Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #319... 22 Panels with Olivia Cuartero-Briggs

Transcript

With Great Power #319... 22 Panels with Olivia Cuartero-Briggs · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Olivia Quartero Briggs. Did I pronounce that right?
• 0:11
  OCB: You pronounced it perfectly, and you're, like, the only person who ever has, so congratulations to you. That was… that was masterful.
• 0:18
  Tad Eggleston: Because I meant to ask first, and then forgot, so I'm really, really glad that I didn't fuck it up, because that would've…
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: That would have been embarrassing, to say it, and then ask, and find out that… no, it's actually Cuoterio…
• 0:35
  OCB: Yeah, that was radiate.
• 0:36
  Tad Eggleston: But it is. Oh, it's strange.
• 0:37
  OCB: No, that's what everyone else said.
• 0:38
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me how it's probably been pronounced for you.
• 0:41
  OCB: Yeah, and nope, 100%. You'd be amazed at the interpretive, interpretive pronunciations of that name.
• 0:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, because I didn't think Eggleston was a hard name to pronounce until I got to school.
• 0:55
  OCB: Yeah.
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: I've had it pronounced so many different ways in my life, it's not even funny.
• 1:01
  OCB: Well, I mean, but at least, like, they're probably, like, cute mispronunciations, right? And not just, like, complete name butchering. You kind of have, like, a cute last name.
• 1:10
  OCB: Like, no one will miss, like, the egg part of it, right?
• 1:14
  Tad Eggleston: I don't… no, I've been called Eagleston.
• 1:17
  OCB: Oh, really?
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: I don't, I don't know how they get…
• 1:19
  OCB: Seems like people are like, I didn't.
• 1:21
  Tad Eggleston: Ego has an A.
• 1:24
  OCB: Right.
• 1:25
  OCB: I feel like that's, like, when someone's last name is, like, clearly, like, Wiener, but no one wants to say Wiener. It's like, it couldn't be egg, right? Like, let's try to.
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: It's gotta be whiner.
• 1:38
  OCB: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:39
  Tad Eggleston: Anthony Weiner.
• 1:41
  OCB: It's never actually whiner, come on. Totally answer.
• 1:44
  Tad Eggleston: Weiner until he sent the dick pics, and then it became Wiener.
• 1:50
  OCB: Yeah, he had a good thing going! He screwed it up for himself.
• 1:55
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, sometimes scandals just, like, couldn't be written better.
• 2:01
  OCB: I know.
• 2:02
  OCB: I mean, seriously, in life that you really… you can't… and it's a shame that you can't write them.
• 2:07
  Tad Eggleston: If you turned that in as part of a TV script.
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: Would it have gotten by? No, this is too on the nose. You can't have the guy with the sex scandal be Anthony Weiner.
• 2:21
  OCB: No, you're 100% right. You're 100% right.
• 2:24
  OCB: Unless it's, like, a really, really dorky comedy, and even then, you might still get called out for it, so…
• 2:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, they go, you gotta at least make it Anthony Fallis, or some word that not every third grader knows.
• 2:38
  OCB: Ballots.
• 2:40
  OCB: I would hope that third graders would know phallus. Well, actually, you know what? Maybe that was just third graders in my, my private school. My elitist private school that I went to.
• 2:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, like…
• 2:52
  OCB: Back home.
• 2:53
  Tad Eggleston: I probably knew it in third grade, like, because as soon as… if you're the smart kid, you learn… you learn the swear words as not swear words, so that you can come back at them and know that you're…
• 3:06
  OCB: Right, like, you know the secret lingo.
• 3:09
  Tad Eggleston: But they don't even tell on you because they don't know what it means.
• 3:13
  OCB: Or they're just kind of so impressed by the fact that you said it, or maybe they think you said it by accident.
• 3:19
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, come on.
• 3:21
  Tad Eggleston: Third grader impressed by a word that they don't recognize?
• 3:23
  OCB: Oh, I thought… no, no, no, like a teacher, basically, or somebody, like, hearing a kid say that, and being like, they couldn't possibly know what that means, like, it has to be an accident, but meanwhile, like, you know, you know.
• 3:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 3:35
  Tad Eggleston: My wife's favorite thing to do with her kids when they start
• 3:39
  Tad Eggleston: Getting into the crazy stuff is just to use the words wrong.
• 3:45
  OCB: Use them?
• 3:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, no.
• 3:48
  OCB: I wish I could do that.
• 3:50
  Tad Eggleston: No, with, like, when they're using the… whatever the new crazy slang is, and it's getting annoying, she'll…
• 3:58
  OCB: Oh, yes. That's brilliant. Just annoy them with their own annoyances.
• 4:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 4:06
  OCB: That's awesome. Yeah, I have to start doing that. I'm just, like, right now, I'm just, like, I'm offended by some of the slang.
• 4:12
  OCB: Like, my daughter told me that there's, a new slang for, losing one's virginity.
• 4:22
  OCB: Wow. Yeah.
• 4:24
  OCB: Cracked.
• 4:26
  Tad Eggleston: bracked.
• 4:27
  OCB: I was like, seriously?
• 4:30
  OCB: That's, like, this… it's just, like, offensive on so many levels, like, couldn't it be something, like, cute or nice? Like, I expect so much more from your generation than.
• 4:38
  Tad Eggleston: So their virginity is an egg now?
• 4:41
  OCB: Yes, I guess. Or like a, like a, like a pauper, or like…
• 4:46
  OCB: I don't like a… some sort of firecracker or something, or yeah, something to be broken.
• 4:51
  OCB: Right. I was like, this is, like, this is so upsetting.
• 4:55
  OCB: But yeah, that was like…
• 4:59
  OCB: It's just so ridiculous to me. And then there's a bunch of stuff that she's just… she's just using incorrectly. It's, like, slang that our generation actually, like, originated, and now they're just taking it and, like, using these words wrong.
• 5:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that's… That's crappiness.
• 5:15
  OCB: It now no longer means, like, you look like you went to a preparatory school.
• 5:20
  OCB: Right. And I'm like, I can't… I can't handle what you're trying to do to my slang. I know what a prep is, you don't know… but mom, everyone's using it. No. You're all wrong. Everyone's wrong. I don't care.
• 5:33
  OCB: End of conversation.
• 5:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know that, like, the best that sociologists could come up with for 6, 7, and they're actually… when I bounce this off of my kids, they're like, yeah, that makes sense.
• 5:47
  Tad Eggleston: Is that it was literally something that they came up with so that we wouldn't understand.
• 5:55
  OCB: Okay, and that's why it, like, literally makes no sense, and, like, yeah.
• 5:58
  Tad Eggleston: And because it will come up naturally, regularly.
• 6:03
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. When you're counting jumping jacks, 5, 6, 7, everybody… Goes nuts.
• 6:11
  Tad Eggleston: And because it's, like, completely offline.
• 6:15
  Tad Eggleston: And that's, like, the part that it took adults the longest to figure out, is for all… for all we were, like.
• 6:21
  Tad Eggleston: Being upset about this, 6-7 is like, an actual, like, interpersonal connection.
• 6:31
  OCB: Right.
• 6:32
  Tad Eggleston: Nobody's tweeting 6-7.
• 6:35
  Tad Eggleston: They shout out 6… it's a call and response thing, it's like…
• 6:40
  OCB: That's… well, you know what? They're not wrong, though, that is kind of brilliant. I mean, I saw something online recently that, like, the most incredible thing that our generation ever did was to successfully spread the rumor, like, worldwide, that Marilyn Manson had his bottom ribs removed so he could suck his own dick without the internet. And I actually think that that is a tremendous
• 7:05
  OCB: accomplishment for us. So, yeah, so no. You know what?
• 7:09
  Tad Eggleston: Did we actually manage to get it worldwide before the internet? Because, like, the internet started right in the, like, in…
• 7:16
  Tad Eggleston: Manson and the internet kind of started together.
• 7:20
  OCB: Mmm… I… okay, I see your point, but, like, I don't… I don't think that… I don't think that… I mean, definitely…
• 7:26
  Tad Eggleston: Without social media.
• 7:27
  OCB: there was, like, we were still doing, like, AOL dial-up.
• 7:30
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I… that's what I was gonna say, like…
• 7:32
  OCB: Yeah, no.
• 7:33
  Tad Eggleston: I bet you part of the spread was through AIM message rooms.
• 7:37
  OCB: Tad, don't you ruin this for me.
• 7:40
  Tad Eggleston: It's still impressive!
• 7:42
  OCB: Very. It's very impressive. We did it without the internet.
• 7:46
  Tad Eggleston: Manson is not. He's kind of a dick.
• 7:50
  OCB: I've never met the dude.
• 7:52
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't either, but even before… I mean, my son went through a phase, and he would, like, tell me these stories, and this is… I mean, recently it's come out that he's also, like, a predator, and, like, my son went, oh, no, I can't handle that.
• 8:09
  OCB: Like, you didn't see that one coming?
• 8:12
  Tad Eggleston: That's exactly…
• 8:13
  OCB: By the way, the guy who, like.
• 8:14
  Tad Eggleston: That's exactly.
• 8:15
  OCB: He actively looks like a vampire. Like a rapey, scary vampire. That's… yeah. Wow, shocker.
• 8:24
  Tad Eggleston: Most, most surprising thing ever, yeah.
• 8:27
  Tad Eggleston: But the one that got me, like… Apparently, he had…
• 8:34
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, my son told me this story, expecting me to think it was cool, and then showed me the article. I'm sitting there going, oh my god, I would have had him arrested.
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: He had some reporter came to, to… His room to interview him.
• 8:52
  Tad Eggleston: And he put a gun to her head as she walked through the door. And apparently, it turned out to be a fake or whatnot, but, like, he was deliberately scaring her to start, you know, as part of his…
• 9:05
  Tad Eggleston: I'm cool!
• 9:06
  OCB: Dude.
• 9:08
  Tad Eggleston: And it's like.
• 9:08
  OCB: No!
• 9:09
  Tad Eggleston: No! No! No, no, no, not cool. Not cool.
• 9:14
  OCB: This, I mean, this had to be, like.
• 9:17
  OCB: A while ago, right? That sounds like some early aughts nonsense right there. Yeah, no, we… we've certainly seen some interesting times, in… in our… in our lifetime. I'm glad, like.
• 9:31
  OCB: There's a lot about, like, kind of where we are right now. Obviously, politically, that's a complete mess, but I do feel like we maybe have moved past…
• 9:41
  OCB: Dehumanizing people to the point where we, you know, try to elicit fear for our own, our own, like, ridiculous enjoyment.
