Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #307... 22 Panels with Stephan Franck

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With Great Power #307... 22 Panels with Stephan Franck · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. Returning tonight is one of my favorite guests,
0:10
Tad Eggleston: one of these days, I'm gonna, like.
0:12
Tad Eggleston: Full-on call you a friend when we start, like, sending emails about things that aren't.
0:16
stephanfranck: down.
0:17
Tad Eggleston: that aren't just, hey, time to come on again, because we always have such a good time, we should talk more often. Stephan Frank,
0:26
Tad Eggleston: Animator, cartoonist, and, and,
0:31
Tad Eggleston: creative mind behind one of my favorite crime stories, and, like.
0:40
Tad Eggleston: saying that is not easy for me, because I am a huge fan of Brubaker, Phillips, and Criminal, and have been forever, and I'm not only a huge fan of Condon and Phillips and their…
0:52
Tad Eggleston: they're… they're that Texas Blood, and now Peril of the Brutal Dark, but, like, good friends with Chris Condon, so, like… so… so it's like… it's always weird for me when, like…
1:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, last year at the Eisners, I, like, there was one category that I had 3 friends up for, and I'm like.
1:12
Tad Eggleston: How do you root for anything?
1:13
stephanfranck: Yeah, well, yeah, I know.
1:15
Tad Eggleston: Now I can't say best, I have to say one of the best, because…
1:21
Tad Eggleston: But, Palomino is a special series.
1:25
Tad Eggleston: It blends… a, a long…
1:31
Tad Eggleston: term, unsolved mystery, with, with, periphery crimes around it.
1:38
Tad Eggleston: A family drama, a coming-of-age story, and…
1:42
Tad Eggleston: And, employs music in a way not often… Seen in comics.
1:51
Tad Eggleston: That… that is truly, truly,
1:56
Tad Eggleston: It knocks my socks off every time.
2:01
stephanfranck: Awesome, thank you.
2:02
Tad Eggleston: Like, you blow the door down.
2:04
Tad Eggleston: With no literal sound, which is a feat.
2:09
Tad Eggleston: You know, I think the only, only person in comics that does music as well as you right now is… is… is,
2:20
Tad Eggleston: I hate it when the name just escapes my mind.
2:24
stephanfranck: I'm terrible with names myself, so…
2:25
Tad Eggleston: I probably even have one of his comics nearby, because he just… just started another… another series,
2:38
Tad Eggleston: Talk amongst yourself. Somebody.
2:42
stephanfranck: Give us a call.
2:43
Tad Eggleston: Topic,
2:47
Tad Eggleston: Dave Chisholm. Had the right name. Dave Chisholm. But, like, he's a PhD jazz trumpeter, so, like, I know that music's gonna be really important for him. And I guess you've got your experience.
3:02
stephanfranck: in charge.
3:03
Tad Eggleston: too, so it makes sense that it's important to you.
3:05
stephanfranck: Yeah, you know, for me, the one when I'm… when I'm drawing.
3:09
stephanfranck: where I'm telling a story visually, you know, to me, you know, there's two kinds of drawings you can do. There are symbols.
3:17
stephanfranck: And they're, things that try to…
3:21
stephanfranck: more represent, you know, either, like, a sensation, or, like, just a physical object, or a physical moment, you know? And, and,
3:31
stephanfranck: So the symbols, you know, would be, like, you know, like the old, you know, somebody's surprise, then you put, like, little,
3:37
stephanfranck: question marks around their heads, and, you know, or somebody's, like, being knocked out, and then you have little flying little birds around their heads, and so…
3:45
Tad Eggleston: Harsh.
3:45
stephanfranck: Or stars, so those are symbols, and you get it?
3:51
stephanfranck: you know, so you get the idea across, but… and you get the joke across, because it works for the joke, but I don't think you're getting the…
3:59
stephanfranck: the sensation of it, right? You know, and so there's a sort of abstract separation from the experience, you know?
4:07
stephanfranck: And so, you know, it's… so there's an obvious choice that people do very often, which is to put, like, you know, okay, we're in the club, you know, there's music, blah blah blah, let's put, like, musical notes, you know, and…
4:22
stephanfranck: To me, those are symbols, because no one reads… like, who knows how to read music, like, for real, and even if you can sort of almost do it, like, you know.
4:31
stephanfranck: who gets an emotional response? It takes being a professional musician to look at that and get an emotional response from it, right? So, my approach was completely different, which is let's try to capture the moment.
4:44
stephanfranck: of what it is to be in that place at that moment, you know, and how the characters react, how they… just to try to… and so it's almost beyond words, I can't really explain it, but you know what I mean? Just trying to capture that vibe, always be in the moment and the vibe, and then the context…
5:00
stephanfranck: You already understand by the context that there's music playing, so you don't need the cymbals. Just, like, trying to…
5:07
stephanfranck: Just deliver that experience of what it feels to be there.
5:12
stephanfranck: And then that's kind of… that's my take on it.
5:16
Tad Eggleston: That sounds about right.
5:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think the symbols can work sometimes, but, like, even when you do the symbols, you gotta…
5:27
Tad Eggleston: Like, because Dave sometimes will actually put the actual notes of something in.
5:33
Tad Eggleston: But… It's not alone. It's not on its own. It's part of…
5:39
stephanfranck: Right, right.
5:42
Tad Eggleston: Part of something that makes you feel it come out, but it has that added bonus that if you can read music and hear it in your head, you're gonna know exactly what.
5:51
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, then you know exactly what it is.
5:54
Tad Eggleston: I'm not… I can read music, but I'm not… I'm not that level where I can…
6:00
Tad Eggleston: But I remember talking to him about it, he's like, yeah, I'm not gonna name the song, because I don't want to deal with copyright and whatnot, but yeah, some people will see that and know exactly what it is.
6:10
stephanfranck: Yeah.
6:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
6:11
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, and again, for some people, it will elicit that response, you know, which is great, but I just, I know for me.
6:20
stephanfranck: It just becomes a symbol. Yeah, I get it, it's music.
6:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
6:24
stephanfranck: not to say that people haven't donated super well, and again, you know, comics. There's a lot of different ways to…
6:32
Tad Eggleston: Also, the big difference, if we're comparing, and I don't need to compare and won't anymore after this, is, like, for the most part, he's doing jazz, and you're doing songs with words, so it makes a lot more sense for you to have the words vital.
6:47
stephanfranck: Writing.
6:47
Tad Eggleston: across… with… you know, I mean, what I'm thinking about is a trumpet solo, right? Right, right.
6:58
Tad Eggleston: So… I mean, it's just… you just wind up displaying them differently.
7:07
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, so, I mean, again, and for that matter, even in this volume, which… which has less music.
7:13
Tad Eggleston: I think, than the previous volumes.
7:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But you still have that, like… I have…
7:23
Tad Eggleston: essentially zero drug experience. I've been drunk…
7:28
Tad Eggleston: Enough times to… to almost fill one hand?
7:33
Tad Eggleston: Four times in my life, I've been…
7:35
stephanfranck: Yeah.
7:36
Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, I don't literally know what that feels like, but you have…
7:43
Tad Eggleston: a sequence in here where everybody's high as a kite, and or tripping, or whatever, and I can…
7:50
Tad Eggleston: feel it, even without having that. And I've read other comics, some that successfully take me there, and some where it's much more symbolic. It's like, I know the characters are there.
8:01
Tad Eggleston: But, so, I mean, That's something that's just a recurring theme in your artwork, is you take these… Sensations.
8:13
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. And make them come through.
8:19
stephanfranck: Well, thanks for saying that. That really is the… what I'm trying to do. You know, well, first I'll say the drug thing is also from imagination, because I'm not a drug person at all.
8:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you live in LA, so…
8:32
stephanfranck: Yeah.
8:32
Tad Eggleston: You're allowed to say, well, the 80s were a crazy time.
8:35
stephanfranck: No, no.
8:36
Tad Eggleston: Nobody.
8:36
stephanfranck: It would look…
8:36
Tad Eggleston: We're still…
8:37
stephanfranck: No, I mean, I, you know, I did a fair amount of drinking in my life, you know?
8:43
Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to make you into a druggie step.
8:45
stephanfranck: No, no, no, it's very cool, but… I'm just saying, certain things you have to imagine. You know, like, the reason I don't do drugs is because I know I have this type of personality that if I started, I would never stop, so it's better.
8:59
Tad Eggleston: Right.
8:59
stephanfranck: start, you know? Yeah. But, but the…
9:02
stephanfranck: But yeah, so… and it was really interesting, too, because there's…
9:06
stephanfranck: what's… talk about the moments. What I really like about this final volume is it all plays out almost in real time, right? Yeah. You don't cut to tomorrow, it's just this one crazy night that…
9:19
Tad Eggleston: Though that actually reminds me of something that I wanted to bring up, because I was impressed at the way that it worked out.
9:27
Tad Eggleston: So give me a second, I gotta go get to the page, because we are talking right now…
9:34
Tad Eggleston: I wanna say 30 years and a day after this story ended?
9:42
Tad Eggleston: Does that sound right?
9:44
stephanfranck: I would have to check.
9:45
Tad Eggleston: I, I think it was March 19th.
9:48
stephanfranck: -Oh, there you go.
9:49
Tad Eggleston: Maybe 31 years in advance.
9:51
stephanfranck: It was March 19th.
9:53
Tad Eggleston: 95.
9:54
stephanfranck: That's crazy, yeah.
9:55
Tad Eggleston: is… is… Is the last date listed?
10:00
Tad Eggleston: And of course, it's taking time to load right now.
10:04
stephanfranck: I think you're right, yeah.
10:06
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, when I got to that, I'm like…
10:08
stephanfranck: Yay.
10:09
Tad Eggleston: Man, I should call him right now and say, hey, can we move it up, just so we can…
10:13
stephanfranck: Yes.
10:16
Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, oh, wait a minute, no, that won't work.
10:19
Tad Eggleston: I'm already talking to somebody tonight.
10:24
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, that was… that was a weird synchronicity for me when I saw that, particularly because, again, autistic pattern number.
10:34
stephanfranck: Scout.
10:34
Tad Eggleston: I…
10:35
stephanfranck: Right.
10:36
Tad Eggleston: So, I… I… I immediately… Latched onto that.
10:41
stephanfranck: LinkedIn.
10:42
Tad Eggleston: What would have been cooler is if you'd made it my birthday, which is next week.
10:46
Tad Eggleston: Well…
10:46
stephanfranck: Happy birthday in advance.
10:48
stephanfranck: Yeah. But you're right, though, like, it's like, this whole book is about synchronicity, this whole series is about synchronicity, you know, about, you know, events, you know, that, you know, she's retracing.
10:59
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm sorry.
11:00
Tad Eggleston: March 18th.
11:02
stephanfranck: 18th, okay, so we just missed it.
11:05
Tad Eggleston: 45 a.m. is…
11:06
stephanfranck: I think.
11:07
Tad Eggleston: our last… Yeah. Last dated timestamp.
11:13
stephanfranck: 31 years.
11:14
Tad Eggleston: 645 is the last time we're given, so… so yeah.
11:19
Tad Eggleston: 31 years and a day and a half ago.
11:23
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
11:24
stephanfranck: Yeah.
11:25
stephanfranck: Exactly, you know, it's exactly, like, because I arrived in LA, in September or October, I can't remember, I think October, 1995.
11:35
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
11:36
stephanfranck: So, that's… that's… that was the… that's the end of that story, and that's my starting point, you know, in LA, so…
11:44
Tad Eggleston: So you arrived in LA after the Palomino, then?
11:48
stephanfranck: Yeah, it was just closed, it just closed.
11:50
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
11:51
stephanfranck: So I never saw it in action. I did end up, you know, getting to know and working with the musicians at other clubs, you know? So, I know the scene really well, I know the stories really well, I know the…
12:04
stephanfranck: just the overall vibe, because I've been playing in those type of places since I was, you know, 15, until I stopped maybe, like, 15 years ago.
12:15
stephanfranck: But,
12:18
stephanfranck: So, so it's all, yeah, yeah, so it's really trying to recapture that experience and that… those moments, you know? There's a certain texture to it.
12:27
stephanfranck: that is, again, very specific. And I think, like, the… a lot of the specificity comes from animation.
12:35
stephanfranck: And when I mean animation, I mean specifically my… I started as an animator, you know, which is that you're, like, acting…
12:45
stephanfranck: You're splitting the acting performance with… you have an actor who's performing it once, and you're recording them, and then you have this recording, and you're trying to
12:55
stephanfranck: inhabits that role, and just trying to be in every subtlety, in every, every, intention, in terms of, you know, also…
13:07
stephanfranck: you know, understanding their subtext so you understand what they want to show, what they don't want to show, like, how the character is either open or guarded, and, you know, and all that stuff. And it's about… and you're living…
13:19
stephanfranck: in the frames, right? Because just here, because you have this thing called the, we used to call the X sheet, the exposure sheet, right, where you have every frame vertically, and then the dialogue was broken down, and you were trying to see the… this performance exist visually and in time, and just…
13:37
stephanfranck: So…
13:40
stephanfranck: And so you'd listen to it, because it was, you know, like, especially back then, 30 years ago, right, you didn't have… so you… basically, they would give you a tape of the sequence, and you had this little tape recorder by your desk, and you would…
13:54
stephanfranck: rewind, play it, and as you're listening to it, you're drawing it at the same time, trying to really be in that, you know. So, so there's a very, sort of, method, kind of.
14:06
stephanfranck: Vibe to it, you know, because, again, you're just trying to merge yourself, to disappear yourself into that performance, and just kind of match it moment to moment, and be true to it, you know, to its intentions, the ones that are explicit, the ones that are hidden.
14:22
stephanfranck: And… I don't animate, per se, anymore, but…
14:27
stephanfranck: when I do the comic dust, I'm still in that same mode, where I'm in the moment of the performance of the script, and I'm just trying to capture
14:35
stephanfranck: The energy of… Being there at that time.
14:41
Tad Eggleston: Mum.
14:44
Tad Eggleston: Oh, so many questions. Figuring out the order to put them is difficult.
14:50
Tad Eggleston: I think that flows okay to, to, like…
14:55
Tad Eggleston: And… help me out, because I'm terrible with names. What was the… what was the daughter's name?
15:01
stephanfranck: Oh, or Lizette. Lizette. And then Liz, when she's a little bit older, just by Liz.
15:06
Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about…
15:10
Tad Eggleston: I mean, because, like, we don't expect it in Issue 1, but… or Volume 1, but by the end of even, like, Volume 4 or so, it becomes clear that it's more her story than anybody else's, and certainly by the end of Volume 6 it is.
15:28
Tad Eggleston: So, two questions, like, is that something that emerged as you worked, or did you know that it was Lizette's story when you started?
15:39
Tad Eggleston: With that first volume, because, like, she was… she was a major supporting character at the beginning.
15:44
stephanfranck: beginning.
15:45
Tad Eggleston: this story.
15:46
stephanfranck: Right.
15:46
Tad Eggleston: The opening scene is… is her.
15:49
stephanfranck: is her.
15:50
stephanfranck: So, it emerged. Okay. It presented itself. I literally, when I was at the end of Volume 3,
15:58
stephanfranck: And so that was done, and the book was coming out, and whatever, and I had to start in earnest on 4, 5, 6, and finish the…
16:06
stephanfranck: the story, I just woke up one morning, and I just realized that
16:13
stephanfranck: it was her story. That what needed to happen there was a 15-year time jump, and she was taking over the investigation. And what's really
16:22
stephanfranck: funny, is that then I started to go, like, you know, of course, you know, you have this idea, and then you go like, okay, well, is this contradicting anything that I've… that I've, you know, laid out before, right? Because you can't deny what's been already expressed. And so, I re-read the whole thing. I was just like, oh my god, it was…
16:40
stephanfranck: there from the beginning.
16:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
16:43
stephanfranck: She's in the first scene, you know, and it's just somebody who's, like, the…
16:48
stephanfranck: she's the main character in training, but she's too young, she doesn't have the agency yet, right? And so, it's going to, so… so it…
16:59
stephanfranck: So I would say that it was always there, But I didn't know.
17:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, that's why I had to ask the question, because as soon as it emerges as a reader, you're like, oh, oh, yeah, no, this makes total sense. It's not jarring in any way. It's not like, well, wait a minute, I thought it was so-and-so's story, it's…
17:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh!
17:20
Tad Eggleston: But at the same time, it…
17:26
Tad Eggleston: it's noticeable enough, and I know enough about creators… that I'm like.
17:31
Tad Eggleston: this could have gone either way. It could have been that you had the whole thing sketched out at the beginning, and you kind of knew that you were gonna have this shift, and it could be like…
17:41
Tad Eggleston: It's in my head, because, like, I'm with C2E2 next week, and…
17:46
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:46
Tad Eggleston: Like, one of the… one of the…
17:50
Tad Eggleston: rare times that a non-comic book-related thing at a Comic-Con caught my attention is… is,
17:58
Tad Eggleston: There's gonna be a West Wing panel with… with… with Martin Sheen and… and Dulet Hill.
18:05
stephanfranck: Oh, that's awesome.
18:07
Tad Eggleston: And the reason this is in my head right now is I'm enough of a West Wing geek that I've…
18:14
Tad Eggleston: read all sorts of process stuff from Aaron Sorkin and whatnot. Martin Sheen wasn't supposed to be in every episode.
18:22
Tad Eggleston: The president wasn't supposed to be a major character.
18:25
stephanfranck: Yeah.
18:29
Tad Eggleston: But Martin Sheen made Jed Bartlett something that Sorkin
18:34
Tad Eggleston: needed to write more of. And if that's true of March and Sheen, it's doubly true…
18:42
Tad Eggleston: of Dulet Hill, who played Charlie Young. Initially, he was really only supposed to be in the episode where he was hired.
