Icon #17 - Lisa Frank: Trapper Keeper Trap God

In this edition of the Iconograph, Jack and Miles are joined by writer/director Chelsea Devantez to talk about the woman who exposed millions of children to their first little taste of what a ketamine-tinged LSD trip might look like:

Lisa Frank!

They'll explore her not-so-humble beginnings, her relationship with James Green AKA Jaime Verde, and why Lisa Frank Inc. was also known as 'The Rainbow Gulag'!

WATCH: 11/28/98 CNN: Lisa Frank Company Marketing to Young Girls

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to this spinoff episode of
Dirty Zeitgeist, which we're calling the Iconograph. My name is
Jack O'Brien and one of the founders of crack dot com,
and I'm joined as always buy my co hosts mister
Miles Gray.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome, Miles Gray. I found I found a dollar on
the street two days ago.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Congratulate.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Just to compare and contrast. I haven't really founded anything,
but I felt like I wanted to use that word
some kind of way.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
So I found it. I founded a industry and I.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Founded a dollar on the street. So we're kind of lazing.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Commedier and a political actor Michael Clayton fixed actor for sure. Yes,
it's the actor in our third seat. Miles an Emmy
nominated writer, comedian, yes, director, host of the podcast Glamorous Trash.
She just wrote and directed a movie called Basic that
seems to have a uh am. I reading that one

(00:58):
hundred percent on rotter.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Tell everyone friends, tell them all that it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
In all of their fucking faces. It's a chelseadvantage, chel say.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Thrill, thrill, the thrill.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
To be here, thrilled to have you here. Uh For
this episode where instead of looking at the Zekeist through
current events. On Monday mornings, we look at the Zekeeist
through the powerful pop cultural All right, this is where
I need you. I'm bringing you guys in it early
because I need your help here. Yeah, this is where

(01:36):
to say pop cultural horror cruxes. The Harry Potter fans
got upset because apparently that's not what a horror crux is.
I thought it just like a powerful magical item that
I could use as like a metaphor.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
But what did they say it was?

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I don't know. I couldn't I couldn't pay attention to them,
is their objection.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, I don't know anything about it, but I like
the words, so.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Use it. Having not I read the first three books
when they first came out, and I was like, yeah, okay,
but I never got I don't think I got to
the Hork cruxes reading the first three books. But Harry
Potter people are unforgiving about certain things.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Oh, it's like a soul of a wizard, or some
ship goes into there trapped in a thing.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, but I don't know, man, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (02:33):
Listen until the witches weigh in. This means something to me.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Infinity Stones, Intones, Infinity Stones, Yes, mar where you Belong?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, Jacker do a Star Wars one Get get that.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Cr meta culture crystals, Hork cruxes, I don't know, it's
got a nice it's got it's a cronchy word.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
We're talking about iconic figures that have a sort of
magical power that emanates off of them over our pop
cultural landscape. We use these icons to create meaning, to
introduce ourselves to art as children, to show us what
the inside of an eight year old girl's brain would
look like on a hero's dose of mushrooms. That's right,

(03:21):
it's a Lisa episode. We're talking Lisa Frank of a
powerful esthetic that defined the trapper keepers and folders and
school supplies of my childhood could have given rise to
its own Disneyland if the company had not turned into
apparently the scariest place to work ever, allegedly doing no

(03:44):
small part two massive amounts of cocaine.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
As we'll get into which none of that is surprising.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
In the aesthetic, it would be shocking.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I feel like it'd be like one or the other.
It's like there were no drugs and alcohol at all,
and that's what they're coming up with or was completely debauched.
I feel like it would be one extreme.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
They do protest quite a bit about the allegations of
drug use, but there's some countervailing evidence, I will say,
in the direction that there might have been some cocaine
use going on behind the scenes. But Chelsea, you specifically
chose Lisa Frank. What is your relationship to Lisa Frank.

Speaker 5 (04:23):
Well, you know, we would go and pick up your
school supplies and the options were blue red and acid trip.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
And I believe she started.

Speaker 5 (04:32):
The maximalist in me because I said, I guess this
is you only got one option if you want to
have fun, and that is to go balls to the
fucking walls all the way. And so yeah, always knowing
her and then really, you know, they did a documentary
where one of my on the podcast we talked about
something called stepdad energy. Regardless of being a stepdad or not,
something can always have stepdad energy. And stepdad emerges in

(04:56):
the Lisa Frank story that really blew me away, and
I've just kind of been obsessed with her ever since.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Oh her, okay, yeah, interesting.

Speaker 5 (05:07):
Dad emerges in her story, which I will I will
be I went on some deep dives on Instagram. That's
where I got my research, Jack, and I'll be throwing
in some tidbits depending on what you grant, which.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
I do not do Instagram research. So this is going
to be so helpful.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
I mean it to the bottom of her ex husband
and son's feeds, and so I can really didn't really say.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
A lot you were talking about Atland with regards to
the stepdad.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh I am, I am. I'm not calling her the stepdad.

Speaker 6 (05:35):
She is.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
I would say she's the dads dad.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
He's the stepdad, Okay. And then there is another candidate
for stepdad energy, which is the enforcer from the company.
But yeah, to your point, I just remember growing up
and girls generally had trapper keepers with like the wild
dolphins flying out of waves like winking at you in

(06:01):
a magical Emerald universe, and boys had blue or red
or at best. I do remember like one year I
got the cartoon character on a generic basketball team like
it so they couldn't even like get like the bulls,
but like they had like because it was Jordan era.

(06:21):
It was like red jersey, you know, right right right,
red jersey guy dunking, but in a way where it's like, oh,
this artist has never even seen basketball be played before.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
By the time I was getting the gender like school supplies,
there was this thing called like no rules sports, and
it would be like an eagle fucking shredding a football
or some shit, or like a gorilla like dunking a ball,
or a fucking wart hog like shredding up a fucking
soccer ball, and shit like sucks. Yeah, it was like

(06:54):
it was just like, oh, it's too aggressive, and you know.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
It's terrible and yeah, and I do think reached new
heights in terms of like trapper keeper art school supply
art that we've not seen and like, there is an
immense amount of care and artistry put into what she
did in a way that I do find inspiring. She

(07:18):
gives me like Willy Wonka vibes a little bit.

Speaker 5 (07:20):
Yeah, Like but she really also was the only option,
Like do you remember that era, Like it was just
there was no one else in the market coming in
with anything, and so it's really funny that the one
option was out of its fucking mind like that. You know,
they didn't start with like sparkles or balloons. They were
like you can have a dolphin or gy, or you

(07:42):
can fuck off.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Second grader.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but if this tiger and unicorn had
a baby, yeah it is. He's like, Okay, she like herself.
So there's a lot of people. I think people want
to make her into Willy Wanga. So a lot of
people are like you, actually, there's only two pictures of
her on the inner Like She's like really and that's
not actually true. Like you can find the old news

(08:04):
reports where she's being interviewed. She doesn't like to appear
on camera now, but like you can find her and
like old interviews with her. She's she kind of looks
like if Amelia Badilia was told to have a colorful personality.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
She wears the craziest colors and like patterns and are
clashing and just you know. She created a massive factory,
like the way that Willy Wanka's like chocolate factory is
like the thing you would imagine, like a child would
imagine a chocolate factory would be. She created like a
factory that on first blush, like when you first go there,

