TUTT NIGHT! Un-80s all over. Patreon exclusive interview. With the writer of 48 hours, CUP MANO, and I-Hi, SKEVER E-DASUZA, and I-O, your hosts, Probe Queenie, and Scott Weinberg., all right. You know what, let's do this. Let's do this. Give me this scoop on like what was the inciting factor? What made you decide to just issue a more safe profession and decide to risk it as a screenwriter, filmmaker. If you ask, but I was a kid,

if you actually what I wanted to do when I grew up,

I was one of these kids five six years old. I was making my own comic books and stapling together. And I remember distinctly saying, I, you know, as soon as I must have seen one of the first episodes of the Disneyland TV show where they explained how they made anime cartoons. I said, that's what I wanted to do when I made me old flip books and stuff.

So, and then I was one of the first kids,

I guess, that one of the first, but making home movies with like, you know, eight millimeter movie camera. I made a film when I was, I guess, in trying to think maybe 10th grade or something called Cole Finger, you can guess the premise of parody of James Bond and I entered a national contest and won a prize. So I had that bug really early. And in fact, I was always a very creative kid. And I think if you follow my Twitter feed, I recently put up some illustrations I did. This also wasn't high school. And a teacher assigned us a, and this must have been ninth grade. A teacher assigned us the, said, right, and illustrate your version of a fairy tale. So I did my version of totally elapsed in the three bears. And they called my parents and had the school psychiatrists come in. Oh, you're going my turn to feed the can see the illustrations. It was like a neon war, my camera thing where Goldilocks was like the client, but she was like a lying bimbo for the private detective. And it was the bear crime family, your papa, mom and baby bear. that was their crying, you know nicknames, their

hitman was a Humpty, a Dumpty.

Goal of my Twitter feed have recently had the illustrations there.

I definitely don't know how it was in my senior year of high school.

I sold it at an article to a road, which is a men's magazine,

which at that time was trying to be like Esquire.

It later on declined, it went into, it became kind of crummy. But so I brought that to school and I'm showing it to my friends and it's John Peter says, what are you doing back there? Bring that talk, oh well, let's do the Susan. We don't think much of pornography here at the Shabby High School. So again, they call the

The guidance counselor man, and I'm up there by we got we got we left a message for your father And I go listen I didn't bring him for the pictures. Oh, everybody says that. No, I have an article and there's blinding centerfold and the guidance counselor goes Son of a bitch that's your name. What are they doing? something like that. And so all of a sudden, my suspension was forgotten. At the end of the day, they go in the PA announcement, and they go, you know, all right, a pet squad's meeting in room three. The soccer field was being receded, and congratulations to one of our seniors who was published and who was published. Ha ha ha ha. It's, it's, it went from pornography to art in five minutes. But my favorite story was I guess it was in like seventh grade. I had an English teacher who told us to write a story, write it for old story. So I wrote like a science fiction story. So he says he's saying, okay, I'm passing the papers out. I miss the Susan come up in the front of the room. So I said, You're just gonna say this is science fiction story. So he says, he's saying, okay, a piece of the paper's out. I missed the Susan, come up in the front of the room. So I figured he was gonna say, this is the best story or whatever he says. I want you to tell everybody here where you copied your story from before I take you to the principal. And I know you copied your story from the magazine. I got, no, I didn't. I made this story up. So I'll give you one more chance to tell the truth. I wrote that story. It's okay, that's it. You take to the principal's office.

And meanwhile, I made this story up. So I'll give you one more chance to tell the truth.

I just wrote that story. So it's okay, that's it. He takes you to the principal's office. And meanwhile, he has the janitor on my locker and I had a science fiction magazine. So now they have in the office and he says, he copied it out of this magazine. And I go, I wrote the story myself. And if he says I come to the magazine, he's lying because he just got that out of my locker.