18:50
stephanfranck: Ready.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: And then he liked him, so he wound up doing a little more. And by, like, the third season, he'd gone from being this character that…
19:02
Tad Eggleston: that, like… Could have been a throwaway character if Dule Hill hadn't come in and killed it.
19:09
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
19:10
Tad Eggleston: To an actual credited character.
19:13
stephanfranck: Yeah, absolutely.
19:15
Tad Eggleston: And by the end of the show, which is even after Sorkin left, he, like, went from being the body man to an actual White House staffer. You know, that's how much he'd ingrained himself in the series. So…
19:29
Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, like, to pull it all the way back to comics, I've talked to Beto Hernandez a couple of times, and, like, he'll talk about how he doesn't always know
19:40
Tad Eggleston: What?
19:42
Tad Eggleston: Luba, or Fritz, or whoever are gonna do until they start doing it, and then it's like, well, if that's what Luba does, that's what Luba does!
19:54
Tad Eggleston: You know, they just live in his head.
19:56
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
19:57
stephanfranck: Well, you know, I think what it is, is it's,
20:02
stephanfranck: it's about… as they say, right, it's… this is why you can't copyright an idea, right? Because it's like everything we do, from all the way from movies to comics to everything in between, you know, and it's about execution.
20:17
stephanfranck: Right? There's no good or bad idea. It's just how you're gonna execute it. And execution is… means performance.
20:26
stephanfranck: Right? And those guys create…
20:29
stephanfranck: created a performance that was undeniable, and that opened the door on some truth. I was like, wow, yeah, now it's open, you know, and it's coming out. We have to go through those doors now. And,
20:43
stephanfranck: It was the same way, like, the way…
20:46
stephanfranck: I realized that we needed to have this time jump and all that stuff, is that I started to write the scenes at the beginning of Volume 4 the way I had, sort of, early on imagined they would be.
21:00
stephanfranck: You know, with him, you know, still in the same time period and stuff.
21:04
stephanfranck: And it…
21:06
stephanfranck: as I was trying to quote-unquote perform those scenes, because to me, when you're writing, you're performing a scene. When you're drawing it, you're performing now the text, you know, it's always performance, right? Layers of performance. And so, as I was trying to perform the scene through even writing.
21:24
stephanfranck: It started to feel, false.
21:27
stephanfranck: I was like, ugh.
21:28
stephanfranck: this doesn't work. This is… yeah, I mean, I can force it to be this way, but…
21:33
stephanfranck: it's contrived, it doesn't… it's not believable, it's just like, you know? And then I realized it was just false, you know, and that the true answer was, no, now it's 15 years later, this is what needs to happen right now. So, again, it's always like the perform… if you allow yourself to just kind of surrender to the performance, and just… just kind of…
21:54
stephanfranck: It's just gonna open doors that you didn't know were there, and can completely disregard certain other doors that you thought were so cool, but really, they were, like, out of, you know.
22:05
stephanfranck: Off topic, you know?
22:06
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. On the same…
22:11
Tad Eggleston: Vain, and you're a parent, so, so, like, kind of frame it
22:17
Tad Eggleston: In that sense, I mean, we met Lizette when she was, what, 14?
22:24
stephanfranck: That's right, yeah, 15.
22:26
Tad Eggleston: And… and… and she's, like, 30.
22:29
stephanfranck: Right, she goes from 15 to 29. I wanted her 15 because… so that at that age.
22:37
stephanfranck: Driving was within range, like, she had that to aspire to, and, you know?
22:43
Tad Eggleston: Right?
22:43
stephanfranck: And then 29, so she was still on the young side of 30, because I think after 30, then a different page gets turned with the character.
22:52
Tad Eggleston: But, talk to me… Particularly because…
23:01
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because you didn't write the intervening years.
23:05
Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about how the character aged. Talk to me about how… because… because you can tell that this is still Lizette, but… but it… it feels like it has the appropriate
23:18
Tad Eggleston: Like.
23:20
Tad Eggleston: a 29-year-old looks back at their 25-year-old self and goes, holy shit, was I that person? But they really look back at the 15-year-old self and go, oh my god, just like…
23:32
Tad Eggleston: I'm 46, and I don't even like to think about who I was when I was in my 20s. I'm sitting there going.
23:39
Tad Eggleston: You know, I'm so glad my wife met me in my 30s. I don't think she would have liked me a few years earlier.
23:46
stephanfranck: Yeah, no, I… you know, it's funny you say. That's very true.
23:49
Tad Eggleston: And not even because I was a bad person, just because I was a different person, and a lot of the changes.
23:54
Tad Eggleston: the things she likes about me, you know?
23:56
stephanfranck: Hopefully you grow, right?
23:58
Tad Eggleston: For example.
23:58
stephanfranck: And so, it's… you look back at a time where you were less grown up, you know, or whatever, and you go like, oh, man, you know.
24:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I guess that's another thing. I think it would have been easy to write this character where she'd stumbled out because her father had died.
24:18
Tad Eggleston: dolled out, because there was still all of this mystery, but she didn't. She's grown!
24:24
stephanfranck: Yeah, so she… she's a very interesting character. I love who she is when we find her, because… well, first, she was already a badass when we first found her, right? But she was already, like, reeling from, like, this…
24:38
stephanfranck: trying to deal with that first tragedy, and I realize we're spoiling things, so, like… I mean, the first…
24:44
Tad Eggleston: 5 people probably have read.
24:47
stephanfranck: If they have.
24:47
Tad Eggleston: haven't, well, like, they should, and we're not spoiling everything.
24:52
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
24:53
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
24:53
stephanfranck: So…
24:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, at this point, I'm… I'm…
24:58
stephanfranck: It's been out.
24:59
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, it's been out, I'm careful about what I'm saying about Volume 6.
25:04
stephanfranck: Yeah.
25:04
Tad Eggleston: You haven't even started this Kickstarter yet. Right.
25:08
stephanfranck: Right.
25:08
Tad Eggleston: And I'm trying not to get too detailed on the previous ones. I'm not sitting there going, so her dad walked into this place.
25:16
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this happened. No, no, no, yeah, it's still, it's still gonna be a fundraiser. But, but, so…
25:24
stephanfranck: So, she was already, as a teenager, reeling from that…
25:29
Tad Eggleston: From having lost her mother.
25:30
stephanfranck: from having a loss to the mom, right? And the thing, too, is that
25:34
stephanfranck: he had lost the love of his life, and also, he had lost his shit, basically, when that happened, right? So now he's in this double situation where he needs to keep it together and kind of try to put some…
25:49
stephanfranck: You know, his life, kind of constrict his life to just kind of cobble…
25:54
stephanfranck: a life together for what's left of his family, which is him and his daughter, Lizette.
25:59
stephanfranck: And so on the one hand, he's like, he himself is under pressure, and then, of course, he's under that…
26:08
stephanfranck: Question that anybody who has teenagers, you know, has, which is.
26:12
stephanfranck: okay, my teenager's crazy? When do I step in? And, you know, when is it a code red? And when is it just experience that I need to let it happen and let them…
26:25
Tad Eggleston: When is the light? When is the light yellow? When is it red?
26:30
stephanfranck: Yeah, exactly.
26:31
Tad Eggleston: When is it actually green, but, like, I'm a parent now, so I don't like thinking of that as green, because when I think back on that, I go, why was I that dumb?
26:46
stephanfranck: And at the same time, you have to let the kids, you know, I mean, that's part of growing up, right? So, so…
26:53
stephanfranck: So he's in that very difficult place where he's trying to parent a teenager on his own, and meanwhile.
27:02
stephanfranck: he's trying to parent himself on his own, and sometimes she's the one parenting him, you know, and… because she's also… but so she's this really badass character from the get-go, she has the… the wits, she has… she's an old soul, she's like a… you know, a true detective in her bones, you know? So…
27:22
stephanfranck: But then, yeah, the whole thing happens, and he dies, and then it becomes, to me, yes, of course she's still going to be that badass.
27:32
stephanfranck: woman, you know, now 29, who now has all the agency of being an adult. So, you know, there's a strength to the character that couldn't be there when she was 15, you know? But at the same time, there's also a case of Arrested Development.
27:49
stephanfranck: You know? Where, like…
27:52
stephanfranck: She hasn't given… you know, she's in a job that, you know, she should have done.
27:59
stephanfranck: she should have been doing better, you know, compared to her friend, who just went on to do amazing things and stuff. You know, so she's still on the… on the quest… on the quest for truth, but at the same time, you know, she's gonna…
28:14
stephanfranck: So, I'm trying to not give away too many details, but the point.
28:18
Tad Eggleston: No, I understand.
28:19
stephanfranck: It's that balance.
28:21
Tad Eggleston: In fact, I'm literally cataloging a couple of questions, it's like, I have to ask these after we're done recording.
28:29
stephanfranck: Okay.
28:30
stephanfranck: So that's the thing, where when we find her in the second half of the story, she's… she has the powers of being an adult, and she's still a badass, because she always was, but… and she was always a little bit of a hard case, also, let's face it.
28:43
Tad Eggleston: Right?
28:44
stephanfranck: But now there's this, this element of she's, she has this case of Arrested Development, where, like,
28:52
stephanfranck: she needs to give herself permission to live, and to move past this, right? And so… but the thing that she's dealing with is too much to just move past, and this is what the final volume is, right? Which is that it's going to be one final night where
29:10
stephanfranck: all the way of history, right? And so you either survive, it's like, solve it and get past it, or die trying, you know?
29:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, you know, this is exactly where we were going as I was listening to you, because, like.
29:24
Tad Eggleston: As so often seems to happen in life, she's been stalled out.
29:29
Tad Eggleston: On one level for 15 years, while still growing.
29:33
Tad Eggleston: And suddenly, like… Everything happens at once, in real time, in high pressure, in danger.
29:50
Tad Eggleston: in ways that complete… you know, this is where I have questions to ask off the air, because I can't… but the way I'll put it on the air, in ways that…
30:00
Tad Eggleston: completely uproot All of that time that we didn't see.
30:07
stephanfranck: Yep.
30:08
Tad Eggleston: In ways that, like, almost take all of that growth she has had.
30:15
Tad Eggleston: And make her question it, make her… like…
30:20
Tad Eggleston: And again, like, she goes from… from being on, like, a tricycle… to… like… A supersonic chat.
30:36
stephanfranck: Yeah.
30:39
stephanfranck: You know.
30:40
Tad Eggleston: Like that.
30:40
stephanfranck: I've heard said in life many times is that the decline is long.
30:46
stephanfranck: But the collapse is, like, an instant.
30:49
Tad Eggleston: break.
30:50
stephanfranck: You know?
30:52
stephanfranck: Excuse me. And I think, like, this is what's been happening, right? Like, this whole situation has been sort of…
30:58
stephanfranck: festering, and being kind of, sort of, papered over, and coped over, and stuff like that, you know, for 15 years, and in this… so we find her in this status quo that is not quite…
31:11
stephanfranck: living the way she should be living, but, you know, she's kind of getting by, you know, sort of, you know? And all of a sudden, all those… that web of lies and all those, you know, mysteries just, you know.
31:26
stephanfranck: Something unravels, something, like, somebody comes back from the past, you know, somebody she hasn't seen in a long time, comes back, starts asking questions about something, because that's…
31:37
stephanfranck: What her job entails.
31:39
stephanfranck: and… the sweater starts to unravel, and when it unravels, at that point, it goes fast, and everybody…
31:47
Tad Eggleston: All the dominoes fall.
31:48
stephanfranck: All the dominoes fall at once.
31:51
Tad Eggleston: You know.
31:52
Tad Eggleston: And it's… I mean… It's a breathtaking ride.
31:59
Tad Eggleston: like… I, I, a,
32:07
Tad Eggleston: I had to split it up, because I started it
32:10
Tad Eggleston: In between stuff at school, but, like…
32:15
Tad Eggleston: It was hard to set down every time
32:18
Tad Eggleston: I had to set it down, and eventually I decided, okay, I'm just…
32:23
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna do other things in my free moments, because I need to be able to take this all the way through when I.
32:31
stephanfranck: Finish.
32:31
Tad Eggleston: shit.
32:32
Tad Eggleston: And then I read it again when I got home. Because… Like, it's breakneck.
32:40
Tad Eggleston: In a way that the other volumes weren't. And that's not a knock on the other volumes. The other volumes shouldn't have been.
32:48
Tad Eggleston: Breakneck wasn't their pace.
32:54
stephanfranck: Yeah, you know, it's like, there has to be… I love it when there's a shape to the… to the, you know, the stories, right? And you, you know, essentially here, you're getting into the final act of the story, so the first act, you know, it's exposition. It's like we're meeting the characters, the world, the situations, the plot thickens, you know?
33:13
stephanfranck: things goes bad, you know? And then you get to this final point where everything goes faster and faster, and now we're in real time. Also, that's something I love to,
33:25
stephanfranck: To play with,
33:28
stephanfranck: you know, in comics is to play… because, you know, as I always say, I'm sure I've said it on your show, like, several times already, but it's one of my key things, you know? You can, you know, in comics as in everything, but especially in comics, you can choose to compress or decompress the story.
33:46
Tad Eggleston: Billy?
33:47
stephanfranck: And compress it to where it's just like, you know.
33:51
stephanfranck: you jump from one idea, or to another idea, or to, like, a different time, to a different time, and the next day, and this happens, right? And then you can also do it,
34:02
stephanfranck: Excuse me. Where it's, you're really in the play-by-play of things, and you're really, like, in real time, almost. Almost like a, a, you know, like a film that would be one take, almost, right? Right. You're in the, you know, and so, I think…
34:20
Tad Eggleston: I'd say sometimes it's even… it's even slower than that.
34:23
stephanfranck: Right.
34:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's weird, because, like, as we get faster, in some ways we get slower, because sometimes a page is actually…
34:35
Tad Eggleston: It's slow motion, because you're getting four different angles on the same second.
34:41
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah. And every time you… because, you know, and it's not that it's the same thing that's happening every time, it's just that it's still progressing, but maybe it's like, for instance, at some point, as you were mentioning, that, you know, they're high, everybody's high, right? And so time gets dilated, and then at some.
34:56
Tad Eggleston: Well, I…
34:57
stephanfranck: some…
34:57
Tad Eggleston: I'm just literally looking at a random page here.
35:03
stephanfranck: Hmm.
35:03
Tad Eggleston: During the car chase sequence, near the end, where… you, you have…
35:13
Tad Eggleston: you know, her car in front, you can see his car in the lights behind her, then you're inside her car. I guess if you pay a lot of attention, you can see that her head has moved slightly.
35:25
stephanfranck: Right.
35:26
Tad Eggleston: From image 1 to image 2, and then you cut to his car, which is moving, so yes, time is passing, but, like, the feeling is that this is… this is him while… while that's going on, and then you see him shifting gears, and you know that we're… but then the next page is… is still, like…
35:47
Tad Eggleston: Face.
35:49
Tad Eggleston: Road, face, road, you can tell he's getting a little bit closer. Face, now he's on her tail. Like, but…
35:59
Tad Eggleston: It's almost like you're getting different…
36:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Scott McCloud talks about it when he… one of my favorite chapters in understanding comics.
36:10
Tad Eggleston: on gutters, and…
36:11
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
36:12
Tad Eggleston: Like, sometimes they can be… sometimes they can be the… the passage of time, but sometimes they're just there to…
36:23
Tad Eggleston: to hold you in a moment, and make you look at it from different places, or… or whatever, zoom in, zoom out. For that matter, are you familiar with Jesse Lonergan's work at all?
36:38
stephanfranck: No, I'm sorry, no.
36:39
Tad Eggleston: Jesse Lonergan did my favorite book of last year. It's a book called Drome, which is… it's like,
36:49
Tad Eggleston: It's like a fantasy creation tale.
36:52
Tad Eggleston: But it's also, like, the things he does with panels and how he tells a story is just, like, nothing I've ever seen. Because one of the things I've learned from Jesse Lonergan is you don't even have to change the picture. He will… he will sometimes have…
37:11
Tad Eggleston: A page that's split into 30 panels, but it's really one picture that's cut into 30 panels.
37:18
stephanfranck: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
37:20
Tad Eggleston: Because that's happened, it slows you down.
37:23
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
37:25
Tad Eggleston: It forces you to look at it longer, even though it's that one image that you might have taken in and turned the page other.
37:33
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know who does that, too, is Mike Diodaro.
37:37
stephanfranck: Okay. You know, like, on the… he's doing some really interesting, like, his AWA books that he's.
37:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:44
stephanfranck: Very interesting, kind of…
37:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
37:47
stephanfranck: an image that is deconstructed in those pieces, and all of a sudden, time, you know, slows down. You know, for me, it just goes for, you know, as far as Palomino, it goes back to,
38:00
stephanfranck: what I was saying about Trying to capture, like, the…
38:04
stephanfranck: being in the perception of the moment, right? Like, if you're… if you're…
38:09
stephanfranck: trying to get away, and somebody's chasing you with a car, and you're in your car, and you see, and they're gaining on you, and like, how much can they gain on me, right? Right. The 5 seconds that it's going to take for them to actually try to hit your bumper, get you off the road, right? Those 5 seconds are gonna feel like…
38:29
Tad Eggleston: Forever.
38:29
stephanfranck: Forever, you know, time stops, right?
38:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
38:32
stephanfranck: And so it's… that's what it is, being in the service of the experience of the characters, so that the reader can be in that experience as well.
38:44
Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
38:46
Tad Eggleston: It's just, link.
38:48
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes feel like I'm Chris Farley when I'm talking to you, because I just want to say, you know that page where it went…
39:00
Tad Eggleston: That was awesome.
39:04
Tad Eggleston: Duh! I'm so stupid!
