Channel 5's Andrew Callaghan Talks Chet Hanks, The Rise Of Channel 5 And What Makes The Perfect Interview

ournalists like Andrew Callaghan are a rare breed. In 2019, the now 24-year-old set off on an RV trip across America to document some of the largest, most polarizing gatherings of people he could find under the monicker All Gas No Brakes. Stops included events like Burning Man, a Flat Earth conference and more political vibes like a Proud Boys rally.

Now, after a dispute with his production partners that led him to leave the All Gas No Brakes brand, Andrew has come back with Channel 5. In the show's five months online, Callaghan has spoken to protestors at Derek Chauvin's verdict announcement, gone to pick-up artist bootcamp and interviewed the eccentric Chet Hanks. We spoke with Andrew to learn more about the rise of Channel 5, get his take on the art of interviewing and what the future holds for him.

Q: What was All Gas No Brakes?

A: All Gas No Brakes was an Instagram, YouTube, Patreon show that I did independently from a creative standpoint, but under a parent company called Doing Things Media. They bought me an RV, gave me a $45,000 salary and they sent me across the country and I basically shot, interviewed and edited it all by myself and with the help of friends. Owen Borges was the first videographer and then Nic Mosher, who's my current Channel 5 videographer came in, but before then, All Gas No Brakes was a zine. It was basically a book with a bunch of cartoon illustrations that I wrote about my experiences hitchhiking as a teenager across the country when I was 19.

So it was a mix of illustrations and photos and just stories about my early traveling days. I published that independently in Seattle, and then also I had this show called Quarter Confessions, which I did with my friend Michael Moises in New Orleans, which was like Drunk on Bourbon Street confessional interviews. It's still on Instagram. Doing Things Media initially wanted to buy Quarter Confessions from us, so they were negotiating with us, and then I graduated college, so I left New Orleans, left Quarter Confessions to Mike, and I embarked on my own route sponsored by Doing Things.

Q: So how did you get involved with Doing Things Media?

A: Well, Doing Things Media has a huge marketing apparatus because they owned a bunch of popular meme pages like Shithead Steve, Trashcan Paul. One page was called Drunk People Doing Things, Wooks Doing Things. I'd say the first interview that went viral was when I started covering music, kinda more wook-style music festivals, like more hippie-style, Colorado, Arizona stuff, because their audience is very college-heavy and also festival-heavy. So they were able to promote me at first and then people liked it. So from then on, it just had its own wheels.

Q: What happened between you and Doing Things Media to end the partnership?

A: There was a couple of things that happened. When it first started, All Gas No Brakes was pretty much only funded by Patreon profits and merch sales. I was only getting like 20% of Patreon and merch and for someone who felt like I most of the digital production by myself, I thought that was unfair. Specifically, around October 2020, we started making a movie or a long-term project with this company Abso Lutely, which is Tim and Eric's company. And of course, because I was spending so much time doing that, Doing Things Media was pressuring me to make more content because their Patreon numbers were going down, YouTube stats were going down or stagnating because I wasn't able to devote any time to making videos for them.

And so then demands got kind of crazy and I told them, "Alright, I want 50% instead of 20% if you want me to work two jobs," 'cause I was growing as a creator and I was like, "Okay, if I'm gonna work my ass off just to make you guys 80% of the money, it doesn't seem fair to me." They responded by firing my two best friends, Nick and Evan. I don't know what their strategy was, obviously, it didn't work out. Obviously, they know now that they made a mistake, but I had to get a bunch of lawyers and get myself out of the contract because it was going bad. They ultimately sent me a notice in the mail that was like, "You have 30 days to make a few pieces of Patreon content or All Gas No Brakes is over."

They even tried to squeeze me and make me pass the torch to a new host to act like I was just jaded and giving up. The narrative that they wanted to run with was like, "Andrew is just so tired after all this time on the road, he needs a break. He's so mentally and emotionally exhausted." But really, I was just getting started. Also, they were uncomfortable with the political leanings of some of my shit.

I mean 2020, it wasn't that I chose to make the show political, but in 2020 there was so much political shit happening that I was like, "Alright, it's the pandemic." The only shit happening during the pandemic was COVID protests and then the George Floyd protests, so I wanted to cover something and I ended up making some shit that really did well. But obviously, you can't really merchandise that and Doing Things Media was all about merchandise.

So they wanted me to go to the UFO conference and Burning Man and all this sort of center-pilled Joe Rogan style, tin foil hat shit and make merch out of it, but then I'm like, "Okay, you guys probably can't make merch of the interviews that I did at the George Floyd protests. I mean, you could, but it would go over badly", and so they weren't too cool with that. But overall, I didn't have a horrible experience working with Doing Things Media, but it's just by the end it got really bad.

Q: Now you're operating under the name Channel 5. What separates All Gas No Brakes from Channel 5?

