Latest / Draw Me Anything with Jason Chatfield / DMA #47: Naked Kickstarters & Bypassing the Print-pocalypse with American Bystander's Michael Gerber

Transcript

DMA #47: Naked Kickstarters & Bypassing the Print-pocalypse with American Bystander's Michael Gerber · Draw Me Anything with Jason Chatfield

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, we're going to kick off.
0:01
SPEAKER_01: Everyone says you're shuffling in and taking your seats.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another edition of Draw Me Anything.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: My name is Jason Chatfield.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to everyone for the returning viewers.
0:11
And for the first timers,
0:13
I'm a cartoonist and a comedian in New York City.
0:15
And my special guest today is Michael Gerber,
0:18
the founder and editor of The American Bystander.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Michael?
0:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm fine.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: I have to say,
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SPEAKER_00: honor demands that I say that I'm not the founder,
0:28
SPEAKER_00: and that's a whole other story.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I misspoke.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: But I'm sort of the re-founder, co-founder, whatever you want to call it.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Re-founder, I should have said.
0:36
But that's part of what we get into,
0:38
and I think you'll really enjoy that.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Well,
0:40
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to start with a moment that I remember very vividly in 2015,
0:46
SPEAKER_01: 16,
0:46
SPEAKER_01: 17,
0:47
SPEAKER_01: something around there.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: I was sitting at the New Yorker in the cartoon lounge,
0:54
SPEAKER_01: which at the time wasn't really a cartoon lounge anymore.
0:57
It was just like a small room off to the side from where Bob's
1:01
office was.
1:03
And Sam Gross was sitting below a giant picture of his cartoon
1:08
with the mouse in the car.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: And he was holding a copy of this magazine.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: called The American Bystander.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: I was like, what the fuck?
1:17
SPEAKER_01: What is that?
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Because he was trying to explain to me.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: I was new to America.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I moved here in 2014.
1:24
To my brain,
1:25
my big Everest was like getting into MAD and getting into The
1:28
New Yorker.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: That was my...
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: As many cartoonists.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, have you heard of this magazine?
1:34
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I'm embarrassed to say that I don't.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: I haven't heard of it.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: And when he showed me the cartoons and the cartoonists that were in,
1:44
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
1:44
SPEAKER_01: this is everyone I love.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: These are all my favorite cartoonists in here.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: What the hell?
1:49
SPEAKER_01: How long has this thing been around?
1:50
SPEAKER_01: I think Arnie Roth did the cover to that one.
1:53
And I was like,
1:53
I think it was like a Christmas issue or something like that.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: It was number six.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Six, right.
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Yeah,
1:59
it was just beautiful,
2:00
incredible,
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you know,
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Arnie Roth,
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unmistakable,
2:04
you know,
2:05
style.
2:06
And it blew my mind because I'm looking through this thing and
2:09
he saw it in my face.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: He was like, yeah, right?
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, you should submit to this.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: So he was explaining to me, you know, you should submit and all that.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, the imposter syndrome sunk in.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, I don't belong in here.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: This is ridiculous.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: These are, you know, these are giants in here.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't belong in here.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: So that was my first introduction to it.
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SPEAKER_01: And I was so enamored of this magazine that I had no idea it existed.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's kind of the story of the business right there.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Everybody loves it.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Very few people know about it.
2:40
We're always trying to figure out how to get more people to
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know about it.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: How did you come to re-invigorate it?
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a story.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: What's an interesting story.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: So Brian McConaughey,
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who is the only person I know who worked for the original
2:56
National Lampoon in the
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SPEAKER_00: first five years,
2:58
SPEAKER_00: which is so great.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And then SNL in 76 to 80.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And then SCTV, like 80 to 82.
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SPEAKER_00: So he's the only person I know that has that sort of trifecta.
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SPEAKER_01: And I had known him.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: I'd known him for...
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: At this point, I'd known him for about five years.
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SPEAKER_00: And he and a friend of his named Alan Goldberg,
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SPEAKER_00: who's still our senior writer at Bystander,
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SPEAKER_00: came to me and they wanted to do a radio show,
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SPEAKER_00: like an old-fashioned radio show,
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SPEAKER_00: like the National Lampoon Radio Hour,
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SPEAKER_00: if anybody's ever heard that.
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And they talked to me because they knew,
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I don't know,
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they knew I was kind of a wild card.
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And,
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um,
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and I said,
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well,
3:37
I don't,
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I don't know how that business works.
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SPEAKER_00: This was in 2012.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how that business works,
3:43
SPEAKER_00: but I will tell you this,
3:44
SPEAKER_00: that if,
3:45
SPEAKER_00: if we do a magazine,
3:47
SPEAKER_00: um,
3:48
SPEAKER_00: you'll get a podcast,
3:49
SPEAKER_00: you know?
3:49
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And so they, all right, well, how would you do a magazine?
3:52
SPEAKER_00: And so then,
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SPEAKER_00: uh,
3:54
SPEAKER_00: I said,
3:54
SPEAKER_00: well,
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SPEAKER_00: I've developed a,
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SPEAKER_00: a really super lean publishing model for the,
3:59
SPEAKER_00: uh,
3:59
SPEAKER_00: for the Yale record in college humor magazines in general.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Like,
4:02
SPEAKER_00: how do you,
4:03
SPEAKER_00: how do you create a good looking humor magazine with a staff of five,
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SPEAKER_00: three of whom are drunk?
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SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, how do you do that?
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And so I had worked on that for a long time using a lot of new
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technology.
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And I figured,
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I said to these guys,
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I said,
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look,
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I think I can apply a lot of the same
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SPEAKER_00: techniques.
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And what I'll do is I'll come up with it because I was just
4:22
getting over a terrible
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SPEAKER_00: illness that was decades.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't know physically whether I could run a magazine.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: And so I said, look, I'll do this.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: I'll put together a dummy for you.
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SPEAKER_00: And then I'll give it to you.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: And then you can do what you want.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: And the guy said, sure.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's fine.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: So we worked on it and we were trying to get funding.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: We tried to do it conventionally.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: We tried to get somebody to give us, you know, $5 million or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00: And there was a guy who was going to give us...
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a bunch of money because he was in tight with a bunch of
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Chinese oligarchs.
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SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, well, I'll give you the money.
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If you put a bunch of the sons of Chinese oligarchs on your
5:00
magazine nest head to
5:01
SPEAKER_00: give them H1B H1B visas.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And we were like, sure.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: What, you know, whatever.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: But that fell through at the last minute.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: And so the guys were like, well, now what do we do?
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And, um, and I said, well,
5:17
SPEAKER_00: I kind of fucked up the story.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but, but at a certain point I showed them the dummy.
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SPEAKER_00: I showed Alan and Brian the dummy.
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SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, here you go.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Here's a magazine.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go off and do something else.
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SPEAKER_00: Um, and they said, oh, we could never do this.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't know how to run this kind of thing.
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SPEAKER_00: And I said, okay, well then let me run it.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Um,
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SPEAKER_00: and after our,
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SPEAKER_00: our funding fell through,
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SPEAKER_00: I,
5:41
SPEAKER_00: I said to them,
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SPEAKER_00: well,
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SPEAKER_00: I think we could at least,
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SPEAKER_00: we could at least try to do one issue via Kickstarter.
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SPEAKER_00: And that first issue is like a book because we thought it was a one-off.
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SPEAKER_01: Was that 2015?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was October 2015 is when we launched it.
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SPEAKER_00: And I had no idea whether it was going to be successful or not.
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SPEAKER_00: And, you know...
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SPEAKER_00: It was,
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SPEAKER_00: I remember I was jumping in the shower,
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SPEAKER_00: so I was stark naked and I hit,
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SPEAKER_00: when I hit like,
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SPEAKER_00: okay,
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SPEAKER_00: go on the Kickstarter.
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And I thought either this is like a really good omen or a
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really terrible omen.
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SPEAKER_00: So we,
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SPEAKER_00: we funded in,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: and then,
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SPEAKER_00: and what was funny about that,
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SPEAKER_00: we funded and we funded quickly.
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SPEAKER_00: And then people are like, when's issue two coming out?
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, I guess I'm running a magazine now.
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SPEAKER_00: And so that's how, that's how that all worked.
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SPEAKER_01: So 2015, so that's 11 years ago, I guess?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 11 in October.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
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SPEAKER_01: that's a long time for it to sustain anything like this,
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SPEAKER_01: especially a print magazine,
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especially something that's funded in such a way that bypasses
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all of the sort of
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SPEAKER_01: corporate overlords and the advertisers and all that kind of stuff.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: The model is ballsy.
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SPEAKER_01: It's good, though.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's similar to the College Human Magazine model in that it's like,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: The magazine, the, the, the, okay.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Very quickly.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: The corporate magazine model is back in the day.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: It was essentially, um, you'd try to break even on your newsstand sales.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: You'd lose money on your subscriptions.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: You'd, you know, like Esquire will give you a year for $9 or whatever.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:20
You'll lose money on your subscriptions,
7:22
but then that means your rate base,
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uh,
7:25
from your newsstand sales and your subscriptions would be high
7:29
enough that whatever
7:29
SPEAKER_00: profit you make come from your advertisers.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the three corners of the stool, as they'd call it.
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SPEAKER_00: And so back in the day,
7:37
SPEAKER_00: and certainly this was,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: when I was in the magazine business in the 90s,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: this was still how things would work.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: You know,
7:43
the idea is you go and try to find some ne'er-do-well son of an
7:48
industrialist and
7:49
SPEAKER_00: say,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: we'd like to do a magazine.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: By the 90s even,
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, humor magazines were not people, people were not funding them.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, those kinds of people would be interested.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: I remember going to magazine,
8:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:05
SPEAKER_00: meeting with,
8:06
SPEAKER_00: uh,
8:06
SPEAKER_00: people in magazine business,
8:07
SPEAKER_00: pitching a bystander like magazine in 1992.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And they were trying to decide between my,
8:13
SPEAKER_00: uh,
8:14
SPEAKER_00: proposal and a guy named,
8:16
SPEAKER_00: um,
8:17
SPEAKER_00: what was his first name?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he was the son of Ralph Lauren.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And he was doing a lifestyle magazine.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And,
8:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:26
SPEAKER_00: so this was a situation where just from the average,
8:29
SPEAKER_00: from the model,
8:31
SPEAKER_00: there was no question.
8:32
Humor magazines really appeal to readers and they really run on
8:35
newsstand.