(08:41):
this is what you want the Lisa Frank factory to
look like. It's like painted in these matt like all
these like crazy colors. You can like see it when
you're landing at the airport. It's like the only thing
like jumps off the map. And the factory is eventually
called the Rainbow Gulag because of how night marrish of
a place store. So the main sources that we used

(09:05):
in this, and this is a Meredith Danko joint. Thank
you Meredith for your research on this. We drew heavily
from the Jezebel article called I think it was called
the Rainbow Gulug, and then the docu series, which I
think was called Glitter and Greed. And then there's a
bunch of you know, Time articles and stuff like that

(09:26):
that will link off to in the footnotes. But we'll
start off with Lisa Frank's background. She grew up in
a suburb of Detroit, which it's important to get into
the specifics here. It is the Bloomfield Hills suburb of Detroit,
which is ranked the top five wealthiest cities in America

(09:46):
with a population under ten thousand. Her father ran an
automotive manufacturing company which was founded by his fathers and uncles,
which I at first assumed, Oh, it's like kind of
a small mom and pop shop. It's like, you know,
she he grew up outside of Detroit. The factory that
her uncle's founded and that her dad ran was like
publicly traded. It was the only company in the US

(10:10):
to make engine bearings for tanks in World War Two.
It was like a massive industrial concern. Like she grew
up massively wealthy. She went to this really prestigious high
school in this area that is the same place that
Mitt Romney and his wife met.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
So okay, it's just a demon center.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
And her dad was a collector of art. He was
on the Detroit Institute of Art Board and you know,
encouraged her art. She said that they she was always
a girly girl and a huge colorer. They were just like, here,
take these coloring books and leave us alone. You have
too much energy. And she would just, you know, go

(10:53):
nuts with the coloring books. She's kind of like a
Batman villain whose theme is color, like right, like just
she's like this, and this is her origin story, just
having very successful parents who were like, here, go away
from us, take these coloring books. Colors. She just is
like obsessed with colors. She eventually names her kids Hunter

(11:17):
and Forrest Green.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
It's just this is actually my favorite thing about her.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
That the last name of the the guy with the
last name Green.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Some would say so that.

Speaker 5 (11:32):
Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think she
was attracted to anything else about him other than his
last name.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Is going to be sick for my children. I'd love
that she committed to Hunter and Forrest. It makes me
very happy.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
I know, with a with a girl, what do we
think they would have gone with? Emerald, Kelly Green? Kelly
Green good pitch mo No.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
I I went to school with a girl named Kelly Green,
and she would always wear Kelly Green. It was a
very same thing. It was ninety two.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
It's nice to have your identity handed to you.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
That's yeah, yeah exactly, and have like a cmyka number
too assigned to it.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
I had to watch Jaws one hundred times so that
I could have an identity and elementary the shaw boy, Yeah,
I just paced it in the uh in the chat
picture of the cradle that she made for her kids.
Oh my god, give you a sense of like how
pervasive her esthetic is. Uh, it's just everything. They had

(12:30):
a massive McMansion that was like multi colored like this,
Like it was just she was.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Really about that life I had. I mean, I knew
she was colorful, but like to put your baby in
like a nightmare thunderdome like that that feels a little
aggressive at least.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
House just you know, filtered through the mind of somebody
who is on LSD.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, or like if Salvador Dolly started to coke in
eighties or something.

Speaker 5 (12:57):
Yeah, yes, so I'm getting major SeaWorld from her, Like
don't you feel like she kind of held up the
sea World universe even though it's not affiliated. Like she's
always like, dolphins are having fun performing for you, like Wales.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
They're your friend and it is my chill.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
They're not animal slaves, they're just loving it. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
And she also has an interesting relationship to popular culture
in that well. First, like when she first starts out,
as we'll get to she was just like she would
license famous characters and like put Betty Boop riding a
unicorn and stuff like that, which would have been cool
if she stuck with that. But then like as she

(13:38):
you know, becomes more savvy, she'll just like see that
Free Willy is popular and be like, oh, we'll do
an orca jumping out of the water like that because
that's popular and kids' brains will associate it with free
willy Yeah, and a smart as hell she does. She
is a smart, savvy capitalist aka evil in a lot

(13:58):
of ways. Yeah, but you know she has a twin
engine private jet. Once this whole thing takes off, and
it's again like crazy colors, like it's like multi colored,
and has described her mic mansion that she lived in
at the height of her success as purple and yellow
and hot pink and light green and orange.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
So and yellow and hot pink and.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Orange yea, and she like has her own layer.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it's always like a nice sunset.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
Imagine your brain feeling calm in that color palette.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
I'm home, like that is. That's a twisted place to be.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Like, even when you're doing research on Lisa Frank. The articles,
a lot of the articles are like written on pages,
like I just pasted this into the Like the Lisa
Frank like information website is just like written in pink
and purple and like has a panda bear like juggling
globs of color like down below. It's just the whole

(15:00):
It's a very pervasive esthetic.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
Yeah yeah, wait, did you see this?

Speaker 2 (15:08):
In my senior year of high school, I was a painter,
and I had an art show and I sold all
my paintings.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
What is that? Leiah Coca? So the next step in
so she is always a drawer, always an artist. She
has an art show in high school, her paintings sell out,
and Leiah Cooca buys one of them the like famous
corporate Uh you know, I think he was the head
of Chrysler at the time.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, For it doesn't just.

Speaker 5 (15:36):
Feel like your dad being like, hey, everybody, come by,
come by Lisa's paintings tonight.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Does sound a little bit like a girl Scout cookie sale.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
However, if so, he us a real shithead because he
then uses this as an excuse to be like, and
I'm never paying for anything else for you again, because
you can do this on your own. So she gets
cut off, or at least that's the version of her
origin story that she tells, is that from that point forward,
after she made three thousand dollars at the art show,

(16:06):
her dad was like, you can't yeah, which back.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Then, believe none of this. Yeah, I don't believe in
second of.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
This Ridge kid's story.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
I made it on my own, my parents three thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, I just posted a picture in the chat of
like what her early work looks like, fat futures, dirty
sprite to cover a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
like purple clouds or like like Georgia O'Keeffe without knowing
what she was trying to do.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, just kind.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Of no way. Her dad believed in her off of
these paintings. There's no way. He was like, you can
make a living off of this. Go out into the world.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, just get out of my house. See Leah Coca
even bought you bought one of your pieces.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Where he was just like really cheap, and he was like,
how how do I justify cutting this little fucker off?

