#132 Kieron Connolly / Publishing / Hollywood History / Art & Artists / Streaming & Theaters

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together. Yep. Awesome. Kieran, welcome. We're live. How are you doing today? Happy New Year. Very. Well, thank you. Happy New Year to you too. I'm very pleased to to be speaking to you Tuesday on New Year's Day. Yeah, that's right. I appreciate you taking the time on a holiday and I'm really excited to talk to you. I found your profile because I was looking for. I love Hollywood and I've been learning a lot about just history in general recently. And I've been trying to find all the niches and fun aspects of history of the, you know, topics that I love. And so I came across your book and it's actually on the way to me now.

0:48 I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but but I did get a chance to shoot off an e-mail and see if you wanted to talk about it first and a bunch of other things because it happens to be that I'm also a writer. I got a creative writing literature degree in college and I've been writing short poetry for the most part ever since. And I teach high school English, and, you know, and you have a rare situation where you're on both ends of the writing spectrum, where you're editing and you're finding, you know, good stories and fascinating stories. And then you're a writer yourself. So I'm really excited to talk to you about a whole bunch of stuff today. OK, can I ask a question? Please. What What ages do you teach in high school?

1:30 I rotate on a on a yearly basis. This year is 9th, 10th and 12th. What? What age is that? That would be thirteen. OK. 1314 is 9th grade, 1415 is 10th grade, and then 1718 is 12th grade. OK, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, what's your? What are you curious about? I was just wondering if, if you know, what ages it was. And yeah, I mean, we're all everyone's always interested in education because we we, you know, we've all been through it some, some work in it and their own stories of what was good or bad about their schooling. So. I had. It happens to be that I was very lucky to go to very good schools, but I had a very hard time in school. I had at a very difficult time taking tests. I had a very, I would get very overwhelmed and then I would panic and my, you know, and the information that I'd spent hours and hours studying and taking notes on would just fly out of my brain.

2:29 And, and then I thought I was dumb until I got to college and until, until I got took a creative writing class as one of my professors. And I learned that a much more eloquent and and well spoken when I have an opportunity to put my own words to an idea and not be boxed into particular answers or perspectives. Yeah, which kind of fits the rest of my life. It's great that you had that experience as sort of to see, you know, to find your way. Yeah, yeah. And it helps me a lot as far as connecting with my students because I try very much to make it as relatable. And, you know, I mean, the classes are relatively small. They're between 10 and 15 kids apiece, which is a really good size.

3:11 It gives me a good amount of time to be able to focus on each kid a good amount. But yeah, I understand. I like the, I know the feeling of not being able to sit behind your desk for, you know, 45 minutes or starting a class at 5:45 PM and, you know, and realizing that you got another 45 minutes of your day to go and you're 17 and you, all you want to do is play basketball. So, you know, I, I, I, I relate pretty strongly to that. Can you want to tell me a little bit about, about yourself and your career? And I want to kind of dive into some of some of the work that you've done and hear some of your thoughts. Yeah. So I've worked across publishing, publishing and journalism for many years now, maybe 20 odd years now. And you know, we're speaking today because I wrote a book called The History.

3:55 It's got various titles over the years, but more recently it's been called The History of Hollywood once it's called Dark History of Hollywood. And this is a book was published by a publisher I, I worked for in house at the time as an editor in the UK called Amber Books. But cinema had always been a great interest of mine from from being a child. And I did go to the National Film and Television School in England and I did a screen writing course and my interest at that point was becoming a screenwriter. But also I was always interested in, in generally in how the industry worked. And my father was in the industry a bit as a screenwriter himself. So I, I met people over the years who worked in the industry. I went on film sets. I went into cutting rooms when I was a student. I introduced some people, my first degrees in history. I introduced some people about the process of making a film. I introduced a, you know, a producer, a writer, a director, a designer, an editor, a cinematographer, A composer. And what a, you know, I hadn't to get them to tell me their stories of how it how it works from their point of view. So not just doing their celebrity interviews, which is usually an actual director, but actually taking different people involved in putting, putting, putting on the show. And when the opportunity came to write this book for the publisher, you know, I put my hand up and I was very pleased to get the Commission to write it. And it was a very intensive, but very happy summer writing the book.

5:14 And I would have spent many, many, many months and years writing it, but that wasn't the way it was going to work. There was a there was a deadline. To me, the deadlines are quite exciting and it's nice to, to reach to, to step up to that challenge. And although I already knew a bit about Hollywood, I learned a great, great deal more, mainly sitting in the British Library reading other books on the subject. Right. And I'm so curious, even just from that little introduction, what have you found as you spoke to different people? Because you know, one thing that I did I'm doing is I'm focusing on similar to what you did. I'm interviewing stunt double S I'm interviewing music supervisors. I'm I'm, I'm trying to interview writers and editors. I interviewed the gentleman that produced the Taken series, which was a lot of fun.

6:00 And excuse me. And I'm also trying to kind of get a feel for for this. And, you know, reading about the history of Hollywood, you know, Hollywood's kind of gone through different waves of power that you know, or creative power. And you know, and, and, and to kind of see even today the remnants of, let's say, the director, the directing generation, you know, like how much power and their prestige and reputation is, you know, whether it's. Like the generation from the late 60s to the early 80s, right? Yeah, sixties, 70s till today, even the Spielberg's and you know, and the modern school Stasies and all those gentlemen that that pretty much can have an, you know, open check to any studio they want to make any idea that they want. And, and it's cool kind of to see how that how that works and how the dynamics of Hollywood have changed over the years. So what have you found when you started or what are some things that surprised you or didn't surprise you when you started interviewing people?

6:58 So I didn't interview people for for this book in particular. There wasn't really the the time or the budget to do that. I interviewed people. I've interviewed people over the years for other projects or just wrote to people. Yeah, I'm trying to think of one particular thing. I'm not sure I can settle the 111 sort of particular gem there. I think what, what what struck me when I was researching the book, which I didn't really know about before, was the sort of the level of corruption in Hollywood in the 40s forties, how the unions were corrupted by the mob. That was something that I hadn't known about it. It's in all the books. I just hadn't read it before. That was an interesting area in terms of you're talking about the director's generation.

7:44 You know, I think it's, it's interesting the way that the power shifts over the over the decades. And I think those directors were now would say how difficult it it is to get certain projects made and easy to get other projects made and how the studios are producing far fewer films. And they're producing, you know, a lot of like Marvel type superhero things and a few quite low budget films. And like the mid budget movie is very hard to get financed now. And I think about someone like Robert Redford, who died last year in 2025, made in 198586 and 85, I think out of Africa with Sydney Pollock. And you're kind of oh, would they make that movie today that, you know, with two big film stars and expensive film in filming in Kenya or whatever. I'm not sure they would finance that film today, or at least not at that level.

8:31 It would be a kind of a much smaller production the way the way sorry I'd. Probably go to streaming I imagine. And it might be ATV series, it might it might be TV series on streaming yeah. So how things how things change and the different, you know, while Hollywood may make fewer say with grown up films, there are there are other avenues now there are other outlets. Yeah, definitely. I'd say that film has become, has definitely become more democratized over the years, especially with the technology that's been available to everyone. I'm showing my high school students now the movie Dead Poets Society, and they are it's I had to give them. Come out when I was about their age, right? I was with 17.