• 9:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, now we just… now we just do it if you're protesting things that we don't like.
• 9:56
  OCB: Yeah, well, listen, I mean… I have to have something.
• 10:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 10:03
  OCB: But…
• 10:03
  Tad Eggleston: I had Ryan Busse on the show. Ryan, Ryan is a… now he's a politician in… in…
• 10:14
  Tad Eggleston: Montana, but before… when I had him on the show, he was the issues director for…
• 10:20
  Tad Eggleston: Giffords, the gun safety group that Gabby Giffords started after she got shot.
• 10:27
  Tad Eggleston: And before that, he was a gun executive.
• 10:31
  Tad Eggleston: And one of the reasons that he left the gun industry
• 10:35
  Tad Eggleston: is he was at a Black Lives Matter rally, with his kids…
• 10:42
  Tad Eggleston: Who wanted to go out, because they believed in it.
• 10:45
  Tad Eggleston: where they got heckled by a guy holding an AR-15.
• 10:50
  Tad Eggleston: And he's like, wait a minute, no, this is not okay.
• 10:53
  Tad Eggleston: Something has gone horribly. He's like, I'm a gun guy, but this is not okay!
• 10:59
  OCB: Good for him, man. I feel like you don't… you don't hear enough…
• 11:02
  OCB: From folks like that, and people, you know, kind of making the switch, and…
• 11:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, I'll plug his book again. He wrote a book called Gunfight, where he talked about the shift in the industry.
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: from the inside.
• 11:17
  Tad Eggleston: And I think at this point, he's even…
• 11:19
  OCB: That's fascinating.
• 11:20
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I think at this point, he's even more wide-eyed about it than he was…
• 11:25
  Tad Eggleston: then, because then I think he…
• 11:29
  Tad Eggleston: He was still in denial of some of the profit motive side.
• 11:34
  OCB: Okay.
• 11:35
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm pretty certain his company, it wasn't a pro… you know, his company didn't get into this stuff, because he was… he was involved in a company that, like.
• 11:43
  Tad Eggleston: made almost artisanal guns, if that makes sense. They were, like, really high-quality rifles for hunting.
• 11:50
  OCB: Okay, sure.
• 11:52
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, I mean, if you're talking art supplies, it would be, like, the equivalent of buying the $100 set of colored pencils rather than the Crayolas.
• 12:02
  OCB: Sure.
• 12:03
  Tad Eggleston: Or, like…
• 12:04
  OCB: The cheese with the name you can't pronounce.
• 12:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 12:08
  OCB: Yeah, the $200 bottle of wine with your gun.
• 12:12
  OCB: You're… you got the whole artisanal collection right there.
• 12:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they're wrong.
• 12:17
  OCB: Sournough starter.
• 12:20
  OCB: Right, okay.
• 12:22
  Tad Eggleston: But they still went to shows and whatnot, so we got to watch the industry change.
• 12:26
  OCB: Right.
• 12:26
  Tad Eggleston: at shows.
• 12:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's a fast… it was a fascinating read. I had a… I was so happy that he was willing… like, it's one of the handful of times I reached out to a totally non-comic guy. Right. Though, ironically, like, 6 months later, I saw him in a comic.
• 12:47
  OCB: Cool!
• 12:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, there's a comic, and why do I always forget the freakin' name of it,
• 12:54
  Tad Eggleston: There's a comic about, like, combating disinformation.
• 12:59
  Tad Eggleston: And it used him for one of the…
• 13:03
  OCB: Oh, that's very.
• 13:04
  Tad Eggleston: He didn't even know about it until I sent it to him.
• 13:07
  OCB: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:09
  Tad Eggleston: I will come up with the name before the end of the show, because I dug it up earlier today.
• 13:16
  Tad Eggleston: But anyway, while we're doing that, tell me about Kill Train, because that's the most recent one. I read it, I loved it, even though I…
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: as I told you, I was afraid of it. It's the type of book that can go either way with me. I wouldn't have been able to handle it if it was a movie, so I'm glad that it was a comic.
• 13:34
  OCB: Oh, well, hopefully it will be a movie at some point, or a TV show.
• 13:37
  Tad Eggleston: I don't promise to watch it.
• 13:39
  OCB: But it's.
• 13:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm more likely, because I feel like we're friends, but… and if I overstep my boundaries there, I apologize, but…
• 13:49
  OCB: Oh, no, please, no, honesty's great. Listen, this, extreme gore isn't for everyone, but .
• 13:55
  Tad Eggleston: No, I meant in calling you a friend.
• 13:58
  OCB: Oh.
• 13:59
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if we've gotten that far yet.
• 14:02
  OCB: Have we had the friend conversation? Oh, dear. No, please. Not at all, not at all. But yeah, no, so, Kill Train…
• 14:14
  OCB: It was actually inspired by a dream that I had in my 20s, but it's about a not-so-distant future in which to control the population explosion, New York City institutes this kill train program. So, 1 out of every 10,000 trains is chosen at random, and everyone is slaughtered by the end of the line, and in this world, you have the struggling single mom who's actively having a nervous breakdown and decides that she's not going down without
• 14:38
  OCB: a fight.
• 14:39
  OCB: So, yeah, so that's the… that's the premise of the book, and…
• 14:44
  Tad Eggleston: Was that part part of your dream in your 20s, or did that come after children?
• 14:48
  OCB: Well, yes. After children, but also, it's interesting, because I had… I had sold Mad Cave on the initial concept for the book, which was, you know, these subway trains basically being used, for human extermination to control the population explosion.
• 15:06
  OCB: But, you know, I'm always working on, like.
• 15:10
  OCB: like, 10, 15 different projects at once, which is insane. I'm trying not to do that anymore.
• 15:15
  Tad Eggleston: sounds typical of most writers that I know, particularly
• 15:19
  Tad Eggleston: Ones that work in multiple mediums.
• 15:20
  OCB: Yeah, it's, like, it's a big, huge juggling act, but, you know, like, we'll talk about later, there's, like, certain things that end up, like, happening in the industry, which, like, point you in other directions and kind of.
• 15:32
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. I will say, for the record, and I've said it multiple times on this show, the solution to having artists and writers who both are prolific and don't go insane is pay them well enough to eat and cover their healthcare.
• 15:51
  OCB: Yeah.
• 15:52
  OCB: Well, Comics doesn't do that, but .
• 15:55
  Tad Eggleston: No, it doesn't!
• 15:56
  OCB: Yeah, so… Yeah, just for starters, but…
• 16:01
  Tad Eggleston: That's why you have to be working on 6 different projects at once.
• 16:05
  OCB: Right, I mean, and that's another reason why, like, we need film and TV to come back for, like, a host of reasons, but that's one of them. But, so yeah, so I sold them on that initial concept, but then, you know, when I was, like, doing my whole juggling act, and it came time to actually write the outline, I was just… I was in a really shitty place.
• 16:24
  OCB: And I was… I was…
• 16:26
  OCB: kind of furious, about a lot of things, and I thought, you know, I could just… creates…
• 16:32
  Tad Eggleston: In this world today.
• 16:34
  OCB: It wasn't… listen, I… I'm not one of those people that gets furious about the state of the world. I was, like, I was more furious just about the state of, like, my life, and, you know, the… the place that I had found myself, and what.
• 16:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they do play off of each other sometimes, Olivia.
• 16:51
  OCB: It's true, like, there's, you know, there were things that were happening, in the industry also, you know, like, I mean, the entertainment industry is, it's not… it's not easy for anyone, it's really not easy for women. And, I…
• 17:03
  Tad Eggleston: I believe that 10 times over.
• 17:07
  OCB: I had told myself my whole life growing up, you know, because I grew up in New York City, and I think during the 90s, there was very much this sentiment from, like, you know, women in my mother's generation of, like.
• 17:18
  OCB: No, like, guys, we took care of everything for you, okay? Like, you're solid, you have nothing to worry about.
• 17:25
  Tad Eggleston: And then they allowed…
• 17:26
  OCB: We've gone through it.
• 17:28
  OCB: And then what?
• 17:29
  Tad Eggleston: And then they elected Reagan.
• 17:32
  OCB: Oh, well, this… no, this was, I mean, after Reagan, right?
• 17:36
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, but what I mean is, they took care of everything, and then they elected Reagan, and it took some time, but that's when the ball started rolling downhill again to get us where we are.
• 17:46
  OCB: Well, listen, I mean, it's so hard to say, because I don't know that it necessarily matters who is in office when it comes to things like this. It's just that progress is.
• 17:59
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's just an easy… it's an easy way to… To… to delineate time periods.
• 18:06
  OCB: Yes, and it's also… it's an easy way to stagnate, too. Like, I'm not gonna say.
• 18:10
  Tad Eggleston: Hell yeah.
• 18:10
  OCB: Like, you know, the…
• 18:13
  OCB: certain political parties don't make it, like, enormously harder to actually, like, see gains when it comes to, like, dumb… dumb things like equal pay. But the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, whether or not you had someone left or right in office, like, there was still… there's… there's… things are just…
• 18:33
  OCB: harder for women. There's, like, there's… there's certain.
• 18:36
  Tad Eggleston: They are.
• 18:36
  OCB: Of, like, what they can and cannot do, and there's also, you know, the fact that… the…
• 18:44
  OCB: The world is still very much designed for men, in everything from, like, the products that you use to clean your teeth with, and the way that city planning works, like, and just the design of, like, public transportation systems, like, there's… it's…
• 19:02
  OCB: it's bizarre when you actually start looking into it, like, how… how little women are considered in any of this. Sorry if you can hear the sirens, that's just my neighborhood. I live on, like, a.
• 19:13
  Tad Eggleston: I can't, actually.
• 19:14
  OCB: Okay, that's great.
• 19:16
  OCB: Because, like, they're here. Okay, now they're leaving, great. Sometimes they get stuck in my street, which is quite small, and that's awesome. So…
• 19:25
  Tad Eggleston: I imagine.
• 19:26
  OCB: I never… I was always told that, like, you know, we could do whatever we wanted, and it wasn't an issue anymore, and so I didn't look for it. Like, it really was not until I was in graduate school, and I had…
• 19:38
  OCB: a pretty fucking blatantly chauvinistic professor that took me forever to identify, that I was like, oh, wait a minute, like.
