Latest / Ridiculous History / The Secret World Of Roald Dahl, with Aaron Tracy, Part Two: the Man Behind the Author

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The Secret World Of Roald Dahl, with Aaron Tracy, Part Two: the Man Behind the Author · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: tuning in. This is part two two of our continuing
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: conversation with none other than Aaron Tracy, the award winning writer,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the founder of Parallax, a producer who's done pretty much everything,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: including creating the new hit podcast The Secret World of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Roald Dahl. That is our super producer, Max the gob
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  Speaker 1: Stopper Williams. Max, how are we doing.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Low, I'm doing well. I am excited for the second
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  Speaker 2: half of this interview. It is absolutely amazing. It is
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  Speaker 2: great to have Aaron on here with his excellent knowledge
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  Speaker 2: and takes, and so yeah, excited for the second part.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And our Pale Nol is on an adventure currently, but
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: we'll be returning very soon. So in the meantime, if
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: you haven't checked out part one of this interview, do
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: that first. We'll wait, We'll still be right here on
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: your app or on your phone or whatever, and then
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: get back to us and join us.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: We're going to dive right in.
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  Speaker 1: We also know and is the story of the Irregulars
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: is something you explore pretty early on in the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: We also know that we can prove he was in
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  Speaker 1: the regulars. But as you have pointed out, in the
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  Speaker 1: course of your extensive research, you found that Dall was
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  Speaker 1: first and foremost a committed, immaculate storyteller who maybe maybe
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  Speaker 1: shures things up a little bit. What he's talking about
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: is past. Could you tell us, I'm trying to think
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  Speaker 1: of a diplomatic way to say this, so just to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: put it bluntly, because rule Dall is not with us
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: on the show today, how much of how much of
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: what he said about his past escapades was true? At
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  Speaker 1: how much of it was more like a good story.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's a great question and impossible to answer,
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  Speaker 4: of course, but we know a ton of it is true.
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  Speaker 4: We know sort of the foundation is all true. I
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  Speaker 4: think when you get past the foundation into the specific details,
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  Speaker 4: you're right that some of it might have just been
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  Speaker 4: Doll's story telling. If you look at his first couple
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  Speaker 4: memoirs about his childhood, they're written very much in the
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  Speaker 4: style of his children's books, and so there's almost like
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  Speaker 4: a kind of a wink wink, I think that you
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  Speaker 4: know these are so so whimsical, so fantastical. It's like, yes,
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  Speaker 4: these are memoirs, these are autobiographies, but come on, it's
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  Speaker 4: not like every detail is true. So there's a bunch
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  Speaker 4: of examples of him exaggerating. Like in his memoir he
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  Speaker 4: talks about his crash when he's flying for the RAF
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  Speaker 4: and he talks about being alone and the circuitry malfunctioning
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  Speaker 4: and crashing in the desert. In truth, what we know
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  Speaker 4: is that there was another pilot with him, and it
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: wasn't just that the circuitry and the plane malfunctioned. It
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: was that Doll had run out of fuel. But he
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  Speaker 4: he likes the story, you know, And we see that
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  Speaker 4: sort of throughout his life that he's always sort of
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  Speaker 4: he'll never pass up the opportunity for a really good
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  Speaker 4: story when he can.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So not necessarily lying or making things up entirely
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  Speaker 1: out of whole cloth, but kind of painting himself perhaps
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  Speaker 1: says a bit more of a heroic figure.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, okay, here's another example. As a spy, Dall
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  Speaker 4: was getting close to the Roosevelts. Eleanor was a huge
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  Speaker 4: fan of that story that I mentioned that Doll wrote
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  Speaker 4: The Gremlins and she used to read it to her grandkids.
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  Speaker 4: And she invited him over to the White House. And
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  Speaker 4: because everyone of Doll you know, as I mentioned, he
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  Speaker 4: was charming and handsome and dashing and a great storyteller,
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  Speaker 4: and he charmed the Roosevelts, and they invited him up
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  Speaker 4: to Hyde Park their weekend retreat, and he went up
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  Speaker 4: several different times. So we know that that's all true.