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Three thousand dollars is an astronomical amount for a like
a child like child art paintings in what I'm presuming
this was like the seventies, maybe when she was in
high school or some shit.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, so like late seventies, early eighties, yeah, late seventies.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean, good for you, man, like
that you can put together a bunch of people that
somehow three thousand dollars came in from your ink blocks.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah. It is interesting that she starts when she's a kid.
She's making abstract like adult seeming art, and then as
she becomes older and confident, like as an adult artist,
her shit like looks out her voice. Yeah, it looks
exactly like what a child would make. But she so
she gets into Arizona and decides to go there for

(17:51):
art school, which everybody in the articles was like, very
prestigious art school. I did not realize Arizona was a
prestigious art school. But she had to, according to her,
again support herself financially, and the way that she went
about doing this is again very savvy capitalist. She's like, well,
who can I exploit here? And she says, when I

(18:14):
came out to Arizona, I met people who would go
out to the Native American communities and I would go
out and I would trade for art or jewelry, or
I would buy it. I would go back to Michigan,
where I was from, or I would go to California
and I would sell what I had bought. So it
was really working through college. But likely she's just like,

(18:34):
you know, being a middle man middle person for Native
American artists and like upselling it and presumably so brutal.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Also like my daddy's cut me off. I know, I'll
become an art dealer colonialist.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Right exactly, Okay, how to extract wealth from the indigenous people? Yes, yes,
here it is, here's a solution. Wow. I felt like
a big thing. Like in the eighties too, like when
people were like, I've got these new kotches dolls exactly
what she's talking about. Yeah, it was exactly.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
She had her she had her finger on the pulse.
She was like, we're going to do that. So I
was really working through college, is how she describes it. Uh,
and then one day, okay, so this is where the
like part, this part of the origin story. I've seen
it interpreted a couple different ways, but the way she

(19:27):
tells the story is like, so I was working through
college doing that, and then one day I met a
guy who said, anything you draw, I can have made.
So we started making things from my ideas. I also
represented other people and sold their artwork, and then we
realized that I was the one with the commercial sense,
because if I said make a Teddy bear or unicorn,
that was what was sold. So some people have interpreted

(19:48):
that is she's like working going out to these Native
American artists and like selling their ship and then eventually
being like you want to know what's actually going to
sell really well to the Native American artists and be like,
what if you put unicorn on that shit and started
giving assignments to the Native American artists. But I couldn't
find any confirmation of that. It might have just been

(20:09):
a separate person who was then like working on assignment
for her.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
It's also so John Mayer to be like, I'm an artist,
but I also represent other artists, and You're like this
can't go well, Like you can be an artist or
you could be a manager, but like why are we
doing both?

Speaker 3 (20:25):
This doesn't seem like a good idea.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah. She also eventually works with John May. That's one
of her recent collaborations. I think she has for his
like Instagram talk show or something like that, okay, which
we all remember and of course told dearly in our Hearts.

(20:48):
She started a jewelry line called Sticky Fingers, where she
handmade pieces with like plastic fruit and a glue gun.
She hired an assembly line of jewelry makers who worked
out of her guest house, and Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's
sold her artwork again.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
So to be clear, she's been on her own making
her own way up selling stuff, but has.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
A guest house.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Has a guest house. Yeah, it's from all the China
dolls on flips on the side, right, yeah, yeah right,
and has connections with Neman Marcus and Bloomingdals. But buyers.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
I went to high school with them.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I'm sure you did, Memon Marcus.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
No, it's one guy, yeah Marcus.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, she said, you read stuff about me. People think
it was all influenced by drugs. You couldn't do what
I did if I was on drugs.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Okay, yeah, yeah, you're done, You're on drugs.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah. So she then starts making She She renames her
company Lisa Frank Inc. One of their popular products is
an all in one box with a painting of a
Teddy Bear on the front and the eyes are star
earrings and you open the box and take out the
earrings and the lid is a pin and then inside
the box as a necklace, and it's She does seem

(22:04):
to have an inherent sense of what little girls are
gonna like, and she's always been like, I'm kind of
a little girl at heart, and then people around her
are like, no, it's like creepy. She's like a little
girl like she really it seems like you are in
the room with a grown up who has done a
body switching movie.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
And this is when she's like getting licensing agreements to
use characters like Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Mighty Mouse,
and Popeye in her works, which I feel like that
could be cool, Like could have been cool if she
kept doing that instead of doing the like her original characters,
which four hundred original characters. I was not familiar with

(22:46):
the role and Lisa Frank and Lisa Frank universe, and
I think she.

Speaker 5 (22:50):
Really did try and launch them to become a Betty
Boop or a Felix the Cat and that just never
wor her world has always existed so clearly, but her
characters never took hold.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
I didn't even realize that she was gonna like be
the next Disney.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, like she thought, like and this one's called baby Chunky.

Speaker 5 (23:08):
Yeah, like there's one names for each of her kids
and I can't remember what it is, but it's like
Hunter the Tiger, Bully Explosion, Oh.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Right, okay, yeah, oh Lisa. I mean it's funny like
that she was licensing characters because if she kept doing that,
I could see her making the kind of shit rappers
would have worn in two thousand and five, like when
Iceberg was popping, or like Foubu Platinum when it had
like Mickey Mouse and shit, and she was like, no,
I got the.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
But no. There's a lot of ways that pop culture
has intersected with with her esthetic in the years since
she rose to power and fame. But there's just ample
evidence that, like, the company can be very difficult to
work with.

Speaker 5 (23:51):
Yeah, like she could have been at Disneyland. She actually
could have been all those things, but what how she
was managing it? It blew up before it could happen.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah. So in nineteen eighty two, when she is twenty five,
Spencer's Gifts offered to place a one million dollar order
if she could convert her button designs into stickers, and
so her company devises a way to print stickers that
would maintain sharp, bright colors, which was groundbreaking at the time.

(24:23):
How do we explain Spencer's Gifts to people who weren't
around at the time.

Speaker 5 (24:27):
Oh, my god, a meme factory that were trinkets. Yeah,
your older brother fucking loved Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Imagine tangible memes. Yeah, as you could buy and whatever
was cool or popular or about to be at the time.
It's like if there was some like truly some meme
trinket everyone had, you go to Spencer's and they had it.

Speaker 5 (24:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like if Spencer's existed, now does it
still exist? I don't want to be he to Spenser's,
but let's Spencer's us it down. If it does, it
probably is selling. Like in the curb, we all fam
on a key shape.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yes, yeah right now there's one at the Glendell Galleria. Okay,
oh wow, how because it's different now because now they
have their logos like graffiti and it's like welcome to
Spencer's and it's just like phrase t shirts. But it's
like now it's like that's where like you know, gen
Alpha kids are like got my Deaf Tones vintage quote

(25:25):
unquote vintage shirt at Spencer's.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
They went and got edge on us. Yeah, they still
got Nightmare before Christmas. Shit though they still stay true
to that though, you know, like certain.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Things, I feel like partially they got replaced by Hot Topic,
but like.

Speaker 5 (25:38):
Not but also hot Topic was existing hand in hand
with Spencer's for a moment, Like hot Topic took itself
seriously and Spencer's was like, we have fun.

Speaker 7 (25:46):
Yeah, we have farts in the camp you can get
you can get yeah, like aspiring goth, like aspiring junior
high goth hot topic like pranky, you know, puckish shithead
kids answers.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Y's right, So they see something in Lisa Frank. She
like they even create, like they have their own ink
colors that are like proprietary to them. They do like
really put a lot of care into how they're making
their products, and it takes off, like from that one
million dollar order, they start building this big, you know company.

(26:25):
They start out at this time in a like strip mall,
and then pretty soon they're in a warehouse, and pretty
soon like more and more, they like go into business
with me, who's like making the trapper keepers, and they
just like build and build, and soon they're fucking everywhere.
One of the wildest details of like how they built

(26:45):
this empire that I couldn't fucking believe is that there's
this CNN like report on Lisa Frank h like at
the height of her power, and they would send steff
Ath into Tucson elementary schools to conduct focus group tests.

(27:06):
They would like take school children and be like which
of these products do you like better? In like in school,
I'm going to just put the link in there for
you guys. I just want to show this one part,
which just seems so fucking crazy to me that this
would be legal. Yeah, would you mind playing the.

Speaker 8 (27:27):
Top priority for both Green and Frank to keep little
girls coming back for more, so they don't make a
move without first consulting their finicky audience.