• 19:46
  OCB: there are people out here who just really do not like outspoken women. And, you know, and then in the entertainment industry, like, it's… I feel like it's not…
• 19:57
  OCB: it's not like that, like, dudes are like, oh, like, screw that chick, we don't want to work with her, like, she's gonna cry all the time. Like, I don't actually think it's that blatant. I think they're just like…
• 20:08
  OCB: hey, like, I have, like, my group of dude friends who I'm more comfortable with, and so, you know, because I'm doing the kind of work that I'm doing, which requires me to be vulnerable and be an artist and a writer, like, I would rather surround myself with, like, dudes that I know are, like, cool with me like that. Like, I think that's… it's, like, it's kind of innocent in some ways.
• 20:26
  OCB: But, you know, I was just… I was having trouble getting work.
• 20:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'll give them two parts innocent to go with one part… Never had to, like…
• 20:39
  Tad Eggleston: Learn how to act properly.
• 20:42
  OCB: Listen, there's definitely some of that, too. But, you know, also, like, I'm… I'm also someone who can, like, very safely say that men gave me my start.
• 20:55
  OCB: you know, like, men who were above me in the industry were, like, the first people to, like, put their hand out and give me a job. So, like, it can work both ways.
• 21:03
  OCB: But it just… it's… it felt like… I was… I was feeling this discrepancy. I was also feeling like…
• 21:08
  OCB: you know, as, like, a woman with children, that there were, like, you're perceived differently, there are… your energies have to go in certain places, and, like, if you're that kid's dad, like, it's… you kind of don't. Like, the expectation is not the same.
• 21:25
  OCB: I was feeling roughed up by this.
• 21:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, as… as a… as… as… as the… the… Weekend dad myself.
• 21:35
  Tad Eggleston: When my kids were younger. Weekends and two nights a week, which had so many people telling me, oh, you're amazing, and I'm sitting there going, wait a minute.
• 21:43
  OCB: Yeah.
• 21:44
  Tad Eggleston: I'm amazing because I see my kids 3 times a week.
• 21:49
  OCB: Right.
• 21:49
  OCB: No, but it's true, you are. Wow, like, you didn't run out on those kids? Like, let's give you a prize. Meanwhile…
• 21:57
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, I mean, there, where I was going is I remember
• 22:03
  Tad Eggleston: Michael Chabon has, has a city… it's,
• 22:06
  Tad Eggleston: collection of essays called Manhood for Amateurs.
• 22:10
  Tad Eggleston: And the very first one talks about being At the grocery store.
• 22:16
  Tad Eggleston: With one of his kids when they were young.
• 22:19
  Tad Eggleston: And they start screaming, so he tears open the box of the box of Cheerios.
• 22:25
  Tad Eggleston: like, in the store, before it's been paid for, to give them Cheerios for them to be quiet.
• 22:31
  Tad Eggleston: And an old lady leans over and goes, You're such a good dad!
• 22:38
  Tad Eggleston: And he's just thinking, If it had been my wife…
• 22:43
  Tad Eggleston: She would have been a terrible mother because they were screaming, she would have been a terrible mother because she bribed them to be quiet. She's just going through all of the ways that even the things that he was being praised, that not only was it at, like, this incredibly low bar for being a great dad.
• 23:02
  Tad Eggleston: But half the things that he was being praised for, if his wife had done them, she would have been looked down upon.
• 23:10
  OCB: And you know, it's funny, I don't think that that is necessarily even, like, limited to men in parental roles. I think it's also.
• 23:16
  Tad Eggleston: No?
• 23:17
  OCB: like, any time that, like, men feel bad or have their feelings hurt, I think that women, overreact, but when… with men, it's like, oh, that poor guy. And I have… I've experienced that firsthand so many times. But again, listen…
• 23:35
  Tad Eggleston: I apologize for my gender, Olivia. No! I don't even actually totally claim it as my gender anymore. As soon as I realized that you didn't have to, I went, you know, there's no part about what people generally consider men that I… I don't think I'm a woman, so I don't know what I am, but…
• 23:53
  OCB: No, listen, you're a human being, and there's nothing inherently wrong with being male. It's just that we have… we have taken so much time to ascribe certain values and… and attributes
• 24:09
  OCB: to people that really don't have them. Like, listen, I'm not gonna sit here and say that men and women are the same. Like, I'm on hormone replacement, we are not the same. Like, my chemical cocktail is completely different, but my chemical cocktail is also completely different from other women, even other women my age, which we are also finding out now that we actually know that perimenopause is a thing, and don't even get me started on that.
• 24:31
  OCB: this out forever.
• 24:31
  Tad Eggleston: I have that conversation with my wife a lot, so…
• 24:34
  OCB: Yeah, this is the…
• 24:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you need to, let it out.
• 24:38
  OCB: No, like I said, like, I got the patch, like, I'm figuring it out. You did too. But I will say that, like, you know, we…
• 24:47
  OCB: We spend a lot of time talking in generalizations about one another when we're all very, very specific beings, and it makes me sad. It makes me sad that we, you know, decided at any point in time that there was any, like, gender-race combo that we could point at and say, you're the problem.
• 25:04
  OCB: I… I don't think that that's accurate, but I do think that we have to sometimes look at, like I did when I was embarking on writing Kill Train, that there are certain groups of us that are suffering dumb things disproportionately.
• 25:21
  OCB: Not because we don't work hard, or because we're not talented, but just because we present a certain way to the world.
• 25:28
  OCB: And I… but I was very fearful, because when I constructed this whole outline, I was like… it was crazy, I was, like, really, really jet-lagged, and I was in Europe, and I was, like, exhausted, and I just could not stop writing this outline. And I sent it into Mad Cave, and I had, like, this awful feeling in my gut that, like.
• 25:45
  OCB: They're gonna come back to me and say no one's gonna care about a story about, like, a middle-aged woman having a nervous breakdown.
• 25:53
  OCB: And actually, they came… they didn't have a single note, and it got green.
• 25:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, Olivia, have you been reading comics for the last 20 years?
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: Comics is one of the few places where we care about that.
• 26:06
  OCB: Well, I mean, and I'm very grateful. I loved writing Kill Train, and I love writing Kill Train Volume 2, which I think I told you about, but there is an update there, because, you know, for those of you in the comics world, I'm sure that, like, well, I mean, now, probably.
• 26:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's old news now, because Marvel just had all of its news.
• 26:27
  OCB: Yeah, so Mad Cave had a bunch of layoffs, and they canceled a bunch of books, and Kill Train Vol. 2 was one of them.
• 26:33
  OCB: As well as another book that I had with them, called Death Cast, but they also happened to lay off my editor, who I've been working with for years on Kill Train Volume 2, so I actually… the day that he got laid off.
• 26:49
  OCB: I wrote him, and I was like, James, you want to do Kill Train Volume 2 as a Kickstarter? And he's like, yes, I'm down. And we're actually repeating on Thursday to…
• 26:56
  Tad Eggleston: And you're gonna have to come back.
• 26:59
  Tad Eggleston: Cause…
• 26:59
  OCB: Yeah, there's no way I'm not gonna do that book. Like, we outlined it, it's beautiful, like, we worked on it together.
• 27:07
  Tad Eggleston: And that's… I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about Kickstarter, because, I mean, like.
• 27:13
  Tad Eggleston: we had Kyle Starks on right after… he… he wound up doing the third volume of Where Monsters Lie through Kickstarter, because the Dark Horse said the first two volumes didn't sell well enough, we won't… we don't want to publish a third. They were publishing other stuff from him, but they wouldn't put… publish this one that he wanted to do.
• 27:33
  Tad Eggleston: So he's like, well…
• 27:34
  OCB: Yeah, similar.
• 27:35
  Tad Eggleston: We're not.
• 27:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I thought it was so funny, because, like, literally, while I was talking to him, we were talking about two books. We were talking about this Kickstarter for this book, that the first two volumes had come out.
• 27:46
  Tad Eggleston: from Dark Horse, and we're talking about another book at Dark Horse, by him, with the same artist. So, like, they totally wanted to continue working with the writer and artist team, just, like, give us something else.
• 27:59
  OCB: Yeah, no, and that happens all the time, you know, and I was just, you know, talking with some Mad Cave folks today, and, like.
• 28:06
  OCB: You know, my reps are, like, pretty pissed.
• 28:10
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 28:11
  OCB: you know, their feeling is, like, you shouldn't sign contracts if you're not… if you can't honor them, but, like, I get it, like, listen, the business shifts and changes, and, like.
• 28:19
  OCB: You have to do what you have to do to keep your company alive, and I take no…
• 28:23
  Tad Eggleston: our, our.
• 28:23
  OCB: of it.
• 28:24
  Tad Eggleston: Are your reps more, TV… movie side, or…
• 28:30
  OCB: I have reps across the board, so I have an agent in the traditional publishing space, I have managers in film and TV, and agents in film and TV, and I have a lawyer, like, I…
• 28:42
  Tad Eggleston: No, I was just…
• 28:43
  OCB: Solid 25%, it's crazy.
• 28:45
  Tad Eggleston: Cause… cause there are not enough… like…
• 28:51
  Tad Eggleston: comic space reps. So sometimes… sometimes the… Yeah, they'.
• 28:56
  OCB: Either, like, entertainment or publishing, yeah.
• 28:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right. They don't understand the comics industry as well. Like, if they're giving you the rights to go
• 29:06
  Tad Eggleston: to go make a Kickstarter, they're doing so much better than a lot of comics companies do when they decide not to make a book.
• 29:16
  OCB: Yeah, no, I mean, and that's, like, I have to get the letter of rights reversal, but they're not… they're not gonna try and hold on to the rights. Mad Cave's really, really good like that. They, if it's creator-owned, then the creator owns the copyright. They're… they're very, very decent that way. Right. So, but yeah, again.
• 29:34
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like…
• 29:35
  OCB: Hero hard feelings.
• 29:35
  Tad Eggleston: I've read books from you at publishers that weren't.
• 29:40
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 29:41
  OCB: Yes, you have.
• 29:43
  OCB: I don't care about talking about that either.
• 29:45
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, but, like, well, I mean.
• 29:47
  OCB: I'll talk about all of that.
• 29:49
  Tad Eggleston: I read Mary, Mary Shelley, Monster Hunter today, and it clearly was setting up for another volume that I bet you we never get to see.
• 30:00
  OCB: Well, interestingly, the second.
• 30:02
  Tad Eggleston: Where are you gonna…
• 30:03
  OCB: that ended up being Bram Stoker Monster Hunter, which was… and it was a totally different story, and it was… there was, like, a date that it was supposed to come out and everything, and then, of course, you know, Aftershock went bankrupt. And so, yeah, that… but I don't know if that book will ever see the light of day.