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  Speaker 4: What we do I don't know for sure is everything
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  Speaker 4: that Dall put in his memoir and talked about on interviews,
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  Speaker 4: which is that FDR would ask him to mix Martini's
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  Speaker 4: and FDR took him for a joy ride and his
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  Speaker 4: specially made car, and that they just became like incredibly
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  Speaker 4: close friends. Hard to know, right, but Dall definitely did
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  Speaker 4: spend time with the Roosevelts, and definitely did write a
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  Speaker 4: twelve page report after the first weekend that he spent
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  Speaker 4: with them over the July fourth weekend in nineteen forty
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  Speaker 4: and sent back to Churchill about, you know, everything Churchill
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  Speaker 4: was dying to know about FDR, namely, does FDR want
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  Speaker 4: to help us, does he want to enter the war?
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  Speaker 4: What's his current thinking on the situation. So all of
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  Speaker 4: that is absolutely true.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So then we have we so we know at
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  Speaker 1: the core that that kind of initiative is successful, which
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  Speaker 1: is great to hear. So the important parts, at least
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  Speaker 1: in that instance are true. But I've got to say it,
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  Speaker 1: it reminds me of something that I've seen happen in
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  Speaker 1: Los Angeles where you know, somebody is at a restaurant
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  Speaker 1: and they cite a celebrity in this, you know, across
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the dining room, and then later they go to their
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: friends and they say, oh, Robert de Niro, Yeah, I know,
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  Speaker 1: we have dinner together sometimes.
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  Speaker 5: That's good.
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  Speaker 1: So maybe that maybe there's a little bit of that
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  Speaker 1: kind of showmanship.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's also twenty six years old, right, So who
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  Speaker 4: doesn't boast and exaggerate a little bit when they're twenty six,
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  Speaker 4: especially when you're in these kinds of when you're running
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  Speaker 4: in these kinds of circles. There's a there's another story
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  Speaker 4: where he he says that he went back to his
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  Speaker 4: superiors after dating Claire Booflouos for a little while and
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  Speaker 4: said he couldn't do it anymore, like she was just
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  Speaker 4: too voracious, he couldn't take her anymore. And he makes
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  Speaker 4: up this whole story about how the ambassador says to him.
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  Speaker 5: You got to go back, you got to do it.
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  Speaker 4: Remember that Charles Latton movie about Henry the Eighth where
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: Charles Ltton sort of turns the camera and says, the
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  Speaker 4: things I've done for England, you know, you got to
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  Speaker 4: suck it up. You've got to do that yourself. I
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  Speaker 4: have no idea if that's Sue or not. It feels
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  Speaker 4: a little bit like Dolls just boasting about, you know,
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: sort of Claire's appetite for him. He would later go
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: on to put the things I've done for England line
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  Speaker 4: into Sean Connery's mouth and James Bond. So you know,
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  Speaker 4: these guys they like exaggerating, they like a good story.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think it's a it's necessarily a
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  Speaker 4: coincidence that the irregulars that I mentioned that Dolls hanging
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: out with are all creators. They're all creatives. They're Ian Fleming,
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  Speaker 4: the writer of James Bond, David Ogilvy, who would go
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  Speaker 4: on to write, you know, to create a whole cloth
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: like original, the most influential advertising campaigns, Noel Coward, the playwright.
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  Speaker 4: These are all creative writers who are somehow caught up
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: in the spy game.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And I love the I also love the idea of
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: of Rolled as a reluctant lithario, you know what I mean,
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  Speaker 1: like like Casanova with regrets. He's just so beloved, is
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  Speaker 1: the thing. So uh yeah, this takes us to This
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: takes us to another aspect of his wartime years that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: we have to return to because it's something that I
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: know obviously profoundly disturbs us, and it disturbs everyone in
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the audience as well, we know, or I hope, which
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: is a strange contradiction in his ideology and his perspective.
