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Building a Writing Career and Completing the Long-Awaited Johnny Carson Biography | Mike Thomas · The Daily Writer

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, I can say that in all honesty, today is a momentous occasion here on the show.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why do I say that?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because today is the culmination of a nearly 20-year journey to hold a very special book in my hands.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is titled Carson the Magnificent, and this is the long-awaited biography of one of my entertainment heroes, the late Johnny Carson.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for those of you who aren't very familiar with Johnny Carson, he was the host of NBC's Tonight Show for 30 years from 1962 to 1992.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they called Johnny the King of Late Night because he ruled the late night airwaves for literally decades.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when Johnny Carson retired from the Tonight Show in 1992 at the top of his game, he famously went into his retirement cave, so to speak, and he rarely came back out except for a few public appearances in the years afterwards.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it was such a big deal when the writer and journalist Bill Zamy was able to score an interview in Esquire magazine in 2002 with Johnny Carson, ten years after he had retired from the Tonight Show.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as I know, it was the only formal interview that Carson had granted since his retirement.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now a few years after that, Carson agreed to let Amy write his full biography.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: The book was announced and he went to work on it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then the years crept by and the book never came out.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Zamie got cancer, which obviously stalled progress on the book.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then he passed away last year with most of the book written but still incomplete.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And over the years it had become known as what I would call one of the great unfinished biographies, almost achieving legendary status in the book and publishing world, but not for the reason that Amy or the publisher wanted, which was that the book never actually got finished.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then earlier this year, nearly 20 years after Zamie started working on the Carson biography, Simon and Schuster announced that Chicago writer Mike Thomas would be taking up the reins of the book and completing Zamie's work.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this was the perfect match because Thomas was a well-established entertainment writer, as well as a friend and former research assistant of Bill Zamy.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have to understand how excited I was to see this announcement earlier this year.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is no exaggeration.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not overdramatizing this in the least.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can ask my wife.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: For the last 20 years, about every six or eight months, I would try to find some little scrap of news about this Johnny Carson book.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how excited I was.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to understand that as a kid I idolized Johnny Carson.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I was actually a high school senior in 1992, whenever Johnny Carson retired, and I remember watching his final show in May of uh 1992 and just crying because it was such a huge deal in American public life.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who maybe weren't born yet or you weren't into Johnny Carson at the time, uh it's kind of hard to imagine how much of a big deal that was, because literally for decades, Johnny Carson had been sort of the, I don't want to say the grandfather of American culture.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's not really what I mean, but he had been there to comfort people and to sort of accompany them on their journey through life.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when when you have somebody as popular as Johnny Carson was, and they're literally a companion to your bedtime routine every single night, it's a huge deal whenever that person is no longer on the airwaves.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I remembered Johnny Carson as a kid.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I saw that Simon and Schuster was going to finally release this book after nearly 20 years, I was over the moon about it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was so excited.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I told my wife, I can't believe they're still going to release this book after Blizami had passed away last year, and I was just really, really excited about it because I had been literally following this book for a couple of decades.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now that brings us to today's conversation.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I knew that the book was coming out on November the 5th, uh, election day in the U.S.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: of all things.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure why the publisher picked November the 5th.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of an odd day to release a book with all the hubbub going on, but hey, you got to put you got to put the book out there sometime, so why not?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when I saw that the book was coming out in November, I a couple months ago I got in touch with Mike Thomas on LinkedIn, actually, to see if he'd be interested in talking about the book here on the podcast.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he graciously replied and agreed to be on the show.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And with the help of Ann Pierce, the Associate Director of PR at Simon ⁇ Schuster, we arranged this conversation.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's some background and context, not just for my excitement about this book, Carson the Magnificent, but a little bit of background on how this conversation actually came about.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's more backstory than what you're used to when I do an intro for an interview episode here on the show, but I thought it might be interesting to you.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get into the actual conversation, let me tell you a little bit about my very special guest.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mike Thomas is the author of two critically acclaimed books, The Second City Unscripted, Revolution and Revelation at the World Famous Comedy Theater, and, you might remember me, The Life and Times of Phil Hartman.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mike spent more than 14 years as an arts and entertainment features writer at the Chicago Sun Times and is also a regular contributor to Chicago magazine.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he lives in Chicago with his family.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So in our conversation today, we dive into all sorts of topics related to Mike and his writing career, and of course the book that brought us together in the first place, which is Carson the Magnificent.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And our conversation topics include how he knew he wanted to be a writer, how he became acquainted with Bill Zamy in the 1990s, why Bill struggled to finish the Carson book, Mike's process of taking Bill's work and seeing it to completion, and what it was like to pick up the writing mantle from somebody else.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about Mike's writing advice for people who want to begin or expand their career as a writer as well.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I do want to say that if you love Johnny Carson or entertainment biographies in general, I think you're really going to love this book, Carson the Magnificent.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is super well written, it's engaging, it's fascinating, it's inspiring, and of course, it's all about Johnny Carson, the man himself.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that alone makes it absolutely worth the price of admission, so to speak.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I highly encourage you to grab this book if you're interested in those topics.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: However, I also want to encourage you to pick up the book for another reason.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a lot of editors, ghostwriters, and people who are doing writing for other people who listen to this show.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you fall into that category, particularly as a ghostwriter or a developmental editor, you will really you really need to get a copy of this book because it is a perfect example of a writer who is telling somebody's story without getting in the way.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in the case of this book, Carson the Magnificent, Mike Thomas had a difficult job.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: He had to do two things really well.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: One is the is that he had to tell Carson's life story, which in itself is a huge sprawling story.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Bill Zamy famously, you know, had a difficult time finishing the story because it's kind of like that the deeper he got into the world of Johnny Carson, the harder time he had sort of pulling it all together into a book that wasn't going to be 3,000 pages long.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So Mike Thomas had to do that.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: He had to wrap up Carson's story, but he also had to do something else, which is tell the story of Bill Zamy's journey to complete the book.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Mike Thomas did an absolutely phenomenal job on this book.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a wonderful read.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so my hats off to Mike Thomas for a job really well done.