8:36
And that's why they can survive in a place like England where
8:39
there's very small,
8:41
SPEAKER_00: it's geographically small.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: You can print them in one place.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: The numbers just work better.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
8:47
Or maybe someplace like Australia where you can hit five cities
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and get the
8:52
SPEAKER_00: majority of the eyeballs of the potential readers.
8:56
In America,
8:57
you know,
8:58
back in the day when there's newsstands in every city,
9:01
it worked.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: But once those started to die, the whole model fell apart.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm just rambling.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: This is interesting stuff.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people don't know about this.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this is the thing.
9:13
And particularly if you live in New York,
9:15
you're like,
9:15
well,
9:15
why aren't there more magazines?
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Because in New York, there are newsstands.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: In Chicago, even, there aren't very many newsstands.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: My folks live right downtown in the Loop.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you have to go to Barnes & Noble.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: In L.A. where I live.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty slim thickens.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: So it's just like, how do people even see magazines?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: So the idea was, the whole idea behind the model was, how do we create?
9:40
It wasn't focused on get $20 million from the son of the
9:45
Coleman mustard person and
9:47
SPEAKER_00: hope to be able to give them $40 million in five years.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: It was more like,
9:53
SPEAKER_00: well,
9:54
if we want to print this kind of material and we want it to get
9:57
to readers,
9:59
SPEAKER_00: how do we make it work as leanly as possible?
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And so everything is, how do we do it efficiently?
10:03
SPEAKER_00: How do we get it directly to readers?
10:05
SPEAKER_00: But also, how do we make it look as good as an old magazine?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Just as you say,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: you look at it and you're like,
10:12
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Jack Ziegler and Sam Gross and all these people.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
10:17
that's the thing that jumped out at me is not just that it was
10:19
a full of these
10:20
SPEAKER_01: incredibly talented cartoonists and their work,
10:22
SPEAKER_01: but it was just
10:23
SPEAKER_01: It was very professionally done.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: It felt like a real professional.
10:27
It felt like a very professional publication that had been put
10:31
together by a
10:31
SPEAKER_01: gigantic team,
10:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:33
SPEAKER_01: on a massive floor in a World Trade Center building.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: And it was this ragtag skeleton crew that put it together.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I got to be honest.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: One?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Me in front of my computer.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: That's unbelievable.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Because Brian was born in 42, I think.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, even by 2017, he was... What is that?
10:51
SPEAKER_00: He was...
11:01
SPEAKER_00: 73 or something.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: And Alan's about that age too,
11:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:05
SPEAKER_00: and I didn't,
11:05
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have enough money to,
11:07
SPEAKER_00: to hire out the design.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: So you just had to learn to do it.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: So, well, yeah.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'd been designing for many years,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: but,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: but then also too,
11:14
SPEAKER_00: and this,
11:14
SPEAKER_00: you might find this interesting.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Like,
11:16
SPEAKER_00: All of the – it's all purpose-built for a skeleton crew as you can get,
11:21
SPEAKER_00: where it's like the design is done in such a way so that it's modular,
11:25
so I can commission an article and I can commission an
11:28
illustration and they can
11:28
SPEAKER_00: come in at different times and they're not integrated.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so it was all to how does one crazy person do this?
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so a skeleton basically.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there is that, and it's sort of accordions.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: If I get a lot of good stuff,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: if I get a lot of good one-pagers,
11:46
SPEAKER_00: then that issue has more one-pagers.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, guys, if this looks a little weird.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm holding this phone with my hand.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: It's okay, it's totally fine.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: We had a note,
11:56
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
11:56
SPEAKER_01: from one of the listeners saying,
11:57
SPEAKER_01: Mike is the best editor to work for.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: That was E.R.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Flynn who said that.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Oh!
12:02
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Ed is,
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Ed is really sweet because I'm always like going,
12:06
SPEAKER_00: okay,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: no,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Ed,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: this is where the joke is.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: You got to do this, that, and the other thing.
12:10
It's really nice of him to say that because I generally,
12:13
my,
12:13
this is another thing.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, I am not a frustrated writer.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: I am both frustrated and a writer, but I am not a frustrated writer.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: So I,
12:21
SPEAKER_00: when people submit to me,
12:23
SPEAKER_00: my goal with them,
12:25
SPEAKER_00: uh,
12:26
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:26
SPEAKER_00: certainly when you and I work together,
12:28
SPEAKER_00: when you submit a piece,
12:28
SPEAKER_00: it was always,
12:29
SPEAKER_00: it's always like,
12:31
SPEAKER_00: You're looking at somebody.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: You're like, what's special about them?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: How do I get more of that?
12:37
SPEAKER_00: How do I unlock them?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's completely different than an editor at a big magazine.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: That's not how you're trained.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: That's such a big piece.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: I talk about this with cartoons all the time and comedians as well.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: I was in Michigan last week for the Traverse City Comedy Festival.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: And I was with an agent.
12:56
And at the back of the room,
12:57
he's a guy who used to send me out for road work all the time.
13:00
and he's been in the industry like 40 years 40 something years
13:04
and there was a
13:05
panel of bookers you know for one nighters and clubs and
13:07
festivals you know they're
13:08
all talking about to comedians about hey here's how to get
13:11
booked and here's how to
13:12
be a professional comedian and all this sort of stuff and the
13:15
agent in the back of
13:15
SPEAKER_01: the room
13:16
kind of took him to task because he said,
13:18
you know,
13:19
you guys used to actually develop acts.
13:22
You used to actually give them this opportunity to grow and
13:27
learn and you used to
13:28
SPEAKER_01: hone that,
13:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:29
SPEAKER_01: you used to give them that.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: You don't do that anymore.
13:31
You just have this glut of people coming in from like TikTok
13:34
and whatever.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: And you just throw them up and you don't care.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: You don't develop them.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: You don't,
13:39
SPEAKER_01: given feature spots or anything like that.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Their response was twofold.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: I think it was,
13:44
SPEAKER_01: A,
13:44
SPEAKER_01: there's just too many comics,
13:45
SPEAKER_01: and B,
13:46
SPEAKER_01: like,
13:46
SPEAKER_01: well,
13:46
SPEAKER_01: when every TikTok headliner wants to bring their own feature,
13:50
it means that we only have like 11 out of 52 weekends of the
13:52
year that we can
13:53
SPEAKER_01: develop an act or get a local person on.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: So it is hard.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: But it used to be a part of being an editor...
14:01
SPEAKER_01: or a booker or a manager,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: that you would develop the voice,
14:04
SPEAKER_01: the unique style that was them,
14:07
SPEAKER_01: that no one else was doing that thing,
14:09
SPEAKER_01: that they were bringing to the table that no one else was really doing.
14:12
You could tell who their influences were because you could tell
14:16
the sense of humor,
14:16
the style.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: You're like,
14:17
SPEAKER_01: oh yeah,
14:18
you seem to like Sol Steinberg or you seem to lean towards Sam
14:23
Gross or whatever it
14:24
SPEAKER_01: is or John Callahan or whatever it is.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: But then you have these
14:29
styles like comedically and visually where you're like yeah
14:32
let's let's let's hone
14:34
in on the thing you're doing and stop trying to have you ape
14:37
the people you love
14:38
totally you know it's so important don't you think yeah yeah of
14:42
course and and i
14:42
will say from my own perspective the best training for a young
14:46
comedy writer is
14:47
parody and i mean i did so much parody and um and then via the
14:52
parody you kind of
14:53
SPEAKER_00: break into your own style and i think
14:55
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that was interesting,
14:57
SPEAKER_00: cause when I was doing the Barry Trotter books,
14:59
SPEAKER_00: um,
15:00
SPEAKER_00: I was always,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: I was always trying,
15:02
SPEAKER_00: yes,
15:03
SPEAKER_00: I was doing a close parody of certain elements of the Harry Potter books.
15:07
I was also plotting it and structuring it and designing it and
15:10
everything towards
15:11
SPEAKER_00: an eye to how do I not get sued?
15:14
SPEAKER_00: Um,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: so I was using historical precedent a lot with that too,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: but,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: but for me,
15:20
SPEAKER_00: what was always,
15:20
SPEAKER_00: what's always the most fun is,
15:22
SPEAKER_00: um,
15:24
SPEAKER_00: is making a warm personal connection with the reader.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: So I, so I use, and this is onion.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: People don't do this.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: The onion is a different school and the onion is wonderful,
15:34
SPEAKER_00: but the onion is what people call dry,
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: in that it's,
15:40
SPEAKER_00: it's anonymously written,
15:41
SPEAKER_00: it's team written and all the rest of this stuff.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's so wonderful.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: That's, that's why it's,
15:46
So high quality,
15:47
certainly back in the print days,
15:49
every issue,
15:50
every article.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: But for me,
15:52
I was always interested in using parody as a way to communicate
15:57
with people
15:57
SPEAKER_00: directly.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm interested.
16:00
When I was interested in parody,
16:01
it was a response to,
16:02
I thought,
16:04
these...
16:05
topics these items are one of the few things that that really
16:09
bring us together
16:10
that a lot of people know you know uh back in the old days if
16:14
you read something
16:15
like sj perlman or james thurber or any of that love for him
16:18
yeah oh my god all
16:19
those guys some of my favorite writings so they are drawing on
16:23
a monoculture really
16:24
yes and so they can talk a lot about things a lot about a lot
16:27
of things that we can
16:28
SPEAKER_00: everyone reference exactly so once the digital world happened
16:32
SPEAKER_00: from my perspective,
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I thought,
16:33
SPEAKER_00: well,
16:33
SPEAKER_00: parody is a way that we can all talk,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: be talking about the same thing.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knew Harry Potter.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: That's why I picked it, you know?
16:39
SPEAKER_00: So, uh, so anyway, I don't know when that I'm, I'm sorry.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where that leads to.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: No, it's a, it's a very specific thing because there's two parts to that.
16:47
One is that satire and parody are very different things,
16:50
but parody does teach you that skill.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: It teaches you if there is a long connection with the reader,
16:54
SPEAKER_01: because there is a recognition of a reference and a,
16:57
SPEAKER_01: and a,
16:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:58
SPEAKER_01: a corpus of like,
16:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:59
SPEAKER_01: these references.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: You, you're also towing the line of fair dealing and fair use.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: Like you,
17:04
SPEAKER_01: you're,
17:04
SPEAKER_01: you're towing the line of parody where you're like,
17:06
SPEAKER_01: you,
17:06
SPEAKER_01: you start to learn where the line is,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: you know?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Well,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: and here's what I would say,
17:10
SPEAKER_00: I think,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: and this is another,
17:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:12
SPEAKER_00: you and I,
17:13
SPEAKER_00: when we ever,
17:13
SPEAKER_00: when we always talk,
17:14
SPEAKER_00: we go,
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I always go back to the business and I'm always like,
17:16
SPEAKER_00: oh yeah,
17:16
SPEAKER_00: back in 1985,
17:17
SPEAKER_00: uh,
17:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:20
SPEAKER_00: it was,
17:20
SPEAKER_00: the thing is,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: is that,
17:22
SPEAKER_00: um,
17:24
SPEAKER_00: the,
17:25
SPEAKER_00: the,
17:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to put this.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: There's a tension because it's like, well, what is fair use?
