Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Entertainment Series 8: Billy Aronson / Creating RENT / Playwriting & Screenwriting /Kids & Adult TV

Transcript

Entertainment Series 8: Billy Aronson / Creating RENT / Playwriting & Screenwriting /Kids & Adult TV · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
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  and we're live with Billy Aronson.
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  Billy, what's going on? How are you?
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  Ephraim, so glad to be here. I'm so happy that you're here
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  too. I, I'm excited for a number of
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  reasons. Number one is I came across your
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  site and I, I audibly laughed out loud a bunch of times.
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  And, and then I was also struck with the holy shits of, of all
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  the great credits that you have. So that's number one.
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  Number two is I have been exhausted and miserable the last
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  week and you're and just the goofiness of this beginning of
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  the conversation is already already taking a load off.
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  So I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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  Thank you. I goofiness can help sometimes.
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  It definitely does. I, I, the truth is that I'm, I'm
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  very aware of it. I need to surround myself with
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  more of it, you know, because I think that it's not something
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  that you necessarily take for granted.
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  And it creates a, you know, a certain light heartedness that
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  is, it's important, I think, to have every now and then.
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  Yeah, yeah, important to me for sure.
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  Definitely tell me a little bit about yourself, tell me a little
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  bit about who you are and and what you've done, and then we'll
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  kind of dive into some of the fun, creative and talk a bit,
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  talk a little about your journey along the way.
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  Well, I think of myself as a playwright.
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  I kind of thought of myself as a playwright before I was actually
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  writing plays. In fact, when I was a kid and I
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  started doing that in college and sort of as an obsession.
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  I just had to, I didn't know anything about it, but I had
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  just, my heart had been broken by a girl when I was 17.
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  And it just opened my eyes to the world.
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  I saw things and feelings and everything was exploding in my
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  head and I had to do something with it.
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  And I couldn't put words to it. So although I, I was, I played
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  music a lot. I've played jazz flute and piano
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  and stuff before that. I thought, I need this.
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  I need something that, that I can control that will express
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  this insanity that I'm feeling about the world and excitement,
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  the pain, the joy, all of that. And so I just started writing
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  plays and I learned how to do it by failing.
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  And then when after college, I, I wrote all through college, I
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  wrote plays and made my friends be in them.
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  And then I went right on to drama school at Yale and learned
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  how how that I would could not that no one could tell me how to
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  do this, that I had to figure it out on my own.
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  And then I went to New York and learn how to do it.
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  And while learning, I I got involved in the creation of the
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  musical Rent. It was actually my idea.
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  I work with Jonathan Larson. I'll just give you this the
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  short version. You can ask for more anything
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  that I'm saying. Yes, we're going to go back, but
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  yeah, some. Original concept and additional
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  lyrics for rent. I figured out how to make money
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  with my writing while I was learning to write my plays,
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  writing for TV a lot and children's television in
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  particular. And that turned out to be a real
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  adventure. And maybe 10 years ago, I
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  actually got to write to make create my own children's
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  television show with an artist. We made a cartoon called Peg
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  Plus Cat that teaches math on PBS.
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  Nice. And having already written for
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  Beavis and Butthead, encourage the Cowardly Dog and the Wonder
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  Pets, a wide variety of especially animated stuff.
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  I guess Goofy goes with animation a little bit and and
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  yeah, so that's pretty. I think I touched them.
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  Opera is 1 interest of mine. That led me to work on the, the
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  Boem Opera, the Boem musical, a Rent.
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  But also I've started writing librettos for operas and that's
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  been a joyous thing. Music.
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  I like to be near music and around music.
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  I'm not a good musician, but I like to be near people who are
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  because I think when you're, when you're dancing, you know,
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  when music makes you feel so much so quickly and so
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  intensely. So I like to have something to
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  do with that. Beautiful, beautiful love that
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  that was that was a great elevator pitch for the story.
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  Elevator pitch for my life. I love it.
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  I love it. Excellent.
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  I, I hope that what that I could have an elevator pitch that that
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  is that that's concise and colorful.
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  Anyway, I want to, there's a lot I want to get into because
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  there's so much that you said that was so relatable and so
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  much fun. Starting with your heartbreak,
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  which is not the fun thing, but I always feel like looking back
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  on that, I know for myself that, you know, when I was in high
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  school, my first heartbreak at 16 took me like a year and a
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  half to recover from. And it was really, and and I
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  really don't know what about it struck me so deeply.
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  And I didn't, I remember not, I remember feeling that same
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  sensation that you're describing, which is not having
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  an outlet and like having all this and not knowing what to do
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  with it, you know, and I actually ended up comforting my
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  or working on comforting myself with my fellow hopeless
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  romantics in my in my class, you know, the ones that were always
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  getting rejected. And we'd find a collection of
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  great slow, sad Billy Joel songs or, you know, some great, you
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  know, pop rock music that we were first discovering, James
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  Taylor and, you know, that all kind of tender and emotional
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  rock, I guess, you know, you have songs like Summer Highland
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  Falls. I don't know if you're familiar
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  with that song, but, you know, it's either.
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  It's weird, these are not the best of times, but they're the
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  only times you've ever known. And it's either sadness, sadness
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  or euphoria, I think is the mine.
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  It's like you have to. Me.
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  It was Joni Mitchell. There you go, friend.
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  Turned me on to Joni Mitchell and I listened to Blue when I
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  was with her and then I couldn't get over.
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  I've still. Listened to Blue, Yeah.
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  And you can't listen. You can't listen.
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  It's the song is so strongly associated in your brain.
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  It's seared in with your with your relationships.
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  I still have songs now that from a decade ago, you know, or, you
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  know, bring back extremely vivid memories, whether you know, and,
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  and just from different girls that I've gone out without my,
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  my life. But so you, so you always loved
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  music and you always found a way.
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  And you're using it kind of to find a way to express whatever
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  you're feel, you know, whatever you're going through inside.
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  Yeah, right. Yeah, I think, you know, we live
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  in a rational world of rules and logic and you got to achieve
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  things. And it's that's you're
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  convinced, you're taught that at a young age, you pick that up.
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  But I think that the power of the the intuitive and the
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  emotional and the subconscious is much bigger.
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  I mean, I think the consciousness is a little island
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  in this huge ocean of emotion that we have and irrationality
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  and passion and music understands that.
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  Music connects me to that. Yeah.
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  I mean, do you find that you could tap into that while you're
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  playing music because you said that you're.
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  Yeah, yeah, the question has right.
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  Jazz is almost it's, it's very improvision, Improvisional, yes.
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  I love improvisation, to tell you the truth.
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  I think everything in life if the more like improvisation it
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  is, the better. In other words, when you're with
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  with jazz is an extreme version of it, like comedy.
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  Improv is, which my daughter does, where you have to be.
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  So in the moment, you're not looking at yourself, you're not
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  thinking about what's this adding up to.
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  You're just experiencing where you are, who you're with.
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  You're listening to everybody else, and you're responding
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  intuitively. There might be a conscious part,
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  but it's mostly intuition. And like when you're watching a
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  basketball player, they're just there.
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  They're in that moment, they're responding, and it's beautiful
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  and exciting. I think all the most important
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  stuff in life happens that way. The best decisions, and
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  certainly the most beauty is created that way.
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  Yeah, definitely, definitely. So have you found that at a
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  younger age or have you found throughout your life that you
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  were able to kind of navigate your way through emotions or
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  through particular chapters of your life, good or bad, through
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  music or through playing music? Or is it mostly through
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  consuming and sharing? Well, I've tried so hard to, to
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  stay close to that musical, to stay honest and clear and be
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  listening and be in the moment the way you are with music.
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  I'm not a musician, but with my writing, I until I was 60, I was
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  very introverted. I was shy and I couldn't really
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  think clearly in the company of other people.
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  So that's, I think that's good for a playwright by yourself.
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  You organize it only I could only write well when I was
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  really relaxed, when I was into that, that kind of improvisatory
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  feeling. Yeah.
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  So I would go back and do that by myself and then share the
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  play with the world. Yeah.
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  I'm not sure I answered your question.
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  But that's OK. It's because you did answer.
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  You answered that you figured out a method of navigating it
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  through playwriting as opposed to through playing music.
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  Yeah, yeah, it sure is exciting though when you're when you're
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  playing music at a party with other people and you're just,
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  you've had a drink or something, you're all relaxing together.
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  It's, it's a closeness that's just a wonderful feeling to be
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  that close to people. I now do something called after
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  I did years of yoga and now I do this, this cult thing called,
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  it's not an actual cult, but it's like it called 5 rhythms
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  dance where we get and it's a little bit they they appear all
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  over the world, but it's in New York.
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  I do it on Sundays for two hours, 80 people in a room
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  moving without talking to each other.