Speaker 9 (27:36):
Good morning, class, Well, thank you. My name is Carol
and I'm here today from Lisa Frank.

Speaker 8 (27:42):
Lisa Frank product testers can be found a day or
two a week in any of Tucson's elementary school or
today focus groups for upcoming projects.

Speaker 9 (27:51):
I just was testing the Faberge watches with the middle
school and elementary and then I had sixteen boards at
one time and we had them pick out. We were
complete surprised the ones they picked up, cause we would
not even have picked them.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
So that is Lisa Frank that we just got to
hear from. You guys got to see. That's also her
husband who we're about to meet. But just I love it.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
I love it because and even teachers now like they're
just paid so little. I remember in second grade every
day if I came in and I was like, I'd
like to put on a play, my teacher, Missus Sunberg,
was like take it over, babe, and for an hour
every day, I'd be like, here's my play with my friends.
I think teachers must have been like, what a gift.
Lisa Frank's coming by. I don't have to teach shit

(28:37):
for an hour?

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right, Yeah, the degree to which like it, it's only
hazy in my memory, but like the way that like
a candy bar sale or a magazine sale would just
like take over school for a month. It's just like,
here's what you need to sell, and like how how
like what are your numbers looking like today? It's like

(28:58):
crazy what I hear? They're just being used as a
fucking focus group, like multiple days a week.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
One to two days a week throughout the school year.
Someone is in a Tucson elementary.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
School, start being pulled out of class like they are
in a classroom.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah, like the emancipation proclamation. Shut up, sorry, it's Carol
from Lisa Frank. All right, come on in, Carol. Yeah, yeah,
we're just talking about go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, Okay, kids,
now the boys do you like Chameleians, like, what the
fuck is this?

Speaker 5 (29:29):
I am from the Southwest, and New Mexico always rates
quite low in education, and I'm gonna go out on
a limb and say Arizona wasn't doing so well either.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I just looked it up. Arizona ranked fifty first and a.

Speaker 5 (29:43):
Survey regarding the quality of its public school. Though the
US is comprised of fifty states, it included Washington, d C.
Thus making Arizona fifty first. This from Leman Academy dot com. So, yeah,
I think those Tucson School.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Students did in a more much man and like there,
she's truly running that shit like a drug operator. Like
in the wire they were sending them out with testers
for the fiends, you know what I mean. They're like,
you'll just see how they're liking this new one, and
they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hot, it's hot.
Let's go with that fucking with the penguin Pegasus jointing. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (30:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
If the tester who was out in the classroom seemed nervous,
we're about to find out why. I'm guessing after that interview,
Lisa Frank was like, well you're fired. Nah, she could
be tough to work for. But by the year twenty twenty,
Lisa frank Ink had generated one billion dollars in sales.

(30:48):
At the peak, they had, as I mentioned, a private jet,
they also had a hot air balloon. And they did
like they did their own market research and were like
some of the first people to be like wow, girls
ages four to twelve account for fifteen billion dollars in
annual sales and influence one hundred and sixty billion dollars
in household purchases, and so they really like helped move

(31:12):
this market. They create this factory that really feels like
it would be a good setting for like a Wes
Anderson heist film. Like it has this vault where like
in the in the center of the factory is like
every piece of art that they've ever created for Lisa
frank like from day one, and it's just this weird

(31:34):
or it was at one point just like a literal
Willy Wonka factory. I just pasted one piece of art
from the early days where it's just a bunch of
junk food like kind of.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
As a astrological constellation.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, it's like burgers, hot dogs, pizza, lollipops, but like
for some reason. If you'll notice the hot dog is
ejaculating mustard onto the amber on.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah you got a nice one.

Speaker 5 (32:04):
Yeah, get those messages to kids early.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
So in nineteen eighty two, James Green became Lisa Frank's
first in house illustrator and designer. He is a talented
airbrush artist, and you may notice that air brushing kind
of an unimportant part of how they make their work,
and eventually he helps them make the transition to computer graphics.

(32:32):
They develop a proprietary ink formula. This is where things
start to go off the rail. So they get married
in nineteen ninety two. She is like kind of decides
to stop being there on the day to day basis,
and he kind of takes over as the head of
the company.

Speaker 5 (32:52):
But can we talk about their wedding footage for like
a second. Yes, that is son of the funniest wedding footage.
You watch it and you're like, oh God, they're doomed,
Like these two people do not want to be.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Married to each other, not like each other at all.
I would say. There they walk down the aisle as
enemies and.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
They're in the video being like ha ha ha married
this fucking bitch.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Ha, you're the big of bitch. Let's use some cake.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
It's like, oh, James, stop it, stop it, stop it,
stop it, stop it.

Speaker 5 (33:21):
And she's yes, but he's like he's like so annoying
and starts for attention and he's like trying to take
over like it's his big day.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
And then she's like shut up.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Wow, like uncomfortably. Her wedding dress could have been more.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Colorful, way more coloring.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
A giant hat that has like a lot of different
colors on it, which is he's.

Speaker 5 (33:43):
Giving magician energy, like even though he's just the groom.
The way he's like talking to cameras like is this
your card? I think he's in a top hat right,
Like he's in like some weird suit.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, he's definitely like got spets. I think he's got
he's got tails, he's got his tales. So many claim
that Lisa Frank Inc. Was a bad place to work,
Like there's one interview with somebody just from Tucson. He's like, yeah,
I moved to Tucson and there's like the one ads
are dominated by Lisa Frank things, which I'm like, oh cool,
like what a cool company, like, and everybody I talked

(34:19):
to was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you
not work there. That is the world's shittiest employer. It's
just like known everywhere that that's a bad place to work.
Some of the things from people who worked there. Green
who became eventually the CEO of the company after marrying her,

(34:41):
and in the lead up, like as they were like
solidifying there, he.

Speaker 5 (34:45):
Was almost in the prenup She's like, I will marry you,
but you're fucking running the shit and I ain't working
no more.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
He got nine of the shares of the company. She
kept fifty one like that one wedding gift to him.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, thanks for the last name.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Definitely feels like a business arrangement is being solidified more
so than a wedding at their wedding. It is also
funny the video footage, like the people in the wedding
even talk about how what they like pull up in
a horse drawn carriage and the horse takes a massive shit,

(35:22):
like right as they're getting out of everyone's like, I
feel like that was like sort of appropriate for things
to come wow. So Green would throw things, yell swore,
once flipped a table. Overall created a culture of intimidation.
This behavior was attested to by sixteen individuals and sworn

(35:45):
affidavits in a lawsuit against him. It is denied by him.
He says, I don't have a temper. I don't have
a temper. I don't have a temp Like you see
this in the docu series. He like repeats it over
and over again, and they're like, so you never flipped
a table. He was like, I hope to god I
did flip that table because it deserved to get flipped
over a few times.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
I was like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, we see you convincing.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
And here's where the step dead energy comes in.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yes, the table at your factory where you're drawing kittens
riding unicorns deserve to get flipped Overact, what the fuck
are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Should have seen what that table was fucking saying.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Some other texture from people. So Lisa
could be pretty mean to people. One person who worked there,
I personally heard Lisa Frank's scream at sales managers and
threaten their lives if they fucked up a presentation.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Oh fuck.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Every day was so stressful and hearing Lisa's voice downstairs
on a speakerphone made my blood run cold, people said
of Green, he really turned that place into a shithole.
The guy's kind of a dick. He will never take
someone to the side if he has an issue with them.
Instead he will scream and curse and belittle them in
front of everyone. So standard bad boss shit. But then

(37:08):
there's like some real Jenna say Quah, like some real
next level shit. He wouldn't learn employees' names since they
were like firing them every six months and because he
was an asshole, so instead he would give them nicknames
of his own invention, he said. One former worker said,
I had a friend there and she was not the

(37:29):
most attractive girl, sort of poorly. He used to refer
to her as that guy like within your shot of her.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
What the fuck shit.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
It was known that you couldn't wear heels if you
worked for him, and the way he explained it was because, well,
you can't walk fast enough to keep up with me
if you're in heels, and in reality is just he's short. Yeah,
and so people, I.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Was like, motherfucker, people, I know, blendybo could outwalk you
and you yeah, oh wow? How tall was he?

