MythBusters host Adam Savage had the kind of job most of us can only dream of. For years, Savage and his longtime cohost and colleague Jamie Hyneman would test all kinds of myths, rumors, and urban legends in the most explosive way possible. Plus, they actually got paid for it.
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00:00Adam Savage spent 13 years blowing up things on Mythbusters, probably one of the coolest
00:05jobs in the world.
00:06But Adam Savage is more than just the sum of all the things he's exploded.
00:10He's worked on Star Wars and done a lot else besides.
00:13Here's the untold truth of Adam Savage.
00:15Sesame Street played a big role in Adam Savage's life, and not in the same way it did for most
00:21kids who grew up in the 70s.
00:22Adam Savage is artistic, creative, and clever, and it's probably not a stretch to say that
00:26some of that came from his dad, Whitney Lee Savage, who was an animator on Sesame Street
00:31and also did work for another popular children's television show called The Electric Company.
00:35"...and he's found it, a rubber glove sandwich."
00:42Writing for AV Club, Savage said his dad spent two or three months a year drawing and animating
00:4730-second spots for Sesame Street.
00:49His dad's involvement with the show eventually led to Savage's first acting job.
00:53He did the voice work for a series of Sesame Street spots that taught kids how common household
00:57objects worked.
00:58"...I'll show you how a faucet works, Sheila.
01:01You turn the handle and it releases a rain cloud named sand inside the faucet."
01:07Savage also got a lot of inspiration from his dad's work, experimenting with claymation
01:12and animation, and even doing a spot for Swatch in 1988.
01:16He said,
01:17"...those simple animations are what I thought of as dad's work growing up.
01:20To me, they represent a creative brain allowed to run free.
01:23What more can one ask?"
01:25The kid version of Adam Savage once had some pretty lofty career ambitions.
01:30As in, he just wanted to get paid to play with toys all the time.
01:33He told The Sneeze that before he ever wanted to work in special effects or blow things
01:37up for a living, he wanted to be a LEGO designer.
01:40He said,
01:41"...hands down, the best toy ever has to go LEGO.
01:44I mean, LEGO fueled my desire to build things from age 5 to age 17, I think."
01:49Savage didn't become a LEGO designer, but that desire to build undoubtedly led him to
01:53a career in special effects, and later to his career in explosions and disagreeing with
01:57Jamie Heineman all the time.
01:59"...this is exactly what I imagined being a mad scientist would be like when I was a
02:04child."
02:05Just about everyone who's lived in the United States during the 80s remembers Mr. Whipple.
02:09While today's Charmin commercials feature animated bears alluding to their number two
02:13bathroom activities, yesterday's Charmin commercials featured an old grocer named Mr. Whipple,
02:19who got really bent out of shape when customers dared to squeeze the Charmin.
02:23"...squeeze Charmin, squeeze Charmin."
02:25"...exactly."
02:26According to SFGate, by the time Adam Savage was a teenager, he'd decided that maybe acting
02:31was his thing.
02:32And because people who are new to acting don't turn down roles, no matter how silly they
02:35are, his legacy includes a brief stint in one of the Mr. Whipple commercials, where
02:40he played an apron-clad stock boy named Jimmy.
02:43"...Mr. Whipple, the roof is leaking all over the new Charmin!"
02:46And because that's not 80s nostalgic enough, he also appeared in the 1985 Billy Joel music
02:52video You're Only Human, Second Wind, in which he played a kid who is rescued from drowning
02:56as Billy Joel goes fishing in a black overcoat.
02:59There was really no other time like the 80s.
03:02What's the world's coolest job, besides blowing stuff up for the Discovery Channel?
03:06Designing models for Star Wars.
03:07Not only did he spend 13 years on MythBusters, before that he worked for Industrial Light
03:12and Magic as a model designer.
03:13"...I worked on Episodes 1 and 2."
03:15"...Okay."
03:16"...Sorry about that."
03:17For Adam Savage, watching Star Wars was a life-changing experience.
03:20According to StarWars.com, Savage grew up reading Star Wars and special effects magazines,
03:25so by the time he landed a job at ILM, he not only understood the Star Wars universe,
03:29he also knew how to create it.
03:31He explained,
03:32"...I had a reputation at Industrial Light and Magic for being quite fast and that afforded
03:35me some really cool jobs."
03:37But after three years at ILM, Savage says he's started to become restless.
03:41That's when he got the opportunity to work at MythBusters, the other most awesome job
03:45of all time.
03:46And he still got to play with Star Wars toys.
03:48"...Nice bucket."
03:49"...Thank you!"
