Original subtitles

[wind blowing]

- Doesn't look like much right now,

except for the incredible carpet.

As you walk down the hallway, you'll turn the corner

and open up a door into another world.

And the first thing that you'll be confronted with

in that world, a gorgeous Victorian house.

And you'll think, why did I just pay $15

to come in and see a normal house?

Eventually you'll open up the refrigerator

and the fridge will just continue.

And you'll wind up in an inter-dimensional travel agency.

[dreamy chiming music]

This time last year there was nothing left in the tanks

for any of the artists and we had literally,

$500 in the bank account the night before

that we opened the doors to people.

There was a lot of fear and anxiety.

We can't control this anymore.

[upbeat rock music] [laughing]

- We're going to this lit place now.

- Apparently, it's this psychedelic fun house in Santa Fe.

- Everyone who's in New Mexico is doing it.

- Meow Wolf!

- Okay, so there's shrimp on the wall.

Like, what is happening?

- You guys look awesome.

- Oh my God, we're here at Meow Wolf.

["Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio]

♪ We could jet in a stolen car ♪

♪ But I bet we wouldn't get too far ♪

♪ Before the transformation takes ♪

♪ And blood lust tanks and ♪

♪ Crave gets slaked ♪

♪ My mind has changed ♪

♪ My body's frame, but, God, I like it ♪

♪ My heart's aflame ♪

♪ My body's strained, but, God, I like it ♪

♪ My mind has changed ♪

♪ My body's frame, but, God, I like it ♪

- [Man] How we even got on this timeline, I don't know.

I don't know if it was collectively being willed

and we were navigating through dimensions or something.

♪ Charge me your day rate ♪

♪ I'll turn you out in kind ♪

[electricity crackling] [melodic glitching]

[eerie ambient music]

- Hello, hi!

All I know is that we're supposed to get all juvied out,

and I brought the entire squad, some old, some new squad.

- [Man] Okay.

- I've got some weird slime.

- [Man] Right.

- [Emily] Meow Wolf is this entity that is using us

to channel itself into the world.

- This is gross and cool.

- The Meow Wolf itself, the beast.

I've talked to it on the internet once.

I was like, "Are you it?"

And it was like, "Yes," and I was freaking out.

- The thing about Meow Wolf, too, is

we don't know what we're doing, and we don't care.

[jazz music]

- Santa Fe, New Mexico to me is the reason for Meow Wolf.

You have this small town, about 70,000 people,

over 300 galleries, the third largest

art market in the country.

- Everything is geared towards tourists

and what you'd consider like high end arts.

- As cosmopolitan as it is, it's like

well, this is a safe form of art.

- The scene for young emerging artists who are trying to do

something or weird just didn't really exist.

- I'm making a wanted poster for the Serpentine Scourge.

- God, the studio and gallery arts world

is a bunch of markety bullshit.

[energetic rock music]

- We felt disenfranchised and completely underrepresented.

There is a social group that had formed.

We felt like there was this apparatus of gate-keeping

that was keeping us out of the art world.

- So it was like, well, if we're gonna be living in Santa Fe

and having to work and wanting to make art,

how is that gonna work?

- We were sort of like, Santa Fe's orphans of neglect.

- We all organically just grouped together.

We had a place called the Quadruplex

that was four different houses all in one little lot

and everybody that we knew started to move in there.

And we're like really supportive

of whatever art people were doing.

- I was tired of, like, reading about people

who had done interesting things.

I wanted to be someone doing interesting things.

- It just felt like really cool to be a part

of this social group, getting to be really, like, brash.

- Matt King!

I often lose it.

♪ Living off this land ♪

- Matt, he was an animal.

He was an animal back in the day, he was just feral.

♪ Take them by their hand ♪

- We had a lot of music shows in our basement.

- The police would come and shut everything down immediately

And there wasn't enough room and people would get all pissed

'cause like, it was their house that was getting trashed.

- You guys woke me up.

- The police had concluded that there was a cult

living in this apartment, because there was

clear signs of cult activity.

[laughing]

We were like, we just need a space.

Like, let's just finally get a space.

[upbeat music]

It was like, we can't wait for others

to invite us to be part of their world.

It's time for us to just do what we want to do.

- I'm King Cosma, and I come from the Oz Dimension

and trying to make something that lasts.

The new tradition and taking back

the Santa Fe plaza for locals.

♪ It feels so '80s ♪

- I wanted to, like, be an agitator of things,

and really put work towards shaking up the culture

of the city that I was born and raised in.

♪ Get up, baby, yeah ♪

♪ I'll meet you in the street ♪

♪ Get up, baby, yeah ♪

♪ Destroy the right wing ♪

- [Vince] So I was sitting in the parking lot

of the Ramblin' Cafe,

and I was eating a breakfast burrito,

and this was probably a romanticized version of this story,

but I looked up and next to me across the street

was this building that said "For Lease".

I did the math, and I was okay so, if 15 people got together

you know, $900 a month, that's like $70 a person per month.

We could totally afford this.

So I started just like making calls.

We could throw shows, we could do really weird things,

we could have, like, sleep overs.

♪ Get up, baby, yeah ♪

- Everyone just kinda like, yeah, cool, let's do it.

[light electronic music]

- Count me in, that sounds so amazing.

Like, I want to be there.

- So 10 of us came together.

We all threw down $100 a month,

we rented a 900-square-foot space.

We just started working together.

We said, what are we gonna call it?

- [Emily] We all sat in a circle and passed the hat around

and drew names out of the hat.

And everyone would draw two.

And then we went around the circle reading the names.

There was fighting, people were standing up

and, like, shaking their fists and getting really passionate

- [Matt] So many different possibilities came up.

[upbeat electronic music]

- Then Meow Wolf was a combo that was thrown out there.

- I will admit I was one of the people at the beginning

when the name Meow Wolf came up.

It was like, no way, that's, no way.

That's such a dumb name.

- And then when it came down to vote,

it turned out everybody actually voted

for Meow Wolf and it won unanimously.

I'm not sure why.

- Even at the time, everyone was like, "Really?"

- Everybody was still kinda weirded out,

like, "We're gonna call it Meow Wolf?

"That's not even a thing."

- I left that meeting just like, what are we doing?

- The amorphous beast was a mere zygote at the time.

[laughing]

[rising ominous music]

- Quinn and I were like, well, let us have the first show.

And everyone agreed.

- They knew what they wanted to do first.

They were just like, "Let's jump into it,

"let's jump into it, let's do it, let's do it really quick."

[light percussive music]

- Quinn was like this mega-artist, superpower,

excentric dude.

- Matt and I got very, very close, very, very quickly.

He became my best friend in the whole wide world.

We painted everything together, every square inch.

- Very quickly we ran out of room to pain, so we started

building sculptures out of the paintings into the room.

And it was really liberating moment

when no one was telling us what to do,

and these ideas were just coming naturally

as though they wanted to be built

and we were the medium at that point.

That two week experience just sort

of cracked everything open.

- Set the tone for everything Meow Wolf ever did after that,

'cause it was like, oh well, they're just goin' nuts.

- Way more people showed up than we thought.

And like, we got on the news,

which was totally not an expectation at all.

- [Interviewer] So, how would you describe Meow Wolf,

and how do you fit into the art scene?

- Meow Wolf is a venue for artists.

It was created to give artists who felt

like they were on the outside of the art market

in Santa Fe looking in a voice.