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  Speaker 1: One of the biggest questions I had is, Okay, this
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  Speaker 1: guy fought for the Allies in World War Two again
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: against the Axis Powers, against the Nazis. He has that
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  Speaker 1: infamous a series of infamous interviews where later, despite putting
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  Speaker 1: his life on the line for the Allied Powers and
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: to combat the horrors of the Axis Powers, he does
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  Speaker 1: later just because there's no way around it. He's inarguably
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  Speaker 1: unapologetically anti Semitic, and he doubles down on it like
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  Speaker 1: throughout his later life. What is there some context that
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  Speaker 1: could explain this apparent contradiction. How did he go from
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  Speaker 1: fighting Nazis to agree with their horrific ideology.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think you're right that they're connected.
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  Speaker 4: He saw himself as well as everyone he was fighting
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  Speaker 4: with the in the nineteen forties as sort of saving
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  Speaker 4: the Jews of Europe. In later years, he he became
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  Speaker 4: incredibly enraged at what Israel was doing, specifically what Israel
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  Speaker 4: was doing in Lebanon. And so the most famous example
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  Speaker 4: of Dolls bigotry coming out is this interview he gave
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  Speaker 4: to the New Statesman in nineteen eighty three. And the
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  Speaker 4: reason he gave that interview is because he had just
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  Speaker 4: written a book review about the Lebanon War. And in
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  Speaker 4: that book review he was really critical of Israel. But
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  Speaker 4: what he did was this sort of classic anti Semitic trope.
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  Speaker 4: He instead of criticizing the leadership of the Israeli government
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  Speaker 4: and the military, he criticized all Jews everywhere. So he
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  Speaker 4: said in this interview, there is a trait in the
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  Speaker 4: Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Even a stinker like
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. He
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  Speaker 4: did later say in an interview, I've become antisemitic. He
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  Speaker 4: really he could not separate his hatred for what the
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  Speaker 4: Israeli government was doing to the Lebanese with his his
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  Speaker 4: feelings for Jews everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: This is such a tremendously important point. You know, history
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  Speaker 1: is always closer than it looks in the rear view mirror,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: we like to say. And I think you're you're bringing
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: to light something important and powerful that the government of
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: a place is, more often than not, not the representative,
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  Speaker 1: not the full picture of the people of the place.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: You know, most most people around the planet, they want
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to know that they're going to eat something later that day.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: They want to have a safe place to sleep, they
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  Speaker 1: want their kids to have a better life, and they
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: want to be successful. And I think it's something that,
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  Speaker 1: especially in these devisive times, we all could do well
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  Speaker 1: to remember.
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  Speaker 5: You know.
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  Speaker 3: It's it's it's.
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  Speaker 1: A shame that it's a shame that doll fell so
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  Speaker 1: so hard. But this I agree with you that, at
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  Speaker 1: least in my limited experience, not being a scholar in
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: this regard, in my limited experience, I didn't clock stuff
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: like that. I'm prob I was probably a in his work.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: When I'm reading it, I didn't like you, I didn't
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  Speaker 1: clock anti semitism. But also I was kind of a
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: dirt bag kid. So all the times I saw somebody
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: called fat or ugly, I thought it was hilarious. You know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: so maybe not the best judge.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Guess there's something else we want to get to a
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: bit of a plot twist in our conversation here now, folks,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: right now, you can check out the secret world of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Role Doll, available wherever you find your favorite shows. But
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: we don't want to end our conversation there. We have
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: been talking a lot about one writer, erin, but if
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I could beg a little bit more of your time,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I'd like to ask you about another writer, a guy
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: named a guy named Aaron Tracy.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: You is that okay?
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: Is that just imagine to talk about my writing? Yeah?
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Of course, awesome, Okay, thank you so much.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: So.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: One of the questions that I know a lot of
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: current writers or budding writers in the audience tonight are
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: going to have is how did you become a writer?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: What drew and what draws you to the written word.