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I encourage you to grab this book called Carson the Magnificent, available in bookstores anywhere as well as Amazon.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So with all that said, and with this very long intro, which I hope has helped set the stage for our conversation, here is the amazing writer, Mike Thomas.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mike, it's great to have you on the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: This interview, in some ways, has been 20 years or so in the making because I've been waiting for this Carson the Magnificent book to come out for a really, really long time.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm really glad that we were able to connect.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks for doing this interview.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be here with you.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: You and a bunch of other people have been waiting 20 years for this.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Has that been a common theme as as this book got announced earlier this year and they knew that you were attached to it?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Has this been something that a lot of your friends and other people have mentioned that, man, I'm so glad this book is going to see the light of day?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh nobody I think thought it would happen.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, all props to Jonathan Carp, who's now the CEO of Simon at Schuster, for keeping it alive because John was Bill Zamy's first, uh Bill Zamy, the main author of this book.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: He was his first editor at Random House and he bought the book and he stuck with it and Bill all through his sort of publishing ascent.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: John left Random House and he went to an imprint called 12, wasn't able to publish a book there because he only published 12 books a year, but then he went over to Simon and Schuster and ultimately became the top guy over there.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when Bill um died last March, John got hold of me and ultimately asked me if I wanted to finish the book since Bill wasn't here to do that.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's it it was a daunting ask.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I said, John, I'm flattered, but you know, not only was Bill a giant in his field, but Johnny was a giant in his field.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so stepping into both of those pairs of shoes seemed kind of overwhelming.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I took a beat.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, let me see what reporting Bill has done.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Let me see, uh, you know, let me read his manuscript.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: He had 75, 80,000 words already written.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in three weeks or a month, I came back and said, Yeah, I there's a lot here for me to work with.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd like to tackle this.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so it went from there.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he so what was his name, John at Simon and Schuster?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Jonathan Carp.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he saw a lot of people.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: He is.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: He always believed this could happen, and he stuck with Bill through the ins and outs and ups and downs.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, once Bill became too sick to do anything more on the book, that was uh almost a decade ago, he got cancer in 2013, and it just laid him low.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: He battled it and battled it and survived for longer than anybody ever imagined, but he just did not have the wherewithal emotionally, physically, mentally, to do the book.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it was shelved.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but John always believed that it uh you know had potential, and and that's why he reached out to me, and I'm glad he did.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when he went to Simon and Schuster, then just maybe a little publishing insider baseball.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he reaches out to Random House.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they had the book for many, many years, I assume.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so he just makes a deal with him and says, Hey, can we take this on?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to sort of shepherd this to its completion.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is that kind of how that works?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not sure about the deal making uh details, but you know, John bought the book while he was at Simon or while he was at Random House.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so how however it worked contractually, it migrated from Random House ultimately to Simon and Schuster.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad it did.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, but it always stayed with with John.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm certainly glad that he wanted to do that and that he pulled you into it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was just I was so excited earlier this year, and I don't remember how I came across it, except maybe I had um I think I just googled it one day.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know this sounds this sounds a little stalker-ish, but literally every about every six or eight months for the last probably 10 or 15 years, I would just Google, you know, Johnny Carson's book, Carson the Magnificent, just to see if there was any news about it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I was not interested in it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so once in a while there would be like a little update, or Bill would do an interview, you know, on some Chicago station or something.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And there would be a little tidbit, and then when he passed away, I just assumed, well, probably it'll never get finished.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Once in a while, even while he was battling cancer, he he really talked uh wanted to get back to the desk and start writing and reporting again.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: He just and he talked about it off and on.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It just it just never happened.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you probably saw there were uh, I don't know, probably four or five, six interviews he did during those years where he talked about that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it was I think it was titillating for people like you.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's the right word, you know, enticing, saying, Oh, maybe this is gonna happen after all, but unfortunately it never did.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's finally here.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: All due to Bill, by the way.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've never lost sight of the fact that this is Bill's book.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Bill did all the reporting, Bill gained the trust of all the sources to get all the material, he did all the research.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I had to do very little in order to finish this.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I reached out um to a couple of his sources for further illumination on stuff, like especially the comedy writers, Carson's writers.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but other than that, everything was there.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh everything I needed um to complete the story.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there is still a a that that's not the right question I was gonna ask?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm excited about this book because you know, Johnny left the Tonight Show in '92.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was a senior in high school.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I remember watching that last show and crying.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was what, 17?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which sounds kind of cheesy now that I think about it.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it was true.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was a part of my life.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually the exact same age as my grandfather.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I always saw him sort of a grandfatherly figure in some sort of strange way.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that now he's kind of coming back into the cultural conversation with this book.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so I really hope this turns a whole new generation of people back to Carson and how much so too.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting you say he was a grandfatherly fatherly figure.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think for Bill, he was something of a fatherly figure or a parental figure.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and he said that early on in this letter I found that he wrote to David Letterman, because Bill and Letterman knew each other from the early 80s on, and they would talk about Johnny, and Bill profiled Dave a couple of times.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's how he kind of made his way into the whole late-night scene.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he wrote about Dave, he wrote about Leno, he wrote a piece about sidekicks for Esquire magazine.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So Bill was ensconced in that whole scene.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But he wrote about uh to Dave uh about Johnny as being this sort of dependable third parent there no matter what, every night.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was a source of comfort for Bill.