Ben and Duncan of MTV’s “Buried Life” Ask Us “What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?”

By Kat Ahn on January 18th, 2010

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From the same network that brings you the lives of the rich and frivolous in “The Hills” and, of course, the tanned antics of “Jersey Shore,” comes a new show about four guys who are not only trying to achieve things off their “What Do You Want to Do Before You Die” list, but are also spreading goodwill along the way.

You may have seen the commercials, ads, or billboards for MTV’s “The Buried Life,” where Duncan, Ben, Jonnie, and Dave created a concept of not only trying to find purpose for themselves by playing basketball with President Obama, visiting the Playboy mansion, kissing Megan Fox, participating in a Krump competition, but also helping to deliver a baby and helping strangers achieve something from their lists.

These four guys made a promise to themselves that for every goal they achieve on their list, they would help a stranger do something on theirs. I talked to Duncan and Ben about what it took to really unearth “The Buried Life.”

Duncan and Ben, great to talk to you guys. Tell us about yourselves and how did this idea of “The Buried Life” begin?
BEN: Duncan and I are 25, Jonnie and Dave are 23, and we’re all from Victoria, Canada. We started this project in 2006 and we were going through what a lot of kids our age go through. You get to a point when you graduate college and you have no idea what’s next. We were searching for purpose and came up with this question, “What do you want to do before you die?”
DUNCAN: So, we bought a camera, worked random jobs and called companies to get sponsors to fund this project. And then it all started happening from there.

I read the NY Times article that mentioned “The Buried Life,” saying that this show represents the changing tide of MTV’s viewers in the age of Obama. What did you guys first think when you found yourselves on the front page of one of the most respected news sites in the world?
BEN: Very humbled, surprised, excited. We waited a long time to find a partner that would let us have creative control. We didn’t want to give that up. I mean, we directed, produced, edited, and chose the music for “The Buried Life.”
DUNCAN: When we saw ourselves on the NY Times, it was very cool because we felt like everyone would ask themselves that question just because of that article. That’s what we wanted to do, get everyone thinking about it.

Between the current dire situation in Haiti and our nation’s current unemployment rate, it seems as though we’re all searching for inspiration and hope more than ever. Do you think your show taps into that? How can the average person be inspired by “The Buried Life.”
BEN: Great question. Hopefully it’ll be easy to inspire anyone who watches because we’re just four regular guys and we had no ambition to start a TV show. It was just something to cross off our list, but it was never the original intent.
DUNCAN: I think that people will see that we do everything on our own and that anybody can do these things. We ended up doing lots of crazy things that people told us that we could never do because we just went for it. Hopefully they’ll see a lot of themselves in us.

Going back to that, young people are in the worst shape when it comes to the unemployment rate because companies seem to be focusing on keeping their current employees who already have experience. Yet you guys have done something really different by going against the grain. What words of advice would you give to a young person out there who doesn’t want to work a nine to five and has a dream/goal that seems impossible?
BEN: I think one of the biggest things to do to move forward is to share your ambitions or dreams, whatever they may be. Don’t keep your goals inside because that was really helpful for us. We thought about doing this and kept asking ourselves, well, why don’t we do them? We started telling people about it and people started helping us. They came through and helped us all the way, whatever. That was really surprising to us because we didn’t expect that people would just reach out and help so much. Also, persistence. Just don’t give up because a lot of people give up just before they break through so I’d say never give up on what you want.
DUNCAN: That’s reflected in all these items on our list because a lot of people will say, that’s impossible. Sometimes you don’t know. You fail the first, second time, and we just kept going. It was our third try to try to get into someone’s wedding and give a toast.

So, what are some of the craziest things that you crossed off your list of “Things I want to do before I die?” What are you STILL looking to cross off? And seriously, you guys got to play basketball with President Obama? What was that like, and did you get past him to score a basket?
DUNCAN: The craziest was probably Playboy mansion and just the audacity of our plan to get in. The probability of disaster was so high, so that was the craziest one. Delivering a baby was crazier than we thought it was. As for playing basketball with Obama, you have to stay tuned for that one. We can’t give anything away, but people will be really surprised.
BEN: The one we’re still looking to do is number 100, “go to space.” We also want to tell a judge, “You can’t handle the truth.”

Haha. You guys are CRAZY. So, does it get really stinky on that bus with four guys? And, do you have girlfriends? If so, what do they think about your efforts?
DUNCAN: It gets dirtier rather than stinkier because our costumes and stuff go everywhere with us. As for the girls question, this is the first time that we’re all single at the same time. By the way, do you know where the name of “Buried Life” came from?
NOPE. Tell us.
BEN: We tried to figure out a name for the concept of this show. Jonnie read this poem in English class by Matthew Arnold called “The Buried Life,” and it resonated with us. It speaks to the same feeling we had about how our daily lives can become so cumbersome. We all have this longing to live this buried life of purpose.

I’m inspired. So, did you ever in a million years think that you’d be where you are right now? How does it feel to stick to your guns about your show and not compromise?
DUNCAN: We never really started out with this desire. #53 — we were supposed to make a show in 2007. Then they told us that they wanted all the control, but we had a vision for it. Like Ben said earlier, we wanted it a certain way and when we partnered with MTV, they liked that it was real. That we’re just four regular guys. So in our partnership, we edit, choose music, are co-exec producers on the show — we’re part of it, and that’s really important for us.

Any last words, and what projects are you currently working on?
BEN: We have this goal to help build soccer fields in Africa and we partnered with a company that says that if we get 75,000 members on MTV’s “Buried Life” Facebook, they’re gonna fund a soccer field. We’d love it if you could help us out by joining to help these kids.

Serious? In that case, HERE’S A LINK TO MTV’S BURIED LIFE FACEBOOK. And check out the series premiere of MTV’s “Buried Life,” January 18 at 10PM ET/PT.