We started to feel this momentum,

and it felt really good.

It felt like we were included for the first time.

[lively rock music]

We started to hold meetings, and that's when

early constitution stuff started to get built.

So it was like, who do we allow in these meetings?

And it felt really strange to say these people over here,

but not these people over here.

So we were just like, fuck all that.

♪ One, two, thee, four ♪

♪ Everybody talking at ♪

♪ One, two, three ♪

♪ Well you know I'd walk a mile ♪

♪ Just to die ♪

- It's about radical inclusivity.

- It's an open door.

♪ We all learned what that door is for ♪

- There was like the first sign we ever painted,

it looked kind of like a really

punk rock nursery school or something,

and we were like concerned that what

kind of people is this gonna draw?

♪ Walk a mile just to die ♪

♪ Die die die die ♪

- All the types of weirdos.

All the good and bad weirdos.

- I went to a meeting, and the rest is history.

I was just, like, ready to go.

♪ Good luck is gone ♪

♪ In the mile that I speak of ♪

♪ Is the one I love ♪

- A big one, and then I say this.

- And then you say that.

- And then I say this.

- And then you say that.

- I think I, like, messaged Vince on Facebook

asking if I could have a show at Meow Wolf,

and the response was, "No, we don't really do that,

"but you can come by and hang out."

I've always kind of gravitated toward groups of people

who are kind of saying "Fuck you" a little bit.

- I, thankfully, got invited to come over

and participate, because I never would've gone on my own.

I was too shy.

♪ Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy ♪

- [Caity] It was impossible not to go back.

We would just text the words "Meow Now."

Meaning, like, I'm gonna go sit in this miserable,

freezing warehouse and paint shit.

[laughs]

Do you wanna glue shit to the walls?

[ominous electronic music]

- Meow Wolf itself, the beast, can spread out

like with weird little tendrils,

and, like, it chooses people

and absorbs them into its amorphous blob.

- Rule number one, you have to show up.

You have to come and hang out

and talk to people and start making things.

Rule number two, you have to get jumped into the gang,

and that's a very secret initiation process

that I won't go into here, of course.

- I actually didn't plan to stay in New Mexico permanently.

But I really wanted to work on this next installation.

I decided to stay for that, then ended up

kind of changing my life.

[banging on door]

- Emily and Benji were big,

artistic powerhouses in a lot of ways.

- [Emily] I met Benji in high school.

We were in an art class together.

- [Benji] And she was just wearing this shirt

that said, "Emily is a strange girl."

- Benji and I formed a cult called the Star Gentle Utarians,

and our mission was to transform your soul

into digital data and migrate to the next level.

- Store it for you so you could live without

your body and be immortal, essentially.

- Yeah.

[ethereal electronic music]

The first show I took part in was Biome-neuro-norb.

- That whole show was literally almost

completely made out of garbage.

- We had no money, me and Matt started, like,

taking trips to Salvation Army

and just pulling stuff out of their dumpsters.

- It was like a treasure hunt for us.

The show grew out of the materials we could find.

- For Biome I created this really weird assemblage.

I basically, like, sat in a pile of trash for a month

and was, like, zip tying trash together

and fixing it to the wall.

- Everybody's Maximalist going to town

on every single square inch of the room.

Maximalism is way more stuff than you think

is gonna actually be pleasing.

[oscillating tonal music]

- I'm not much of a visual artist, you know.

I've never really have been.

But I'm, like, looking at all this stuff

and realizing, like okay, if we're creating a world

then who inhabits that world?

[electric sizzling]

[speaking foreign language]

- We wanted to do something space cult, future sci-fi style.

There was a mythology and there was pictures

of the two, like, original people who formed this colony.

- Narrative is access point for people

who don't feel welcome in art galleries

and museums to experience the work.

[speaking foreign language]

- I made this fishbowl with a creature inside of it,

and the creature's name is Buggy.

[speaking foreign language]

I ended up filling the fishbowl with clear jello.

Everyone goes up to the fishbowl and like touches it,

and these, like, crazy little Petri dish-style

organisms started to grow.

So that was definitely a first time of being, like,

I'm gonna make art that's in an environment

that people are going to interact with.

And in the end, I actually like that,

because it became part of the piece.

You know, I wanted to make this kind of

like, fucked up organism, but what it

actually turned into was even more fucked up.

[laughing]

Wow.

- [Man] Music video.

- [Emily] Remixed music video.

[laughing]

- Those first handful of shows were messy.

[energetic electronic music]

You know, for us, it was just this creative explosion.

- It was just, like, burning down some kind of old system

and having, like, a hybrid phoenix of what

art can be rising out of the ashes.

- We moved into this warehouse space.

We kinda needed, like, a trashier building

that we could trash even more.

- How did you find my secret lair?

[cackling]

- [Sean] We just kinda all did whatever we wanted to do.

[energetic funk music]

- Anyone who knew where the key was could book a show.

- [Man] All types of music, you know, like punk

and metal and, like, weird art stuff.

- The space on Hopewell and 2nd Street

was the sketchiest shit I've ever witnessed in my life.

Probably 200 extension cords, like, plugged into one another

Like, wrapped around the rafters with,

like, plastic bags around them.

- Basically we almost killed Corvus.

- Those were pretty ragged times.

- [Man] Hear us!

[explosion booming]

- There's always been like, this good, productive,

I think, tension between the chaos and the order.

- [Man] Catastrophe!

- [Sean] A lot of people in the group kinda thrive on chaos.

[laughing]

[metal music] [screaming]

- I brought a agenda for the first time to a meeting

and I think it was Quinn, or it might have been Matt,

who literally crumpled it up and, like,

threw it on the floor because that looked

too much like the corporate world or something.

- We didn't want rules, we didn't want hierarchy,

and that presented a lot of problems.

- Total annihilation.

We all had to fight for ideas and projects,

and sometimes that's, like, literal fighting.

[laughing]

[screaming]

- I started thinking about the bridge

between idea and manifestation.

- Vince had ideas about a specific vision.

That's, like, a big thing that he brings to the group.

It just wasn't what we were doing, though.

- He moves very, very fast.

And a lot of art cannot, and should not.

- I saw the vision and I was very aggressive about it.

- He could see further out, and for someone

not concerned with further out, that's really annoying.

- I really didn't want to have, like directors,

and that's what I was starting to feel

was a lot of, like, directorial energy.

A lot of, "No, that's just not how it's gonna be."

I'm like, "Who the fuck are you to tell me that?"

- [Matt] Vince was doing things that reminded

people of the man or whatever.

- I had a really bad relationship with power and control.

It was my way or the highway type of thing.

- He is the person at the meetings will

stand up and yell at all of you for not agreeing with him.

- I remember a moment when I went into a Meow Wolf meeting

and I was a little bit late and they had

started the meeting without me.

[eerie tonal music]

I wanted to help run the meeting,

and so like I was chiming in with sort of ideas.

And I remember Corvus and Shawn sitting next to each other

and sort of, like, tag-teaming against me.

Just kind of like keep me out, or at least

that's what it felt like to me at the time.

Probably wasn't true.

And so I remember looking at them,

two of my closest friends at the time

and just being like, okay, fuck all of you.

I'm out of here, I'm not part of Meow Wolf anymore.

♪ In the great unknown ♪

♪ They left me alone and I wondered why ♪

♪ Til I realized I don't disobey ♪

♪ Outside my picky gaze ♪

♪ When I realized ♪

♪ Why they left me alone ♪

- I've known Vince for half my life.