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to imagine that was the case for millions of other people.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: He was dependable because it was a communal watching experience.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was, I mean, I guess VCRs were there toward the end, but nobody had a DVR, nobody was streaming anything.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Millions and millions of people gathered in front of their TVs to watch this guy night after night after night.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so Johnny made this emotional connection with them that is different than I think the connection that is made today because it's it's so fragmented out there.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even you have somebody like um like a Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel or whoever it is, that are that are sort of at the quote unquote top of the talk show game as it stands right now, but they have just a tiny fraction of the audience that Carson had back in the head.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: They do, uh like 10% maybe uh of what Carson had.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, as far as I could tell, Carson had about you know, he would he he would get like 17 million people watching his show.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Colbert's top-rated show, I think um, you know, without all the D VR views added in.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's under 2 million from what I could uh gather from the research.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's still a lot of people watching, but it's not Carson watching, but just so many other things to watch and do.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's it it's almost impossible to have that kind of intense emotional connection when you're when your audience is smaller, although I'm sure they do with the people who watch them.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they do.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't tell you the last time I actually watched a watched a late night show actually on television.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's all on YouTube or or whatever.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think a lot of people do that.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I catch clips all the time on YouTube.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, honestly, half the time that's how I watch Saturday Night Live.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'll catch Dave Itzkoff's summary on Sunday morning, and all you know, all the clips will be there with his rundown of what went on the night before.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I assume I mean that still counts for for viewing, you know, it's YouTube for you know, SNL's numbers, I guess.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I'm worried about their numbers, but it it's much more convenient way.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's asynchronous.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely now.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's just the first sports, I guess.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, except for sports, live sports is the one thing that is not really asynchronous because it's like unless you're not reading anything or talking to anybody, you don't want to know how the game turns out.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to watch it two days later.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's funny.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about some of the the details of so I I'm a ghostwriter, and so I'm always interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff of how something actually works producing a product.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I got a lot of other stuff I want to get to as well, but I'm curious.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you officially signed on to this book, Carson the Magnificent, how does that work in terms of do they send you you know computer files of here's here's Bill's drafts, here's all his stuff, here's all the digital files, here's how to access, you know, a storage locker full of material.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: What actually happens as you take over this project?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: What do they actually give you in addition to maybe some guidance or direction from the publisher about book length or the parameters?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious about that whole process.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, well, it was a couple sources.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh John Carp, the uh head of Simon and Schuster, sent me the manuscript that Bill had completed so far.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So because I had never read it, I didn't know what he had written.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then um I uh linked up with uh Bill's daughter uh Lucy, who gave me access to his storage locker in Chicago that had all the piles of Carsonia, I guess is what you call it, binders and folders and neckties and a big pink check that Johnny had written to Doc Severinson.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Bill had everything in here.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was reading that in the prologue last night.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then she also came.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's uh I've told people it's kind of that's my tribute to Bill in this book, is his tribute to Johnny, because it was always meant to be a celebratory biography.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but anyway, getting back to, and then you know, Lucy's daughter also gave me access to the hard uh to the um files on his hard drive.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I had all of that uh stuff as well.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: It just, you know, as Bill said, he he always thought he had too much information and and yet not enough.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was of the mind that he had plenty, you know, because you at some point you have to stop reporting and research and and just start and start writing.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And luckily he had done that.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: He did three-quarters of the book.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: But when I saw that, I said, yeah, I've got plenty here to work with.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how all of that stuff sort of came into my possession.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a matter of taking a long while to sort through it and create a yeah, and create a roadmap, like uh choosing the bits and pieces that I thought were the most relevant.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have unlimited space, you know.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: The you know, my my sort of um the edict was, you know, just complete the story.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just take Johnny from New York to LA uh through the end of his life.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I just I hit them the beats that I thought were most significant and most unique in terms of how Bill had reported them, you know, sort of insights that hadn't been published before.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love how you wrapped up the book.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I I haven't read the whole I haven't had time to read the whole book yet, but I've read the prologue and uh I think part of chapter one, and then of course I always skip to the end.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because I always want to know how the story wraps up.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to spoil anything, uh, but the way that you wrapped up the book with the talking about the party, uh, I thought was it was the perfect ending because you always want an ending to be a little poetic, a little expected, but also a little unexpected.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it was just it was such a different ending than what I would have would have expected, but then in retrospect, I just thought, wow, I just that has such emotional perfection to it.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I did try it up in a nice bow, you know.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you want a little, like you said, uh not a cliffhanger, but maybe a little dissonance at the end or a little, you know, what's next?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Why, why, why didn't this happen?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was it's kind of like I I remember people not liking the ending of um what was the movie with Tom Hanks where he's the Fed X guy castaway.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he comes to this fork in the road and he's looking one way and he's looking the other, and the movie just kind of ends um without resolve without resolving anything.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I really love that kind of stuff, you know, and I also love songs that don't end in the key they began in.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe it's a relative minor or something like that.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's something about that that just kind of you know is a kick to me.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that that somehow mirrors Parsons' life a little bit.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, he he famously struggled with his relationship with his mother, and maybe uh course I haven't read the whole book uh yet, but that seems to me that like that for his life was kind of a through line of it doesn't matter how much success you have, you can he can never make his own mother happy.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that seemed to have a real impact on him in his life.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of dissonant this dissonant.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thread that just ran through his whole life.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not uncommon.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of, you know, Frank Sinatra, another Bill Zamy giant, had, you know, a mother who was both smothering and withholding.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Hugh Hefner had a mother and and father who were emotionally distant.