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Do we know?

Speaker 8 (38:04):
Well?

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Even then he had a top hat on at his wedding.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
I'm going in.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
At five to four.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
He stayed in the carriage. Well, well they got married.
Accusations include the management spied on employees, and there's pretty
good evidence for this, like based on someone in the
docu series like talks about how they got an email
from one of their friends at the company being like

(38:34):
James is coming down great, and then they got called
up to Ronda's office. Rondo was like kind of his
HR enforcer, and she was like, well, your little friend
got fired and the only only reason you're not fired
is because you didn't answer that email back, so like
basically openly being like.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Track their emails.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yeah, And at one point someone was like, I can
tell you're reading my emails because like it says red
next to the emails that I had like haven't opened.
And they were like, oh, how do you make that
like show up? Though?

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Basically how do I break into your house better without
you knowing?

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Right, It's like the birth of what we all live
with now, right. He also had a company bulletin called
Frankly Speaking Frankly Speaking, where they would talk about the company.
But it just it's amazing how much it reads like

(39:35):
cult literature. I just I have a direct quote from
frankly speaking that I want to read to you guys here.
Being optimistic is simply a choice be positive. Negative people
make positive people sick. No, if you want the relationship
to make your career, allow this advice. Be loyal. Bosses
will forgive carelessness, stupidity, tardiness, and a temper tantrum. These

(39:58):
can be corrected, but loyalty is a true character flaw.
You cannot and will not be trusted. Respect the boss's
time and do not tread on his turf. Is the
boss informed? The boss should be informed about what you
were doing, where you are, whom you are talking to,
and why. These principles will serve you. Well know the

(40:19):
fuck they will not.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
What the fuck was that?

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Jonestown memos like what don't tread on?

Speaker 1 (40:28):
What the fuck is he?

Speaker 7 (40:29):
Even?

Speaker 3 (40:29):
Don't tread on him?

Speaker 1 (40:30):
From Lisa Frank. Yes, this is from the desk of Lisa.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Don't Lisa Frank Gadsden flag When does a cocaine come
into this? Because that feels very It's just just.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
A river underneath that.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, yeah, that feels very like fuckers too, there river
underneath that's causing all of this yeah, this this seems
to have been like people had cocaine suspicions kind of
from the start. One of the quotes is that James
and Ronda were pretty big into coke. There would be

(41:07):
days when James would come down to the art department
super sweaty and super paranoid and just like walking really
fast back and forth through the design area and there
was nothing to be stressed about. It was just a
regular day.

Speaker 10 (41:21):
Dude, what are you what are you doing on that
fucking crazy art? Just like fuck yeah, just trying to
make the little penguin dry.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
It is like the art is kind of trippy, but
it also is like hokey at the same time. I
feel like, you know, not a gentle art.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Yeah, beyond maximalism.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
It has a real sharpness to it.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
It is not a like cozy place to be.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah. Somehow, even like the round eyes feel like sharp
to your point where they're like, yeah, everything.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
I believe is outlined.

Speaker 5 (41:57):
I think his big contribut was like adding black outlines
to a lot of things to also make everything seem
super harsh and like pop more.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah. Yeah, like uh like coloring books, which you know,
so go deep for her again, He's really good at
denials in the In the docuseries, they're like, so a
lot of people said you were doing coke the office,
he said, First of all, he loves to call it.
It's a a woman who's doing the questioning. In the docuseries,

(42:31):
Produce has to be like, what are you talking about?
You have to be an idiot? Task that quite like.
He loves to give that step, that energy back to uh,
you see, you don't want to be doing cocaine when
you're in a business environment. What are you an idiot?
And then she's like, okay, so you never did cocaine,
and he said, of course I did cocaine. But he's

(42:53):
just like, but I just didn't do it at the office.
And I was like, uh huh, yeah, sure, yeah I
did cocaine. Everybody was doing cocaine. You're talking about the
drug use had been going on for years. We saw
Ronda come to work from time to time just totally
fucked up. So Ronda it becomes like the James and
Ronda show. Ronda is his right hand like hr person

(43:14):
who in the docuseries is just like, I fired so
many people. I can't even count how many people I
fired and they're like, you feel how do you feel
about that? She's like, oh wow, She's like yeah, like
her brain has been like blown out. It's wild. But

(43:37):
she is in the like we mentioned the cult energy
of that thing. She's like, there are certain people who
are in this docu series who feel like they are
in a cult, and she's one of them. She's questioned,
She's like, I believe James is a genius, a true genius.
I mean, how else did you possibly define a man

(43:59):
who is an artistic genius, a business genius? Look at
all the things that he built. And yeah, she's fully
on board. She is essentially the hit man. They would
like people worked for like below market and would be
treated like shit in the ways that we're describing, but

(44:21):
also like not paid well. And then when they would
be fired, they would have their you know, severance packages
and stuff like that withheld until they had to sue
to like get the packages like actually pay it out.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
But yeah, so Ronda comes to work. We saw Ronda
come to work from time to time just totally fucked up.
One morning, she couldn't even stand up straight. And then
there's a crazy story this is so these are like
kind of trickling in all over the place. There's like
one parenting forum where someone was talking about working at

(44:58):
Lisa Frank Inc. And somebody told the story about how
James would send her with an unmarked box or a
paper bag to meet someone at a gas station or
a parking lot and she was supposed to exchange her
package for theirs and not look inside. And then he
also had to buy his viagra and his porn is

(45:19):
a shop.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, so anonymous box drop off exchanges for god knows what. Yeah,
oh wow, he wasn't buying porn in a box. So
that funny.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
You don't know what was inside that box because she
knew she was buying the porn in the viagra, but
the box the gas station box. He was like, we
don't talk about what's inside the gas station box. Yeah, so, uh, Lisa.
I don't think anybody ever talked about her behavior seeming

(45:54):
particularly coke fueled at the office. However, there's a famous
uh piece of art. There's like so as mentioned because
this is like a real Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory of nightmares.
They have every piece of art in a vault that
you can like go in and like look through in
the office. And there's one that is a note on

(46:16):
the back of like a piece of art from one
of Lisa Frank's friends to Lisa about how much fun
quote she had freebasing with Lisa and horring around New York.
He said, I think we all xerox to that one.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
That is so funny and horn around.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Hell, yeah, you know, to be an artist in eighties
New York so awesome. Yeah. See.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Now I'm like, now I want to know more about Lisa.
I know she's smart.