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And so at a certain point,
17:37
SPEAKER_00: if you look at parodies from the 70s and into the early 80s,
17:40
SPEAKER_00: they are extremely precise.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And that's why people love them.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: And then by 1990,
17:46
there was a perception among corporate lawyers that that was
17:49
actually something
17:50
SPEAKER_00: that would get you sued because someone would say,
17:53
SPEAKER_00: well,
17:54
SPEAKER_00: you can't tell the difference between them.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And
17:57
SPEAKER_00: From my perspective, that's exactly what's protecting you.
18:00
That if you're being specific,
18:02
you're saying this is specifically a parody of this.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're trying to do.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Because where you get sued on parody,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: and this is another podcast,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: where you get sued on parody is a kind of bagginess.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And so, because...
18:19
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by bagginess?
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Bagginess is like,
18:22
SPEAKER_00: where you can get sued,
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Hustler v.
18:25
Fall will protect you if you were specifically parodying an
18:31
original with a satiric
18:32
SPEAKER_00: intent.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: And you can say, I changed this from this to this for this reason.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, got it.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: That's the sort of societal benefit of parody.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: The satirical aspect.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: But as
18:47
SPEAKER_00: publishing became more corporate,
18:49
SPEAKER_00: parodies got less satirical and,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: and also misguidedly less precise,
18:56
which makes them more suit worthy because then the original
18:59
owners of the original,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: they can say,
19:01
SPEAKER_00: um,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: that's just a taking.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Um,
19:03
SPEAKER_00: You're just trying to use our marketing, the audience we've built.
19:09
So,
19:10
for example,
19:10
I got a $50,000 after Barry Trotter went into the stratosphere
19:15
in England.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: The U.S. publishers who had all rejected me.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Now, Barry Trotter is a self-published book.
19:21
And it's the biggest self-published book of comedy,
19:24
at least,
19:24
that I've ever run across.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: But in any case, an editor at Simon & Schuster...
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Offer me $50,000 for the U.S. rights.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: I said, fine, that's great.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: We signed a contract.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I get back their design.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Their design is funny.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look like the actual U.S. editions of Harry Potter.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not periodic.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: And I said, look, it's got to be periodic because that will protect us.
19:51
And the editor said,
19:51
no,
19:52
my lawyers say that it's actually going to get us sued.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, where do I send the $50,000 back?
19:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And she was like,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
20:02
SPEAKER_00: I said,
20:02
SPEAKER_00: because for me,
20:04
SPEAKER_00: the reader is not going to go,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: oh,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: so-and-so editor at Simon & Schuster forced him to change it.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: They're going to say, oh, this guy is an idiot.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know what he's doing.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: He's just trying to basically rip off Harry Potter fans.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's what gets you sued.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's exactly.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: That's a suit.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I always wondered about that with your, would you do that?
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Because you have this filter, I think, that you've developed over years.
20:28
I think now you just have this innate kind of thing where you
20:30
kind of know where that line is.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: You kind of just understand it through experience and understanding.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: But you also have this interesting thing.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: What was that specific type of smart, stupid?
20:42
SPEAKER_01: When you work for, you see certain things.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: It's like a shorthand, I guess.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: So you work with Rose Chest or Jack Handy or something like that.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: You're looking through a gag or a draft or whatever it is.
20:58
and you have like a gober filter you know like you have is
21:01
that's really do i
21:03
that's how i picture you like it's a filter that we passed it
21:07
passes through this
21:09
SPEAKER_01: filter in your brain
21:10
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, all I can tell you is my influences.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: That's all I can tell you.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: I want to know more about that too, actually.
21:19
I really want you to talk about your influences in your stuff
21:21
because I know your
21:21
SPEAKER_01: mother was an artist.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my mother was an artist, a single parent.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: She was going to art school in St. Louis.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: And this was,
21:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:30
this was the first generation to go to college and all that
21:32
sort of stuff.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And I was a smart little boy surrounded by people who could draw.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: And so when I was, and this is in the mid 70s, because I was born in 69.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: So I have been, quotes, editing people since I was about six years old.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: Right, 10,000 hours.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I just loved it.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And that early,
21:54
that middle 70s period was a tremendous high watermark for
21:58
print humor and print
21:59
SPEAKER_00: humor magazines in general.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And comedy in general.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And parody,
22:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:04
like I remember seeing Young Frankenstein in the theaters when
22:07
I was five.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And I remember reading National Lampoon when I was five.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, you mentioned your brain.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it did.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: It totally did.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
22:17
SPEAKER_00: and also,
22:17
SPEAKER_00: too,
22:17
SPEAKER_00: because I was around adults and not kids,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: my sensibility is a very boomer sensibility.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's why.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I was.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: I totally was.
22:32
And I remember ripping up copies of Mad Magazine and reordering
22:38
the articles
22:38
SPEAKER_00: because I liked them better.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Once again, editing, you know, and it's like.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: my,
22:45
SPEAKER_00: my old writing partner,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: um,
22:47
SPEAKER_00: he,
22:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:48
SPEAKER_00: who's,
22:49
SPEAKER_00: who's a successful comedy person in New York.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: and,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: and he's just like,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: he just looks at me and he's like,
22:54
SPEAKER_00: you were cooked from the beginning.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: You know,
22:56
SPEAKER_00: you were just,
22:57
SPEAKER_00: there was no way because the thing is,
22:59
SPEAKER_00: is the story of the story of my time in the media is like the,
23:05
SPEAKER_00: literally the,
23:06
SPEAKER_00: the death of the editor.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Like there are no, this arc.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: And, and also the sense of,
23:14
And this is a longer conversation because there's some good
23:18
things about it and
23:18
SPEAKER_00: there's some truth to it.
23:19
But the sense that the creator needs to come to the audience
23:26
unfiltered and that
23:29
SPEAKER_00: editing is kind of – it's not cheating.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like making their art less authentic.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: where once again,
23:39
SPEAKER_00: I always look at it as,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: as,
23:41
SPEAKER_00: as from the outside going,
23:41
SPEAKER_00: okay,
23:42
SPEAKER_00: what can,
23:43
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:44
SPEAKER_00: what can Jason do really well?
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: He, he, he tends to, he tends to do this stuff.
23:49
And then I would talk to him and say,
23:50
well,
23:51
what do you,
23:52
what do you really enjoy?
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I really enjoy such and such.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: What's going on in my life, your life.
23:57
And then,
23:57
you know,
23:58
and this is something that Ed Flynn and I do all the time.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: What's going on in your life.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: And, and then getting material from, from that.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: But like,
24:08
Good editing is a service position,
24:10
and there is no money in publishing for that.
24:15
And also,
24:16
editors at big corporate magazines are not – the value of
24:22
editing is not monetizable.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And so,
24:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:25
SPEAKER_00: like,
24:26
did you make $50,000 extra this issue because it was
24:29
particularly well-edited?
24:31
SPEAKER_00: You know,
24:32
so as all these magazines have tipped more and more towards the
24:35
publishing side,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: because the money is so much harder to come by,
24:39
editors are under so much more pressure to be timely or to have
24:42
some sort of
24:43
rationale that they're chasing the zeitgeist and all the rest
24:46
of that stuff.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: And the editors, the people are just as smart as they've ever been.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: It's the job that they're being asked to do is kind of an impossible job.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: It is kind of an impossible job, yeah.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: I think that's interesting.
24:59
And that arc that you're talking about from the 70s through to
25:02
now,
25:02
it's just that...
25:04
SPEAKER_01: I always thought that one of the most valuable things that I could ever,
25:08
SPEAKER_01: ever sort of experience was having a good editor,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: an unfiltered good editor,
25:14
SPEAKER_01: knowledgeable,
25:15
SPEAKER_01: but also was able to develop my...
25:20
my my style my vision my my craft uh for lack of a better word
25:25
um in such a way
25:26
that it didn't um dissuade me from still pursuing the thing i
25:29
had a uh i worked in
25:31
newspapers when i was like 19 20 years old yeah yeah like local
25:34
newspapers and i
25:35
had that j jonah jameson type newspaper yeah great so
25:39
cantankerous and everything
25:39
but he was so skillful knowledgeable he would not let me get
25:43
away with anything and
25:44
SPEAKER_01: like in fact if i even turned in a finish
25:47
SPEAKER_01: that wasn't quite,
25:48
SPEAKER_01: he knew I could,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: if I was phoning anything in or if he knew that I was,
25:51
SPEAKER_01: he'd go,
25:52
SPEAKER_01: send it back,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: do it again,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: fuck off.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: He'd send me out of his office and go, fucking do it again.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, we have 20 minutes of deadline.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I don't care, do it again.
26:00
And I loved it because it made me force me to get better,
26:02
stop me getting comfortable.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: I love the value of like,
26:06
SPEAKER_01: of being able to work under pressure,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: speed,
26:10
SPEAKER_01: but also the quality does matter.
26:12
Just because you've got a tight deadline doesn't mean that
26:14
you're going to skimp on
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Gotta do it.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: You really do need to find that balance, right?
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And that takes years and years of practice.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm still working on it.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: As am I, you know, I mean, I even have the cigars on my desk.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the old J. Jonah and Emerson thing.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Because part of the whole,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: what I haven't told you about this,
26:32
is part of the whole growing up thing for me was my mother was
26:36
a waitress in some
26:38
SPEAKER_00: taverns in St.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Louis and they were newspaper bars.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were newspaper bars.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I hung out with a lot of newspaper people back in the 70s.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Love those.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the ink is in my butt.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: Ink in the veins.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: Something that joggled when you were talking.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I once visited Arnold Roth at his studio.
27:04
And this was,
27:07
I don't think this is his apartment now,
27:08
but it was back in the 90s.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was still... Oh, no, no.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: His studio was near Carnegie Hall.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: I remember this.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: And so this was like...
27:21
SPEAKER_00: This must have been 91 or 92.
