Crazyhot Podcaster: Q&A with Brendan Davis, the Man Behind Tonight's (Dec 2) Hot Chili Eating Contest Livestream

From the silver screen to your podcast feed, to the live streaming of tonight's Maovember Hot Chili Pepper Eating Contest, Brendan Davis has run the gamut of entertainment and media gigs.

The Hollywood-hailing mover and shaker got his start in China by executive producing a season of the CCTV Tinseltown interview show Jia Pian You Yue/佳片有约. These days, Davis is becoming best known in Beijing for hosting Big Fish In the Middle Kingdom, an engaging and intimate podcast in which he interviews an eclectic array of expats. Past guests include actor Matthew Knowles (the first foreigner ever admitted to Beijing Film Academy's acting program and star of the upcoming, USD 100 million budgeted Chinese fantasy film ASURA), Plastered 8 founder and TV personality Dominic Johnson-Hill, and tech guru and bestselling author Steve Hoffman. A recent episode also featured True Run Media's own Mike Wester, Cheers founder Claudia Masüger, and Maovember founder Jim Boyce as part of the kickoff to that month-long charity event.

After that interview Davis and Wester chatted about the climactic Maovember event: the Hot Chili Pepper Eating Contest (slated for today, Dec 2 at 6.30pm at Punjabi). Davis, coincidentally, is in the midst of producing a documentary about the world of hot peppers, from eating competitions to vendors and more, called Crazyhot. What's more: he has a friend who livestreams her charity events on the massive Netease platform, which led Davis to help the Maovember team arrange a live stream of tonight's contest. He says: "Netease has millions of subscribers, and my friend helped arrange for the contest to be featured on their front page," (for more on that, click here or scan the QR code below).

Davis developed his interview chops on Jia Pian You Yue/佳片有约, a major CCTV series on which Hollywood bigshots are interviewed and introduced to a Chinese audience. The CCTV gig came about via one of Davis' former students at New York Film Academy's MFA campus in L.A. (he taught filmmaking there between his gigs as a producer and sound engineer for various movies). 

"It's the way that Chinese people were introduced to Hollywood films, before the more recent internet explosion," Davis says of Jia Pian You Yue/佳片有约. Among his favorite guests: Marvel mastermind Stan Lee, horror auteur M. Night Shyamalan, and Sean Astin from The Lord of the Rings.

That lead to an opportunity to produce a major New Zealand feature film in China, but the project, unfortunately, fizzled out. Disheartening as that was, China had already reeled Davis in. Inspired by podcasts like WTF by Marc Maron, a comedian who's had his share of highs and lows in show business, Davis decided to get behind the microphone himself.

He started Big Fish In the Middle Kingdom weekly this past spring. It is now 31 episodes strong. Though Davis continues to work on new film projects in various stages of development in China, the podcast lets him flex his storytelling skills in a more direct, hands-on manner. Better still: it allows him to meet expats from various other fields and share the stories that he, and the rest of us, might not otherwise hear.

"It helps me aggregate the expat experience in China, and what foreigners go through here," Davis says of spearheading Big Fish In the Middle Kingdom. "It also opens a window for Chinese people, so they can see that guys roaming around Taikoo Li aren't just diplomats – they're building businesses, working in the arts, journalism and all kinds of things."

For more about Big Fish In the Middle Kingdom, click here or search for it on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Maovember Hot Chili Pepper Eating Contest will be held at Punjabi tonight at 6.30pm; for more on that, click here. If you can't make it out, watch the hot mess unfold via the live stream it here.

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Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
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Photos: Courtesy of Brendan Davis