When the beloved Gonzo documentary series All Gas, No Brakes returns to the web later this month, its creator, Andrew Callaghan, will have achieved what feels like an impossible resurrection to him and his legion of fans.
The 28-year-old Loyola journalism graduate has been at the forefront of DIY reporting since his teens, beginning with interviews of fringe dark-web figures and protest movements during a gap year. This magnetism toward communities that fall below the traditional media radar intensified in New Orleans. At Loyola, his eye for the absurd found a feast in the French Quarter; his interview series, Quarter Confessions, eventually birthed his memoir-zine, All Gas, No Brakes, a document of a 70-day hitchhiking journey across America. Its success led to a partnership with Doing Things Media, a humor-leaning production house that agreed to fund the All Gas, No Brakes web series.
Soon, Callaghan — alongside Nic Mosher and Evan Gilbert-Katz — was traversing the country in a shabby RV, documenting the surreal, perturbing and often hilarious fringes of American culture. The show garnered a dedicated audience but proved short-lived. Audiences were perplexed when they departed in March 2021, the result of contractual disputes with Doing Things Media. Reports suggested the production house bristled at political coverage, such as the 2020 George Floyd protests, demanding the team stick strictly to humor.
While Callaghan successfully transitioned to the more traditional newscast-style Channel 5, the loss of AGNB’s esoteric style and specific storytelling seemed to gnaw at him. In May, he announced he had “squashed the beef” with his former partners. All Gas, No Brakes was officially back as an affiliate of Channel 5. Callaghan had clawed back the entire IP catalog, brand rights and social media pages. He even got the RV back.
Compared to the structured approach of Channel 5, All Gas, No Brakes is rooted in pure vérité. It tips its hat to Hunter S. Thompson’s wild streak, Vice Media’s early alt-media sensibility (and later penchant for parachute journalism) and VHS cult favorite Heavy Metal Parking Lot. The series’ brief plunges into American subcultures are told without hand-holding or rigid structure; the point of the story often doesn’t reveal itself until the end — or perhaps days later.
“I felt like a mother whose child was taken away when All Gas, No Brakes left,” Callaghan said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter this week. “It’s been a chaotic and malicious journey from the jump. To have this moment of stability where I possess complete ownership over these two projects means everything. That is success.”
Callaghan financed the buy-back through Patreon donations and revenue from his recent feature-length documentary Dear Kelly. The film — the first produced by Channel 5 — follows a man whom Callaghan met at a 2021 “White Lives Matter” rally and tracks his radicalization following a home foreclosure.
But the return of the series is only the beginning. Callaghan intends to grow Channel 5 into a media empire with its own ecosystem of shows, potentially adding live streams and cross-country hitchhiking trips “from sea to shining sea.”
However, he is also compartmentalizing his coverage. Callaghan is insistent that the resurrected All Gas, No Brakes remain politics-free. After years of wading through the “muck” of political reporting, it is hard to blame him for returning to the simpler draw of the RV and America’s rich tapestry of eccentrics.
“I want a divorce from that side of the internet,” he says, noting that new episodes will be shorter than the initial run. “I’ve gone so deep into that field with Channel 5 that I want to regress a little bit to a more pure state of mind.”
Viewers can expect coverage of alien conferences, crypto-cults and micronations. For Callaghan, it all comes down to how people congregate. “Basically, just tight-knit communities — the adult baby subculture, various fringe groups,” he explained. “The ‘subtle medicine’ behind All Gas, No Brakes is showing that communities still exist. Community collapse is the biggest crisis happening right now.”
All Gas, No Brakes returns to YouTube on April 27 at 9 p.m.
