than a month's salary
in two or three days, right?
Why is it so huge?
I dunno, because it's worldwide.
lt's worldwide.
Probably, yeah.
(laughing)
You're a big star now.
All of a sudden, the flood gates had opened.
(upbeat music)
Corporate Elliot-Jones Here with you here today.
I'm very, very surprised that Dave is getting these jobs.
I never know whether I prefer watching the actual…
ad he's in, or watching Dave watch the ad.
- There I am. - It's like watching
one of those videos where the gorilla realises
it's him in the mirror.
But it's Dave like, “that's me on TV.”
(laughing)
It's a drug. It is addicting.
And once you get a little taste of that,
that sweet mama fame...
I want more, I want more of that!
(upbeat music)
Merry Christmas!
By Christmas of my first year in Japan,
my extra work seemed like a distant memory.
I'd found my calling as an idiot foreign nerd.
And I was getting paid thousands of dollars
to star in prime time television commercials.
Who could complain about that?
It's actually pretty surreal, like…
I was taken to the same studio that Godzilla was filmed at.
It's trippy and it's exciting and it's cool.
But you do kind of feel a bit special.
We've been here probably eight months.
Is this kind of where you expected we'd be at
when we started?
Did you expect we'd get this far?
I don't know what I expected really.
I just did it.
(laughing)
(Japanese rail announcement)
(dance music)
A year into our experiment, I was well and truly hooked.
My pursuit of fame initially felt frivolous
and ridiculous, but the perks were indisputable,
and I couldn't deny that I wanted more.
(New Year's countdown in Japanese)
(cheering)
But as it turned out, I was only really
skimming the surface of what true fame actually involved.
I may have overdid it a little bit.
My legs feel so numb.
I think I will actually just cancel and just sit down.
I thought you were inhuman at one point,
but this is just proof that you are human.
Yeah, yep.
The Beast...
is a kitten.
(laughing)
What just happened?
All I know is...
Bob hasn't been getting enough fluids.
He's had to go to the hospital
and cancel the rest of his New Year's event.
Thank y'all, good night! Happy New Year!
(music box music)
Months later, we were back on the road with Bob.
He'd barely had a day's rest in a hectic year
in which he'd reportedly earned 3,000,000 US dollars.
After seeing him crash out of the New Year's event,
I wanted to know what effect his work had
on his personal life.
Do you spend more time as the Beast than Bob Sapp?
Correct, that's right.
And so, and that's why on my Facebook,
I have a picture of me and my dog,
and me and an elephant in the background, OK,
because I want people to know, listen,
I'm really a normal person, guys
because that's right, when I leave,
everybody wants The Beast.
When I walk through the mall, they want The Beast.
It can get, you know, tiring.
What about your friends and family?
Are you happy with your relationship with
your close friends and your family at the moment?
- Family members are gonna be...
they've got to stay their distance.
So, almost, a little bit over 10 years
I've yet to see anybody in my family,
or really speak to anyone.
Because yeah, it's really hard because...
you know, they want to be a part of what's going on
so much, that it's to their detriment.
That makes me go nuts.
It's a blessing and a curse.
How do I get to know somebody?
Oh my goodness, geez, you tell me I have…
over a thousand plus e-mails over there,
a day, a week, a month 10,000 e-mails.
How do I get to know anybody?
You know, everybody's saying the same thing.
I really like you for you!
And everybody, but I really like you for who you are
instead of what, for what you do, you know what I mean?
Everybody says that. Everyone says the same thing.
So what does it take for you to care about someone?
That's a really good question.
I haven't really thought about that.
I guess I do more caring for them than I really...
want them to care for me, I think.
That's probably how that works,
so I have my animals that I really care for.
My friends that are close, closer to me,
which is very few, and then that's about it,
you know, so what it takes is really somebody
that has the stamina and the wherewithal to
understand all of this.
Bob Sapp had lifted the veil
from his larger-than-life character,
to reveal a reality of self-imposed isolation,
and hard work bordering on workaholism.
I'd once found his stardom inspirational,
but now I wondered if hardships such as Bob's
were part of the general baggage of being a celebrity.