• 30:21
  OCB: I haven't… they're out of bankruptcy now, but yeah, that's like… I don't… I don't…
• 30:28
  OCB: I don't try and check in, I'm just…
• 30:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't blame you.
• 30:31
  OCB: you guys want to do when you want to do it. It's… that's a different story. I mean, I think there's, like… what I love about the comic book industry is that, like, 99… oh, the cat's so cute. 99% of the people in it, like, they're just good people that want to tell good stories.
• 30:48
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 30:49
  OCB: Like, let's face it, like, no one is making a crap ton of money doing any of this. The other good thing about a Kickstarter, though, is that I will make more money on my own book.
• 30:58
  OCB: doing a Kickstarter than I would with a publisher, but, you know, then you also have to do more work, but, you know, it is what it is. And I'm so glad that James Emmett, it's who edited the first book, is… we're gonna do the Kickstarter together, and…
• 31:09
  OCB: He's done a Kickstarter before, I have not, so I'm extremely grateful.
• 31:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, and that there, I'm gonna be talking to,
• 31:17
  Tad Eggleston: David Hyde of Superfan Productions, I think later this week, and they've kind of…
• 31:23
  Tad Eggleston: they've kind of slipped into that place where comics people don't do a lot of publicity, comics people don't always know how to run Kickstarters, and…
• 31:33
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know everything that Superfan Productions does, but it seems to be publicity and Kickstarters.
• 31:40
  OCB: Yeah, oh, that's really interesting. I should contact David. No, he's lovely. We, I had a great time, working with him. He worked with Oni Press, and helped a lot.
• 31:50
  Tad Eggleston: still there.
• 31:51
  OCB: with Jill and the Killers, getting that book out there. And, he did a phenomenal job. Like, he would have me, like, write all these essays, and then he would get them published in places, and yeah, like, he, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna write a little note to myself.
• 32:05
  Tad Eggleston: Nope.
• 32:06
  OCB: Gotta reach out to David Hyde, yeah, he's a good one.
• 32:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and speaking of Jill and the Killers, skateboard's in my hand, oh, yeah! Why don't you give us the Jill and the Killers pitch? I talked about.
• 32:18
  OCB: Yeah, so…
• 32:18
  Tad Eggleston: two years ago when it was coming out, but it's been a while for, for, for…
• 32:22
  OCB: It's been a while.
• 32:23
  Tad Eggleston: The listeners are 22 pounds.
• 32:24
  OCB: I'm gonna do.
• 32:25
  Tad Eggleston: Hi, Mom. Hi, Britt. Hi, Adam. Those are our listeners. We might have a couple more.
• 32:31
  OCB: Oh, we have some live folks. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 32:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, no, they're not live. They're just the people that I know listen.
• 32:39
  OCB: Oh, okay.
• 32:41
  Tad Eggleston: I have a small enough podcast that I know my listeners by name. Half of them are related.
• 32:48
  OCB: Oh, that's so cute! Well, actually, are you going to ALA? Are you gonna be there?
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have… I won't be inside as of now, because it's really expensive.
• 33:02
  OCB: Is it?
• 33:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's like $300.
• 33:05
  Tad Eggleston: But it's cause they give away so many things.
• 33:08
  OCB: Okay.
• 33:10
  OCB: Huh, well.
• 33:11
  Tad Eggleston: If I was a librarian, my school would pay for it.
• 33:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right. If you need a plus one, I'll carry stuff for you.
• 33:18
  OCB: Well, y'all, I'll let you know. I'm not…
• 33:21
  Tad Eggleston: Otherwise, I'll come down and bite you, yeah.
• 33:23
  OCB: I'll probably have an extra badge when I'm there, but, yeah, so I'm… I'm gonna be doing a signing, actually, of Jill and the Killers, because, I just…
• 33:32
  OCB: I just reconnected, with Hunter, because I actually need more copies of the book. I sold out in, last time I was in Chicago. Okay. And so they're gonna have me do a signing, and they invited me out to, like, a lovely dinner with them, so I was like, oh, I haven't, like, connected with the Onipress folks in a while, but yeah.
• 33:49
  Tad Eggleston: Are they having you do a signing just at ALA, or are they having you sign any? Okay, because I'm connected with a shop in the area, we'd have you out if you got time.
• 33:59
  OCB: We can try and figure that out. I don't… the ALA conference, it's long, it's like 5 days. There's… I'm not gonna make it for Thursday, but I'll be there by Friday.
• 34:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, we'll trade some emails, we'll figure it out. And if nothing else, I'll come down and buy coffee, dinner, breakfast, lunch, we should sit down and.
• 34:18
  OCB: Yeah, we should, it'd be fun.
• 34:19
  Tad Eggleston: Fact.
• 34:20
  OCB: But yeah, so, Jill and the kill…
• 34:22
  Tad Eggleston: I won't be working during the summer. That's the greatest thing about being a teacher.
• 34:27
  OCB: Oh, trust me, my dad was a teacher, I know all about it. Yeah. But yeah, so…
• 34:31
  Tad Eggleston: The worst part about being a teacher is almost everything else, except for the feeling of accomplishment.
• 34:37
  OCB: Don't say that.
• 34:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
• 34:38
  OCB: Teaching, but at the university level, in the fall.
• 34:42
  Tad Eggleston: Olivia, I love teaching. The feeling of accomplishment actually, like, outweighs the everything else.
• 34:48
  OCB: All of the nonsense.
• 34:49
  Tad Eggleston: When you start explaining, like, what it is teachers do to people who don't have that passion to teach, they sit there going, oh my god.
• 34:59
  Tad Eggleston: What? That's the only time they realize that you're underpaid. They don't think you're underpaid when they think about your summers off. They're like, oh, of course you're paid that way. Look at all the time off you've got. And then you start talking about kids, and having 30 of them at once.
• 35:15
  Tad Eggleston: And Skibbity Toilet, and 6-7.
• 35:18
  OCB: That's right, yep.
• 35:21
  OCB: Well, yeah, you're really getting hammered. I'm gonna be teaching at the university level, in the fall, so…
• 35:27
  Tad Eggleston: Not always better.
• 35:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it depends on…
• 35:30
  OCB: pay is certainly not. What they pay adjuncts is, like, it's.
• 35:35
  Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, adjunct pay?
• 35:37
  Tad Eggleston: I had a friend who actually managed to unionize the adjuncts at a… at a community college.
• 35:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 35:44
  OCB: Wow, that's…
• 35:45
  Tad Eggleston: Practically doubled their pay overnight.
• 35:49
  OCB: Honestly, you could double what I'm getting paid, and it still wouldn't pay the rent.
• 35:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no! He still had to teach at two different junior colleges, as in the rancher. Right.
• 35:59
  OCB: Well, but again, this is not…
• 36:00
  Tad Eggleston: Pay his half of the rent with his fiancee, who taught at one junior college and worked at a bookstore.
• 36:07
  OCB: Yeah, that's, like, it's actually criminal. But no, Jill and the Killers is about… it's about a group of, teenage girls in this really creepy Route 66 town called, Seligman, Arizona, which actually is a real town.
• 36:22
  OCB: And they get what they think is a murder mystery game box, and it ends up being clues to an actual double homicide in their town that might be connected to the disappearance of Jill's mom.
• 36:33
  OCB: And that one was, it's so… I love looking back at that.
• 36:38
  Tad Eggleston: That was my introduction to you.
• 36:40
  OCB: Oh, yeah?
• 36:40
  Tad Eggleston: I loved it.
• 36:42
  Tad Eggleston: I loved it, and then I was scared off by your website, so I never managed to email you.
• 36:48
  OCB: See, what was scary about my website?
• 36:50
  Tad Eggleston: You're professional and work in TV, too, so I assumed that, that, like, oh, the comic guy isn't gonna get anywhere.
• 36:58
  OCB: Oh, that's so weird! Yeah, no, like…
• 37:01
  OCB: That's, that's so interesting that you would perceive it that way. No.
• 37:06
  Tad Eggleston: Well, also, it was earlier, earlier in the podcast…
• 37:11
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't have my confidence yet.
• 37:15
  OCB: Oh, yeah, no, you just gotta reach out, like, and it's, it's funny, I think I had the same view before I, like, wrote in film and TV, that, like.
• 37:23
  OCB: TV writers were whatever I thought they were. And then my first job was on Criminal Minds Beyond Borders, and I remember, like, the whole team of writers, like, walking towards me, and it was like they were in slow motion until I got close enough, and I was like, oh, this is like a pack of nerds. Lovely nerds, but yeah.
• 37:39
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
• 37:40
  OCB: I'm nerds.
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: I've become very good friends with Chris Cantwell. Like, I've been excited the last two weeks because Devlin Silver finally came out after…
• 37:49
  Tad Eggleston: After…
• 37:50
  Tad Eggleston: The 8 months he spent grueling over making it, and then the year plus that it sat around waiting for release.
• 37:59
  OCB: Right.
• 38:01
  OCB: Yeah, but, no, we're…
• 38:03
  Tad Eggleston: And now, now, now television writers are a little less demystified to me, though I'd probably still have trouble speaking to Aaron Sorkin.
• 38:12
  OCB: Well, I think everyone has trouble speaking to Aaron Sorkin, because Aaron Sorkin speaks like Aaron Sorkin.
• 38:19
  OCB: But… oh, you want to hear a funny Aaron Sorkin story?
• 38:25
  Tad Eggleston: I'd love to.
• 38:26
  OCB: Okay.
• 38:27
  OCB: This is so ridiculous. I'm on a hike, with one of my best girlfriends in LA. She's actually married to Jeff Addis. Talk about, TV writers. He, just did The Burroughs for Upside Down, Productions, the show that's about to come out, which everyone should watch. Watch the Burroughs.
• 38:46
  OCB: It comes out… oh my god, it comes out in, like, 2 days. I'm so excited. But anyway, so we're on a hike, and, we're in Bronson Canyon, which is where we would always go to hike.
• 38:56
  OCB: And I pass this gentleman, who looks extremely familiar, like, I know that I know this guy's face, and we get, like.
• 39:04
  OCB: a few yards, you know, past him. And I look at Ashley, and I'm like.
• 39:10
  OCB: oh my god, was that Aaron Sorkin? And she was like, oh, I don't know. And I was like, fuck, I think it was, like, I love him. He's, like, one of my… I really do, I love Aaron Sorkin, and I'm like.