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  Speaker 4: So I've always been, I think, like you, a giant
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: movie buff and TV buff too, and so I wanted
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: to do that. It's not so much that I just
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: want to that, I just wanted to write. It's that
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: I wanted to be involved in movies and TV as
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: a kid, and so at first I thought I could
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: be an actor, and then, you know, quickly realized I
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: did not have the talent for that or the the
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: interest in that, and so the next best thing was
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: being the storyteller. So, just like just like Doll, just
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  Speaker 4: like millions of other people, I moved to Los Angeles
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: after school and just sort of tried to make it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: And you know, there's no one way to do it, unfortunately,
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: It's it's not like a apprenticeship like in like in
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: the old days, or or even in a professional.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: Like a trade.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, there's no clear path, and so everybody just
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: finds their own way. And for me, I just wrote
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: a bunch of scripts until I had a couple that
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  Speaker 4: I was, you know, willing to to show people at least,
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: and then just got my first job and kind of
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: moved up from there.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: That's awesome and it's going to be inspiring for a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: lot of our fellow ridiculous historians to hear about this journey.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Next question on this subject, okay man, what is to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the degree that you're comfortable sharing on air, what is
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the strangest project you ever found yourself in. Have you
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: ever had one of those moments where you looked around
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and thought, Holy smokes, how did I get here?
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: Oh? My god? So many. I mean, anybody, anybody that.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: Spent enough time writing TV and movies is going to
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: have just bananas stories. I mean, the first one that
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: comes to me is a writing partner and I my
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: friend Andrew. We were working with Lionsgate on a project
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: and then they teamed up with a toy company and
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: they brought us the board game Risk to try to
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: adapt into TV, which was I mean incredible, right, Like,
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: it's got so much name recognition, it's been around forever,
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: people really know it. But when you think about it
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: for a few seconds, you then remember that there's a
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: pretty big obstacle, which is that there are no characters
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: in Risk, so you have to make up everything. I mean,
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: it's completely nuts. It's like the new you know, it's
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: it's not so much new anymore, but for for a while,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: and still to a large degree, ip is everything. Can
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: you get a cereal box? Can you get a board game?
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: Can you get a comic book? Like what can we do?
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: That's already in the public consciousness, what can we take
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: and turn into a show and so so risk was
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: a truly crazy one for me. We spent a lot
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: of time on that. I'll say another could just kind
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: of totally surreal moment in my career was I was
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: I wrote a pilot for the USA Network and we
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: ended up making it, which was great. We cast an
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: amazing writer who was also an actor to play one
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: of the essential roles in the pilot, and that was
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: Tom McCarthy. And Tom McCarthy had just come off winning
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: the Oscar for Best Screenplay and so here I am
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: writing for this guy. I'm like, you know, I'm so
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: insecure about my writing. All writers are insecure about their writing, right,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: but like, this is my first big pilot to get made,
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: and here I am trying to write dialogue for the
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: reigning Oscar winner for Best Screenplay.
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: I was so humiliated.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: I was just so insecure that that was a very
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: tough Hollywood experience for me.
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: But you know, he was.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: He couldn't have been sweeter. And you know, he didn't
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: constantly tell me what an idiot or what a bad
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: writer I was. So I would check that up up
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: as a win.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, I would agree I think you're being a little
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: hard on yourself, my friend. I also, my spidy sense
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: is telling me that you probably have war stories for
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: days in the trenches of writing so much for TV
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and film and thank you for thank you for sharing those.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I'm between us. I am convinced that there are probably
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: a couple of stories that are probably better not for
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the air.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: Maybe we do it in the dark place, man.
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's tough out there.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: We can hang out, we can hang out in the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: future and talk about some of this stuff. But I
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: love I love picking the brains of writers, of people
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: who have successfully successfully.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: Journeyed in this field.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Right, And with that, one of the questions we always
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: like to ask when when we get together in these
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: kind of circles, is uh, who are some of your
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: favorite writers today? What are you reading? What are you
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: what are you digging?
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Are you?
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Are you at the point now after the Secret World
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of Role Doll where you're saying I need a break
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: from this one author.