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  But we were late through the music, just moving to music.
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  And I, it's such a wonderful feeling to be connected to
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  people. That's what I I seek in the
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  theater. Everyone's laughing at the same
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  moment. You're connected impulsively,
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  you're connected at some deep level and it feels great it
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  you're part of a community. You're not alone.
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  I mean, as an artist, you're alone what's inside me.
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  But to connect that to other people is a joy.
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  And especially I think the, the there, there's extra level of
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  joy that's that's shared really by the performer and the
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  audience when the performer behaves in a way that's
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  particularly vulnerable and could be misinterpreted as not
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  good. And the audience responds
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  positively and sharing. And then it's almost like a
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  moment like for everyone and everyone is happy and everyone
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  kind of laughs along. And I feel like the and and and
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  and I was actually, and I want to talk to you about the
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  difference between, you know, the writing for stage, writing
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  for screen and performing for stage and performing for screen
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  because it's a different universe.
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  I mean, and I know with my very, very limited exposure in
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  college, but but that was one thing that I feel like that that
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  live feedback with the audience is something that you don't get
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  the same way. But it's part it's almost part
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  of the same magic. That's a concert in the sense
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  that like the great, you know, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful
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  Dead used to say about the early acid trips when everyone was
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  kind of in like these big test, you know, warehouse and they're
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  playing music. He's like the the for the from
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  the band's perspective, the audience was the emphasis.
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  You know, like it was just us talking to each other and
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  sometimes they liked what we said and sometimes they did it
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  and we'd laugh about it and that was the end of it.
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  But like, you know, you got it with the performing arts it, you
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  know, especially with the live card, I feel like that's really
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  a big, big component of it. Sure is.
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  Even I think, you know, it's obvious with jazz that these
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  notes haven't been played before.
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  But even when you're doing Beethoven's Symphony and
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  Orchestra, them, the great musicians will tell you it's
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  like that performance is fresh. It's like it's never been played
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  before every time you do it, which is tricky, you know, with
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  Hamlet or with a classic. But but that's what makes it
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  thrilling. That's what makes it beautiful.
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  Yeah, yeah. And it's actually because I, and
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  I actually was, I, I for a couple of years, Springsteen
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  really saved my emotional state of mind, you know, and I
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  connected on a very deep level to a lot of his, his albums Born
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  to Run in Darkness, in the Edge of Town in particular, where
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  like 3 like deep to my like when I, when I like.
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  It's the combination of of tragedy and and like, like
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  almost like mourning and at the same time defiance and hope like
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  being placed together in the same albums was so it just was
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  so engaging to me for so many years.
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  One, and then I was thinking a couple of years ago, I was like,
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  I wonder how he brings this passion like night after night
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  after night, because I feel like you're singing the same song for
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  50 years. You get burned out of it, I
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  imagine, you know, And I imagine that's why a lot of bands burn
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  out, you know, But there's something, there's something
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  about, you know, these great live performers when they say
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  that the performance isn't the music.
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  The performance is a dance with the audience.
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  And so they seem. That's what keeps it alive and
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  fresh and going strong. It's so thrilling that they can
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  do that. Yeah, I've heard James Taylor do
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  Fire and Rain alone. I've seen him four times, and
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  every time he did it, he does the hits and it's like he's
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  never done it before. He's talking to you.
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  You're just the way that I'm talking to you.
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  You know, I don't know what we're going to say, but that's
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  the way a great performer does their even the hits.
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  I, I dragged my wife to James Taylor with and we, and actually
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  her grandmother found out we were going and she came to and
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  he went to Tanglewood last year, 4th of July to watch him in, up
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  in Tanglewood and it was such a great experience.
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  Have you been to Tanglewood before that part?
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  I've not. Heard about it many times.
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  Yeah, I mean, you've heard, you've heard plenty then, but it
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  was just one of the best venues. And the only problem was getting
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  home at, you know, like leaving. You're just sitting in a, you
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  know, parking lot for till 2O clock in the morning.
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  So tell me about when you started playwriting and you said
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  that you failed your way through college.
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  How did you keep pushing through writing and keep pushing through
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  get, I guess not being happy the results that you got, because
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  that's something, you know, I'll put down my guitar for six
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  months at a time and be like, I freaking can't write a melody
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  for my life or I'm trying to write a song.
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  I'm trying to write a poem and I'm like, I can't get it done.
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  I just walk away. You know, how do you how do you
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  do? How did you do that?
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  I had to, is all I can say. I imagine that's how you feel
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  about songwriting. You have to keep coming back to
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  it. You just have to.
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  I needed it so badly. So I would write a play, and I
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  guess it's partly a kind of automatic stupidity.
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  It's like like after finishing a play, no matter how badly it
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  went, I believe the next time I'm going to get it right.
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  Excuse me. It's just this feeling that
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  keeps coming back. Got it.
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  Now I've got it. This next one is going to be
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  amazing, and that's probably what brings you back to writing
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  your next song. It's like the I got no, no, you
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  know, it might be defying all odds given how many times I've
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  failed or how badly I failed, but this is going to be the one
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  I still have that I can't. I couldn't write something new
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  if I didn't fail. It was going to be better than
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  anything I've ever done and perhaps the best thing in the
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  world. And I totally believe, I totally
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  relate to that. And but did you, was there a
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  particular, for example, did you have like I have a structure
• 15:24
  that I try to stick to or try to develop when it comes to like
• 15:27
  lyrics or, or poems? Or did you have any like when
• 15:30
  you, when it came to playwriting, how did you go
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  about developing characters, lyrics, performance, whatever,
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  whatever it was? How did you learn to keep all
• 15:39
  these things in mind? Did you learn to keep like, did
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  you like have any idea about this stuff or you just kind of
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  improvising? What was it like?
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  Yes, I was just kind of improvising.
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  I didn't have a formal playwriting class.
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  I just wrote exactly what I wanted to see on a stage.
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  And it unfortunately took me a long time to realize the
• 15:59
  connection between what you write on the paper and what's
• 16:02
  going, what an experience it's going to be on stage, right?
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  It's like writing a recipe for a cake without you just write it
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  and you make it. You say, Oh my God, this is
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  awful. But I learned a ton from doing
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  that constantly. I mean, on the page, I would
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  write long monologues, for example.
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  I thought, this is so powerful. This is, you know, and the
• 16:23
  minute you get it on stage or you the actor's just reading it,
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  you say, Oh my God. Forward through.
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  This please stop talking. Stop talking.
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  You know, So during rehearsal, I learned to cut a lot.
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  I learned, for example, that storytelling on stage, it's it's
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  the play is nothing like a novel or a short story.
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  It's more like a dance or a fight or a sword fight,
• 16:45
  something. It's got to keep moving and
• 16:47
  leaping ahead. You can't put it down and come
• 16:49
  back. You can't take a break in the
• 16:51
  middle. You can't Daydream a little bit,
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  you know? So I learned that very quickly,
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  right? And I don't think anyone could
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  have told me that. They certainly couldn't have
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  made me feel as bad as listening to a long monologue made me feel
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  you. Just for me.
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  You just need to learn by doing it.
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  So I learned what a character was by by trying to write them.
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  I learned what a play is or what, and it's also it's my
• 17:20
  rules there. There are things that are true
• 17:22
  for everybody, I guess. But I think if you're an an
• 17:26
  artist, I think each of us is unique is and, and the
• 17:30
  uniqueness, the weirdness of us of each person is the best thing
• 17:33
  about their art, right? So you can learn a lot of
• 17:37
  traditional things, but that weird the thing that works for
• 17:40
  you and nobody else. So the thing that you need to do
• 17:42
  that no one else would need to do is the best thing about your
• 17:47
  work. So that's something you just
• 17:51
  have to try. You have to have your hunches
• 17:53
  and your impulses and say this is how I want to do it and find
• 17:56
  out maybe you're right or you're wrong.
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  Right, right, right, right. That's really cool.
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  That's really cool. And then how and then how did
• 18:02
  you start blending the concept of performing, I guess
• 18:06
  playwriting with musicals? And yeah.
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  And I guess one thing I've personally and anecdotally, but
• 18:13
  personally notice is that I also, I, I too have a very hard
• 18:16
  time. I when I write, sometimes I'm
• 18:18
  capturing an idea and then when I say that idea out loud, I'm
• 18:21
  like, that's not what I meant to say.
• 18:22
  Like that's not what I'm trying to do.
• 18:23
  And I'm sure what your reaction, you relate, but like, I, you
• 18:28
  know, so I, I, I always tell my students, actually my high
• 18:31
  school students, I teach them English and I and I try and I,
• 18:34
  and they're like, how do I know if my paper is ready to, you
• 18:37
  know, hand in? I'm like, did you read it out
• 18:38
  loud? And they're like, no.
