50 YEARS OF HORNACEK
In September of 2024, Jerry & Joe sat down to talk in honor of Joe’s upcoming fiftieth birthday.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
So how you doing, Joe?
Good.
What’s been new over the last ten years?
Well, I was hoping we could get more stuff done together, but I ended up just going back to work and getting more work experience basically, and really, really working a lot of hours.
In 2015, 20 Years of Madness premiered, so we got to go to a bunch of film festivals with it. That was pretty cool. But then, yeah, I agree, the ten years since then, we filmed a little bit, but not that much.
Yeah. It seems like we’ve been planning on doing some more stuff lately than we have over the last ten years. But just went through some relationships a little bit and then mostly just trying to do hard business with construction.
How’s that going these days?
Well, I could say I have more confidence in the job field now, as far as my career in carpentry. And I went to school for climate control technology. And I’m at the point where I have some clients, as where before I did have to work for a company and now I don’t really have to.
So you’re like freelance?
More freelance, from the experience that I acquired.
Great! You have a big birthday to celebrate this month. You’re going to turn fifty in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, I’ll be fifty years old. I made it.
Well. . .there was a trampoline. We had a swimming pool. There was a lot of little girls to play with. There was a lot more kids in the sub than there is now. Like you used to walk out and there just would be kids everywhere. There used to be this thing called Bareass Beach. There’s a lot of old Brookland Sub fables. I almost lit a whole forest on fire and I’ve never seen two men work so hard in my life to put it out, my dad and a neighbor. I got grounded for a month. Um, I’d go play with my cousins a lot because I had a lot of family. And then there would be hot air balloons like all the time
—–like it was just more common of a thing for them to fly over my area back then and nowadays it’s like unheard of, you never see a hot air balloon. If one landed into your backyard it wasn’t uncommon. There was that many hot air balloons. My dad and I used to go chase them down.
I remember going into sailing a lot, you know, on the rivers around here. Going up north a little bit. Down the street, my friend, Brian McCarthy, his dad bought him a laserdisc player. This was way before CDs or DVDs. And it was about the size of a record, but handled like a CD player. But they only had Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. So for two full summers, practically, I would say two to three times a week, we were either watching Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back or both. On laserdisc.
And the cool thing about that is, that’s before Lucas started changing everything.
And that’s before VHS.
So the original original versions.
And it looked like a film. It was pretty good quality. It’s just weird to see how trends change.
Yeah.
Of course there was the whole 80s, you know, Pac Man and breakdancing and all the good movies that came out and stuff like that. But, it was a little more rough back then too. I remember wrestling around with the kids a lot more, like getting beat up and stuff like that and beating someone up. You know a little bit about that.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, there’s a lot of history before that too. And if you were living in the sub, it was still going on like that, like hardcore.
Brooklands sub in particular was kind of rough sometimes.
Yeah. I remember down the street someone actually had a toga party. But for the most part——oh, we had stickers. Everybody had those sticker albums.
Yeah.
Those were cool. We had charms. We had those pencils with the clouds on them that you could buy at Hallmark.
Wait, pencils with what?
With the little clouds on them. You could buy at Hallmark. They don’t make that. I would love to see those or that artwork, it’s like the—
–Are they the clouds that moved?
It looked like the Flash Gordon intro.
Oh, OK.
Where the clouds are all moving in like different colors, like they used to somehow get that technique and print it onto a pencil. You used to be able to go Hallmark and buy it.
Let’s talk a bit about your personal creativity because you told me something, I think last year, that I didn’t know about. Way before you did video, you would do audio. You had a tape recorder and you would do some kind of audio performances in your bedroom.
Yeah.
What was that like?
My friend and I used to act like we were radio announcers and we’d play songs or we’d act real goofy and stuff like that. Tapes were kind of special as a kid because you could act, you could do like a corny performance and then like. . .you wanted it, it’d be all taped out, like cut up and rewound songs coming from somewhere and then you record over that. And it’d get to the point where you try to make like a master tape. Where you go and, like, try to insert parts where it’s dull and do something cool. You know? So that was cool.
Yeah, you’re making your own kind of shows in a way.
Yeah.
Which is funny too because, you know, I didn’t move here until I was in eighth grade, but I also had that kind of relationship with tape recorders. I have audio of my dad interviewing me when I’m like five or six. But then as I got older, I did the same thing——I would play sometimes with my friend, sometimes myself, making up songs.
I remember I recorded Casey Kasem. This is when the Michael Jackson Thriller album came out and Beat It was going to come on——I knew it was going to come on. So I took the tape recorder and I walked it up to the TV and I blasted the TV and recorded Beat It and my mom got all excited and she called my grandma and they got all excited. My grandma bought me a Michael Jackson poster. And she goes “do good with school.”