39:09
stephanfranck: So…
39:10
Tad Eggleston: My wife's a big Saturday Night Live fan, so am I. That's immediately where I go when I feel like I'm… I'm gushing rather than asking questions.
39:19
stephanfranck: You can't go wrong with Chris Farley, so…
39:23
Tad Eggleston: I still need to read the comic.
39:26
Tad Eggleston: Z2 did a comic.
39:28
Tad Eggleston: With, with his brother.
39:31
Tad Eggleston: Ryan Dunleavy got to draw it.
39:33
Tad Eggleston: I think it's called Growing Up Farley, I forget.
39:36
Tad Eggleston: There's a Chris Sparley biography comic.
39:42
Tad Eggleston: That I need to read.
39:44
Tad Eggleston: That's actually, like, also, like, I think all before he's famous.
39:50
stephanfranck: Right.
39:50
Tad Eggleston: Certainly.
39:51
stephanfranck: Which is the interesting part, it's always the interesting part.
39:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
39:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah,
39:59
Tad Eggleston: Gives me goosebumps, so… so let's… let's talk, nuts and bolts. When… when is the Kickstarter launching? Have you decided yet? Do we have a date?
40:07
stephanfranck: Well, we're, shooting for, mid-April, if I'm correct?
40:16
Tad Eggleston: April?
40:17
Tad Eggleston: Is there a page to follow up? I should've…
40:21
stephanfranck: Yeah, so actually, this is why we're waiting for a little bit, because we, you know, we want as many people as possible to pre-register.
40:29
stephanfranck: So that way, you know, we have… we start to see, you know, who's tracking, you know, the… and so if you go to… if you go to Kickstarter and you look for Palomino Volume 6,
40:41
stephanfranck: So there's a link up, which is the pre-registration, which means that if you click on that, and you put your info, then you get notified when we go live, which is super helpful, because then people can jump on it, and, you know…
40:58
stephanfranck: That's.
40:59
Tad Eggleston: how I get to be the guy that, that, that…
41:01
Tad Eggleston: I… I forget which book, I actually managed to be the first backer on something.
41:06
stephanfranck: There you go.
41:07
Tad Eggleston: Cuz… cuz that's… that's how quickly I jump on the ones from my friends.
41:13
Tad Eggleston: It's…
41:14
stephanfranck: Thank you. Well, it's super important because the, you know…
41:17
Tad Eggleston: I think I was 4 on yours last year.
41:20
stephanfranck: Oh, you were? Oh, that's amazing.
41:22
Tad Eggleston: Or some ridiculously high number.
41:24
stephanfranck: That's great. Well, thank you.
41:26
stephanfranck: Well, because, you know, like, the algorithm, obviously, I mean, it's also that game, right? And the quicker you get to your goal, the more the book gets represented on the front page, and then the more new people get to discover it, you know what I mean? Right.
41:43
stephanfranck: So by, by, you know, pledging early, what you do, really, is you're helping new people find it.
41:52
Tad Eggleston: You got some… You have some very, very nice poll quotes here.
41:58
Tad Eggleston: Jeff Lemire says it's fantastic.
42:01
stephanfranck: No.
42:02
Tad Eggleston: Comic Book Couples Counseling. Film Noir Style and Rockabilly Confidence.
42:09
Tad Eggleston: Jim, my food was… Short on words, heavy on emphasis, badass.
42:15
stephanfranck: There you go, that's… that's him right there.
42:17
Tad Eggleston: Got some high praise from Alex Segura and Jimmy Palmiati, a couple of regulars. Well, Alex has been on a number of times. I have a hunch Jimmy will be on a number of times, because…
42:31
Tad Eggleston: He had a really good time, and we had a really good time the one time he was on.
42:36
stephanfranck: Yeah, I'm sure, I mean, it's always, like, just nerding out with those guys, just fucking…
42:40
Tad Eggleston: Oh, man.
42:41
stephanfranck: Yeah, every time you're.
42:43
Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, go, go, go, sign up to be notified on launch. You will not regret it. If you don't have the first 5 volumes, I'm certain he will be offering at least digital versions, and probably physical versions of all of those as well.
42:58
stephanfranck: Yes, all the books, so on this campaign…
43:01
Tad Eggleston: All the money at once.
43:03
stephanfranck: All the money ones. So, we're, not only all the six Palomino books, but we also are offering, you know, the silver hardcovers, you know, that are still as good-looking as they ever were.
43:16
Tad Eggleston: R?
43:17
stephanfranck: There's Rosalind, which is the prequel to Silver, and there's…
43:21
Tad Eggleston: I got Rosalind last year, and I got the, the, the…
43:24
stephanfranck: romance in the.
43:26
Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
43:26
stephanfranck: God, yeah. So, it's just a fun one, right?
43:29
Tad Eggleston: It's not… like, can I… can I just say…
43:32
stephanfranck: Yeah.
43:32
Tad Eggleston: That, to be able to do a 6-volume epic like this, like, this is like, what, 700-page epic?
43:40
stephanfranck: 661.
43:42
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
43:44
Tad Eggleston: 661-page epic.
43:47
Tad Eggleston: But also to be able to do, what, a 25-page one-shot?
43:51
stephanfranck: 42.
43:53
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
43:54
Tad Eggleston: So, okay, it's almost a novella.
43:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
43:57
stephanfranck: That's how you get it.
43:58
Tad Eggleston: If you go do a 24 pages good, or an 8 pages good, like, you're gonna officially have all of the skills.
44:08
stephanfranck: Yeah, you're… well, and also, it's a different voice, it's a different tone, it's a different style, so sometimes it's just, like, you need that sort of…
44:18
Tad Eggleston: But…
44:18
stephanfranck: switch that.
44:20
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, you, you…
44:22
Tad Eggleston: Like, in the, in the afterword here, you, you talked about one of my favorite writers, and I also love the specific story you mentioned, there will be soft rains.
44:35
stephanfranck: Hell yeah.
44:36
Tad Eggleston: But, like, as much as I love Bradbury.
44:40
Tad Eggleston: Like, even his novels are strung together short stories.
44:44
stephanfranck: Right here.
44:45
Tad Eggleston: is brilliant at short stories.
44:47
stephanfranck: Yeah.
44:47
Tad Eggleston: like, the handful of times that, like, I think the reason that I am not huge on something wicked This Way comes…
44:56
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's good.
44:59
Tad Eggleston: But why I'm not huge on it is, like…
45:02
Tad Eggleston: It's probably the one novel novel that he wrote, and he doesn't work as well at that length.
45:09
Tad Eggleston: he's the master of the short story. He can do short stories in the same world and string them together. I mean, that's what Fahrenheit 451 is, that's what the Greentown books are, other than…
45:21
Tad Eggleston: then something wicked this way comes. And again, I don't want to bash that book, like.
45:26
stephanfranck: Most people…
45:26
Tad Eggleston: if they write something Wicked this way comes, and that's the only thing they write, they're happy.
45:34
stephanfranck: Yeah, absolutely, no kidding, right? Like, for me, for when I was a kid, one of my favorite author, I mean, as many people, was Stephen King, you know? And I loved his short novels, I loved his long novels, but I loved his short stories as well. And to me.
45:52
stephanfranck: There's something really fun about
45:56
stephanfranck: Telling a contained story that opens a window on the big world.
46:01
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
46:02
stephanfranck: So you get all the world building, but somehow you're able to suggest it in these few events that are happening, and so I love that.
46:09
Tad Eggleston: But it's still different skill sets, and there aren't a lot of people who seem to be able to…
46:16
stephanfranck: I mean…
46:16
Tad Eggleston: I was talking to somebody recently that loves the 8-page stories that, you know, because there's a lot more anthology comics coming out than, like, any time since, like, the 50s.
46:26
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
46:28
stephanfranck: Well, even as a kid, I grew up on that, you know.
46:31
Tad Eggleston: Right.
46:31
stephanfranck: you know, in France, right, Metallurland, right?
46:34
Tad Eggleston: Right.
46:34
stephanfranck: All those 8 pages, 5 pages.
46:37
Tad Eggleston: And it's great seeing all those ape, but I was talking to somebody, he's like, no, like…
46:42
Tad Eggleston: I can be constrained to 120 pages, but if you asked me to even do a one-shot comic, much less an eight-page stories, like, I wouldn't even know where to start.
46:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
46:56
stephanfranck: I mean, you know, what's pretty interesting is that you look at those
47:02
stephanfranck: I'm going back to Metallur alone, right? And,
47:07
stephanfranck: you have stories in there that I saw back then, so that's decades ago, right? I saw them as a kid, and they're 5 pages, 8 pages.
47:17
stephanfranck: But I… it's a world.
47:20
stephanfranck: I remember to this day.
47:22
stephanfranck: You know what I mean? And so, I think…
47:26
stephanfranck: You know, if you do enough series that are 600 pages long, at some point, the idea of doing short stories becomes very appealing.
47:36
Tad Eggleston: Well, that I get too.
47:37
stephanfranck: you know.
47:37
Tad Eggleston: That I can'.
47:38
stephanfranck: And, the next one, the next thing I'm doing is a short story, in fact, and I'm gonna try to do 40 pages, and,
47:47
stephanfranck: And it's going to be in the spirit of those, kind of.
47:51
stephanfranck: Stephen King short stories of the… but the thing that I think where you're… where it's hard is if you try to
48:00
stephanfranck: You have to be able to Hit the ground running.
48:05
stephanfranck: In a way that you're in movement, in action from the get-go, but through that, you're already… you're sensing, you're, you're, you know,
48:15
stephanfranck: the exposition of the world and the, you know, all that stuff just comes in already in motion, and so if… yeah, that's… I think that's the one secret, is to… maybe one of the two secrets is one is…
48:30
stephanfranck: it's a short story, so it has to be in motion from the get-go. You can't take 30 pages to get, like, the first dead body to drop, you know what I'm saying? So it's gonna happen immediately, but in a way that
48:44
stephanfranck: brings in, or brings on the world immediately as well, so you're getting in on those two layers, you know. And then I think at the end, there's a way to… my favorite movies or stories of any kind, you know, is… you know, or novels, you know, it's any… it's always, like, the,
49:05
stephanfranck: A complete story with an open ending.
49:09
stephanfranck: You know?
49:10
Tad Eggleston: It's funny that you say that.
49:11
stephanfranck: And so… That's sad. Because, like, so at the end, it's not like the character got everything they wanted, or Will never got anything they wanted. It's more like, alright, so they survived this now.
49:24
stephanfranck: Yeah, getting ready for the next, next turn of the, you know…
49:28
Tad Eggleston: Like I said, it's…
49:29
stephanfranck: It's…
49:29
Tad Eggleston: It's funny that you say that, because, like…
49:35
Tad Eggleston: the feeling at the end of this book, and I'm gonna try to do it without, like, giving away any of the details, is that…
49:43
Tad Eggleston: The Palomino story is over.
49:46
Tad Eggleston: But… Lizette's is not.
49:50
stephanfranck: Right.
49:51
Tad Eggleston: Lazettes might be just beginning.
49:54
Tad Eggleston: And almost… I mean, that's, that's, that's… and, you know…
50:00
Tad Eggleston: I wouldn't blame you for not having an answer to this question. In fact, I hope that you don't have an answer to this question.
50:08
Tad Eggleston: But, any chance we'll see her again?
50:13
stephanfranck: Yes.
50:14
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
50:15
Tad Eggleston: I don't…
50:16
stephanfranck: You know, the, the, So… as…
50:27
stephanfranck: You know, as we're doing this, you know, we're also… I'm trying to…
50:35
stephanfranck: Put it together as an animated independent movie.
50:39
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
50:40
stephanfranck: And, So… You know, the, as, as, you know, which would be, you know.
50:51
stephanfranck: retell the story of the book series. But then, when you start, you know.
50:57
stephanfranck: diving into these type of conversations, then it's like, well, what would a sequel be? What, you know, is there a leg for a sequel? And so, I literally have two sequels, right?
51:10
stephanfranck: And I'm not gonna say anymore, because there's, like, a big…
51:13
stephanfranck: high concept in it that I want to… I don't want to give away, so I won't… but,
51:17
stephanfranck: But, yes, it's a world that is very hard to leave.
51:22
stephanfranck: That, that…
51:23
Tad Eggleston: That makes me happy.
51:24
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna, I'm gonna toss out my, my, my, I'm gonna be even more confident about tossing out my, my,
51:32
Tad Eggleston: my random thought that I always think in, like, books like this.
51:38
Tad Eggleston: and I don't think anybody's ever done this before, what I would love to see, and I'm not saying that you should do it, because particularly if you have other ideas… if you have ideas already.
51:49
Tad Eggleston: I trust your ideas.
51:51
stephanfranck: Good.
51:52
Tad Eggleston: But… but particularly with, like, a book like this, where the main character is in a noir, not really by choice.
52:01
Tad Eggleston: I've always thought it would be great if, like.
52:04
Tad Eggleston: There was a sequel that was a completely different kind of story.
52:09
stephanfranck: blank.
52:09
Tad Eggleston: Like, we had a noir story, and the sequel is…
52:14
Tad Eggleston: the YA story where they're the mom, and their kids are in middle school, and, like, like…
52:22
Tad Eggleston: Just to use an example, it'd be like… it'd be like if she was the mom in drama.
52:28
Tad Eggleston: the Raina Telgemeyer book. It was all about her kids being
52:32
Tad Eggleston: school play. I'm not saying… I mean, that's why I used an example that's been written already, and obviously not with the noir beginning, but, like, I imagine in life that, like…
52:45
Tad Eggleston: A lot of people who went through something like this, if they could manage to not go
52:51
Tad Eggleston: Through it again…
52:53
Tad Eggleston: would be quite happy not to, which doesn't mean that they don't have stories that might be enjoyable, they'd just be completely different kinds of stories.
53:03
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know if anybody's ever done something like that. It'd be like taking, like…
53:10
Tad Eggleston: It'd be like making the next Star Wars movie. Ray has a Szechuan restaurant on some out… outer world planet.
53:21
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I'll tell you, those are all the…
53:26
stephanfranck: I'm not gonna elaborate, because I really don't.
53:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
53:29
stephanfranck: away, but, you know, whether I'm thinking of sequels for Silver or for Palomino.
53:34
stephanfranck: those are the kind of thoughts that exist, you know? And, and for both, I actually have…
53:43
stephanfranck: you know, I… you know, if I…
53:46
stephanfranck: ever go back into making more silver stories. You know, it will… so that's the beauty of
53:55
stephanfranck: these things, it's like, you want to do something that…
53:58
stephanfranck: Recaptures everything you've loved about this, but at the same time, doesn't redo
54:05
stephanfranck: The… it doesn't re-thread on what you've already seen.
54:09
stephanfranck: And even more so, that's the thing that I really hate in sequels, is…
54:16
stephanfranck: When, you know, a character has had this really meaningful character arc.
54:21
stephanfranck: You know, but now it's not the same character as the character in the premise, right? So the sequel, like, they sort of backslid, you know, in between the movies, and you're back to, like, you're like, dude, you know, so in a way, it's very… because I hate that, because it kind of nullifies the growth of the characters, nullifies some of the relationships that happen.
54:40
stephanfranck: with the characters that were all set up at the, you know… So, you don't wanna… you don't wanna repeat yourself, you don't wanna…
54:50
stephanfranck: artificially nullify part of the growth or the character story that's happened in the first story, just for the sake of being able to re-hit some of the same tropes, you know what I mean? So…
55:03
stephanfranck: So, but in both cases, for silver and palamino, I have ways forward if I… you know.
55:11
stephanfranck: live long enough to, you know… Well, I hope you do. Yeah, me too. But, you know, so…
55:19
stephanfranck: that do… I have good ways into that stuff, basically, that's what I say.
55:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, that sort of thing I've thought about, but, like, the thought that's, like, forming in my head right now that I think is new, but based on a lot of stuff, is, like, it's so funny that…
55:40
Tad Eggleston: so much.
55:43
Tad Eggleston: Storytelling.
55:47
Tad Eggleston: Even though it's so often about character development, like, the next book, or the next episode, or the next movie, or whatnot is about
56:03
Tad Eggleston: Doing another similar plot, or doing…
56:07
Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean, I'm even thinking about Indiana Jones right now.
56:11
stephanfranck: Like…
56:12
Tad Eggleston: And I love Indiana Jones, but as I think about it, it's like, almost, you know, whether you're talking young Indiana Jones or…
56:21
Tad Eggleston: or… the most recent Indiana Jones movie, right? Like, every episode, every movie, that is, like.
56:29
Tad Eggleston: beyond a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, except that Indies had what?
56:36
Tad Eggleston: 35 of them?
56:37
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:39
Tad Eggleston: And it's like… Buu…
56:46
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's a heightened, you know, it's like… or, you know, Batman, right? How many cases have Batman solved?
56:53
Tad Eggleston: Nam?
56:54
stephanfranck: million, you know, so I think that that's something that I'm kind of willing to accept.
56:59
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm willing to accept it, too. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just… it…
57:04
Tad Eggleston: it's another one of those, I mean, kind of like what we were talking about earlier, where… where…
57:09
Tad Eggleston: the fast-paced comic actually kind of slows down the storytelling. Like, it's so weird to me that… that, like…
57:20
Tad Eggleston: As much as we love Character development, as species, as, like… Storytelling aficionados… fans, whatever.
57:38
Tad Eggleston: often without resetting… we don't give the characters different kinds of experiences. I mean, the difference in experience between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade
57:50
Tad Eggleston: isn't that much. It'd be a way different experience if you went from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Three Men and a Baby.
57:58
stephanfranck: Right, right.
58:01
stephanfranck: Yes, to me, well…
58:05
Tad Eggleston: And I'm not saying that that would be good either.
58:08
stephanfranck: Yeah.