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  And I said read out loud. Like why?
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  Like, because you're going to catch 1000 things that, that
• 18:45
  look like they make sense on paper, that don't make sense in
• 18:47
  your head. You know that's.
• 18:49
  A great idea. I wish my teacher had told me
• 18:51
  that. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:53
  I wish my teacher told me a lot of things too.
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  But, you know, that's, I think that's what living, that's what
• 18:57
  living is for. Yeah.
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  So what's the difference between?
• 19:00
  So how'd you integrate lyric writing and music into into
• 19:04
  playwriting? Well, again, trial and error
• 19:10
  with Rent was my first real musical, I guess.
• 19:14
  Yeah, so I'd seen a bunch, but I also knew I wanted to do it a
• 19:17
  little differently. I wanted it to be a little
• 19:21
  rough, to be very rough. And I put in the the swear words
• 19:25
  and things like that. I just thought for these
• 19:28
  characters, this is how they would would go.
• 19:32
  And it took me. The first draft I wrote was
• 19:34
  really terrible. But then I and Jonathan told me
• 19:37
  that and then I did another draft that was more because I
• 19:40
  think the first I was trying to write it like what I imagined
• 19:43
  people would want me to write. The second one I said, OK, I
• 19:46
  give up. This is what I have to do.
• 19:49
  And so I just had those two characters sitting there in the
• 19:52
  cold, just kind of swearing with kind of a punk rock rhythm, da
• 19:56
  da da, you know, And that became the song Rent.
• 19:59
  And I wrote them the way I basically the way I write
• 20:05
  dialogue, except with the rhythm heightened in a in on the stage.
• 20:11
  You can heighten rhythm to an extent and the lyrics, I guess,
• 20:15
  but you want to be careful it doesn't get sing songy or two.
• 20:18
  You don't want to rhyme unless there's a real reason for it.
• 20:21
  You prefer not to rhyme. What?
• 20:23
  Sorry. You prefer not to rhyme if you
• 20:25
  can. That's right.
• 20:28
  Nothing should be more interesting than it needs to be
• 20:32
  or it's a distraction. Yeah, I learned that from my
• 20:35
  playwriting, that if if characters language.
• 20:38
  Because on the pet you read a lot of Shakespeare and Beckett
• 20:40
  and all these players, these artists who are great with with
• 20:43
  rhythm and the sound of language.
• 20:44
  But if you go too far with that, it becomes a distraction.
• 20:47
  And it you're just aware that the playwright is.
• 20:51
  Yeah, I. Have.
• 20:53
  I have that issue with, with some of my students who I'm
• 20:55
  trying to show them a song or I'm trying to show them, you
• 20:57
  know, lyrics to particular song and try to examine the depth of
• 21:00
  it. And they get carried away with,
• 21:02
  you know, different aspects of the song that kind of, you know,
• 21:05
  grabs at, you know, I guess a little bit more of a superficial
• 21:08
  level of their attention that kind of pulls away from their
• 21:12
  from, from their ability to pay attention to what I'm really
• 21:15
  trying to show them, which would be the lyrics, you know, I
• 21:17
  guess. If there's one thing, there's
• 21:21
  that one germ inside any work of art, I think that you've got to
• 21:24
  be true to and you got to get a sense of, even if you can't put
• 21:27
  words to it, what sense of what that thing is and follow that.
• 21:30
  If you start making, you know, putting bells and whistles or,
• 21:33
  you know, cutes cuteness on it, it's it's really annoying and it
• 21:38
  and it art really has to be pure or it doesn't work.
• 21:42
  If if you you can only push even with with TVI found this out
• 21:46
  because you know, you have commercial considerations or
• 21:48
  things that editors will come in and tell you to do something.
• 21:52
  And you have to be very careful with that because especially if
• 21:56
  you're doing something new in bold like a Bruce Springsteen
• 21:58
  song or a Joni Mitchell song, it's got to be just right.
• 22:01
  You can't put anything extra. They're perfect, you know?
• 22:04
  Anyway, so that's I learned writing a musical by having by
• 22:09
  trying and having Jonathan Larson still working at you
• 22:12
  guys. So how'd you go?
• 22:13
  How'd you go up with the idea? How'd you go up with the
• 22:14
  concept? Well, when I was new in New
• 22:17
  York, I lived in Hell's Kitchen, which was then much more like
• 22:20
  the name implies, in my little crowded building.
• 22:26
  There were drugs all over the place and, and it was cramped
• 22:31
  and it was cold. But I lived nine blocks from the
• 22:33
  Metropolitan Opera. It's where you're right near the
• 22:35
  Lincoln Center. So I used to go up and that's
• 22:38
  that's where I learned to like opera, just because it was drama
• 22:43
  with a big, gorgeous stage, big sets, big costumes, gorgeous
• 22:47
  music. And and if you got standing
• 22:52
  room, it was cheap. I think it might have been $8,
• 22:56
  something like that to stand in at the Metropolitan Opera all
• 22:59
  the way in the back. And they were long and I had
• 23:02
  time. I didn't want to be in my
• 23:03
  apartment. It was too small and I didn't
• 23:05
  have any privacy. So and, and La Boheme in
• 23:09
  particular I fell in love with because it's about young artists
• 23:13
  who are really poor, you know, who are struggling.
• 23:16
  They're burning their own work to, to keep the fire going.
• 23:20
  But they are that they fall in love.
• 23:21
  They have great friends, great friends and great love, romance,
• 23:26
  intense romances. So I, I related to that and only
• 23:32
  when I was walking home one time through the cold on my way to my
• 23:36
  Hell's Kitchen apt, I thought, wow, my boem, my, my artist
• 23:41
  world is very different. It's sharper and it's, it's like
• 23:45
  broken glass compared to the smoothness of the, the
• 23:48
  Zeffirelli sets and the luscious Puccini music.
• 23:52
  There's nothing luscious about New York in the mid 80s if you
• 23:55
  live in Hell's Kitchen. So that's when I got the idea to
• 23:58
  do something. And I don't write music I love,
• 24:01
  you know, I can play it, I dance to it.
• 24:03
  But so I went to Playwrights Horizons, a theater that I
• 24:07
  worked at. I mean, that was doing readings
• 24:11
  of my work and and Ira Weitzman there, their musical theater guy
• 24:14
  recommended me to two composers, one of whom was John Larson.
• 24:18
  So that's where we. Hooked up.
• 24:22
  We hooked up through that. Right.
• 24:23
  Wow, amazing. I love the way that you and it's
• 24:26
  funny that you described it as gritty and a little bit more
• 24:31
  rough around the edges, but because a it is, but it's so
• 24:38
  endearing. It's in such an authentic, not
• 24:41
  kind of try way, you know, not trying to, it's not, it's not
• 24:45
  imposing, you know, the, the, the, the lyrics and the
• 24:48
  characters and, and the whole storyline.
• 24:51
  It is done in such a, it feels so subtle and it feels so
• 24:57
  natural and organic. It's just like you're kind of
• 24:59
  peeping into these people, like the way these people organically
• 25:02
  live. And there's no kind of sense of
• 25:04
  showmanship nearly as much as just a bunch of people having
• 25:08
  fun together and, you know, kind of sharing and expressing life
• 25:10
  together. I think that's what makes it so
• 25:14
  relatable. And I think that's what makes it
• 25:15
  so much fun to so many people because I think there's, I think
• 25:21
  we, I think we almost, I think there's a certain expectation of
• 25:24
  like a certain properness, you know, to musicals.
• 25:27
  And there's, and there's such a strong tradition and it's a rich
• 25:30
  one and it's a beautiful one and it's a really deep one.
• 25:32
  But like, this was like an individual's, you know, this is
• 25:37
  like a unique, an individual's expression of what a musical is.
• 25:41
  And I think that's really what caught what caused so many
• 25:44
  people's imagination and what caught fire to so many people.
• 25:48
  Yeah, Jonathan and I worked together on it for a year or
• 25:51
  two. We couldn't.
• 25:54
  Nobody was biting, nobody was interested in doing.
• 25:56
  We wrote 3 songs together in a in a draft of a script.
• 26:01
  So we decided to go our separate ways.
• 26:03
  We put it aside and he asked if he could go ahead on his own.
• 26:06
  So he gets the credit for this wonderful thing that it became.
• 26:10
  Aside from my 3 songs, I'm credited with original concept
• 26:13
  and additional lyrics. OK, my 3 songs are still in
• 26:16
  there. Which ones?
• 26:18
  Rent Santa Fe and I should tell you the love duet.
• 26:21
  Oh nice. Love those.
• 26:24
  Nice, that's. Great.