He's just always been a total force,

but he wasn't always so confident.

- I had a really traumatic high school experience.

I was a closeted gay kid who had

severe acne and was overweight,

and I didn't really have any real friends.

With Meow Wolf I started to discover myself

as a leader and as somebody who could bring people together.

It was my first time as an adult where I felt

committed to something I was willing

to be committed to for the rest of my life.

And so when I saw them doing really good work

without me, it was devastating.

It was like, it was devastating.

[mellow synth music]

- I've known Benji and Emily and some

of the other Meows since they were teenagers.

When they did GEODEcadent, I was like,

"Oh my god, Linda, you have to see this."

- So I went to see them in this rabbit warren

of dangerous ladders and little rooms

and strange things, and I totally loved it.

I just, I loved it.

- Linda Durham, local gallerist, hyper-famous,

queen of contemporary art in Santa Fe.

- She invited them to redo GEODEcadent in the gallery space.

- I thought, people need to see this.

This is the new art.

- Being that it was a big-name art gallery,

I made the decision to curate who was gonna be in that show.

- It was limited to just eight people.

It was the first thing that we did

that wasn't radically inclusive.

There was a composition to it, there was an artistry to it

that couldn't really just be everybody doing everything.

- It really did lead to a wider kind of audience for them.

- All of a sudden people are noticing.

Credit started becoming a really big concept

in not just my head, but everyone's head.

And people are grabbing for credit.

All of us want acknowledgement, but at that age you need it.

And so there was a meeting at the Dome one day,

where I just sort of lost it.

I couldn't

[sighing]

couldn't do it anymore.

- He moved out without, you know,

really telling anyone he was moving out.

It was an incredible disappointment.

- In that period of time I was suicidal.

I didn't really have any friends, and I felt kinda lost.

And then I met this guy named David Loughridge

who kinda came into my life out of nowhere.

Became my best friend and confidant.

So it was a moment of healing for me in my life a that point

He was looking for community in Santa Fe,

and was really interested in Meow Wolf.

So he inspired me to try to get myself back involved.

And I said, "Man, I really want to be part

"of Meow Wolf again, but I don't really want

"to engage in the same sort of like structure."

- After GEODEcadent, there was a bunch of different ways

that we had tried to work together and try to deal

with this kind of chaotic working method.

And it like failed and succeeded in lots of different ways.

It was a hard time, though.

I think a lot of it had to do with Vince not being there.

He was, like, a powerful glue and force.

Brought people together and propelled them.

- I reached out to him and we started

having these morning meetings.

I was about ready to leave, too.

- We were gonna start a new collective

called Super Meow Wolf, and then people

could have the choice whether they wanted

to go a Meow Wolf show or to a Super Meow Wolf show,

and that was like a really dick thing to think about,

but we did talk about that.

- But we arrived at this conclusion that if Meow Wolf

is completely open and inclusive, then that can include us

even if we want to have some amount

of organizational structure and roles.

That intention and that momentum

became the Moon is to Live On.

- I told you, I was visiting a time space.

- Whatever, it doesn't matter.

A spirally void could open up tomorrow

and take us to a completely different reality.

- We wrote this, like, huge, ambitious, crazy play.

- The play was inherently Vince's brain child,

but people were into the idea enough

that it became a Meow Wolf show.

- I saw that as an opportunity to really open the doors

for more people to get involved again.

'Cause that was what was kind of missing at the time.

- [Man] David was the star of this play.

- Here Robert, eat your bacon.

- Don't tell me what to do!

I don't feel like bacon, I'm going to work!

[gasping]

- Bacon? - Bacon!

- That's crazy, man.

Yeah, I don't know, you haven't seemed very happy lately.

- [Man] I got to really get close with David,

and his energy, like, ended up really adding to the whole

group and sort of transforming Meow Wolf in lots of ways.

- Well, I'm an amateur storyteller, or something.

- It was an actual play that was put on,

except it was done in a Meow Wolf way.

It was like pushing three, it was like two and a half hours

or, like, three hour play of just total nuts,

and all the stuff that we wanted to do

were justified in the dreamworld

of the protagonist character.

[airy electronic music]

- By nature it had to be a lot more

structured than our other shows.

- [Man] I don't like to plan like that.

Why do we have to plan like that?

- A lot of people really started to feel like

there's not as much anarchy as I'm comfortable with,

but at the same time we would never pulled off

the play without structure and hierarchy.

- It's like a weird thing to say in the context

of an anarchic art collective.

That strong leadership and a strong vision

actually does cohere people.

- [Vince] And that started a whole next chapter

of Meow Wolf, where I was welcomed back.

- We were realizing more and more, okay like,

we need some amount of structure

and we probably should start, like, raising money

and thinking about a budget.

And, you know, we did that for the play.

Like, let's do that for another big installation.

♪ Going on a pigeon quest ♪

♪ Surf the mouth and ride the breast ♪

♪ I've been looking in a new direction ♪

- The writing was on the wall for me.

Like, I don't think Meow Wolf is a place anymore.

I think Meow Wolf is a group of people.

♪ I've been looking in a new direction ♪

This group of people can do anything we want.

- We'd be, like, sitting around and dreaming together.

Yeah, we're gonna get a show at CCA

and then we're gonna get really popular

and that's gonna launch us.

- Corvus and Sean and Vince invited me to come over

for their Thursday meetings, and that lit the fuse, man.

- We got together and we talked about

what that show could look like.

Chris Hilson said we should do a ship.

- We were trying to figure out one piece

that was large enough for everybody to actually have

different portions of control, different rooms.

- I was like, wow, this could be really cool.

A big boat in this space.

- We were all really excited, and really scared,

'cause we were like, oh shit, that thing is huge.

- It was 6,000 square feet.

It was, like, three times the size of the space that we had.

- And I just said, "If you need to spend the night,

"work all night, that's fine.

"If you need to sleep, okay.

"Get hungry, want to cook somethin' in the back, yes."

I don't think I said that ever before,

and probably not since, but this is such

an extraordinary project.

- Man, we wanted it so badly.

We knew that we were doing something

that was, like, kind of crazy.

- Something so ambitious that we're not sure

if we can pull it off or not.

[chuckles]

♪ I've been looking in a new direction ♪

♪ The day has passed ♪

♪ The moon's aglow ♪

- And it was crazy, it was a really

crazy project to commit ourselves to.

I mean, we basically said that we're gonna raise $50,000.

And when I said that number the group was just, like,

that's fucking insane, that's way too much money.

And we'll never get it.

And, you know, we raised $50,000

and we spent every bit of it.

And it was all spent on materials,

not a single person got paid.

[upbeat electronic music]

- Sean and Vince and David, Matt King and Caity Kennedy,

really took very good charge and were able

to herd the cats, as it were.

- Making it, like, organized enough

and like a certain amount of left brain enough

that you can actually execute the idea.

'Cause otherwise it would just be tangential screaming

in a warehouse for eternity,

which is also a good show idea, I think.

- When do you want to paint, Caity, what do you like?

- The way that it was structured,

we had essentially like five teams.

The shift.

- Put one strip on this side, one strip on this side.

- [Oliver] The archive.

- The people on this ship.

Go to the archive and figure out how to do

something really particular.

- [Oliver] The environment.

- I kinda just need to be here all day, every day.

- Performance.

- The captain from all those eras is Captain Banks.