• 39:20
  Tad Eggleston: I do too.
• 39:20
  OCB: I, like, should I go back and, like, say something? No, I, like, I can't, like, I'm too nervous, like, oh man, I can't believe I just saw Aaron Storkin, and, like, I didn't realize it until it was too late. Okay, so anyway, that whole thing happens, like, cut to months later, like, I'm watching some, like, awards ceremony on TV or something.
• 39:40
  OCB: And all of a sudden, I see the gentleman that I saw on the hike, and it wasn't Aaron Sworkin at all, it was Christopher fucking Nolan!
• 39:55
  OCB: I was just like…
• 39:56
  OCB: Imagining myself on this hike, like, excuse me, sir, let me mistake you for a lesser-known celebrity. Like, it would have been…
• 40:06
  Tad Eggleston: I, I mean…
• 40:07
  OCB: for me.
• 40:08
  Tad Eggleston: My son would argue with me, but I'd rather meet Aaron Sorkin.
• 40:13
  OCB: I would rather meet Aaron Sorkin, too. It's just that you don't go up to Christopher Nolan and mistake him.
• 40:18
  Tad Eggleston: Though, you know what? I'm looking at a picture of him right now, and I can see it. I can see it.
• 40:23
  OCB: There's sort of a similar… It's not like jogging.
• 40:25
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly if you're jogging.
• 40:28
  OCB: Or he…
• 40:29
  Tad Eggleston: You know, if people are in motion and not wearing suits or whatever you're used to seeing, people, you know.
• 40:37
  OCB: But also, like, who has seen Aaron Sorkin recently, anyway? You know what I mean? He's not someone that, like, you see regularly. But anyway, yeah, so that's my, like, Aaron Sorkin, non-Arin Sorkin story.
• 40:48
  Tad Eggleston: My, my, my, my favorite…
• 40:51
  Tad Eggleston: line about Aaron Sorkin to quote, and I'm not gonna… not gonna attribute it, because the guy that wrote it in his newsletter years and years and years ago wound up being one of the really bad actors in comics. But.
• 41:06
  Tad Eggleston: We'll do the line anyway, because the line was great.
• 41:10
  Tad Eggleston: he, he wrote, I, I just read…
• 41:14
  Tad Eggleston: the script for the pilot for Studio 60.
• 41:19
  Tad Eggleston: Man, I want to break that man's… er, nearly gave up writing. Man, I want to break that man's hands.
• 41:27
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 41:32
  OCB: Well, you know, it's funny, that's, like, a very, very common story that you hear a lot, like, just when I was gonna turn my back on all of it.
• 41:40
  OCB: I don't know how much.
• 41:42
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean…
• 41:42
  OCB: that, though.
• 41:44
  Tad Eggleston: No. No, he wasn't… I mean, it was a joke. I mean, he didn't give up writing. It was… it was… that was how much this writer appreciates Sorkin's writing, is that, like, he reads Sorkin's stuff, and he's like.
• 41:58
  Tad Eggleston: I can't do this.
• 42:01
  OCB: You know what's really interesting about that? You can, you totally can.
• 42:05
  Tad Eggleston: I agree.
• 42:05
  OCB: This was actually, like, one of the… one of the best things about being staffed on different shows was realizing that, like, if you can… you just get the tone of the show in your head, like.
• 42:15
  OCB: you can… you can kind of parrot anything to great success, and with someone as distinctive as Aaron Sorkin, when I was in graduate school, I… I… my thesis project was a feature, there was just a feature that I wanted to write, but I knew halfway through grad school that I wanted to be in TV, and part of that was because of the newsroom.
• 42:33
  OCB: I love.
• 42:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 42:35
  OCB: I loved it!
• 42:36
  Tad Eggleston: He loves it.
• 42:37
  OCB: passionate, loved it. I wanted to, like, live inside of that show. And so.
• 42:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I feel that way about all of Aaron's shows.
• 42:45
  OCB: I know there's something about that, that Kay.
• 42:47
  Tad Eggleston: His movie's not quite as much, but… but… but I get…
• 42:50
  OCB: Oh, yeah, the Lucille Ball movie that he… I was like.
• 42:55
  Tad Eggleston: I enjoyed it.
• 42:56
  OCB: Oh, you did?
• 42:58
  Tad Eggleston: I did. On the.
• 42:59
  OCB: I was kind of horrified by how not funny it was when she.
• 43:02
  Tad Eggleston: On the second watch.
• 43:04
  OCB: funniest person.
• 43:05
  Tad Eggleston: I know, but I think that was part of the point.
• 43:08
  Tad Eggleston: Is that, yes, she's the funniest person, but she's also brilliant.
• 43:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but I think there was no way to get… So her job… her job was to be funny on screen and, like, run the business off-screen.
• 43:21
  OCB: But the casting was also, like.
• 43:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it was weird.
• 43:24
  OCB: Like, there was so much going on with that movie that I was just kind of like, this is, like, it's, like, off-putting, and I love, I love the Lucille Ball.
• 43:33
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm, I'm…
• 43:34
  OCB: But, for the most part.
• 43:35
  Tad Eggleston: Way more… way more about his TV. I was just watching Sports Night again.
• 43:41
  OCB: Oh, yeah, you know, it's funny, I also love,
• 43:45
  OCB: Peter Krausa, but I haven't seen that show. I love.
• 43:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, essentially, essentially, what Aaron Sorkin does, that I love, is he takes all of these things.
• 43:57
  Tad Eggleston: And he both demystifies them, and…
• 44:02
  Tad Eggleston: Puts forward, like, the most ideal version of them all at the same time.
• 44:09
  OCB: Yeah, it's like, it's beautiful drama, and I think people's.
• 44:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, whether it's Sports Night, or the West Wing, or Studio 60, or the Newsroom. Like, you're see… you're actually getting to learn about how these things work, and all of their dirty, horribleness, but you also have this example of how we wish they worked.
• 44:28
  OCB: Right.
• 44:30
  OCB: Right. Yes, no, 100%, and it's… it is… it's very, like, idealistic, and it's… it's… I think what…
• 44:37
  OCB: what people like you and I love about it so much is that it's a very, like, romantic version.
• 44:43
  OCB: Of this thing that we're watching, but also, like, you're learning at the same time. But also, like, I don't know if you felt this way, but, like, if you… like, Aaron Starkin clearly has, like, a very defined viewpoint on life, and, like, if you agree with that viewpoint, like, you're gonna be like, hooray!
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 44:58
  OCB: And I… yeah, so that's… he just, like.
• 45:01
  Tad Eggleston: If you believe that, like, human beings are relatively equal and deserve certain things, like respect, and food, and healthcare, truth…
• 45:16
  OCB: Yes. Well, that's…
• 45:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's part of respect. Like, like, like, the need to lie to somebody means you don't respect them enough
• 45:24
  Tad Eggleston: To think that they can handle the truth, or you know that the truth is so damning.
• 45:31
  OCB: Okay.
• 45:33
  Tad Eggleston: You don't respect them enough because you made that truth.
• 45:37
  OCB: I don't know! See, I would venture to say that it… it's… those types of things are way more internal. I think that there's so much fear involved in lying, and that it has… it oftentimes has very much to do with how you feel about the other person, more how you feel about yourself, but again…
• 45:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 45:53
  OCB: So, so much of what I do as a writer is, like, deep, deep psychology, and…
• 45:58
  OCB: interestingly, like, several of the projects that I am now developing in the TV space are all, like, deeply psychological in a really, really fun way. And what's great about having someone like Sorkin as a mentor is, you know, I think you grow up watching these movies and these television shows, and you think, like, how the fuck did he write like that?
• 46:18
  OCB: And then you get to a point in your life where you've put in your, like, 30,000 hours, and you're almost 43 years old, and you're like, I am finally smart enough to write smart shit. And it's just…
• 46:30
  OCB: Awesome! It's awesome! Like, oh wow, I can, like, write with, like, juice and nuance, and I'm gonna create a character that you're totally gonna fall in love with, and she's gonna be a sociopath, and it's gonna be fucking awesome.
• 46:43
  OCB: So, so yeah, thank you, Sorkin, for being, like, beautifully complicated, and also, like, writing. Holy… I shit you not, because I broke down newsroom, because it was the first spec that I ever wrote of a show was of the newsroom.
• 46:56
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 46:57
  OCB: want to read it, I'll send you my spec.
• 46:59
  Tad Eggleston: Please.
• 47:00
  OCB: I don't think it's bad, I think it's probably… I think it's actually quite good, even though I wrote.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: No, seriously, please.
• 47:07
  OCB: Yeah, I'll send it to you, it's fun. It's like, it's an episode in the middle of season one that never existed, I just, like, I squished it in between two other episodes.
• 47:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 47:16
  OCB: with my own thing.
• 47:18
  OCB: But, yeah, his, like, literally his TV scripts were 90 pages long for each of those episodes, but in length, they were, like, 60 minutes, and that is not supposed to be possible.
• 47:31
  Tad Eggleston: No, I.
• 47:32
  OCB: That's the actor's story in that show.
• 47:35
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know how apocryphal this is, and I forget which episode it was, but there was an episode of the West Wing that I think weighed in at
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: almost 200 pages.
• 47:49
  Tad Eggleston: And they said you…
• 47:51
  OCB: day.
• 47:51
  Tad Eggleston: You have to cut this, you have to cut this. He's like, no, just talk faster.
• 47:54
  OCB: Yeah.
• 47:56
  OCB: That's exactly what he did. Which is great.
• 47:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and have you ever seen His Girl Friday?
• 48:03
  OCB: No, I have not.
• 48:04
  Tad Eggleston: The old Cary Grant movie, see, I watched that recently, and, like… It wasn't bad.
• 48:13
  Tad Eggleston: But it had a lot of fast talking that didn't work, and I think because they didn't do fast acting, they just did fast talking.
• 48:21
  OCB: Right, yeah.
• 48:22
  Tad Eggleston: So you gotta give some real credit to his… his… ass, too.
• 48:27
  Tad Eggleston: For not just talking faster, But continuing to emote, continuing to, like…
• 48:35
  OCB: Oh, yeah, no, you need to be… you need to be well-trained to be a historic an actor. And that's also what I loved about Newsroom, too. Almost that entire… those were all New York-based actors that were, like… they're stage actors.
• 48:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No.
• 48:47
  OCB: Yeah, they hand.