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: Yes, I'm definitely putting all of my roll Doll books
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: in the closet. I've got a stack of them in
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: front of me. But yeah, as soon as the show's
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: over there, they're all going away for a while. Yeah,
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: I mean I have so many favorite writers I've been reading.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: In terms of fiction, I've been reading a lot of
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: mysteries lately. Patricia high Smith. I I recently discovered who's
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: just as extraordinary as everybody says. Uh, They're they're great
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: page turners and and and they make.
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: You think uh.
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: In in film and TV, I'm a giant Aaron Sorkin fan.
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: I love William Goldman, I love Nora Ephron. So many screenwriters,
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: but I love Marty Supreme. I love the screenplay there.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: Noah Bombach is one of my all time favorite writers,
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: and he's got a new movie this year.
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: Richard G. Linkletter too, He's got two new movies.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, basically too many to name.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a that's a great spot to be
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: rights as a as a reader, as a as an
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: audience member. That's that's the kind of stuff we love.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I I got I recently because I was on some
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: long plane flights. I recently got back into the phenomenal
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: short story writer Edgar Carrott. Pretty pretty hard.
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: To me.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: He's he's like the next or the new Kurt Vonnegut.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's cool, snappy, just on the edge
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of approachable surreal. I guess we could call it. I
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's an aesthetic. We're just making up
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: on the air, Aaron. One other thing that stood out
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: that I saw you mentioned often in conversation was that
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: just as Roald Dahl had heroes, you have heroes of
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: your own, one of whom is the legendary Rob Reiner.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: We were We were immensely fortunate on one of our
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: sister shows, Stuff they don't want you to know, to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: interview mister Reiner for a podcast he did on the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: controversy and conspiracy surrounding the jfk assassination, and for my money,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: it comes the closest to answering some of those unanswered questions.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Just because I think it would be fun for Rob
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: to have heard us fanboy a little and embarrass him.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Could you could you tell us about why this, why
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: this guy in particular is such a hero of yours.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we could start the podcast over.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: I could go another hour just talking about Rob. I
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: absolutely loved him. He was such a great mentor figure
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: for me. He produced a pilot that I wrote, and
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: so I got to work in his office at Castle Rock.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: They put me in the in the room next door
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: to his office, and so I got to constantly hear
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: him on the phone in the next room and got
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: no work done, of course, But he was he was
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: just so caring. He would take me and my co
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: writer Andrew out to lunch all the time and just
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: regale us with stories because he had you know, he
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: had been in the business for decades and decades and
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: decades and knew everybody, and everybody loved him. He was
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: also besides being I think one of the great directors
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: of all time, he was a fantastic producer. He and
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: his company produced so many movies that that people probably
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: don't even think of in relation to him, like the
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: Shawshank Redemption comes to mind. But you know, when I
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: talk about when I talk about Doll's time in Hollywood
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: in the podcast, I talk a little bit about the
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: various runs by great directors because Dahl worked with Hitchcock,
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: not you know, during Hitchcock's great run, and a lot
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: of people think that that was maybe the greatest run
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: by a director of all time, Hitchcock leading up to Psycho.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: But I think you could.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: Argue that Rob Reiner in the late eighties to early
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: nineties actually had the greatest run of movies ever. I mean,
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: in this very brief period of time, in less than
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: a decade he made when Harry met Sally and a
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: few good men and the American President and stand by me,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: the Princess Bride. It just the body of work is extraordinary,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: and just how giving he was and how willing he
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: was to share his wisdom and encourage young writers. I
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: had him and the script that I wrote that he produced,
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: and it's one of my prized possessions, one of my
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: other prize possessions. And this says a lot about how
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: much doll or excuse me, how much Rhiner really appreciated writers.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: In the basement of Castle Rock, where I used to
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: sneak down after after hours, he had a room that
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: was aligned with bookshelves from Florida ceiling, and on those
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: bookshelves he had every draft of every one of the
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: scripts he ever developed. And so there's like two shelves
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: that are just drafts of whin Harrimet Sally, for instance,
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: which is a movie I love all the way back
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: from what it was just called Words with Love that
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: was the original title, and I took that and I
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: went upstairs and I photo copied it, and I have
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: that in my drawer now too. I never told him
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: I did that, but it was Yeah, it was just
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: it was so nice to go down there and be
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: surrounded by the work of writers that Rob Shepherd did.