- So if someone wants to develop him.

- [Oliver] And tech.

- [Man] What is that you guys are doing on that wall?

- Oh, we're listing all the components

of the control surfaces, and trying to figure out

dimensions for all of them so we can arrange them.

- [Oliver] That was our first real go at having a tech team

and having interactive components.

- My specific role has sort of evolved into a weird,

kind of combination of architect

slash engineer slash general contractor.

That was, like, tough for me,

because I wasn't used to having that role.

I wasn't totally committed to that role.

There was this part of me that wanted to just be an artist.

People were looking to me to make decisions about stuff,

and sometimes I just, like, lost my shit.

[light electronic music]

- People were going to work still four or five,

whatever days a week to make their money,

and then often spending that money

and all of their extra time to make this thing.

Which was, like, what the hell?

Like, I've gotta see where this goes.

- I'd come in in the morning and people would be asleep

on the floor from just going to sleep

a couple hours before working all night.

- We were just so tired, you know,

and just there all the time.

It kind of stresses me out, like,

thinking about it, like oh my god!

- Does everybody fit through this?

- There were probably around 100 people

who contributed to this ship, and that was, you know,

the moment where Meow Wolf really got its hooks into me.

- [All] One, two, three.

- [Zevin] Because I'd never experienced working

with a group of people in that way.

[piano music] [drilling]

- There's, you know, 50 people

that are all doing little things.

It may in comparison to the entire whole

of this project feel inconsequential,

but when you put all those together, that is the project.

That's what makes it so incredible.

- [Man] David was so solid through the Due Return.

[light electronic music]

- Okay, on three we're gonna jump up and down and say Meow!

- [Man] He did stuff that nobody else

wanted to do, and it was incredible.

We couldn't have done that show without him.

[crowd cheering]

- He was a workhorse, and he a big truck and he had

a trailer, and he was the guy that loaded the stuff up,

moved everything, and was a positive spirit

and a motivator to the group.

- So I'm just looking for one person,

so if you want to volunteer for that,

see me after the meeting.

Nick, cool.

I have my volunteer, thank you.

- [Man] He sided, like, the entire ship by himself.

- I always thought it was so cool that he had, like,

all the tools and they were all organized

and everything was perfect, and he was perfect.

[giggling]

Just love David.

- He was definitely a born peacemaker,

and I think he was able to understand people

and where they're coming from.

And we needed those people that could

just get in between and be like, you are both valid.

We need you both, stop fighting.

- It's been good, it's been really positive, yet

really exhausting, stressful.

- We have three weeks, and it looks like there's a lot

to be done, but with that amount of people it just flies.

- We're like, "Shit, I hope people come."

You know, like, we've been working on this thing

so hard for so many months.

- I remember the day before we opened,

Vince and I were walking around and he's like,

"What did we do, what the fuck did we do, this is stupid."

- Exhaustion, doubt.

Are we creating something that people

are actually gonna like or are people gonna walk in this

and say, what a bunch of fuckin' masturbatory bullshit?

I remember there was a moment.

We're 15 minutes from opening the door,

and we all crack a few bottles of champagne.

We should feel proud of ourselves as a group.

Hard times and we kept going,

and I just, that's what it takes.

And I just, like, incredible job.

Thank you, guys.

- And I'm just proud of everybody.

I am so proud of everybody,

and I apologize if I've ever been a little bit of a bitch

during this.

[all laughing]

Because I know I'm guilty of that,

but I just wanted to say thank you to everybody.

You guys, you guys, you guys--

- [Woman] Fucking did it.

[all laughing]

- [Matt] Every single one of you.

- [Man] To Meow Wolf!

[all cheering]

- [Vince] To my new family!

[all cheering]

It was just such a sweet moment,

because we could literally hear 1,000 people outside.

And we knew that we, at that point,

had done something that was remarkable.

[upbeat electronic music]

- [Man] So it was, like, totally magical.

- That's the moment that you kinda get addicted to

is when you actually see what you've done

through somebody else's eyes for the first time

and you remember why you were doing it in the first place.

- [Woman] Aw, cool!

- The sense of accomplishment was pretty spectacular.

- Seeing these people of all ages,

all kinds, all types, you know.

Not the kind of people that you would see walking into

the Miami Art Museum or Walker Art Center,

or other places that I've worked.

- [Interviewer] So how long did it take you guys

to build this?

- Uh, we've been working on it since '82.

- [Interviewer] How long did it take you guys to build this?

- You know, with time travel and all, it was pretty quick.

'Cause you know, all we had to worry

about was these paradoxes.

- It was pretty immediate the way the press responded to it.

I mean, we're on the cover of like

every local arts and culture magazine.

- I just remember the intricacy of it and the details of it.

Where you could've just spent hours in there

looking at all the pieces of it.

- I was one of those people that was just totally,

like, which bunk am I gonna take a nap in this afternoon.

I like completely fell in love with it,

and went back as many times as I could.

- I mean, I would've lived in that intergalactic pirate ship

if they had wanted to hire me as a caretaker.

- It's a unique experience.

The art world needs that.

They need to get shaken up a little bit.

[energetic punk music] [screaming]

- People loved it.

It ran for three months, and we saw

25,000 people through the door.

- [Man] We asked for like a $10 donation.

- The year before we'd be like, "Cool, there's like

20 bucks in the donation box tonight!

Like, let's buy some beer."

- We made like $125,000 off that show.

And I was literally like taking cash and putting it

in shoe boxes, 'cause I didn't know what to do with it.

So literally like under my bed

was like $125,000 stashed in

shoeboxes.

At that moment I realized that we had a product on our hands

Something that we could actually use

to create a sustainable business.

[rhythmic electronic music]

This is closing night of the ship, this is our last night.

We've had an amazing run.

I just wanted to personally, and from like Meow Wolf,

I want to thank everybody who came here.

- You guys are all stuck here now, too,

because it's flooded outside.

And we also never promised that this boat would float.

[thunder cracking] [rain falling]

- The ending night of the show was just this

biblical deluge flooding the area outside

of the gallery and water starts coming in.

We're tryin' to mop out the water.

Here comes the rain to take away the ship now.

It's pretty surreal.

I'm feeling like an agent of entropy right now.

- It was really sad to break it down.

We didn't know what we were doin' next.

- Where to go from here was huge,

so I think we had this kind of identity crisis.

- So this project happens where everybody pours

their heart and soul into and volunteers all of their time.

Then you throw in all this money, and you throw in this like

possibility that we're actually going to transition

from a collective to a business,

and everyone just starts to freak out.

There was a lot of existential questions.

- What do we do with the money?

Who gets to decide?

- How do we function as an organization?

You know, how do we feel about hierarchy?

- And there ensued 100 hours

of group conversation and debate.

Excruciating at times.

I started to think about, well,

what does success look like?

How can we continue to do this?

- Vince was coming from one direction very specifically,

like, with very hard-nosed ideas.

- He and Corvus had always had this business mentality.

- [Vince] There's all this, like,

hatred and angst, and skepticism,

rightfully so, around capital.

- [Woman] It was a lot of resistance against them.

- And a lot of people were like, oh, the soul

of Meow Wolf is going to be crushed

if we start getting paid, 'cause then we'll start,

you know, doing it for the completely wrong reasons

and it's not going to be punk anymore.