58:08
Tad Eggleston: It's just… it's weird to me how the human brain works, because…
58:13
stephanfranck: Wow.
58:13
Tad Eggleston: our lives are filled with different experiences. Yes, we have repetitive experiences, but, like.
58:19
Tad Eggleston: we're… we're so defined by different experiences. That thing that we go through that we'd never gone through before is one of the things that will build our characters and whatnot. And as much as we love storytelling.
58:33
Tad Eggleston: for… Helping us understand people and understanding characters.
58:38
Tad Eggleston: We tend, both as creators and as… as… as readers, watchers, etc, to, like.
58:46
Tad Eggleston: Want our characters to keep going through the same stuff.
58:50
stephanfranck: So, you know, the way I look at it, I look at it… those are all really good points, really valid points, and I could add more water to your… what you're saying, but just for the sake of the conversation, I'm gonna look at it from a different point of view.
59:06
stephanfranck: And I'm going to say it's like the blues.
59:10
Tad Eggleston: Right?
59:11
stephanfranck: The blues has 3 chords.
59:15
stephanfranck: you know, and probably two forms or three forms that those chords can organize themselves into, right? You have 12 bars, your 16 bars, your whatever, right? You know, so…
59:28
stephanfranck: If you're not a Blues fan, then…
59:33
stephanfranck: Every blues song sounds the same to you.
59:36
stephanfranck: But if you allow yourself to get into…
59:41
stephanfranck: to enter that world, and to kind of surrender to it, then you realize that every blues song is absolutely different, you know? And that you can go to a blues festival, like, there's some people who go on the blues cruise, you know, like, on the fucking.
59:54
Tad Eggleston: Chicago Blues Festival is one of my favorite events of the year.
59:58
stephanfranck: And so people will be, like, stuck on the boat for, like, two weeks, all listening to blues, like, all day long for two weeks, right? And to them, and rightfully so, every single song will be different. Every single song will be a different moment, a different everything, right? So I think, to me, you don't want to…
1:00:17
stephanfranck: you don't want to be too broad and say, like, to me, it's, you know, it's… yes, Indiana Jones is a forum, just like the Blues is the forum, right?
1:00:27
stephanfranck: And so…
1:00:29
stephanfranck: of course, I'm gonna want him to do certain things every time, because that's the form, because if he doesn't do that, then it's no longer a blues song, you know what I'm saying? So… so I think that it's… it's…
1:00:39
stephanfranck: Legit to stay within a form, and to.
1:00:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:00:43
stephanfranck: exploring it and exploring, exploring it. The thing, though, is that you do… I think…
1:00:50
stephanfranck: where I think I would draw the line is that… because, you know, if you look at a story in terms of the three-act structure, right, it's like, it's the…
1:00:58
stephanfranck: you know, the other character starts with the want, you know, which is whether they want it, or before they're forced to want it, but there's a want, right? And the want is also…
1:01:10
stephanfranck: the thing that get the asses in the seats of the theater, right? Or they will… or the stuff on the cover that will make you buy the book, or whatever, right?
1:01:18
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:01:18
stephanfranck: But then… The form of story is that…
1:01:22
stephanfranck: At some point, everybody's brought to
1:01:26
stephanfranck: Realize the falseness of the want, and accept the need.
1:01:30
stephanfranck: Right? And so, at that moment, you know, like, let's say Michael Corleone wants to be a gangster. He wants to be, you know, and next thing you know.
1:01:42
stephanfranck: you know, he's gonna… because he wants to be part of the family, right?
1:01:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, really.
1:01:47
stephanfranck: William sent up the.
1:01:47
Tad Eggleston: the other way. He wanted not to be part of the family, but…
1:01:50
stephanfranck: But again, but again…
1:01:52
Tad Eggleston: And he needed to be part of the family.
1:01:54
stephanfranck: Well, no.
1:01:55
stephanfranck: That's where I'm gonna push back on that. Because the… the one.
1:02:00
Tad Eggleston: He wanted to run off with Kate.
1:02:02
stephanfranck: Yes, it's true. But, but,
1:02:07
stephanfranck: the want is not necessarily something that they want right off the bat. It's going to be the thing that you, as the audience, want for them. And everybody who's watching The Godfather knows that he's gonna become a gangster, that's the.
1:02:22
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no.
1:02:22
stephanfranck: sources.
1:02:23
Tad Eggleston: It tells the story.
1:02:24
stephanfranck: And pretty soon, even though he doesn't start out that way, you know, that one's gonna get, like, dropped on him and activated, and now, whether it's Vengeance or whatever, he's gonna get in there, right?
1:02:35
stephanfranck: And at the end, either, like, you accept the need, which is, no, you need to turn away from that and do this thing you wanted to do at the beginning, or, you know, go with your
1:02:44
stephanfranck: family, not the family, right? And so if you accept the want, it becomes… if you abandon the want and take on the need, like Indiana Jones, right? At the end of the first,
1:02:57
stephanfranck: At the beginning, he wants objects, he wants those artifacts, he wants that stuff. And then at the end, he realizes that there's a falseness to the want, that certain things, that he's wanting the wrong things in life.
1:03:09
stephanfranck: The real things in life.
1:03:11
stephanfranck: that, you know, love, you know, long, like, true relationships, he's turned away from those. That's what he actually needs, right? And that's presented through the choice at the end, where,
1:03:25
stephanfranck: you know, certain things are not for you, right? And he chooses not to look…
1:03:33
stephanfranck: you know, all the craziness, right? Which is the stuff he wanted, he's been wanting to find about those things, find out about those things from the beginning, right? So, if you renounce the want to some degree, and accept and
1:03:46
stephanfranck: you know, pivot to the need, then it's a hero story. And if, like Michael Corleone, you turn away from what you really need to do and double down on the wants.
1:03:57
stephanfranck: then it's a tragedy. That's why The Godfather is a tragedy, right? So, the only thing that's tricky in my mind with sequels is that the first movie had that act perfectly well done, where the character
1:04:13
stephanfranck: Most likely turned away from the want, the falseness of it, and, you know, and then embraced the need, and now you've fallen in love with what got you… what got your ass in the theater was what he wanted in the first place, because you also wanted to see that, right?
1:04:31
stephanfranck: Right. But then you've grown, they've grown, that's, like, the whole form of story, and then, you know, you know, so the problem is now comes the sequel.
1:04:41
stephanfranck: And the thing that gets the asses in the theater, it's still the want, but the characters already abandoned the want, right? So, you need to find a way to do it in a way that
1:04:53
stephanfranck: It's still the blues, it's still the form, it's still the want, we're still gonna have all the stuff we all want to see, but at the same time, that we don't deny
1:05:01
stephanfranck: the character growth that's been taking place in the previous movie, because otherwise, the audience feels, like, cheated. It feels like…
1:05:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:05:09
stephanfranck: So it didn't matter, you know, that's when you start.
1:05:12
Tad Eggleston: No, I think you…
1:05:13
stephanfranck: Nothing counts.
1:05:13
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've got dueling thoughts right now. The statement I'll make is you're making me realize why I like…
1:05:24
Tad Eggleston: Crystal Skull and Spear of Destiny so much, and it's because… Marion's back.
1:05:32
stephanfranck: Right.
1:05:33
Tad Eggleston: It's because Marion's back. It's because he…
1:05:36
Tad Eggleston: He gets the opportunity to look at this thing that he had… Pushed away…
1:05:46
Tad Eggleston: That was really what he needed.
1:05:48
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:05:50
Tad Eggleston: You know…
1:05:53
Tad Eggleston: But also, you somehow managed to take us all the way back to the thing we forgot to record, because we just got into talking. Because where this segues really well is, like, off-air, you had mentioned that a lot of it is the specificity.
1:06:11
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
1:06:12
Tad Eggleston: That by using that same form.
1:06:16
Tad Eggleston: It means that we can pay more attention to… the details.
1:06:23
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:06:24
Tad Eggleston: Bring out the character.
1:06:26
stephanfranck: Yeah, exactly.
1:06:27
Tad Eggleston: You know, and, and that, and that, that's…
1:06:30
Tad Eggleston: that's made it go full circle, because I was asking more of a philosophical and psychological question than trying to critique
1:06:39
Tad Eggleston: the way we make things. I was…
1:06:41
stephanfranck: It was true.
1:06:42
Tad Eggleston: trying to go, why do we do it this way? Because if you look at it from a certain perspective, it seems counterintuitive, but then when I get… when I go full circle back to the specificity, it's like, oh, the reason we'll go ahead and use the same plot, or a similar plot, or whatever, is it…
1:07:02
Tad Eggleston: means that… We can focus more on the stuff that matters.
1:07:10
Tad Eggleston: We can… okay, I know what an Indiana Jones movie feels like.
1:07:15
Tad Eggleston: And unfortunately for some people, like, if you don't nail that part, it's like, the people who don't like Crystal Skull at all, the people who
1:07:23
Tad Eggleston: like Spear of Destiny, only a little bit more.
1:07:27
Tad Eggleston: It's because they feel like the plot's gone too far away, or it's become too…
1:07:33
Tad Eggleston: weird, you know, they don't like the time traveler, they don't like the alien, and… and for me, I'm sitting there going, well, that fits in, because, like.
1:07:42
Tad Eggleston: The 30s was a cult. The 50s were aliens. The 60s were when we were getting to do trippy shit.
1:07:50
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:07:52
Tad Eggleston: You know? It all fits in to me, and what's important is, like, how… Junior is behaving.
1:08:04
Tad Eggleston: I like calling him Junior sometimes. Junior?
1:08:10
Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, no, as I think of it that way, the reason why…
1:08:22
Tad Eggleston: I recently was part of a,
1:08:26
Tad Eggleston: book club discussion of Darwin Cook's Parker.
1:08:31
Tad Eggleston: And, and, and I, I…
1:08:34
Tad Eggleston: I am not only a fan of Darwin Cook's Parker, I have read all of the Parker novels a couple of times, I have…
1:08:46
Tad Eggleston: seen most of the movies based on Parker novels. A couple of them are hard to get your hand…
1:08:51
Tad Eggleston: hands-on, including an Italian one that's supposed to be a really, really good…
1:08:58
Tad Eggleston: adaptation of, the score, which is…
1:09:02
Tad Eggleston: Such a great book that I'd love to see a good adaptation of it.
1:09:06
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
1:09:07
Tad Eggleston: But,
1:09:09
Tad Eggleston: like, one of the things that a lot of the people were frustrated with is they're like, I don't see any character development at all. I mean, yes, we've got these tight…
1:09:17
Tad Eggleston: heist jobs, blah blah blah, and I'm like.
1:09:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, the weird thing about Parker is, like, he prides himself on not changing, but if you read the whole thing.
1:09:28
Tad Eggleston: He does. It's just really fucking slow.
1:09:32
stephanfranck: Right.
1:09:33
Tad Eggleston: But there's something true about that.
1:09:37
Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, like, Because he's somebody who prides himself on not changing, because he's somebody who
1:09:45
Tad Eggleston: Who built into his character is, like.
1:09:50
Tad Eggleston: I work once or twice a year, and then just go goof off.
1:09:56
Tad Eggleston: Only you can tell that he's only really alive when he's working?
1:10:01
Tad Eggleston: Which makes it that much weirder. I mean, like…
1:10:06
Tad Eggleston: I have elaborate possible backstories for Parker and how he became who he is. I think it's… it's a…
1:10:14
Tad Eggleston: worthwhile thing to examine at some point. But, like, the shift also becomes, like… he winds up…
1:10:24
Tad Eggleston: With a woman from one of the jobs…
1:10:29
Tad Eggleston: like, the 8th or 9th book. You know, she came in with somebody else, but left with him, and even though he'd sworn off that, because, like, famously, that first book, he's… he's…
1:10:42
Tad Eggleston: He winds up in jail for the first time and only time, because his… his wife had…
1:10:49
Tad Eggleston: Shot him in the back.
1:10:52
Tad Eggleston: But, while you don't see it, like…
1:10:58
Tad Eggleston: What you start to feel is that he does have a life that he cares about.
1:11:03
Tad Eggleston: in between jobs. He's starting to behave just a little bit differently between jobs, particularly because while she'd been part of that one job, she was then like, I want to be with you, but I don't ever want to do this again.
1:11:18
Tad Eggleston: you can go off and do that, and then come back to me, and I understand that that means that you might leave and never come back, and I'll deal with that. Like…
1:11:30
Tad Eggleston: But again, like, the character development
1:11:33
Tad Eggleston: Happens over this really small amount of time.
1:11:39
stephanfranck: Yeah, and .
1:11:41
Tad Eggleston: I guess where I'm going is that, you know, you've got a semi-repetitive plot. In fact, they're very formulaic. I mean, if you break it down, it's like, okay, you're gonna have this, and then this, and then this, and then that, and then this, you know?
1:11:58
Tad Eggleston: And the first part is gonna be from Parker's point of view, and the second part is gonna be from…
1:12:04
Tad Eggleston: different people in the crew's point of view, and then you're back to Parker's point.
1:12:07
stephanfranck: Right.
1:12:09
stephanfranck: So, so we're back to the blues.
1:12:11
Tad Eggleston: Right, exactly.
1:12:12
stephanfranck: You know?
1:12:14
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, no. See? See? Look at that. We talked our way through…
1:12:21
Tad Eggleston: What in the human condition made it so that we…
1:12:25
Tad Eggleston: We tell the same story, but have the characters change.
1:12:29
stephanfranck: Yeah, I think that's the… that's the…
1:12:34
stephanfranck: you know, the human condition is that it's holding these two ideas at the same time that are opposite on everything, right? Like, that nothing… the human condition hasn't changed in… ever, you know? People are still people and will be people until they're replaced by AI or something, you know? But as long as.
1:12:53
Tad Eggleston: AI's got a long way to go to be able to… Right?
1:12:57
stephanfranck: So everybody's the same, and yet everybody's different. I think that's the… you know, it's… and that sort of complexity and that tension
1:13:06
stephanfranck: Between a character… because, you know, some characters are…
1:13:10
stephanfranck: on a hero's journey, where it's all about their change, it's all about, you know, some sort of awakening of some sort, you know?
1:13:19
stephanfranck: And some people, some here, some characters are agents of change, you know?
1:13:23
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:13:24
stephanfranck: And, you know, sometimes they never change, and sometimes it changes, but ever so slightly, right? Like, like, you know, Dirty Harry changes over time, you know, this is so, you know…
1:13:37
stephanfranck: so…
1:13:39
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes they change the people around them more than they change themselves.
1:13:43
stephanfranck: Yes, exactly, exactly. And so, so…
1:13:47
stephanfranck: But I think it's just like gravity, right? You know, the Earth, you know.
1:13:53
stephanfranck: orbits the Sun, but the Sun still feels the Earth's gravity, right? So, even the, you know.
1:14:01
stephanfranck: The side of the equation that ends up, you know, they're supposed to be the unmovable object.
1:14:08
stephanfranck: Still is affected by the smaller object, and that's why those characters who First, enter, like, the…
1:14:17
stephanfranck: the narrative, you know, whether it's a series of books or whatever, a series of movies, whatever, you know, as this agent of change, who they themselves don't change, right?
1:14:29
stephanfranck: But they do.
1:14:31
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:14:32
stephanfranck: And so… and change, in fact, has… I'm just bringing it back to Palomino, because change is…
1:14:41
stephanfranck: And, you know, and the tension between what's permanent and what isn't has become one of the main themes in the series.
1:14:49
stephanfranck: Yeah. You know? Where, like, the, you know, the…
1:14:53
stephanfranck: anybody who's listening to this who doesn't know, the Palomino Club was a real place in LA that did exist, and that did close in 1995. This is also why, when I decided to do the time jump, all of a sudden, it made perfect sense.
1:15:06
stephanfranck: Because 1981 was the height of the Palomino, and 95 was when it closed. So.
1:15:14
stephanfranck: And it had been around for…
1:15:16
stephanfranck: 50 years, right? So, like, this idea that certain cultural landmarks certain people.
1:15:24
stephanfranck: certain societal norms, certain form of governments that you take for granted, that you think have always been here and will always be here. Everything…
1:15:37
stephanfranck: Little by little, moves on, you know?
1:15:40
Tad Eggleston: And then sometimes speeds up.
1:15:43
stephanfranck: Right? Sometimes slowly, sometimes very, very fast, because like we… like I said, you know, the… earlier, you know, the… the decline is long, but the collapse is swift, right?
1:15:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:15:54
stephanfranck: I mean…
1:15:54
Tad Eggleston: Like, you just made me think of… and they've done a phenomenal job of restoring it, but like…
1:16:00
Tad Eggleston: How jarring was it?
1:16:03
Tad Eggleston: When there was a fire at Notre Dame.
1:16:06
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. And to see this… this cathedral that…
1:16:10
Tad Eggleston: I'd never even been there. I've never been to Europe.
1:16:13
stephanfranck: Right.
1:16:14
Tad Eggleston: But it's, like, this… It's this thing that's supposed to be in the world, and it's suddenly not.
1:16:21
stephanfranck: And for the first time, you're entertaining the idea that there could be a world without a Notre Dame, you know? Right. And when you start to open the door.
1:16:29
Tad Eggleston: powers in the United States.
1:16:31
stephanfranck: Twin Towers, and who knows where else, right? So, you know…
1:16:39
stephanfranck: So, so, so, as everything, nothing is… that you, you know, Nothing like that is permanent.
1:16:48
stephanfranck: But, so, you have to ask yourself that, but what is?
1:16:52
stephanfranck: What is the, the, the…
1:16:54
stephanfranck: the safety rope, that thread through all that stuff from time to time, from time period to time period, from person to person, from… what is… what is the thing that stays, right?
1:17:07
stephanfranck: And… and to me, it's the human condition, and it's the human… the fabric of… human, morals.