• 48:47
  Tad Eggleston: The newsroom… I mean, no offense to the West Wing, I love the West Wing cast, the newsroom's the best cast he ever had.
• 48:54
  OCB: They were insane. Yeah.
• 48:56
  Tad Eggleston: Totally insane. But I know you're on a clock.
• 48:59
  OCB: watch that show again, because it's so funny, you know.
• 49:01
  Tad Eggleston: I will almost…
• 49:02
  OCB: Absolutely.
• 49:03
  Tad Eggleston: I fall asleep to it tonight, just because you put it in my head.
• 49:07
  OCB: Well, that's amazing that you can fall asleep to it. But, you know, every time I'm, like, living in New York, I'm nostalgic for LA and vice versa.
• 49:14
  Tad Eggleston: But I feel like if I watch the news… Olivia, I've probably watched…
• 49:18
  Tad Eggleston: every episode of the News Wing, or Newsnight…
• 49:22
  OCB: do a swing!
• 49:23
  Tad Eggleston: That's the next…
• 49:24
  OCB: one! We gotta, we gotta pitch it to him!
• 49:28
  Tad Eggleston: Any one of his shows, probably the minimum number of times I've watched any given episode is, like, 20?
• 49:36
  OCB: Holy shit.
• 49:37
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, like…
• 49:39
  OCB: You can quote them.
• 49:41
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 49:42
  OCB: Wow, okay.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, so, like, that's one of the reasons I can fall asleep to them, because they just keep running in my head.
• 49:50
  OCB: Wow.
• 49:52
  Tad Eggleston: It actually calms me. It quiets my brain.
• 49:55
  Tad Eggleston: Like, what keeps me up is rapid thoughts about everything else, so, like… If I listen to things…
• 50:03
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly things that I know and love, I can fall into them, and sometimes I don't even realize I'm asleep.
• 50:11
  OCB: That should.
• 50:12
  Tad Eggleston: Garfors, Aaron Sorkin…
• 50:14
  OCB: I need to do that. See, my problem is that, like, I'm a horror writer, I love thrillers and horror, and all of the movies that I have seen 20 or more times are fucking.
• 50:24
  Tad Eggleston: Are not nighttime movies.
• 50:26
  OCB: Cannot fall asleep to The Exorcist.
• 50:29
  OCB: So, yeah, I…
• 50:30
  Tad Eggleston: I cannot watch The Exorcist, so, you know…
• 50:33
  OCB: It's brilliant. It's brilliant.
• 50:35
  Tad Eggleston: I, I believe you.
• 50:37
  OCB: Do you know what that movie did? It taught me so much about how to successfully, like, scare people.
• 50:44
  OCB: And it's very simple. You see Ellen Burstyn's reactions before you see what she's reacting to, and her reactions are so horrific, it's telling you, it tells the audience, this thing you're about to see is disturbing as hell. And then you see it, and it almost doesn't matter what you could be looking at, because you have just.
• 51:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, see…
• 51:03
  OCB: Already scared going into it.
• 51:04
  Tad Eggleston: This is where I'll… have you seen The Haunting?
• 51:08
  Tad Eggleston: With Julie Harris?
• 51:11
  OCB: the… I mean, there's so many, like, the hauntings. Okay, I've seen.
• 51:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's, it's the original…
• 51:15
  OCB: The original, okay.
• 51:17
  Tad Eggleston: adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House.
• 51:19
  OCB: Okay, I think I have, but it was a very long time ago. I watched, like, every horror movie I could get my hands on.
• 51:24
  Tad Eggleston: By the time I'm gonna see.
• 51:25
  OCB: In, like, 5th grade.
• 51:27
  Tad Eggleston: I happened to have her nephew as my English teacher in high school, and he did a unit that he called Fright vs. Horror.
• 51:36
  Tad Eggleston: Or fear versus horror.
• 51:39
  OCB: Okay.
• 51:39
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, we didn't necessarily do any horror, because you couldn't play Halloween in school.
• 51:45
  Tad Eggleston: But we'd watch that movie, because… because he's like, horror…
• 51:51
  Tad Eggleston: Might make you afraid, but is a lot about just grossing you out.
• 51:55
  Tad Eggleston: fear.
• 51:58
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't care if it grosses you out.
• 52:01
  OCB: Yeah.
• 52:01
  Tad Eggleston: It's about sending that tingle down your spine, giving you goosebumps, blah blah blah.
• 52:07
  Tad Eggleston: The original haunting… Like, it does it all with shadows, and music, and her reactions.
• 52:17
  OCB: That's the way to do it!
• 52:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: There's… there's no… there's no blood, there's no gore… You know…
• 52:28
  OCB: And it's funny that you say.
• 52:28
  Tad Eggleston: Completely psychological.
• 52:31
  OCB: I don't really think of Kill Train as being, like, a horror, necessarily. I don't think of it as being scary, but because.
• 52:37
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's much more of a fear thing.
• 52:40
  OCB: It gets… well, no, I don't think that Kill Train is scary. I think that Kill Train is… it's like… it's a really heartfelt journey with a lot of camp.
• 52:49
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
• 52:50
  OCB: Like, there's, like, blood and guts everywhere, but, like, that's, like, that's, like, part of the hook, but it's, it's…
• 52:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess as a parent, the fact that she's trying to get home the whole time…
• 53:01
  OCB: She's trying to get back to her kid to prove to her.
• 53:03
  Tad Eggleston: Right. That's terrifying.
• 53:05
  OCB: anything.
• 53:07
  OCB: I see. Well…
• 53:09
  OCB: Yeah, then… well, James and I want to do the third book, too, and if that scared you, then you probably won't like the third one.
• 53:18
  Tad Eggleston: No, see, I don't mind being scared, it's a gross-out that I don't like.
• 53:22
  OCB: Okay, alright.
• 53:23
  Tad Eggleston: handle watching The Haunting.
• 53:27
  Tad Eggleston: But I can't watch Friday the 13th.
• 53:30
  OCB: Interesting. Okay, I gotcha. I gotcha.
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 53:34
  OCB: I… there is some… there's some… I…
• 53:36
  Tad Eggleston: And the weird thing is, the weird thing is it's really just gratuitous gore, because I don't mind the gore in, like, A Saving Private Ryan or A Last of the Mohicans.
• 53:46
  OCB: Right. Saving Private Ryan.
• 53:50
  OCB: See, I don't like… I don't like the realistic stuff. That's why I.
• 53:53
  Tad Eggleston: I like it.
• 53:54
  OCB: was fun.
• 53:54
  Tad Eggleston: And a realistic moves.
• 53:56
  OCB: Because it was, like, it was so over the top, and, like.
• 53:59
  Tad Eggleston: Which one?
• 54:00
  OCB: In my book, Kill Train.
• 54:01
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 54:02
  OCB: The comp for that, it was like, you know…
• 54:05
  Tad Eggleston: In comics, I can totally handle it, because among other things, the second I'm bothered, I get to turn the page. I don't have to wait for the director to be done showing me whatever they're showing me.
• 54:14
  OCB: Did you see The Substance by any chance? Speaking of, like, really gross movies.
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 54:20
  OCB: Okay.
• 54:20
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even…
• 54:21
  OCB: That, like… I actually… I had to pause it because I was… I was… I was getting physically ill, but I also loved the gratuitous disgustingness of it, because it was, like, it was so over-the-top in the most horrifying way to, like…
• 54:38
  OCB: prove a point that you couldn't look away from, and I just… I thought it was kind of brilliant. So, to me, it's like, it's all about how it's used, but I'm with you, like, eventually, like, I will… I will get sick now. I didn't used to when I was a kid, but now I'm like, I have to… I have to pause so that I can, like, give myself.
• 54:55
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm getting, like, I finally watched Sinners, and I handled the vampire parts better than I.
• 55:00
  OCB: Oh, I loved that movie.
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's fantastic! Really? But I was worried about the vampire parts, and I handled them better than I expected.
• 55:09
  OCB: Well, there you go!
• 55:11
  Tad Eggleston: I just remember, like, I love the first half of From Dusk Till Dawn, and the second half, like, makes me so queasy that I can't watch the movie.
• 55:20
  OCB: Oh, yeah, do you do like this? Sometimes I do this. Like, I'm still…
• 55:24
  Tad Eggleston: No, that's what I do.
• 55:26
  OCB: Yes, makes it less bad.
• 55:28
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I do for exactly one scene in every Indiana Jones movie.
• 55:34
  OCB: Yeah.
• 55:35
  OCB: This is Squint!
• 55:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 55:38
  OCB: That makes it more palatable.
• 55:39
  Tad Eggleston: Somehow, every Indiana Joe… actually, I guess the new one, I don't remember if the new one had one, but the first four had a scene apiece that made me go, okay, is it over yet?
• 55:50
  OCB: Yeah, I… I don't know why that's somehow watching through my fingers. That's better than what my mom used to do, though. She, like… I remember watching, like, Evil Dead, and, like, for every, like, limb that got chopped off, she, like, had to, like, grab the corresponding limb on herself and, like, scream, like, as if that was something.
• 56:07
  Tad Eggleston: I don't scream, but I've been known to feel my arm when Ponda Baba's arm gets cut off in the cantina scene at the beginning of Star Wars.
• 56:16
  OCB: Okay.
• 56:19
  Tad Eggleston: It's like… Really, was that necessary? He wasn't even the guy talking!
• 56:26
  OCB: Yeah, no, because they've got to keep you on your toes, you know?
• 56:32
  Tad Eggleston: Have you… Do you watch, did you watch Robot Chicken at all?
• 56:38
  OCB: No, I do not.
• 56:40
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 56:41
  Tad Eggleston: Robot Chicken had a great Star Wars pastiche, where, where…
• 56:48
  Tad Eggleston: the Dr. Evazon character from that… that scene was exactly the way he was, but Panda Baba, like, you had the translation, and it turned out they were both architects, and
• 57:00
  Tad Eggleston: Ephazon was just being drunk, and Bondabama was actually saying, no, no, we're not, we're not criminals, please! Oh, he lost his arm for the next day, he's at work. See, I can draw left-hand
• 57:12
  Tad Eggleston: It's like this grand drawing of a…
• 57:16
  OCB: Oh, amazing.
• 57:18
  OCB: Yeah, no, I know, I have to, like… there's so much great adult animation out there, and I'm just, like, I'm not on it.
• 57:25
  OCB: I.
• 57:26
  Tad Eggleston: Not on most of them.
• 57:27
  OCB: much.