(chattering)
I was with Sasser, one of Hajirai Rescue's
most passionate supporters,
and a keen admirer of up-and-coming idol
Kelsey Parnigoni.
It's Hajirai Rescue!
(upbeat music)
Since arriving in Japan eight months ago,
Kelsey and her group Hajirai Rescue
were now on the cusp of mainstream status.
It seems like you're at least getting
more of those dedicated fans.
How often do you see them?
Every live show, every single time.
And then they come to your stall
and buy everything. - Yes.
You know, just to see like that much dedication
It's like “oh my God, thank you.”
But success in the highly lucrative idol
industry, often involves sacrifices that many
in the west would consider unreasonable.
Idols, once they sign a contract
with an agency, are essentially the property of the agency.
And they don't have private lives, basically.
And there was a case, the girl from AKB48.
She had the unmitigated audacity
to have a date with a boy...
And she was ritually, publicly humiliated, shamed...
She shaved her head and she put herself up
on YouTube and made this confession.
Here was a girl who was just going on a date with a guy.
But the point is, these girls are supposed to
portray this image of virginal purity,
mainly to satisfy the sublimated sexual urges
of the middle aged men who are in large part the fans.
I wasn't sure if Kelsey was subject
to such stringent conditions herself.
But I was curious about how she was getting on
having immersed herself in an entirely different
system of celebrity.
To find out, we joined her downtown for a classic
session of Japanese karaoke.
What have you been up to lately?
Well, we just had our CD release
in Tower Records. - Oh my God.
- So that was really surprising.
There were a lot of people there, actually, so…
because that day we actually had an event where
if you buy one CD, then you get to shake our hand,
and if you buy two, you get a free Polaroid picture, so...
Some of the fans like that little bit of contact, right?
You know, AKB, they actually have events
just for shaking hands, and you have to pay
to get into those events.
Jesus!
Exactly.
It is crazy.
How do you feel, at that moment
shaking the hand of someone that has bought
that handshake, essentially?
It kind of feels surreal, I guess…
Like it's definitely weird,
but it's not something I'm really uncomfortable with,
I guess.
Anywhere in the entertainment industry
you're kind of like, you're more of an object.
Especially with idols, though, it's all about image.
It's like you're paying to...
have contact with me.
Like...
I don't think, like, I don't know,
I'm a pretty normal person, but…
I don't know, it takes getting used to, I guess.
But you're not allowed to have a boyfriend as an idol, are you?
No.
What do your parents think about what you're doing?
I don't know if my parents really understand fully…
because like, I'm pretty sure in Australia
it's the same thing, it's just like what is 'idol'?
Like what, you can't have a boyfriend, what is…
like, and I think the biggest thing is you can't
have a boyfriend, and you have to be in like a bikini?
Isn't that so like sexist or something?
I get that the most, I think, from like English
bloggers will send me questions.
And it's just, it's a really different way of looking at it,
so I have no idea what my parents think.
Kelsey had made astonishing progress
towards her goal of becoming a Japanese pop icon.
But giving up basic freedoms to play the role of an idol,
to me seemed like an extreme price to pay for fame.
I could see now that a serious pursuit of fame
was not a harmless endeavor, but a major life decision,
with real life consequences.
We were well into our second year of living in Japan,
and my showbiz success had come to a crippling halt.
With time ticking away, we decided to return
to our original plan of hustling for an audience on YouTube.
I want to become famous in Japan.
So, I'm gonna need your help.
(chiptune music)
-I'm fucking nervous man. -What are you worried about?
But as I found myself subject
to the escalating whims and demands of an audience,
my tolerance as fame guinea pig finally began to whither.
This desperation to get famous, this is what this is.
It's not fucking easy.
It's gonna be ridiculously cold.
It's gonna be like minus two degrees.
We deliberately had a look we were like -
“which waterfalls will be frozen?”
That was the main criteria for finding a waterfall
for the dare.
Can we safely guarantee that this is
the most extreme thing?
No.
The extreme things are the only way
that people will take notice of you.
Yeah, but according to who?
We want a video that people might share or like--
Our approach has been like, let's make
a ridiculous character, let's make Onigiri Man,
let's make him get naked and go in public--
That's because it's funny. Yeah, but that's because
you think it's funny!