- I think that was kinda like in the back of people's minds,

like, I don't want to make this a business

because I want to feel like I have the power to make what

I want to make, and I don't want to be told what to make,

and I definitely don't wanna be somebody's bitch.

[giggling]

- We just clashed, you know.

Clashed big, big fights.

- Man, I remember people just being angry,

yelling, shouting people down.

I mean, it was insane, it was too much.

- I just decided, you know what, I want to study

my own stuff, I want to, like, work on my own stuff.

- I took time off after the Due Return

'cause I just felt like, really spent by it.

I can't blame anybody for the fact

that I decided to take on a huge amount

of responsibility in that project,

but I felt resentful about it.

I needed to step away from that.

I also needed to, like, spend some time doing my own thing.

- People come and go for many different reasons.

Because it can get terrifying to be part of this

mutant creation that we've all had a hand in.

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

♪ I thought the future would cooler ♪

♪ Cooler, cooler, cooler, cool ♪

[upbeat electronic music]

- Meow Wolf itself, the beast.

We're kind of subject to its whims,

while still creating it.

And you can leave it if you want,

but it's about this creation, the beast,

controlling us as opposed to how individually

we would, like, maybe inherently feel.

- Who we are and what we want to represent

is always gonna be a question.

We knew we wanted the big building and permanent home,

but we weren't ready, and we didn't have the opportunity.

- [Man] People had heard about the Due Return

and so there was reverberations out of Santa Fe.

More interest in getting us to do other projects.

- We decided at that point, because we have so many people,

that Meow Wolf could split up

and do different shows at different times.

There was, like, a million shows

in all these different cities,

and little factions of Meow Wolf

that were involved in them.

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

♪ I thought the brave world would be newer ♪

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

- [Emily] We went to Boulder, Colorado,

Las Cruces, New Mexico, Chicago, New York twice.

Matt and I went to Miami for probably

the smallest Meow Wolf show ever.

- Each time we get invited to one of these places

us as a group get so excited, and we think this exposure

is gonna lead us to the next big thing.

And we did it, and we did it, and we did it,

and nothing ever happened.

It never got us to the next level.

- The problem was that the art world

was not capable of handling Meow Wolf as an artist.

The art world usually spends some amount of money

on one person to do a short install of work that can sell.

And we were a bunch of people doing a long install

of work that doesn't sell.

- [Man] This is, you know, it's Glitteropolis.

- I keep trying to make something that's as over the top,

pretty pretty as possible in order

to like get over that impulse.

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

♪ I thought the brave world would be newer ♪

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

♪ I thought the future would be cooler ♪

- Attention customers.

We have a special on Whale Song.

[laughs]

Whale Song

[whales singing]

is a deodorant that came to me in a dream that I had.

The scent is calling for peace.

Whale Song deodorant, antiperspirant, and antidepressant

is now on sale for 1/12th off.

- We did this for years and it got,

you know, it got really tiring

because we'd go to a city and there were 10 of us

living in one tiny little room, sleeping one after another

because that's all we can afford,

because all the money is going to the art.

There's not even much money for that.

- At some point you have to go, well,

you know, how long can I do this for?

How long should I do this for?

You know, everybody's got their limit.

There's other things I want to do with my life.

Like, I'm not gonna have a family

in this, like, destitute reality.

- We saw very clearly why this wasn't gonna work.

You know, money wasted, projects that were total disasters.

Pending lawsuits.

Meow Wolf was really feeling like this obligation

that didn't have any path forward toward success.

Nobody wanted to do it anymore.

[slow breathing] [dreamy electronic music]

[wolf howling]

- We were not having meetings.

Meow Wolf was kind of dissipating into different ideas,

but David was always really just like,

let's look for a building, let's try to get a new thing.

He was kinda like pushing it

when everybody else was kinda flighty.

He was really intense in that way.

- [Man] David put, like, so much energy into what he did.

He had mood swings, intense kind of manic approach to things

but then he would get really upset and be depressive,

and that was part of his bi-polar.

- The swings were much larger

than anybody else I've known,

personally, who's had the disease.

He was a very talented photographer

and found an outlet not only artistically,

but with us as a group.

David put together this show in the Meow Wolf warehouse.

It was really quite something.

He was gonna present his photographs,

but also share journal entries from a time

that he spent in a psychiatric hospital,

as these representations of his mental illness.

When you came and saw this show, you were encouraged to

pick up charcoal and markers and draw on the walls

and sort of just how you felt.

By the end of it, it was just this

beautiful mess of scribbles.

- [Man] Sentences that didn't make sense

next to crazy images

of weird, kind of like demented faces

cluttered with nonsense and insanity.

He continued to have bouts with mania, depression.

- [Man] Sometimes he was down and you could

see it immediately in his eyes.

- David actually lived with us for, like, six months.

He was very dedicated to his friends,

and to Meow Wolf, and to his family.

And he was very, very unhappy.

- [Man] So you, like, wouldn't see him for a long time.

He just wouldn't come out of his house

for a really long time.

- And the doctors didn't know what to do

to get him out of this depression.

They said, "Okay, last resort.

"We're gonna do ECT, electroconvulsive therapy."

And he was going in for two or three shocks a week.

You have to deal with getting put under,

and then the grogginess of coming out of anesthesia.

I saw over the course of a year, this thing was working.

It was defeating the depression.

He was psyched, he was like,

"Okay, we're gonna do another big Meow Wolf show."

And he even mentioned to me once,

"What if we got George R. R. Martin involved?

"Like, that would be crazy," and we laughed about it.

- But he called me up like right before he went

into a treatment, and he had been thinking about me,

and he called me up and said, "Hi."

I asked him how he was doing, and he said he felt good

and he was feeling like these treatments were really helping

There was a lot of hope and positivity in David's life

and there hadn't been in several years.

- I saw him Thursday and he was not doing very well,

but I didn't think anything of it.

I was like, this is just a normal up and down for David.

Friday, he goes in for literally his last ECT.

He leaves and he feels really groggy.

And he just says, like,

"Okay, I just need to sleep this off."

I got a call from his brother, and his brother said,

"I have something bad to tell you, David fell into a coma."

And I just was like, what the fuck?

I just started calling people and letting them know.

It was just fucking devastating, man.

- When I got that call it was really heavy.

There's no way that you could prepare for it.

- It was just like, let's drive to Albuquerque and see him.

It was really, first time in a long time,

that most of the group was together again.

- Essentially he had, he had had pneumonia

and nobody really knew, because he was going through

these, like, treatments and his body was all messed up.

- His lungs filled with liquid, heart stopped,

brain stopped getting blood, and then,

[sobbing]

and then died 24 hours later.

[wind howling]

- The way that he went was very inexplicable.

And we all got a chance within

a 24 hour window to say goodbye.

I don't know why any of that happened the way that it did.

- I miss him every single day.

He was not only an incredibly impassioned person,

he was not only an incredibly caring person,

but there was something to his character,

a certain type of a empathy that I think

only really comes from personal suffering.

You knew that every single thing

that happened with David was completely genuine.

I just wish he was here, I really do.

I really, really wish he was here.

♪ Steady silence ♪

- I try to think about him as a sense of strength,

as somebody who's still present with us.

But the weird thing about his death

is that it definitely brought us all together

in a time when we were, like, totally dispersed.

- Everybody came to my house

every day, all day, for a week.

- [Vince] We just felt this like extreme sense of loss

and needed each other to help us get through that.

- You never thought all of these people

are going to become our family.

Ultimately that brought the family

together and made it stronger.