• 57:28
  Tad Eggleston: Robot Chicken…
• 57:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm playing with action figures as I talk to you. How was I not gonna watch Robot Chicken?
• 57:36
  OCB: I've only heard good things about it. That, like, BoJack Horseman, like, I know people would.
• 57:41
  Tad Eggleston: I've heard great things about that, but I haven't watched it, because it doesn't involve action.
• 57:44
  OCB: There's so much stuff out there, and even now, like, this is gonna sound terrible.
• 57:49
  Tad Eggleston: Also, so many comic books, and that's what I do mostly.
• 57:53
  OCB: Which is, like, yeah, I… and probably smart and better for your brain. I mean, the one good thing I can say about the fact that the industry is contracting, and I know, like, all of my TV writer friends are gonna hate me for this, but, like, there's… at least there's gonna be, like, less stuff out there to try and keep up with, because there's, like, there's so much noise out there.
• 58:10
  Tad Eggleston: Hours in the day, yeah.
• 58:12
  OCB: Yeah, it's… it's really, really… and I can't… I cannot keep up with it,
• 58:16
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't either.
• 58:17
  OCB: It's hard as, like, a TV writer, because you go into meetings and stuff, and you want to be able to talk about everything that's relevant, but, like.
• 58:24
  OCB: I have to… most of my evenings are taken up watching whatever my daughter wants to watch, because we have, like, an hour before bed every night where, like, we watch something together, and, like, the… I don't know, 6 months.
• 58:36
  Tad Eggleston: Olivia, you're a great mom.
• 58:37
  OCB: Creek is…
• 58:39
  OCB: Because I spend one hour a night with my kid. Thank you, yes! I will take it. Olivia is a…
• 58:46
  Tad Eggleston: And you let her pin.
• 58:48
  OCB: She's an okay mom, but she's a…
• 58:50
  Tad Eggleston: in store.
• 58:50
  OCB: Fabulous fucking dad. That's… that's the… that's what we're saying here.
• 58:56
  OCB: I do, I do. I let her pick because she picks good stuff. Right now, actually, well, we watched all of Dawson's Creek, but right now, we're watching our way through all of the Marvel movies in the order that she chooses, and we just finished, the most recent Spider-Man movies.
• 59:14
  OCB: Okay. I don't know what she's gonna do next, but I think I told you when I met you that I had a meeting set up at Marvel.
• 59:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think so.
• 59:22
  OCB: So I was there. Yeah, so it was good. Yes, no, it happened, it's lovely. The editor I met with is fantastic, we had a great meeting, and, so she… and it was, like…
• 59:32
  Tad Eggleston: The editor you met with still there, because Marvel just had a bloodbath.
• 59:36
  OCB: She is absolutely still there, yes.
• 59:39
  OCB: I heard back from her today!
• 59:43
  Tad Eggleston: Though, I mean, Heidi McDonald had a good write-up that… and I think her take was decent. It looks like…
• 59:51
  Tad Eggleston: to a certain extent, it's Kevin Feige going, now that fucking Ike Perlmutter is gone.
• 59:58
  Tad Eggleston: I'm getting my people in charge of comics, too, so that we don't have to deal with all of the
• 1:00:04
  Tad Eggleston: bullshit that… rich MAGA guys had dealt with for…
• 1:00:11
  Tad Eggleston: Because Ike Perlmutter was a real…
• 1:00:15
  OCB: Really? Yeah, I don't know about any of the Marvel politics. I am so recent to the Big 2 game.
• 1:00:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  OCB: I really know nothing about them.
• 1:00:25
  Tad Eggleston: S-so-so…
• 1:00:27
  Tad Eggleston: Heidi McDonald, who is one of my most trusted sources in the business, like, isn't willing to say that, oh, this is absolutely a good thing, but she's cautiously optimistic. She had a good write-up at the beat today.
• 1:00:41
  OCB: Okay.
• 1:00:43
  OCB: Well, yeah, we'll see. I don't know, I mean, my experience so far has been so limited, but, like, really fantastic.
• 1:00:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I want it to be good, because one of my friends just signed exclusive with them, so, like…
• 1:00:58
  Tad Eggleston: He still can do creator-owned stuff elsewhere, but he can't do DC stuff for a while, and he's had some success at DC too, so…
• 1:01:06
  OCB: Well, I would love to talk to him.
• 1:01:07
  Tad Eggleston: Don't worry.
• 1:01:08
  OCB: I really like DC characters, too, and I would like… I would love to do a couple of big two books for the, for the street cred.
• 1:01:15
  OCB: Yeah. Because, yeah, it's fun, but also, you know, once you start diving into these characters, and, like, just as, like, a little sneak, so the character that I would… it's a little bit on the nose that, the editor would bring up the, the one gay Latina.
• 1:01:30
  OCB: in the Marvel universe. But I was so glad that she did, because I was kind of nervous about bringing it up, because it felt too on the nose to me, but then she did it, so I was like, oh, okay, this is cool if you're doing it. But, you know, that, like, America Chavez hasn't really landed as far as, like, a Marvel.
• 1:01:47
  Tad Eggleston: But she's a really cool character.
• 1:01:48
  OCB: She's really cool, she's overpowered.
• 1:01:51
  OCB: That's… that's one problem. But she's very cool, and she's young, and she stands out, and, like, this, like, dimension hopping, that's so badass. So, that was brought to me, and I was, like, you know, kind of given an opportunity to, like, see if I could do something cool with her. So I sent… I actually sent in my pitch yesterday.
• 1:02:14
  Tad Eggleston: Fingers are crossed for you. I have a wood desk, I'm knocking on it.
• 1:02:19
  OCB: That's to prevent something bad from happening.
• 1:02:21
  Tad Eggleston: Well, bad would be that they said no to your script.
• 1:02:25
  OCB: Okay.
• 1:02:27
  OCB: Well, it's definitely not a script, it's just a… it's just a.
• 1:02:30
  Tad Eggleston: No would be that they are… okay, so bad would they say no to your pitch, I'm sorry, I got the words wrong.
• 1:02:38
  OCB: Right.
• 1:02:39
  OCB: But I…
• 1:02:40
  Tad Eggleston: Know what you…
• 1:02:41
  OCB: Yeah.
• 1:02:42
  Tad Eggleston: And I have two closing questions, so how much time do you have?
• 1:02:45
  OCB: I should probably head out pretty soon, so ask me, ask me your.
• 1:02:48
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, we gotta do closing questions then, because they're good ones. And then we're gonna have to talk again, because this is.
• 1:02:55
  OCB: Yeah, absolutely!
• 1:02:58
  Tad Eggleston: I've been doing this podcast for a little less than 5 years now.
• 1:03:02
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
• 1:03:05
  Tad Eggleston: the number of times I get to have conversations or friendships with people that used to be names on pages.
• 1:03:13
  Tad Eggleston: That, that, like, if you told me when I was 15, oh, you're gonna be buddies with this guy.
• 1:03:18
  Tad Eggleston: Or you told me when I was 30 that I was even gonna meet that guy, or that…
• 1:03:23
  Tad Eggleston: This other guy would like MY work!
• 1:03:26
  Tad Eggleston: Or what… that I was gonna host 4 panels at C2E2.
• 1:03:30
  Tad Eggleston: like, I wouldn't have believed you at all, but everybody in this industry has stories where it's like, I pinch myself, and I go, oh my god, I got to do that, or oh my god, that happened. So I started collecting them. Tell me a surreal story about your time in the industry.
• 1:03:49
  OCB: I mean…
• 1:03:53
  Tad Eggleston: And you can extend to television, because I know, I know you're not just comics.
• 1:03:58
  OCB: Right, but I mean, I would like to tell a comics-based story, because this is a.
• 1:04:01
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:04:02
  OCB: based podcast, but, like, you know, I mean, obviously, like, I worked with Mike Schur, so, like, getting on a Mike Schur show is, like, the most surreal thing ever, and every day, like, going into work.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he's actually on a book tour with Joe Kosnowski right now.
• 1:04:14
  OCB: Yeah, you had mentioned that, yeah, they're connected. Their book just came out, they wrote a book together. Aside from that, and, like, those, you know, bizarre moments of, like, driving onto a studio lot and being like, I can't believe I'm allowed to park my car here, let alone work here, is very cool. But there was, actually, like, a moment…
• 1:04:33
  OCB: That just happened a couple weeks ago. I was, at the Brooklyn Independent, Comic Showcase, over at Industry City.
• 1:04:41
  OCB: I heard great things about that.
• 1:04:42
  OCB: Yeah, probably from folks who were in the main room. I was not. I came into the event.
• 1:04:48
  Tad Eggleston: I don't, I don't… I don't know where my, my, my friend, R. Sikoriak was there somewhere.
• 1:04:55
  OCB: Well, there's a main room that I think got, like, a fair amount of traffic. It was also, like, the weather was really crappy, and I was in, like, a side room, and I'm realizing, I'm, like, looking around, there's, like, half the tables, like, no one's showing up to set up, and, like, so, like, I'm set up in this, like, somewhat empty room, and I'm like, it's not gonna be a great show, but whatever.
• 1:05:11
  OCB: And this chick comes in, Like, beet red, and comes up to me and is, like, trembling.
• 1:05:21
  OCB: holding out a first issue of Kill Train, and was like, I'm so sorry to bother you, this is, like, my favorite book, and I'm so nervous right now, can you sign this for me? And it was like…
• 1:05:36
  OCB: I made this person's day just by existing.
• 1:05:40
  Tad Eggleston: Hen?
• 1:05:40
  OCB: signing her book. And the fact that she, like, asked me, like, well, I'm like, of course, like, why else am I here?
• 1:05:47
  OCB: It was, it was so.
• 1:05:49
  Tad Eggleston: And this is what I'm gonna say, if the room hadn't been that empty, she might not have managed to get the courage up to actually get that far.
• 1:05:57
  OCB: Maybe.
• 1:05:57
  Tad Eggleston: So it might, it might have been part of the.
• 1:05:59
  OCB: Honestly, it may… may be.
• 1:06:02
  OCB: She made the entire… I maybe made $200 that weekend, maybe. And she made the entire thing worth it, because it meant so much to her to meet the person who had written this book that she loved, and…
• 1:06:17
  OCB: you know, just alone, the fact that I could write a book that somebody loved and treasured enough to, you know, get, like, a bag and board for, you know, that she brought herself.
• 1:06:29
  OCB: Is one thing, but then, you know.
• 1:06:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I bag and board all my comics, Olivia.