03:51If you know anything at all about the strained relationship between Adam Savage and co-host
03:55Jamie Heinemann, you might assume that the two incompatible personalities ended up hosting
04:00MythBusters together through some casting accident.
04:02But the truth is actually stranger than that.
04:05Savage and Heinemann knew each other before MythBusters.
04:07According to SFGate, they worked together in the 1990s at Colossal Pictures, a special
04:11effects house in San Francisco.
04:13Savage told The Sneeze that Jamie was responsible for his first job in the movie industry.
04:18The pair collaborated for three years making models for commercials, and they also built
04:22the semi-legendary battlebot robot Blendo.
04:25"...Blendo!"
04:26In fact, it was Heinemann who first called Savage about doing MythBusters.
04:34Heinemann had been approached by the show's creator, but didn't think he was interesting
04:37enough to carry the whole show on his own.
04:39So he called Savage, and thus began one of the most antagonistic co-host relationships
04:43in the history of television.
04:44"...Those didn't sound like regular seconds.
04:47What kind of seconds were you counting there?
04:49Two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten?"
04:53Now some people will tell you that after 13 years of myth-busting, Savage and Heinemann
04:58actively dislike each other.
04:59But that's not accurate.
05:01Savage told Entertainment Weekly,
05:02It is true that we're not friends.
05:04We disagree about the small details every single day, on almost every single detail.
05:08But we don't really disagree about the big stuff."
05:11He added that even though they aren't friends, they do have a deep amount of respect for
05:14each other.
05:15"...Holy crap!"
05:20Even Adam Savage's most devoted fans aren't necessarily aware that he suffers from hearing
05:24loss.
05:25Given the nature of his job, it's tempting to conclude that the hearing loss must have
05:28happened when something blew up on the set of Mythbusters, or, more likely, when lots
05:32of things blew up on the set of Mythbusters.
05:35But explosions aren't to blame.
05:43Savage's hearing loss is actually congenital.
05:45His ears have structural problems that leave him at risk for infections, which can potentially
05:49lead to larger problems like partial facial paralysis.
05:53In an interview with Still Untitled, Savage said he's undergone a series of operations
05:57meant to correct the structural problems in his ears, but his hearing loss is still
06:00severe enough that he has to wear hearing aids.
06:02"...Honestly, when I don't have my hearing aids in, I start to get panicked, because
06:06I can't hear anything, and it's, it's, the world gets very small very quickly."
06:10Savage is open about his hearing loss, and is a champion for the use of hearing aids.
06:13"...But if you think you have hearing loss, or if you know someone who has hearing loss,
06:16go get them checked.
06:17It really will radically, radically improve your life."
06:21You can't call yourself a bonafide geek until you've gone to Comic-Con and awesome cosplay.
06:26According to SyFy, every year, Adam Savage not only goes to Comic-Con, he goes there
06:30incognito in an elaborate full-body costume that either he builds himself or commissions.
06:35"...I decided that I would put together an elaborate costume that covered me completely,
06:39and I would walk the floor of San Diego Comic-Con anonymously."
06:43His costumes have been inspired by everything from Hellboy to Chewbacca.
06:46In 2017, he attended Comic-Con as King Arthur in a 20-pound suit of armor.
06:51The armor was made by Terry English, who also created the costumes for the 1981 film
06:55Excalibur.
06:56Unfortunately, you can't really be incognito if everyone knows you're always incognito,
07:02and Comic-Con fans in the know have made a game of trying to spot Adam Savage at the
07:06annual event.
07:07So the next time you're at Comic-Con, just look for the guy in the 100% self-contained
07:10suit who looks really hot and uncomfortable, and then ask for a selfie.
07:14He may not reveal his identity to you, but you can be pretty sure he'll let everyone
07:18in on the secret on his YouTube channel.
07:21There are some real job perks to being the star of a long-running television program
07:25in which you get to build super cool things and then blow them up.
07:28One of those perks is the paycheck.
07:29The other one is that people take you seriously even though you're pretty much the same geeky
07:32fanboy you've always been, only now you're a geeky fanboy with leverage.
07:37In 2017, Adam Savage got to appear in 2048 Nowhere to Run, a film short promoting Blade
07:42Runner 2049.
07:44According to SyFy, the film takes place in a crowded underground marketplace and follows
07:48the shady activities of replicant Sapper Morton, played by Dave Bautista.
07:53Savage plays a blood-bag merchant and can be seen over the shoulder of Bautista for
07:57several seconds.
07:58It's not exactly the role of a lifetime, but the awesomeness points are pretty off the
08:02charts.
08:03"...every bit as much fun as you'd think."