00:25My husband's building shelf after shelf and he wants to know when he can stop.
00:30I've heard Finney say the word completist. You're out of your mind.
00:36The growth just continues. It's nuts.
00:40If you base my collection on these prices, it'd be half a million dollars.
00:45But I just love how, you know, obviously with eBay and everything, you get so obsessive.
00:49And with those books, it's something else.
00:52I mean, you know, I didn't even know it went that deep, you know, and I find myself, you know,
00:57like, wow, I didn't know this is either this.
00:59This is there. I mean, you know, but then you having the one sculptor who never sculpted before actually make
01:06those things.
01:07That was insane. But that shows that it's gone beyond the tiki culture.
01:11And as you guys were talking about, into a modernistic perspective of it.
01:16So it's sort of transformed, but it's still tiki.
01:20Correct. Yeah.
01:21We caught some breaks and having a really deep bench of artists and craftsmen, you know, as opposed to contractors.
01:30This place was built and the film, you know, as well was made by people that were artists.
01:39And, you know, I got into a little bit of trouble because the guys that were building the physical environment
01:43weren't contractors.
01:44Right. They're artists. They live in their right brain.
01:47And that's not the one that's not the part of the brain that handles numbers, including budgets or timelines.
01:52And all that just kind of went right.
01:55Right. And because these happen in because documentaries happen in real time, the further the bar went over the budget
02:03that we never had, you know, so does the film.
02:06Yeah. Right.
02:06Right. So and but now, you know, and as sort of we finished the physical space and then a year
02:14later finished the film.
02:17And at that point it was like, OK, now we sort of killed two birds with one stone, but it
02:20was sort of painful in the process.
02:22Well, I mean, growth and evolution is always painful, you know.
02:26But the thing is, it's as long as you're happy with the final product, you know, if they'd achieve, as
02:31you said, you're a completist.
02:32But with Kabbali, has it since there's been a little bit of time, you know, because you can always see
02:38certain things that you want to fix, certain things you want to tweak it.
02:41But, you know, yeah, no, it's there's no it would be a mistake to think that there's an end ever.
02:51This is a living organism.
02:53Right. Right. Yeah. I like to think of it as, you know, we use the word culture, but I also
02:56like to think of it as a culture in the sense of a Petri dish. Right.
02:59You do something and it's working. And what is it going to do?
03:03It's now outgrown. Certainly from a physical standpoint, there's no room in the bar now to put any more mugs.
03:10And, you know, the relative success, you know, that Kabbali has had has only enabled me to sort of spiral
03:18further into mug addiction.
03:23These are all shags. These are Doug Horns of Antiki. Tiki Diablo. This entire shelf are the Mulders, the John
03:31Mulders.
03:33Tiki mugs. Tiki mugs. Tiki mugs.
03:36I love the words tiki and mug together.
03:39The tiki mug itself actually came into the game in the early 60s.
03:44You know, I think the history of the tiki mug is a lot deeper than when some people might think
03:48it's more than just your grandmother's collectible.
03:51This is an artist movement.
03:56Some of the stuff I've seen from all the modern mug makers, it's absolutely incredible and super, super clever.
04:00This has got to be the first scene in history that is based around ceramics.
04:04There's artistry and the way that they're glazed, color selection, the way that they're finished.
04:09The collector scene is bananas.
04:12Ten o'clock last night, the first couple people got in line.
04:15A lot of times there's a one mug per person rule.
04:17When you're traveling far, you want to have your souvenir, you want to have your trinket.
04:21The mug becomes the drug.
04:22Are they more popular than ever? Yes, they are.
04:25But I feel like at this moment we may be on a crest and we can either go in a
04:28positive direction or we're going to go into a negative direction.
04:32It's both experiential, but it's also a reference point.
04:35You know, talking like Rob's gone now, but this is that memory of you having this time with him.
04:42You know, both of you.
04:43I mean, could you talk about the power of memory in this kind of both the medium that you're working
04:48in, but also the experiential element of the tiki community?
04:53I mean, if you watch the film, you'll know that every mug has a story, right?
04:58True.
04:59Everyone does.
05:00They all have summer lore, summer, you know, mythology.
05:03We, you know, we go into the Ren Clark severed head, right?
05:07There's different examples of that.
05:09Well, in many ways, you use the word, the term memory.
05:13We are keeping the memory of how he created this bar, how this bar inspired a mug and how what
05:20eventually has happened has inspired Finney's journey into this world.
05:27I mean, he didn't start in this world.
05:28He was sort of an outsider.
05:30So when you watch the film and hopefully what people take away from it, you know, is, is that the
05:36personalities that are involved and the personal connections that these people share with one another.
05:40But it is that story of how we look at the Octomug and how that story came to be.
05:46Well, there's a, you know, I think there's a legacy that tiki has and then the people that created it
05:54in the, the sort of time span that we were interested, which is the revival that started around 2000.