• 26:26
  It did catch fire. He kept Jonathan stuck with it
• 26:29
  and and made it really great and expressed his heart through it
• 26:32
  and and it did catch fire. It I, I think you're right that
• 26:36
  it's it felt personal. It felt humble, open hearted and
• 26:43
  people could relate to it, to the characters.
• 26:45
  There and sincere for sure. And, and I think that even I
• 26:52
  think that it kind of, I would almost hope that it would almost
• 26:56
  be inspirational to kind of people today in a weird way,
• 26:59
  because despite such bleak circumstances that the
• 27:03
  characters are living through. And like you said, New York in
• 27:06
  the 80s is no picnic, you know, but there's still a romance and
• 27:09
  a magic of participation and community that, that, that, that
• 27:14
  the place had. And I think anyone that lives in
• 27:15
  New York would tell you that for, you know, for many years,
• 27:19
  that's what made it so wonderful.
• 27:20
  And I actually think it's probably what we're missing in
• 27:23
  today's world, because today's world almost feels like there's
• 27:27
  a lot of, there's not a lot of economic comfort for a lot of,
• 27:31
  for many, many young people, many, many middle-aged people,
• 27:35
  you know, many people in general.
• 27:36
  There's a lot, there's a lot of economic insecurity and there's
• 27:40
  not really, I don't think people really, and also people are
• 27:44
  isolated in a very intense kind of way, you know, and that's for
• 27:49
  a number of reasons. And you know, and we can talk
• 27:51
  about that, but I actually think that if people looked at that
• 27:55
  and said, is this what my life could be like?
• 27:57
  Look at this joy, look at this kind of fun and authenticity and
• 28:00
  and and real and real happiness that some people are sharing and
• 28:05
  love and and meaning that there even though things are hard,
• 28:09
  community is what is a community is what people are living for.
• 28:13
  I think that that would be that should be so inspirational to
• 28:16
  people today. Yeah, people still enjoy the
• 28:19
  show. Yeah, thank God.
• 28:21
  Yeah, because we keep getting checks and.
• 28:24
  There you go. There you go.
• 28:27
  Yeah, I, I remember I was, I think I mentioned in my e-mail
• 28:29
  to you when I introduced myself, but I was forced to go see it in
• 28:33
  Community College. I was in Rockland Community
• 28:35
  College upstate and and my and I took a class and the professor
• 28:40
  made us go and I was like, what is this?
• 28:42
  I don't know. And like I read the description.
• 28:44
  I'm like, I don't know, I went there and I'm not exaggerating.
• 28:48
  A minute, 90 seconds in, I was completely hooked.
• 28:51
  And I was like, I don't know what this is, but I'm a part of
• 28:54
  it. I love this.
• 28:55
  This is great. So thank you.
• 28:56
  Great to hear from. Thank you.
• 28:58
  Of course, of course. So yes, let's talk about your
• 29:03
  man. Do you want to talk about your
• 29:04
  kids programming first or TV writing or what do you want to
• 29:08
  go? What do you want to go from?
• 29:10
  Here anything involving me is fine.
• 29:12
  OK, great. Or we can talk about you, too.
• 29:17
  TV writing. OK.
• 29:17
  Well, I did it. I began it to make money because
• 29:20
  I was, I'd gotten engaged to my sweetheart who lived in Boston.
• 29:24
  I was in New York. She was going to come live with
• 29:26
  me in New York. And I wanted to, I wanted to
• 29:28
  make it clear that I could pay my end of things, that we were
• 29:31
  going to raise a family. And I was serious about this.
• 29:33
  Sure. And I've been living.
• 29:36
  How old are you at this point? About 30.
• 29:40
  Cool. Sounds really young to me now.
• 29:43
  Yeah. Then I felt old.
• 29:45
  I am too old to be having roommates and to be not knowing
• 29:50
  where my next check is coming from.
• 29:52
  And so I wanted to, I wanted to have the comforts of like ATVA
• 29:56
  big TV, you know, a big screen TV and AVCR stereo.
• 30:01
  And and I also just wanted to have some stability.
• 30:05
  So I got into and I found writing for television.
• 30:08
  If I find in general, I tell artists, if you can use your
• 30:11
  skill, your craft to make money, you'll make money much more
• 30:15
  quickly than often than bussing tables or I was doing paralegal
• 30:20
  work at night. So I, I just applied to
• 30:24
  everything. I watched all of the channels
• 30:26
  that were on TV and I looked is there anything that has that I
• 30:30
  would be interested in? If I if there was a show I
• 30:33
  thought I could write for, I would wait till the closing
• 30:35
  credits, see who produced it and figure out how to approach them
• 30:39
  and tell them how much I love their show.
• 30:40
  Nice SO. Mostly you get no response, but
• 30:45
  occasionally people would bite and I had good writing samples.
• 30:50
  You had to have a sample. Something funny and short was
• 30:52
  usually for whatever show involves comedy, you have to
• 30:57
  make sure you have like a good three page thing.
• 30:59
  Someone you can read and go haha.
• 31:01
  Let's check out more of this guy.
• 31:03
  Did you, did you have one go to sale, you have one go to Joke or
• 31:07
  do you have a couple that you'd work on based on whoever you're
• 31:09
  applying to, no. Sketches, like comic, like
• 31:12
  little Playlit, you know, 3 pages or 4 pages.
• 31:14
  I don't. I'm not very good at writing
• 31:16
  jokes. Others are, and that's a great
• 31:17
  thing to have. You can have a page of 10 jokes
• 31:19
  that can get you a lot of work, but I had my my I had like a
• 31:24
  four rotation of four or five different sketches.
• 31:26
  I would use Gotcha kids TVI had a Grover sketch I'd written and
• 31:31
  for grown-ups TV other more adult with stuff with sex in it.
• 31:35
  But and I I would get some work through that.
• 31:38
  And I found that it wasn't always, I wasn't always good at
• 31:41
  what I thought I'd be good at. For example, I thought that a
• 31:45
  Comedy Central would would go well for me, but it didn't
• 31:48
  because like grown up wit wasn't really my joke.
• 31:51
  As I say, joke writing wasn't my thing, but children's TV tended
• 31:56
  to be good collaborations. I tended to be good fit, which
• 31:59
  surprised me. But now, of course it makes
• 32:03
  perfect sense because I'm goofy and you know, I have a juvenile
• 32:06
  side. In fact, I think I don't have an
• 32:08
  adult side. I just have a juvenile side
• 32:11
  that's good. I got a lot of work writing for
• 32:15
  kids, television, also writing like educational books I really
• 32:17
  liked. Well, cool.
• 32:19
  Like for kids educational books. Yeah, like or OK, young through
• 32:25
  6th grade, that sort of thing. Like writing for Scott Forsman.
• 32:27
  I did a book about the star gravity and the stars astronomy
• 32:35
  DNA. Cool.
• 32:38
  I find that it was fun. If there's something that you
• 32:42
  you understand but you're not a scholar at, it's really fun to
• 32:46
  teach it, to go to it and say, wait a minute, here's what's
• 32:48
  cool about the way the planets were formed.
• 32:52
  Here's what's cool about DNA. And to talk and to talk kids
• 32:56
  slowly through each step and have it be funny the whole time.
• 33:00
  That's the assignment, you know, So that was a good gig.
• 33:05
  And also a lot of children's television and some quirky
• 33:07
  cartoons like Beavis and Butt Head.
• 33:09
  Yes. Even my wife, when that first
• 33:12
  when that show first came out on TV, we loved it because it
• 33:14
  wasn't like anything else. It was just so weird and and
• 33:17
  true it that's what it's like to be a 9 or 10 or 12 year old boy
• 33:20
  13. I guess they are.
• 33:24
  And so when I got the call to write for that, I was just
• 33:27
  thrilled. I.
• 33:29
  I don't understand how that works in terms of hiring new
• 33:32
  writers once a show has already started because isn't there a
• 33:35
  particular pace and tone and kind of, you know, like, I can
• 33:39
  imagine it's really difficult to do, no.
• 33:41
  Yeah, I agree. It's hard to to.
• 33:44
  You're sort of learning to write in somebody else's handwriting a
• 33:46
  little bit. Yes, right.
• 33:48
  Which is tricky, but usually if they're hiring new writers,
• 33:51
  they're open to a little bit of, they expect you to bring
• 33:54
  something new to it within their rules.
• 33:57
  And again, it's hard to communicate explicitly.
• 34:00
  I mean, they'll always have a list of rules, what they are and
• 34:03
  clues to give you. But you have to sort of feel it.
• 34:06
  Again, it's like the improvisatory thing.
• 34:08
  You just sort of get the rhythm of this show.
• 34:10
  You get the personalities and you love it.
• 34:13
  And so you can get into it and take it and make it, you know,
• 34:16
  find the intersection between you and it, right?
• 34:19
  What it is and what you are, right?