So this guy was adamant this my parents came in and they said he's a creative kid who always does this stuff So this guy happened to me the whole year. He flunked me in English I you know like my parents where I guess to disconnect you to realize you don't flunk a kid's grade for a bad attitude you you know. Meanwhile, on my SATs, I had a 790 on my English, right? So, but meanwhile, so anyway, years later, after I'd already come to Hollywood and I was already, I guess, doing the $6 million man, I came back to visit my parents and my mother says, this can go out to the deli and, you you know get these following items. So I go to the deli and the English teacher's behind the counter, slice the nova. So I really that was a wonderful moment of shadden for you. Well anyway this was I guess 1971 and this was the beginning of kind of the low budget movie world. The movie Joe with Susan's Randans first movie Yeah, I have a sense from great. Yeah, okay. That was one of the first break out movies done by an independent was Canon films Not the canon of Golden Globe is they bought it later. So I'm sitting around with my friends probably getting high high like on one weekend. And we said we should make a movie. And of course I'm a professional writer, I've been in print. So we put together with the, you know, codery of creative people in Philadelphia and Trent New Jersey that I knew. And I made a basically a Cheach and Chong movie before Cheach and Chong, which was called Arnold's Reckon Company, which is currently streaming on Shout TV Network. So if you want to go see by first movie, you can find a theory to recognize Philadelphia and Bucks County Environments in that movie. When that showed up, that was one of those, I have never heard of this. How have I never heard of this? This has got to happen now, type of movies. Just because, yeah, I mean, talk about a revelator. Like anybody who has followed your career knows you from the stuff that started in the 80s. So this is a huge like line for. All right. So anyway, so we shot this was, I guess 1972 we shot this on weekends and I had just wrapped the movie up and I had entered it in a film festival, the Atlanta International Film Festival and it won the special jewelry prize there. This was the perfect time for this kind of film to come out and I had people, I had all these people say I'm going to produce. I had a lot of signing with the distributor who ended up going bankrupt like the month movie was released so it had no release essentially. But I did meet a couple people from show business. I have a photograph somewhere I think I tweeted it recently of Martin Landau handing me the award. I have a photograph of Martin Landau handing me the award and a bug bug better career was on the panel I spent time with him and Frank Capra was a great experience. Wow. Anyway, there was one of the people who was there on one of these panels was Barney Rosen's wife who was the producer of Charlie's Angels and he said if you ever cut the Hollywood, you know, look me up, you know, I maybe you can do an episode of Charlie's Angels, whatever a thing. So at this time, I knew enough from reading writer's digest and the writer magazine that you had to have a writing sample and that all of my print samples did count. No one's going to read something I wrote for the New York Times and say this guy could write a screenplay. So I sat down and I spent like the next, so this was like November. So I probably spent the next four months and I wrote two spec scripts, the same two genres that kept me in ninth grade and next three years because I always had Raymond Chandler or Isaac Asimov behind my algebra book. I wrote a science fiction script and a paranoid crime thriller. And we sold my extra car, which is kind of a beer. I got $300 in this crappy car, which was enough for a round trip ticket on the Freddie Laker cheap airline. And I say to my wife and my, my little baby daughter, I said, well, I'm going to Hollywood. I'm going to stay with my uncle and aunt. And I'm going to give myself three months to be successful in Hollywood. That seems reasonable. So now my aunt, she says, you know, one of my best girlfriends is Murph Griffin Secretary. And, you know, there might be something over there because he does the Murph Griffin show and he does all the game shows. You know, we're all fortunate and Hollywood squares and think whatever, you go see her. So the next day, I go down to see her for coffee and she says, you know, I didn't realize until after you're already coming over, but we're not hiring any writers for the game shows right now, which is writing quiz things the different thing that you do anyway. And there's really no writers, positions available for the talk show. It's a different thing that talent coordinators write, like suggestions and copy, for Merv to ask the guests, and he writes his own stuff. So this may be a fool's errand. So I'm kind of depressed, even though it was exciting to see the Hollywood squares live. You know, I won't get it right. So, you know, forget the guy and I saw, you know, I forget the guy.

Pauline?

No, Pauline, exactly, thank you.

I saw Pauline in person.

Anyway, she's waiting a minute.

There was a young lawyer who was in Merz Law firm and I heard he left the law firm and

became an agent.

I've got his number here somewhere.

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