Patrick O’Dell On The Release Of New Epicly Later’d Book.

There are three main things that sparked my interest in journalism.

One of those three was Patrick O’Dell’s Vice series Epicly Later’d. Being a twelve-year-old skate nerd binge watching the episodes led to an algorithm that introduced me to random Vice documentaries, getting me interested in both storytelling and what you could do with it through journalism. Patrick himself is a major reason as to why I’m writing an introduction to an interview that I did with him. 

Anyway, prior to the video series, Epicly Later’d was Patrick’s blog. A blog where he would share his day-to-day antics, capturing it all on his digital point and shoot. Sharing everything from the parties he was at, who he was hanging out with, the skate trips and sessions he was on. It’s been over a decade since epiclylaterd.com was updated with a day of Patrick’s life, but here he is now, presenting a book of photos from the blog to celebrate a time that once was. The book of familiar faces is published by Anthology Editions, is available through their website now, and will be available worldwide on the 22nd of October. 

How are you feeling about the book?

I’m excited but you know, you go through ups and downs of how you’re feeling too. I showed it to some people who were around during that era and knew everybody, then I showed it to someone a lot younger who didn’t know who the people were, and I was feeling self-conscious.

What about it made you self-conscious?

It’s a photography book, but it’s not really, it’s a book about the blog. I mostly used pictures from the Canon ELPH. There are a few DSLR photos, but there are no film photos, work photos or iPhone photos. I tried to keep the book narrowed onto just the blog photos, there are the occasional exceptions but for the most part it is a journal. It’s a book that is like a journal so that comes with a bit of self-consciousness.

Of course, when it’s so personal it always is going to have that added level of vulnerability. It’s cool that you now can have the blog in a tangible format instead of just on the internet.

Yeah, the blog could just get turned off. I pay the bill for the blog, but I could die, and if no one knows the password, the blog just gets turned off. I think about this with my show, everyone’s dying, if you don’t tell the story no one else is. People can speculate on your motivations or what your intentions are but sometimes your intentions are just to share stories and cool people that you care about because maybe no one else will.

Definitely, it’s cool you’ve been able to do that for so long too. Had you been thinking about making the book for a while?

A couple of years ago, I planned to self-publish a series of books, they were going to be much shorter, still a book but closer to a zine. I had the first one finished, then I went on Instagram being like ‘Hey, check it out I’m going to make a book. Would you buy one?’ Jesse from Anthology hit me up and was like ‘Don’t do that, make a book with us’. Now, this makes more sense it’s the right length. When I went through the book, I was like this is the right amount of pictures, any more and it starts to be overkill.

The layout is really cool, the spreads really capture the way the blog felt, each being of an event or day in a way similar to how the blog was. Was that something you were conscious about while working on the design?

Yeah, I wanted everything chronological. The blog was a journal of a day, each one I would try to make like an adventure, starting in the taxicab, dinner, the party, the taxicab and then home, that would be the page to be like this is what I did last night. The book is condensed and couldn’t be that, but I tried to carry those elements over.

Were you wanting it to be as similar to the blog as possible?

There are things we got rid of for time but little things we did were on purpose. Su Barber did the layout and we put all the hyperlinks that were on the blog in at the back of the book. Then with the photo on the cover, the reason that it is pushed to the top is because it was how html looked. I didn’t really know how to do web design so I would just plop a picture in, and it would stick it up in the top left corner, that’s why the photo is there. There are little things like that, things are underlined, and the font are nods back to the blog. 

How did you choose the photo of Kevin “Spanky” Long for the cover?

It was tough to pick which picture to put on the cover, there was an inclination to put a certain person, but if you put Dash Snow, Chloe Sevigny or Jerry Hsu on the cover there might be an expectation that it’s a book about that person. I thought the photo of Kevin was good because you can’t really tell it’s him. I liked it too because it was within the first month of doing the blog.

I’m pretty sure it is the same moment as in the Baker video where Braydon [Szafranski] says ‘Weed saves lives’ and then Spanky starts laughing and falls on the ground. I just thought that photo could be indicative of the whole book, especially because there isn’t a lot of bad stuff in the book, it is pretty wholesome, and I thought having Kevin laughing was happy.

When I saw that photo was on the cover, it made sense, I feel like Spanky is very representative of that time and all the friends you were hanging out with.