1:17:18
stephanfranck: You know? And especially that's… which is funny, because, like, I feel like some of the books that I've done, I started them…
1:17:27
stephanfranck: at times where it was just purely because I love the genre, and I love the, you know, and…
1:17:32
stephanfranck: As, as you go… Through the process of manifesting them.
1:17:38
stephanfranck: That all of a sudden, they find this resonance in the world, you know?
1:17:43
stephanfranck: And so, for me, for Palomino, it was, like, this thing, and I wrote about it at the end of one of the books, I can't remember, it's 4 or 5, but it was kind of crazy, like, there was this scene, right, like, when the producer talks about
1:18:00
stephanfranck: the Palisades as the place, like, if you made it to the Palisades, you've got it made, you know, and stuff, right? And as I was…
1:18:08
stephanfranck: Inking that page, that's when, you know, the palaces were burning, and we were on the other side of town, but our site was burning too, and so we get to…
1:18:17
stephanfranck: but, you know, and so…
1:18:21
stephanfranck: so there's that kind of stuff, and then it goes back to noir, which noir is, for some reason, everything I do is some version of noir, you know, silver was pop noir, this is kind of neo-noir,
1:18:35
stephanfranck: I would say romance in the Age of the Space God is postmodern meta-noir or something, you know?
1:18:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:18:41
stephanfranck: But, the… Point is that, to me, the essence of noir is that…
1:18:50
stephanfranck: whether they're good people or bad people, or they could be positioned either way, but the noir characters can't let things go. It burns their ass.
1:19:02
stephanfranck: you know, so sometimes it's because there's a kind of greed that they can't let it go, and it would burn their ass to let it go, and they're gonna follow that all the way to hell, you know? In other cases.
1:19:15
stephanfranck: They're, like, they have this thing about injustice, or lies, and they can't let it go. And even though, by all means, they should, because that, you know, pursuing it may have terrible consequences, you know, but…
1:19:30
stephanfranck: they can't let it go. And so, like, this idea of, no, values, morals, truth, justice.
1:19:39
stephanfranck: Certain people among us can't let that shit go.
1:19:44
stephanfranck: And those are noir characters, because they're always rubbing against the rest of the world, who kind of goes along to get along, you know?
1:19:53
stephanfranck: or who doesn't want to see, doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to… whatever, you know? And so…
1:19:59
stephanfranck: Those characters find themselves in a position of resistance.
1:20:05
stephanfranck: Which, to me, is where, like, The artistic, sort of…
1:20:11
stephanfranck: Endeavor is headed, and, like, artistic doesn't fucking matter, but, like, everybody, you know.
1:20:17
stephanfranck: You know, will find themselves,
1:20:21
stephanfranck: At some point, having to orient themselves in terms of
1:20:26
stephanfranck: am I rooting for fascism, or am I rooting for democracy, or… you know, and at some point.
1:20:33
stephanfranck: some people… will… Not let it go.
1:20:41
stephanfranck: And that's, at the end of the day, when everything else changes, everything else goes.
1:20:46
stephanfranck: that through line of people who didn't let it go is what stays, and what history is made of. And so… and that's the essence of noir, right? So,
1:20:58
stephanfranck: mixing a lot of things together, but that's kind of… that's what kind of emerged for me, like, from the soul of the story, you know, as I… and it didn't start that way, it started like, let's do a cool, you know…
1:21:11
stephanfranck: crime thing at the Palomino, right? But you start with the fun stuff, and little by little, the story goes like, excuse me, I have something to say about this, and it… if you just let it happen, you know, it will…
1:21:26
stephanfranck: You know, manifest.
1:21:29
Tad Eggleston: That, have you ever seen…
1:21:35
Tad Eggleston: a movie called The Good Humor Man.
1:21:39
stephanfranck: I have not.
1:21:40
Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
1:21:41
stephanfranck: I have a feeling you've seen every movie that has to be… that's ever made, and every book…
1:21:47
stephanfranck: ever being… Because I've seen a lot of movies, I've read a lot of books, but you, my friend…
1:21:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, this is… this is… it just popped into my head because, like…
1:22:01
Tad Eggleston: I don't know how it generally gets classified, because, like, it's a comedy, it's for sure a comedy,
1:22:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, at IMDb, they call it Slapstick Action Adventure Comedy Crime. I would actually say that it has a noir element, but it's a comedy noir.
1:22:22
stephanfranck: Tell me the hell.
1:22:23
Tad Eggleston: Carson, who's a comedy actor, is in it.
1:22:27
stephanfranck: Right. What was the title again? Sorry, can you repeat the title?
1:22:29
Tad Eggleston: Good humor man?
1:22:31
stephanfranck: Right.
1:22:32
Tad Eggleston: But as you were describing that, that, that, that can't let anything go, I was thinking to myself, yep, like.
1:22:38
Tad Eggleston: What makes this movie work is, like, he can't let go that he just wants to get married to his girl.
1:22:46
Tad Eggleston: Right. And he falls into this thing with all of these people who can't let crime go, and he fell into their web, and, like, they need to…
1:22:55
Tad Eggleston: And it's like… I think only in the studio era, where they were making a film a week.
1:23:04
Tad Eggleston: could this movie have ever been made? Because I can't imagine the pitch meeting where somebody went.
1:23:09
Tad Eggleston: this is… this is great. Let's do it. But it really works, you know? I mean, I can't take credit. It was… it was Beto Hernandez that recommended it to… it was actually Beto and his daughter Natalia were on the show together, and… and…
1:23:26
Tad Eggleston: they're the ones that recommended it to me. I'm like, okay, I have to track this down, which isn't particularly easy, but it is on YouTube with Spanish subtitles.
1:23:37
stephanfranck: Wow.
1:23:38
Tad Eggleston: It's in English, but it's subtitles.
1:23:42
stephanfranck: That's… that's awesome. You know, you mentioned this, this thing of…
1:23:46
stephanfranck: back when they were making a movie a week, right? There really is something to be said for making a movie a week, you know what I mean? There is! Like, just pushing past the preciousness and just going for it, you know?
1:23:59
Tad Eggleston: There's gonna be a lot of drivel, too. I mean, like, what, what, I mean, every time I hear anybody talk about the movies back then, the comics back then, the…
1:24:11
Tad Eggleston: the music back then, however they divined back then, I sit there going, yeah, because you only remember the good stuff.
1:24:22
stephanfranck: Right.
1:24:22
Tad Eggleston: pull out the Billboard Top 100 from 1965, and yes, there's gonna be, like, 7 Beatles songs, but there are gonna be 20 songs that you've never heard of, and at least 14 of them, when you play them, you'll go, oh, that's why I've never heard them.
1:24:41
Tad Eggleston: But they were more popular than at least 3 of those Beatles songs.
1:24:46
stephanfranck: break.
1:24:48
Tad Eggleston: But then…
1:24:48
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:24:49
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
1:24:49
stephanfranck: What stayed? What remained, is the question.
1:24:52
Tad Eggleston: Exactly. Exactly. You know, so, so, like, I don't think you can judge a period, like, fully judge a period until you're out of it.
1:25:01
stephanfranck: Also, I think that there, something where I think, I feel like we're suffering
1:25:08
stephanfranck: From is a lack of context.
1:25:11
stephanfranck: Because I just remember seeing, like, when I was a kid, and you know, like, on the weekend, you know, with my friends, we'd go to the…
1:25:21
stephanfranck: You know, the videos, you know, the good…
1:25:23
stephanfranck: with those corner stores that you could rent VHS.
1:25:26
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:25:27
stephanfranck: Right, right. And so, a lot of those movies, you know, so they had some big movies, but they also had all that… the B-movies, and even worse, right? But, like, there was a lot of B-movies, right? And we'd watch those, and…
1:25:41
stephanfranck: they weren't, like, a masterpiece of cinema, but they were a great genre B-movie, right? And sometimes…
1:25:50
stephanfranck: No, I was gonna say, sometimes, in our times, you know, people have forgotten that some movies are made to be B-movies, and sometimes I see people criticizing some really awesome B-movies, you know, as if, yeah, it's not an Oscar movie. Why are you… why are you looking at it from that perspective? Look at it from
1:26:13
stephanfranck: the type of B-movies we were watching when we were a kid, you know? And…
1:26:18
stephanfranck: In that context, you realize, my God, this is… this is delicious.
1:26:23
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'll… yeah, I'll take it a step further, is that, like, again, like, if we're looking at the specificity, sometimes those B movies are as good or better than the A movies, because they're just lower budget.
1:26:39
Tad Eggleston: They're just…
1:26:40
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, I… this will be the third interview in a row that I've wound up… I saw a movie Wednesday night made by a comic writer, or a comic artist.
1:26:51
Tad Eggleston: Jim Terry, who's done a fair amount of work with Tim Seeley, and had a fantastic autobiographical graphic novel called Come Home Indio a few years ago. Like, 20 years ago, he and a friend…
1:27:07
Tad Eggleston: made… A trailer for a movie that didn't exist.
1:27:12
Tad Eggleston: But… it's stuck in their heads. So… last year.
1:27:17
Tad Eggleston: They spent the year making the movie.
1:27:20
Tad Eggleston: On no budget whatsoever.
1:27:22
stephanfranck: Right.
1:27:23
Tad Eggleston: But… With a legit artist's sensibility.
1:27:29
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
1:27:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, so the way I've been describing it is, like, imagine Jim Jarmouche and Kevin Smith got together and made an action money, or action movie, but didn't spend any money on it.
1:27:42
stephanfranck: That sounds pretty amazing. I want to see a Jim Jarvis.
1:27:44
Tad Eggleston: It was!
1:27:45
stephanfranck: I mean, yeah.
1:27:46
Tad Eggleston: It was. It was amazing.
1:27:49
Tad Eggleston: because… They didn't try to be anything that they weren't.
1:27:54
Tad Eggleston: But the things that they were, they nailed.
1:27:59
stephanfranck: You know, it's funny, like,
1:28:02
stephanfranck: you just touched on something that, I think I… I think I wrote about it in the afterwards of this book, is, like, the sense of what's real, what's authentic, and what's not.
1:28:16
stephanfranck: And,
1:28:19
stephanfranck: I think it boils down to that, right? Something that is just what it is. It's not trying to tip its hat to something. It's not trying to just, you know, like…
1:28:28
stephanfranck: you know.
1:28:30
stephanfranck: wear somebody else's shoes or something. It just owns… it is what it is, and it owns it, and just, that's it. And exists, it just exists, you know? And to me.
1:28:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, it often exists because it had to.
1:28:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean…
1:28:47
stephanfranck: Yeah, oh, yeah. Or there was some sort of fluke, you know, as some… Well, but, but, but, like.
1:28:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this…
1:28:54
stephanfranck: That's the…
1:28:55
Tad Eggleston: Essentially lived in the head of two friends for 20 years until they're like, we just have to do this.
1:29:01
stephanfranck: Is it… is it… can you… can I see it somewhere? Is it on Bluetooth?
1:29:05
Tad Eggleston: Not yet. I mean, I hope that eventually you can. It's called Shank. If enough people keep plugging it and I keep whispering it to enough people, hopefully something could happen. Like, it was… as of now, I think it was a one-night-only screening at a theater in Chicago.
1:29:24
stephanfranck: Oh, that's amazing.
1:29:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I would be willing to bet that 80% of the audience was either in or related to somebody in the movie.
1:29:34
stephanfranck: Right.
1:29:35
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, I was friends with Jim.
1:29:40
Tad Eggleston: Tim Seeley, who is also friends with Jim, was also in the movie. I didn't see him in the audience, I don't know if he was actually there, but, you know…
1:29:50
Tad Eggleston: that was the type of audience that, I mean, like, after… after the show, after having seen the movie, as I was walking out, and, like, I couldn't stick around for the after-party stuff, because I had to teach in the morning, but I'm looking at the people in the lobby, and I'm like, oh, I just saw you, and I just saw you, and I just saw you.
1:30:08
stephanfranck: That's awesome.
1:30:10
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, again, I mean, the reason… the reason I say Kevin Smith is because… because it's both got the DIY clerk's feel to it, but also.
1:30:26
Tad Eggleston: uses humor to acknowledge, you know, it has a self-deprecating humor. You know, it's like, a lot of the action, you know, it's old men trying to do action stuff, so they overdid it with the sound effects to make it…
1:30:42
Tad Eggleston: Or they'd sometimes overdo it with the blood, or whatever, you know, to, like, yep, yep, this is all we can do from an action standpoint.
1:30:55
Tad Eggleston: But then, like, the reason I'll, like, where it becomes Jarmouche and Smith is, like.
1:31:03
Tad Eggleston: There would be that scene in between that, like.
1:31:07
Tad Eggleston: is normally the… I mean, what I love about Jim Jarmouche is, like, so many of his movies, it's…
1:31:15
Tad Eggleston: And actually, it was a cartoonist that turned me on to him, too. Are you familiar with the Norwegian cartoonist Jason?
1:31:22
stephanfranck: Man, I feel like I'm failing at all your.
1:31:24
Tad Eggleston: No, that's completely fine, because you always turn me on to stuff, too. But you would like Jason. Jason does anthropomorphic stuff.
1:31:32
Tad Eggleston: But… very Jarmouche-like.
1:31:36
Tad Eggleston: Often noir.
1:31:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you've got similar sensibilities. Not as cartoonists.
1:31:43
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
1:31:43
Tad Eggleston: people.
1:31:44
stephanfranck: I gotta check it out.
1:31:46
Tad Eggleston: But what I love about Jarmouche is, like, sometimes I feel like, oh…
1:31:53
Tad Eggleston: If anybody else had made this movie, I would have seen the exact opposite parts.
1:32:01
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
1:32:03
stephanfranck: In what sense? Why?
1:32:06
Tad Eggleston: Well, like… Rather than seeing the action scene and the action scene, I saw them make breakfast in between.
1:32:15
stephanfranck: Oh, I see, I see. Yeah, yeah, I see. It would have been the negative image of the moment.
1:32:20
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:32:20
stephanfranck: Right.
1:32:24
stephanfranck: That's for sure.
1:32:24
Tad Eggleston: So it had a little bit of that feel, where it's like, you'd get to see him… having… SpaghettiOs.
1:32:36
stephanfranck: That's funny.
1:32:38
Tad Eggleston: Or, you know… It had that atmospheric feel at times, you know?
1:32:46
Tad Eggleston: And it just had fun. Like, again, there was, like… martial arts-ish, there was sci-fi-ish.
1:32:54
stephanfranck: Great.
1:32:55
Tad Eggleston: was…
1:32:56
stephanfranck: Okay, now I gotta, I gotta see, I gotta see this.
1:32:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, shank, I'm… I'm gonna keep plugging it.
1:33:02
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:33:03
Tad Eggleston: Jim's planning on coming back on the show, we'll talk about it. And I'll give him… I mean, I was just talking to Joe Illage, you know, when I brought it up, and like.
1:33:12
Tad Eggleston: I asked him in an email today, like, are you… and I don't have an answer yet, but I'm like, is there gonna be any distribution? Is this… are you gonna make it available digitally or on DVD? And I put parenthetically, it actually feels like it should be on VHS!
1:33:29
stephanfranck: That's awesome.
1:33:31
Tad Eggleston: And if he did, I think I would either restore one of the VCRs that I have around, or go buy another one, just to be able to watch it, because…
1:33:41
Tad Eggleston: like…
1:33:42
Tad Eggleston: It's been a long time since I liked a movie that much. Like, the older I get, the less I actually watch movies except…
1:33:51
Tad Eggleston: For social reasons.
1:33:53
Tad Eggleston: I read a ton of comics.
1:33:54
stephanfranck: because…
1:33:55
Tad Eggleston: my medium of choice.
1:33:56
stephanfranck: Listen to…
1:33:57
Tad Eggleston: books.
1:33:58
Tad Eggleston: Occasionally, I'll read them, but most of the time I listen to books, because I've got a long enough drive that that's a…
1:34:04
stephanfranck: Oh, I see, yeah, yeah, that's a great way.
1:34:06
Tad Eggleston: 45 minutes at a time.
1:34:07
stephanfranck: That's great.
1:34:08
Tad Eggleston: But, like… Most movies don't grab my attention
1:34:16
Tad Eggleston: you know, most movies, by 5 or 10 minutes in, I'm looking at my phone, or I'm reading a comic book, or…
1:34:23
Tad Eggleston: You know, one of my co-hosts gave me an old Nintendo Switch for…
1:34:28
stephanfranck: Mmm.
1:34:28
Tad Eggleston: For Christmas, so I could play my baseball game that wasn't available on my PS4 anymore. So, like, I'll find myself
1:34:37
Tad Eggleston: okay, I'm watching this movie because I want to be able to talk about it, but it's not holding my attention, so I'm gonna split it with my baseball.
1:34:46
Tad Eggleston: I went into the movie Wednesday night worried that I was going to be able to stay awake, because I've got a history of falling asleep in theaters to begin with.
1:34:54
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:34:54
Tad Eggleston: And I was spent.
1:34:57
Tad Eggleston: you know, it's been a long semester and a long year. I mean, have you noticed that we're in, like, the 92nd week of January 2026? I mean, when you wrote about Reagan at the back of this, I… I…
1:35:12
Tad Eggleston: I,
1:35:16
Tad Eggleston: I, I immediately… immediately went, oh, God.
1:35:21
Tad Eggleston: Yeah… Yeah, that's really where it all began, isn't it?
1:35:26
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:35:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, a little bit with Nixon, but like…
1:35:32
Tad Eggleston: There was a course correction, and we couldn't… we could have decided to go forward with that course correction.
1:35:38
Tad Eggleston: And instead, we got Reagan.
1:35:42
stephanfranck: Yes.
