Matt's Interview

So Matt is co-founder and runner of this little here Bolts of Thunder operation. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met, and he's my older brother. One thing I love about Matt is that whatever he tells you he really means. Unless when he's joking around, but he usually makes that obvious enough that you don't need to wonder. But any compliment he gives is always sincere and honest, so getting any kind of compliment from him is one of the highest honors one can receive. Matt also possesses some kind of Jedi persuasion skills that he has developed and fine tuned over the years, mostly on me, and he can convince pretty much anyone that even the craziest of tricks sounds like a good idea. I'm happy he's on board for another video since he's the better filmer of the group, and he always comes up with really good ideas for videos. So in this interview, Matt reflects on a life of being chased by cops as a kid, preparing for the zombie apocalypse, and movie making. He also exposes the less than clever back stabbing tactics of his kid brother in trying to take all the credit for everything that goes on here. What a jerk, that kid brother of his...

(MrBoltsofThunder) We've seen over the decades the sporadic changing of your fashion styles. Several years ago was Muska Matt. Then we saw AFI Matt, Tupac Matt, Early 90s Matt, and garbage can Matt. What style are you currently sporting? How do you justify radically reinventing yourself every 6 months or so?

All of my styles are not a matter of choice, but of circumstance. My styles reflect the current trends at Ross and TJMax. If I had real money I'd probably by clothes that fit me right and hold up a little better, but I just take what I can get. However, this year I've been really low on money and haven't gotten any new clothes, so I suppose my style will be the same as last year. If we filmed a video in the winter then maybe I could show off all my cool jackets, but winter filming isn't gonna happen for us.

What's the funnest thing you've ever done on your skateboard?

Watching fat, uncoordinated people falling in weird positions can be funny. So I'm sure I can look funny when I fall. But nothing really sticks out, especially since I can't watch myself while I'm skating. Maybe you can tell me what the funniest thing is since you're around me a lot.

Do you feel like people misjudge you because of your rough exterior? Do you think people automatically think you're crazy or mean because your head always shakes from side to side, you have the tendency to growl under your breath the first time you meet someone, and you are prone to biting?

I don't think the biting really offends anyone, but maybe the growl. But seriously, people really do seem to think I'm a mean person cause I have this permanent pissed off look on my face. Even when I was a missionary people thought I was really mean, and I was clean shaven. But the beard and shaved head really seems to make people think less of me. But that's all right, cause I think less of them too.

So we found all of those old VHS tapes of our skating back in St George. What are some of your favorite things you've seen on those tapes? When you watch them, what do you see has changed with our skating and what has stayed the same?

First of all, nothing's changed at all. We still sound the same and skate the same stuff and joke the same and everything. Ten or fifteen years might seem like it will change you a lot, but apparently it doesn't. Anyway, one clip that I saw was where this guy wanted to fight me and a couple of our friends while I was filming  you trying to kickflip the Harmon's gap. The guy was like early 30's and had big muscles and a tank top shirt and was bouncing a basketball very vigorously. And his little 3 year old kid is standing there watching. The dude is pissed cause you're riding through the basketball court to kickflip the gap, which I understand his frustrations, but we were there first. Anyway, he saying "step-up motherf---ers!" Being half his age and size, I refused to "step up". But we wouldn't leave either and you kept skating right in front of him and you eventually landed it. It was pretty funny. I totally forgot about that incident. I guess we had a bunch of those. It makes me happy to see that we weren't little wimpy kids that high-tailed it out of there the second he started threatening us.

Living in St George meant learning to hide and run from overzealous cops and citizens. What are some of your favorite cop chases/run-ins or encounters with super citizens down in St George?

Oh the scariest chase was this one time at like 2 in the morning when you, me and Nick were out screwing around and this cop came out of nowhere and started chasing us. We all split up and went different ways and he chased me through some neighborhood in his car. I was just hopping fences and stuff. But finally I just ran up to someone's front porch and layed down behind a little potted plant next to the door. By little plant, I mean it was a foot tall and six inches wide. So not the smartest move. So I'm laying there and I here the cop car pull up and stop right in front of the house. And then I can hear him get out of his car and the footsteps are coming in my direction so I look up and I can see him going up to the porch at the house next door. So I just get up and run and fast as I can and jump some more fences and get out of there. That was it, but it was pretty scary when I thought he was walking up to the porch. 

What is one of your scariest memories in being chased by cops?

Oh shoot, I just answered this question. Well, maybe I should try to answer the previous question. Oh I know, this one time  I tried running from the cops, but they had us surrounded and so I actually got caught trying to run. That's about it. I suppose there's more to the story, but I'm not good at telling stories in writing. That's your job. Maybe you should tell these stories for me.

What's your best score on an 18 hole in golf?