• 1:06:34
  Tad Eggleston: That way they… that way I can… Don't steal my…
• 1:06:36
  OCB: Fucking thundertad.
• 1:06:39
  OCB: Right?
• 1:06:40
  OCB: LinkedIn.
• 1:06:40
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:06:42
  OCB: It meant a lot to me that she liked my book, and that she could meet me, and have that be something that was fulfilling to her, and I think a lot of times as creators, like, we get so in our own heads about the business, and like, where's our next paycheck coming from, and we haven't achieved what we thought we wanted to achieve, even though it's honestly effing impossible right now.
• 1:07:04
  OCB: You forget, like, you're touching… It's way more impossible now.
• 1:07:09
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, no, I meant that as a compliment.
• 1:07:12
  OCB: Oh, no, no, no, I'm not talking about me, like, I'm so lucky that I got into the business when I did, because no one's getting in now, the doors are closed for the time being.
• 1:07:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:07:21
  OCB: The industry has contracted so much that you will have entire shows that are just staffed with showrunners taking pay cuts, because there's no… there's no work.
• 1:07:31
  OCB: like, a lot of writers who are, like, doing non-union stuff and, like, shouldn't be, but, like, we have to stay alive. Like, it's, like, it's… it's, like, it's all… it's all banana pants right now.
• 1:07:41
  OCB: Yep. So, yeah, and, you know, we get so consumed with, like, the rat race of it all, and, like, you're only as big as your last credit. Meanwhile, like, you know, there's people out there that just treasure so much these things that you…
• 1:07:55
  OCB: Created, and you forget how important that is to people, and how much… how important you are.
• 1:08:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 1:08:01
  OCB: hey, maybe it's, like, just her and, like, two other people, but I'll take it, because that's…
• 1:08:05
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, I'm one of those other people, so I'm assuming that there's, like, 3 other people.
• 1:08:10
  OCB: Cool. I'll take it.
• 1:08:12
  OCB: What's your, what's your other question?
• 1:08:14
  Tad Eggleston: My last question that I always ask, and my favorite question to ask, tell me something you love.
• 1:08:22
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
• 1:08:25
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again with the rules.
• 1:08:29
  Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
• 1:08:31
  Tad Eggleston: And not enough people around you have experienced it, and you really need them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:08:38
  OCB: Okay, yes. Let me just make sure that I'm saying this right.
• 1:08:41
  OCB: Because I…
• 1:08:46
  OCB: I… there's a TV show, and… okay, yes, alright, I know.
• 1:08:51
  OCB: Motherland, that came out with Vertigo. Do you know that comic?
• 1:08:57
  Tad Eggleston: Think I do.
• 1:08:58
  OCB: Okay, it's… who… who wrote it? I talk about this one all the time, I feel like I'm the only person that's still talking about this book, but it is so good. Why does it not say who wrote it, like, immediately?
• 1:09:17
  OCB: No, it is not the real life.
• 1:09:19
  Tad Eggleston: Motherlands.
• 1:09:21
  OCB: Oh, yes, okay, yes, Motherlands. Okay.
• 1:09:25
  Tad Eggleston: I'm in Sproyer.
• 1:09:26
  OCB: Yeah, okay. So, that book, when I was, like, first getting into comic book writing, I met with, an editor over at Vertigo, rest in peace, and…
• 1:09:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it's bad, but it's… it's not quite the same.
• 1:09:44
  OCB: it… I… I… it's, it's…
• 1:09:47
  Tad Eggleston: Vertigo just came back.
• 1:09:48
  OCB: Oh, did it? Oh my god.
• 1:09:49
  Tad Eggleston: This year.
• 1:09:50
  OCB: Wow! Oh, that was a long hiatus. Okay. But, so it was when it was over at the Warner Brothers lot. Right. So, I went onto the Warner Brothers lot, and I met with this,
• 1:10:02
  OCB: I don't know if he was, like, an editor, an executive, whatever, and, like, gave me some of his favorite books, and I was, like, walked into the, like, DC Vertigo vault.
• 1:10:13
  OCB: And it was, like, this huge room, like, wall-to-wall comics, this, like, big heavy door. It was, like, something out of, like, a movie, like, we went to, like, Narnia for a second. And he, that was one of the books that he picked for me, that was one of his favorites for me to, like, learn good comic book structure storytelling.
• 1:10:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:10:32
  OCB: And it is… it's…
• 1:10:34
  OCB: so phenomenal. I did not understand at that point in time yet, because I… I read Archie comics when I was growing up. That's the only thing that looked like it was for me. All the covers with the TNA and all of that stuff, like…
• 1:10:48
  OCB: sure, I was like, I didn't know that I was a gay little kid, whatever, but I still knew that that was not for me, like, that was for dudes, right? So I never read any of it. And then… but there's only so much, like, suburban high school shenanigans you can read, so I had been away from comics since, like, Archie and, like, you know, 8th grade.
• 1:11:05
  OCB: And I was coming back to them, and Motherland's…
• 1:11:08
  OCB: it was, like, this, like, very, like, high-concept, like, futuristic, like, very, very visual. You know, that whole… that made sense to me, but by the end of this story, I was sobbing. It was such a beautiful…
• 1:11:22
  OCB: gripping, emotional story, and I'm telling you, nothing that I have written would exist if… had I not read Motherlands. So, everyone needs to read that book. It is absolutely gorgeous. It is, like, 100% a testament to the power of comic book storytelling and what it can do. And, it's a… it's a female-centric, it's a mother-daughter story.
• 1:11:43
  Tad Eggleston: I have read a lot of Simon Spurrier, and I have not read that, so it just went on my list.
• 1:11:50
  OCB: Yes.
• 1:11:51
  Tad Eggleston: Probably by the time we talk next, it'll have been read.
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Cause I like… I like his work.
• 1:11:57
  OCB: It's great.
• 1:11:58
  OCB: And yeah, I think you're thanking me.
• 1:12:01
  Tad Eggleston: And I love Vertigo, that was… that was near the end of Vertigo, I'm trying to remember…
• 1:12:05
  Tad Eggleston: That was before, after… They fired my friend Shelly, which was really the… the…
• 1:12:13
  Tad Eggleston: the sign on the wall that they were about to shut down was when they… they sent Shelley Bond backing.
• 1:12:21
  OCB: Oh. Yeah, my buddy over.
• 1:12:23
  Tad Eggleston: He's done well since then.
• 1:12:25
  OCB: He was one of the last to go to, yeah.
• 1:12:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean…
• 1:12:30
  Tad Eggleston: There weren't, I mean, there weren't many after Shelly. Shelly was one of the last… last men's…
• 1:12:35
  Tad Eggleston: women standing. She calls herself one of the last men standing sometimes, so it gets…
• 1:12:41
  OCB: It's all good! Like I said, we're all people, man.
• 1:12:44
  Tad Eggleston: Vertigo was, I mean, like…
• 1:12:49
  Tad Eggleston: It's a shame that you drifted from the comic shops before Vertigo started, because, like, Vertigo was Shelley Bond.
• 1:12:56
  OCB: But you're saying now they're back, we just gotta find out who's over there.
• 1:13:00
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, there's good stuff there now. No, I meant… I meant as a kid, you talked about drifting away because every… all of the comics didn't seem like they were for you other than Archie. Right. If you had seen Vertigo at that time…
• 1:13:14
  Tad Eggleston: Cause you were a kid about the same time I was a kid.
• 1:13:17
  Tad Eggleston: you know, which is when… when Shelly and… and Karen Berger and…
• 1:13:23
  Tad Eggleston: A handful of other people were really…
• 1:13:25
  Tad Eggleston: Completely changing how we looked at comics in general.
• 1:13:29
  Tad Eggleston: with the stuff that they were doing at Vertigo.
• 1:13:33
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:13:35
  OCB: Wow.
• 1:13:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's never too late.
• 1:13:36
  OCB: Listen, I think everything happened exactly the way that it was supposed to happen, so… Well, no, absolutely.
• 1:13:41
  Tad Eggleston: I just…
• 1:13:42
  OCB: Right wherever.
• 1:13:42
  Tad Eggleston: When people get to read tons of comics.
• 1:13:45
  Tad Eggleston: You still have time to be present.
• 1:13:47
  OCB: Reading more all the time.
• 1:13:48
  OCB: I do.
• 1:13:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 1:13:49
  OCB: I do. Like I told you, I'm gonna live to 150. I have all the time to read all the comics.
• 1:13:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, like, the oldest woman in the world, Women in Mexico.
• 1:14:01
  Tad Eggleston: Apparently hit 128 last week, so that's… that's… that's 3 years past what was previously considered possible, so…
• 1:14:08
  OCB: Right, and so, and you're telling me that in the next 50 to 100 years, we're not going to be seeing some progress in that regard? Come on.
• 1:14:16
  Tad Eggleston: But she didn't need the progress. I mean, she's from a small village in Mexico.
• 1:14:21
  OCB: I guess we just need… We need that drinking water.
• 1:14:29
  OCB: But hey, whatever works, man. I'll just keep taking my supplements and hope for the best, and keep.
• 1:14:34
  Tad Eggleston: Olivia, it is an absolute pleasure. We'll have to do this again. For that matter, we should read books together. Like, you gotta read more comic books. I'm always looking for people to read. You ever want to talk about a comic, just, like, shoot me an email and say, let's talk about this comic. And if I haven't read it, I will.
• 1:14:53
  OCB: Good!
• 1:14:54
  Tad Eggleston: And hopefully we can get together when you're in town for ALA. For Olivia Cortero-Briggs.
• 1:15:01
  Tad Eggleston: pick up Kill Train, pick up Jill and the Killers, pick up…
• 1:15:05
  Tad Eggleston: College Try, we didn't even manage to talk about College Try.
• 1:15:08
  OCB: Alright.
• 1:15:09
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately, her other comics are hard to pick up because they're from a publisher that doesn't really publish anymore.
• 1:15:15
  Tad Eggleston: But.
• 1:15:16
  OCB: You can still… you can still order, Mary Shelley Monster Hunter and, Silver City. You can get them on, like, Amazon and stuff.
• 1:15:22
  Tad Eggleston: I'm certain they can be found. They're just harder.
• 1:15:26
  Tad Eggleston: Find her at a con, she'll have some at her table.
• 1:15:30
  Tad Eggleston: Easy enough? That's the better way, because then she makes the money.
• 1:15:34
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm in favor of you making the money.
• 1:15:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, for 22 panelists, this has been Olivia Cortiero-Briggs, and we will see you after the next page.