September 8, 2025 • 14 mins
"Pig The Pug" and "Bad Guys" creator Aaron Blabey popped by the studio on the eve of the release of Bad Guys 2. His life hasn't changed too much after his book and film success - he just swaps the craziness of Katoomba for the craziness of Hollywood! But while one luxury purchase did almost get him killed by a kangaroo... it was actually the film that saved him!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Fits In with Her with Kate Richie podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, this is exciting but also a bit scary because
we've got one of the original Bad Guys in the studio,
real bad Guy, right, forty Bad Guys books in ten years,
and we have Bad.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Guys Too coming out at the movies. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The Fitzgerald family is salivating over this advanced screenings at
the moment.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
But it comes out next Thursday.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And the man behind Bad Guys is the magnificent Aaron
Blaby Joneses.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Now Hello, well, hello, just checking Aaron's canser on do
they work?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, Aaron, Aaron, welcome to the studio, buddy, Thank you
very much. Can we go back?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I mean, Bad Guys is massive in our house too,
fits and we can't wait to see the new movie.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
But I just want to go back because if we talk.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
About, you know, Pig the Pug and the earlier books,
what was it that made you want to master the
art of writing kids' stories?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
It was very pragmatic.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
My little my youngest was six, and the books that
he was being sent home from school with were such
absolute trash careful yeah, and they were literally so boring
that he would they were making cry. I remember sitting
(01:21):
on the sofa with a six year old who would
cry when it was time to read a book, and
I thought, well, I've got to come up with something
better than that.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Was that was a simply it was as simple as that.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So, what was the first book that you produced.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Well, I did eight books before they got popular, my
early ones. I couldn't give them away really, And then
it was Pig Pig and Pig Thumbing in the corner
and the Bad Guys all happened in the one year.
They were actually all invented on the same day. It
sounds it sounds like cobblers, but it's not.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
That day.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
I went for a walk and I was I was
forty year old with two young kids, who was desperate
to not work in advertising anymore, and I thought, this
is pretty much my last shot on forty and I
went for a walk, and for some reason, the universe
dropped all three ideas into my head on the same day.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Aaron, this fascinates me.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
This fascinates me because even then, I mean, it's just
it's an epiphany, right, So yeah, I mean, you don't
know where to go with this, But like so when
was the moment. Okay, from then then you start writing
and it starts coming to you. But when did you
start thinking to yourself, this is actually getting really popular.
Was there a moment where you just thought, our kids
(02:34):
are really starting to love this, Aaron, it was twofold.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
There was when Pig dropped. He was immediately really popular
in Australia, which was incredibly exciting. But I remember the
first print run was like forty thousand copies, which seemed
gigantic to me at the time. But then the first
Bad Guy's book dropped in the school system in America
and in a week they'd done half a million copies
(02:59):
and it was just and I'd never sold more than
four thousand of anything to that point. It was like,
what's happening? And then it just escalated, continually escalated. It's
I think, I think we're just about it's sixty.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Middle and now I see the bad guys.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
In total total bad Guys about getting close to forty
I think.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And the movie's catapulted it even more. The movie is unbelievable. So, Aaron,
were there days in that period where it just exploded?
Were there days where you were just getting phone calls
from publicists and book companies just going, oh, you've sold
another million today?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Or was there were there days like that?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It was a little bit. You've got to remember what
I do.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Like I'm I mean, I'm a hermit to begin with
and as autistic as they come.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
So I'm in my That's true.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
I'm in my studio just alone, like and I was
in there doing this for ten years, you know. So,
And it's funny.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
My agent in.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Angeles, who's amazing, who did the deal for the movie
and everything. He tried to contact me. I think it
was three or four times, and his assistant called a
couple of times, and I just told him to clear off,
and because it just seemed it just seemed too unlikely.
You know, I'm sitting in my little studio in the
Blue Mountains and a guy calls up claiming to be
(04:20):
a big Hollywood agent.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
You kill you.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Yeah, So that happened for a bunch and eventually emailed
me and sent me a long thing, and yeah, we
kind of explaining that it's well, you know what though,
it's really funny. The first time I went to LA
for the meetings, I was still convinced I was being punked.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
The whole time.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It wasn't.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
It wasn't until we ended up like because that week
we met all the heads of all the studios and.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I thought, Okay, well maybe this is legit. But it was. Yeah,
it took a long time.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Can we go back to the start bay You've got
that day when all the ideas dropped. There's a big
difference between having an idea and what you think is
a good idea enough to pursue it, and then actually
making it happen.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
So when you.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Wrote the first A Pig Pug, what was that process like,
Because obviously you'll very quickly you've mastered the art of
storytelling for kids, because many books have been written by
people and they just become a book.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Written by someone.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
I think it was a combination, Like it was written
specifically for my kids, so I knew his sense of humor,
so it was about that. As much as I hate
to admit it, my brief stint in advertising I think
did help me. I think the difference between my old
books that didn't sell and the ones afterwards that did
was the ability to condense an idea into something that
(05:33):
was really sharp and really funny and just sort of
clear messaging.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Yeah, and hit. And it wasn't conscious.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
I think it was just I'd spent two years thinking
like that and then i sat down to write a
book about a disgusting little dog and it it just
fell into place.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
This is the Fitsy and with Kate Richie podcast.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Aaron, what's the fine line and Bad Boys? I mean,
you have a look at some of the characters. What's
the fine line of you pushing it too far? Because kids,
I mean we all know. I mean you look at
roll dar books, you look at them all that the
naughty side of books is what kids love, and that's
what stands out the most. But are there were there
(06:15):
moments that you had to pull stuff out because you went, oh,
this is too full on for kids, or.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
I spent that That was always the game for me
is how far you can you could push the Oh?