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, part of it was the generation.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, Johnny dealt with that, and I think that bled into his life of about sort of never quite making that emotional connection, never feeling totally appreciated.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and sure, I I without getting too psychoanalyzy about it, it affected his relationship with women as well.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure, as I think it would anyone.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm sure at that level uh of height and success, you have all kinds of opportunities to do whatever you want.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sure.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, nobody tells you no.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I I you know, I can only imagine, yeah.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, Johnny Carson was not a saint.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows that.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I wonder, like, what would that be like to be in a superstar's shoes?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Not that that excuses any of the bad behavior, but it does contextualize it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, unless you've been on the inside and experiencing that, I don't know.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I wonder if anybody truly knows what it's like.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Plus the pressures are immense.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: The tonight show was his most significant other.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: More so than his wives, more so than his children, his family.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: He always lamented the fact that he couldn't be a better father.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it just it took him away.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And again, not an atypical story for anybody who's engrossed in what they're doing, whether you're in tech or whether you're in show biz, whatever it is.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's been the case for you know forever.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that you have you've had a long career as a writer, Mike, and the Carson book is only the latest thing in, you know, a long line of projects and books and other things that you've worked on.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um so are the people who listen to this show are writers from all different kinds of backgrounds.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: The common theme is they're all trying to build a business around what they do uh in some form or another.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if you can take us back to when did you in your career know that you wanted to pursue writing as a career and not just a hobby?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what were some of your first steps in that direction?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I think um, you know, in in college um is when I first thought, well, maybe I'd like to pursue this um someday if I can make money at it.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's when I actually started reading Bill's work as well.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, when I was uh actually probably a senior in high school, freshman in college, uh, you know, I'd read his stuff in uh in Rolling Stone and in Esquire and think, well, you know, maybe I can't reach that level, but maybe I can do something like that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so you just start slowly working your way up.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I would work for alt weeklies that paid$25 a week for me to interview Steve Miller or, you know, some 70s rock icon.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then those are the days there was no internet either.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is the early 90s.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we would I would actually I would have to drive to the downtown office in Cleveland where I was living at the time with my big five and a quarter inch floppy disc paperclipped to a printout of my story and actually physically put it in the basket in the offices.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Of wherever I was writing for.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's how I got my start.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I would always call people um to pick their brains, people who had been in uh the industry for years and you know, were kind of at the top of their game editorially or writing-wise.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I did that as much as I could.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Even in college, I would do that, just say, hey, I just want to learn a little bit more about what you do because I might want to do it.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, slowly it went from freelancing.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I moved to Chicago, and I always had full-time jobs, writing or communications or something like that.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I uh was working at a trade magazine when I had just moved to Chicago in the mid-90s, and that's when I met Bill, because I had heard he had moved back to town.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I had read his work before that, and he happened to be working on Jay Leno's memoir at the time.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I dropped him some of my horrible freelance clips in retrospect, and said, Hey, can I pick your brain?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had been doing for years.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Yeah, sure, let's meet up.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so we met up at what became our favorite joint, Twin Anchors at Ribbs uh place in uh Chicago's old town area.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's a place we'd go for another 25 years, and we just started talking, and uh it turned out he needed a little help on the on the Leno memoir, like just organizing transcripts, basic stuff.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so while I was working at the trade magazine, I was writing about uh corrugated and folding carton, so that was exciting.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was doing a little work on the side for him, uh, and he actually paid me for it.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was always very generous that way.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was this extra money.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, wow, this is amazing.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and he let me inside of his world.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: He started introducing me to editors and writers, and I was just this mid-20s wannabe, you know.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when he got done with with um the Leno memoir, when that came out, um he uh got a contract to do a Sinatra book, uh, which was based on an Esquire piece he had written in 1996.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, he was able to pay to bring me out of my trade magazine job and hire me full-time as his research assistant.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so this all stemmed from my calling him up or writing him a letter saying, Can I pick your brain?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it right place, right time, right guy.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and so for the next three years, we worked on uh the Frank Sinatra book, we worked on an Andy Kaufman biography about the comic, and then we did uh uh a Regis Philbin book in uh 2000, and then I left uh for the Chicago Sun-Times, where I wrote features for about 15 years.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: But for those first three years, I was I was essentially paid to learn.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I do not take that for granted, and I I tell people this is uncommon, but man, if you can find a mentor like that, it's just it's gold.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily even somebody to hire you, but somebody who will guide you and give you the benefit of their wisdom and just let you see how the sausage is made and maybe open a couple of doors for you here and there, which he certainly did.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have to perform once those are open.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I look back and think what my career would have been without his influence, and I think it would have been totally different.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And don't you think that there's something really important about so you took initiative to get in touch with Bill to begin with, and there's something about taking that initiative, seeking out that person or that mentor, taking charge of your career and taking responsibility.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: That impulse can really serve you well in about a thousand different ways in life.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're not willing to go after it and make the first move and take initiative, then you know, some so many creatives and writers and artists, I feel like they just sort of sit back and they go, Well, I hope that something, you know, lands on my doorstep today and that they take this kind of passive approach to life, but yeah, nothing's weird.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta go for it.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: You do, and the most they can say is no, or they can ignore it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I I guess that's a bit of an ego blow, but I didn't care at the time.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was always doing something else.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like at that point I I needed this connection to make a living.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I wasn't making a great living, you know, writing about cardboard boxes, but it was something.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had a base.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, I would say give it a try.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: The most I can say is no, but it, you know, in these cases like uh like I had with Bill, sometimes you get a total mensch.