27:24
And Arnold encouraging me was really what made me go into
27:29
magazines after college,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: which...
27:30
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And Arnie hooked me up with Harvey Kurtzman, who I...
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Wrote a letter to and told him I was trying to do this.
27:39
I was trying to do a national college humor magazine inserted
27:42
inside college,
27:43
SPEAKER_00: all college newspapers.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And believe it or not,
27:45
SPEAKER_00: back in that,
27:46
SPEAKER_00: those days,
27:46
SPEAKER_00: that was actually an idea that might've worked,
27:48
SPEAKER_00: but I didn't have enough capital,
27:50
SPEAKER_00: was not able to raise the million dollars.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And I have this very sad email or very sad letter from Harvey saying,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: your idea sounds great and you sound like a great guy,
28:00
SPEAKER_00: but I'm just too sick to be talking to you.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: And he died soon after.
28:06
But anyway,
28:07
that same time I was with Arnold in his studio and it was a
28:12
fascinating thing.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: He went over illustration.
28:20
And he said,
28:21
he would point to it and he would say,
28:22
okay,
28:23
this is where I'm really drawing.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm really looking.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: And this is where I'm really looking.
28:28
And this foot,
28:29
I'm just drawing a foot in quotes,
28:31
you know,
28:31
like I'm coasting here.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And my goal is to get drawings where I'm always looking at everything.
28:39
I'm,
28:40
you know,
28:40
and so it was really interesting because it's the same sort of
28:43
thing.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's like, and, and so with him, what I loved about that was,
28:50
because I had grown up and my mother was always like,
28:53
Arnold Roth is great,
28:54
you know?
28:55
SPEAKER_00: And,
28:55
SPEAKER_00: and then we'd look at Ronald Searle and we'd be like,
28:57
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
28:57
SPEAKER_00: school,
28:58
SPEAKER_00: school of Ronald Searle.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh,
29:01
SPEAKER_00: and,
29:01
SPEAKER_00: um,
29:03
SPEAKER_00: but to hear from him and he was 80 at that time,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: uh,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: that he,
29:09
SPEAKER_00: even he coasts and he doesn't want to coast.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: He wants to do better.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: It,
29:15
Guys like that,
29:16
guys like Sam,
29:17
you know,
29:18
like people who are dedicated to this art.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: That's what has always given me such encouragement.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: And I must say that I feel,
29:25
I get one of the difficulties of the last five years is that a
29:29
lot of these people
29:30
SPEAKER_00: have passed away.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Though Arnold is still with us, which is wonderful.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's 96.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm really...
29:39
SPEAKER_00: I get,
29:39
SPEAKER_00: I lose heart because I'm now that guy and I'm thinking,
29:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't,
29:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't have enough money.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't have enough time.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: I can't teach enough people.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, what do I do?
29:47
And it's lucky that I have a collaborator and Laura Fox who,
29:51
who,
29:52
yeah,
29:53
Laura is super.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And, and she loves this stuff even more than me.
29:56
Um,
29:57
and she's a bit younger,
29:58
so she doesn't come at it with the same sort of like,
30:02
SPEAKER_00: So I'm always trying to,
30:03
SPEAKER_00: with one hand,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: teach her the operations side,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: because it is really a one-man show until she came along.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: And then also the editorial side.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is how you work with somebody.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: This is what you do.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that at the connection,
30:18
SPEAKER_01: the Arnie connection,
30:19
SPEAKER_01: I had no idea that that was part of you.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Arnie?
30:23
SPEAKER_00: I invited Arnie.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: I knew Arnie.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine from college knew Arnold and Caroline.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: And when I was a senior at Yale,
30:33
SPEAKER_00: we invited Arnold for what's called a master's tee,
30:36
SPEAKER_00: which is,
30:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:37
SPEAKER_00: just somebody coming up to campus,
30:38
SPEAKER_00: talking to students.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's great.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And he had a really nice time.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And we had a really nice day.
30:44
It was great because that was just in the beginning of the
30:46
resurrection of the record.
30:48
And Arnold,
30:49
so Arnold was one of the few people I knew in New York when I
30:52
graduated,
30:52
went down.
30:53
and you know tried to make a go of it and he was just so so
30:57
he's always been so so
30:58
SPEAKER_00: supportive and just a one and Caroline too just wonderful wonderful guy
31:03
SPEAKER_01: They're the reason I live in New York.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: Is that so?
31:06
SPEAKER_01: I was 21 years old.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: Oh, shoot.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: That would make me move to New York.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, do you know who Paul Rigby was?
31:15
SPEAKER_01: The cartoonist Paul Rigby?
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Paul Rigby.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: He and Pat Oliphant were both political cartoonists,
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Australian political cartoonists who came over to America.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Pat Oliphant was Australian?
31:24
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know this.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Adelaide.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Really?
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was actually real.
31:28
to sneak our way in here you do you do you do and I you know I
31:33
have to before you
31:34
SPEAKER_00: before you go a lot of my if you want to know what my sensibility is it's
31:41
SPEAKER_00: mid-Atlantic
31:43
SPEAKER_00: It's mid Atlantic.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: It's not quite American and it's not quite English punch.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: It's exactly.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: It's, it's, it's, it's Monty Python.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: It's the Beatles.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: It's, it's this moment where, where, where popular culture was English.
31:58
And Australian,
31:59
because they're Humphreys,
32:01
and America,
32:05
all mixed up together.
32:06
And so one of the reasons that I never quite got much of a
32:12
foothold in conventional
32:14
SPEAKER_00: publishing was that,
32:15
was because I was really focused on that moment where
32:21
Anglo-American culture ruled
32:23
SPEAKER_00: the world.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it did.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: It was a real moment.
32:27
Yeah,
32:28
and it's interesting because I would talk to the guys from
32:30
National Lampoon,
32:30
the old guys.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Sean Kelly was a good friend of mine.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, Sean Kelly.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: And he said, we looked at the Python people as kind of twee.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: They weren't really getting at it like we were.
32:42
And I think what's interesting about those guys is that
32:46
National Lampoon in the
32:46
SPEAKER_00: United States really was a moment.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't an institution.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: And Python has continued and continued.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I think.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think to myself,
32:58
SPEAKER_00: there's a lesson in that where it's like,
33:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: if you're writing incredibly great detailed parody,
33:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:04
SPEAKER_00: satire about Richard Nixon,
33:07
SPEAKER_00: there's a benefit to that.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: But also, too, there's a benefit to.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: See,
33:12
SPEAKER_00: because Python,
33:13
SPEAKER_00: the interesting thing about that generation,
33:15
that generation is the first comedy for people for an
33:19
incredibly overeducated
33:20
SPEAKER_00: middle class.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's true.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they knew the audience, yes.
33:24
Yeah,
33:25
and so it's like,
33:26
you could make,
33:27
and you can find this,
33:29
you know,
33:30
1066 and all that.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: I think that was from the 50s.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: That was a big hit in England.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a big hit in the United States.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Ten years later,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: something like 1066 and all that,
33:41
SPEAKER_00: because of the Beatles,
33:42
SPEAKER_00: because of the sort of angle,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: that the...
33:46
center of gravity of comedy and rock and roll and everything
33:49
had shifted towards England.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of a midpoint.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: You have this great mixing of, of, uh, the Anglophone world.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: And, um, now maybe you see it in India.
34:01
Um,
34:01
but in any case,
34:03
it's,
34:04
it's really,
34:04
it's really quite,
34:05
it's really quite fascinating.
34:06
Um,
34:07
and I think that that,
34:08
if you could say what,
34:09
what am I trying to do with bystander?
34:11
I'm trying to,
34:12
Laura and I are trying to create an institution really more
34:14
than anything else.
34:14
We want this thing to be around for a hundred years,
34:17
but also this sense of like,
34:21
SPEAKER_00: This sense of, like, smart silliness that you're talking about.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: Smart, silly.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: It's that, trying to capture that.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: And I think Eric Idle and John Cleese both talk about that,
34:31
SPEAKER_01: the smart,
34:32
SPEAKER_01: silly,
34:32
SPEAKER_01: that balance,
34:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:33
SPEAKER_01: not treating the audience like an idiot,
34:35
SPEAKER_01: but also being completely idiotic and silly.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: Well,
34:37
SPEAKER_00: the thing about,
34:38
what's really interesting is that if I make a joke about
34:41
something from history,
34:42
SPEAKER_00: you should know that I know a lot about that thing from history.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly, yeah.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: So, like, the last time that I watched Life of Brian,
34:51
SPEAKER_00: I remember that there's a joke.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: There's a sort of it's not it's it's not really spelled out.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: It's not there's not a nobody puts a bell on it,
35:02
but that Brian's mother has had some sort of inappropriate
35:05
sexual relationship with
35:07
SPEAKER_00: a centurion.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: And and that's a kind of running gag.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, how does Brian's mother make her money?
35:15
SPEAKER_00: She's a prostitute.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Little do I know,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:19
SPEAKER_00: and then at a certain point,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: this is,
35:22
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:22
SPEAKER_00: the last time I'd watched it,
35:23
SPEAKER_00: I had read something that there was a persistent rumor sort of in early
35:28
Christianity among the Romans that the father of Jesus of
35:34
Nazareth was a centurion
35:36
SPEAKER_00: named Pantera.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: That was the reference.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: And so what's great about the pythons,
35:43
SPEAKER_00: when they really get at it,
35:45
SPEAKER_00: is that,
35:46
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
35:46
SPEAKER_00: they can write so that if you don't know that,
35:48
SPEAKER_00: you just think that's funny.
35:50
But if you're deeply read in medieval history,
35:53
you know,
35:54
Holy Grail's a hell of a lot funnier.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: Or Roman history, which I've deeply read in.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a dick cut.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's great.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: And so the thing is,
36:03
SPEAKER_00: is that my writing partner,
36:05
SPEAKER_00: John and I,
36:06
SPEAKER_00: ex-writing partner,
36:06
SPEAKER_00: I think he's moved on to,
36:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: better people.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: But I think that,
36:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:12
SPEAKER_00: we always used to talk about,
36:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
36:14
SPEAKER_00: the thing that's wonderful about Python is that they were,
36:17
SPEAKER_00: people in America,
36:19
SPEAKER_00: comedy writers in America know about comedy.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
36:22
They know about cheers,
36:24
you know,
36:24
or,
36:25
or,
36:25
you know,
36:25
and now the officer arrested development.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: They know cheers, mash, and build.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Those,
36:31
SPEAKER_00: those,
36:32
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:32
those other comedy writers and comedy writers in England often
36:35
know about medicine
36:38
SPEAKER_00: or history or politics.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: So they're bringing.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Painting.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
36:43
So it's a very different,
36:45
um,
36:45
ground that you're,
36:46
that you're working from.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: And I'm always trying to get Americans to work on that same ground.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: It's a really good place to come from because there's an area,
36:53
you're not being pretentious about having some kind of area of
36:56
expertise where
36:57
SPEAKER_01: you're trying to be high-minded about it.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: You're coming from a place,
37:02
SPEAKER_01: it's funnier and more interesting because there's a passion behind it.
