“We didn’t even know what we were doing, to be honest,” Ben Nemtin says as he tries to sum up the connection he and his three pals have made with a whole new MTV generation. Grabbing a quick margarita during a whirlwind trip through Manhattan, he says humbly, “We just knew the feeling behind it.”
It’s a feeling that’s easy to get caught up in.
If you haven’t caught wind of The Buried Life, you’ve missed out on a television revolution. MTV, once known for music videos, more recently known for fluffy fake reality fare (i.e. The Hills), turned a powerful corner with this show following four good friends in pursuit of a dream: Nemtin, Dave Lingwood, and brothers Jonnie and Duncan Penn of Victoria, Canada, set out across the land in an old RV to try to accomplish the list of 100 things they’d like to do before they die. The twist? These young dudes wouldn’t just live the dream — they promised to do whatever they could to help perfect strangers attain their own dreams at every stop on the journey.
It would be difficult for someone with as much power and reach as Oprah Winfrey to accomplish such a feat, let alone four college-age guys with no fame, and no dough. In fact, long before MTV came into the picture (a couple of years into the self-documented journey), Nemtin tells Tonic, the guys almost over-thought it too much themselves and didn’t do it — worried they didn’t have any money and therefore wouldn’t be able to help people; and concerned that their borrowed 1977 RV would never survive a cross-country trip.
They simply did it anyway.
“I remember sitting in a restaurant, this man that owned it had brought us in to feed us, at this Greek restaurant, and he talked to us about this Greek expression [that sounds like] ‘Aphlava,’ which is ‘live without fear,’” Ben says. “He thought this is what we embodied. So Dave decided to get a tattoo and put ‘Aphlava’ [in Greek letters] on his ankle. And it was at that moment that we started looking at our inbox and started seeing these emails coming in from people all over the world. That’s when John and I looked at each other and said, ‘What is going on? This is pretty cool!’”
Life-Changing Emails
Sure, the various trials and travails of life on the road while four good-looking guys figure out how to accomplish far-reaching tasks through a series of creative bartering arrangements makes for good TV. (If it weren’t already taken, the title The Amazing Race might be just as fitting.) But the power and reach of their “go for it” message can’t be overlooked.
This email the guys received is just one example of many Tonic had a chance to look over. (Names omitted for privacy):
A few months ago one of our former classmates committed suicide and i believe that if he wouldve heard of “the buried life” i bet he wouldve found some hope and wouldn’t have did what he
did. I think its very important for people like you four to set examples for us as teenagers and help up understand why living life is major in our lives and how we effect others
- D
“You can’t help but be totally touched. This one girl just emailed and said she was losing hope, and had contemplated ending it,” Ben says. After our interview, Ben forwarded the email so I could read her conclusion for myself:
…But this show for some reason has made me realize if I ever did end my life before my time I would never get to go back to all those special places with all of my very best friends I hope I never lose. So thank you and I hope you continue having fun changing yours, and others lives. -Anonymous
The email that anonymous teenager sent to the guys came after she viewed “the Obama episode,” he notes, “with these two guys we meet in their sixties, who talked about wanting to go back to ‘The Man Made’ before they die.”
The Man Made, it turned out, was an old swimming hole where these guys used to hang out with their best friends as pre-teens and teens. Tracking them down, Ben and his buddies put them all back in touch, after many, many years — reconnecting friendships that had grown apart for decades, and reuniting them at their old swimming hole. Now, those guys in their sixties talk to each other every week.
Ageless Lessons
Young. Old. The question — and the message — remains the same: “What do you want to do before you die?”
“It’s pretty incredible,” Ben says. “It’s humbling, really. But we do get a lot of those type of emails, from people who were in a dark place.”
Who knew that a show on MTV would be the thing to brighten anyone’s outlook?
“It’s triggering people in different ways,” he says. “This question forces you to think. It puts you face-to-face with death, sort of, which in turn makes you think about life.”
Monday night’s finale involves throwing an epic party in their home town (getting around the usually strict cops); and uniting a son with his father for the first time ever on camera. “It’s a doozy,” Ben says. “It’s so powerful.”
Next up for the gang? Starting to think about season two. “It’s just bigger, bolder,” he says. “Now that we have a bit of notoriety, we’re going to go after things that it doesn’t matter who you are.”
Such as? “‘Go to Space,’” he says. “How can you get to Branson? Is that even feasible? We’ll see.”
They’ll also continue their quest to try to play basketball with Obama — an effort that was actually stymied by their association with MTV, since television network involvement automatically politicized efforts that before MTV’s involvement seemed totally pure, and innocently ambitious.
The nativité and simplicity of their efforts is something the Buried Life guys fought hard and will continue to fight hard to keep. The four of them are all executive producers on the show, and even do their own editing. So despite the new fame — and, presumably, fortune — they want to keep MTV and that fame at bay while they continue the quest to inspire and help others achieve their dreams.
“It’s such a simple thing, but people are afraid to [go after those dreams]. You might think, ‘I can’t write a book,’ but if you go and tell everyone you know that you want to write a book, someone might say, ‘You know what? My uncle works at a publishing house.’ And that’s the spirit of Buried Life, and that’s why it’s so powerful because that’s the community that we’re building online. People posting their lists, and helping each other. That’s the goal. We’re not there yet, but building that online community is something we’re working on,” Ben says.
He also points out that the more they travel, the more they encounter one recurring truth: That people who really made a big success of their lives chose ‘Aphlava,’ to ‘live without fear’ and to take a different path; to follow their dreams when they were young — even when everyone else was telling them not to do it.
“So imagine what the world would be like if everybody did that?” Ben asks in a not-so-rhetorical question. “They would be happy. They would be fulfilled. They would want to give back, because they would feel like we do — that we’re so blessed to be able to do what we love doing that of course we’re going to want to give back. It’s more of a social commentary than anything,” he says. “It’s crazy.”
The way he sees it, more and more people are starting to wake up to that new reality.
“I think there’s a real shift going on,” Ben says. “Especially with youth.”
“What I didn’t expect was the intensity and the loyalty of the supporters, and how much they want to be a part of it. We probably get 10 to 15 speaking-engagement requests per day, from high schools and colleges — just because they can see that this is real and they want to be a part of it,” he says.
“It feels like an army. A little army of people that are just motivated, which is pretty powerful,” he adds. “Now, the question is: In what direction do we turn that army?”
Catch the finale of The Buried Life Monday night at 10 p.m. on MTV.
Photos courtesy theburied.life via Flickr.