9:12 There you go. And and I mean, it's actually funny that you say that because last year I showed them the Blind side. They said, what movie? What year did this come out? I said 2008. They said that's the year we were born. And I was like, Oh my goodness gracious, That's that's wild. But I had to give them, I had to really prep them in advance and explain that, you know, what a drama was and how everything you know what from the from the cinematography to the acting is much more intentional and that you know, they're not going to this is a different type of movie that they're than what they're used to watching, where not everything is a cut immediately. And you know, the bodies tell stories and the camera tells stories. And you still get some of that today, but I think a lot less less frequently. And so I was kind of introducing them to that genre. They didn't really know what to do with it, you know. And yeah, I thought that it's, you know, so it's it is a, I guess that genre is a lost art.

10:04 There's a great book by gentleman Ben Fritz called The Big Picture, I believe. And, and he, he's a Wall Street, Wall Street Journal writer for many years. And he, he talks about how the reason why franchises are the primary films that the studios are green lighting today is because the international audience is so important now to the box. And, and, you know, there's not as much, there's not as much desire for an Ethan Hawke, Robin Williams drama as there is, you know, for, you know, another transformer, you know, blowing up, you know, Taiwan or Manhattan or something. Yeah, yeah.

10:45 That there's a point where the, you know, the the markets beyond the US were just sort of extra, extra thing. Now that we're at now it's it's it's essential and integral to, you know, how they budget the movie. And at the time when the dead purse came out, you know, Ethan Hall wasn't was it was I think it's his first film. So he wasn't a name at all. Probably Williams isn't was a name, but sure, I've not seen the film since it came out. It's kind of, so it sort of surprises me to sort of for you to say, you know, the, the, the kids found it kind of a challenge to watch because to me it seemed like a very straightforward film. But obviously ties move on. Yeah, yeah. We're seeing, we're seeing our attention spans getting, you know, shot down. And it happens to be that because the school that I teach at is an Orthodox Jewish school, most of the students don't have smartphones and they're not even allowed to have them.

11:31 And so you could see the, the developmental difference even I'm the oldest of 6 and, you know, my youngest brother's 14, I'm 30. And, and he, and the difference in attention and the difference in the way that you can appreciate a film, I think is pretty dramatic without, you know, without having that smartphone, you know, and the way that you develop and go up. Can you tell me a little bit about the, about the corruption with the mafia and the unions? And if you want to explain just if anyone doesn't know what unions are in the way they work within the world of Hollywood. OK, let's see if I can remember. So, you know, with the ending of prohibition in with prohibition ended in 20s, When did it end anyway? The mob, the mob, when when alcohol became legal again to sell the mob, The mob was looking for a new outlet. Hollywood became one of those, one of those outlets. And one of the ways in was that they, they would approach the technicians unions, the people who, who managed the, the unions who, the, the organisations who supported the, the people who were the carpenters at the studios. These are all the projectionists and the body that was supposed to look after the, their interests of the, of the projectionists and the carpenters, for example, and the scene shifters.

12:49 And the more managed to infiltrate that union and sort of say, you know, we will they mostly infiltrate it and actually start running it and and then say, and then say to the studios, rather than improving the conditions for these workers, give us a kickback, a financial, you know, give us some money and we'll just we'll all pay a little lip service to improve conditions. So we'll do a little bit for the workers, but mainly money's going back to the mob. And if you don't, and if you don't do it, all these workers, all the protectionists will shut down and then you won't have anyone coming in, you know, no one, no one paying tickets, sure, buying tickets at your cinemas.

13:33 And this happened in the late, late 30s and early 40s. And finally, the law caught up with them, and the head of one of the studios went to prison for a short time, and the mobsters were imprisoned. And I think one of them later died in a suspicious car explosion when he was living near Vegas. Yeah. Yeah, it's suspicious, I, I tell. The better in the book, yeah. I see, I see. Yeah, there was. Oh man, I'm going to have to recall the name of the book, but I read about studio head corruption and and misappropriation of funds.

14:15 Oh man, it's going to drive me crazy. And I believe it was the Columbia. David Bagel man book and decent exposure. David. Bagel. Decent exposure. Yes, that book was spectacular. Yeah, cover to cover was great. Long time ago since I looked at that book. But yeah, David Bagel, I tell, I tell his story briefly in my book, but only in, oh, yeah, 200 words. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great, it was a great book. And is that is that is that the same around the same time period that is occurring or? No, because Begman was I think late 70s, early 80s, and there's thought I was talking about the 1940s, Yeah. Gotcha. And did. The, the, the, the, the studio header went to prison for a while. Actually had a relationship with a young Marilyn Monroe, like before she was famous. Yeah.

14:58 Really. He was. He was much older, yeah, but yeah. She's been getting a lot of people in trouble for a while, huh? I guess. I mean, I don't know if you could blame her, but yeah. How does, how does, how does one remove the mafia once they kind of get the hooks into, you know, some kind of one remove the mafia once they get the hooks into an organization, I mean. Yeah, I mean, those guys did go to prison. So that was that was that sort of that sort of I think ended that thing. I don't know enough now to sort of know how close things are, but but that was the sort of the story from that period and it's told, I think again in quite a good book. The the I can't remember it right now. I'll tell you.

15:39 I'll tell you before I'll. Come to you, it was. Surfaced at the end of the interview, Yeah. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Yeah, I did. I did. I did an episode with a gentleman that studies the history of gambling in general and in Vegas and the mafia connection, obviously. And one of the ways that he basically said that the government had to catch the mafia in Vegas and get rid of them was pretty much to kind of just strip them of their civil liberties and then, you know, find them guilty and just toss them in prison. You know, which I'm not quite sure what I think. And you know the problem. I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently that, you know, people say that regulation leads to corruption, obviously, but lack of regulation leads to corruption too. So like, you know, there's really no perfect world. And I think all we have to do is just really be as vigilant as possible because, you know, there, there is no perfect system that people will not be able to, you know, kind of sneak their way into and, you know, one way or another really 'cause some kind of damage.

16:44 So tell me a little bit. I'm sorry. So, so you, you see, how did you get commissioned to? So you you said that you were in house, you're an editor and you get commissioned to write this book and you have a couple of months to write it. No, I had, I think I had sort of from June to sort of late September, yeah. But adequate time is that is that that that's. Good. But it was a real thrill. It was because I think 58,000 words, including captions, like quite long captions. And that was a great thrill to write it. And yeah, I would have happily spent much longer. But that was the sort of that was what the schedule they were working on. And and there's there's quite sort of, you know, I had nothing else planned for that summer. So it was quite nice to say, OK, this is all I'm going to do, you know, and.

17:25 I'll and you always wanted to be a writer. I suppose, you know, when I was younger, I was thinking about movies and my, my father's, you know, has been a journalist and a novelist and a screenwriter. So there's a sort of you grew up absorbing this, this, this sort of way of life, you know, for better or for worse. You know, maybe I should have kind of looked further afield. But, and so my, all my jobs have sort of been on different sides of this desk, either writing a book or editing a book or when I was in journalism. But a lot of my work was sort of finding books that we could do do extracts from, like not finding, pulling the thread out of out of a biography to tell a story. So it's all sort of storytelling in different ways. And then when I then before that, I was sort of trying to do screen writing. So I was trying to make up stories and things. And it was always.