You think it's funny to see me doing those things!
But actually, we don't always need to make something
that's extreme just to get people's attention.
You alright there Dave?
Oh, I don't know what to say…
I just don't want to do it anymore.
I don't want to be doing this today.
I'm doing this only for the documentary.
There's a nice bit of snow there,
just to kind of indicate the temperature.
I'm feeling so nervous.
That coffee I just drank is all swimming around my stomach now.
Got everything ready, hopefully you don't have a heart attack.
(laughing)
I feel like this project, in a way, has kind of…
come to define me.
I've got people in every aspect of my life…
kind of seeing me for this documentary,
seeing me as Mr. Jonesu.
People call me Mr. Jonesu.
Three, two, one.
It's actually suffocating.
(yelling)
I'm swimming! I'm swimming!
(yelling)
Surely, there was more to modern fame than this.
Fishing for likes, shares, and seconds
of online attention, we were presenting ourselves
like small brands.
Whether we were doing dangerous things, showcasing
our picture perfect lives, or hurling ourselves
into icy waterfalls.
Experiment or not, it was too much,
and I felt like I couldn't continue
until I could answer the crucial question of why.
Oh, my balls!
I can't do it.
I can't. - Oh, come on, Dave!
Dave, Dave, go back.
- My balls.
-My balls! - Dave, go back.
- No. - Dave, you were almost…
you were there! - Fuck off!
You don't know what it's like!
You have no idea.
I felt like that was a pretty feeble effort.
- It was a poor effort. - It was a pretty poor effort.
Aw, you guys are mean.
(laughing)
(knocking)
My fans are so sweet. I love them.
Ladybeard-San. Hello, how's it all going?
I hope my letter and gifts find you in good health.
-Aw, that's nice.
I have poor English, but I am studying English again
to write to you.
Oh my God, that's so sweet.
And you are trying hard in the foreign country in Japan.
- That's correct. - That's amazing.
Since we'd last met Rick and Naoko,
Ladybeard's Twitter following had more than doubled,
thanks to their tireless work and huge personal
investment in the brand.
With my motivation for the fame experiment
now at an all time low, I was curious about what fuelled
Rick's incessant hunger for fame.
So what do we want to find out today then?
Well, I think one thing that's for sure
is that what Rick's doing isn't normal.
I guess I'd like to find out what drives someone
like Rick to come all the way to Japan,
put on a woman's dress, and try to get famous.
Which is not a very normal thing to do.
It's a pretty extreme life choice.
I think anyone who's getting into the entertainment
industry generally, especially as a performer
has some level of not necessarily insecurity,
but to an extent, they enjoy being objectified.
In the sense, they enjoy performing,
and they enjoy people watching them.
Did you have, I mean, any insecurities
when you were younger? - Yeah, tons.
Tons, bags full.
I think that's a massive reason why I'm doing all this now.
In fact, I remember doing a goal setting workshop
several years ago when I kind of said to myself
I sort of need to get famous because I'm never
gonna feel worthwhile if I don't.
(ethereal music)
Later that night, I visited Rick at his apartment.
at his apartment.
I wanted to know more about his past, and how it had
shaped his fame ambition.
Australia I find very strange,
in that I've never properly been able
to get things done in Australia.
Like I've never really felt like accepted
amongst other Australians, which is why I left.
My main memory of growing up is that I was fat,
and nobody liked me for that reason.
That's my main memory.
The world repeatedly communicated with me
that I was a shit human being because I was fat.
When did you first start seeking, like, that acceptance?
I guess when I was 14, when I started cross-dressing.
I found being funny was the only approval I normally got
from people.
If I was funny, then even the guys who were bullying me
would laugh.
When I first came up with the name Ladybeard,
it was a code name for just like the party version of me,
because it was essentially what I would do
when I went and partied.
You did this so often, like…
so regularly, that people just knew you as…
that's party Rick, that's Ladybeard.
Yeah, yeah.
That's right.
But then Ladybeard, the name Ladybeard,
I didn't create until much later,
until I was living in Hong Kong.
So people just knew me as Rick, the dude who's wearing a dress.