Not that great. I shot an 8 over once, which isn't bad, but I could do better if I practiced more. But at the time that I shot that I had only been playing for 2 years, so that's pretty good. I just haven't really played at all since I was a teenager. I used to play golf every single day cause we lived on a golf course and I took lessons every week and got really good, but then I just wanted to skate more, so that ended that. I actually feel really bad about it cause I had good potential and the pros at the local golf courses would always say how I was gonna be this really good golfer and do really good on the high school team, but when I got to high school I played for one week with the team and I hated all the kids and quit. They were a bunch of rich snobs and were kinda pickin on me. And one of them accused me of cheating, which I didn't do. So that's the story of my golf career. I have really nice clubs and whenever I see them I always think of how I should go use them, but it just cost so much money. Anyway, I'll get back to it eventually.

going back to stories, we had all kinds of weird stuff happen to us at scout campouts and stuff like that. What are some of your favorite memories or stories from our campouts as kids?

There's so many. I love when you beat up Bobby because he pushed you because you were chopping a log and he said that no one could touch it. That was pretty funny. You might have already told that on the blog though. If not, then feel free to fill in the details. Actually, today I remembered about when we built snow caves. That was pretty frustrating. We built the biggest, nicest snow cave and as soon as it was finished our scout leader claimed it as his own. What a lazy bastard. That still pisses me off. He sits back while some little kids shovel snow and hollow it out for two hours and then all the sudden he's like "This is my snow cave, go make your own." He was in his 40's and he was being a school yard bully to a bunch of kids. So we had to make another one, but the problem was that there were no more flat areas, so we built some crappy cave on a hill, but by the time we started it the sun was going down so we had to do it really quick. It was the worst cave ever. I remember laying there looking at the ceiling and after only twenty minutes the ceiling had sunken in by about a foot. I told Jon and so we crawled out as fast as we could. This could Gabe was in the cave with us, but for some reason we didn't tell him that it was collapsing. So we got out and stood and watched as the cave collapsed on top of him. That was the only highlight of the campout. Cause after that we realized that we had left all of our supplies and sleeping bags in the cave, so now they were under a big pile of snow. Being the lazy kid I was, I just gave up and went and slept in a lodge with a bunch of scout leaders who were too big of panzies to sleep in the snow. And me and Jon practically froze to death that night. That's about it. Man, that story sounds lame. If you saw me in person then I could tell it pretty good though. I hate writing. Once Jon was out of town for like a week and I was suppose to write on the blog, but I couldn't get myself to do it. Good thing Jon likes it.

What were some of your favorite things from the last Bolts of Thunder video? What parts or sections are you happiest with or like to watch the most?

The whole thing is good. I don't really have a favorite part but I really like Dan's part cause I thought it was pretty solid. Anytime I see it I still laugh. I guess it has a lot of personality. I had the idea of how to make it long before we ever started filming and it turned out pretty close to how I would have wanted it. There were other shots and stuff that I wanted to get for it, but Dan is such an elusive character and so I was just grateful that we had enough to put a whole part together. The rest of the video is good though. But I'm not the type to really dote over our videos. I don't think too much about them. I just like to move on and see what I can do next and hope that it makes me happy.

What do you want to see in the next video? What direction do you see Bolts of Thunder movie making going in?

The next one will definitely be easy to make. I'm basically just gonna see what footage I have in July and put it all together. I don't care if someone has one trick or a hundred tricks. I just want to have fun skating and then if we get stuff on film then I'll use it. And that's been working pretty well lately. In the last video we had too many people to film and it got a little tiring. With only one camera it's a lot of work for me or Jon to do, and who wants to spend all their time filming other people. I have a lot of other things I want to do as well, so I didn't want to spend this summer just filming people that want nothing more than to just be in some skate video. Yeah, that's pretty much what the next video is about, it's about filming with your friends that you actually hang out with. So this video is fun to make cause it's just been hanging and skating and filming with good friends. That's what our first video was. It was just the five of us hanging out everyday and having fun and filming each other. I think the second video got a little out of hand towards the end, so I'm just making the new video a lot like the first one. But don't get me wrong, there's really good skating in it. Every weekend AJ goes gets crazy footage. And Ben too. they kinda remind me of Dave McDonald and Nick cause all of them would sacrifice their bodies for the good of making our video, which is what Ben and AJ have been doing every weekend. So look out for their footage this July. You'll be impressed.

Now let's talk movie talk. What are your 3 favorite movies from the past 3 years? Only 3, and you can't respond with "that's too hard to say", you have to give 3 movies. You can give more than 3 if you want...

I'll just go with three. I really like foreign movies for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don't have the best hearing and so I always watch movies with subtitles. So like that they always have subtitles. Second, foreign movies can't rely on big budgets to make stupid special effects movies like Transformers that have cheesy dialogue and lame stories. They have to rely on really interesting characters and stories, so I love watching foreign movies. Except for a lot of asian films. Some are good, but there too many artsy ones that get really annoying. Anyway. So I love thriller movies, so this one movie I really like is called "The Secret In Their Eyes". It's an Argentine film. It's really good. Another film is this Austrian film called "Revanche". I only watched it once but I remember being very impressed with it. Oh, and I'm not recommending these movies to anyone who doesn't watch rated R movies, cause they're definitely rated R. I don't even have a third one. I guess I'll just go with "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". That's a fun movie and a really good thriller. And the characters are really interesting.  I liked it more than any other movie this past year for sure. 

Who's your favorite James Bond?