Speaker 5 (46:52):
She becomes mysterious and then you want more of her.
But but yeah, James becomes the front.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, James becomes the front. She's like mainly working from
home from the time they have kids in the mid
nineties until September two thousand and five when Lisa files
for divorce from James, and that just like throws everything.
It's like a messy familial divorce, but on a like

(47:19):
company wide scale. They come in, they're all like asking people,
They're like, hey, would you like if I started my
own thing? Like James is trying to get people to
like go with him. He's like you know that, it's
like my like, these are all my ideas, right, like
you know, I'm like, she hasn't even been here, like
you would you even? Yeah, oh, he says, I am
Lisa Franks so many.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Times Instagram bio.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, it's truly. He also has a tattoo in his
arm that says blame James, and they're like why do
you have that? He's like, because what else am I
going to? Like that's everybody. Yeah, Like during the course
of his like run as the CEO, he made like
tens of millions of dollars, like having forty nine percent
of the like distribution, Like he has done so incredibly

(48:05):
well for himself, but.

Speaker 5 (48:07):
Also he's maniacal and he just takes this company and
as much as he puts into it, he pisses all
over it.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yes, right, yeah, Like this is where all the so
Lisa kind of blames the divorce. She's like, you know,
I was going to start a Disneyland and all these
things and then I went through a divorce. September two
thousand and five, Lisa files a suit against Green to
oust him from her company, and he counter sues and

(48:37):
like his suit like you know, they make claims of
like this is I was involved in this and I
did like all all this, he just doesn't seem like
the person who has truth on his side. Like he
claims that he created all of the characters and themes.
It's just like that seems like you're a fucking liar.

Speaker 5 (48:56):
He tries to take credit for every single thing she
ever did and say it was actually me.

Speaker 11 (49:01):
Yeah, I'm just like when you mentioned Chelsea, like his
Instagram account, I just looked at it and it's like
he's he's gone mental.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
He's gone.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
I pulled it up because I was like, first off,
and I don't know why this gets me, but he's
got three thousand followers, and it.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Gets me because he's supposed to be the man.

Speaker 5 (49:21):
Behind Lisa Frank and he has been tweeting her for
a decade. Yeah yeah, he cannot get to five k
and on.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
February nineteen, not for lack of try not for lack
of it.

Speaker 5 (49:33):
On February nineteenth this year. So it's like recently, it's
like a month ago. He's like, here's something I will
share on a personal note. See Lisa Frank. The person
used to call me a control freak, and I remember
once there was a a woman at her blah blah
blahlah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
And you know what, I was the creator. It was
my vision.

Speaker 5 (49:50):
And then in all caps, nobody stood in the building
again after I left, no more art. So yes it
was all about me, and yes I was a control freak,
but I knew that that was intentional. It was the
way I to be right. There's more, there's more paragraphs
in the miles. Are so good, a bro, you have
been divorced for twenty.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Years and rent free up in that brain another one
he just places it. Let me just say this up
from before I get started. All right, there's a woman
out there masquerading is Lisa Frank, the artist and the
creator of the Lisa Frank brand. See the Lisa Frank Company.
The real one that you know and loved as a
child was built by me. I built the brand and
creating the artwork. See I am the real creator of

(50:31):
the Lisa Frank brand, the real artist. That's just he
posted that a little bit before Christmas. Slash shit.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Oh this is.

Speaker 5 (50:38):
Every post of his like, I did this, I did
this like and also I believe.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
He lives in Mexico now in which is.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Correct, and is a born again Christian that's right.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
And he goes by He goes by very day. I'm
not joking.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
He got away what.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
He has a T shirt on that says I may
ver day on.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
The that I just feel like Mexico is abusing he.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
So one of the saddest things in the docu series
is that so they their sons are split Hunter and Forrest.
Like I think Forrest is the under kid.

Speaker 5 (51:15):
He's a parent situation each one tare.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
Forrest goes with uh Lisa and Hunter goes with James.
And like I thought that the hr Ronda was like
fucking captured. Like this dude is gone, Like he is
completely beside the son is that is like exactly he's

(51:44):
introduced and he's like I just think, like my mom
didn't do ship, like my dad did everything, and like
so why do you never got it? But so you're
like okay, Like it's clear that he's like just regurgitating
the stuff that his dad has told him. Then he
said is like, honestly, I think my dad's goat status
greatest artist of all time. I think he's the greatest

(52:06):
artist of all time. I have his art tattooed on
my arm. He thinks his dad is the greatest artist
of all.

Speaker 5 (52:13):
Time that said, this man can work on Instagram. Okay,
we're like one hundred and fifty thousand followers. And he
became a pro baseball player by making baseball tiktoks.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yes so am I.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
What jesus pro baseball And one.

Speaker 5 (52:33):
Year I changed my life follow at one hunter for
comedy and a great story. And it's like it's him
becoming this like pro baseball player, like as he like
tweets about it. Wow, well greenco Loco is his baseball name.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
I mean not great, it's.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Not great, not greenco Loco.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
It's just all bad.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
So he has another account called pin che Green Go
Green Go Local, Go Greenngo Local.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
I mean they love capitalism. Marketing runs in the DNA.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Oh and he's just like like doing Spanish language content.
Yeah too.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Crazy shit. The divorce does not go well for anyone.
The company is like at this time, everybody talks about
the Like one of the misconceptions I feel like I've
seen in a lot of the coverage of this is
like people are like and this is all happening as
sales are like going down, and like the aesthetic is

(53:36):
like going away, and you know, uh, naturally, it's just
like falling off. I don't really like I think there
would have been a way to keep building with like
this brand and like you know, her asthetic sense and
like you know, just artists like that. There was a
way to move this forward. But I think they just
like kind of fucked themselves, Like oh yeah, just like

(53:58):
the internal strife. I think they could have kept building,
but the way like you just see from nineteen ninety
six to two thousand and four, the sales are just
like going down, down down slowly, slowly, slowly, and then
very quickly.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
I mean there were aims to get to like some
other escalation or like yeah, like another.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Level plans for like a Lisa Frank world, like that
would essentially be like Disneyland for Lisa Frank characters and
like aesthetics and gear and you know, there are plenty
of people, so like the aftermath, Like you don't hear
much from her in anything because she she'll like grant

(54:36):
an interview here and there. She won't appear in any
docuseries and like her only statement to the makers of
this docu series is like I've always loved art, YadA YadA,
Like you know, just I let my art speak for itself,
but like she does these collaborations with people that like
always just go horribly, Like she's the Reebok want like

(55:00):
the big corporate ones. You're not gonna hear like, oh,
it was a fucking nightmare from the big corporations. You
just see that, Like they did one run of shoes
with Reebok and they sold out and then nothing else,
you know, or they do align with Target and then
it's over immediately. So the ones that you do actually
hear from are like there's this makeup brand that did

(55:21):
a Kickstarter thing with her that was basically like Lisa
Frank makeup sets and they would like be sold in
trapper keepers and things like that.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Like an eyeshadow palette that looks like a shadow.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Palate that looks like a little Lisa Frank trapper keeper.
It's like a cute idea, and they she's just like
she makes one of them, like take her and her
son on a like really like all expenses trip to Greece,
and she's like, yeah, this is a business expense. This
is how big business is done. And like basically like
bankrupts them and then just.