37:05
And I think when you see a comedian make a reference on stage
37:09
that maybe it's like
37:10
SPEAKER_01: the joke hits,
37:11
SPEAKER_01: but then there's a tag or something,
37:12
but you know only maybe 4% of the audience is going to
37:15
understand that very
37:17
SPEAKER_01: esoteric reference.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: But you do it anyway because,
37:19
and the laugh is bigger from them because they want you to know
37:21
they got the
37:22
SPEAKER_00: reference.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Ah, I know.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: It's a different,
37:26
SPEAKER_01: like you said,
37:27
it's that warm relationship that you have with the reader or
37:29
with the audience
37:30
SPEAKER_01: where you're going,
37:31
SPEAKER_01: hey,
37:31
SPEAKER_01: I see you.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: I respect that you're going to understand this.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm not treating you, I'm not,
37:36
you know talking down to you and i think that's a lot of
37:39
there's so all there's a
37:41
correlation that a lot of my favorite comedy writers and
37:42
comedians and artists and
37:44
cartoonists all have that that they yeah even if they're like
37:47
everyone from the mad
37:48
magazine you know usual gang of idiots to right you know that
37:53
they the the people i
37:54
SPEAKER_01: enjoyed the most were people who
37:56
had a very distinct understanding of like of that that
38:00
relationship and arnie was
38:02
my first exposure to someone who didn't talk down he did he was
38:06
i mean he was very
38:07
deliberate but um like you said you know where he was taking
38:11
you through like the
38:12
decision tree you know it's really interesting that's so
38:15
fascinating but he did the
38:16
same with me when i was 21 i'm in new york city yeah i met him
38:19
and caroline here
38:19
SPEAKER_01: caroline at their apartment
38:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: He was so generous with his time.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was a kid from Perth working in local newspapers.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what the hell did I know?
38:28
But Paul Rigby had sent a letter to Arnie Roth and Pat Oliphant
38:33
and Bill Gallo.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: And these cartoonists said, hey, my friend's coming to town.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: He's a young cartoonist.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Just, you know, take him out to lunch or something.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Really generous.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, man, that's awesome.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: It was wild.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
38:48
in it took me to the bunny bash and I got to meet all the other
38:51
cartoon it was like
38:52
a master class that's great and I was so like generous and nice
38:55
and Arnie was the
38:56
first New Yorker I met oh that's awesome that's when I got the
39:00
buzz that's when I
39:01
got the buzz I was like I have to move here I have to move here
39:05
that's great he's
39:05
SPEAKER_01: the reason I'm here that's wonderful
39:09
SPEAKER_01: You talk about the Searle, the school of Searle.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: I drew this a while back because,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:15
SPEAKER_01: you look at Scarf,
39:16
SPEAKER_01: Rigby,
39:16
SPEAKER_01: Steed,
39:17
SPEAKER_01: Richard Thompson,
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Arnie Roberts.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: They all have, you can see the Searle in their work.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: The DNA is there.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: And they went off and found their own version of whatever that was.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, 100%.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: There's so many more, yeah.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: But I love that stuff.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: See, I love it too.
39:36
And we could talk forever because one of my favorite comedy
39:39
people is Peter Cook,
39:41
SPEAKER_00: who among comedy writers of a certain era,
39:44
SPEAKER_00: total genius,
39:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:45
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:45
SPEAKER_00: oh my God.
39:47
But not really well known and certainly not really well known
39:49
in the States.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: I had that as well.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: That was part of my sort of comedic pedigree.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: Really?
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have a friend who's,
39:58
SPEAKER_00: I have a friend who has brain cancer, and so he's passing away.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: See, he's a boomer.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Most of my friends are boomers.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: So he's, you know, the age he is.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: But last week,
40:11
SPEAKER_00: I was going to go down and see him,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: and he can't speak very well,
40:15
SPEAKER_00: so we watch movies.
40:16
One of the movies I brought down was Bedazzled,
40:19
which is one of my favorites.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: It's the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore movie.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: And that's a perfect example of the kind of comedy that you get.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: In that Anglo-American moment where it's...
40:33
I don't even know how to...
40:34
You said like mid-Atlantic was kind of...
40:37
Yeah,
40:38
mid-Atlantic.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: That's a good... That's what I coined.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: I run a Beatles blog,
40:43
SPEAKER_00: which used to be the biggest Beatles fan blog around,
40:47
SPEAKER_00: just because I love them.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's called Hey Dole Blog.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: But mid-Atlantic was sort of how I talked about it, where there was...
40:59
SPEAKER_00: there's just a certain kind of culture, uh, from 1960 to 1980.
41:03
And it really starts with beyond the fringe and it really ends
41:06
with Lenin's assassination.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: And,
41:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Monty Python comes out with meaning of life in 82 or whatever,
41:12
SPEAKER_00: but it's,
41:13
SPEAKER_00: it's really kind of,
41:14
SPEAKER_00: it's really kind of done at that point.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: We don't, we didn't know it.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: You don't know it at the time,
41:19
SPEAKER_01: but looking back,
41:19
SPEAKER_01: you're like,
41:20
SPEAKER_01: well,
41:20
SPEAKER_01: I guess that was the tail end.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: And I love how this camera gives me a double chin.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm really enjoying that.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Um,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: But,
41:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:28
Arnie's a perfect example because Arnie lived in England and
41:31
worked for Punch for
41:32
SPEAKER_00: many years in the 70s.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: You know?
41:34
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: So his sensibilities were middle age.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: And you can see.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can see it in his work.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: You can.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:44
SPEAKER_01: Cal,
41:44
SPEAKER_01: Kev Callagher as well,
41:45
SPEAKER_01: he was working in Fleet Street in,
41:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:48
SPEAKER_01: he was working in the early days,
41:49
SPEAKER_01: he works for The Economist now,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: he's a country,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: he's for The Economist for many,
41:52
SPEAKER_01: many years and the Baltimore Sun until recently.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: And he was in the UK,
41:57
SPEAKER_01: he's white,
41:57
SPEAKER_01: he's British,
41:57
SPEAKER_01: he was working in the UK,
41:59
SPEAKER_01: but he's American,
42:00
SPEAKER_01: well,
42:00
SPEAKER_01: he's actually Canadian,
42:01
SPEAKER_01: but he's out of Baltimore.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: And you can see in his work that sensibility.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: We talked about it.
42:08
He came on the show and we talked about it because he has that
42:10
ability to transcend
42:12
SPEAKER_01: both sensibilities.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult now to do.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: I think it's very, very distinct.
42:18
And the reason he's so good at what he does is that he's able
42:20
to distill that.
42:22
There's two things I want to discuss before because I could
42:25
talk to you forever.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: I know, me too.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, all these things...
42:29
yeah well i usually put the camera and scribble at about this
42:33
point in the show so
42:34
anyone in the chat who wasn't going to draw anything request
42:37
but i didn't want to
42:38
cut you off what he's going to say what do you what do you want
42:40
to know about the
42:40
yellow record i'll tell it to you in a minute sure uh i mean i
42:44
want to know that's
42:45
my problem i want to know everything about the arrow okay and
42:49
uh the other thing
42:50
that i really want to touch on before before we finish up and
42:53
just to let people
42:53
SPEAKER_01: know where we're going to go with this
42:55
Is that on my way here,
42:57
you were talking about,
42:58
you know,
42:58
magazine stands.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: I was brought to the House Newsstands on 23rd Street and 14th.
43:02
I went to Union Square to the Barnes & Noble because I wanted
43:06
to check if they had my book.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: Signed books or sold books, Jason?
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Signed books or sold books?
43:13
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
43:15
fucking shelf first but yeah if you if you sign a book they
43:18
can't return it it's
43:19
this old book yeah that's true that's true they can't return it
43:22
um so i was curious
43:23
as to what magazines were on the shelves uh on the shelves and
43:26
and because it's so
43:27
hard to even find a copy of the new yorker anymore it's weird
43:29
yeah um yeah
43:31
And the other piece to it was I just wanted to see if my book
43:34
was on the shelf,
43:34
you know.
43:35
Because distribution is such a big piece of why you would even
43:39
use a traditional publisher.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: I was very candid with my publisher.
43:42
My writing partner and I were asked with this book series that
43:46
we're doing,
43:47
SPEAKER_01: why wouldn't you guys self-pub this?
43:49
SPEAKER_01: And we said, to be completely frank...
43:53
SPEAKER_01: we need your distribution network.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: We need this on shelves because it's a gift book.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: It's an impulse purchase.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: It's a gift book.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: It's more difficult to get that online on Amazon.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: It's so flooded.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: You really do need to hold it.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: It's very tactile.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: It's a hard cover, full color.
44:07
You really do need to have it in your hands to understand the
44:10
value of it.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: And that was the only reason.
44:13
And unfortunately,
44:14
it's been the only reason we didn't sell pub was for
44:18
distribution.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: We don't see it on shelves.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: It's so frustrating.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: We've been very vocal about this.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: There's no problems about it.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: But what I noticed when I was talking to our friend,
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Tom Chitty,
44:28
SPEAKER_01: who got yesterday or two days ago,
44:31
SPEAKER_01: got the book funded,
44:32
SPEAKER_01: the Nooks and Cranies of New York,
44:33
SPEAKER_01: which I'm so excited about.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: 126%.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: You can still go and order copies.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Everyone should go and back this.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: Look up Nooks and Cranies of New York, Tom Chitty.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Fantastic book.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: I went through the PDF.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: It took me forever.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: I was lost in the details.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: Incredible.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: But that model is what I wanted you to talk about,
44:53
SPEAKER_01: that lean model that you're using for these books.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: I really want to dig into that.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: So,
45:00
SPEAKER_00: first of all,
45:01
Yale Record was sort of in and out of business since Gary
45:06
Trudeau from 1969 to
45:07
SPEAKER_00: 1989.