And I'm still surrounded by girls…
because I'm wearing dresses.
(laughing)
(chattering)
I could see that fame had awarded Rick
a happiness that perhaps he couldn't get otherwise,
and that beyond the likes and shares and signifiers
of fame, there were real human connections.
Perhaps this feel good factor was what my fame
experiment was lacking.
I was willing to give my online celebrity one last shot.
But this time, I was going all out.
Alright, today's a big one. I'm at Comiket.
So far, my fame attempts have got me 500 fans.
Today I'm ready to take it to the next level.
When Ladybeard came here, he got 10,000 fans in one day,
so today I'm aiming for 1,000.
Team Jonesu have taken this to the next level.
We've created a hand drawn sign, and on it
it says that if we get 1,000 followers on Twitter,
or subscribers on YouTube, Dave's gonna take off
his loincloth.
You know, there should be some people who want to see
that, hopefully, in winter.
Every year, almost half a million people
come to manga and anime festival, Comiket.
Find the changing rooms because this is mental,
I don't know.
As well as hosting an enormous comic market,
Comiket is widely regarded as a place for aspiring stars
to connect with new fans.
It seems like judging from the guy right next to you,
this is the place to go--
I'm not the only person doing this.
I mean, we're all trying this.
We all want to get known.
(foreign language spoken)
(conversing in Japanese)
(lounge music)
Our technique may have seemed crude,
but we were gambling that at least some
of these anime fans would appreciate a fake
superhero in Onigiri Man.
The idea was to appear in as many photos
as possible to advertise our special offer.
Am I gonna be chastised for this?
Oh Loretta
Don't get much better
Oh Loretta
Take off your sweater
- How's it going? - Yeah he's getting a bit
more attention than a lot of these people, actually.
I feel like I'm getting my poses right, you know?
We had like 30 people just taking photos of him.
It was like he was like one of those naked women.
Even though he's freezing, he's loving it, you know?
(laughing)
By the end of the day, we had registered 200
new Twitter followers, 800 shy of our target.
Our tactic had failed.
But on the upside, it was the first time
I could really say I felt comfortable as Onigiri Man.
It feels good to just be liked, like by strangers.
Never had that before.
Even though we didn't get our goal,
we got something that we haven't been able
to get so far, which is people loving what I'm doing.
If you didn't have to get naked in the middle of the winter,
and people just liked you like this all the time,
imagine what that would feel like.
That would be incredible,
like, I could see why people would want that.
(laughing)
It doesn't stop.
We went to bed last night with 250 followers on Twitter.
Over the past hour, or few hours
I've just got hundreds and hundreds of new followers
and there's this photo that has been
retweeted 12,000 times.
- It's amazing. - It's amazing.
It's ridiculous.
I don't even know what that means in terms of viewers,
but it's just amazing.
I haven't looked at my phone for the last hour,
but I have a feeling I'm gonna have to take off my fundoshi.
Let's have a look.
(laughing)
Just now it appears I do. - Yeah?
What have you got, what have you got?
1248.
No way!
Oh my God.
What are we gonna do?
You're gonna have to take off your fundoshi.
Now?
(laughing)
It's that time of the season
I don't need a reason
14,000 retweets meant that more than a million people
had seen the photo, making it one of the most
popular tweets in Japan that day…
It was an incredible viral achievement,
but it didn't stop there.
In the weeks that followed,
I began to amass my own crew of Jonesu believers on YouTube.
I just had a marathon watching all your videos.
You're amazing, funny, and with a lot of talent.
It's kind of cool that you've got those like,
minions of fans that just like write to you.
It is cool.
Have you ever met with a fan?
Well, I bumped into a fan once.
I had never met him before and I was walking
through Shibuya, and he yells out, Mr. Jonesu!
(laughing)
Yeah, it was New Year's Eve.
We were now pushing over 1,000 subscribers on YouTube,
and I couldn't deny that it was strangely addictive.
He goes, reads the analytics,
he's like “we've gone up two subscribers,
three people have commented.”
And then he replies to the comments.
But our girlfriends had returned to Australia.
And after spending two years of our lives in Japan,
it was hard to ignore the elephant in the room.