• 34:21
  That's useful. So fun.
• 34:24
  So cool. So take me through this only
• 34:25
  because I'm, I'm particularly enamoured by this because I
• 34:28
  lived on the Upper West Side for a little bit and spent a bunch
• 34:31
  of time there in my early 20s as a new single post college guy.
• 34:39
  And one of my dreams, daydreams how to walk by the ABC building
• 34:42
  and just imagine walking in and going to my writing job or going
• 34:45
  to a television job there. So can you paint to me the
• 34:47
  picture of what it's like, what a what a day of writing there,
• 34:51
  you know, for a television company or you know, for a
• 34:53
  studio at the time was like? Sure.
• 34:56
  Well, I wrote freelance OK, so I didn't always I would go in for
• 35:00
  a meeting, OK, to the MTV building or the.
• 35:04
  The PBS, you go when you're nervous.
• 35:06
  Are you, are you dressed up? Are you, are you, are you like,
• 35:09
  who are you meeting with? What's it like?
• 35:11
  Nervous. Yes, nervous because I was used
• 35:13
  to being home alone and writing. And then you come in and you
• 35:15
  don't know what they're going to say about your work.
• 35:17
  There are going to be other writers there tossing out ideas.
• 35:20
  That whole thing was a was a scary party for me.
• 35:23
  But I did. I was a head writer of the show
• 35:26
  called The Wonder Pets much later in my career.
• 35:29
  And that was the only time, I guess, when I went in every day,
• 35:32
  all day, and I sat in an office and I wrote and I edited other
• 35:36
  people's writing and I went to meetings.
• 35:38
  And it looks from getting used to.
• 35:40
  See, you'd sit in and you have scripts in your desk and you
• 35:44
  would either start working, continue them or edit them or
• 35:47
  whatever. And then a couple of times a day
• 35:49
  you'd meet with other writers who are coming up with
• 35:52
  simultaneous ideas for the same episode or for the next
• 35:55
  episodes. How did that work?
• 35:57
  Well, it was mostly again, I was the only in house writer.
• 36:00
  The main thing was to dealing with the show creator who was
• 36:03
  there executive producer and he knew exactly what he wanted.
• 36:09
  So it's like I was the head writer, but writing he was my
• 36:11
  head. So that was that was a source of
• 36:16
  some terror. Did you guys?
• 36:20
  Yeah, collaboration. Yeah, collaboration is hard for
• 36:23
  me, but but when you get it, it's a thrill.
• 36:27
  And I think I got pretty. I could often get what he
• 36:30
  wanted, and that made me feel great.
• 36:32
  There was a lot of that, but I also just like being around
• 36:34
  other people. There were all the animators and
• 36:36
  the artists. I go with Pike.
• 36:39
  They were all creative and young, yeah, and and fun to be
• 36:43
  with. So I liked being part of a team
• 36:46
  that was. Great.
• 36:47
  Yeah, Yeah. What's is there a difference
• 36:51
  when you're writing for animation as opposed to again,
• 36:54
  for, you know, for the screen or for actors?
• 36:56
  Because I showed my class again and this is how I already know
• 37:01
  that time is passing a little too fast for my comfort.
• 37:03
  But they don't even they really don't not familiar who with
• 37:06
  Robin Williams and Aladdin, you know, and I'm showing them the
• 37:09
  outtakes of, you know, of the, of the different concepts that
• 37:12
  that that Disney had for, for, you know, his, for his for
• 37:16
  Genie. And I'm expecting it to, I'm
• 37:19
  expecting a similar reaction to what I had when I saw it.
• 37:21
  And they're kind of just met with a blank stare, which is
• 37:24
  crazy. I know I have to expose them to
• 37:27
  some more culture, but I'm sure that writing is like animation
• 37:34
  gives you so much more freedom to express a point that words
• 37:37
  don't necessarily have to carry for you.
• 37:40
  And if you can often let, and I'm sure this is almost similar
• 37:43
  to playwriting, if you can let body language do the talking
• 37:46
  instead of your mouth, a lot of times that's preferable, right?
• 37:50
  Yeah, yeah, cartoons are fun to write for, I think.
• 37:54
  Animation I wrote for this show called Courage the Cowardly Dog.
• 37:57
  That was for like. Middle.
• 37:58
  I remember it. That was a Cartoon Network,
• 38:00
  right? Yeah, Cartoon Network.
• 38:01
  Yeah, yeah. I mean every cartoon, all
• 38:04
  animation, the rules are different for what you can do.
• 38:09
  But Courage the Cowardly Dog was very stretchy and very
• 38:12
  imaginative and bold, unlike Beavis and Butt Head, which is
• 38:16
  much more like a play where the characters don't stretch, but
• 38:22
  they can. I love writing for for Dilworth
• 38:24
  for that show. John Dilworth was the creator
• 38:26
  and you put in the stage directions, very expressive
• 38:30
  stuffs, you know, his his head expands, his tongue goes out
• 38:35
  around the world, that sort. Of thing, but that's written in
• 38:37
  it. Right.
• 38:39
  It's written into the script. You write it into the script,
• 38:41
  cool, describe it and of course the then the animators make it
• 38:46
  great. But you have to put it in there.
• 38:48
  That's that's how you tell the story.
• 38:49
  Anything is the script has to have everything that tells the
• 38:53
  story. That's needed to express the
• 38:54
  drama, the personality, the meaning of it.
• 39:01
  So I forget what I was going to say.
• 39:04
  Animation is different with everybody.
• 39:06
  I was doing it with younger kids, though.
• 39:08
  You have to have that. You want them to see, to speak
• 39:12
  and you want it. Anything that's important to be
• 39:14
  in the dialogue and in the stage directions so that they're
• 39:18
  seeing it and seeing and hearing, right?
• 39:21
  Because they haven't. Language is fairly new to them,
• 39:24
  so you want to make sure that what they see on the screen is
• 39:27
  described by words and what they say with words is is done is
• 39:32
  acted out for them. And how cognizant is the, is the
• 39:36
  creator or the studio's of this concept or are they, are you,
• 39:41
  were you cognizant of this to begin with?
• 39:43
  And like how did how like cuz that sounds like something yeah,
• 39:47
  people, people tell you. As I would work, they say no,
• 39:50
  no, no, you can't just write that they have.
• 39:52
  We have to see it and hear it at the same time.
• 39:54
  I see. Cool.
• 39:56
  And then I imagine with the kids stories, you have to figure out
• 40:00
  a way and there's a whole another level of intelligence.
• 40:02
  And the way, you know, is when you when you have a really,
• 40:05
  really smart person and they can explain really, really
• 40:07
  complicated ideas to anyone. That's how you know how smart
• 40:10
  they are, you know, and I think so, yeah, totally.
• 40:12
  It's. A skill Einstein was pretty
• 40:14
  good, I think, at explaining his ideas, even relativity, very
• 40:18
  simply and clearly. He writes beautifully.
• 40:20
  I think not all scientists can do it, which is good for writers
• 40:25
  like me who wanted to help them. But with children's television,
• 40:29
  I find that the important thing is to express exactly what you
• 40:34
  would for adults, except in their language.
• 40:38
  In other words, don't dumb down. I mean, friendship is.
• 40:41
  It's all still about love and friendship and fear and tension.
• 40:45
  It's hard. It life is hard for whatever age
• 40:48
  you are. Yeah.
• 40:49
  And to not dumb it down for kids or, or to think, well, kids are,
• 40:55
  you know, don't they aren't as smart as we are.
• 40:57
  So keep it simple. It's still complex feelings, but
• 41:01
  you just need to express it in a language that they can get you.
• 41:04
  Slow it down a little bit. You watch the vocabulary.
• 41:07
  Yeah. But that's been my guiding
• 41:11
  principle. I find it, it's the best when I
• 41:14
  really put my heart into it and just think of it as though I'm
• 41:17
  writing it for myself, just like I would with a play.
• 41:20
  It's the most beautiful thing I can possibly create.
• 41:23
  And I'll find a language to keep it simple.
• 41:25
  In my case, I just, I'm, as I say, I'm juvenile.
• 41:28
  So I have the concerns, I think that overlap a lot with the
• 41:31
  concerns of a four year old, yeah.
• 41:35
  I think a lot more people do than they care to admit, by the
• 41:37
  way. Yeah, Yeah.
• 41:41
  How do you how do you have that goofy side?
• 41:42
  Like, do you feel like it's constantly like bubbling up and
• 41:45
  you kind of just let it go or like, or do you feel like it's
• 41:48
  kind of like a door you can open and close this silliness or
• 41:51
  goofiness? How do you relate to it?
• 41:53
  It feels natural to me. It doesn't feel like a door I
• 41:55
  can open and close. I mean, I write about serious
• 41:58
  things most of the time, right? You know I'm writing a a musical
• 42:02
  right now about war. OK.