So you’re a kid, you’re doing sports. I know you skateboarded a lot and then got into comic books, but then we started transitioning into doing video. We don’t have to tell that whole story because it’s a long story. Do you have any special memories from the earliest days of making videos?
Well you and I already used to hang out before that, but it was not about movies, it was about comics or playing video games.
Yeah.
And the other thing is, I want to get back——part of me wants to, like, go and figure out all these games that I used to play and all the games that we missed. Maybe ask you and I just to, like, one of these years, spend a month or two together just playing video games.
That’d be fun.
Yeah. Just to catch up and see what the heck’s going on with that because there’s a lot to that, you know? But bringing it back to eighth grade, I remember goofing around in class. You and I had a desk on each side.
We were both in the corner because we were—
But before that we were sitting together.
Yeah.
I just remember, like, that was the biggest thrill. One of the biggest thrills of my life. It was like me and Jerry were this dynamic duo. The worst dumbest kids saying the stupidest things all the time.
We were both class clowns, but in different ways.
Yeah.
Circling back, do you remember anything about the very first time we filmed?
Yeah I remember my dad walking in while we were playing back the footage we shot that day. It was on hi-8 and you were spitting out 2 Live Crew lyrics.
Oh no.
And my dad was just sitting there. He didn’t say nothing. He was just listening to you.
Man. That’s right. I forgot about. . .yeah.
I thought maybe he was going to blow up or say something, but I think he thought it was cool. Or he was definitely entertained, you know?
Well that’s unlike that other time, where I wasn’t doing anything dirty, but we were doing a cover of Channel Zero and there’s the part that goes “she watch, she watch, she watch.” Our friend’s dad, Bob, who was usually so chill, came in super mad. He’s like “turn it off, turn it off” and it turns out he thought I was saying “she likes to fuck, she likes to fuck.”
You know what’s funny is, like, I had this weird ESP thing going on and I kept, like, thinking that’s what the words were saying and I couldn’t shut myself up and I think I was communicating to them with ESP or something like that and they actually came and busted you. It was so stupid.
Cuz yeah, it’s just “she watch,” over and over and over.
Because you didn’t, you weren’t——you didn’t, like, you know like synthesthesia or schizophrenia or something—
Yeah yeah.
—like, you didn’t pick up on it, but everybody in the room did, except for you, and you were just going “she watch, she watch, she watch, she watch.” And there’s this big guitar like, you know, with bass drums and stuff.
Right. So you maybe telegraphed it with psychic, you know—
Yeah.
Like your psychic antenna made it—
Yeah, and I was like, oh man, I was like what the heck’s going on in my head you know? But anyways, my dad when 30 Minutes of Madness was playing, like, it played the premiere, but then it also repeated for the rest of the month. 
So my dad saw it and I was embarrassed and I went in my room and he thought The Guy With The Big Hat and Sunglasses went in the studio and was like “Welcome to the show.” Like he was all excited about that and then he’s like “that’s your show, you did a good job!” He was like really proud and happy and stuff and then the credits he’s like, where’s your name? He’s like, “oh they gotta put your name in there.”
But your name is in there.
But he goes “oh I thought that was your show.” He goes “this is Jerry’s show?”
Both of our show.
Yeah. But he was like elaborating like “you should have a show where you sit down in a studio with The Guy With the Big Hat and Sunglasses.”
I know that you’ve had some health issues the last couple of years. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Well, last year I got diagnosed with cancer of the rectum. So it’s been a chore, obviously in my life.
Would you say that it’s been a pain in the ass?
Yeah, pretty much. I have cancer of the rectum——that’s where it goes (laughs).
(Laughs) And it’s stage four, yeah?
Yeah.
When you first told me, I was in Thailand. You were talking about how you felt about death and you had some really deep stuff to say. Do you remember what you said or how you feel about it now?
Well, I just tried to keep faith in Christianity, but I was not opposed to dying. I thought, you know, it wasn’t my decision, it was up to the maker. I have so much faith in Jesus that I think all my friends are going to go to heaven with me and we’ll be able to do 30 Minutes of Madness. Like with the faith I have in the Holy Spirit.
Yeah and you also said something like, if you die, it’s like going home——and it’s hard to be sad about being in heaven.
Yeah, I basically felt that way my whole life, you know, but another day goes by and we get a little older and we think, well, it’s just not our time to go. But I think I was just feeling at that time I was more closer to my religion and feeling God more. You get to see your father and then his father and his father all the way up to Adam and Eve. So you kind of get this feeling like it’s Christmas time where you get to see, well, for most people, a good Christmas party, you know, for a longer time, basically. Like you get to feel that security of being in the company of others and not having to worry about life’s ventures.
Yeah.
You know, so it’s like a good place to go, a place that you want to be, because of the good times that you’ve had here be, like, just a better time up there along with the memories that you have of the good times here.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Yeah. All these people, like they die, where do they go? Like this memory I had with this person and this phone call I could make and have this conversation and go back and have that conversation with that person——I can’t do that anymore. Well, now you would be able to, because, you know, you go into that place where it’s the other side of life, you know.