18:08 Interesting. What's the difference? In the process story, sorry. What's the difference in the creative process when you when you're trying to, when you're trying to come up with a story, how do you kind of outline that? Well, I suppose I, I've had, you know, less experience, also less, less success in that field. And I suppose, you know, with that, you're sort of stuck with the blank page. Whereas when you're writing a non fiction book, you're, you're always drawing on something. There's always another book on David Bagel or, or on, you know, 1940s Hollywood that, that, that you can look at. So there's always more research to be done. And the, the danger is you end up doing too much research or you haven't got, we've run out of time or, or you're kind of you can't see the wood for the trees. And in fiction, you're fiction, something kind of, you know, seems interesting to you and you sort of start running with it and think this is going to go very far.

18:48 I sometimes think about fiction a bit like a bit like a sort of Doctor Frankenstein studio and you've got all these sort of bits of severed limbs and, you know, a torso, but no head. Well, you've got a head but no torso. And you don't quite, and you can't quite get the electricity to it to, to make it come alive, but you've got all these bits on on a good day. You think of it in more like an artist's studio where there are kind of some, maybe some unfinished paintings, but there's bits and pieces going on and and you think at one point I will finish that and it will come to life and go somewhere. Yeah. So I've got various folders of ideas and things scribble down and things. I'm very busy right now with with other things. So sure, sure, sure, sure.

19:30 Well, if you're editing and you're looking for or you're looking for a good story, what are you looking for that catches your eye as far as freshness or character, you know, more character driven story. How do you determine what's like, you know, what's going to try to catch people's eye? I mean, mainly now I'm working in nonfiction and a lot of that is history. And you're so a lot of the history is sort of quite well, actually, it's just the history of a country or it's the history of a particular moment, moment, moment. So it's not necessarily hugely character LED. That said character LED history is, is is is very stimulating because it's much more interesting for the reader to follow one one person through or a few people through a story rather than, you know, you know, 15 different presidents or something.

20:13 Yeah, So so. You're looking for the kind of both the interesting idea and also how well the the author tells it and how well do they write, You know, and. What would be considered good or bad writing? Like what what? What would you look to avoid? You know, avoid the cliches. Tell me something I didn't already know. If you can tell me something I'll already know, kind of tell me it it to me in a surprising way that kind of takes me, you know, makes me think, oh, I didn't know. You know, I was reading something that earlier today and I thought, well, I kind of know, know most of this already. And the person who's telling it to me isn't sort of presenting it with any sort of fresh insight. So even if it's a well known story, at least have such a good perspective on it that you're bringing something fresh to the topic.

20:57 Right. What kind of tasks do you set your your pupils to write at school? So it's actually funny you ask. I primarily focus on creative and self expressive assignments as in, you know, write a story about like, I just had my class write a poem and the 2 rules were it has to be about something negative and it can't end on a on a happy note. And yeah, and one of the reasons why is, like you said earlier, to kind of avoid those cliches. And my first year of writing in college, I would only write, you know, happy poetry. And it was all bad. It was all, it was all quite awful. And and my professor, you know, pulled me aside one time.

21:39 He said, listen, he goes, I really do appreciate the mindset that you have where you're trying to focus on the good. He's like CE OS. The problem is it comes off sounding inauthentic and not quite as organic. And he's like, maybe try to be a little bit more raw or a little bit more real in your writing. And, and then as the, as the years have kind of followed, I've noticed that my writing was always better when I was kind of trying to work through something that I was, that was going on in my, you know, and whether that was fictional or whether that was a poem or that was a letter to myself. And I'm just trying to work through, you know, what's going on in my head. And I'm kind of trying and I'm trying to give my students that ability to do that because, you know, I'm sure you're, I'm sure you're just as aware as I am that by the time these 9th graders are in 12th grade, who knows what, what college English class is going to look like and to what extent, you know, it's even going to even be relevant or necessary.

22:37 So, you know, I, I'm trying, I'm trying to think about what is going to be useful to them as they get older. And I think that one of the most useful things that we can use the English language for is to help understand, is to help express ourselves and understand others and try to, if we don't understand others, to use our words to figure out what it is that we get or don't get and to kind of come to some kind of similar conclusion, you know? Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. And, and you know, and I found in, in, you know, you have experimented with this, with the students in class, that by repackaging what they say back to them and then presenting an argument makes them much more likely to be thoughtful about it or consider another perspective because you're, you're showing them that, Hey, I understand exactly where you're coming from. Like you, you are heard.

23:30 I, I, I, I understand you. I understand the point you're making and what you're trying to say. Have you considered in your train of thought or in the way that you're framing this, have you considered that perspective as well? Because maybe that'll change the way that you saw, you know, the way that you actually have this prep, this prep, this preposition, this presupposition rather. And, and it and it typically works. It really does. So if that could be the skill that I teach them as far as, as far as, you know, self-expression in writing goes, then I'm very happy. And then as far as literature goes, we kind of bounce around quite a bit, their attention. What kind of literature are you are they reading?

24:10 It depends. It depends on what they're I, I actually give them a lot of input. So if they want to talk about something in one class, love the history of film. So we've actually been talking about Pixar. We've been talking about how the company got started and, and all their creative strategies, like, for example, the fact that they don't take typical characters they don't like every story is not about a human being or two human beings. They have to be something a different take on main characters. They can't be musicals and they can't be traditional love stories where boy meets girl tries to find her, there's a conflict and they end up back together again.

24:50 And because at that point in the 90s, Disney was really suffocating the market with other, you know, the other golden age of, of Disney animation movies from Katzenberg and, and, and Michael Eisner and Pixar didn't know how to stand out from them. And this is one of the ways that we came up with. So reading material on that some classes like psychology, more understanding ourselves and understanding kind of our behaviour and the way that we think. And they, you know, we talk about a lot about where the place of anxiety, you know, what, what place it has and where it can, where it comes from and how it gets out of hand and, and a lot of other, you know, experiences and emotions that we have to try to understand ourselves. And you know, the best thing, they look at me, they go, Mr. Hirshman, this is just a therapy. This is just therapy glass.

25:38 And it's like, lucky, Yeah, lucky you. Exactly. I'm not, you're lucky. I'm not billing you for this. You know, I'm billing your parents for this because, you know, I really, I really would or, or should. But one of my one of my biggest challenges that I have as a writer, personally, I, I'm good at creating the fresh content and unique kind of perspective on things. One of my challenges, I have a very hard time keeping track of a whole story or a whole sequence or a whole narrative in my head. And I'm not organized enough to really be able to, to really know how to lay it all out. That's not the really the way my brain works. Would you have any kind of recommendations as to the way to the way to kind of get more organised or to or any recommendations how to keep track of a story for a longer period of time?

26:23 Well, I, I suppose, you know, we will find, you know, our own, our own way there somewhere. And some people would say you have to kind of outline it very, very, very, yeah, rigidly and then stick to your outline. And then you kind of know where you're going. And other people say, well, I don't, I don't need to do that because I know where I'm going. So that's fine. I would say no, I just want to kind of start and see where I go. And I hope that it goes somewhere interesting. And maybe that's the, the thing to do. You know that yeah, you'll go, you'll go somewhere and as as you're going, you will find, I mean, maybe it's not the story you have originally thought you were going to write, but you write something else and that becomes something worthwhile anyway. So it doesn't matter where you thought you were going to go in the 1st place because the story has LED you elsewhere. So I kind of hope that these, these things sort of work for people and everything.