• 42:04
  But it's funny. I mean, it's kind of, you know,
• 42:07
  it's, you see that there's something terrifying happen, but
• 42:09
  you look at the people, there's something funny about it.
• 42:13
  It's just my way of looking at things.
• 42:14
  I guess at at best, my heart is in it.
• 42:18
  But at the same time, I'm stepping back and looking down
• 42:20
  at it and think, really, yeah, natural way to be for me.
• 42:25
  I don't always wish I were that way, but I make use of it.
• 42:31
  It's got to be a great balance. And I think it's, do you think
• 42:34
  it's a coping mechanism? Because that's, I feel like to
• 42:38
  find the goofiness in something, it's kind of protecting yourself
• 42:41
  for distancing yourself from, you know, taking something too
• 42:44
  seriously or making it too painful.
• 42:47
  I know what you're saying to me, it's not a coping mechanism.
• 42:53
  It's natural. It's, it's just my truth.
• 42:58
  I mean, this is how it feels when I'm in pain, right?
• 43:01
  I've had when I, I was visiting my friend Connie in California
• 43:04
  one time and I got terrible, terribly sick on something I ate
• 43:11
  and I had awful, I mean, I was terrible cramps and diarrhea and
• 43:15
  vomiting and everything. And she laughed at me.
• 43:18
  She's it's just, you're so funny.
• 43:19
  You look so serious. The way it's like whatever my
• 43:22
  face was or you saw your rhythm just changed.
• 43:25
  So violent, so extremely. She was laughing.
• 43:28
  That's sort of me. I mean, I found that with my
• 43:32
  first play the, you know, it was again about broken heart in the
• 43:36
  night when my parents were divorced and the way this hatred
• 43:39
  between men and women, something about the moments and there were
• 43:43
  few that it worked. People laughed.
• 43:46
  It's kind of a laugh of recognition.
• 43:48
  Yeah. It wasn't like, because I was
• 43:49
  trying to I I know you can make jokes when you're trying to
• 43:54
  avoid getting serious about things, and I've done that when
• 43:56
  I nurse at a party or something. But it's really not that with
• 43:59
  the art or with the cartoons for me.
• 44:01
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely that's.
• 44:03
  How I experience pain? The nuance for sure, for sure,
• 44:06
  for sure, because one is kind of a developed form that kind of
• 44:11
  serves to that you've kind of grown to protect yourself.
• 44:14
  The other one is just kind of the way that you are.
• 44:15
  It's just true. It's just your perception in the
• 44:17
  way that you, you know, process reality.
• 44:20
  Yeah. That's really interesting.
• 44:23
  That's really cool. I forgot I was.
• 44:24
  I was gonna comment on something that you said.
• 44:29
  Something clever, maybe? What, were you gonna correct me?
• 44:32
  Something stupid I said, or No? No.
• 44:33
  No, no, I was gonna comment. I was gonna comment cuz I was
• 44:35
  gonna, I was gonna ask you elaborate, but now I don't, no,
• 44:38
  I don't recall. So let's talk about a couple
• 44:41
  more serious things because you mentioned that you that, you
• 44:44
  know, that a lot of people are interested in, you've started
• 44:46
  talking a little bit about, you know, anxiety and depression
• 44:49
  throughout your career. Yes, terrible problem for me,
• 44:52
  Terrible problem all my life really.
• 44:53
  But it got at its worst in my 50s I guess.
• 44:59
  Do you wanna, do you, have you thought about it enough or
• 45:04
  looked at it enough to kind of be able to draw a narrative in
• 45:07
  your mind as to like have a storyline where it began or how
• 45:11
  it continued or developed throughout your life?
• 45:13
  Or are you not sure about that yet?
• 45:15
  Well, yeah, there. I don't know in the end, but the
• 45:19
  two ways I have of looking at it are one, it was just my
• 45:22
  chemistry, which would make sense because everyone in my
• 45:24
  family has suffered from depression and anxiety.
• 45:27
  OK, another is to say, but then I can make the story of well,
• 45:32
  when my parents were divorced, I was 7 and I felt it was my job
• 45:36
  to keep the family happy. No one told me that, but as the
• 45:40
  oldest of three children, so every all the things that.
• 45:43
  The. Trouble.
• 45:45
  I thought it was all my fault all my life, and every time
• 45:48
  something failed that I was in, I thought it was my fault.
• 45:50
  If a play didn't work, it probably was my fault.
• 45:53
  I still think that, but whatever would go wrong in the world I
• 45:57
  thought was my fault, and then I just couldn't take it anymore.
• 46:00
  After a certain point. Whatever the reason, the
• 46:02
  psychological or the biological, it's the thing I've had to deal
• 46:06
  with. I just got used to being nervous
• 46:09
  in public, in public speaking, and I would go to parties with a
• 46:13
  sentence ready to say. So when people asked what I was
• 46:15
  doing, I wouldn't draw a blank. I wouldn't feel like I had this
• 46:20
  negative thinking, terrible negative thinking, and my
• 46:22
  impulse would say I suck, I'm bedded, everything.
• 46:25
  Even if there was something cool that I was doing, yeah, I would
• 46:28
  think, oh, that's just for children or oh, it's I rent.
• 46:30
  It was just, I did a little bit, then I quit.
• 46:32
  Always I would see the worst of it.
• 46:34
  So I'd have to have a sentence ready so that I could say
• 46:36
  something that sounded good when people would ask what I was
• 46:38
  doing. It's a terrible way to live.
• 46:40
  Terrible. And then depression would come
• 46:43
  and go sort. I was sort of aware of it.
• 46:45
  I remember in college one time, I noticed that if I don't get
• 46:48
  out of bed, there's this thing that's going to happen to me, so
• 46:51
  I better get out of bed in a hurry.
• 46:52
  Really. Ghost that was pursuing me, What
• 46:55
  is that thing I have to get out of bed to avoid?
• 46:57
  And then it caught up with me in drama school and I couldn't get
• 47:01
  out of bed. And it came back, of course,
• 47:03
  much, much worse. In my late 50s, I had a long
• 47:07
  depression of I guess it was six months of being almost
• 47:10
  paralyzed. Oh man, it was so awful.
• 47:13
  But I was not funny. I can imagine you think you're
• 47:17
  funny to the observer, probably. Yeah, Yeah.
• 47:21
  You know, if I start telling my problems, if I would tell
• 47:24
  somebody something, I just as a nervous person, I'm funny.
• 47:28
  So, you know, people would laugh at me.
• 47:29
  I'd go to my place. I was so nervous, I had to hide.
• 47:32
  I would hide in back and people would think this is a comical,
• 47:34
  cute thing, but it was not fun. It just sucked.
• 47:38
  Yeah. Feeling my stomach tight all the
• 47:40
  time I had, I had panic attacks, which again, a person like me
• 47:45
  with a funny face, being panicked can be hilarious.
• 47:47
  But it sucked. I didn't want to live like that,
• 47:49
  no. And then so I took a combination
• 47:52
  of yoga and medication and therapy and mainly just focusing
• 48:02
  on that negative thinking, changing the way my mind worked
• 48:05
  by any means necessary to Get Me Out of it.
• 48:08
  And right now I'm the happiest person I know.
• 48:11
  So I'm the opposite. You know, when you get through
• 48:15
  depression, the great news about depression is when you get
• 48:18
  through it, you're stronger, I think, because of it.
• 48:21
  Then through hell. And you know what hell is like.
• 48:24
  And you know how to avoid it, right.
• 48:25
  And you realize how great it is just to be able to work to, to
• 48:28
  wake up in the morning and look out the window and just feel,
• 48:31
  Gee, things are good. Yeah.
• 48:32
  It's OK. Yeah.
• 48:34
  Or if it gets cold. Hey, that's OK.
• 48:36
  It's winter. It's supposed to get cold.
• 48:38
  It's not like the world is getting dark and evil where
• 48:43
  you're getting old and tired. I think that a lot.
• 48:47
  I think that second thought a lot.
• 48:49
  You get tired and old yeah, I just, I just turned 30 last week
• 48:52
  and Oh my gosh, yeah well, I'll spare you my I'll spare you.
• 48:58
  But I, I, I feel, Oh no, my forever disconnected from youth,
• 49:04
  you know, is this, is this it? But then of course, then of
• 49:06
  course I hang out with my 2 1/2 year old and my 6 month old and
• 49:09
  I'm like, of course, I'm not disconnected from you.
• 49:12
  You're crazy. This is just dumb.
• 49:15
  It's something that I think that I think it's especially if it's
• 49:18
  something that you don't take for granted anymore, you start
• 49:23
  to appreciate it, you know, in a whole nother level.