- There are plenty of people in this group

that can be pretty hard to be around sometimes,

but that's why it's more like family than friends,

because it doesn't matter.

You make it work anyway, you don't walk away from them.

♪ I take care of you ♪

♪ If you ask me to ♪

- There was like this space for us

to mutually understand each other

and feel sympathy, love, compassion for each other.

Reminding ourselves why we started this,

what's actually magical about this collective.

[upbeat rock music]

- And there's probably some element of it

that was like holy shit, that can happen?

Like, let's not fuck around, let's get over our shit.

- It just felt like there was this rejuvenation

of wanting to do a big show together.

In honor of David, in honor of his

wanting the group to get together.

Thinking about that as like Meow Wolf rebirth

and not knowing what that looked like.

[rhythmic percussion music]

- Several of us were thinking about

how can we make Meow Wolf sustainable.

- We need a building, we need like,

probably millions of dollars.

Like, where are we gonna get that?

- There's seemingly insurmountable odds against us,

but let's just pretend like it's actually gonna happen.

Let's start designing the project.

♪ Through the dream ♪

♪ Baby dream ♪

- [Woman] We were throwing out concepts,

you know, writing stuff

down on post it notes and putting them on the wall.

- [Man] The idea came into my head

about a house that you enter and there's secret passageways

that lead into other dimensions.

- Here is a house, and an event has happened

that has broken time and space to the extent

that portals have opened up throughout the house

which will now lead to these fantastic environments.

- Everybody just went completely nuts with concepts.

Like this way, this way, oh, it's gotta be a laundry room,

it's gonna be, okay, so a laundry room jungle

that has fish in it with gelatin pouring out of this thing

and with like ants, but there's ants like tunneling inside.

Like, it was just so nuts, like, seems really insane,

but if this happens it could be one

of the most crazy things that anybody's seen.

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

♪ Dream baby dream ♪

- I had looked at the bowling alley,

and was like holy fuck, this building is huge!

33,000 square feet, and it was just like oh my god.

And I had all of these memories of the bowling alley

growing up here, just like going to birthday parties

and getting grilled cheese sandwiches and bowling.

- It was for sale, and we needed someone to buy it for us.

So what we did is we made a list of everyone that we knew

that we thought would have enough money and be interested.

- And Vince, like, threw out George R. R. Martin.

♪ Oh dream baby, dream baby, dream baby, dream baby ♪

- George lives in Santa Fe and happened

to, like, meet Vince once.

- Most of us are huge Game of Thrones fans,

so the idea of the person that we are closest to

that could really buy this building for us

being George Martin was really silly.

- It was all joking, at least I thought,

but Vince was actually really pushing for it.

- And yeah, there are huge question marks for this project,

and we're trying to bring something that is like

a impossibility to make it possible.

And we just need to believe and work as if we can do it

and figure it out as we go along,

and not get paralyzed by doubt.

[wolf howling]

My life is either going down this track,

or I'm like moving to another city

and I'm starting a new life somewhere.

It's on me to get this done.

- Vince called me up and, you know,

said, "Do you want to purchase a bowling alley?"

And I said, no, not particularly.

I don't, I mean, I bowled a few times,

but it's not a particular passion of mine.

And then he told me a little of what he had in mind,

and invited me to come down and see it.

- If you want to go and see the show,

you just walk right up this way.

There's some hints that something's happened here,

something unusual, some break in time.

- The Victorian house lost in time and space,

other dimensions, other times, a secret story

that you would have to decipher.

Ah, he was just pushing all my buttons there.

He probably knew they were my buttons,

'cause I'm a science-fiction fantasy guy.

- And he's like, "Well, how much

"is it gonna take to renovate the building?"

And we're like, it's gonna be

like $300,000, man, like no big deal.

- And I said, "Where did you get that figure?"

- A couple weeks later this contractor comes back

with a number that's like $1.8 million to renovate.

- And we had to go back George.

- And he's like,

"What's this, this is, is this the number down here?"

And we're like, yeah, the number's $1.8 million dollars.

And he just, like, sits there quietly.

It was a desperate plea, it was like,

please take a chance on us, you know?

Like, nobody else is going to.

- He convinced me, okay, I'll buy the bowling alley.

God help me. [chuckling]

- It was December 23rd, and we're supposed

to close on the building January 6th.

And there was a really terrible moment, actually.

George really wanted to have $140,000 backing the lease.

- And we were like, we're screwed.

- [Vince] I don't know where to go,

I don't know where to turn to.

I had to call David's parents at, like, 10 o'clock at night

two days before Christmas, a year after David had died.

- Meow Wolf was very important to David.

They're a big part of our lives.

A big part of our heart.

He wanted so much for Meow Wolf to become very big,

and I think he would've been so excited, so Bruce said yes.

- That was huge.

That was like, this is a go.

[industrial music] [people chattering]

- It's a pretty astonishing space,

and I can see all sorts of possibilities here.

Something magical, something the city has never seen before.

- [Vince] We're naming the show House of Eternal Return.

[all clapping]

- Listening to them describe their vision

of what it would be, it seemed unreal.

Really, quite honestly, there would be this

immersive experience where people of all ages

could walk in, have an intimate relationship

with the art that was around them.

- Here you are, you walk in, you are

in an intergalactic travel agency.

Interdimensional, intergalactic, anything you can think of.

[all laughing]

- A lot of us were able to quit our other jobs

and just do this full-time.

For the first time ever in our lives.

- [Woman] In those images of--

[people chattering]

[bassy electronic music]

- [Benji] So hey everybody, it's time to start!

- [All] Start what?

- [Benji] The meeting!

- [All] Start what?

- First bowling alley meeting!

[all cheering]

- [Man] Trying to conceptualize something

being permanent is so much different.

Everything we've done up to that point gets torn down.

- The group had made large-scale, immersive,

semi-permanent installations before.

They had not done it to code, they had not done it

with inspections and permitting.

- [Sean] The whole process really started

way before we actually got into the space,

and it started with the architecture process.

How do you describe this thing that we're building.

We're not building a house, but we're building a house.

You can go through that fireplace, and then there's caves.

We were suddenly like, engaged in a project of massive scale

A ton of infrastructure.

- All right, so we're gonna start by doing, like,

a big loop of the building and talking

about all the different spaces.

- It was scary, too, 'cause we were all amateurs,

and we didn't really know what we were doing.

- Um, it's a construction site, obviously.

From the ground there's, like,

it's dangerous, just be careful.

- The entirety of figuring out the House of Eternal Return,

the business structure, the layout, the building code,

and fire retardant, and, like, all of the many,

many, many pieces has just been a constant,

all day, every day exercise in rolling with it.

- There is no one answer, how do I make a massive,

immersive tech layer for this already insane exhibit.

I wonder if it happened when we were,

like, the very first time we hung this.

- So many levels of just, like, every single Meow Wolfer

working on multi projects and getting good

at what you needed to get good at,

or at least like learning it or finding people

who were really good at it and combo-ing that.

That was like the hyperweb.

[crashing]

- [Man] All right!

- This will be totally walkable, explorable.

There's absolutely no reason to make something like this.

But for some reason, everybody is psyched

about making things just like this.

- This stuff is like four inches thick, which is great.

It came from the walk-in freezer here

when it was still a bowling alley.

- So when you enter into the house

you are basically in what appears to be a normal house

that's inhabited by a real family

that's lived here for generations.

