hello fellow mutants beautiful nerds i hope you are all fine today uh i am fine thank you
for asking this is adam savage in my cave and i am taking some questions from tested
patrons regarding my tenure as a mythbuster and today's question comes courtesy of kyle
bennett with an extra e so maybe it's benetti uh he says did you ever get to meet or interact
with the narrator of the show his voice was iconic alongside the mythbusters crew um the
same question for the folklorist heather uh yes we did meet heather i appreciate you remembering
that we had a folklorist because she only was on the show for one season um specifically because
that well i mean we drifted way beyond folklore by the end of the first season that's definitely true
um so regarding modern folklore there wasn't a lot to get into uh about folklore once we're
doing youtube videos right um but you're asking specifically about my friend and colleague rob lee
uh and rob lee is a canadian from australia who narrates american television shows
yes uh rob i agree with you rob's voice is iconic and a completely
important vital part of mythbusters which is why it was so sad for me for those of you who live in
the uk and watched mythbusters in the uk from my understanding and i have never seen one of these
cuts actually if somebody has one i'd love to see it um from my understanding
the british version of mythbusters was half an hour long and narrated by somebody that wasn't rob
and i don't know how that show would work
robs okay realize that the producers of mythbusters the very first thing they would
do at the very beginning of a script was go to cliche.com and look for all the most obvious puns
uh they would then look for even more puns and then once they'd written a script with a
whole bunch of puns in it they would add some even more puns and puns they're fine they're
fine they're often low-hanging fruit they're definitely within the dad humor school of jokes
but it's not easy to read a pun it is non-trivial to make it funny and not
feel like you're insulting the audience frankly but i have a favorite pun and rob
killed the delivery on this one uh it's from the first or second season i can't even remember which
in the very first pilots we painted jamie gold uh a la the goldfinger myth that uh
shirley jackson the actress that got painted gold in the movie goldfinger with sean connery
uh died from the said shirley jackson am i getting that name wrong at any rate
she famously supposedly died or suffocated from being painted with gold paint
didn't happen we painted jamie gold i asked him if he'd ever seen any gladiator movies
he didn't know what that joke meant we all had fun then i got painted with gold paint
because we had another thing to test um and i had to have my temperature taken internally
uh and that was not pleasant uh it also sucks to get painted with gold paint to get painted
your whole body with latex paint it's just like my mood dropped almost immediately um but
in the script it said something about it's time to gild his lily white hide gilda lily
killed my lily white lily white hide guilt dude that's a great pun i love that pun and rob lee
rob lee had this has this way of reading a pun that i have such respect for because
as he reads it you can hear the smile in his voice and you can also hear that
slight ironic tinge that says i'm sorry that i'm wasting your time with this joke
but as soon as we get it all done we're gonna move on to the next one it'll all be fine
here it goes like all of that was inherent and made text by rob's dry laconic delivery or
laconic is not the word but dr very dry and yet tongue firmly planted antique he always
i'm not i've never asked rob his opinion about the puns that that all the mythbusters
producers would write for the for the narration script i never asked him how he felt about that
but i suspect he would express that they were a challenge to read correctly and that yeah you
have to read them with a knowing smile you can't just you can't just pretend it's not happening
you can't just read it as text you gotta add some subtext because well it's there um surprisingly i
have only spent i've only hung out with rob i think on four or five separate occasions
and those were always at the emmys um mythbusters famously lost eight or nine emmys in a row uh we
were nominated uh eight or nine times we lost repeatedly to all sorts of other shows and i'm
sad about that i would have loved uh our entire crew would have loved the feather in our cap
of a genuine emmy but it was not to be um however at the emmys was often a really great moment for
the australian crew mythbusters was edited uh and produced out of australia out of sydney by beyond
productions so we get to see all those folks that we love john luscombe jenny o'shea and rob lee and
then we combined them with the san francisco crew dan tapster would come from england it was just
it's like a reunion every year i missed that part of the emmys you didn't ask but here's the thing
about losing an emmy it sucks it sucks you're sitting there in the audience we were always
the last category so i just sit through this three-hour creative arts emmys for that last
category i am not complaining i am not complaining i am so lucky to have gotten to do this
but you're sitting there after three hours you're tired your category comes up and you find yourself
surprised i found myself surprised by how much i wanted it at that moment i've been ignoring it the
whole time or kind of not feeling one way or the other being kind of cool with any outcome and then
they read your category and they read the other nominees and you're like man i really really want
this and then it doesn't happen and then you feel crappy for a little while like 15 minutes uh your
wife might lean over and say you should go up and congratulate the winner and she'll be right uh and
then there is this hilarious death march from the uh uh the nokia theater wasn't the nokia theater
i think it is sorry from the emmy theater i guess i'll know this is nokia but from the emmy theater
there's this march from the emmy theater to the governor's ball and everyone walks like
two blocks and it's on that walk that you feel better because you're just walking with all
these other people most of whom have lost and you're also witnessing and seeing some of your
favorite people on television my favorite year was the final year it's arguably the year that
i wanted to win the most uh and felt really sad that we didn't win and then we're on the
march we're walking we had brought some of our friends to come with us to the emmys and that
was really really lovely and then as we're walking to the governor's ball i notice that ahead of us
sees two preternaturally beautiful human beings uh and it is um harry hamlin and lisa arena
who are not only like twice as uh as handsome as attractive in person as you would imagine they are
seriously but like jaw-droppingly sweet i i literally just said harry hamlin and turned around
and i said the character you're playing on mad men this year is a crazy enigma and i love it that's
that's kind of how i approach other celebrities i like and he was like well thank you very much
in this voice that was like someone pouring syrup all over me and then lisa reno like turned around
and engaged with us asked us to ask my wife and i some questions they were just delightful
but that was not what you asked about you asked about rob lee power to rob lee um i am sure he
is still narrating awesome shows um yeah he was an intrinsic deeply vital part of the mythbusters
crew and an honorary a genuine mythbuster in his own right thank you guys so much for these
questions tested patrons yeah your questions are great um i will continue to answer them
as long as you keep submitting them thank you guys for joining me i will see you next time