• 49:25
  And I think that, you know, like this, that, that kind of, and
• 49:28
  that's, I think why part of what's fun about your
• 49:31
  personality is that like for a lot of people, they don't take
• 49:34
  it for granted. The, the, the silliness and the
• 49:37
  way to look at and, and, and that kind of way of looking at
• 49:39
  things. And so because it's not
• 49:40
  something that everyone has, it's so much more endearing and
• 49:43
  it almost feels intentional when you, when you do come across it.
• 49:47
  So it's, it's great. Did you, was your, that second
• 49:52
  bout of depression? You say that you're familiar.
• 49:54
  You had it, you had it a little bit in college and drama school
• 49:57
  and then it came back in your 50s.
• 49:59
  Were you? I mean, that's a 30 year gap.
• 50:02
  I mean, but it was still there. I mean, it was, it was like this
• 50:05
  ghost, I could tell you. But like when I got to New York,
• 50:07
  OK, if I don't do something, I've got all my whole life free
• 50:10
  now I'm going to, I better do something.
• 50:12
  And we're sort of always writing a play I got and I got to get to
• 50:15
  the next one or something. The meaningless is going to hit.
• 50:17
  I'll have nothing. I'll be doing nothing.
• 50:18
  My life will mean nothing because everybody has a lot of
• 50:21
  that, a little of that. Meaningless.
• 50:23
  The fear of meaninglessness is what is what drove it.
• 50:26
  It was a feeling of. Yeah, of being, I guess,
• 50:28
  existential nausea. Call it what you will.
• 50:31
  Yeah. I didn't think of it as
• 50:33
  depression so much as just. I'm hiding from the truth.
• 50:37
  There is nothing, you know, that we're alone and naked, and it's
• 50:41
  just nothing. That meaning is imaginary, that
• 50:45
  you have to create and cling to this, the story of your life,
• 50:49
  this getting somewhere, this achieving.
• 50:52
  You know, I couldn't enjoy Sundays, for example, being a
• 50:56
  Sunday on after a date. You know, I don't want to relax.
• 51:00
  I have to get right back to work.
• 51:01
  I don't want to have time to think about the meaning of it
• 51:03
  all. Wow.
• 51:05
  So I finally had to confront that.
• 51:07
  But yeah, it was. It wasn't gone for 30 years.
• 51:08
  It was. It kept coming back at my own
• 51:11
  wedding. I was terrified, you know,
• 51:13
  they're going to find out that I'm a failure.
• 51:15
  I don't belong with this woman. I'm a loser.
• 51:17
  Wow. Very relatable.
• 51:20
  It's very relatable. Yeah, yeah, extremely relatable.
• 51:24
  But you're doing so well. You're a musician.
• 51:26
  You've got these two great young kids.
• 51:27
  You're a teaching whiz. You're good looking.
• 51:31
  You're funny. I I.
• 51:36
  Everything you're saying is deeply, deeply relatable.
• 51:41
  And I actually, I've, I've learned to recognize that
• 51:45
  sensation when I'm not creative. So if a week or two will go by
• 51:52
  and I didn't write or I didn't play, do a podcast or I didn't
• 51:55
  learn a new song on guitar. And like that existential dread
• 51:59
  that you describe really, really well, which is like, what am I
• 52:02
  even doing? You know, like what, like what
• 52:04
  is this? And, and then the scary thing of
• 52:06
  it being like, even if I do, what is it, you know, and, and,
• 52:12
  and that was that, that's something that I spent many
• 52:14
  years, a couple of psychedelic trips, a lot of, a lot of great
• 52:19
  friendships, you know, spending many, many hours discussing.
• 52:23
  And I think that at least for myself, and I'd like to hear
• 52:28
  about maybe your, you know, what with the way that you've kind of
• 52:30
  thought about it or worked through it or different stages,
• 52:33
  I guess that you've gone through.
• 52:36
  I think I had to separate from myself the fact that I, if Ryan
• 52:41
  Hershman, am not going to be relevant or remembered even in a
• 52:44
  generation or two. But the impact that I have in
• 52:47
  the world absolutely will exist. And like the things that I do,
• 52:53
  all this, all the snowballs that I just, you know, roll down the
• 52:56
  hill that keep on packing up and keep on getting bigger and
• 52:58
  bigger and bigger that I don't even know where it's going to
• 53:00
  end up or where it's going to go.
• 53:01
  But I just have to have but, but I have faith and hope in that my
• 53:05
  actions actually lead to that, that whether anyone remembers it
• 53:09
  down the line or not is irrelevant.
• 53:11
  The fact the world's actually a better place for my family, for
• 53:14
  my kids, from, you know, for the future, for humanity is where
• 53:19
  I've been looking like. That's that's kind of where I've
• 53:21
  settled for the moment. I'm curious about what you how
• 53:25
  you answered those kind of questions.
• 53:27
  Well, you've done very well. I mean, you've solved it at a
• 53:32
  young age. You have a really good answer.
• 53:35
  I admire that. I have to.
• 53:36
  Feel it. We have to, you know, it's one
• 53:37
  thing to say, to feel it. Believing it, having something
• 53:41
  to remind yourself. Wait a minute, how have I
• 53:47
  answered it? Now it's much easier for me.
• 53:50
  It's been much easier when I'm older.
• 53:51
  I don't know why. I just, I guess I feel like
• 53:54
  although I'm still working really hard to create new stuff,
• 53:56
  I feel like I've done stuff so I don't need to.
• 54:01
  It's not even about proving myself to other people.
• 54:03
  It's about just I don't need to. I mean, when you're 30, it's
• 54:08
  probably good that you feel this compulsion to achieve because
• 54:11
  you, you know, it shouldn't be unpleasant, but there's a lot
• 54:15
  ahead of you that you're going to do.
• 54:17
  And that's great. And it'll take some energy.
• 54:19
  It will continue to take energy and imagination and everything
• 54:21
  you've got. And that's great.
• 54:24
  I think I have come to a sort of faith about my art.
• 54:28
  You mentioned the word faith. Yeah, I had a strange thing
• 54:31
  happen a few years ago where an opera I'd worked on I developed
• 54:36
  with a composer in the 90s that got nowhere.
• 54:41
  We developed it and developed it and did it in churches and
• 54:43
  schools and stuff. Was picked up by a theater in
• 54:46
  Sweden. They found it on the Internet
• 54:48
  and they did a full production of it with a 70 piece orchestra,
• 54:52
  one of the largest stages in Europe.
• 54:54
  And this is in Malmo, Sweden. That was revolving and a
• 54:57
  gorgeous just blew me out there and it was just gorgeous.
• 55:01
  And it struck me that it's possible that the works that you
• 55:07
  do now that are not appreciated. We love that opera that if you
• 55:11
  do your very best, if you put your heart into it and do make
• 55:14
  it exactly what you think it should be and it doesn't get
• 55:16
  recognized for whatever reason it might be.
• 55:19
  In fact, there might be 30 years from now.
• 55:22
  That was 30 years between the perfect production, the perfect
• 55:26
  recognition of it. You can't know that.
• 55:29
  Yeah, it probably. I don't know.
• 55:31
  I don't the odds. I don't know what the odds are
• 55:32
  that it will happen, but it might.
• 55:34
  Jonathan Larson never knew what rent would become.
• 55:37
  He seemed to have a feeling that it was huge and important.
• 55:41
  So I can only say that you have to accept that for now.
• 55:46
  The the mission is to do your absolute best, put your heart
• 55:49
  into it. Live for the moment with that
• 55:51
  work. Be in it, love doing it, love
• 55:54
  making it that that experience of knowing that you're putting
• 55:58
  something gorgeous out into the world, putting yourself into the
• 56:01
  world has to be enough because you can't always know what's
• 56:05
  next and then let it go and move on to the next one.
• 56:08
  And then there's also the question that I deal with.
• 56:11
  I think I would like to be strong enough that I can accept
• 56:13
  that, even if that's not even about that.
• 56:15
  I don't even need to change the world with my work.
• 56:18
  That just being and going through the day and being good
• 56:21
  to my children and being kind to people on the street, saying
• 56:24
  hello to people on the street and sharing the positive energy
• 56:28
  with the crossing guard. Yeah, that alone.
• 56:31
  Changes your life, changes your life.
• 56:34
  By the way, when did, when did you start implementing that?
• 56:36
  Because I started doing that like a year ago, maybe a year
• 56:39
  and a half ago. But I just started making eye
• 56:42
  contact and saying hello to people and just being nice to
• 56:45
  neighbors and the male people and the people at the
• 56:48
  supermarket. And I go to the gas station now
• 56:52
  and if I'm in a bad mood, I walk out five minutes later and I'm
• 56:55
  just like, I said hi to three people and had four and had four
• 56:58
  positive exchanges. I'm like, this is great, man.