Yeah. And I know you said that, if it happens, it happens because it’s going to happen to all of us.
Right.
But also, you don’t want to go yet. There’s a lot of stuff that you still want to do and you’re interested in.
Yeah.
When you think about things that you’re excited about living for, aside from work, what are some of the things you have a lot of excitement about?
Well, I think it’s cool to be in the creative process a lot. And for instance, let me think, how do I say this? To be able to have a good family life and then be able to do more crafts and hobbies or make a difference, you know, in society by, you know, being able to help people in certain ways and things like that.
Do you feel like this experience in facing cancer and looking at your mortality, do you feel like you have some advice for other people who are maybe struggling with some health issues?
Yeah, I would say always keep optimism and try to remind people to look for cures for cancer because, you know, it could be just something really simple that was just overlooked all this time, you know, and then you just need to, like, kind of push or nudge a little bit here and there on things that are getting overlooked or an idea that can’t come to reality, realms of reality, you know, because of the way things are set up right now.
I think optimism is hard for a lot of people, even if they’re totally healthy and they’re young. How do you think you’re able to keep such an optimistic outlook?
Well, there’s things to do, you know, if you put your mind on a certain idea, then everything else in your life is going to go towards that forward position. If you don’t have that, then you’re forced to do something else, so just the fact that you want to do something is important. And then realize that it’s just not going to happen. Like you have to think of things, like, for instance, if you can get up early enough, set aside time for an hour to yourself before even getting ready for work, you know, you have to spend time with yourself.
Is that kind of like meditation?
Yeah, but it has more to do I think with planning, the importance of planning your schedule.
Hm. So if I’m understanding you correctly–
Like most people want to sleep in, you know?
Yeah.
But, for me, one of my things that really bothered me was, I had some cryptocurrency that was locked up, you know, and I said, if I don’t get up early to even think about what I’m going to do or say, then I’m just going to let it go. So one of the things I did when I got up early was just write some things down, put some ideas together. And then I was able to get my wallet unlocked. But it was just from. . .not really going extreme in trying to hurt people’s feelings or put myself in a position where it would be too damaging where I couldn’t just do what I wanted, because of frustration or whatnot, but more of just getting up and just thinking things through and thinking of your emotions and putting everything in check first and then build up on that.
So it’s kind of like you’re processing while you’re awake before your day really starts.
Yeah, because to say you have things to do or you’re just suffering too much, but it might be prosperous to get up an hour early before any of that happens and spend some time with yourself, you know? And the thing is, I have this thing where, like, if you get up too late in the day, by the time you do that, then you can’t catch up on the things that you were supposed to do. So you have to do it, you know, it has to be done early.
Well I remember in the 1980s, life was like that a lot for a lot of people. Like they would just want to go do their day, come home, immediately hit the couch and just watch TV. Like we had Family Ties (TV Show), you know, and a lot of stimulation at that time was the invention of Pac-Man arcade games and video games and stuff like that. Breakdancing and good movies coming out. And then that’s what we end up following and want to do. We want to mimic that stuff that stimulated us so long ago. We want to be a part of that. But as far as other people that just don’t have a passion, you know, to just work and come home and sit on the couch and have snacks, I mean, that’s a good life too, I guess.
You think so?
Yeah. Like, look at those nice chairs that we had, we were able to sit on at your house.
Oh yeah, my parents had some nice chairs.
It was nice to hang out and go and goof around all day and go to school and learn and do everything and, you know, try to get girlfriend or whatever and then just hang out on those nice chairs in front of the TV and watch the basketball game or something like that. Like it was a good life, you know?
Yeah.
That’s just the culture, you know. But as you get older, you want to be good at your job so you excel, so you train yourself to do things in a speedy fashion. You want to be like Mr. Awesome at work and all this stuff, so then you take a different path that way. And then you kind of forget what your passion is because you’re trying to just, like, go and just do one task and be awesome at that task in case you get called upon at that job again. So it’s like a lot of give or take, you know? So it almost feels like, when your body’s at rest, it can develop on its own. So I’m thinking, if these people are, you say don’t have passion, they just go to work and then sit down on the couch and watch TV, like they’re going to naturally want to do something.
You think that if they have enough rest, they can recharge maybe and find something.
It’ll like recharge itself. If they come in, especially if they come into someone who’s motivated, that is always very positive.
I do think if people are always on the go and always stimulated, then it’s hard to recover and get energy.
Yeah.
So maybe rest is a big part of it, because if you get enough rest and you’re able to heal—
Right.
And that can be like physically healing or mentally healing, then maybe the passion will just kind of present itself.