It's a house in Mendocino, California,

but something has happened there.

Something is not quite normal about this house.

- The shockwave that happened sort of

shot up through the roof and it has rippled the floor.

And there will be a video playing through the toilet.

The story is based around the Selig Family,

who are a family of supernatural artists,

musicians, and inventors.

They are so creatively powerful that their abilities

actually break time and space, which creates

the exhibition, and that exhibition is a manifestation

of the family's thoughts, and memories, and dreams.

[bird chirping]

- [Man] Everything that exists in the exhibit relates

to our storyline that we have in this house.

- There's so much detail in the narrative.

Like, they all have, you know, collected photos

and we have family portraits and journals.

[light electronic music]

You'll never know everything that's happened in their life,

but there is this underlying story.

- [Sean] And then you're back in, like,

kind of the normal world.

But not really.

- [Woman] Hi.

- There's some doors that go [emulating depressurization]

[groaning]

[erratic electronic music]

- [Sean] Never gonna make it.

- No I did, I got it out of the maker space and in here.

- [Sean] Yeah?

- Yeah.

- I was super fuckin' stressed out.

And probably scared a lot of people because I had

a terrible frown on my face like the whole time.

- Him and I got in just throw down screaming matches

where I almost had to punch little Sean.

- I got a finger for all of you.

- I was just the guy who went around

and said no, you can't do that,

'cause then we have to put a sprinkler in it

and that's gonna cost us $500 and we just don't have it.

- I don't need a helmet, we got our CO.

This Beer?

This is a soda.

- Yeah.

- You can use all of this in the documentary.

- [Woman] There's no documentary.

- Yeah right.

- That's like the order and chaos combo

where it's like having to be, like,

passionate but responsible about both of those things.

I think it could totally drive people insane.

- Our entire approach to the electrical system

was fundamentally flawed.

We're planning on using all these extension cords.

Shit, that doesn't work.

- [Man] You guys have any idea

when the power will come back on?

- [Woman] No word.

Sean is the only one who knows.

- [Man] Just hit the kill switch now.

- [Worker] Let's just turn this big mistake off, you guys.

[laughing]

- We had to completely re-engineer

all the power distribution in the show,

which meant adding another $20,000 to the budget

and bringing in an electrical engineer,

and then adding another $20,000 to the budget

and bringing in electrical contractors.

And these were, like, really last minute changes

to a plan that we kinda barely understood.

- It just kept going up and up, and you know,

there were a couple points

I wish they, we can't, you know.

Guys, stop it!

- Is the whole project gonna fail now,

because we can't raise another $20,000?

Then there was like $20,000 after $20,000.

- [Man] We're going like way over budget

and the opening kept getting pushed further into the future.

- [Sean] Every time the construction costs went up

Vince had to go out and fundraise more.

He had to go out there and present confidence, this matters.

- Uh yes, so this is the Meow Wolf art complex,

and it's 33,000 square foot building, it's 2.7 acres.

- I mean, there was times where it's two days before payday

and there's zero money in the bank.

- And so I have the rest of Friday

and I have Monday to come up with $90,000.

♪ You got to ♪

♪ Ha ha, ha ha ♪

- [Vince] Or else we have to tell the entire team

that payroll's not coming this time around.

- To have the incredible stress of responsibility

for everyone's job, it was very hard.

♪ Tape ain't gonna fix it honey ♪

♪ Honey, it ain't gonna stick ♪

♪ Tape ain't gonna fix it, honey ♪

♪ It ain't gonna stick to you ♪

- [Man] We had about 400 people working

on the House of Eternal Return.

Volunteers and contractors and artists.

- We thought we could build everything for $800,000.

We came up to an end result of 2.7 million dollars.

And Vince raised all of that money single-handedly.

♪ You got to go steal a hand ♪

♪ You got to, you got to go steal a hand ♪

- At some point we had to put a deadline on it.

It was just gonna keep on going, and so we decided

March 17th, that's the day we're opening,

and there's no question about it.

- [Matt] It's like this looming, this looming presence.

Like, oh yeah, this shit has to get done.

- It's like, what else are you gonna, you're not gonna stop.

You know, you're not gonna stop doing it,

you have to kind of figure out how to keep doin' it.

♪ You got to go steal a hand ♪

♪ You got to, you got to go steal a hand ♪

♪ You got to ♪

- At this point it's been a year and a half

of six or seven day weeks.

And those days are never less than 10 hours.

Usually, in this final stretch, like 14, 16 hours.

- [Man] Oh, it's got down here now.

Uh, god, please work.

- We got some two weeks left.

[all cheering]

When I hold up my arms like that,

I want you guys to say two weeks!

- [All] Two weeks!

- Of mad cash splashin'!

- [All] Two weeks!

- [Benji] Of mad bash crashin'!

- [All] Two weeks!

[speaking foreign language]

- I've gone through a bunch of different levels of burnout.

Kinda like Dante's levels of hell sort of thing.

- [Man] Like every show,

we are still working up until we open.

- [Woman] It's just full of things that drive me crazy.

That I want to fix, and it's like not done.

- There's some shit goin' on in there

that doesn't seem like it was part of the plan.

[laughing]

Nobody's seen the show, because there's

ladders everywhere, there's the scissor lifts.

- I haven't slept in 36 hours.

- I haven't thought at all about operating the thing.

What are we going to do tomorrow, when the public comes in?

[light electronic music]

- Opening night was totally in the hands of fate.

There's no backup plan anymore.

- [Emily] It was terrifying and exciting

all at the same time.

- I run home and change.

I'm exhausted, I come back, my mom's talkin'

to George Martin on the couch,

and I'm like, mom, why are you talkin' to George?

Leave him alone.

- It's incredible.

The Meow Wolf gang have done something

I think they should be very proud of.

Something truly unique.

- [Vince] People are just like funneling in,

and I remember just like seeing Sean

in the front yard of the house and he runs up to me

and like I was like, is it working?

You know, is it working?

And he's like, "I think it's working!"

- [Emily] People started comin', and then more people

started comin' and then more people started comin',

and we're like, oh my god!

- [Vince] God, David would've loved this.

- It was very emotional for us.

We just kinda stood there in awe,

because we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into

or what we were gonna see next.

- [Man] We, like, devoted the learning center to his name.

- [Leslie] Just to walk in to see his name is,

it just takes me back every time.

- [Man] We help fulfill something

that he helped set in motion.

- I don't know, it's just you don't ever expect

things to actually work.

[chuckles]

You like really, really, really hold out for the hope

that, like, it's all gonna work out.

[heavy electronic music]

♪ Life needs no keys ♪

♪ Brook then Grand Street ♪

♪ Four fights, late night ♪

♪ Black socks, white ties ♪

♪ Ten pounds, loud sounds ♪

♪ Turned up, tied and bound ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

- [Man] Felt like a cosmic joke.

We're looking at the numbers after a few weeks.

We're like, we've got $550,000.

We're just like laughing, like what?

Like, how is this possible?

♪ I'm earning money ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ 10 Brook's pencil ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ I don't make the rules ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Is it co-mental ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

♪ Don't slow down ♪

[phone dialing]

- Since last time I networked with Meow Wolf,

I copy-pasted two new team members.

[chuckling]

[cheering]

I love, I just like to have to say,

I love what Meow Wolf is doing.

You guys have vision, okay?

And I love what you're doing with SRA Outreach, okay?

It's like, wow, you guys.