• 57:01
  I don't know what's going on. But but, but, but things are
• 57:03
  good. Things are good.
• 57:04
  You know, I it's amazing. Well, this is not fair that
• 57:06
  you're know all this at 30. I was going to point out how I
• 57:08
  it took me 68 years to get to this, but there goes my story.
• 57:13
  Come on. That's great.
• 57:14
  That's I agree with you. There's no way you weren't doing
• 57:16
  this stuff the whole time. It's just a question of whether
• 57:18
  you're aware of it, you know? I mean, you couldn't have gone
• 57:20
  through all that you went through with people at least
• 57:23
  getting this positive reception of good and good vibe from you
• 57:25
  that they want to, you know, be around.
• 57:27
  You well I agree it is a great just saying hello to people
• 57:30
  making eye contact with people is a beautiful thing and it
• 57:33
  makes you feel great makes makes them feel great often.
• 57:36
  So what are some so, So what are some things that you hope to
• 57:39
  that you hope to work on now? What is some ambitions that you
• 57:41
  have? Well, I'm doing a new musical
• 57:43
  that's my main project based on a Shakespeare play called
• 57:46
  Troilus and Cressida, a not very well known war play that he
• 57:49
  wrote. That's also a odd, really odd
• 57:52
  comedy that that strikes me as about now in a lot of ways, that
• 57:56
  asks. In what capacities?
• 57:58
  What's what's the scenarities? Well, it's about a war that the
• 58:03
  Trojan War, it's set in the Trojan War that no one knows why
• 58:06
  they're fighting it. It was about because Helen,
• 58:09
  because Paris took Helen from Greece to Troy, but no one
• 58:13
  really likes Helen and you know, on either side they don't like
• 58:17
  her. So why are, and they've been
• 58:19
  fighting for 10 years at this point and they but they just
• 58:21
  can't stop. So that the theme, the question
• 58:24
  of why we hurt each other and the romance, the toilets and
• 58:28
  crested romance is very painful to both of them, even though
• 58:31
  they seem to want to they they want to love each other and yet
• 58:36
  they destroy each other. So and it's about a world in
• 58:40
  which both sides talk at each other.
• 58:43
  Language is really difficult. Languages makes up conflict.
• 58:47
  The more they talk, the more the the conflict grows.
• 58:50
  Even when they're switching sides of the.
• 58:52
  They don't even know what they're talking about, but they
• 58:54
  just keep fighting. What is that?
• 58:56
  Yeah. So it asks that question.
• 58:58
  Wow. And I found this composer whose
• 59:00
  music I'm in love with, G Hey Lee, a jazz composer who's from
• 59:03
  Korea but lives in Brooklyn now. Amazing.
• 59:06
  We're having a good time working on it.
• 59:08
  Wow, that's so exciting. I'd love to hear updates about
• 59:10
  that. That sounds really cool, how are
• 59:13
  you? Wow, such great themes.
• 59:17
  I think so. And so how do you modernize it?
• 59:20
  You're taking this story and you're like, you know what?
• 59:22
  I love this story. I love these themes.
• 59:24
  Here's like my playbook for this.
• 59:27
  I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to, I want to put my own
• 59:29
  twist on this. Now what am I, you know, how do
• 59:31
  you go about that? Well.
• 59:33
  With rent, of course, for example, we said it now what we
• 59:36
  said it in. It was the late 80s.
• 59:38
  We said it then in that specific time period, which was
• 59:42
  contemporary to what we were when we were writing it.
• 59:45
  But with this, I thought it should just stay as simple as
• 59:50
  possible. I try.
• 59:51
  I considered, do we set it down? Do we set it during World War
• 59:53
  One? But that that wasn't the point.
• 59:56
  It needed to be simple and mythical and feel huge.
• 59:59
  Yeah. But feel like now, I mean, so I
• 1:00:02
  just, it's it's as I was writing the script, I made it my own.
• 1:00:09
  So it it focuses on more women characters.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah, a world that's Half Men and half women and where the the
• 1:00:17
  the anger that's in Shakespeare's play, but hidden.
• 1:00:19
  And there's a lot of tenderness completely hidden in
• 1:00:21
  Shakespeare's play that I brought out.
• 1:00:23
  OK. That, but that's what makes it
• 1:00:29
  feel contemporary. And I think people are getting
• 1:00:31
  that when we show it to them. But it is a hard question.
• 1:00:35
  How do you do that? How do you make it your own?
• 1:00:37
  How do you modernize it? Yeah, yeah, because there's a
• 1:00:40
  lot that I've been thinking about.
• 1:00:42
  I mean, I was just, I did a a fascinating podcast last week
• 1:00:45
  with a woman that specialized in the history, unknown history
• 1:00:50
  essentially, of Japanese war crimes in World War 2.
• 1:00:54
  Wow. I don't know anything about it.
• 1:00:55
  I didn't even know that that was a thing.
• 1:00:56
  I didn't know anything, you know, and, and, and apparently a
• 1:00:59
  lot of information was classified and, and there's
• 1:01:02
  only, and it was never even digitized.
• 1:01:04
  And she had single handedly almost, I think maybe a small
• 1:01:07
  team digitized like 1,000,000 copies or over 1,000,000 copies
• 1:01:10
  of information. As she said, we have Civil War
• 1:01:14
  documents that are in better kept condition because they were
• 1:01:17
  written on cotton paper as opposed to World War 2 where
• 1:01:20
  production was pretty much at a standstone in the States.
• 1:01:23
  And so the quality of paper was garbage.
• 1:01:25
  So as soon as these papers deteriorate, history's gone.
• 1:01:29
  You know, our awareness of that of that was gone.
• 1:01:32
  But one thing that we were talking about was so many things
• 1:01:35
  that were happening in the early 1900s are exactly rhyming with
• 1:01:40
  what's happening today. And it wouldn't even take that
• 1:01:42
  much to kind of make contemporary, you know, I mean,
• 1:01:44
  OK, trade a horse, trade a horse and buggy for, for Aston Martin.
• 1:01:49
  And, you know, and trade, you know, I mean, you don't even
• 1:01:52
  have to trade the characters, like the main characters of the
• 1:01:54
  countries or whatever it is. That's that's who it is, you
• 1:01:57
  know, So I think, I think that it's more about the new, it's
• 1:02:03
  almost like cultural and like a little bit of like nuance of
• 1:02:05
  like technology. But other than that, a lot of
• 1:02:08
  this already lends itself to just human nature, which is
• 1:02:10
  consistent. Yeah, thank God human nature is
• 1:02:13
  consistent. Yeah, you don't.
• 1:02:15
  You don't have to have cell phones all the time to man.
• 1:02:18
  It's how you do a play. That's my next step.
• 1:02:20
  I got to get rid of my cell phone.
• 1:02:21
  I got to get. I got to get one of those flip
• 1:02:23
  phones. You know what I'm talking about.
• 1:02:24
  They don't have. Really.
• 1:02:26
  Yeah, that's my next goal, I thought.
• 1:02:28
  Your generation was quite comfortable with all that stuff.
• 1:02:32
  We are I think that we're going to see very quickly that we were
• 1:02:36
  a test, a lab test generation for social media and the impact
• 1:02:42
  of constantly living in a combination of comparison and
• 1:02:46
  consumerism world where everyone is comparing themselves to
• 1:02:48
  everyone and purchasing everything beyond any kind of,
• 1:02:52
  you know, sustainability, you know, so, so I'd rather just
• 1:02:58
  separate myself from that off the get go.
• 1:03:01
  And you know what everything I got to do, I got to do, I could
• 1:03:03
  do on my computer. You know, I mean, there's really
• 1:03:05
  no reason to walk around with. I mean, if my wife used to call
• 1:03:09
  me, my kids need to call me. Got a phone number, You want to
• 1:03:11
  send me a text SOS, I'll come pick you up.
• 1:03:13
  And that's the end of it. You know, that's, that's my
• 1:03:16
  ambitions. Sounds like a good idea.
• 1:03:18
  Definitely, Billy. I really appreciate the time.
• 1:03:20
  This is such a fun conversation. This is really great and I
• 1:03:24
  really, you're thoughtful, you're sweet, you got you tell
• 1:03:28
  an amazing story and I really wish you tons of luck with all
• 1:03:32
  these next exciting phases and hopefully you can accomplish
• 1:03:35
  success while treating yourself well at the same time.
• 1:03:39
  That's the goal. That's the goal.
• 1:03:40
  That's the goal. Thanks.
• 1:03:41
  Brian, I've I've enjoyed this very much.
• 1:03:43
  This is such a pleasure. All the best.
• 1:03:45
  Take Care now. Thank you.
• 1:03:46
  Take care. Bye.
• 1:03:46
  Bye.