27:11 Like everyone, everyone's different. Everyone has a different approach to it. Not the English novelist William Boyd says when people say to him, I've got a great idea for the opening of a novel, and he always said, he says, I always say to them, have you got an ending? Because you know, for him, obviously it's more important to know where you're going to go. And he always knows where his novel's going to start, when it's going to end, what the story's going to be before he's, he does all his research 1st and before he actually starts writing it, like a year to research, a year to write it. And he says and the, and the researching and the sort of planning does involve lots of sort of blind alleys and that, oh, no, that one, we'll have to change things. But others, others work differently. Obviously, there was a lot of, you know, what you don't want is a lot of sort of abandoned material. Although you suppose you could say that that's part of the process of finding your way as a writer and thinking, you know, actually I, you know, I can't quite bring this character to life or I don't quite know where this, this particular story is going. But from that, something else might happen that you might. Yeah, you can recycle.

28:07 You think of something else and you have a different character and you realise and you, you know, you've, you work out and also people's styles. You know, some people write a lot of plot, some people don't write a lot of plot. And it doesn't matter as long as it, as long as what you're doing works. You know, that what, what and finding, I suppose also just finding your voice. You know that I think it's quite interesting when you can't look at some some writers and things. I can't obviously can't right now. I can't right now. I can't think of any examples. But who in the in the early in the early work were doing something. I know it's sort of OK, but they hadn't quite hit their stride. And then they sort of found whether it's in novels or in screen writing, and then they sort of found this is what I'm good at. And you know, like they were trying to be a very serious writer, but actually naturally they were a sort of comic writer.

28:48 And that's what their strength was, you know, and or vice versa, or they were trying to be funny, but they weren't very funny. But but they were great at sort of historical research. And that was that was what they should be doing. The guy who writes the actually the guy who writes the crown or the the TV Series A Crown about the British royal family. He did various things at first in screen writing, including writing sort of a couple of romantic comedies and things, and then kind of hit on the fact that he was better at doing factually based dramas, things about about real people, researching them and then writing a drama around that. And that's what he's since he found that that's pretty much all he's done since then is write things that are about as the crown or politicians or people in public life. But that goes back to what you were mentioning earlier where you know the difference between having a blank page or some kind of strand to start pulling at, you know, and see exactly where you go with that.

29:36 Yeah, it's also fun. I'm a huge, I've been a huge Springsteen nut for about 7 years now. And, and I've listened to one of the, one of the, one of the great things I, I tend to like artists that have this, they have, the artists have big archives of all their live performances are a ton of fun to go through because you really get a idea as to who the artist is as they perform in the way and interact with the crowd. And, and you really could feel the, the magic and the energy in the air. Even when you're listening 50 years later, you can, I mean, it's so tangible. And one thing that I've noticed that, you know, because I would, I would listen to let's say an album and I'd listen to the tour and see how, you know, the live versions compared to the studio versions.

30:18 I tend to like the live versions more. But one of the things that I noticed was that he would, that Springsteen would have snippets where he would kind of be improvising in the middle of a song. And he'd have phrases where he'd like kind of throw them out while there was an instrument, while there was an instrumental break. And he'd kind of mess around with words and flow with a little rhythm and just mix something in there. And then the next album, you'll hear those words again as the name of the song that he was been working on the whole time. And you can see that the chord structure and the music structure kind of was plucked from this, from this other song. And and he, you know, and if you the the the examples, I think was in Backstreet is one of his more famous songs from born to run in 75 and drive all night from the river in in 1980. You know, he the a bunch of the lyrics and the verses came from his impromptu rambles during badge streets and the year and the years leading up to it.

31:15 So that's. Interesting to to trace the sort of creative process, yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's, and that's the that's the fun thing about people. And I guess, you know, you kind of almost become a historian in and of itself when you kind of dive into these, you know, these these musicians and these performances as as deeply as you can, because you do notice these nuances and you pick up on them and you find out, hey, when you played that rendition of this in this particular version that year, like, what were you thinking of? And you know, it's it's it's a ton of fun. It really is very cool. Have you? Yeah. Go ahead. Go carry on. Yeah. Please please. My question is irrevant to what you've just been saying. Let me ask you one first. Yeah, please go ahead. I was going to change the topic too. OK, I was just going to ask.

31:57 I was thinking about the kids that you were showing Dead Poets Society too, and I thought, you know, can you show them a black and white film or have you? It would be, it would be. It would have to be a sell and I would have to prime them. I'd have to emotionally prepare them for what they're about to experience. If they walked in, they just walked in from the whole day and they just popped down in the seats and I popped on the black and white film. The odds are very, very low that they would just sit there and watch it. But if I would sit there and I'd explain what it is they're about to look for and what was so and provide some of the context. Because one of the big things that I noticed as a teacher is that my students don't want to be there. And I'm the teacher.

32:38 I want to be there. You know, I find education valuable. And so I'm putting all this time and effort into finding creating fun and creative assignments and fun interesting topics for them. And all they think is I have to go to class now. So, you know, I try. I actually, there's a certain point with a couple of my classes throughout the years where I've been able to essentially tell them, I want you guys to have autonomy and maturity and start making your own decisions. If you feel like you, if you don't want to be in class for these 40 minutes, but you will do the, you'll do the makeup work for the week. I'll give you a weeks worth of assignments in advance. If you come to me at the end of the week and you provide with me all the assignments, you don't have to come to my class and you'll still get a good grade, you know, because as long as you're to me, and I hope you agree, but a lot of this stuff is a muscle that you just have to keep on exercising. And I don't care whether you're exercising it between the hour, the, the hours of four and 4:40 or whenever or 10:00 to 10:45 at night, if you're in your own room, if you want, you know, but I just want you to be doing that and, and present and giving them that opportunity make you know, and almost none of them took me up on it.

33:47 OK. When when provided the opportunity for that, they said, you know, what if we don't have to be here, but like, what else are we going to do anyway? Then let's go. You know, at least, at least at least it's a choice that that they that they make, that they whatever they want to join. And also it not being there that involves them having to think more about managing their own time or studying at home. No. And I think they'll go with you and say, OK, well, you'll, you'll a teacher, Mr. Harrison. You're responsible for what we have to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the problem is with teaching. I was talking about this in episode I was recording yesterday is that you really have to be a moron or a martyr to be a teacher, You know, and, and I do it part time and I, you know, I have other, I, I, I, I do sales on the on the side and I do this. What kind of sales do you do?

34:33 I sell medical equipment. It's a little family business that my dad started when I was a kid. And you know, so I, I have the luxury of working from home and being able to go into school and if I have anything urgent, I could text, e-mail or call a customer back or deal with anything you got to deal with. But primarily, it's usually pretty quiet by 4:00 to 6:15 PM every day. So I'm typically, I'm typically not missing too much and it gives me the opportunity to feel like I'm giving back. And also I, I, I, once I started, I loved it. You know, once you start seeing the potential and the creativity of, of, of kids, it just reminds you of, of how much hope there could be, you know, for, for, you know, a lot.