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mention a mentor, you know, just a stand-up guy who will guide you and and like I said, open those doors and let you into their world um to see, you know, uh how things are done.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any any advice for people who it could be somebody younger or it could be somebody in midlife who's wanting to transition out of what they're doing to something else?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's what are some ways that you would suggest that people find a mentor or somebody to help guide them?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously we have books and podcasts and ways you can learn passively from people, but in terms of connecting with an actual person, uh what you know, like if somebody came to you and they said, you know, Mike, you've had this great career.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would love for you.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Would you kind of pick your brain?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like how would you recommend people go about that process of finding a mentor?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there I think there's so many other ways today than there were, you know, back uh at least when I was calling up folks and asking to pick their brains.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't really have internet for those the early part of my my time.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot harder to find people to write actual letters and send them that through snail mail.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, God, now there's YouTube and there's you know, reading and there's newsletters and just anybody you admire.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're not gonna call up the rock and say, hey, Dwayne, can I pick your brain?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Be realistic about it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if there's an editor or a writer you you hear of or seeing an interview, or I think it's totally worth trying to find them and say, hey, I'm I'm I'm a writer in Chicago or wherever you are.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'd love to get into editing.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have 15 minutes just to talk about how you do what you do?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think people would be surprised a lot of the a lot of these folks either did the same thing or they're very flattered to be asked to share their their wisdom.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it can't hurt to try.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you might get shot down 80% of the time, but you don't know if you don't try.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And with things like LinkedIn and you know, email and their play their ways to find people's email addresses, it's not like it's difficult to touch base with somebody.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, there's a embarrassment of riches today in terms of that, and uh in terms of finding people and reaching out to them.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could even just get LinkedIn Premium, and that allows you, I think, five messages to whoever you want.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, they may not reply, but at least you're able to reach out uh to them or find them on a masthead or exactly uh or or go to their website.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: A lot a lot of people have their own personal websites where they have a contact form.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's all kinds of different ways to get in touch with people.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm just surprised sometimes at people who don't want to take responsibility for their own success.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like it is so much easier today than it's ever been before to connect with almost anybody in the world.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you do it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess maybe that's easier said than done.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a little bit of Hutzpah, but um, you know, it's it's uh a little bit of drive.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: You really have to uh love what you're trying to do and and have this sort of goal in mind.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can't be wishy-washy about it, but you're right, nothing's gonna land on your doorstep.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, passivity just doesn't work.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Especially today, I have to say, I mean, there's so much noise and so many distractions, and you have to break through that stuff.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something you talk about in the book in terms of uh I was kind of laughing because you were talking about how did how did Bill even connect with Carson to begin with, you know, in all the ways that he would there's a story about trying to finagle, you know, a press pass into the tonight show and getting turned down and and but trying to figure out how to make all that happen.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that's kind of just what it takes, is you just gotta have the you're gonna have the drive to just figure out how you're gonna get it done.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: He had more than I ever had.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Bill was always doing that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Bill was forever getting into these parties and private events that he was not invited to, because even in Chicago, he he would produce this so-called press pass, and it wasn't it was like a a badge he got for for being the coffee getter at Time magazine, you know, during an internship.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you walk in like you own the place, you're very sure of yourself.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: You drop a few key names, as he did at the night show.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: He knew who the producers were, and um, so yeah, he was much better at that than I was.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that's you know, a lot of journalists are like that too.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're they're unafraid to kind of work the room and and and take advantage of the situation.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you're experienced working on celebrity books, now I know I know the Carson book is different because you were not personally interacting with Carson and and you were working for materials uh that Bill had put together primarily.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: But when you were working with Bill on let's say the books uh about Regis Philbin, Jade Leno, you know, and uh others, um how is that world different?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: The world of sort of high profile A-list celebrities in terms of you have to kind of operate on their schedule, or you know, sometimes people who are are really well known like that are known to be maybe kind of flighty or hard, difficult to work with.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: How how is that different than let's say writing for somebody who's more of a straightforward business client or something like that?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even sure if my question makes any sense or if it's clear.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just kind of wondering how that world is different.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in you're you're talking about books specifically or any other.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these books or articles, really anything.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: When you're interacting with sort of A-list celebrities who are at that level, they're very in demand.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: How is that world different than let's say the more of the workday people who are, you know, just writing business stuff or talking to CEOs or something?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, CEOs are tough too.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, their schedules are tight as well.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um celebrities.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I think when Bill started writing, for instance, I think celebrities were less overcontrolled than they are today.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh there's a lot of gatekeeping today.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So interesting.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: Getting time with them, I think is even tougher.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you know, when you're coming at it from the vantage point of a big magazine, big publication, that opens doors.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole negotiation that goes on.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I haven't done nearly as much of this as Bill or some of the big high-profile writers have done.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is there is an understanding that you're gonna spend this much time sitting with them, you're gonna hang out someplace.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, just so you can get enough time to get enough material.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm sure Bill, as well as other magazine writers, newspaper writers, they you always want more time than you get with with folks.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, you do your best with what you have.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: And in terms of the books, um, yeah, I guess it can be uh difficult to pin people down depending on how busy they are and what their profile is.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but once they're in, and I found this too, once they're in, they're in.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's not just that main person you need to talk to, it's everybody else around them.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And those people are much easier to get a hold of, especially if you have that door uh knocked open a little bit by the person you're writing about.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not always the case.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you have to work from the outside in.