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: Wow, this is.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: A story that I was totally unaware of. And I
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: think it speaks to this practice of lineage because it
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: sounds like you, in that process, you were encountering something
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: very like an apprenticeship to a journeyman position. And I
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: think we could also compare Rob Reiner to Rule Dall
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: in that in that he also Dall also inspired countless writers,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: countless countless folks who would go on to maybe write
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: their own young adult novels, or people who were so
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: just had their minds so rocked by the worlds that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Dahl created that they went out and creatively fed off
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: of that energy, off of that vibe with that, and
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: thank you for being so generous with your time here
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: With that, what do we hope our listeners take away
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: from the Secret world of Rule Doll, Like, we haven't
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: heard all the episodes yet, and we're not gonna ask
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: you to spoil them. But when the curtains close and
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the credits roll on the podcast and we're walking away
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: after we've heard the very last episode, the very last word,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: what do we hope the audience has learned?
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, in the largest sense, I hope people just
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: get a sense for what an incredibly interesting, noisy life
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: this guy lived and how much he was searching for
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: his identity, And so I hope people will. You know,
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: they'll of course be somewhat turned off by the bigotry,
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: but I think that people will also have a lot
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: of sympathy for him. You know, what we didn't get
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: into today is all the tragedies that Doll experience, especially
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: with his family as an adult, which directly led to
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: him writing the children's books. So I hope people will
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: have some sympathy for him as well. But you brought
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: up something else as you were talking about Rob Reiner
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: that I hope people take away from this, which is
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: both Rob Reiner and Roald Dahl had great mentors. Rob
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: talks about Norman Lear, the creator and sho runner of
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: All in the Family, being his great mentor, giving him
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: his job on All in the Family, and then financially
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: supporting him when he made the Princess bride just like
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: absolutely essential to his life. And Roal Dall also had
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: a couple really important mentors. We talked about William Stevenson,
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: but Roaldall also had this guy named Charles Marsh, who
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: was an incredibly wealthy newspaper magnet who was instrumental in
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: Dall becoming a writer. After the war, when Dahl moved
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: back to England and moved into his mother's basement and
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: it looked like maybe that was going to be it
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: for Dall and nothing whatever, uh you know, come of him,
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: Charles Marsh said, no way. Charles Marsh had met him
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: in DC when he was a spy and brought Dall
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: back to New York, paid for Doll to be in
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: an apartment, and introduced Doll to Harold Ross, who was
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: the founding editor of The New Yorker, and really started
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: Doll's writing career in that way. And I bring these
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: up because you know, I teach. I'm on creative writing
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: faculty at Yale, and so this idea of mentorship is
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: super important to me. And I think right now this
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: idea of mentorship is more important than ever because we're
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: finally we're living in a period which you know, because
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: of AI, because of the chatbots, the barriers to becoming
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: a writer are fewer and fewer, Like we can actually
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: now just ask a chatbot to write a script for us,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: and it won't be good right now, but at least
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: it will look like a script, and at least it
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: will have a lot of the elements of a script.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: And so when you break down the barriers to what
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: it means to become a writer, mentorship becomes so much
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: more important. It becomes essential to help writers UH figure
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: out what their point of view is, to figure out
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: how to translate you know, their their their sensibilities into
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: UH into their words on the page. Because AI writing
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: can just be so flat and uninteresting, and so we
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: need mentors UH more than we ever have, I would argue,
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: And so I think, Doll and Ryner, are you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: really good reminders about how important mentors are and that
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: you know, my hope, of course, is that people really
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: seek them out, and that people who are further along
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: in their career UH are more willing to to sort
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: of mentor younger writers.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Just what what a phenomenal way to bring everything together.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: At the end of the conversation, uh this. Uh. I
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: paused for a second and hopefully Max cut out that
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: slight silence because I was just hypnotized, you know, when
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: you're making these points, and then I forgot for a
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: second that we are on Aaron supposed to be. But
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: this leads us all to our very last question. Where
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: can people learn more about your work outside of the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: secret world of Rule Doll? And if your game for it,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: could you give us a little teaser about an upcoming
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: audio novel called The Honeymoon Period. No.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm writing a novel for McMillan. It's actually
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: going to be my first novel, so I'm excited about that.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: And yeah, it'll never be available in print. It is
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: for audio only, so I'm writing it as a novel,
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: but we're going to have a full cast and record
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: it and so you'll be able to listen to that
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: wherever you.