35:15 There's a ton of potential and talent and creativity out there in the youth. And we kind of just watch it or try to, you know, we try to fix fit, you know, fit triangles into squares or squares into triangles. And we don't, we don't let them be themselves. And I can only imagine how much more fun the world would be if everyone kind of got to be themselves a little bit more. Right. Good. And how did you get into teaching? I always wanted to, I always wanted, but there was, but there was an open, there was an opening and they said flexible hours. So I said they have flexible hours. And then, then I would love to do that. But you know, and I, I actually, it's funny, I always, I also had ambitions of being a screenwriter until I took a college course and my professor told me my character, he read like he was autistic and, and he's like, was that intentional? And I said it was not intentional. And he said, well, then you have a lot of work to do and which is which is, you know, good advice.

36:11 And but one thing I did notice that was and my uncle as part of the writers Guild. And so he used to get scripts every year sent to him and hoping for him to vote for them. So I've gotten my hands on a bunch of fun scripts over the years. And what's really cool to see is the difference between the way that they play out on on word and words and the way that they play out on screen and Irishman, for example, which is right down I got must be down your alley as far as actually. I've not seen it, but I know what you mean, yeah. Yeah, you know, that that that movie, the script was remarkable. I read the script and I and I was blown away. And I was glued to it and I inhaled it and it was just just awesome. And then I watched it and I was, I was only disappointed because of how good the script was.

37:02 OK, OK. You know that that it was the. D aging thing OK. I think that was part of the problem. Yeah, I think that was part of the problem. I think that, and I hate to say it because they're they've given so much to the genres and to cinema, but I think that like, you know, Scorsese's got to find the young mobster, you know, I mean, how old was De Niro when he starred in The Godfather 2? I mean, there are, you know, anything that he did. Al Pacino. I mean, these guys, these guys weren't start, you know, weren't starring in The Godfather when they were 80. You know, I mean, even Marlon Brando was, you know, was it was not even that it was not up there. So I think that's a big problem that we have in Hollywood today. And perhaps you could talk about the corruption that, you know, that that works in the sense that who gets to get where as far as acting and actors and talent goes.

37:49 You know, you talked a little bit about the stocks and the extortion. I saw that there were some topics that you dive that you dove into. What is What does it take to be successful in Hollywood? Yeah, I don't know about right now, but I mean, I think all these things is, you know, I think Steven Soderbergh, the, you know, director said, you know, talent, talent plus perseverance equals luck. And, you know, I think I think Hollywood is is it's so difficult for anyone to sort of to to get going. So I think it's just a sort of, you know, it is kind of like a lot of work hard, a lot of persistence and you know, you and you hope that with, you know, talent and, and and graft and some luck that that that things will sort of will pay off.

38:38 Yeah. But there's a whole history of studio executives being taking advantage of, you know, I mean, I don't really know the extent of men. I'm sure. I'm sure that does exist quite a bit because Hollywood has always been kind of a big gay culture, I think. And, and, but I mean, we definitely know tons of stories about about the abuse of women and throughout. The whole Harvey Weinstein stuff and the and the me too stuff, which this sort of stuff came out. Weinstein sort of came out after I'd first, the first the book was written came out first in 2014, ever since updated it. But yeah, the history, history of the sort of casting catch and other things. Yeah, there's been there from the from the beginning. And you know, you've got, you know, very powerful men. You've got a lot of young pretty women.

39:19 The women will want a break in this career. Some of these men, you know, will try to abuse that position. Yeah. Some of the women, you know, will, will, will, might see it as OK, I'm going to sort of see this as a transactional thing. And I hope it plays in my favour. And I'm sure there are plenty of stories where it did play in their favour. And others think actually it it didn't get me very far. I I just ended up sleeping with someone and and I didn't get a good part or a good career. And others would have just said, no, I'm not doing it. I mean, I think Ava Gardner, the actress has sort of said in the 19 would have been 1930s at MGM and she said, oh, well, you know, I knew girls who, you know, if this isn't so much casting cuts as like a little bit of prostitution. So saying, Oh, I know people who if, you know, if the rent was low, they they, they give a little bit away, you know, so there's, there's always been an element of sleaze in the in Hollywood.

40:08 You know, it was a, it was a new, a new industry that was sort of uncharted at the time. And is now more than a century old, but it's say like in the 1930s, it was a very young industry. And yeah, power, beauty, youth sleaze, corruption in that way. And I think also, but plenty of also a lot of plenty of decent people just just working away, getting on with their lives and jobs. Yeah, yeah. It kind of reminds. I mean it, it absolutely kind of reminds me of of today's world in the sense that in order to get ahead, in order to become anything, you either have to work incredibly hard or be incredibly divisive or incredibly inappropriate.

40:49 You know, I mean, it's pretty much one of those, it's pretty much one of those 3. And, you know, there are plenty of people that make that make whole careers, you know, out of a formerly promiscuous reputation or formerly or, you know, or people that caught, you know, just stir up hate, you know, and just use just use a good amount of divisive language that kind of attracts everyone. And that's a good way to get actually, the reason why I started this podcast to begin with was I feel like all this information that we consume could be either junk food or health food. And I think that a lot of the people that kind of get to the top get to the top vis A vis the junk food method. And the goal of the podcast is to be organic and healthy and to kind of provide reasonable and useful information that could unify people that people want to listen to, to make their lives better, not because they're getting some kind of outrage dopamine hit, you know? Yeah, yeah.

41:47 I mean, you sort of hope that the that, yeah, the dopamine hit, the short, the short time sugar rush will will pass. And then in time people will kind of find things that are of value that are out there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know, I the, the, the film world world has become so democratized and studios kind of don't even have the same reputation. I I either. A lot of people don't want to go to the movies to the same extent, and they only want to go for some kind of cultural experience. The problem is it's very difficult to make a cultural experience when no one's going to any movies, you know? So, you know, it's kind of it's kind of this, it's kind of this spiralling, you know, self fulfilling death prophecy for for studios. And I would love for people to come back to it because I'm actually a huge fan of the embodied shared, you know, film, film watching experience and one of the best. And I wish that more people had done this. And this also kind of goes back to your create your originality point earlier, like what stands out? What's what's something different? I want?

42:56 I love to see the good guys lose. I love to see, or at least at least at first, you know, and one of my favorite cultural experiences of growing up was going to see The Avengers Infinity War, where The Avengers lost at the end of the first, at the end of the movie. And the whole movie theater was absolutely packed to the brim. And there were thunderous moments throughout the film. Everyone was laughing, everyone was crying. And then the film ended on like this dark note and everyone just kind of shuffled out of the movie theater without really knowing what was going on. And, and it was so cool to be in a collective environment where so many people were having highs, lows, highs, a moment of like so close, a little bit of hope and then and then let down. And then now what?

43:46 And like you see people trying to come to terms with like, what do you do now? So I think that we actually missed that. I think that that brings us together. I think that that's, I think it's a wonderful thing. I'm a big advocate of going to see of going to see movies. Me too. And I think that thing about the kind of the down ending is very interesting because you have seen movies where, you know, some movies need need an up ending, some made a down ending. And you you have seen movies over the years where you think, oh, they've they've forced a happy ending on this film because they think they'll make it more appealing. And it just feels, and you just feel manipulated. And actually it doesn't make it a, you know, a good ending. And you kind of think they've, you know, they've sabotaged their own film or the studio is forced to sort of sabotage their own film and it's not, not as good.