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, it's just on a case-by-case basis, I think.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's any easier or harder than uh talking to a CEO or somebody who's at the top of the business world.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the I think it was the I have to look at my iPad, I think it was the prologue that I was reading over the last day or two.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: You made a footnote, uh if I if memory serves me correctly, about how it is so important to have access to the assistance to people.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was somewhere in there, maybe a footnote or somewhere else, and how oftentimes building a good relationship with people's assistance is really, really key to having access to that person.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a fantastic insight.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: That was Bill's insight.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he always believed that.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he it you know, with publicists, with managers, with agents.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's how he got to to Johnny.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh it's before he even sat down to interview Carson in 2001, I think it was, for an Esquire profile in 2002, he had been gently working his way into the inner sanctum for almost a decade.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I found a letter that Bill wrote to his editor at Rolling Stone in '91 saying, you know, this is Johnny's final year.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's finally starting to heal a little bit from the death of his son, who died in 91, on his way to doing the final tonight show.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should reach out and start the process of trying to get him to talk.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, ultimately, Johnny decided he didn't have time.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was just barrage with requests that year.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he was very selective about who he talked to in general.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: But that's how it started.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then over the years, you know, Bill started writing about Letterman.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote about Leno multiple times.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote that sidekicks piece I mentioned for Esquire, where he actually became, you know, he was in the world of sidekicks of Ed McMahon and he talked to Charles Groden and Andy Richter just to see what it was like.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was part of that late night world.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm sure Johnny took note.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Bill would also stop by, after Johnny retired, he would stop by Johnny's retirement offices in uh Santa Monica.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he got to know Johnny's executive assistant and a bunch of the other people who worked there.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: His nephew uh was there.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they would do clip licensing in the office.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: And once in a while, if Bill was there, Johnny would stop in, they would shoot the breeze for a couple minutes, and that was it.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it was not a pressure situation because you could not pressure Johnny into everything.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Bill had immense, immense patience.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's another thing this takes.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: He played the long game on this.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Took him a decade, but finally he's there one day, and Johnny's in, and they start talking.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Johnny says, Hey, you want to grab some lunch?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so off they go to a nearby lunch place, uh, Shotzi on Maine, owned by Arnold Schwarzenegger at the time.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um, he finally got the the long sit-down that he'd been hoping for for a decade.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: So playing the long game too is a big part of it.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wayne, that is that is such a rare impulse today because people are so impatient.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: We all want the quick wins and the big success right away, but when you're dealing with the white whale, you know, I think you referred to the way that Bill B.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Johnny book, you gotta you gotta play that long game.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Bill was never one to be rushed in his writing.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh this isn't so much about playing the long game as it is patience and perfection.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I think I think some of his editors might have wished uh he were a little more eager to hit deadlines.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can imagine you know, one of his editors, David Hershey, I remember he'd always say, like, Bill's writing it was it trickled in.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was like an IV of writing.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: But invariably everything was great, uh, but they had to wait uh quite a bit longer in a lot of cases than they did uh for other writers.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: So just the way Bill worked, and he was talented enough where people put up with that.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't put up with me doing that.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be like, okay, next.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you got, uh I'm just curious, when you got the material that that Bill had finished, was that pretty much unchanged from what he had done?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or I assume editors have probably worked on that uh maybe for years or something.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Was that basically unchanged?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then your assignment was take this three-quarters of the book that's already done, and you know, tell the rest of the story, but did you pretty much leave that as it was?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's largely as it was.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was um it was very polished when Jonathan Carp got it and when I got it.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: There was not a lot of messing.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there were a few little tweaks here and there.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: I actually I honestly don't remember exactly what they were, but they were minor.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, like I said, my job was just to complete the story, you know.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um because Bill had um it the the first part of uh what Bill wrote is not entirely chronological.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: It flashes forward in part.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we get little glimpses of Johnny's future life, but largely Johnny was still in New York in Bill's manuscript.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like I said, I had to take him cross country and plant him in in LA and expound upon you know his life there until the very end.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't wait to get my hands on the print copy, which we're recording this on October 29th.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this will come out in just a few days uh before the books are released.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm super excited to get an actual print copy, which has been uh uh I think that's gonna be a common thread people are gonna be talking about for the next few weeks.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Finally I get to hold this book in my hands.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: I hope so, and I think they did a really nice job.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very handsome book, you know, just in terms of the way they they designed it.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm very pleased with that.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was really surprised they kept what seems to me to be a version of the original book cover because it was up on Amazon for years and years and years.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was really cool to see that.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a great cover.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: It just it pops.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that it's the more casual Johnny, it's not Johnny behind the curtain I'm behind now or in front of, rather.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, it's just kind of Johnny hanging out in his house.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't remember where that shot is from.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen it elsewhere before, but that was it's kind of a more it's a more tangible, more human um photo of Johnny.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I I'm super excited about this book for a number of reasons, but also I feel like it's it's going to be a great corrective to some of the the other books that have come out about Johnny, you know, the last 10 years, like the Henry Bushkin book was obviously very now how much of that book is actually true, I have no idea.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it you know it was pretty it was pretty brutal about some of the the more less desirable aspects of Johnny's life.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, everybody is a complex person.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: There are multiple sides to everybody.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad this book is a much more celebratory look at his life.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know I am too, and it was always meant to be a celebratory.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Celebratory look at his life, a celebratory biography.