06:00Right.
06:01Right. And so there were players and now there's new players now that the film's over.
06:05There's new artists coming in all the time, but to be able to, it was very satisfying for me and
06:10gratifying really to be able to get virtually everybody that was, you know, a playmaker in that time.
06:19And it also reminds us that, you know, time waits for no man.
06:24It just marches on. Right.
06:25And so we lost Tiki Robb since the film has been completed.
06:28We lost Danny Gallardo, who was Tiki Diablo.
06:31It's a huge, just a Titan in Tiki.
06:34Right.
06:34And so to, to be able to capture this stuff just, and be okay with being in the moment, you
06:41know, knowing that this is this, you know, when this ends, the time is still going on.
06:47Tiki is still going on.
06:48There's new people, you know, if we've done our job correctly, maybe we've done something to help it not die
06:55or sort of fade further into oblivion.
06:59You know, if we, if we're able to do that, you know, I don't think of this as being a
07:04breakout film because it could possibly be financially advantageous.
07:10To me, the important thing is like, hey, if we can get people that are interested in this thing that
07:16was, you know, really sort of on life support in the, in the last decade of the, of the 80s
07:22and the 90s.
07:24I mean, it was really just sort of like, you know, nobody cared.
07:27I think baby doses, you know, there was, there was tons of these Tiki mugs because nobody cared, you know?
07:32So if we can say, okay, there's, there's people behind this movement.
07:37Right.
07:37There's a community.
07:38Right.
07:39Right.
07:39And it's still there.
07:40And they actually don't care whether Tiki is on the upswing or the downswing.
07:46The advice I would give to anybody who is about to open and design a Tiki bar is don't do
07:50it.
07:52I've been waiting all my life to do this project.
07:55You've got to do a build out that gives you that transformative Polynesia atmosphere.
08:00That's expensive.
08:02Well, they first have to care about the cocktails.
08:05Yeah.
08:07It should get you by the sounds that are around you.
08:10Colorful, weird lighting.
08:12You're in the South Pacific.
08:13Escaping to paradise.
08:15It's a vibe.
08:17This bar will be a destination place.
08:20Dedicated just to Tiki mugs.
08:23So how many mugs do you currently have, Finney?
08:26It's got to be around a thousand.
08:28Finney operates in a world that oftentimes I think is fantasy.
08:32And there's many times that I would have walked away from our partnership.
08:37I didn't really know about this subculture with collecting Tiki mugs until this job.
08:44Sven Kirsten's book of Tiki came out in 1998 and it was his chapter on Tiki mugs that kick-started
08:49this new art form.
08:52I wanted Tiki to re-enter pop culture.
08:55This is an artist movement.
08:59He's out every weekend to Palm Springs and Tiki Oasis.
09:04And he laid the new budget on me last week and it's three times what he said.
09:15What I'm trying to do is something that's so over-the-top and purist and still pushing forward in Tiki
09:22and keeping one eye on the past.
09:36Honestly, I don't think anybody would do anything if they knew that they were getting themselves into.
09:40And what's wonderful about what he's created, I mean, the film visually doesn't do it justice, which is great because
09:48then you want people to come and see it, right?
09:50Yes.
09:51He's created a space in which people can come and see these objects.
09:57I mean, he's essentially collected all these things to share.
10:03And I just think that is just absolutely beautiful.
10:07I love that.
10:08I absolutely love that.
10:09I love that.
10:10Hopefully people will see this and they'll be like, I got to see this with my own eyes.
10:13And then they see these things and then they can actually see them and look at them and ask questions.
10:19And Finney's always there.
10:20Right.
10:21Yeah.
10:22Yeah.
10:22I think that it was important that for the film, that my primary goal was not to make a film.
10:31It was to make a bar.
10:33You know?
10:34Yeah.
10:34I wasn't too concerned.
10:35You know, after a while, you forget that the camera's there and, you know.
10:39He didn't even want to be in the film.
10:40Yeah.
10:41Like, that wasn't even the...
10:42Right.
10:43So, originally, you were just going to help oversee it and not be in it, right?
10:48I thought it should be about the artists.
10:49And it was sort of explained to me by Josh and Mike Clemens, the other producers.
10:53It's like, look, if you want to reach people outside of Tiki, you need somebody to sort of
10:57humanize this or, you know, have a character, hopefully a sympathetic character that people
11:01like.
11:02So, you know, I've said that, you know, if I was a really rich kid or had a big trust
11:06fund and I went out and bought all this stuff, it wouldn't have the impact.
11:10There was, you know, the drama comes from the human experience of, okay, I'm going to
11:16kind of go against everything that I was taught, the way I was raised.
11:19I'm going to push all the chips to the center of the table.
11:22I know it's crazy, but in the big scope, in the grand scheme of things, what's crazy?
11:32I know it's crazy.
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