A: The main difference is that All Gas No Breaks was predominantly a travel show. It was about guys living in an RV, traversing the country, getting into crazy shit. It was very much diving into America-type stuff. I would say that Channel 5 is more like a satirical/semi-serious news company. So it's more like the reporter, breaking news, action news from that deck as opposed to the highway. The imagery of the All Gas Universe was like freeways and all that RV, truck-stop sort of shit. This is a different type of marketing, it's like Anchorman, Ron Burgundy-style shit, that's what we're going for at least. It's meant to ultimately have multiple shows under it. Channel 5, it's a show right now but hopefully, it will grow into a media company that has an umbrella of other shit attached to it.

Q: Are you going to be doing any more traveling for Channel 5?

A: I'm still gonna travel, but I've been jaded from all these three years on the road. I wanna build something cool here in LA. I'm still gonna travel all the time, but not live on the road. I'm done with that shit for a while, at least.

Q: Was it hard rebranding as Channel 5 after gaining such a huge fanbase with All Gas No Brakes?

A: No, it honestly happened really, really easily. Thanks to the New York Times article that Taylor Lorenz wrote. Just thanks to how people, journalists, and there was a lot of creator solidarity and people were like, "You're getting f***ed over." Thankfully, all the fans knew about that. So they were able to be like, "What's Andrew doing next? What happened to him?" And then they transitioned into Channel 5. It was like I just had a mysterious ghost exit. Channel 5's numbers are actually doing better than All Gas No Brakes numbers. Yeah.

Q: You interview a lot of people with very extreme views sometimes. Do the things people say ever make you lose faith in humanity a bit?

A: Yeah, I love people. I love everybody, even the craziest people I interview. I have pretty radical empathy for individuals, but have I lost my faith in the future? For sure. We've got a dark future ahead of us just 'cause people are this endless mosaic of echo chambers everywhere all the time. It's crazy 'cause the internet was supposed to make us smarter when it came out, it was supposed to be like, you can Google anything. All the information is on your smartphone, it's in the palm of your hands, but it's actually made people way dumber. Informational literacy is just so, so low and tensions are so high, it's terrible.

Q: In your most recent video you hung out with Chet Hanks. How did you hook up with Chet and what was that like?

A: He saw the Hoff Twins documentary and he was like, "Let's make a documentary like that about me." It was supposed to be a whole documentary, but we ended up with one interview. I don't think he was too pleased with the interview. He didn't like that we used one of his old music videos when he was Chet Haze in high school. I think he's unable to laugh at his former self.

Q: Would you say his social media personality is authentic to who he is in real life?

A: 100% authentic. He's not as self-aware as it might be perceived. There's a part of him that's appealing and there's a part of him that people laugh at. And I don't think he's been able to pinpoint which part is the reason. If he were to laugh at himself. But I get it. Being a celebrity's son must be insane, especially Tom being the most liked individual. If you even divert a little bit from the inoffensive path, you're gonna be seen as the black sheep.

Q: Was he a good time to hang out with?

A: He was really fun. He's actually a pretty nice dude. I just think he's troubled by a lot of stuff, but I like Chet. Shout out to him. We had a really good time, we worked out, did some burpees, got some beers at Venice Beach. It was good.

Q: Is there one thing people tend to get wrong about Chet Hanks?

A: Well, I just think he speaks from the heart when he's doing a lot of his stuff. I don't know if he's aware of how stuff like appropriation is perceived. I don't think he's trying to be controversial. I think he's just truly expressing himself.

And it sucks that he has to learn at the speed of public image, the speed of paparazzi coverage, because the way paparazzi covers celeb families, it's like… You ever read the National Enquirer? It's like "Scandal scandal, OMG. What?" You don't get the sort of breathing room that a mildly famous person gets. No one's gonna take a picture of me at 7-11 but if Tom Hanks' family even goes into a Walmart or something, it's a goddamn headline, 'cause it sells. So that's the thing people get wrong about him, is that he's really being himself.

Q: You recently covered the California recall; what was the crowd there like?

A: I've probably been to 15 Trump rallies that no one's seen and filming it for the past eight months, so I'm super used to crowds like that. But it's interesting to see how Trump's people have kind of fragmented in the wake of the Capitol Riot. Most of the centrist Republicans disavow Trump supporters and California's got some of the most hardcore ones.

So that's what most of the people at the recall rally were like. It was crazy, as soon as it kinda became clear that Larry Elder might not beat Gavin Newsom in the recall race, everyone was like, "It's fraud. It's fraud. They did the same thing they did with the election." So it's interesting to see that's kind of the new precedent for right-wingers if they lose.

Q: What makes the perfect interviewee?