Yeah, we tried a bunch of different other covers, but they never worked as well as the Spanky picture.

How was it for you looking back on these photos now? 

I would go through those hard drives and there are hundreds of thousands of pictures, everything is in order, and it started feeling like I was in a time machine. I have a wife and toddler now. I would be with them, then go downstairs, look at these photos and be at parties in New York, remembering things, good and bad. Then after a couple of hours I would put it down and go back upstairs. I was seeing my life in order, night by night. It took a long time to go through every picture, I stopped when all the pictures started to say ‘iPhone’. I needed to cut off at some point and I thought that was the best time to cut it off. At a certain point I started to lose interest, a lot of these pictures are in my twenties, I turned thirty towards the end of the book and my life slowly changed into something probably less interesting, so I thought I have to cut it off when I’m still that person who is living that life. I really slowed down from thirty.

When do the photos span from?

I’m not completely sure, but I think from 2004-2009.

The name, Epicly Later’d is now more synonymous with the Vice series rather than the blog. How did you feel when you started to notice that shift?

It was weird. When we started the show, I wanted to think of another name. The blog was doing really well online, it was pretty known, and I think Vice wanted to drag off the popularity of the blog. At one point they told me that my blog sent more people to VBS than any other source, which is pretty cool.

Turning the blog into a video series was originally Jesse Pearson’s idea, he edited the book. What was it like having it come full circle and working with him on the edit of the book?

It was really cool. All the people I got to hire to work on the book were all my friends who I have known for such a long time. Jesse photo edited it, and Su Barber laid it out. It was cool to run it by everybody because you don’t know what you are making, I don’t have perspective on it. Jesse got to check out all the pictures, I swapped some out and some in. Amy Kellner wrote the intro which was really nice to have her write that.

Jesse and I go back further than Vice, there was a magazine called index, I already worked for Thrasher as a photographer. It was winter, I was shooting but I wasn’t that busy. I loved index and got an internship there I would’ve been twenty-two at the time. I went in twice a week and do chores for them, sometimes I would do the funniest chores like go to Björk’s house to pick something up and it was so weird because one of the professors from art school was her DJ, so I went in and knew someone which was so weird. Anyway, Jesse was one of the editors at index, Amy Kellner wrote for them, Leslie Arfin too, Ryan McGinley took pictures for them, it was all these people that I ended up meeting and knowing through being an intern at a magazine, so to have those people be part of this book is cool. 

It’s nice you’re able to work on this book that shares your stories with the people you were around with in that era.  

Yeah, definitely. I’ve been nervous too because I didn’t ask for permission, I just made the book. One person I told about the book said, ‘Don’t put me in the book’. I was like ‘Oh fuck, I’ve got someone telling me not to put them in the book’. Then I was like I’m just going to run with it and see what happens, so far, the reception has been good, and everyone has been okay with it.

I guess most of the people are at such different stages in their life now to how they were in the 2000s.

Yeah, it’s weird though, all the photos are on the blog currently [laughs].

The immortal thing makes it different for some people; in a book those photos are not going anywhere.

Yeah, I just think it’s fun to share things. I’ve had this with various other projects where someone wants to slow you down or you try to think yourself out of making something. Now that I’m getting older, even if it's crappy or weird, we don’t have long on this earth and it’s not about legacy. It’s like the Jeremy Klein episode, like, not that many people know about him. I just want to get this out so people can be introduced to this skater who they might not realise the impact he had.

Were there any stories you thought about while you were going through the book that you had forgotten about?

Yeah, a lot. I don’t remember one specifically. I just thought it was funny how young everyone looks, you look at pictures and you think someone is much older and now you’re that age, you’re like ‘Wow, we were like children’. I keep forgetting I’m older or something. I look through the pictures and can’t believe how young everyone was. It’s the typical passage of time, every other person is dead, everyone’s young. I was young too, which I forget, sometimes I see people I dated, and I go this looks creepy and then I remember I was a kid too, we were both twenty-three and I wasn’t fifty [laughs].

Is there anything else you want to say about the book?

I get really stoked seeing that people bought it and are excited about it. It’s nice to put things out, put all the negative self-talk to the side and just be proud and have fun with it. I’ll come out with a more serious photobook later to prove that I can take a picture [laughs].