Speaker 5 (55:56):
Because they're a startup, they're a makeup startup who got
her to license them the brand for one year, raise
the money on Kickstarter, and then she just never let
them do anything with it, and all the people in
Kickstarter were like, give us our money.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Back what they got mad at them. And then she
releases the product that they had designed together with a
major established like a year later. Oh wow, so really
the same products too.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Like an eyeshadow trapper keeper.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Yeah, I looked so similar in the documentary. And then
there's another like, uh Instagram like person who's an Instagram
influencer who like has a room that is like rainbow
and you know, it's like Lisa Frank coated, but like
not you know, explicitly. It's just a person who's like
rainbows are like kind of my personality and like I

(56:47):
love color, and Lisa Frank reaches out to them and
is like, hey, like love this room. This is so cool.
Love your aesthetic, and then like drops a collaboration with
hotels dot Com like a few months later that is
like very clearly like designed off of that, and it's
called like the Lisa Frank Apartment and it's like across

(57:08):
the street from the other person's apartment, so it's like
really weird fucked up.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Stuff, oh, treading on someone's territory.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yeah, but overall, you know, it does end in sort
of like one of the darker stories other than like
where her son ends up, is like there's this one designer.
Like people have an affinity for the brand, so like
good artists will be like, yeah, I'd love to like
come back and like help Lisa. Oh, Lisa Frank's coming back.

(57:38):
Like every once in a while they'll do like a
post where they're like we're back and they have like
two of the characters like waving from in front of
the factory and people are like, oh shit. Like so
they hire this one designer to come back and like
help refresh the brand. And he shows up at the
factory and he's like it is like Misshavisham's Place in

(57:59):
Great Expectations, Like everything is like dusted over, like the
unicorn statue out front, like the horn has literally fallen
off unicuitn statue. He's like goes in and he's like
it's just empty. There's like literal tumble weeds. It's a
building that like clearly is used to have like three

(58:21):
hundred people working there and it's now like six people
and she just like doesn't like anything that you do.
Like she's just like no, no, no, and like we'll
be rate you and shit like that. He goes to
a marketing branding trade show a few years later, so
he like leaves there, goes to a marketing branding trade
show in Vegas and describes like being out on the

(58:45):
floor where you've got like Marvel and you've got Disney
and there's like sort of the back off brand area,
and he finds a booth that's just a printer page
with like the Lisa Frank logo up like taped to
the wall, and like Lisa Frank herself just sitting at
a fucking fold out table just sitting there like trying

(59:05):
to get people to license the Lisa Frank brand. It's
just like it's like Tar conducting the video game Orchestra
Energy at the end of Tar reference coming here. But
it's like it just you know, could have been something different,
and like people are still trying here and there, but

(59:26):
it does seem like it's just they kind of get
in their own way. Right.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Oh. I wonder like her financial situation too, because she
might not really be having her back to the wall
financially she's just kind of like, I don't know, there's
like a half ast way of doing shit now.

Speaker 5 (59:40):
Yeah, although it also doesn't seem like she was someone
who would like save money, like the fact that she
had like Alisa frank Jet, I don't.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
Think she made enough to sustain that.

Speaker 5 (59:50):
And it's on her restraint, doesn't Yeah the thing, and
and James seems like an absolute psychopath. But if I
were to give my gauge on the situation, it's that
she's the big idea creator. She did start everything. She
is the business mind, she did have the ideas for
the drawings. He's the workhorse. He actually made the drawings,
actually did the work, and she's like, that's good because

(01:00:12):
I'm a rich kid.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
I ain't gonna do shit.

Speaker 5 (01:00:14):
So he did all the work for her, but then
hit like he mismanaged it, and she was like, fuck it,
I just can't stay married to you. But she's never
found that partner since who will be I don't know.
Heavily abused on the rig to get her stuff done right,
and so it just feels like she never met her
next part toxic partner in crime, and so the brand

(01:00:34):
will kind of fizzle out and die forever.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Hey, unless somebody is out there listening, who can ken?
Is that you?

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
Would you like to marry Lisa Frank?

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Can you take down an eight ball in an eight
hour work day? And you're handy with a airbrush?

Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
But what I love about this story is that usually
you see a story like this gender switch do you
know any where? It's the guy for easy, big time
evil and making the woman do all the work and
then taking credit for it. And there's just something fun
about seeing a woman be the evil mastermind. The guy
tries to take credit, it doesn't work, and they're both

(01:01:12):
They both just ride off in their evil carriage.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Oh you're Lisa Frank for real? James. It's actually I
should go by I May now.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
It's just too close to hymen, my guy, Like, what
are we doing here?

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Himen Verdeman? Anything else that I missed? Not not doing
any Instagram research that you wanted to call out? Chelsea?

Speaker 5 (01:01:42):
Oh god, well, the other son who went under her wing,
he's fully private. He does seem like he's still under
the Lisa Frank control, and Hunter is also under the
James Frank, the James Green control, but it looks like
freedom to him. And yeah, it is, I want a
succession on the Lisa Franklin.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Oh yeah, that's what I think.

Speaker 5 (01:02:04):
The true story is here, not her brands, but like
what happened with their family and everyone's named after a
color God's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
It is really like when they were together, even like
the I think it's Hunter, the one who is in
Mexico with the dad was like, I never had a
good birthday, Like I never had a birthday that went well,
which is just like that's heartbreaking. Man. Oh, it's for
a kid to grow up and just be like I
was hoping every year, you know, maybe this will be

(01:02:32):
the birthday. That's like everybody stays together and is happy.
And she's also he's.

Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
Also giving, like I'm the child of multiple divorces and
I remember the first divorce, like my mom's husband be like,
your mom is just a dark light. Sorry to get
personal hair, but it really feels like that's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
What James did.

Speaker 5 (01:02:50):
He's like, and every birthday sucked because of your bitch
mother who stole my artistry from my veins and left
us to fit for ourselves in Mexico. He's really he's
really regurgitating the stories his dad told him in childhood.
That's where it really felt extremely toxic. Like I'm not
even sure that's Hunter's perception of his own childhood. It's

(01:03:11):
his dad's perception entirely. Yeah, yeah, divorces can be.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Really horses in the nineties, No rules man, no.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Rules cult, sorry, where both of us are coming off
some pretty gnarly coke habits too. Couldn't be more ill
equipped for this event.

Speaker 5 (01:03:35):
Parenting books don't exist for another ten years.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
And I won't read him because it's going to say
I have fucked up at every corner.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
So just the ones that say that we should use
primal screams exactly. Yeahs choice, idiot.

Speaker 7 (01:03:53):
Yeah, disloyalty will be punished by death.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
That one is so yeah. Talking to your the your
art company, like they weren't allowed to talk to each other, guy,
They weren't allowed to talk to each other at the
The artists were not allowed to talk to each other.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Because socializing or they're like stay focused whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:04:17):
Either way, it's more like we don't want you talking
about us. That's exactly what Elizabeth Holmes did at the
Torono's Company, like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Don't speak to God. They would pitch it as like
because we want you guys focused on your work. But
what it actually was was she just say about me.
She asked if she was allowed to use the rest Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Stay siloed, So you don't have collective power.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Right, But yeah, it's it's a wild story that gets
a lot darker than I was expecting heading into this.
But Chelsea, I really appreciate you calling it out and I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
So thrilled to bring this rain from hell to your doorstep.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Jesus Christ, where can people find you? Follow you and
check out your movie?