A: I guess the perfect interviewee for me would be like an eccentric person with an earnest point. Not just all bark, someone who has an interesting core. A very layered person who's also energetic. But I think that I've evolved since the early days of All Gas No Breaks. I feel like I cater to people with a longer attention span now. On YouTube, in the early days, I was just looking for the most insane people, but now that seems hollow to me.

Q: Is there anyone you've met recently that you can't believe is a real person?

A: The shirtless guy at the QAnon conference named Chris Erics, the bodybuilder who runs that podcast called Flex The Truth and wears tight stuff and hangs out with General Michael Flynn all the time. I can't believe that guy is real. How the hell is that guy a main QAnon podcaster.

Q: If someone came up to you tomorrow and asked you to be the next Late Night host, would you do it?

A: Yeah, totally as long as I can keep doing Channel 5. Now that I'm a free agent, I can do whatever, it's crazy. I used to have to get approval to do anything and I would have to give all the money I got from anything to Doing Things Media, they had me in a full management contract. So happy that shit's over.

Q: Who are your biggest influences in the interviewer game?

A: Well, Louis Farro's a big influence. There is this graffiti writer named Jay A who used to do this show called Sham's De Baron, he was a hip-hop correspondent, and his other alias was Norman Vename, and he did these super-niche YouTube videos where he would go to douchey art galleries in West Hollywood and in Chelsea New York and he would just f*** with these people. JA is a big interview influence, but humor-wise and attitude-wise, probably John Stewart, The Daily Show.

Q: You used to rap under the name "Trek God." What can you tell us about that?

A: I grew up in Philly until I was like 10. I went to this majority Black school called Independence Charter School and we had all of these lunch tables and everybody had to rap. It wasn't a class, but at lunch, people would bang on the tables and everybody had like, two lines that they would say and everyone in the whole class had to do it. There were like 100 of us.

I think mine was like, "My name is Andrew, I am so crazy. I have like 14 or 15 babies" or some shit like that. And so that was normal. So I went to Seattle when I was 11 and I got there and Seattle was super white, super-rich and nobody rapped. And so, I was just rapping for fun, and so people used to call me Philly MC because I was from Philly. And then Philly MC merged into Trek God, but PhillyMc was more like a freestyle middle school, kind of like Eminem style rapper and Trek God was like a party rapper. I was just making music about sipping lean and robbing people for like $10 at house parties. Trek God was just for fun, but I stopped rapping when I was 18, thankfully

Q: Why did you stop rapping?

A: I just realized that I have other things I like doing better. And every time I would tell someone I rap, there was just this aura of embarrassment that got worse over time. Your grandparents ask you what you're doing and you're like, "I'm just rapping." When people describe you as a rapper, it's just an embarrassing thing to be like a college-age white rapper. Especially because being a high school party rapper is tight, but white boy college rap, like Wes Welker with that song about Jordan Belfort. There's a whole Asher Roth style brand of frat rap and it's probably what I would have kind of gotten into had I continued. I'm happy it didn't happened.

Q: What's some advice you can give to aspiring interviewers?

A: Just be quiet and listen to people. You don't have to be neutral, but at least try to hear people out to the fullest extent and keep your agenda in your pocket. I would say if you need to apply an agenda of your own, do that with the footage. I hear everybody out. I might not put everything they say in the video, because obviously, I have my own opinions about things, everybody does, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Q: Is there a dream interview or event you'd like to cover?

A: Yeah, adult baby conference. An adult baby is typically a grown man who has a trust fund and fantasizes about being an infant. So, he pays a person, typically an older female maternal caretaker to basically put him to sleep, give him a pacifier, change his diapers, sing songs to him and lay him down in his crib every night. And he's completely non-verbal.

I mean, he's verbal, but talks like an infant and cries and stuff, basically to be nursed full-time by a grown woman as a grown man. I know there's something called an Age Plague Conference, and I think there are some adult babies in the mix, but I tried to apply in 2018. You can't get into the adult baby conference unless you're an adult baby. I think adult babies kind of know each other, there can't be that many adult babies. They would snipe me pretty much instantly, so I'd have to become an adult baby. Which I would do. Everybody is sort of an adult baby sometimes, but the diaper-changing element of it is pretty unbelievable.

Q: What are your hopes for Channel 5?

A: Well, one thing that I learned from All Gas No Brakes is that viral fame and exponential growth doesn't make things any more fun. I know what it's like now to have millions of followers and all that, so it's like I'm more concerned with doing things I actually enjoy and making long-form documentaries that push the limits of my creative boundaries and trying new stuff and experimenting with new styles, as opposed to making stuff that I know will go viral and produce a lot of stats. So, where it's at right now, we've got 16,000 patrons and 950,000 subscribers. I would be cool for it to stay there, and it's a sustainable life for me.

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Andrew Callaghan is a journalist and content creator known for creating All Gas No Breaks and Channel 5. You can find Channel 5 on YouTube and Instagram. You can also support Andrew on Patreon.