44:28 And actually, you think if they had had the kind of courage to say, no, no, there's actually film actually ends down And it would have had a far greater impact and would probably have resonated longer than the one that kind of came out. And people kind of liked it enough, but kind of quickly forgot about it by the by the time they got home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as far as movies go, I mean, we as far as the studios go, rather we know that they're as as hesitant as can be to make creative risks. And then once creative risk does work out, they just hope to replicate that ad nauseam until, until everyone stops going to see it. And and I mean, we've seen that with franchises essentially. And right, really what the questions are now for lots of studios is what is the next franchise that we can start so that we have 10 years of movies down the pipeline. You know, Minions had served, I think how how enormous it was and how well it's served for so many years. Think about The Avengers and now, you know, DC is restarting with James Gunn and now the Mario world is going to be absolutely enormous or the Minecraft world. And so these studios are not looking necessarily for dramas or for films about the human condition. They're looking to copy paste success formula. And I don't think if it you know you can. That's the reason why.

45:48 You buy an existing you, you licensed an existing, you know, intellectual property, then they've got. Barbie's going to be a big one. You hope you've got a you, you hope you've got a, you know, an audience of some scale might not happen, but that's that's the kind of the. But there's always a direct, always. There's always, always a direct correlation between how the, the rating, the critical rate, the, the reviews of a film and how much money the first one makes and then the second one always makes more money but gets worse reviews and so on and so forth. I mean, there's a few rare exceptions like Toy Story or The Godfather, you know, the original Star Wars movies. But short of that, it's a, it's a very difficult thing to do. And a lot of times 'cause they don't want to take the risks, they want to copy and paste the, the, the, the formula that worked. And streaming is got to be the place for creators to do, to be able to do that.

46:35 The real storytelling, I think you got the. What I think it was stripping interesting thing is you just had this much wider, you know, many more hours to to to structure the the the story. So rather than thinking, rather than thinking, I've got to get this out this film into two hours ish. You think actually it's like gone the wind, which where it was three hour, 4 hour movie in 1939. Well, that's still on on on as a as a series. Yeah. And what do you think, do you think? I mean, that could have been great. I mean, I think, I don't know, you know, I think that Netflix had a Netflix, I think HBO started it. But Netflix had a ton of success recently with their limited series where they have 6-7 episodes. And I mean I watched that Scorsese movie The it was like 3 hours long with Leonardo DiCaprio.

47:22 De Niro, the killer of the rising Sun. Rising moon? Yeah, that one. Killers. Yeah, the new Scorsese movie is killer. One of that, yes, Yeah. And that could have been a remarkable 5 or 6 part Netflix short series. In fact, American Primeval was very similar to it in that kind of capacity. And it did. You just were able to tell a story super, super, super well. And I know that Peter Berg, the director has been kind of popping around on a podcast talking about how much fun he's having, not being constrained to that typical 2 hour thing. And also studios, rather streaming studios tend to be much more generous with their budget, with their budgeting. They don't have to answer to a box office. They don't necessarily have to release numbers in the same way. So there's a whole different level of responsibility that they have that they can kind of, they can tell people like Adam Sandler, do anything you want.

48:20 It could be the worst thing that you've ever always wanted to make and that you've never got a chance to do. But as long as we see the name Adam Sandler associated with Netflix on top of it, then we are happy to pay anything you want for that. I mean, in the, in the 1980s, Woody Allen had that had that kind of arrangement with, with United Artists and then Orion that they were kind of like, well, within a certain budget, you can sort of do what you want to do. And, you know, their films weren't hugely expensive and they usually did OK business and, and also actually they did well internationally, or at least there was, you know, an audience to some extent broadly globally. And he made quite a few movies at that point, right, With that, with that option.

49:01 He's a great example of like, you know, a movie a year for for and only really slowing down now. He's now 90. But you know, when things got trickier with the sort of allegations against him. But you know, he's a very sort of and I think the the the director of Lost Boys, Joel Schumacher worked in costume many years ago on on some Woody Allen movies. And he sort of said, actually, Woody Allen was very good at telling me, you know, I was saying I wanted to be as I wanted to write a script and direct myself. And then and he said Woody Allen was really good saying, OK, you have to finish the script you're writing, you know, to move on in life, you know, if you want to do that, you've got to finish the script. And he did finish the script and at some point became a screenwriter and a director and had a, you know, a good career. Yeah.

49:42 And I think Allen's a good example of someone you know, a very good work ethic. Yeah, incredible, incredible work ethic and, and, and I guess you know, and you have two schools of thought. You have the the school of thought that says you got to really embody and be the character and you have to find the project that speaks to you and you got to find, you know, the perfect story and the perfect script that with the real voice, that kind of voice that you're looking for any people that listen, I'm here to act and that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make it work. You know, what's what are some films that that have shaped or forged Europe or your perspective or appreciation of a film? What are some what are some of the iconic movies for you? So one of the my pretty favorite film makers, probably not from the 1940s and 50s, mainly working in black and white.

50:26 So we'll be Billy Wilder. Who? Made some recommendations actually, by the way, I would love to. I would love to look into them. So Billy Wilder, you know, who made some like a hot the apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd. So he's probably my favorite film maker. And in those movies you have double Indemnity is a film noir from the 1944 or something like that. Sound like the Hot is a, you know, fast, a farce. Sunset Blvd. is a, you know, sort of black comedy about Hollywood. And the Apartment is, is a great sort of romantic comedy with a kind of Christmas New Year setting, even from from when 1960 of Jack Levinson and Sheree MacLean. So I think I like Wilder's sort of, he's smart. His, you know, his movies are sort of bittersweet. They're funny, but they're kind of, but they're not silly. Well, sound like Hot is very silly, but it's very funny and they're they're charming.

51:17 And so I like him and I think he's a very elegant film maker when he's when he was very good in in the 40s and 50s, as with an elegant film makers. So you kind of admire the storytelling and how how how well it comes across. How would you, how would you describe an elegant film if someone like, didn't understand that you know, someone's listening and they're watching, you know, Marvel and Transformers and you know, Stranger Things? What? What How would you describe like an elegantly made film that like things that they should be looking out for or that they could be more intentional about when watching? So I suppose I don't know Marvel or or Transformers or strange things very well, so I can't come in on those. But I'd say in terms of the storytelling that where and it could happen in in prose or in a movie where where you where you don't go, Oh, that was so obvious or, or that was kind of like, oh, that's kind of dumb.

52:03 Why does the character do that? I don't believe that. And if there's a revelation, you go, oh, oh, well, yeah, I didn't see that coming. But it's obviously it's obvious now. So this that kind of like, you know, sort of, and it's, or if you have to kind of feed the inflation to the audience, it's not done in a kind of now we're going to, you know, shove, shove some information down your throats. It's, it's, it's kind of there's, there are ways to try and sort of, you know, do the exposition so that the kind of it's, it's, it's done with a delicate touch. And and while it was was very good at those sort of things when you know, at his best in the 1940s and 1950s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

52:48 I think so. So you, so you're going to equate or I guess kind of have a relationship between elegance and nuance and subtlety and nuance. Yeah, yeah. That you can pass along. And I think that that's also done. I think it's a more effective way of storytelling. It's a far more effective way. There's, I showed my class the movie Argo about, you know, the 1980 hostage hostage situation in Iran. And, and then I, I, I'm doing hopefully soon a podcast, the gentleman called that, that runs a website called Spy Culture and it talks about the government's affiliation affiliation, association with different films. And, and he had a whole article that we read after Argo about the CI as involvement in the actual making of the film. And, and the way that they kind of insert themselves to make them look as good, you know, make them look as good as possible.