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: Get audio books. And that's very nice.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: If any he wants to know about my other work,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: they can go to my website, which is my company
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: is called Parallax, and so it simply listened to parallax
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: dot com and people can see all of the audio
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: dramas that I've written with lots of different actors over
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: the years, for Audible and for iHeart and my novel
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: will Be will be up there too.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And there you have it, folks, the Secret World of
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Rule Doll with Aaron Tracy. This is available now wherever
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: you find your favorite shows. We would love for you
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: to check it out. We are on the edge of
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: our seats actually because we came in. I'll confess we
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: came in like some other folks, doubtlessly who thought we
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: knew a lot about Rule Doll. It's spoiler folks. You're
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: going to be astonished by how much you don't know
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: just yet, so tune in let us know your thoughts ed. Aaron,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: thank you so much much for joining us.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. This has been truly a pleasure.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: That's been great.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: And there you have it, folks, friends, neighbors, countrymen.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Max.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: There's so much we didn't get to, and there is
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: so much that I think you and I and the
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: audience alike learned just from talking to Erin.
• 32:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah, there was so much to get to.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, it would be you know, amazing if there
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: was another podcast for people to you know, go listen to,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: or a guy like Aaron Tracy would break down these
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: details and much greater and you know, robust ideas. What
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: do you think about that? Wouldn't that be something you'd
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: want to listen to?
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. That's an amazing point, Max. It would
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: almost be like a secret world all its own, a
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: secret world of Role Doll. We should text Aaron with that,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: we should pitch that name to him.
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: I guess we'll just be wanting until until somebody doesn't.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Right it is available now. This is the kind of
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: show where you don't have to pay for the whole seat,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: because you're only going to need the edge.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: We're excited to.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Hear about your favorite Role Dull books. Please hit us
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: up on our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, et cetera, et cetera.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, big big thanks to our super producer,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, and tune in soon. The very next
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: week after this, we are going to bust some myths
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: about ancient history and the shape of the planet.
• 33:36
  Speaker 6: Turns out this Earth is actually just flat.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: The conspiracy is that it's round.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, that we're.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Talking about especial shout out to my actual facts quote
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Lauren Volbelbaum, brother Alex Williams for this slapping baby you
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: are listening to right now.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: And big big thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach, Lance
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: aj Bahama is Jacobs.
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: And oh do we have to thank him?
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: The omnipresent villain of our podcast, mister Jonathan doesn't want
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: to ride the glass elevator, Strickland.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: He's our very own bond villain and actually just off Mike.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: He's the nicest guy.
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: We roast him at the end, but sometimes I feel
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: a little bad and I sent him a text to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: check it.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Last time I saw him, we sat in the office
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: and we talked about video games.
• 34:29
  Speaker 6: For an hour straight.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, well, every conversation with him is about an hour
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: street and between the.
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: Two of us we have about twenty four inches of hair.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: So there's a reason that is hilarious. Folks will tell you.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: We'll tell you when the Quizzer appears on the show
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: again in the near future. In the meantime, thanks so
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. As Noel Brown, my brother in
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: podcast combat, always says, we'll see you next time, Folks.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,