1:35:43
stephanfranck: And that's the hinge. That's the, you know, that's when the old world of the 20th century just starts to…
1:35:50
stephanfranck: you know, die and transform, you know, and so there's this weird period, which I think our generation lived through, you know, like the, you know, between, you know, the end of history, you know, and the digital revolution. There's, like, about 10 years in between, right?
1:36:09
stephanfranck: Not even.
1:36:11
stephanfranck: And… you know, You know, now you're in a different world, which took…
1:36:17
stephanfranck: a few… couple of decades to really, truly manifest, you know? But,
1:36:23
stephanfranck: Yeah, so that's… you know, I always love stories that take place at the…
1:36:32
stephanfranck: you know, like, the… where two tectonic plates of history sort of, you know, rub against each other, you know? That's why I love, like, movies like Excalibur, you know? Excalibur. You know what I mean? Like, where you have the old gods and, like, this sort of pagan, sort of.
1:36:52
stephanfranck: you know, like, animist, kind of, you know, sense of, you know, the dragon, the night, you know? So, that's rubbing against…
1:37:01
stephanfranck: you know, Christianity that's taking hold, and, you know, and the… so, and, like.
1:37:07
stephanfranck: At the… the fracture, or the… the…
1:37:10
stephanfranck: you know, on the frontier of those two worlds is where interesting stories happen. This is where the Arthurian legends are, you know, taking place, you know. They're mysterious roots, mysterious roots in the old world, and yet trying to root for the…
1:37:27
stephanfranck: the order of the New World, you know. So, in that sense.
1:37:31
stephanfranck: that's… that was also, like, with Palomino, that was also, like, the… the reason for that time jump. It's just that 80… you know, 1981, you know, they always say the 80s are the place where the 50s came to die, you know?
1:37:44
stephanfranck: And then you jump to 1995, and people are starting to get, like, emails and office computers and stuff like that.
1:37:52
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:37:52
stephanfranck: And this is where the world of today begins.
1:37:55
Tad Eggleston: the, the, the…
1:37:58
Tad Eggleston: I'm a huge baseball fan, and… and, like, enough so that I'll watch old games, like, for… there was a brief period where there were lots of…
1:38:08
Tad Eggleston: various DVD box sets of selected games or whatnot.
1:38:15
Tad Eggleston: one of them, you know, I'm a Cubs fan, and one of them was, like, a Cubs' greatest, you know, because it was before they'd won the World Series. They were doing lots of World Series sets, but the Cubs hadn't won a World Series yet, but they… they knew there was money in a Cubs set.
1:38:27
stephanfranck: So we're.
1:38:28
Tad Eggleston: Cubs' Greatest Games, and they… and they did it by… by, like, player.
1:38:37
Tad Eggleston: And aside from the fact that I remember watching it on TV, I really appreciated watching what was the Dawson game in that set.
1:38:45
Tad Eggleston: Because, like… It's 1987.
1:38:50
Tad Eggleston: And… like… The stands are filled with people in short shorts and dumb t-shirts.
1:39:01
Tad Eggleston: And… and trucker hats that may or may not be…
1:39:06
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's like a beach party.
1:39:08
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:39:09
stephanfranck: Right, right.
1:39:10
Tad Eggleston: But like an 80s speech party.
1:39:13
Tad Eggleston: Like… And it's not that…
1:39:19
Tad Eggleston: I mean, by, like, the 70s.
1:39:23
Tad Eggleston: People weren't wearing suits to games like they were in the 20s and 30s, but they still…
1:39:29
Tad Eggleston: generally look nice. And by the 90s.
1:39:35
Tad Eggleston: you had more polo shirts or replica jerseys. Replica jerseys finally became a thing, so there was, like, serious team gear.
1:39:45
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:39:47
Tad Eggleston: So it's just this weird period.
1:39:50
stephanfranck: Yeah, the 90s is when the phrase, Casual Friday got invented, you know?
1:39:56
Tad Eggleston: But it's like, Casual Friday gets invented, and you actually become slightly more formal at the ballgame, but really only
1:40:07
Tad Eggleston: Because you've created something between Non-casual, and hanging around in the backyard on weekends.
1:40:17
stephanfranck: Right.
1:40:22
Tad Eggleston: Y-you know, and it's just… it's so…
1:40:28
Tad Eggleston: It's so weird to remember that, like, there was this brief moment where people went out in public
1:40:39
Tad Eggleston: Looking, again, like they were hanging out in their backyard on the weekend, mowing the lawn and having a beer.
1:40:48
Tad Eggleston: Right. And I'm somebody that, like, I'm the king of, like, wear whatever the fuck is comfortable. But that's the other thing. None of it looks particularly comfortable.
1:40:59
Tad Eggleston: They all look like, on one level, they dressed up?
1:41:04
Tad Eggleston: Or dressed for how they thought they were supposed to dress to go to the ballpark?
1:41:10
stephanfranck: accept the…
1:41:10
Tad Eggleston: You're sitting there going, In what universe is this what you wear to a baseball game?
1:41:20
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:41:21
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, I have the vision in my head. There's, like, a guy in a goofy hat.
1:41:27
Tad Eggleston: Like, the Disney goofy.
1:41:29
stephanfranck: Right, right, right.
1:41:31
Tad Eggleston: You know.
1:41:31
stephanfranck: And, like…
1:41:32
Tad Eggleston: The mesh trucker type, right?
1:41:34
stephanfranck: Right, right.
1:41:36
Tad Eggleston: And it's like, so, that was the only cap you had, and you decided that you were supposed to wear a cap to the baseball game. Is that what happened?
1:41:46
Tad Eggleston: And it was the era where, like, Half the men were topless.
1:41:54
stephanfranck: Right.
1:41:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you still see that sometimes, but it's more the drunken frat boys in the bleachers, or the people who actually painted something on themselves, whereas it's like… again, you're watching that game, it's like…
1:42:08
Tad Eggleston: Did they just not own shirts in 1987? I felt like I had shirts in 1987.
1:42:18
Tad Eggleston: And it's just this weird time capsule.
1:42:21
stephanfranck: -H.
1:42:21
Tad Eggleston: I don't know… totally what point I was making, except that I'm playing off of, like, that's… It'll…
1:42:32
stephanfranck: On a way.
1:42:33
Tad Eggleston: I think, like… You're right, history ended, or at least…
1:42:38
stephanfranck: We thought so.
1:42:41
stephanfranck: You know, when the studio…
1:42:42
Tad Eggleston: Did it change? I mean, because I kind of feel like we're in a post-historical society. I think, you know, I wonder how historians will cover us down the road, because it's almost like we keep too much information now. How do you sift.
1:42:56
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. It's,
1:43:03
stephanfranck: Yeah, I mean, who knows, right? Like, there's definitely a lot of new things now that weren't there before, like the, you know, the tidal wave of information, AI, you know, is also something that's gonna, do something, who knows what, you know?
1:43:23
Tad Eggleston: Maybe a while, and like, I think… I mean, I know I'm in a minority opinion here. I think our biggest problem right now
1:43:31
Tad Eggleston: is that idiot rich people decided to start marketing AI as something that's nowhere near AI.
1:43:39
Tad Eggleston: And then they started mark… then anybody who had a powerful computer tool decided to call it AI, and because some of what's done by AI is really nefarious, like, the second you call it AI,
1:43:53
Tad Eggleston: A huge number of people either think it's amazing, or think it's horrible without thinking about what it is.
1:44:02
Tad Eggleston: the people who think it's amazing will try to get it to do things that it's not designed… I mean, the number of times I have to tell students, no, ChatGPT is a large language model. It doesn't know how to do math.
1:44:17
Tad Eggleston: It's not what it's designed for!
1:44:19
stephanfranck: Well, you know, I'll take it one step further.
1:44:24
stephanfranck: Whether or not it knows how to do math.
1:44:27
stephanfranck: he doesn't know that it's doing math. And to me, that's the real thing, right?
1:44:32
Tad Eggleston: Well, but…
1:44:34
stephanfranck: Via…
1:44:35
stephanfranck: Just to tie it down, to tie it back to what we were talking about earlier, you know, in storytelling and the…
1:44:42
stephanfranck: living through the moment and stuff like that, and that's why you're mentioning it, that's why I mentioned that story, you know, with the soft… I can't remember the exact title, actually. There Will Come Soft Brains. There Will Come Softbrains, right? You know, that's… that story really sort of…
1:45:01
stephanfranck: for people who don't know, it's in the Martian Chronicles, right? And then you find this house that is gonna… and for something that was done… drawn by Wallywood, 22 panels right there, right? Yep.
1:45:14
Tad Eggleston: His version of it's so good.
1:45:16
stephanfranck: Yeah. You know, so you're in this modern home, you know, and basically 60 years ahead of time, you know, it's all smart objects, right? Like, the coffee's being made, the Roombas, you know.
1:45:31
stephanfranck: You know, and
1:45:33
stephanfranck: And then you realize that the humans are all dead, they all died instantly in this, you know, nuclear holocaust, you know? And the house keeps going.
1:45:42
stephanfranck: the, you know, the floor keeps getting vacuumed, the, you know, the coffee keeps getting made by the coffee maker, you know. It's all AI, basically, right? The word didn't exist back then, but that's what it is, it's all AI. But…
1:45:57
stephanfranck: It's just this… this simulacrum of life, when in reality.
1:46:03
stephanfranck: there's… no one's having any subjective experience, right? And so, as I was writing in the thing, you know, it's like…
1:46:12
stephanfranck: You're literally talking to the walls.
1:46:15
stephanfranck: Except that you're, you know, in this illusion that the walls are answering, but they're not. You're just some crazy person talking to the walls, right? And so, to me, that is the real danger of AI. That is the scary thing.
1:46:29
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
1:46:30
stephanfranck: Absolutely. You know, people are afraid sometimes that AI is going to become sentient, so in other words, that it's going to have too much, you know, subjective experience. And I'm not afraid of AI becoming sentient and having a subjective experience. I'm afraid that it's going to… by not having it.
1:46:48
stephanfranck: And us interacting with it constantly is going to drag our own subjective experience.
1:46:53
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
1:46:54
stephanfranck: Absolutely. To zero.
1:46:56
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:46:57
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:46:57
Tad Eggleston: But I have a handful of students that might be listening, so I need to clarify that, like, ChatGPT, as a large language model, is essentially a predictive text algorithm on steroids. So when you feed a math problem into it, it is not even trying to calculate it. It is trying to find other examples of it on the internet, and give you
1:47:19
Tad Eggleston: the next X number of letters.
1:47:24
stephanfranck: And it's… and it's no way.
1:47:26
Tad Eggleston: have to hope that other people did the problem right, or that there are problems similar to that on the internet, or… because it doesn't know. And, like, even if you want to use a tool for doing math.
1:47:41
Tad Eggleston: There are tools.
1:47:43
Tad Eggleston: Many calculators, many online math tools that are designed to do calculations. Yeah.
1:47:51
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:47:52
Tad Eggleston: Which is a very different thing, you know? And like…
1:47:58
stephanfranck: Yeah, so, so, so…
1:47:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:47:59
stephanfranck: ChatGPT, and it's with… that's with the math, it's… it sucks at math, right? But, you know, but also,
1:48:07
stephanfranck: It's this feedback loop.
1:48:10
stephanfranck: Where you're basically talking to yourself. So.
1:48:13
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
1:48:14
stephanfranck: Of course, you see what I mean? Like, where it's just, it's discovering.
1:48:17
Tad Eggleston: It will eventually tell you what you want to hear.
1:48:19
stephanfranck: It's gonna tell you what you want to hear very quickly. And so…
1:48:24
stephanfranck: It's just basically you talking to yourself.
1:48:27
Tad Eggleston: But then the other thing is, like…
1:48:33
Tad Eggleston: It has no ability to weight anything, so when you train it on the entire internet.
1:48:40
Tad Eggleston: it doesn't know the difference between the New York Times and Joe's blog. Actually, it shouldn't say Joe's blog, because Joe's blog's pretty cool. That's Joe Posnansky's blog. It doesn't know the difference between the New York Times and Joe Schmo's…
1:48:59
Tad Eggleston: Happy, fun times wordplace.
1:49:03
stephanfranck: Right.
1:49:04
Tad Eggleston: Like… Even if you're using the software, the proper way to use it would be to…
1:49:14
Tad Eggleston: Limit what you give it.
1:49:17
Tad Eggleston: like, I laugh so hard every time I read an article about some law… lawyer getting caught
1:49:25
Tad Eggleston: Because the AI made up cases, right?
1:49:28
stephanfranck: Oh my god.
1:49:29
Tad Eggleston: I'm sitting there going, I guarantee you there's somebody that will sell you a proprietary AI that is only trained on Westlaw.
1:49:39
Tad Eggleston: that isn't looking at the rest of the internet, it is only looking at the law database. And then that wouldn't happen.
1:49:49
stephanfranck: Yeah, I mean…
1:49:50
Tad Eggleston: You're using the wrong tool to do something that you shouldn't be using it to do anyway, rather than using it as a high-powered search engine, and then doing the writing yourself, which is the other thing, like, when you… a baseball writer that…
1:50:08
Tad Eggleston: That writes about other stuff in his newsletter, too, was talking about this either this morning or yesterday morning, like…
1:50:15
Tad Eggleston: He's like, when I'm writing is actually when I figure it out.
1:50:18
Tad Eggleston: like, the idea that you'd have AI write it for you, and you mentioned this earlier, like, you can't patent an idea, right? It's this idea that
1:50:31
Tad Eggleston: It's this concept that your initial idea.
1:50:34
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah.
1:50:34
Tad Eggleston: the work.
1:50:36
Tad Eggleston: Rather than…
1:50:38
Tad Eggleston: Taking that idea, and noodling with it, and working it out, and fine-tuning it as you write it.
1:50:48
stephanfranck: I never thought of it this way, but you're absolutely right. Like, it's, you know, the thing I always say is that, you know, it's, and I think
1:50:57
stephanfranck: You know, I think either I paraphrased it or stole it, I can't remember, but it's from
1:51:04
stephanfranck: Stephen King's own writing book.
1:51:07
Tad Eggleston: I love that book.
1:51:08
stephanfranck: Where me too, right, so maybe you can tell me if I'm just quoting it.
1:51:12
Tad Eggleston: It's been a while.
1:51:12
stephanfranck: My horrific.
1:51:13
Tad Eggleston: Let's find out.
1:51:13
stephanfranck: But, you know, we're basically just something like, art is,
1:51:19
stephanfranck: is not discovered. It is discovered, it's not decided.
1:51:23
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:51:24
stephanfranck: Right? That sounds right. And so, like, the idea that you're gonna decide on something, and some machine's gonna execute it…
1:51:32
stephanfranck: as if… Just that early decision was…
1:51:37
stephanfranck: the destination, or, like, the right thing, right? No. The early decision that you have to… you have to make an assumption, but that's only your starting point, and through the process of doing it.
1:51:53
stephanfranck: this is when, like, either the solution or a better question's gonna emerge. And so…
1:52:01
stephanfranck: Yeah, if you outsource the process.
1:52:04
stephanfranck: you're not just outsourcing the process, you're outsourcing the… that's where the magic is, this is where the growth is, this is where the… not to mention the… the fun of doing anything is the process, you know?
1:52:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, add to that, how… how… how many…
1:52:22
Tad Eggleston: How many leaps forward are made by polyglots?
1:52:26
Tad Eggleston: and Renaissance men.
1:52:28
Tad Eggleston: You know, people who are taking from…
1:52:31
Tad Eggleston: different places. I mean, how much do we stall when we start siloing things? When… when historians don't look at literature, when… when scientists don't look at history? You know,
1:52:48
Tad Eggleston: The story of the world, any story, involves… So much more than… than…
1:52:57
Tad Eggleston: than just its main topic? I mean, what pink… I mean, just to bring it back to this, what makes Palomino great is, like, it's not…
1:53:07
Tad Eggleston: Just about being a noir.
1:53:10
Tad Eggleston: Like, the time and place matter.
1:53:14
Tad Eggleston: the music matters. The… the Hollywood… Out-of-control hedonist culture matters.
1:53:26
Tad Eggleston: You know…
1:53:27
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:53:28
Tad Eggleston: It's not just a procedural mystery with… with no… world around it.
1:53:37
stephanfranck: Right.
1:53:38
Tad Eggleston: I know.
1:53:40
stephanfranck: No, yeah, it's, ex… Deeply rooted in…
1:53:49
stephanfranck: experience, or, you know, it's either it's something that I know firsthand, or…
1:53:56
stephanfranck: or stuff that I know of enough to, you know, to make it believable, you know? But it's,
1:54:03
stephanfranck: Yeah, excuse me, it's about the texture of those moments, it's about living through stuff, you know.
1:54:09
stephanfranck: Sorry, I have to drink some water.
1:54:11
Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
1:54:16
Tad Eggleston: That's even a good idea.
1:54:18
stephanfranck: Right? I mean, it's been 7 hours after all, you know?
1:54:22
stephanfranck: So, no, that's, that's the…
1:54:27
stephanfranck: Yeah, that's the thing, it's just trying to…
1:54:32
stephanfranck: it to be a living and lived experience, you know? And hopefully characters that are fun, that you feel like you've known your entire life, but at the same time, you're,
1:54:43
stephanfranck: you can feel the reality of their struggle, and of their natural… like, what we're always trying to do is, even in Palomino, where there's a slightly heightened
1:54:55
stephanfranck: thing to the language, because it is noir, so everybody's kind of noir-y, you know? But, but in a way that feels natural, you know? In a way that never feels…
1:55:07
Tad Eggleston: Dennis Camp and I went off on a… on a tangent.
1:55:11
Tad Eggleston: out.
1:55:12
Tad Eggleston: iambic pantameter in… in Deadwood.