[chuckling]

Meow Wolf has so much potential.

[heavy rock music]

- Yes!

- [Woman] And I was like--

- Right now, after having been open for a year,

it's like still putting myself in positions of the unknown,

and putting myself in positions of like,

holy fuck is this gonna work?

But now it's just on a whole 'nother scale.

Thinking about Austin and thinking about Denver,

and thinking about these 75 people we have on salary,

and the money that's just like going out towards creatives

and, like, trying to fundraise.

Sort of in the same position of like is this gonna work?

Selfish move is to just like operate the house in Santa Fe

Make a couple million dollars of profit every year,

but there's other artists in the world.

There's other communities in the world

that could be transformed by this opportunity.

[rising optimistic music]

- We're going to look at a site in Denver

for potentially for a new Meow Wolf.

Does that make any sense?

I don't think anything I just said made any sense.

- It does, it does, yeah.

- Yeah, for a potential new Meow Wolf?

How do you say Meow Wolf?

- Meow Wolf?

Meow Wolf.

That answer your question?

We've been like doing all these trips to Austin and Denver

over the last, like, six months looking at real estate.

It's a really weird thing, because, like, suddenly

we're like looking at real estate a lot.

Just not anything I ever expected to be doing in my life.

♪ Why not launch off of the very highest rope ♪

- So the front entrance to Meow Wolf would be right here,

and you have this like really cool

sort of like industrial entry.

We could do like a really cool facade on this.

So not only are we creating exhibits that are

two or three times the size of what Meow Wolf is currently,

where we're on the brink of doing two of them.

And so that's a huge question.

Do we have the capacity?

Are we biting off more than we can chew?

It's daunting.

We're climbing a mountain that's, like,

four times the size of the one that we just climbed,

and the one that we just climbed nearly killed us.

♪ Don't get people hurt just try to ♪

♪ I perceive to leave ♪

- [Man] There's some people, like Vince,

who's just this classic, like, pusher archetype.

He's always gonna be going a hundred miles per hour

faster than everybody else.

The rest of us are in some way kind of tempering that

and trying to bring it back to like

a pace that's comfortable to us.

- [Caity Voiceover] The pace at which

we are all morphing into these

other people who can do all these things

and can run things is hard to comprehend.

- Do you guys want to go over there

and like, get in a circle?

- Check it out!

It's Quinn Tincher from the olden Meow Wolf days!

It feels like-- [drowned out by cheering]

So it's like the old and new, together,

perfectly creating a hyper event horizon.

- I got a note from Matt online on Facebook

that said he wanted to talk.

- I just felt like I needed to reach out

and try to bring him back in,

in the spirit and the ethos of Meow Wolf.

- I literally hadn't seen him in years.

- So I brought him over here to Caterpillar

and walked him around, and--

- Like, and if you want, you could have a job, I guess.

Totally downplayed it!

As heartbroken as I am to have missed the last seven years,

I'm so enamored with this now.

It all worked out right.

[drill revving]

Can you guess what I might ask about this entryway?

[laughing]

- Yeah, well I can tell you it's not gettin' any taller.

[laughing]

- [Sean] Are you gonna put a noodle on that?

- Oh, we're gonna noodle it.

We're gonna noodle so hard.

- [Sean] Is it gonna rain on these a lot?

- It, it's, in this part of Oregon during this time

of the year, supposedly it does not rain at all.

But the roof looks pretty cool.

- Yeah, how are people gonna see that?

Tell him to put a hardhat on.

I'm scared about the skateboards.

Benji, drop everything and give me a high five!

Yeah!

I'm spending all this time putting in

place all these structures and processes,

and also dealing with, like, insurance and like, safety.

All these bureaucratic things, and if we don't do them right

we could lose like the most valuable thing we have,

which is our culture.

Is this what I want to be doing?

Like, I have to say yes to that,

because there's something that put me here,

there's something that I'm doing

that's like, that I'm choosing.

At the same time there's like somewhat of a conflict, right?

And like, I want to make art, that's why I got involved.

Am I the greatest threat to Meow Wolf culture?

I think it's just partly my role, and it freaks me out.

Can I give you a high five?

- [Man] Hey, good to see you.

- [Sean] Good to see you, too.

- [Man] We need one mask.

[groaning]

- [Friend] Sweaty and gross.

- [Man] Well, we're gonna have a gang off between you.

[laughing]

- [Emily] I'm constantly trying to drill down

why do I want to do this.

Why am I putting myself through all this crazy stress?

I really do love getting to see people's reactions

to the exhibition, and they're like, wow,

not only is this crazy, but it's possible.

I can go out there in the world and build whatever I dream

and whatever I want to manifest.

[laughing]

- Hey, Conehead!

You know what, you owe Plotzo some cash!

- [Man] And cut!

- This is where all the junk is

that needs to be gone through.

[giggling]

Ooh, bunch of treasures.

- Oooh. - Ooh, that's good one.

Oh my god, memories!

This is all Caity's stuff.

- [Caity] It's not all mine.

- [Matt] No?

- I don't know.

- [Matt] This old turtle?

Wow, that's a, that is a Polaroid

of the first Meow Wolf show in the middle of it.

- Curlers! - Curlers.

Curlers we collected-- - Look how beautiful they are!

- I mean, really what we have done

for a lifetime is collect, fun, colorful things

to make weird abstract installations from.

The current exhibit, we can't really use stuff

like this anymore, 'cause all of the hands-on stuff,

but for years we got to have fun.

- Not anymore. - Not anymore.

This is from the Due Return

inside of the little treasure room.

- [Caity Voiceover] It's important that things

remain a collective process.

It's important that our curatorial process

is authentic and true to us.

It's important that we keep making things that are weird.

People like to minimize what we do

as entertainment or as big fun art.

The art world is important to what we do.

We're not separated from it,

we're just sitting on the edge of that seat.

- Does everyone have as much trash as we do?

- No.

- Where I imagine all this going, I haven't really told it

to any of the other members of Meow Wolf,

'cause it's kind of a scary thing.

It goes back to the whole, like,

corporate capitalism is a bad thing,

and so I'm nervous about bringing it up,

but my goal now is to create a billion dollar company.

Because like, a 50 million dollar company is where we're at.

Which unit is this?

200 million is totally achievable,

and so is 500 million, so like I'm just fuck it,

let's create a billion dollar company.

[energetic rock music]

♪ I have the dream I dream myself ♪

- [Sean] Can we make a billion dollar company

that's producing a insanely wide range of aesthetic material

and can it be dynamic, and textured, and unexpected?

- That would be the dark dystopia fear that I'd have,

is that it just becomes this like really grim business only.

Corrupt, just heartless, churning out

factory-style Meow Wolf things.

- [Man] We're gonna hire like 300 people

in the next five years.

We're not just artists any more.

There's some aspect to this that is about production.

It's about repeating this business model.

- [Woman] It's also really easy to lose what makes you

actually interesting when you're going for a broader market.

When you're going for bigger business.

- We see it growing really faster

than we can even keep up with.

We don't want to become a Disney, you know?

We have to constantly be thinking

how do we keep this radical.

That's part of what compels me,

is that we gotta make it better.

We're gonna sign the lease here pretty soon.

Here goes, nothing.

- [Man] We have to support those who feel like they're on

the outside looking in, because that's how we were.

That's the point of all of this.

And to me, that's where this is like

either a success or a failure.

[funky electronic music]