53:39 And it was done especially in the film Argo, at least to me, it felt a lot more nuance, a lot, a lot more subtle than a movie that I that movies that I've seen more recently where it almost feels like there are slogans that have to be injected into particular films that, you know, that are almost like a toll, like a toll to be made by the studio is like, hey, you know, you know, you can do whatever you want, but the toll to get in here is you have to throw this, this and this message in. And even if the film was about that particular message, you know, you got, you got to make it blanket. You got to make, you got to make it out there. And so I guess so I guess we're, yeah, it does feel like we've lost some of that.

54:24 I think there are still some great film makers that do, yeah, kind of focus on that. Have you Have you seen many Damien Chazelle films? The Whiplash or La La Land or Babylon? I've only seen Whiplash and La La Land. I've not seen. I've not seen Babylon. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious what your thoughts on it would because I think it is based on 1920s Hollywood as as Hollywood was transitioning from black and white with color. I should see. I should see Babylon. I watched it in in theaters and I hate to say I wanted to like it so, so badly and I couldn't bring myself to and I don't know why, but I thought that he was, I thought that from Whiplash Nala land that he was a really, really, really remarkable director. And apparently the story, his story is that he had wanted to make La La Land 1st and no one would fund it. And so and, and so he made a much lower budget whiplash and and then, you know.

55:20 That sounds reasonable. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess it also goes to like what you were saying earlier about the different ways to get films done is sometimes you got to work hard and just make it yourself or find another project that's smaller budget until you prove yourself, you know, and show yourself that it happens. I have a friend who's who's a playwright in London and, and, you know, her first play was, you know, had too many characters and too many, too many scene changes and and so on. Said, look, you know, this station career, just write a play about two people in one room, which is what she's gone and done. Yeah. And, and it's on in London next month. So. Yeah. There you go. Beautiful. Wow, really cool, really cool. What do you think? And, and, and do you think that there's people all the audience looks for something different in a novel versus a film or that they should be kind of the the trajectory of the storytelling should kind of be similar?

56:05 Well, I think 1 interesting thing about that is obviously is how how film, TV has changed novels like the storytelling that we now now we've seen films and television and that has changed our novelists, right? Do do audiences look for different things in film as opposed to on on the page? And what would you think about? That well, I suppose the one great difference is, you know, on the page, you are, you are well, you can be far more intimate with, with the character. You can hear, you can hear the character's thoughts in a way that on on screen people talk, but that isn't necessarily what they're thinking. You know, that's just what they choose, what they're choosing to say or not to say to somebody. So, so the, the struggle that, that the screen always has is, is how to convey people's feelings and people's thoughts when you, when you've only got the external, you haven't got the internal voice.

57:01 But film can do great things and so can literature and, and you know, you know, I enjoy both and I hope other people enjoy both. What other what other film I want to do? I mean, I, I, I, the, the case that always comes to my mind is Harry Potter, because I had, I, I growing up. I have devoured those books over and over and over again. And the films have let me down time after time after time. At least I felt they couldn't keep up with the, they couldn't keep up with my imagination from the words on the page, like you said. And there's so much going on in the background of these young adults or teenagers with kids minds that are, you know, that, that that cannot be described, you know, acted out or described, I guess, on screen.

57:47 I'm really, really curious how HBO is going to do this because HBO has a wonderful history. With the TV series. Yeah, of the TV series, correct. And they have a wonderful history of really packing a lot of emotion and character into films when they have the time and space for it. Going back to that theme of not giving the audience what they wanted watching The Sopranos and it went, I don't know if you watched it, but there was a scene where they were Tony, the main characters therapist was raped. And, and she has the opportunity to tell Tony who the person that did it was. And, and you can see, and you know, this again goes to what we were just talking about.

58:28 You can see in her mind the conflict the whole time. You can see that she's chewing back words that she wants to say. And and then the and then the and then David Chase does not give it to you. He does not like you have. And she's and Tony says, Are you sure that nothing that everything's OK? And she looks at him and she looks at the audience. She looks at the camera and she says yes. And then the and the screen goes black and and everyone was let down and everyone was frustrated because all you wanted was this poor woman to get this, to get her justice. And, and sometimes in life, you don't get justice, especially if you want to be moral. Sometimes, sometimes if you want to play by the games, by the system, then you don't get justice. That was a good, bold, a bold decision from, you know, David Chase there not to give the audience what it wanted, but what he felt was right for the, for the character, for the situation.

59:14 Yeah. Yeah, and that's what that's what makes a great. That's what I think makes a great creator is, is being willing to take risks and have your audience be upset at you, but then understand that what you're trying to do is make something great for them. He's making a great new apparent, I'm really hopeful, a new series on the MK Ultra experiments that were going on in the 70s or 60s, seventies in America. OK. Which should be a lot of fun, but. When you were talking about elegance before and one other film came to mind of a recent more recent film for 1012 years ago. It's a Polish film called Ida IIDA at the name of the female character by Pavel Pavlikovsky. And I think it's very elegant because it's so pared back in terms of how much information it gives. It gives you only the minimal information and often many scenes are just like 11 long shot. I don't find it very mannered and I just kind of admire it for how how how compact it manages to be. So I would recommend that It isn't black and white. So just pupils might not, might not have had the patience for it, but it's from the past 15 years. Again, I, I think, I think it's just preparing in the right way. It's just getting your head in the right space. And because some of the, you know, and I, I'll go through phases depending on what I'm going through my life months at a time where I can't watch a particular genre. I'm just not, you know, I'm just, I'm just not there and I'm sitting down and, and I've been, I've been like that with comedies.

1:00:39 I've been wanting to watch comedies. I've been consuming a lot of heavier material that are a little bit more philosophical, a little bit more, tend to be a little more serious, and I can't get myself to sit down and watch a comedy. Even though I want to take the burden off and I do want to lighten up. I have to kind of get myself back into that, into that zone. But that's OK because there's, there's like that that I think it was, it was Umberto echo or someone like that who said this thing about, you know, it's fine to have a lot of books in your house you haven't read because it, you know, because there's a time and a place for everything. I'm going to come to that book at a certain point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I've been, I, I just had to order 5 new books because I went to my bookshelf a couple of times and I couldn't find anything, anything new. But yeah, I'm always looking to, to learn new things in from a different angle.

1:01:28 And so I'm really excited to check out your book. How did you so it was, it was, it was, it was it was re released, I guess, or worked on 2023. I saw. Would you add on to it? We updated the, these kind of the story about Woody Allen and, you know, and about Harvey Weinstein and Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. So that's one of those sort of because the book was originally called the Dark History of Hollywood. So it was kind of it was the Commission was to look more at the scandal than just general Hollywood. My, my own interest is general Hollywood including scandal, but just how it all worked. And so we had to update those stories or include the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard story, which hadn't been in the earlier edition. Have you watched the Netflix documentary about that or the series about that?