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, uh, because it's it's it's interesting.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: The reason Bill had trouble, uh among a couple of other things, uh completing it was because Johnny did not lend himself to an sort of an easy, breezy celibatory treatment like Bill had done with Frank Sinatra.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Frank lived his life uh uh overtly.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: He wore his heart on his sleeve.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Johnny did not, and so he it was very uh it was much harder to mine uh the material emotionally and otherwise that that Bill needed uh to complete the book.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean that that's that's just part of it, you know.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um you know, I I remind me, what did you just ask?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I lost my train of thought here.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're talking about uh um what what did I ask?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what specific.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I got I got off on a tangent here.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, no, it wasn't.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know where I was going.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: But actually my follow-up to that was uh probably more interesting than what I originally asked, but you know, this idea of uh something you and I'm I can't remember where it is in the book, but you talked about how almost as if Bill kind of absorbed a little bit of of the darkness that was in John and that sort of depression, which I found to be really interesting because my experience in ghostwriting has been very similar.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean the darkness or depression necessarily, but when you spend a lot of time with somebody and their way of thinking, you can't help but absorb that a little bit.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, you can't, especially if you have any ounce of empathy and that's right, which which Bill did.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was a very empathetic writer, and I can only imagine living with that, not only for months, but years and years.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've done it for a couple of years.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but Bill did it for, I don't know, how long did he started No 5?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I don't know.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: He he actively worked on this book for probably 12 years.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: So Johnny's in his brain all the time.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: And not only you know was Johnny a certain way as a person, you can't help absorbing that, but Johnny's inscrutable in a lot of ways.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so that also weighed on Bill's.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that was that was an interesting uh blend there that stymied him at times.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I can imagine.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I can imagine.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one of the biggest show show business people of all time, uh, and somebody who just influenced countless people, and this is kind of like your career's biggest assignment.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I can't imagine the pressure that that you would feel.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: That too.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: That too.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, there's uh one of his uh future research uh assistants talks about that in the intro as well.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like Bill felt this huge responsibility to treat everyone fairly um who had helped him with this book because a lot of people had put their trust in him, including including Johnny.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was not just about getting the facts right, although that was a big part of it.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was about doing right by all these people who had helped him along the way.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was hundreds.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I can only imagine the weight of that.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I and and it there's an emotional toll attack.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're you're doing a lot of emotional juggling when you do a book like this.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly went through it.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: I did a biography of Phil Hartman, the old Saturday Night Live guy you probably know.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a lot of emotional juggling with that book.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: He had died tragically, and um, you know, his his friends and his family had certain thoughts about how he should be portrayed or what they should reveal.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you just have to, you know, you have to you have to use a gentle hand with all that and realize that uh not everybody feels the same way, and you can't come at it like a bull.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be very gentle and gradual.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you're not pulling the wool over anybody's eyes.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're just I mean, that's the way to gain people's trust.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: They know you're you're you're not doing this as a gotcha thing.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because there have been plenty of gotcha with Carson before, too.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, there was a lot of gotcha in the Bushkin book, the Lemer book had a lot of that stuff in it.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: This was never meant to be like those books, it's meant to be an entirely different portrait of Carson.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: It does not overlook his flaws, they're certainly in there, uh, but neither does it harp on them.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I I hope it presents Johnny in in a more human way, you know, contextualizing but but not excusing.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: So well, this has uh been an absolute pleasure and honor to talk with you, Mike.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: As we kind of wind this down, I'm curious, uh something before I hit record that we were chatting about a little bit is you know, you were talking about how sometimes you work on these big projects like this Carson book and things that are very public, but then you also work on things that are that are more business oriented or other kinds of projects.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: What is your what does your life look like these days in terms of the kinds of things that you typically work on and what's next for you in your writing too?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: Any big projects on the horizon or what what has you excited uh about in your writing?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I am always, as you are, I'm sure, doing a mix of things.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a mix of sort of business tech writing.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: I write every month uh for Chicago magazine.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I do a uh a feature uh with famous, prominent Chicagoans on the back page.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a lot of fun.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like Esquire's What I've Learned um piece, a lot of life, career wisdom.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I do occasional, you know, long features for them.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the the smattering of other stuff.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: I write for the Chicago Symphony, I write for um I I write for an environmental magazine.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's all over the place.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: This Carson um uh book took over most of my time for the last year, and so I wasn't able to do nearly as much of that as I would like to.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the only way to make a living as a writer is is is cobbling it together.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I don't know that I could teach like you did.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've taught a couple of seminars.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's in me.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: My late father was a great teacher, so it supposedly maybe it's in the DNA somewhere, but I never thought of myself as a great teacher.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought about maybe going back into that, but um, you know, it it's just whatever you can do that's kind of focused on what you love is the way to make a living.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's other ways to do it.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, or yeah, I think so too.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: I and you know, Chicago is much more livable than New York.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that's that's the reason I'm here.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you can find a decent place to live.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to live in squalor, you know, you don't have to um, you know, well, I guess maybe there's not as much trash on the streets now as there used to be.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love New York City, but man, it can get overwhelming.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh you know, and it's uh it's just it's just much more livable rent-wise and and everything else.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna stay here, you know.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Plus you have deep dish pizza.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: What else do you need?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's an abomination.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm much more into the New York style pizza.