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
Oh, you can listen to my podcast Glamorous Trash, where
we discuss mostly books in literature, but also you know,
we did dive into Taylor Frankie Paul recently. So we
go around, we get places. My film just premiered at
south By and so now we have now I don't
know where you can see it, but it's happening behind
the scenes and hopefully I don't know. If you ever

(01:05:27):
see a movie called Basic, go there and support women
like me and Lisa frank not.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
The twenty twelve Samuel L. Jackson Basic. Oh this one.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
No, not that one. No, this one starts Layton mister
yeah and Ashley.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Park the Great Yeah, awesome, thanks so much for having me. Yeah,
thank you so much for doing it. Miles anything where
can people.

Speaker 4 (01:05:52):
Support go support Basic, Go support Basic, find it, keep
the perfect rating going, Come near you me.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
I'll be here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
And shout out to Tracy Egan Morrissey, who wrote the
Jezbell article inside the Rainbow Gulag.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
I didn't realize that was her.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Yeah, really good work. All right, I'll be right back
with the Nope pool by Schell in a minute. All right,

(01:06:32):
that was our Lisa Frank conversation. Thank you to Chelsea
Davante's don't Forget to find her movie Basic when it
comes out. All around, creative powerhouse, creative genius, one of
the funniest people in the world. Thank you as always
to Miles Gray. Speaking of funniest people in the world,

(01:06:53):
this is the No No, No, No, No Noe book. Don't
where I tell you the stuff I forgot to go
into during the conversation or didn't have time to. There
was a point in the research that I did mention
where this art director go to the goes to work
for her in I think it was twenty fifteen, and

(01:07:13):
goes to the factory and it's this post apocalyptic Wasteland
version of her once bustling studio. It's gone from like
two hundred people working there down to six. The unicorns
horn fell off that part. So that designer said at
that point that he thought one of the things getting

(01:07:34):
in the way of her success was her old ideas,
her past success. Quote. She just wanted to fall back
on some of her previous legacy characters, said James, an
art director who was hired in twenty fifteen to create
new characters. I think it's because she felt it was
successful once, let's try it again. I say it with

(01:07:55):
some remorse too, because I saw the potential. But I
think Lisa stood in her own way. Honestly. That was
from a People magazine article about the docu series. I
just was that that's not uncommon with the icons we've covered.
An inability to move on from the thing that made
you successful in the first place. That first taste of

(01:08:20):
globes striding success is a powerful drug, and you have
to tell a bunch of people who doubt you to
get fucked on your way to experiencing that drug. And
so how do how do you come down from that?
And now you know here you are again with people
doubting you, and you're like, well, I know what to

(01:08:40):
do in this situation. We saw this with Einstein. We
saw with you know, other lesser people, but we saw
it with fucking Einstein, this you know, genius of physics.
His big masterstroke was to create a unified theory of
relativity that like tied all of the large scale forces

(01:09:00):
of the universe together into one unified system, even though
they seem to be operating differently. And he was like, no, actually,
and here here's how it works. So when quantum mechanics
came along and people are like, things are behaving really
weird at the level of like electron microscopes or whatever,

(01:09:21):
he's like, nah, they're actually not behaving that way. Or
so essentially he is wrong on quantum mechanics because he's
acting in accordance with the instinct that gave him his
greatest victory, which is that everything is actually unified and
there's going to be this unified theory of how everything

(01:09:41):
works together. More consequentially, look at the way Michael Jordan
dresses or other famous men. You know, their sense of
fashion tends to freeze in place when they're at peak fame.
And yes, it's because people stop saying no to them.
But it's also you know, when they start being like,
I've got to trust this inner voice because look where

(01:10:03):
it's gotten me. It's gotten me the main thing, this
powerful drug that I've always wanted, which is immense fame.
It got me those yes men, those people who don't
say no to me. The power of humans to achieve
massive success and keep evolving feels like it can be
more limited than we give it credit for. That's why

(01:10:26):
some of our not actually human icons without an ego
attached to them. You are Santo's Claus, Your gray aliens
have an advantage over human icons. They will adapt and
evolve in whatever way we need them to to remain
their most iconic. And then I'd say that's also true

(01:10:48):
for iconic figures. Once they die, it starts being less
about what they want to be and starts being about
what we need them to be. You know, all right,
Another reason might not be able to come up off
those old iconic characters, those early instincts and early character designs.

(01:11:09):
She says she started designing them when she was a child,
which that actually reminded me of Stephen King, who in
a past episode described writing the novels that made him
famous as an adult. As being he said he felt
like he had a series of characters that he'd had
in his mind since as long as he could remember,

(01:11:31):
just like waiting at a revolving door, and like he
would just let them out one at a time. You know,
with Lisa Franks, she came up with some of the
best stuff that made her a massive success when she
was a kid. And you know what when she was
the age of the children that she ends up designing
for her ex husband when he was maybe being a

(01:11:54):
little bit more honest about her in nineteen ninety eight,
said she understands little girls. You know, she's a little
girl at heart, But she was also a little girl
in the seventies trying to design for little girls in
the modern world. So she needed to come up off
those old characters or listen to other people's instincts. But

(01:12:16):
again that can be hard. Where you know, she needed
to go turn second grade classrooms into focus groups. The atmosphere,
by the way, we'll link off to that CNN report,
but the atmosphere of the classroom focus group from that
CNN report is wild. Kids are like pointing at the
designs they like and shouting like it seems like a

(01:12:38):
kids Bop version of the Chicago Trading Floor. They're all
like that, give me that, how one? I love it?
And then a lot of drug talking. In this episode,
she does seem to have I don't know, I would say,
like that naturally high brain that I feel like I
kind of glimpsed and talked about in the notebook dump
from the Einstein research, Like Einstein was a genius at

(01:13:00):
math and physics and all that shit, but he was
also a genius at having these sort of a to
Z sort of high shower thoughts, and he also behaved
in his day to day life like he was constantly high.
But with Lisa Frank, she made art and lived her
life like she was seeing it through the lens of

(01:13:21):
someone who was on I don't know something like she said,
you read stuff about me, people think it was all
influenced by drugs. You couldn't do what I did if
I was on drugs, And maybe she couldn't do what
she did well on drugs, But it does feel like
maybe other people would need drugs to kind of approximate

(01:13:43):
her natural state of mind, Like drugs are just accessing
naturally occurring brain chemicals and dumping them into your brain
on command. That's why drug addictions often about control as
much as anything. But you know, she was really experienced

(01:14:03):
colors in a very very vibrant way. And the times
that I've experienced colors in an extremely vibrant way have
usually been at least helped along by chemical induced things.
Back when I did that sort of thing. Anyways, didn't
think I'd end up connecting so many ideas from the

(01:14:24):
Lisa Frank episode with Einstein. But here we are definitely
a fucked up business, a sign of how not to
treat employees, but also very impressed with some elements, the
proprietary colors, her singular vision, and then you know all
the things that capitalism, all the ways that capitalism corrupts,

(01:14:47):
and suddenly she feels like she owns rainbows. Great story,
great pick from Chelsea. That's going to do it for
Lisa Frank. We are back next week with probably probably
the most famous icon of my lifetime that we've covered
so far, possible exception of Santa Claus, but you know,

(01:15:09):
I'll just say Santa never sang the national anthem at
the Super Bowl so well that they started selling five
minute long VHS copies of Santa Claus's performance of the
national anthem, and those those vhs is that literally five
minute long vhs has sold like fucking hotcakes. When Santa

(01:15:31):
shows up to a football game, they throw batteries at him,
But when Whitney Houston does it, it creates legends. So
next week talking about the truly great Whitney Houston. It's
a very fun conversation. Look forward to that more zeitgeist
in the meantime. Thank you for listening. I e.