45:08
I came on because I was totally crazy about humor magazines and
45:12
resurrected it in 89 and was Mr.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: Alumni for the next 35 years.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: I am now retired.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it seems to be going fine.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: And like, for example, uh, Bob Grossman, who was a record guy
45:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know him.
45:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was with Arnold.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: He was another early mentor of mine.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
45:31
SPEAKER_00: that's the,
45:32
SPEAKER_00: um,
45:33
SPEAKER_00: the other thing is,
45:34
SPEAKER_00: uh,
45:36
SPEAKER_00: Laura had this great idea about making the bystander,
45:38
SPEAKER_00: uh,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: five,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: one C three,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: not for profit.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's been great.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: We've, we've been able to get some good donations there.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: And we're just about to go this year.
45:46
We're going to go for a big donation push to really put
45:49
ourselves on some good
45:49
SPEAKER_00: financial footing and start paying people better.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: Um,
45:53
SPEAKER_00: And well, yeah, I mean, this is the thing.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, this is the thing.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: Most of the people that we use are of a,
46:01
SPEAKER_00: of a partner,
46:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:02
SPEAKER_00: they're,
46:03
they're at a point in their lives that an extra 50 or a hundred
46:05
dollars is making,
46:07
SPEAKER_00: it doesn't make a difference to them.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, but,
46:10
SPEAKER_00: You know,
46:11
this kind of stuff is not going to thrive in a capitalist
46:13
country if you don't get
46:15
SPEAKER_00: paid,
46:16
SPEAKER_00: you know.
46:16
And I don't know if it's ever going to come back that people
46:18
can make a real,
46:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:20
SPEAKER_00: substantial living from it.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: But my feeling is,
46:23
SPEAKER_00: and I think Laura definitely agrees,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: is we're trying to wait out this digital stuff.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to wait out AI.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to wait out social media.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: We think this is obviously all of this is so terrible for people.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: for people and for culture,
46:40
SPEAKER_00: uh,
46:40
SPEAKER_00: that we're hoping that,
46:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:42
SPEAKER_00: it will die down and that people will start reading print,
46:45
SPEAKER_00: print magazines again.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I think there's, there's something to that for sure.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: Right.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: And particularly with younger people,
46:52
SPEAKER_00: younger people are kind of into,
46:54
SPEAKER_00: uh,
46:55
SPEAKER_00: physical media in a way that is surprising and nice.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: Digital natives are, I think.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: So the publishing model with, with the book,
47:05
It's not that different than,
47:06
than,
47:07
uh,
47:08
the magazine in that it starts from the editorial side.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: How do you, how do you produce the object?
47:15
SPEAKER_00: How do you produce a precious object?
47:17
SPEAKER_00: You know,
47:17
SPEAKER_00: like for example,
47:18
SPEAKER_00: Tom,
47:18
SPEAKER_00: Tom,
47:19
SPEAKER_00: when Tom gave me that,
47:22
SPEAKER_00: when Tom gave me that,
47:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm real watching you draw,
47:24
SPEAKER_00: uh,
47:25
SPEAKER_00: is,
47:25
SPEAKER_00: is PDF,
47:27
SPEAKER_00: uh,
47:28
SPEAKER_00: I thought to myself, this is wonderful.
47:30
And I said,
47:31
you know,
47:31
Tom,
47:31
you could probably get this published with a conventional
47:33
publisher.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: He said, no, I want to get it published with you.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, that's, yeah, that's nice.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: And so,
47:41
SPEAKER_00: and I think part of that was,
47:42
SPEAKER_00: as we talked,
47:43
SPEAKER_00: I said,
47:43
SPEAKER_00: look,
47:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:45
SPEAKER_00: if you're fortunate that,
47:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:48
SPEAKER_00: you'll be published well,
47:50
SPEAKER_00: but what's more likely is they will meddle
47:53
They will change what the book is and how the book is and how
47:58
it's packaged and all
47:58
that sort of stuff because they have to justify – the editors
48:02
have to justify their
48:03
SPEAKER_00: paychecks.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: They have to put their imprint on it.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: And then also, too, it's the same situation with your book where if –
48:11
SPEAKER_00: If you're,
48:11
SPEAKER_00: if you've got a gift book,
48:13
SPEAKER_00: well,
48:13
SPEAKER_00: that means that a publisher is going to have to buy comp,
48:16
SPEAKER_00: the table,
48:16
SPEAKER_00: table space.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: They're going to try to get it into the,
48:19
SPEAKER_00: they could try to put it next to the register or whatever.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't sell big numbers early,
48:25
SPEAKER_00: like very fast,
48:26
SPEAKER_00: they'll just going to go,
48:27
SPEAKER_00: okay,
48:28
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
48:28
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
48:29
SPEAKER_00: exactly.
48:29
You know,
48:30
they're,
48:30
they're just going to go,
48:31
okay,
48:31
you know,
48:31
onto the next thing.
48:33
So,
48:35
you know,
48:35
with Tom,
48:38
it was more a question of just nurturing his vision.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: And sort of saying, go do more of this.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: This is wonderful.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: And just encouraging him.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Um,
48:49
SPEAKER_00: now I just,
48:50
SPEAKER_00: and the last couple of days have reached out to both,
48:53
SPEAKER_00: um,
48:54
SPEAKER_00: Sam Gross's,
48:55
SPEAKER_00: uh,
48:56
SPEAKER_00: daughter and now,
48:57
SPEAKER_00: uh,
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Jack Ziegler's kids because I want to,
49:00
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
49:01
SPEAKER_00: Jessica and also Max,
49:02
SPEAKER_00: if you've met Max,
49:03
SPEAKER_00: to sort of say,
49:04
SPEAKER_00: let's do some,
49:06
SPEAKER_00: um,
49:06
SPEAKER_00: let's do some,
49:07
SPEAKER_00: let's do like a really comprehensive kind of,
49:10
SPEAKER_00: the ultimate Jack Ziegler book,
49:12
SPEAKER_00: the ultimate Sam Gross book.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: This is the thing.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: Right.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: And I said to them,
49:18
SPEAKER_00: I said,
49:19
SPEAKER_00: you know what,
49:19
SPEAKER_00: Jack,
49:20
SPEAKER_00: Jack died very suddenly and also very early in the bystander story,
49:25
SPEAKER_00: I think 2017.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: And so it was really a question.
49:29
And he was such a wonderful early supporter,
49:31
as was Sam,
49:32
as with so many people.
49:35
SPEAKER_00: So I think what we're trying to do is we want to.
49:40
use the fact that we have a mailing list of thousands and
49:44
thousands and thousands
49:45
SPEAKER_00: of people from the bystander who bought issues over the years.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: Um,
49:49
SPEAKER_00: we want to sort of create a walled garden where we can,
49:52
SPEAKER_00: uh,
49:53
SPEAKER_00: talk to,
49:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:55
SPEAKER_00: top talent or,
49:57
SPEAKER_00: or people who are just developing and all that sort of stuff.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: Try to create, try to always create the ultimate book of their style.
50:05
SPEAKER_00: And then, uh,
50:07
SPEAKER_00: basically seed the market in that way where the best,
50:10
SPEAKER_00: you know,
50:11
and this was definitely what Barry Trotter taught me is that
50:14
word of mouth is the
50:14
SPEAKER_00: only way that,
50:15
SPEAKER_00: that comedy books ever get sold.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: So if we can,
50:18
SPEAKER_00: if we can get copies of our book into a thousand hands,
50:22
SPEAKER_00: um,
50:23
SPEAKER_00: that is a huge marketing advantage for us.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the other thing,
50:28
SPEAKER_00: because we're five,
50:28
SPEAKER_00: one C three,
50:29
SPEAKER_00: we can offer,
50:30
SPEAKER_00: offer ridiculously good terms for people and sort of very,
50:34
SPEAKER_00: very,
50:34
SPEAKER_00: very light contract with,
50:36
SPEAKER_00: which I'm here to tell you, I, we talked about this.
50:39
I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars getting screwed by
50:42
publishers and you just,
50:45
SPEAKER_00: it just,
50:45
SPEAKER_00: it just kills your desire to do it.
50:48
SPEAKER_01: It does.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: It's very dispiriting.
50:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, are you making a kaboon?
50:53
SPEAKER_01: I love kaboons.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: They're my favorite thing to draw now.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: I can't, I keep doodling them when I'm warming up.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: Tom is great for them.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: And,
51:02
SPEAKER_01: He's such a creative mind.
51:03
SPEAKER_01: You know,
51:04
you were talking about the fact that you're encouraging him to
51:06
just kind of,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: do more of this,
51:08
SPEAKER_01: go back.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes that's the push you need.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: You need as an artist,
51:12
SPEAKER_01: you don't know what you're doing,
51:13
SPEAKER_01: if there's a desire for it or if there's a need or anything.
51:16
But sometimes you just do need that other voice outside of your
51:20
own head going,
51:20
SPEAKER_01: no,
51:21
SPEAKER_01: really,
51:21
SPEAKER_01: you should keep doing this.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: There's something like that.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: It's worthwhile.
51:24
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: And seeing the book, I was like, thank God someone made him.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:30
SPEAKER_01: It's extraordinary.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: It's really extraordinary.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: And,
51:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
51:34
SPEAKER_00: and so I think to myself,
51:35
because I know your style from your submissions and also from
51:38
the book that I saw
51:39
SPEAKER_00: and all the rest.
51:40
And literally this conversation,
51:42
this is why you have the brain of an editor.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, man, what's the ultimate Jason Chatfield?
51:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
51:47
I'm already starting to think,
51:47
well,
51:48
what's the ultimate Jason Chatfield book?
51:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is with book publishing, like,
51:55
If the reality is that they're basically just monetizing your
51:58
own fan base,
52:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:01
SPEAKER_00: if essentially they buy the book and they say,
52:02
SPEAKER_00: okay,
52:03
SPEAKER_00: how are you going to sell it?
52:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, on your social media.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, on your social media.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: From my perspective, my back gets up for you guys.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this is crazy.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: We've got to figure out a way to do this so that if you guys are,
52:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:19
SPEAKER_00: if Aunt Cindy is buying one of your books,
52:23
SPEAKER_00: that you're not making just 7.5% off the cover.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: You've got to actually make it worthwhile.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:31
SPEAKER_00: So in any case, that's what's going on with the books.
52:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'm very excited.
52:36
SPEAKER_00: And Laura's very excited.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot easier than putting together an issue.
52:39
SPEAKER_01: You can tell her you're passionate about it.
52:41
SPEAKER_01: You're both very passionate about it.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't be doing this if you weren't.