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, it's good.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love yeah.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: And man, I talk about a New York pizza in New York and fall.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I really I want to get back there now.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I miss Central Park when the leaves are turning and going around in there and everything.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I'll put up with the noise and the expenses for Central Park.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the next time you're in the St.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: Louis area, which is where I am outside of St.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, we'll have to give you some uh St.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Louis style pizza and some toasted ravioli, which people love around here.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I love that.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me, what's St.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: Louis style as opposed to Chicago style?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Chicago style, by the way, is very thin crust burnt cheese.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the true Chicago style.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: So what's what's St.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Louis?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when people think of St.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: Louis style, they think of uh, and I could I could be off base here, but my perception has always been you know the deep dish uh Chicago style.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: In New York, I think of as sort of the big honkin pizzas that are massive slices, you know, you can fold them.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: St.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: Louis style, at least as I understand it, is super thin crust.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a pizza chain, I don't know if it's national or what it is, but it's called Emo's Pizza.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they use this type of cheese called Provelle, which some people love, some people despise.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I personally think it's wonderful, it's great.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have toasted ravioli, which is a big St.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Louis thing, apparently.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to make it a good time.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I love all that stuff, so yeah, I love it all too.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad I don't eat it all the time, but I love it.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's great.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been a lot of fun.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate your time.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Super excited to help support the book, and um I have to give a shout out to uh the Simon and Schuster PR person for helping to coordinate this.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Anne's great, yeah.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Anne was fantastic.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very lucky to have her on my side.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Very lucky to have the muscle of Simon Schuster behind this.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's another thing I don't take for granted is having you know the whole publicity team behind you who has the contacts and everything else to to get the word out.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it it has it's a you have to help each other, but man, that is such a luxury.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: I worked with uh Harper Collins on a on a book a couple of years ago, uh, a book called The Faith of Elvis.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: I did it with Elvis' brother, Billy Stanley.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that was the first time I actually worked with the traditional publisher.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were phenomenal to work with.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: I loved them.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: They were great.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, they are.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: When you get a chance to do that, it's it's pretty amazing, it's pretty amazing.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that sounds like a really interesting book.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to look that up.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll shoot you a copy after I stop recording this.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll grab your address and I'll shoot you shoot you a copy of email.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll trade books.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get one soon, right?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're sending me actually I've got one coming from Amazon too, so I'll have two.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, thank you.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to spend your money.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm happy to do it.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've been waiting 20 years for this sucker.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I hope that's a good idea.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I hope people feel like you feel.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: They've been waiting a long time and it's finally here, so we'll see.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that's the way I feel.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Mike, thank you again.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a total honor and a pleasure.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, can't thank you very much.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for the beautiful writing you did in the book.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited to read the rest of it.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, take care.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, wasn't that a great conversation?
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed the heck out of this conversation.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is that weird to say that you enjoyed the heck out of a podcast interview?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's weird to say.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even if it's weird to say, I still enjoyed the absolute heck out of it because Mike is not only a very wise and engaging person, I loved the fact that he was just so open and authentic and honest about what it was like to pick up the pieces of a book and finish that project.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was a very unusual book for a whole bunch of reasons, and he did just a phenomenal job picking up the pieces of this book and not only finishing telling Johnny Carson's story, but also weaving in Bill Zamy's story as well.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a very heartfelt and bittersweet book, but just beautifully, beautifully written.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I highly encourage you to grab a copy of this.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: The book is called Carson the Magnificent.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's an Amazon link to the book in the show notes, so I highly encourage you to grab a copy.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And again, as I mentioned in the intro, I have a lot of ghostwriters and editors who listen to this show.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you fall into that category, grab a copy of this book because so I'm a big fan of looking for model books that help me to learn something about storytelling or how to frame a story or how to how to solve a book problem sometimes.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a really wonderful book, not just because the book itself is great, and because uh sort of of my own personal history with this book, uh if that makes any sense.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's I think this is a wonderful book to have on your shelf, so that when you get stuck trying to tell somebody else's story as an editor or as a ghostwriter, you can look at this book and you're gonna find some inspiration somewhere in the pages, I promise you.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Zamy's writing combined with Mike Thomas's writing, uh combined with Johnny's story, is an absolutely killer combination.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, in my opinion, this is a must-have book for every ghostwriter and editor's bookshelf.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: So again, props to Mike Thomas for an incredible job uh on this book, and also props to Simon and Schuster for seeing this book to completion.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of publishers probably would have just let this book languish and never put forth the resources and personnel and the effort to actually let this book see the light of day.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a perfect example of how traditional publishers and publishers of all kinds, of course, but uh, you know, a lot of people um there's a lot of ways to publish these days, and traditional publishing is going through a bit of a rocky time, a lot of transitions.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a really perfect example of how uh a big publisher like Simon and Schuster can still make really wonderful art and put out really wonderful books into the world.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: So my hat's off to the good folks at Simon and Schuster for ensuring that's a that this book saw the light of day and giving us uh a real gift in this book.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you to the Simon and Schuster folks as well.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my friends, thanks for listening to this episode.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you enjoyed this as much as I have.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I will see you next time.