1:55:16
stephanfranck: Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:55:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes, like, you know…
1:55:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you just, like, you can… when you can heighten something and keep it natural, it… it…
1:55:36
Tad Eggleston: Takes on a different…
1:55:38
stephanfranck: Right.
1:55:39
Tad Eggleston: We brought up… we brought up the West Wing briefly earlier.
1:55:42
stephanfranck: Right. Talk about an elevated form of language, you know.
1:55:46
Tad Eggleston: Just an elevated form of language, but, like, an elevated form of discussion, and, like.
1:55:51
stephanfranck: That's right.
1:55:52
Tad Eggleston: I mean, still… still the… the part that… that I love the most is, like.
1:55:59
Tad Eggleston: TV, it's supposed to be, what, a minute a page?
1:56:02
Tad Eggleston: for… for…
1:56:04
stephanfranck: Yeah, I mean, that's… that's what they say for… Yeah, I think that's what they say for movies, but they also say, dialogue eats up the screen, and, no, sorry, your action eats up the screen, and dialogue eats up the page. So, in other words,
1:56:21
stephanfranck: The more, anyways, I'm getting far into the weeds, but…
1:56:27
Tad Eggleston: No, but…
1:56:28
stephanfranck: It was… yeah, it's…
1:56:29
Tad Eggleston: But, but famously, like.
1:56:30
stephanfranck: Like.
1:56:32
Tad Eggleston: Sorkin turned in, like, a 160-page script for an episode. Right.
1:56:37
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:56:37
Tad Eggleston: And they're like, you gotta pare this down. I was like, no, I don't. Talk faster.
1:56:42
Tad Eggleston: Talk faster! And that's when they also started doing the walk-and-talks, which, when you think about it, how often do we do that?
1:56:51
Tad Eggleston: How many conversations have you had walking around a grocery store, or around a…
1:56:55
stephanfranck: walk.
1:56:55
Tad Eggleston: Comic Convention, or.
1:56:56
stephanfranck: Right, right, right.
1:56:59
Tad Eggleston: We don't always sit down and talk.
1:57:01
stephanfranck: Yeah, you know what show I feel is the…
1:57:05
stephanfranck: in that sense, is the… the descendant of the West Wing is industry.
1:57:10
Tad Eggleston: I need to see that. Industry?
1:57:12
stephanfranck: It's great. It's amazing.
1:57:15
stephanfranck: It's amazing.
1:57:18
stephanfranck: Sometimes so intense that it's… you gotta watch one episode and kind of digest it, because it's so strong and intense, you gotta, you know…
1:57:27
stephanfranck: But that's an amazing show, and, like, it's also a show where the…
1:57:33
stephanfranck: So, you know, the West Wing was rooted in politics, so you had all that policy talk that was… you had to keep up with. So here, it's like, not Wall Street, because it's in London, so it's the city, you know.
1:57:45
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:57:46
stephanfranck: But it's that finance dog that you have to keep up with and see what they're saying. And it's… you can do it, it's… it's… it's not…
1:57:53
stephanfranck: Out of reach, you know, but…
1:57:55
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
1:57:55
stephanfranck: It definitely is challenging.
1:57:58
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, and, like… I love the…
1:58:05
Tad Eggleston: workplace drama, or dramedy, and I particularly love it when…
1:58:10
Tad Eggleston: As it turns out, the workplace is really just part of the setting.
1:58:14
stephanfranck: Yeah.
1:58:15
Tad Eggleston: You know, I'm good friends with Chris Cantwell, which is why I finally… Finally watched…
1:58:23
Tad Eggleston: Halt and Catch Fire years after I should have watched it the first time.
1:58:27
stephanfranck: But since I.
1:58:28
Tad Eggleston: I've watched it. I've watched it.
1:58:29
Tad Eggleston: Over and over and over again, because…
1:58:34
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it was cool to learn more about the early days of computing and whatnot, but… but what was even more fun was… was…
1:58:42
Tad Eggleston: like…
1:58:45
Tad Eggleston: And fun might not be the right word, but, like, particularly in certain industries, or… or industries that are… are…
1:58:54
Tad Eggleston: emerging.
1:58:56
Tad Eggleston: Like, there are a lot of people that will go from
1:59:01
Tad Eggleston: Being co-workers, to being competitors, to being co-workers again, to… whatever.
1:59:10
Tad Eggleston: You're that much more likely to have bigger egos because you're doing new things, you know, so the interpersonal drama just takes on…
1:59:19
Tad Eggleston: Like, so much bigger proportions, because…
1:59:24
Tad Eggleston: You've got different ages, you've got different backgrounds, you've got different…
1:59:29
Tad Eggleston: Personalities and skill sets, but they're all interested in certain things, and they'll build a set of relationships, but then they'll be…
1:59:37
Tad Eggleston: Pitted against each other, and because their work and their friendships were so tied together, they have trouble going, oh, we're allowed to be friends, even though we're not working together anymore.
1:59:48
stephanfranck: Right.
1:59:49
Tad Eggleston: Even though we're, like, Competing with each other in the world.
1:59:55
stephanfranck: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, I feel like I've…
2:00:01
stephanfranck: you know, a lot of the same people that I still see, and of course, I've accrued a lot more people along the way, but they are the same people I was in school with, you know, and were in animation school together, you know.
2:00:14
stephanfranck: 700 years ago, and then… you know…
2:00:20
stephanfranck: it's still the same for people I worked with at, you know, at studios years and years ago, and, you know, and
2:00:28
stephanfranck: And, you know, and it's such… it's, you know, it becomes a small world with its own language, with its… you know, it's just… and every industry, every trade has its own, you know.
2:00:40
stephanfranck: but the traditions.
2:00:43
stephanfranck: you know, it's like, I think every trade, every job, every, you know, has a sense of tradition, that things that… again, I'm going back to that central theme of, you know, of things being built and passed down to the next people, and there's this institutional knowledge of certain things, you know what I mean?
2:01:04
stephanfranck: And I think that's…
2:01:05
Tad Eggleston: those words, institutional knowledge, I don't think we value them enough.
2:01:09
stephanfranck: No, and you're obviously in education, you know, in storytelling, in all the crafts, in everything, it's always…
2:01:17
stephanfranck: being… everything I've learned in anything I do is I've learned it from other people who either gave me a word of wisdom, or I let me watch them work, or, you know, whatever, you know, and you…
2:01:33
stephanfranck: So, it's like… You know.
2:01:40
stephanfranck: and I'm a geek for the, like, complete sucker for tradition, and, like, in that sense, you know? And,
2:01:51
stephanfranck: you know, like, for instance, there's, you know, if you ever go to the Disney lot, you know, and work in certain buildings, you know, there's this one building where you have,
2:02:04
stephanfranck: Behind the glass, you have the first multi-plane camera.
2:02:07
stephanfranck: That was built by, you know, Disney, you know, for Snow White, or even before Snow White, you know? And that's… and whenever I walk past it, you know.
2:02:20
stephanfranck: I…
2:02:22
stephanfranck: like, I feel like I have… it's like you're going to a church, and you do, like, a cross sign or something, you know what I mean? It's just, like, it's… whenever I walk past it, I'm just, like, taken by this sense of… of tradition, of, of…
2:02:38
stephanfranck: of our civilization. That's one break in our civilization, you know? And…
2:02:46
stephanfranck: you know, it brings me back to when I was a kid, and my mom would take me to Office Depot, so… no, to Home Depot, sorry, where I could buy some…
2:02:56
stephanfranck: piece of wood or whatever to try to build a multi-plane camera in my room, you know, and stuff like that, you know? And so, there's that, but then there's knowing that then I get to work with the people who learned it from the people, who learned it from the people, you know, and there's just something…
2:03:13
stephanfranck: And you were mentioning SNL earlier. I think SNL is also one of those places where it has been, you know, I don't know how many, you know, 50 years of…
2:03:21
Tad Eggleston: 50.
2:03:22
stephanfranck: Or 50, right? So…
2:03:25
stephanfranck: I think that's what we have to keep passing down to each other. It's, you know, that institutional…
2:03:35
stephanfranck: Knowledge and transmission of… otherwise, you know, you… we lose the plot, you know?
2:03:41
stephanfranck: If we talk about AI, that's the problem, you know? Do I like that my iPhone corrects my spelling when I'm trying to text somebody? Yes, I do, like everybody else, you know what I mean? But if you end up outsourcing to the, you know, machine too much of that stuff…
2:03:59
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
2:04:00
stephanfranck: Then… then you don't know how to spell anymore, you don't know how to do this anymore, you know, and then the transmission gets interrupted, and… and then we're adrift, because we have no… we're at sea, you know.
2:04:12
stephanfranck: Anyways…
2:04:14
Tad Eggleston: That segues nicely into… I now have two final questions.
2:04:18
stephanfranck: Okay, because I was gonna say… One that you've heard many times. Yeah.
2:04:21
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, one that you've heard many times, but we're gonna start with the new one, because this segues really nicely to it.
2:04:27
Tad Eggleston: I'm about halfway through my fifth year of doing this podcast.
2:04:33
stephanfranck: Yeah.
2:04:35
Tad Eggleston: And I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone in the best possible way. Like, my life has fundamentally changed in terms of
2:04:45
Tad Eggleston: the conversations I get to have, the friendships I've built, the experiences that I, like.
2:04:54
Tad Eggleston: I sit there going, if you'd told me when I was 10, or 15, or 35, that I was gonna do this, I would have said, yeah, whatever.
2:05:06
stephanfranck: Right.
2:05:08
Tad Eggleston: and for that matter, the experiences where, like, even when I think on them now, I almost have to pinch myself and go, is that real? Or did I dream that I…
2:05:18
Tad Eggleston: Went to a baseball game with Dennis Kitchen, or…
2:05:22
Tad Eggleston: On Valentine's Day this year, I bought 2 cars.
2:05:27
Tad Eggleston: And mind you, it was because I had to. We'd had both of our cars die that way.
2:05:32
stephanfranck: Shit. Yeah, yeah.
2:05:34
Tad Eggleston: because of a connection I made, because of this podcast.
2:05:39
Tad Eggleston: I was hooked up with a car dealer.
2:05:42
Tad Eggleston: That was able to get us 2 good cars inside of our… Relatively limited budget.
2:05:48
stephanfranck: That's amazing.
2:05:49
Tad Eggleston: You know, we went from… we went from, like, Freaking the fuck out.
2:05:55
stephanfranck: to… No, it's gonna be okay, it's gonna work out.
2:05:58
Tad Eggleston: What the hell just happened? Oh my god?
2:06:01
stephanfranck: Oh my god, that's crazy.
2:06:02
Tad Eggleston: In the span of an afternoon.
2:06:04
stephanfranck: Yeah.
2:06:04
Tad Eggleston: But, but the other thing that's really cool is, like, everybody I know in comics…
2:06:13
Tad Eggleston: Has experiences like this, has.
2:06:14
stephanfranck: feelings.
2:06:15
Tad Eggleston: like this, and it never gets old for any of us. Doesn't matter how popular you are, doesn't matter how long you've been in the industry, you've got a story to tell about…
2:06:26
Tad Eggleston: the time you met Stan Lee, or… or that kid that came to your table at… at,
2:06:35
Tad Eggleston: con, and told you how Your book could change their life in a meaningful way, or whatever.
2:06:41
stephanfranck: Yeah.
2:06:42
Tad Eggleston: So I've started collecting those stories. Tell me… Yeah. Tell me a story about some…
2:06:48
Tad Eggleston: Just surreal experience you've had that you wouldn't have had if you weren't part of this wonderful
2:06:56
Tad Eggleston: Community of comics.
2:06:59
stephanfranck: Man, there's so many, it's hard to.
2:07:01
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's why it's a… that's why it's a…
2:07:04
stephanfranck: There's a question.
2:07:05
Tad Eggleston: Now, because…
2:07:06
Tad Eggleston: You can give me a different one.
2:07:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:07:09
stephanfranck: Well, what did I say last time?
2:07:12
Tad Eggleston: No, because this is the first time I've asked you.
2:07:13
stephanfranck: Oh, okay.
2:07:15
Tad Eggleston: This is a new question.
2:07:16
stephanfranck: Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Well, you know, I have to say.
2:07:21
stephanfranck: I've been super, super lucky in my life that I've had those experiences in music, in comics.
2:07:28
stephanfranck: And in… movies.
2:07:31
stephanfranck: Where in…
2:07:33
stephanfranck: all of them, you know, I got to work and become friends, in many cases, with the people who were my…
2:07:43
stephanfranck: idols, you know, when I was a kid, right? If you had told me, like.
2:07:52
stephanfranck: you know, when I was even, like, in college.
2:07:56
stephanfranck: that one day, you know, like, Bill Sienkiewicz.
2:07:59
stephanfranck: that I would know him, like, that he would know my name or my work, let alone that I would know him as a person, let alone that he would write something super nice about, you know, my work, whatever. You know, this is…
2:08:13
stephanfranck: you know, I would have been like, my god, this is… this is insane. But the… and there… I have many, many, many like that, that I… it's… and also, like, I don't want to get.
2:08:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, hell, it's still surreal to me that, A,
2:08:27
Tad Eggleston: I've gotten to talk and become friendly with Howard Chaikin.
2:08:31
stephanfranck: Yeah. B.
2:08:32
Tad Eggleston: I know about your work, because Howard Chaikin went from saying, there are no good new comics, to recommending your new comic.
2:08:42
stephanfranck: Yeah. Well, see, here's.
2:08:44
Tad Eggleston: That I then became very friendly with you.
2:08:47
stephanfranck: Yeah, absolutely. So, it's all that, right? But, I have to say…
2:08:55
stephanfranck: The most powerful experiences was through the conventions.
2:08:59
stephanfranck: and going… Two places, you know, and,
2:09:09
stephanfranck: talking to some… because I… like you, it feels like we're both, like.
2:09:14
stephanfranck: We like to talk to people, you know?
2:09:17
stephanfranck: And,
2:09:19
stephanfranck: And so, at conventions, it's really amazing, because you go to places where… that are not, like, industry centers of storytelling, you know what I mean?
2:09:29
stephanfranck: and then you find just people who somehow… you know, they know your work.
2:09:39
stephanfranck: And it meant something to them, and they come and they share stories, and sometimes it's really funny. Like, for instance, this one… one… one time, this one guy
2:09:49
stephanfranck: Comes in, and says, hey.
2:09:54
stephanfranck: And by the way, I always say this, but you can always tell when somebody's gonna… has a story that they want to share.
2:10:00
stephanfranck: Because you see them, they're, like, about 100 feet away, like, touring, like, at the end of the aisle, or whatever, and you can see they're kind of looking into it, and they're like, am I going, am I not going, am I going in, not going in, whatever, right? And then they make up their mind, and they start to make this beeline for you, and you're like, okay, this person wants to tell me something.
2:10:15
stephanfranck: And…
2:10:17
stephanfranck: you know, like, this one guy, one day says, man, I gotta tell you, I was in this horrible sea diving accident, you know, and I was stuck…
2:10:27
stephanfranck: In a hyperbaric chamber for 3 weeks.
2:10:30
stephanfranck: And all I had with me was silver.
2:10:33
stephanfranck: and I read it… Cover to cover, 24 hours a day for 3 weeks.
2:10:38
stephanfranck: And that's the only thing that kept me safe… sane. And so… so that's really, really funny, you know, but some other times, you know, it gets into extremely emotional moments where somebody will
2:10:52
stephanfranck: Reference, maybe, like, in my case, like, probably one of the… I don't want to say…
2:11:01
stephanfranck: Bad, or worse, whatever, but, like, definitely one of the least successful
2:11:06
stephanfranck: movie, and not just box office, but that didn't quite… sometimes stuff doesn't turn out, right? Movie I ever worked on, that industry, people always go like, you know? And somebody just came in and said, hey, I just wanted to let you know, that movie saved me from suicide.
2:11:25
stephanfranck: Right. You know? So, if… That movie accomplished nothing else.
2:11:31
stephanfranck: it was, you know, well worth the time, you know, we spent on it, and we… whatever… and, you know, and that's the other thing, too. Sometimes.
2:11:40
stephanfranck: we can be overcritical of the work, because we're hyper-focused on it, and we tend to, you know, if you're too focused on what's wrong, you start to not be able to see what's cool, you know? And that's one thing that I…
2:11:54
stephanfranck: learned, if I… if I was gonna…
2:11:58
stephanfranck: name one person who I think was, of all the mentor-type figures that I ever had the great fortune to, like.
2:12:08
stephanfranck: work with, and get to know, and whatever. Mine was Glen Keane.
2:12:15
stephanfranck: who, if people… I don't know if you know who he is, or who people know who he is, but,
2:12:21
stephanfranck: You know, he's the… with the…
2:12:26
stephanfranck: like, most prominent Disney animator of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, you know, he designed, animated The Little Mermaid in The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, in Pocahontas, The Beast in Beauty and the Beast, you know, all, you know, Aladdin in Aladdin, you know,
2:12:42
stephanfranck: and on and on and on, right? And so…
2:12:47
stephanfranck: I got to know him, you know, and to work with him for a while, and… he… I…
2:12:56
stephanfranck: I was a little bit stuck, you know, just being…
2:12:59
stephanfranck: you know, coming from France, and, you know, French people think differently. You know, and so I was really trained on what's wrong about this drawing, what's wrong with this, what's wrong with this, looking for mistakes, mistakes, fix the mistakes, fix the mistakes, right? And he was the first person that I saw who was a
2:13:18
stephanfranck: 10 billion times better than anyone else that I knew.
2:13:23
stephanfranck: But instead of being hypercritical.
2:13:25
stephanfranck: he was looking for what's true about this drawing. What am I… what makes me feel something in here? You know, it would go like, you know, this eye…
2:13:35
stephanfranck: This eye is amazing.