52:45
I mean,
52:46
there's a very distinct kind of specific kind of person that
52:49
uses this kind of thing.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's right.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think you have to love artists and writers.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: I think you can't look at it.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: I think you can't look at it primarily commercially,
53:00
SPEAKER_00: although sometimes,
53:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:02
SPEAKER_00: like with Barry Trotter,
53:03
SPEAKER_00: it does do okay.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: But particularly as an editor or doing a magazine,
53:08
SPEAKER_00: you really,
53:09
really have to love working with people and trying to unlock
53:13
their talent and move
53:14
SPEAKER_00: them forward.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: I know that the contract that we offer at Bystander,
53:20
SPEAKER_00: that we offered because it's a loosey-goosey now.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: It's not like that.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: But when we were doing those first couple of issues,
53:30
our contractual terms likely changed the contractual terms that
53:34
people were offered
53:35
SPEAKER_00: at The New Yorker.
53:36
And so one of the reasons for the better,
53:40
because our contracts were better.
53:41
SPEAKER_00: And so they said, okay, shit, we got to match that.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: Um,
53:46
SPEAKER_00: some things have happened with McSweeney's so that,
53:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:49
SPEAKER_00: people are getting paid now and all the rest of that wasn't before us.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: So obviously, thank you.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, obviously it's not, we didn't do that.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: Those people did that.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: And then that's wonderful.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: And they're starting to,
54:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:02
but what we want to do and now what we want to do with books is
54:05
we want to set the
54:06
SPEAKER_00: baseline for you guys higher so that you guys get treated better.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's tough.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: It's a really tough thing.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: We've been trying to negotiate it for a long time.
54:16
I remember when I was president of the National Captioning
54:18
Society came up again
54:19
and again about these base rates that hadn't been increased
54:21
since like 1996.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, nothing's increased with inequality.
54:26
with inflation it was an implicit promise that if we continued
54:30
to do this that we'd
54:30
be offered sort of contracts or whatever it doesn't exist
54:33
anymore there's just
54:34
there are several pieces to this puzzle that are sort of this
54:38
ongoing battle you
54:39
SPEAKER_01: know and um I don't know if we discussed this already um
54:44
SPEAKER_01: A few weeks back, we launched a...
54:46
SPEAKER_01: This is kind of in reaction.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: I guess it's a similar thing,
54:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:49
SPEAKER_01: with you,
54:49
SPEAKER_01: but we...
54:50
SPEAKER_01: A number of editors,
54:52
SPEAKER_01: writers,
54:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:53
SPEAKER_01: poets,
54:54
SPEAKER_01: journalists,
54:54
artists were just sort of disenchanted with the whole sort of
54:58
establishment
54:58
SPEAKER_01: media...
55:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:00
SPEAKER_01: model and wanted to have our own thing that where,
55:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:03
SPEAKER_01: everything from like literary criticism to essays,
55:06
SPEAKER_01: long form essays,
55:07
SPEAKER_01: without a very,
55:09
SPEAKER_01: like a stringent style guide,
55:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:13
SPEAKER_01: it's a light touch editing.
55:14
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
55:15
SPEAKER_01: there's editing and the editors are good at what they do,
55:17
SPEAKER_01: but they're in such a way that,
55:18
SPEAKER_01: like you say,
55:20
you're encouraging people to just go more with what they're
55:23
doing instead of trying
55:24
SPEAKER_01: to have them adhere to a style guide.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: It's a certain, it's a,
55:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a service position,
55:30
SPEAKER_00: not,
55:30
SPEAKER_00: not a,
55:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
55:31
SPEAKER_00: like,
55:32
SPEAKER_00: not like a,
55:32
SPEAKER_00: this is what you must do to be part of our club.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: I just saw Tom Chitty in the chat.
55:38
SPEAKER_00: What did Tom say?
55:39
SPEAKER_01: Caboon has a very deep Google, uh,
55:44
SPEAKER_01: This is the, we did a print mag as well.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: So it's the Metropolitan Review is the print mag.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: It's quarterly.
55:50
SPEAKER_01: And it is, it isn't like there's cartoons in there.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: There's illustrations.
55:54
SPEAKER_01: There's great photography.
55:55
SPEAKER_01: The photography is insane.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's this.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: We did a great publisher, a profile on Gay Talese.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: This whole issue.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love him.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: I love him.
56:06
SPEAKER_01: And the photos are amazing.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
56:10
SPEAKER_01: A New Yorker is New York.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: See, this is so interesting because I have wanted to talk to him.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: We published his daughter's paintings.
56:17
SPEAKER_00: His daughter is an amazing painter.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: His daughter came to the launch a couple weeks ago.
56:21
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
56:22
And I've wanted to reach out to him forever because I wanted to
56:26
send him whatever
56:26
SPEAKER_00: his brand of Cuban cigar is.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:30
SPEAKER_00: Because he's one of my guys.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: Like the New Drawings guys are one of my guys.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's up.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
56:36
SPEAKER_00: You got to send me one of those.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: I'll send you it.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: I'll buy one.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: That's tremendous.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:42
SPEAKER_01: And we're really proud of how it's come out.
56:44
SPEAKER_01: And again, it's a skeleton crew.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: You know what it's like.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: I do.
56:48
It's a lot of work,
56:49
but it's very rewarding because you believe in what you're
56:51
selling.
56:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, right.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: Which comes through in the American Bystand all the time.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: You can tell the joy that you guys take in the work.
56:57
SPEAKER_01: I know it's a lot of work, but you can tell.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to finish up just sort of talking very, very briefly about
57:06
SPEAKER_01: You were on Substack for a sec.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: You have this model.
57:13
I feel like the Tom Chitty book is a great thing to point to
57:19
now as an example and as a model.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: What's going from here?
57:25
SPEAKER_01: Where does the bystander live?
57:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, where does it live?
57:32
SPEAKER_00: Online, I mean?
57:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, is it a certain thing?
57:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have a ghost site.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: And we have, of course, the AmericanBystanderStore.com.
57:44
SPEAKER_00: And we have the AmericanBystander.org.
57:46
SPEAKER_00: It's our,
57:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
57:48
SPEAKER_00: I have to,
57:49
SPEAKER_00: Laura and I have to sit down and kind of rationalize our web presence.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: Our web presence is really designed to move people to the print magazine.
57:57
And,
57:57
you know,
57:58
yes,
57:58
we have a Substack called the American Bystanders Viral Load.
58:01
But I'm always kind of pulling that because the things that I
58:04
want to write
58:05
SPEAKER_00: personally are often not funny these days.
58:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm always kind of pulling that away from comedy.
58:10
SPEAKER_00: The thing is,
58:11
SPEAKER_00: Jason,
58:12
SPEAKER_00: what I want to try to do...
58:14
Digital is a real conundrum for us because it's a bucket that
58:19
never fills.
58:20
SPEAKER_00: And I go through Substack and I see all of you guys...
58:26
SPEAKER_00: so much content and, and it's great and I love it.
58:29
SPEAKER_00: But,
58:30
SPEAKER_00: but the thing is,
58:31
SPEAKER_00: is that,
58:32
SPEAKER_00: uh,
58:32
SPEAKER_00: and I think you with this interview,
58:33
SPEAKER_00: this interview series,
58:35
SPEAKER_00: I think have really kind of cracked it in a way that most people haven't,
58:38
SPEAKER_00: but there's a lot of people who don't have that secondary skill.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: They're cartoonists or they're comedy writers or whatever.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: And they, you know, um,
58:47
SPEAKER_00: I think for me,
58:48
SPEAKER_00: what I'm always trying to do is move people to the print mag,
58:51
SPEAKER_00: move people to the back issues,
58:52
SPEAKER_00: move people to the books.
58:54
The idea at the beginning was if we created a magazine where we
58:58
had 60 to 80
58:59
SPEAKER_00: contributors every issue,
59:01
their aggregate social media presence would be as big as our
59:05
magazine's social
59:06
SPEAKER_00: media presence could be.
59:08
And what happened,
59:10
what was my mistake,
59:12
was most of the contributors that I used in the first...
59:15
10 to 15 issues or were older people who didn't have a social
59:18
media presence.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: And so somebody like Emily Flake has a great social media presence.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: Somebody like Arnold Roth has no social media presence.
59:26
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, humblog.
59:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's right.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, but he wasn't on Twitter back in the day and he wasn't.
59:33
SPEAKER_00: So the thing is, is like,
59:35
SPEAKER_00: Where does it live online?
59:37
SPEAKER_00: Well,
59:37
SPEAKER_00: you can,
59:37
SPEAKER_00: there's a million ways to get in touch with us and we,
59:40
SPEAKER_00: and we love that and we want people to get in touch with us.
59:43
SPEAKER_00: And, but I, and I think Laura's even more a print head than I am.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: We're always trying to move people.
59:51
SPEAKER_00: You want to know what we're doing?
59:52
Go,
59:53
you can download a couple of issues on our website,
59:55
but go buy the print issues.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: That's how to, that's how to figure out what we're doing.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, with Tom's book,
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: I,
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: I guess I feel I,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: I always want to avoid like McSweeney's has a great niche,
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: but it's,
1:00:11
SPEAKER_00: but it's filled.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_00: Like that's a filled niche.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, the New Yorker daily shouts great niche.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: That's a filled niche for us.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: I,
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: I guess I feel like,
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: we've talked about for years and I was actually in,
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: in,
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: in,
1:00:29
almost this almost happened that that bob tischler who was the
1:00:32
um engineer of the
1:00:34
national lampoon radio hour which basically was the launching
1:00:38
ground for early
1:00:39
saturday night live wanted us wanted to do a podcast i wanted
1:00:42
him to do our podcast
1:00:44
because i didn't what i don't want us to do is a podcast that's
1:00:48
just like every
1:00:48
other podcast people talking like you and i are talking that's
1:00:51
fine but i don't
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: there's plenty of that once again that's a great niche but it's filled
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: The niche that's not filled is that sort of theater of the mind,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: fire sign theater,
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: goon show type of thing,
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: right?
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: But,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: but that requires,
1:01:06
but that requires a certain amount of money and it requires a
1:01:08
certain amount of
1:01:09
SPEAKER_00: time,
1:01:09
SPEAKER_00: talent.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: And also too, I have to oversee it in some way.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_00: And we just couldn't get through all that.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: But so where are we going in the future?