Yeah, it’ll come back to you in a dream. Sometimes the body will heal itself naturally. So if I’m having problems, usually I dream and it goes away.
Yeah, maybe that’s a big part of what dreams are, is like that kind of processing.
Yeah.
So you’re going to be fifty years old and you’ve had a really interesting life so far. What do you look forward to?
Well, I hope I get rid of the cancer and be able to gain some strength. Otherwise, I’m just looking forward to living in this residence with my mom, with my family. And being able to work on 30 Minutes of Madness and keep all my friends together as best as possible and look forward to things that may come upon, like maybe going on tour with a band or maybe doing some cool DJ spots or maybe coming out with some vinyls, you know, or doing stuff with YouTube. And, you know, I can’t do everything for myself. I do a Bible verse a day and today’s verse was——I’m not sure if it was the Bible verse——it said this, I think it might have been one of those inspirational videos actually. It said, “If you do too much for yourself, everybody’s going to notice and attack you.” But that’s not why I would want to not do everything for myself. I want to set goals and do things in life because of the simple fact that you can set goals and do things in life. But I do not want to be a person that does it all for myself, you know, so having friends and reaching out and helping is a big part of it.
That’s great. Yeah, well, I know that when we were shooting 20 Years of Madness, we had that scene where we talked about being old men and still having the good times and still making movies. And, you know, we shot a skit today.
Yeah.
And that’s like twelve years after. So we’re still keeping it up.
Yeah. I mean, if anyone’s reading this interview, we definitely need help being publicized because today we went into a library and were not shown that much love. And I think if it was someone like Marshall Mathers or Taylor Swift, or something like that, they probably would have gotten a lot more love. So some of the stuff we do, we do with love, but we don’t have enough love to help us fulfill what we really want to do.
I agree. And that love can come in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
That would be great to have.
Yeah. And we are the talent, you know, we’re not the promoters and we’re not the other stuff, but I just wanted to say, like, that should be something that we should try to figure out, you know, so if there’s anyone out there that wants to join our movement then I’ll try to always play nice too.
When I interviewed you ten years ago, it was kind of just a random thing. And now it’s ten years later. So I hope that we can do another one in 2034 and just keep checking in every ten years. And obviously we hang out in between that and do other stuff, but to actually have a sit-down interview where I’m like, just checking in.
Yeah. I mean, I wish I had enough money to get all my friends together to work on stuff that I want to do, you know, like movies and things with skateboarding and developing communities and stuff like that.
There’s a few things that could help——if we had a patron, like some rich person who found this website, found our videos and like fell in love with us.
Yeah.
And they have hundreds of millions of dollars and they’re like, okay, well, I want to give these guys a grant or give them some money—
Right.
–to just make cool new shit—
–for business, that’s legitimate. And believe me, Jerry and I have been through it, so we probably know how to work with each other a lot better than amongst other people because businesses, what I’ve learned, it’s a sense of trust and, and a lot of pain.
Yeah. Joe and I actually just had a contract that we put together a couple of weeks ago. So we’re figuring it out as we work through different projects.
Yeah.
And I mentioned this in the From the Finger earlier this year, but right now there’s three episodes of the show that are all in different stages of being worked on. Episode 16, 17, 18. It’s still going to be a while, cuz we shoot and edit in our free time and then we all have to work and deal with the rest of our lives. So we don’t finish the shows as quickly as we used to, but it’s still something important to us.
Yeah. Jerry’s gotten a lot better at video editing. So that’s why I have a 30MOM episode 14 DVD on my wall. Cuz I noticed his skills and things he’s doing. He’s still trying to do right now. So there’s a lot of fun that could be had if we had extra time just to hang out or have parties, we could get together with others who want to express themselves through VJing or doing stuff with Digital Audio Workstations, and Adobe still——I know a lot of people are hating Adobe right now, but I think that’s going to be a pass, but—
–I still like Photoshop, but I’m done with Premiere because I really dig Resolve.
Yeah. That’s what I heard, it’s pretty darn good. And I want to say one more thing. There’s a side of me that wants to do things with technology. I think there’s too many big companies that are charging too much money for technology that’s old and, you know, get more publicity to like hang out with others who already have a big publicity——with businesses too, you know, like it would be cool to knock on the guys who made Nvidia store and say, “Hey, we’re 30MOM. Like we need video stuff. And, uh, we used to go to Denny’s too, you know, we would have been at the other table. We probably would have had coffee together.” Mr. Musk, I think I’m gonna talk to him on, uh, PayPal one time. And then, you know, of course, Apple computer, like, “Hey, we’re down, man.” You know, so. . .
Yeah. And I want to say, anyone who’s reading this that knows Molly Brodak passed, we are. . .we still keep her alive in our hearts. And we think about her very, very much.
That’s true. Our hearts go out to Molly and her family and also Matt Zaleski, who we lost just a few years ago.
