SM: We won Triple J unearthed in 2000 and got a record
deal straight off the back of that and did a big tour of Australia
for about a year and then our record label folded and we became an
independent band. We decided to take the money we made and went to
LA in March 2005 because of the success rate, basically. We did our
thing in Australia and we wanted to get over to LA to get a bigger
piece of a bigger pie. We did a lot of practicing and rehearsing
until we got signed by RMR in September 2005.
JG: Were you okay money-wise?
SM: No, not at all! We took out a loan from my father,
our manager lent us some money, I took out a personal loan and we
just kept borrowing money and we’re still borrowing money from our
record label to make this happen. We had pretty much run out and
got to the bottom of the barrel before this happened. We’ve been
living in a two-bed apartment with four people. You eat pasta and
two-minute noodles all day and everyday!
JG: What has kept you going?
SM: There are musical moments that happen every once in a
while when you’re jamming and no one else who is in a nine-to-five
job gets to experience that.
Unfortunately the make up of artists means we’re f--ked either
way because you can’t live with yourself if you stop and you just
won’t enjoy life anymore if you stop.
JG: How did you meet Juan?
SM: I was working holding a sandwich board for a year and
a half in Pitt Street Mall that advertised half-price shoes and I
used to see Juan every Thursday. We first met in September 2004. I
went up and gave him a hug and asked him the same question everyone
asks him which is: ‘Why are you doing this?’ He gave me the same
answer he gives everyone—because he likes making people smile after
they leave his company. I thought it was the coolest idea I’ve ever
seen in my life.
JG: Why did you deicide to make the film?
SM: When I met him I had just seen Supersize Me (Morgan
Spurlock’s McDonald’s exposé) and I thought if he can make a
documentary out of that there’s got to be something I can make a
documentary out of. I always made films, since I was a kid, and I
wanted to make a film because the band hadn’t moved to LA yet. Juan
was something I thought deserved to be documented because it was
free hugs and a beautiful thing and if somebody hadn’t recorded it,
it would have been a crime. I decided to film it three or four
weeks after I met him and that’s how we became friends. We filmed
one day a week for two months.
JG: Is this when you got into trouble with the
authorities?
SM: Yeah we decided to take it around different parts of
the city and found that different authorities had different rules.
Some wouldn’t let us do it and then some considered us a public
liability problem because if anyone got hurt while they were
hugging him, they could sue the city so they said you can carry on
but you will have to pay $25 million worth of public liability
insurance. He couldn’t afford that obviously, so he got a petition
happening. Within a couple of weeks we had ten thousand
signatures.
JG: That was around October 2004. How did it end up on
youtube.com three weeks ago?
SM: The reason why it was such a shock was because it
wasn’t made for the band. It was made because I had hours of this
footage and Juan called me up because his grandmother had died and
he’s now caring for his blind grandfather as we speak. His head was
just spinning around and I was out in LA, busy and I wanted to do
something for him. So I turned the footage into a short film for
him, which took me till the next morning but I just did it in one
night. I sent it to him on a disc as a present and I wrote down
‘This is who you are’. The band walked in while I was cutting it
and suggested putting it up on youtube. So we did that on a Friday
night and by the end of Sunday it had a quarter-of-a-million
views.
JG: How did that happen?
SM: I have no idea. I stopped trying to think. I was
racking my brain. I really don’t know – a quarter of a million
people is a lot of f--king people. It is all word-of-mouth and we
didn’t do anything. We sent a mail out to our friends but that was
it. We didn’t actually do any mass email or marketing or anything.
It got to a quarter-of-a-million views, which is the fastest
growing clip in the history of youtube. And the people who run
youtube took it down because it was getting out of hand. They
wanted to know if whoever made the video had clearance from the
band as they didn’t know I made it and that it’s my song. So we had
to sign a piece of paper giving it clearance and then they featured
it on the front page. Two days later it’s on the top of the front
page and it just goes through the roof.
JG: What’s it like to hug Juan?
SM: It a very satisfying hug. It’s good because we’re the
same height and the same pressure ratio. Every individual person
deserves a different hug depending on height, stature and he bends
his knees, leans over a little bit … he’ll do whatever it takes to
make sure the person involved has the optimum hug.
JG: You all seem like grounded guys. How do you think
this instant fame is going to affect you?
SM: It’s funny man, if you receive fame and notoriety by
doing something selfish, when you get it, it you will eat it up,
but we really created this as something between two friends. It
wasn’t created to make us famous and it’s not really about us, it’s
about the message. And Free Hugs is so much bigger than him and he
knows that and so do I and it’s so much bigger than my music and my
band.
JG: What is it about?
SM: It’s about the most pure, honest, unadulterated thing
in human consciousness and that’s just to feel someone else’s
energy and feel that love. When you hug a stranger there is no
history or purpose, it’s just to make you feel good and put your
energy into someone.
Our band is getting publicity for this clip and if that’s the
only thing that comes out of it that would be a shame because the
fact that this has become so explosive speaks volumes about the
culture that we live in. We’re getting so wrapped up in our cars,
global warming, wars, television or whatever and there are so many
problems that people are shutting off and desensitising. If
somebody gets shot in the head nobody pays attention but if
somebody gives out a free hug, suddenly it’s the most popular thing
in the f--king world—what does that say about us?
JG: You tell us …
SM: The thing is that sex and violence sells, and this is
what really give me the shits. Art is supposed to provoke life and
thought and inspire people and the only thing that the current wave
of entertainment is promoting is ‘Do what you can to get yourself
ahead.’ It’s the religion of our generation.
JG: With these views how have you survived living
somewhere as superficial as LA?
SM: It’s very easy to get sucked into it. I was close to
losing it. I just want to have my little world and be simple
because everything outside is so heavy and difficult to deal with
and I wanted to shut off. As I was making it, I was very emotional
because I was simply creating something for the simple fact of
creating it and the only message was love, freedom and hugs and
there were no dollars signs. Nothing.
JG: So you were getting frustrated?
SM: Oh yeah, largely due to the fact that we were running
out of money. We had limited budget, food clothes, we were living
like shit. We were on the verge of having to go home. When I was
working with the sandwich board it was about creating the best
lyrics I could, now my life was about surviving and making enough
money to stay where I was.
JG: Will you feel guilty if the band does well off the
back of this video?
SM: No. You can’t feel guilty about what you get given.
The only thing you should feel guilty about is what you give out
not what you receive. Our actions have been pure. The point is
they’re listening now. We’re a very dedicated band and we’ve been
working very hard now for six years, there’s been no wavering. It
didn’t matter how it happened we were going to keep going until
something happened.