1:02:14 About Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. No, I'm not. I've not seen that. So what's what was your conclusion in the book? What was your perception of the relationship and the conflict and? I suppose one thing is I'm not hugely interested in their relationship. So all I wrote about, I mean, I wrote about, I've just read it today. I wrote sort of 300 words, just sort of up to kind of writing. You know how he sued the UK newspaper for libel because they called him a wife beater? I think it was he lost the case. You know how he was dropped from the Fantastic B series after the second film, I think it was, or the first film. And then he did win a defamation case against his ex-wife. So there's a bit on both sides.

1:03:01 And I kind of wondered, you know, will his, you know, at that point he was approaching 60. He'd, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean had run its course, it wasn't going to be any any any more of the fantastic beast films, you know. Would his career come back? None of his other kind of films, the more serious films have have had made as a critical or commercial impact. I think he was in something recently that was getting some more attention at a festival. But he hasn't really yet come back. But maybe he will. Yeah, and he had a really interesting. He's kind of, there's a lot of actors like this where he starts his career with a lot of fun and really unique kind of small indie and character driven films.

1:03:43 And then and then and then he kind of, and then he and then with Pirates exploded into another genre of film. But I would have, I would love to see him go back to to to that the kind of earlier movies that he was making, like Blow or What's Eating Gilbert Grape or any of those type of films. Yeah. Gilbert is a lovely film and also I was like that film where it's a mob film with him and Pacino. Yes, Donnie Brasco. Donnie Brasco I really like. Yeah. So yeah. Excellent. Great book too. Yeah, great book. Too. I don't know. Yeah. That was fun. How do you feel about separating the art from the artist? Yeah. I mean, that's something, you know, when you think about, you know, with someone like with Woody Allen or something. Yeah, I think I'm kind of all right. One thing is I kind of don't really know what the truth is in these stories.

1:04:31 So, you know, with Woody Allen, there's allegations he's, you know, lost custody of what the children when they was younger or lost access to them. But he was never charged with any himself. So there's allegation, account, allegation. But, you know, he was allowed to carry on making films because as far as the courts could see, there was no issue here. So I think I'm kind of OK separating the artists from the art. Yeah. And also because it's sort of more interested in what the art is than than who the artist is. So I'm interested in what the movie is, what the book is. Like, I think it's, you know, I'm not really sure what I've thought of. I haven't thought this all the way through yet, but Kevin Spacey was an incredible talent and has not worked in in a very long time.

1:05:16 And I don't think again, as far as the legal case goes, I don't think he was ever convicted of anything. I could be wrong. I don't, I, I haven't, I haven't been as you know, intuitive. But these are it's just another example of someone that is just an enormous talent that right or wrong reputation gets, you know, and very, very well could be that whatever the allegations were were correct. It could be that they weren't. Again, how, you know, like if you're a studio, you know how much you're going to let that affect your decision. And I guess the answer is a lot you know. Yeah, and I think there are certainly cases. I mean, in the book we could look at look at Fatty Arbuckle was in a comedy star in the 19 or 20s, what it was. And, you know, his career ended and you kind of felt that over a scandal where I think think, you know, he was innocent ultimately, but that the, the studios, you know, the whiff of scandal, they washed their hands of him, you know, but actually rather they didn't stand by him.

1:06:14 Yeah, so so. You can look at that point of. View and think, well, the studios you know, should have had more backbone. Of course, there are many other situations such as Harvey Weinstein where you think will actually, you know, he was the bully, bully in his own company and and people weren't weren't blowing the whistle on him and he was getting away with it. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, man. And also, it's such a shame because he made such great movies and you can't really, you can't really blacklist anything that has Harvey Weinstein's name on it. If you go through, if you look at his, his IMDb or, you know, the collection of films that he's made, I mean, there's at least that he's been associated with. And again, that's another question is, and we know that at this point, for example, in today's world that almost everyone's name kind of gets thrown on, slapped on as producers.

1:07:10 You know, everyone, everyone, everyone's a producer. If they had any, you know, if they looked at the script, they're a producer. If they, you know, if they talked to the actor about it, you know, on set, they're a producer. If someone you know, I don't, I don't know how much I you think I don't know the involvement to the degree that he was part of all these films that even if you know, you decided that you don't want anything to do with Harvey Weinstein, that has to do with Dead Poets Society or any or every decision that Miramax, that Miramax made makes. You know, I mean, I think with Weinstein, you know, someone's, I think someone said, you know, he likes to think that he was creative. And yeah, he was initially, initially he was responsible for for distributing kind of often like non-us films in the US and he was very good at marketing and selling those films to the US market and then kind of moved more into producing things himself.

1:08:03 But there was always that sort of allegation that you're always not really producing, but he's, you know, can find the finance and for and very, very good at the awards season marketing and then push. Yeah. Push is a good word for you, right. As far as as far as the way they go about it goes, Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. With again. So that doesn't have anything to do with him making the film. You know, that doesn't have anything to do with, you know, not watching the film because he's, because he pushed it for, for an award, because he pushed it for, you know, for a Golden Globe or for I, I don't know what that would have to do with. No, he doesn't make me think any differently about, say, the formula, The Crying Game, you know, you know, British Irish film from early 1990s, you know, I just wouldn't want to work with him.

1:08:56 Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine. I wouldn't want to work with a lot of people in Hollywood. That's it. But and I think that that's that, that's another institution. I think that there has been kind of reforming and kind of restructuring itself. Have you, have you read into or have you had any thoughts on Disney and open AI's recent business transaction together? I I've barely followed that. I know nothing about that so. It's fascinating. Disney invested a billion dollars into open AI and gave them the rights to use their characters in AI generated films for the next three years. And Disney is historically extremely protective of their IP. And so it's a really curious decision, but it's also happens to work out very well time wise because I think that this next year Bob Iger plans on stepping down and, and, and I, you know, we've heard that plenty of times already.

1:09:48 He's stepped down before he's come back, yeah. Exactly right, exactly. So it's funny, yeah. And following the Disney saga, there's an incredible book I read called Disney War by James Stewart, I believe is author. And it's about the, excuse me, the history of the company from the 80s to the early 2000s and, and the, and the corporate battle and you know, the, the corporate inner workings of the company. And the biggest issue that Disney has had since Walt Disney himself is that people that run the, the ship have a very difficult time finding or creating successors. And so I think that that when Bob Iger made this deal, I would, I would speculate as someone who is speculating and just reading and listening and, you know, following on the side that there's a risk that he can take with the company because he's not going to be responsible for the repercussions. And you know, that's going to be same way that Bob Shaypeck took over with during COVID for that for those couple of years while, you know, he kind of watched him fail and then step back in. You know, I'm very I, I this is a big enough decision that it could be him just saying, let me, I don't want this to tarnish my reputation, but let's see how the future looks with this, you know, anyway, Karen, this is a ton of fun. I really appreciate you taking the time to coming on for coming on and especially again on New Year's Day. And I really enjoy talking to you. This is really wonderful.

1:11:15 And thank you so much for your work. And I'm really excited to read your book. OK. We're welcome. You're. Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. Take care. Nice meeting. You bye, bye.