Daniel Craig. Even though Sean Connery is the original and he's really good, I just really like Casino Royale and Craig is so good at it. I can't wait for the new one.

If Samuel L Jackson were a cowboy, would he rival Clint Eastwood? Who would have an angrier snarl?

Yeah, he would definitely be up their with Eastwood. He can be cool in the crappiest movies. That guy can do anything. But I don't think he can snarl like Eastwood. I don't really know what else to say about that.

So last year you were nominated the most times by fellow Thunder Bolts as the preferred cast away mate in our cannibal island scenario. What is your reaction to this? Why did so many people chose you?

I seriously felt so good whenever someone picked me. A big smile lit up on my face. I sensed a lot of jealousy and sibling rivalry from Jon after that, and that made me feel even better. If Jon gets to have all the credit for Bolts of Thunder, then I want to be everyone's first choice for the island. I want respect and you're gonna give it to me. I've been working behind the scenes for too long and now it's my time to shine; especially on an island. And the reason people picked me is because they could see through all the lies and negative propaganda that Jon Hart has been spreading about me on this blog. I seem to remember that Jon went on this big campaign about how I hate camping and being in the wilderness; and now that I think of it, that happened right before all the interviews. Jon Hart was trying to steer votes his way by making me out to be a 21st century technology loving faggot. Well it didn't work and people saw right through it. People picked me because they know what I'm capable of.

Now that we're entering a new season of scenarios and zombies are the main theme, do you think people might once again choose you because of your experience in watching zombie movies and tv shows?

Well now that I know what Jon's tactics are, I'll go on the pre-emptive by mentioning what has already been said about me. I have watched almost every movie that I know of about zombies. I've even watched low budget home-made zombie movies on the internet. By movies, I'm also including both seasons of the walking dead. Not only do I watch the movies, but I study to skills necessary to survive a zombie apocalypse. I have such detailed plans that living in a zombie world would be fun. And if you pick me then you'll get to have fun with me. So this is basically my resume and I'm applying to be your buddy in the zombie apocalypse. I'm the right man for the job.

Now to ask you the scenario questions, who would you choose to be with you in the zombie apocalypse? What would be your method of survival? I'm sure you've been planning this a while, so I expect some detailed thought on the subject.

Okay, even though he has done so much to try and taint my well respected image, I would choose Jon to be my zombie buddy. As Dave McDonald pointed out, I basically chose by brother Brian for the island, so it's Jon's turn now. But I would have fun with either of my brothers. Jon's watched a few episodes of the walking dead, he watched 28 days and 28 weeks later, and he's watched Zombieland a few times, so I think he's had enough basic training that he could hack it with me. And he's really careful and safe, so I would feel safe around him. That's where he differs from Brian. Brian is a serious risk taker and that usually doesn't go over too well with me. I never take risks. So Brian might scare me a little too much. He'd probably go looking for zombies just for fun or something. Me and Jon would go up into the mountains and live near a lake. I've noticed that zombies seem to have a hard time going up hills, so we'd be way up in the mountains. We'd mostly eat fish since we don't hunt animals. But the good thing is that you can fish even in the winter. And we'd have a garden in the summer as well. We'd have plenty of time and wood to build a really nice fortress. The main thing is that you don't want any zombies getting in the water and contaminating it. So we'd build and big fence that went around the entire lake. It would take some time, but we'd have all the time in the world. So that's about it. It would be so much fun cause we used to live in the mountains, so it would be just like being kids again. And despite what some people may have said about me, I'm not lazy when work needs to be done.

Now the entire Bolts of Thunder crew is staking out in a warehouse. As you know, we are well armed because we stormed the national guard reserve place after the zombies took over and got our hands on everything we could find. All the skating we've done in the warehouse has caused too much noise and the zombies know we're in there. We're talking hundreds... maybe thousands of zombies bearing down on us. How will Bolts of Thunder fight? What do you see happening here?

I'm gonna assume this is a really big warehouse. What I would do is just copy something that I saw on the walking dead. I'd pour a bunch of gasoline on the ground and then everyone would climb up a rope or ladder into the rafters and then we would break through an air vent and get on the roof. However, one person, probably me, would go unlock the warehouse doors and let all the zombies in. I'd climb up to the roof really fast and pull of the rope or ladder. And then I'd just wait for all the zombies outside to come rushing into the warehouse. When the whole place is full then I'd just light a match and let them burn. Then we'd take the ladder or rope and climb down the outside of the building. Hopefully all the zombies were inside. If not then I'm sure we could take out a few with our weapons. Then we'd just run for the mountains and follow the plan that I outlined above. This is the only real way to survive this situation. Or at least its the best way. 

I'm out of questions for now, so what are your last words for our readers?

I don't know if many people knew, but I'm moving to Omaha, Nebraska at the beginning of August. I'm going to more school for 3 1/2 years. When I'm done with school you will call me Dr. Hart. I'll be sure to let you know when that is. I'm gonna leave Jon in charge of Bolts of Thunder while I'm gone. He has been known as a mutinous traitor in the past, so if anyone notices that he's trying to completely take over Bolts of Thunder and have me taken out, then I would like a heads up, please. That's  it.