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: Obviously we're going to be doing books.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: Obviously we're going to continue to do the magazine.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: If we can keep doing quarterly or more, that's great.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm, I'm about to,
1:01:25
SPEAKER_00: do a whistle-stop tour around the country,
1:01:27
SPEAKER_00: basically just trying to get more subscribers,
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: more donors,
1:01:32
SPEAKER_00: all the rest of this stuff.
1:01:32
Because if there's one thing that everybody listening should
1:01:36
take from this,
1:01:38
SPEAKER_00: it's essentially this.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_00: When artists and writers are part of a benign institution,
1:01:43
an institution that recognizes their essentiality to the
1:01:50
success of the magazine or
1:01:51
SPEAKER_00: the TV show or whatever it is,
1:01:53
SPEAKER_00: if they're part of a larger institution,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: and they get health insurance and they get a decent dollar and they,
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: and they get collaborative benefits and all the rest things thrive.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_00: The idea that every cartoonist or every comedy writer,
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: that their job is to be a solo entrepreneur has impoverished everybody.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_00: Because,
1:02:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:15
SPEAKER_00: gatekeeping is terrible in some ways,
1:02:18
SPEAKER_00: but back in the day,
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: if you got a book,
1:02:20
SPEAKER_00: if you got a book published,
1:02:22
SPEAKER_00: You got ads in the New York Times book review.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: You got on TV, all the rest of the stuff, and you made a decent dollar.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, you go into, like, how do you gather the crowd?
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: And institutions, they have to be benign.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: Institutions that are benign, that are flexible, and are light.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_00: where all the money that's generated doesn't go to the,
1:02:46
SPEAKER_00: the real estate on sixth Avenue in New York.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_00: I think that's gotta be the future for people.
1:02:50
Cause,
1:02:51
cause this individual stuff,
1:02:53
you and I were talking about this before we started.
1:02:56
Not only is it super,
1:02:57
super hard to do,
1:02:59
to be successful and it's playing the lottery.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_00: It's playing a lottery.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a gamble.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_00: It's a huge gamble.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing is, is like,
1:03:06
SPEAKER_00: then if you're not successful,
1:03:08
SPEAKER_00: if you can't pay your bills as a cartoonist,
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: or if you can't pay your bills as a comedy writer,
1:03:12
SPEAKER_00: humorist or whatever,
1:03:14
SPEAKER_00: our society makes you think that that's a failure of you.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's not,
1:03:18
it's a failure of the society around you that we're now in this
1:03:22
weird kind of hyper
1:03:23
SPEAKER_00: capitalist nature,
1:03:24
SPEAKER_00: red and tooth and claw thing,
1:03:26
SPEAKER_00: which is nuts.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_00: It's nuts.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: That's not how people are meant to live.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I started the magazine.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: That's why I keep it going because, because I think,
1:03:35
Just demonstrating that institutions can be helpful and they
1:03:40
should be helpful and
1:03:41
SPEAKER_00: that creative people need that protection,
1:03:43
SPEAKER_00: I think is really important.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really, really good ethos to have.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_01: That's a really good motivation.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad you're doing it, truly.
1:03:50
There's not a lot of people who have the capacity or the
1:03:53
attention or inclination
1:03:55
SPEAKER_01: to sacrifice as much as they do for that.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: So I'm grateful to you and to Laura.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_01: And for anyone who has never even read The Bystander,
1:04:04
SPEAKER_01: you absolutely have to,
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: first of all,
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: click the little...
1:04:06
SPEAKER_01: orange thing up here that says subscribe.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_01: So subscribe, first of all, to viral load.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_01: But then also,
1:04:13
SPEAKER_01: absolutely go to americanbystandard.org,
1:04:15
SPEAKER_01: get copies of the book,
1:04:16
SPEAKER_01: go to the store,
1:04:18
SPEAKER_01: buy and back Tom Chitty's fantastic new book,
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Books and Crannies in New York.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's great.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: You won't regret it.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: And it's so...
1:04:29
refreshing because you know there's so much doom and gloom that
1:04:31
people talk about
1:04:32
now it's refreshing now people who still have a very clear
1:04:35
vision like you who you
1:04:37
know as you say the lack of sort of better term of like waiting
1:04:41
out digital or
1:04:41
waiting out AI it's really as you say this sort of generational
1:04:45
thing of this
1:04:46
fatigue of digital natives just like everything being on a
1:04:49
screen 24-7 there's this
1:04:50
novelty almost of having something tactile you know too much
1:04:54
content you know too
1:04:56
SPEAKER_01: much content
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's interesting.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't want to, I could literally, you and I could talk forever.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:05:03
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:05:05
SPEAKER_00: what Sean Kelly and I used to talk about,
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: cause Sean was a nationally important guy from way back then.
1:05:10
And,
1:05:10
uh,
1:05:11
we would talk about something called comedy poisoning where
1:05:15
comedy writers,
1:05:15
uh,
1:05:16
SPEAKER_00: If you're a comedy writer for long enough, you never laugh.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_00: And you usually say things like, yeah, right.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: As a stand-up, you would know this too.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, you're like, oh, I can see how that's funny.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know how that's working.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the comics at the back of the room don't laugh.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_01: They go, that's good.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the thing.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_00: I think that,
1:05:35
SPEAKER_00: I think that too much content over to,
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: a fire hose tends to dull people.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, uh, you know, like, oh, that's great.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that means funny.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: Blah.
1:05:46
I think one of the wonderful things about print is you can pick
1:05:48
it up and you can
1:05:49
SPEAKER_00: put it the fuck down.
1:05:50
Like go out and you go out into the world and then you pick it
1:05:53
up and you read an article.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: That's really funny.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:05:56
but the thing about the bystander always with every piece of
1:05:58
material is it's all
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: about the personal connection between that person,
1:06:02
SPEAKER_00: that creator and the reader.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:06:06
It's all about like what is,
1:06:08
you know,
1:06:08
we talked about AI in the bystander.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_00: And I go,
1:06:11
SPEAKER_00: God,
1:06:12
I'd love to have it help me with layout because it's just
1:06:15
fucking so hard to lay it
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: all out.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_00: But Laura's like, no, no, no, no, no.
1:06:19
It's always got to be human connection between the readers and
1:06:24
the creators.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: Because they can tell.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_01: They can tell.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, totally.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't agree more.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really, really...
1:06:34
um important thing to maintain because it could be so easy for
1:06:37
people to just start
1:06:38
implementing those sorts of things and outsourcing and but then
1:06:41
it does you do lose
1:06:42
that that ineffable just there's a quality to it that you can't
1:06:46
well think think
1:06:48
about it for me as an editor the guy who's like i'm like i know
1:06:51
exactly what i want
1:06:52
the whole thing to look and feel like you know i'm like oh i
1:06:55
could just go and i
1:06:56
don't know if it's claude or whatever and yeah oh we can make
1:06:58
it into this amazing
1:06:59
SPEAKER_00: thing
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_00: It would be fundamentally hollow.
1:07:04
It would be fundamentally,
1:07:06
it would be fundamentally artificial and weird.
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: And,
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: and also too,
1:07:10
like it'd be putting money in the pockets of the worst people
1:07:13
in the fucking world.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_01: And yes.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_01: And I have no interest in doing that.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, yeah, yeah.
1:07:22
yeah well um like like i'm gonna have to get you back on
1:07:25
because i could talk to
1:07:26
you for like three hours and and yeah just just on comedy alone
1:07:30
let alone on
1:07:30
publishing oh yeah we would have a wonderful time like books
1:07:34
and i just it's it's
1:07:35
such a privilege it's such a pleasure that i finally got to to
1:07:38
have you on and yeah
1:07:39
SPEAKER_01: thanks me too so thank you for making time and
1:07:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited about everything you're doing.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to share this with everybody.
1:07:48
So anyone who's watching this who enjoyed it,
1:07:51
please subscribe to both our Substack.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: Support us.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: Become a paid subscriber if you can.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_00: It really means everything.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_00: It really means everything.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_00: Can I say one last thing?
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
1:08:06
Uh,
1:08:07
last night at about seven o'clock,
1:08:10
I had to put my beloved cat to sleep.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_00: And I've been really upset.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_00: And I was talking to Laura about it.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to Laura about it and, and she said, no, don't tell.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_00: Cause I always, I always like, I'm very visible person, you know?
1:08:25
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yeah, what's going on today?
1:08:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
1:08:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm fucking thinking about Max and hoping he's good wherever he is.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_00: So if,
1:08:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:08:32
SPEAKER_00: if you,
1:08:32
SPEAKER_00: if,
1:08:33
SPEAKER_00: if,
1:08:33
SPEAKER_00: if you guys don't mind,
1:08:34
SPEAKER_00: just spare a little thought for that little guy,
1:08:36
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: because he was real special to me.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
1:08:40
I've been looking forward to this interview so much because I
1:08:42
knew it would be so fun.
1:08:43
I think you're such a good interviewer and I knew it would take
1:08:46
my mind off of things.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go right as you talk.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start designing pages so I can just kind of process.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to take a moment to say,
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: everybody,
1:08:54
SPEAKER_00: if you've ever had a cat or if you've ever had a pet,
1:08:56
SPEAKER_00: just give a little thought,
1:08:58
SPEAKER_00: man,
1:08:58
SPEAKER_00: because I work by myself at home and my cats are my co-workers.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_01: And Laura, too, of course.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, I know you're a cat from your bio photo on your Gmail.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_00: That's actually an older cat.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_00: That's a cat from when I lived in New York.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: That's a cat from when I lived in New York,
1:09:15
and she was part of – she was the co-writer of Barry Trotter
1:09:18
and all that stuff.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_00: I love her.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to pull one out for Meg's, ladies and gentlemen.
1:09:24
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:09:25
SPEAKER_00: Please do.
1:09:25
SPEAKER_00: Pull one out for Meg's.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: Pull one out for Meg's.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: And this replay is going to go out in a day or two.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: So please share it if you enjoyed this and if you found it useful.
1:09:36
And we'll clip up some bits and pieces and throw them on social
1:09:39
media so that
1:09:40
SPEAKER_01: people can come back and watch the whole thing.
1:09:42
SPEAKER_00: Jason,
1:09:43
thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about these
1:09:45
things that I care about
1:09:46
SPEAKER_00: so much.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_00: And everybody, thanks for...
1:09:50
SPEAKER_00: for coming on and listening.
1:09:51
And I saw the little hearts going up for Max,
1:09:54
and I appreciate it so much.
1:09:56
SPEAKER_00: So thank you, everybody.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_00: And thank you, Jason.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for tuning in.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: Of course, thank you.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_01: I'll be in touch.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.