2:13:37
stephanfranck: I'm really feeling the emotion in this eye. The rest is not, you know, but besides… but just… doesn't matter. Refocus, start from the eye, this eye you have, and just rebuild from there. This is amazing. You know, and, like, somebody who, and because animation, as comics.
2:13:55
stephanfranck: But animation in particular is such a technical… there's such… we're talking about barriers of entry, you know, like the drawing barrier of entry, and not to mention the emotional analysis, and the ability to just put it all together, and animation is so high.
2:14:10
stephanfranck: That it's very easy to end up separated from your really… your creative…
2:14:18
stephanfranck: artist, from the kid in you who was excited about it, right? Because you're so worried about, I'm drawing this wrong, you know?
2:14:27
stephanfranck: And so he was the guy who really… Through just his…
2:14:33
stephanfranck: Vibe, and… and, like, his generosity of… the generosity of his vision, of…
2:14:39
stephanfranck: Arts and… but people and everything, was able to put me back in touch
2:14:44
stephanfranck: 15 years into my… or 10 or 15 years into my career,
2:14:50
stephanfranck: Back in touch with the kid.
2:14:53
stephanfranck: that I was…
2:14:55
stephanfranck: who was just passionate and was just chasing some truth, you know, when that feeling that when you're a kid and you're trying to draw the Joker or Batman or whatever, and you're, like, lost in it, and you have this feeling that she can get this right, everything will be right with the world kind of vibe, right?
2:15:10
stephanfranck: And so, he's the one who reconnected me to that, and if that hadn't happened, I don't know that I'd be writing and doing all the books that I'm doing now.
2:15:22
Tad Eggleston: that.
2:15:23
Tad Eggleston: It's amazing.
2:15:26
Tad Eggleston: I, I… These… this is why I ask this question now. I love hearing…
2:15:32
Tad Eggleston: Love hearing the stories, and it's so true that, like.
2:15:38
Tad Eggleston: I mean, what I immediately started thinking about when
2:15:42
Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly because I've had blues on my mind, too, is, is that, I… I…
2:15:52
Tad Eggleston: I had friends that had a blues band.
2:15:55
stephanfranck: Like…
2:15:56
Tad Eggleston: a great bar blues band, right? Not, not…
2:16:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think that they could have been more, maybe, except that it's just, like… you know.
2:16:08
Tad Eggleston: Like, being a musician is, is, is…
2:16:11
Tad Eggleston: Like, being a cartoonist, or being a movie star, or whatnot. There are way more people who are really good at it than there are really…
2:16:20
Tad Eggleston: careers in it.
2:16:22
stephanfranck: I'll tell you something. I don't want to derail your story, but I'll tell you something about that in a second.
2:16:28
Tad Eggleston: But that's not even the point. The point is, they were so hypercritical of themselves, and I would just always sit there going.
2:16:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I have a pretty good ear, and…
2:16:41
Tad Eggleston: I noticed one of your mistakes, but you wrote it, and it worked, and, like…
2:16:47
Tad Eggleston: I didn't notice all of the other ones that you're talking about, so I'm certain that nobody else in the audience noticed the rest of the ones that you're talking about.
2:16:57
stephanfranck: Yeah, exactly.
2:16:58
Tad Eggleston: Excuse me.
2:16:59
stephanfranck: They were too focused on the cool stuff you're doing, as opposed to trying to pick out your mistakes, you know?
2:17:05
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
2:17:07
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:17:07
stephanfranck: The thing I was going to say about that is, it's something, and I'm just repeating it, I've just heard it say fairly recently, by some
2:17:18
stephanfranck: you know, somebody in Nashville who was saying that he had heard
2:17:23
stephanfranck: from somebody, somebody else, so I guess it gets passed on. Again, tradition, right? That somebody was saying that
2:17:32
stephanfranck: because so many talented people show up to any big, either music center, entertainment center, you know, theater center, whatever, comics, whatever, you know, there's… every city has a sort of business that they're in, you know? So, so many talented people show up…
2:17:48
stephanfranck: And the biggest predictor of whether they're gonna end up
2:17:53
stephanfranck: You know, succeeding in that business.
2:17:56
stephanfranck: Is no talent.
2:17:58
stephanfranck: It's whether their nervous system can handle the industry.
2:18:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
2:18:03
Tad Eggleston: That makes sense.
2:18:03
stephanfranck: And I think that is true for everything, right? Where some people can… could have just the ability to
2:18:14
stephanfranck: You know, end up, you know, playing in stadiums, you know?
2:18:18
stephanfranck: But if…
2:18:20
stephanfranck: humanly speaking, that makes them miserable, and, you know, then it's not gonna happen, just because it's not for them. It's not for who they are, you know?
2:18:28
Tad Eggleston: Right?
2:18:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:18:31
Tad Eggleston: Alright, now the question that you've been asked every time you've been on, and always give me great, great answers, which is what I always look forward to asking you. Tell me something you love.
2:18:41
Tad Eggleston: Preferably comics, but we don't have rules.
2:18:44
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules.
2:18:48
Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
2:18:50
Tad Eggleston: That not enough other people around you have experienced, and you really, really want them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
2:19:08
stephanfranck: I… I have… Several possible answers.
2:19:12
Tad Eggleston: You can give me more than one. You've given me more than one almost every time you've been on.
2:19:16
Tad Eggleston: You turned me on to Billy Strings.
2:19:19
stephanfranck: Oh, that's right. So… and so, I mean, you know.
2:19:24
stephanfranck: may have been… maybe… maybe a lot of people, especially in comics, already know this, but I… I just… it just came back out of the…
2:19:32
stephanfranck: the bookshelf, the other day, just because I just wanted to just reread it, you know? A couple of years ago, I bought the…
2:19:45
stephanfranck: the Artist Edition version of The Winterman by J.P. Leon.
2:19:52
stephanfranck: Do you know this one?
2:19:54
Tad Eggleston: I know JP Leone, but I don't know if I know the Winterman.
2:19:57
stephanfranck: So the Winterman is this sort of…
2:20:01
stephanfranck: superhero story, but it's also not. It takes place in… it's a little bit espionage, kind of… it's got this kind of almost ultimate kind of vibe, where it's like…
2:20:14
stephanfranck: superhero, but more grounded in a certain way. It takes place in Russia, you know,
2:20:22
stephanfranck: talk about the end of history, like, in those years, like, post-Soviet Russia and stuff like that.
2:20:27
stephanfranck: It's amazing.
2:20:30
stephanfranck: So, I would highly, highly recommend that.
2:20:33
Tad Eggleston: Oh, this looks good.
2:20:34
stephanfranck: Yeah, it's incredible.
2:20:36
Tad Eggleston: And I, and I…
2:20:36
stephanfranck: Unfortunately, he passed away, as you know, a couple years ago. Yeah.
2:20:41
stephanfranck: But, you know.
2:20:46
stephanfranck: you know, the… some of his friends, Tommy V. Edwards, for instance, who's also a friend of mine, and a bunch of other dudes, put together, Chris Ferguson did the book design,
2:21:01
stephanfranck: who's also created the Palomino logo for my books, but,
2:21:08
stephanfranck: Anyway, so they put together this amazing artist edition of the… of the series.
2:21:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I'm looking at the Zoop campaign right now.
2:21:17
stephanfranck: rights, there you go.
2:21:18
Tad Eggleston: And, and, and… Wishing that I'd seen it.
2:21:23
Tad Eggleston: When it came out, and… and…
2:21:25
Tad Eggleston: wondering if I would have been able to afford it, cause… cause it's right on the edge of, like…
2:21:30
stephanfranck: I know, it's a big one. And that's, you know.
2:21:33
Tad Eggleston: Nowadays, I'm more likely to pull the trigger on something this expensive, but…
2:21:39
Tad Eggleston: But I think when it was actually a live campaign, I wasn't quite to that point.
2:21:45
stephanfranck: You know something? It's the only artist edition book that I have.
2:21:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:21:51
Tad Eggleston: I don't have any yet.
2:21:53
Tad Eggleston: Right. There are a handful that I'm very, very interested in.
2:21:57
stephanfranck: Yeah, me too. You know, and especially since, for me.
2:22:03
stephanfranck: I feel like I only learn to draw stuff when I see originals.
2:22:09
stephanfranck: Yeah. For whatever reason, when I see reproductions, it gets compressed, da-da-da, I'm not… when you look at the original.
2:22:17
stephanfranck: you can still see almost the gesture behind it, you know? You can feel it, there's something about the physicality that…
2:22:24
stephanfranck: For many reasons that just remain in the, in the, in the, in the mark.
2:22:29
stephanfranck: And then, that's when I see, oh, that's… you know? And so, that was always the case. And,
2:22:36
stephanfranck: Of course, there's those, you know, artist editions, it's like you're looking at the originals, you're seeing it just the same way, you know.
2:22:43
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I was just seeing today that,
2:22:48
Tad Eggleston: Thanagraphics has not one, but two.
2:22:52
Tad Eggleston: Karl Bark's Artist Editions.
2:22:54
stephanfranck: Oh.
2:22:55
Tad Eggleston: On their… their slate for later this year, and it's like.
2:23:00
stephanfranck: That's amazing.
2:23:02
stephanfranck: Amazing. Be very curious to see at what size he was drawing those strips.
2:23:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:23:07
Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
2:23:09
Tad Eggleston: But I'll be talking with Eric Stevenson on Wednesday as part of my,
2:23:15
Tad Eggleston: I am treating myself to a baseball and comics roundtable on my birthday. Normally, we do them only after the World Series, but opening day this year is on my birthday for the second time ever, and the first time
2:23:32
Tad Eggleston: in the United States, and I'm like.
2:23:34
Tad Eggleston: And it's spring break, so I'm gonna have a roundtable.
2:23:38
stephanfranck: Man, it could be. Yeah.
2:23:40
Tad Eggleston: And, and… not Eric Stevenson, Eric Reynolds. Eric Reynolds from Phanographics is one of my.
2:23:48
stephanfranck: Right.
2:23:48
Tad Eggleston: comics, Bunnies. Bunnies, so he'll be…
2:23:51
Tad Eggleston: He'll be joining us, so I'll have to ask him.
2:23:55
Tad Eggleston: Like, how… how big did Bart… because I'm always interested, like…
2:24:00
Tad Eggleston: Like, have you ever been out to the Billie Ireland in… Columbus?
2:24:08
stephanfranck: Nope.
2:24:09
Tad Eggleston: Billy Ireland cartoon… Library.
2:24:14
Tad Eggleston: at Ohio State is the largest collection of original comic art.
2:24:20
Tad Eggleston: At least in the United States, possibly in the world.
2:24:22
stephanfranck: That sounds amazing. I have to say, I've never been to Ohio at all. That's one state… I've been to the state.
2:24:28
Tad Eggleston: Overall, I don't know how much you're missing.
2:24:31
stephanfranck: Yeah.
2:24:32
Tad Eggleston: But…
2:24:33
Tad Eggleston: I think everybody should go… everybody who loves comics should go to the Billy Ireland, and for that matter, everybody who loves comics should go to Cartoon Crossroad Columbus at least once.
2:24:45
stephanfranck: This is amazing.
2:24:46
Tad Eggleston: because Jeff Smith and Tom Spurgeon started Cartoon Crossroads, and they kind of… kind of modeled it after the European festivals.
2:24:56
Tad Eggleston: Rather than having, like, one big convention space.
2:24:59
Tad Eggleston: They, they have events spread out.
2:25:02
Tad Eggleston: Across town, so there… there are events at the library, there are events at the… the Performing Arts Center, there's… there's…
2:25:12
Tad Eggleston: events at the art museum, there's events at the art college, And then, like…
2:25:20
Tad Eggleston: There are events, and, like, the tabling area is at the public library, and everything's free.
2:25:29
Tad Eggleston: you know…
2:25:31
Tad Eggleston: And, like…
2:25:32
Tad Eggleston: It's the only con you can go… like, I still, like, I still think back a couple of years ago.
2:25:40
Tad Eggleston: like… And, like, a 5-table across-the-aisle…
2:25:45
Tad Eggleston: From each other, and… and next to each other, you had, like, Evan Salazar, who's a fantastic…
2:25:54
Tad Eggleston: alternative indie comic guy, you had… students from Ohio State.
2:26:01
Tad Eggleston: That were in the cartooning program, who literally had, like, their homemade comics.
2:26:08
Tad Eggleston: You had Shelly and Philip Bond.
2:26:11
Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
2:26:12
Tad Eggleston: You had the table for, for, like, the National Society of Political Cartoonists.
2:26:17
stephanfranck: Wow.
2:26:18
Tad Eggleston: You had a couple of students in from out of town with
2:26:23
Tad Eggleston: Comics that they'd, like, stapled together.
2:26:26
Tad Eggleston: And across from them was Dennis Kitchen.
2:26:29
stephanfranck: Amazing.
2:26:30
Tad Eggleston: You know?
2:26:33
Tad Eggleston: Craig Russell was down the way, and…
2:26:36
Tad Eggleston: And then there was other people that had made their own… I mean, like…
2:26:40
stephanfranck: That sounds, like, amazing.
2:26:43
Tad Eggleston: Zdarsky was there for the last, or not the last one, the one before that, and I remember saying to him, like.
2:26:49
Tad Eggleston: Chip, this is gonna be the one con where… where…
2:26:53
Tad Eggleston: A, when you have your panel, the room won't be full, because Jeff Smith's panel is at the same time.
2:27:00
stephanfranck: Yeah.
2:27:01
Tad Eggleston: And B, since you and he are signing at the same time, you're gonna, probably for the first time in your life, look out and see that you don't have the longest line among the people sitting…
2:27:15
Tad Eggleston: And I was right, because, like, I know Jeff well enough that I went to Chip's panel, and…
2:27:21
Tad Eggleston: It was… it was a good room.
2:27:24
Tad Eggleston: But it was probably 80% full, not full, full.
2:27:28
Tad Eggleston: And then, like, Jeff had double the signing line that he did. And, like, Jeff's there every year, so Jeff's line was nothing compared to, like, Raina Telgemeyer's line.
2:27:39
Tad Eggleston: Four years ago.
2:27:41
stephanfranck: Or…
2:27:42
Tad Eggleston: Or, art Spiegelman's line.
2:27:46
stephanfranck: Oh, yeah.
2:27:47
Tad Eggleston: You know, Charles Burns was there last year, Carol Tyler, you know, I mean…
2:27:52
Tad Eggleston: So, it's, like, the one con that, like, is not only all about comics, but, like, there's no low bar.
2:28:04
stephanfranck: No, that sounds amazing.
2:28:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:28:06
Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah. The next one, they had to, to, to change it to, to spring rather than fall.
2:28:14
Tad Eggleston: Because Ohio State no longer gets their football schedule early enough for them to plan around it.
2:28:21
Tad Eggleston: And…
2:28:22
Tad Eggleston: they did last year's on 8 months of planning and went, 8 months is not long enough to plan one of these. So the next one will be in April of 2027.
2:28:34
Tad Eggleston: But I, like, I can't recommend enough
2:28:37
Tad Eggleston: like, apply for a table, but even if you don't get a table, it's… it's the one that I tell people, look.
2:28:44
Tad Eggleston: like, go…
2:28:46
stephanfranck: Go enjoy.
2:28:47
Tad Eggleston: just go enjoy. I mean, he's local and graduated from Ohio State, so he's a regular at this too, but, like, I think it was 2 years ago, Derf Becht Durf wasn't tabling, but he was there, and I hung out.
2:29:00
stephanfranck: some of them.
2:29:00
Tad Eggleston: some… Just… walking around, and he's like, yeah, it's…
2:29:05
Tad Eggleston: It's so weird and kinda awesome to be here, but not have to do anything.
2:29:12
stephanfranck: Yeah.
2:29:13
stephanfranck: Yeah, I had that experience one time in New York, where it was, like, the first time
2:29:19
stephanfranck: it was… COVID was kind of done, not quite, but kind of, maybe 2022 or something like that.
2:29:27
stephanfranck: And, I was there,
2:29:30
stephanfranck: just for the release of, one of the… I can't remember if it was the first Abrams, books, you know, seller, and so all I had to do is,
2:29:41
stephanfranck: Just go do that one panel.
2:29:44
stephanfranck: And I went signing, and then everything else was just hanging out, you know? And I was like, oh my god, that's a whole different experience than.
2:29:51
Tad Eggleston: It is.
2:29:52
stephanfranck: to me, that's… to me, a convention is me at the booth, kind of working hard and selling and talking to a million people and stuff like that, you know? So that's… it was nice to be, to experience it more, like, as a…
2:30:06
stephanfranck: Free-floating, you know, thing, you know.
2:30:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
2:30:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… I mean, I know, I know finances can be an issue or whatnot, but I… I… I think every… everybody in the industry owes it to themselves to choose, like.
2:30:19
Tad Eggleston: Not necessarily a big con, it can be your local small press con or whatever, but to choose, like, one comic event a year to go to and just be a fan, rather than…
2:30:32
stephanfranck: Yeah, I've been working.
2:30:34
Tad Eggleston: to remind yourself that, oh, this is a community, and it's… I mean, you get that when you're working, too, but, like…
2:30:42
Tad Eggleston: But it's different.
2:30:43
stephanfranck: Yeah. Because they're…
2:30:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, Stefan, it is always, always a pleasure. We should do it more often, we should do it off-air. I, I, yeah.
2:30:52
Tad Eggleston: so, let me take us out, and then we'll chat for a couple more minutes.
2:30:58
Tad Eggleston: for Steph and Frank, this has been 22 Panels. The book is Palomino. Go sign up to be notified on launch at Kickstarter right now, Volume 6. He wraps up just an epic noir story.
2:31:14
Tad Eggleston: Thank you so much, and we will see you after the next page.