When do we go home?
Does 1,000 subs sound famous to you?
No, but we-- - I think 20,000 does.
20,000 is the size of a small town.
(laughing)
So you want a small town following you.
That's how you're gonna do it.
Let me tell you about this through the statistics.
Oh, Jesus.
The graph looks great and I know like maybe
in reality we are kind of at that point
but when do we stop?
Because the girls have left us. We're all just working
enough to survive.
When do we say, OK, that's enough, let's stop.
When I have enough of a following that you can
call me famous.
That's a big call, man!
Like I know that's our goal, but otherwise, what are we doing?
Well, what we're doing is we're living in filth.
We're barely making enough money to survive
And we're pushing on with this project and at some
point it's gonna be like, just relax, OK.
It might not happen.
It occurred to me that I might never
be satisfied. In my mission to become big in Japan,
I'd become a regular on Japanese television,
starred in national and international ad campaigns,
and cultivated a half decent following on the internet.
And yet, I still didn't know if I was famous.
Is famous being recognised on the street in Japan?
Is it walking around, you know, and having
paparazzi constantly following you?
It's a hard thing to describe, and it's a harder thing
to define, but I mean
I guess it's just kind of the essence of being
complimented for something unique about you.
And in a world with so many human beings on it,
fame is something that makes you stand out and feel special.
I think everybody that like kind of does
performances and stuff, I guess, they kind of want to
get bigger, you know, that's kind of the point.
You want to show it to everybody.
Fame has become the commodity that more or less
establishes our internal value.
(laughing)
(cheering)
People imagine that their identity is going to last,
or is only enduring by their production
of these versions of fame
because that is seen as the real value in a culture,
and the real legacy of who you are.
So I'm the most famous in the history
of this sports entertainment, in the history of this country.
(grunting)
I guess I'm just a legend forever.
(grunting)
The only value I can present to the world
is making people really, really, really happy.
So I'm gonna have to hit that as hard as I can...
rather than just being someone who was alive once and died.
What have we got here?
(groaning)
Leaving tomorrow. Well, leaving in five hours.
And I haven't fucking packed.
And I don't know where Dave is.
I think he's out there having a smoke.
What are you doing?
I'm just enjoying the last moments we have in Japan.
This is it.
It's a nice night to stand on the balcony.
It's a beautiful night. It's a new season,
new talent coming through soon. You know?
It's kind of sad, isn't it?
Are you gonna miss Japan? - I'm gonna miss trying.
Let's hug it out.
Get in here Louis.
Get in here.
Hug it out.
It's ending in five hours.
(laughing)
I'm going inside, I need to pack.
What have we achieved?
Over the last few years of our lives?
What have we achieved?
What have we set out and done?
He's cracked! Dave has finally cracked!
What have we done?
- What's happened? - I don't know either.
(laughing)
(gentle music)
In recent years, the flood gates
have opened, and ordinary people are free
to pursue fame like never before.
If you're true to yourself, and prepared
to do the hard yards, fame can be a euphoric
and rewarding experience.
But like any drug, it has a price.
Whether it's seriously hard work,
sacrifice, or in my case, public humiliation.
Though I enjoyed my fleeting moments of celebrity,
I took much more from the real life adventure
I had with two of my best mates.
As more and more of us find ourselves on the podium
in this strange new era of instant celebrity,
I wonder if we're forgetting one of our greatest
freedoms of all: the freedom to be ordinary.
(rock music)
So now we are 100% retired from everything,
so now we just live off of the over $7,000,000
that we earned, so I thought there was gonna be
some big retirement fight.
What retired me was by looking at how much money I saved.
I don't know what I'm gonna do from now on.
I'll figure it out, though.
I've got it covered.
I'm just a little fella from a little place,
who came to a big place,
and with a ridiculous idea.
And tried to get up the hill with it,
and now it seems I'm partway up the hill.
That was the craziest couple of years of my life.
I'm pretty happy to have done it,
but part of me is also really stoked
that I'm no longer wearing that red loincloth,
and maybe for the next job, I'll prefer
to be on the other side of the camera.
Goodbye, goodbye
Goodbye, good goodbye
(yelling)