Absolutely And look, there's a perfect example in one of
in the second half of the Bad Guys series, from
about book thirteen on or something. I've got a character
with chainsaw hands, right and and what because the original
idea was sort of like Tarantino for kids, and that
(06:43):
sounds inconceivable. But the game for me was how can
you take adult iconography. The kids like love the look
of but aren't allowed to watch. How can you take
bits of that make it? And I think that's what
happened in the American schools with the first Bad Guys
book was kids picked it up, saw these gangsters on
the front of the I can't believe this is in
(07:05):
the library. Sure are we meant to have this?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
This feels like it? Yeah, And I that was intentional.
It really was, because I just thought about the stuff
that I loved when I was that agent.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
Because it was the eighties, it was access to any
any inappropriate material you wanted to get your hands on,
and that sort of got so it was I think
there's a bit of a spirit of that that I
kind of brought into it. But it was just to
have for myself, to have fun and to make my
kid laugh.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
It was as simple as that.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I'd be fascinated to know too, because you know of
the world wide success, you know with the movies, who's
who's contacted you or tried to reach you even though
you were a herb it self described.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
I haven't met I have met, and he's lovely. I
have met Lawrence Bender, who produced pulp fiction and Reservoir Dogs,
and it was actually face timed me on the carpet
for this movie, which was utterly surreal because I was
wearing a T shirt with his old logo for the
first film. Yeah, look, it's it's it's a trip. I
(08:12):
know that there was a There was some highly exclusive
agency in LA that only has twelve clients, all of
them are mega, mega famous, and they approached one of
the clients wanted to talk about the bad Guys after
we'd already sold it to Dreamwork. So yeah, I don't
know which one it was, but it was somebody like
the list of twelve is ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
They're all whole names. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So the voices in the movies, I mean, Sam, I
rate Sam Rockwell as an actor so much.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
He's one of the best that the world's got at
the moment. So do you get it?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Do you in the process of mister Wolf, I mean,
that's your most probably crucial character in the movie. Did
you get a say in that or did you leave
that up to everyone else?
Speaker 5 (08:53):
So the process of the big with the voice cast
was because it's it's strange with animation, because you can't
really get movie stars to audition for that time. They
just sort of throw in old performances, do a rough
animation and see and there was a discussion around all
the characters. But Sam was just like a note brainer.
Sam's been my you know, one of my top five
(09:15):
favorite actors since he first turned up in The Green
Mile back.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
In the nineties.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I mean, I just love him and he's a really
sweet guy. So we'd met on Zoom until this this
premiere in LA I got to meet him in person
and then saw him a bunch of times when we
were there, and he's great.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
He's such a cool guy.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
How do you like La Aaron? Well, that was what was.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Weird like for ten years.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
I mean, COVID got in the way for a while,
but for ten years I was either in Lura, in
the Blue Mountains or in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
It was one of the other. And it was such
a trip.
Speaker 5 (09:54):
You know, it just does your head in and you know,
and I would I would alternate, you know, La Crazy
with Katoomba Crazy, like those two things weird, but but no, look,
it's it's a trippy place. And I've had the most
perverse and surreal experience of Los Angeles. I've never once
(10:17):
been to. I've been like fifteen sixteen times or something
now and I've never once been where it wasn't as
weird as it gets. You know, I'm at a studio,
I'm meeting whoever.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
You know. It's it is. It is bizarre. I'm weirdly
quite fond of it. Actually.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
It's something if you're a big movie fan like I am.
In music, it's just so sort of laden with history,
you know, so, but it's you know, at the same time.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's it's it's I've always described as like Paramatta Road
with palm trees.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
Aesthetically, I mean that's what it looks.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, upraight.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I mean, it is so exciting to see the success
of this, and it just news to grow and grow,
so your mind must run to what's next.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Oh, I'm in the thick of that at the moment.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I bet you are anything to share.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
When The Bad Guys was finished, I finished episode twenty,
I announced.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Prematurely that I had retired.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I took two years because I was bugged after ten
years because I was doing one hundred hours a week
pretty much to get it all done. Because I do
everything I do, all the drawings and all this stuff,
so wow. So I had two years break and then
my agent, who I was talking about earlier, he said,
I can put it together a deal for a new
because I had no idea that he knew that I had,
(11:41):
which is the next thing. And I said, no, I
don't want to do it, and I to make him
go away. I thought of the silliest number I could
and I said, look, you can get that.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
We can talk about it.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
And he came back two weeks later and he tripled it.
So it's crazy, quite a bit out of that, absolutely
absolutely surreal. So I signed with McMillan earlier this year
and went over and they're great on congratulations. It was crazy,
(12:14):
but it's called the new ones called Game of Pets.
It's out of pets.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Love this.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
You don't seem like a man who needs indulgence, but
you know you've had success.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
But is there something? Is there a luxury item that
you've brought yourself just to say thank you to yourself?
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I do it all the time.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
What my favorite though, he's actually just come home. I
have a it's not dissimilar to the Bad Guys car.
I have a Dodge Challenge.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
That I love very dearly. And then about fifteen months ago.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
We were driving from Melvine, Sydney and a gigantic rue
came out.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
We're doing one hundred and ten and we're.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Lucky to be alive. He saved our life, the big guy. Yep,
a bomb and because you can't get parts. It took
fourteen months. But he's home and purring, purring like a kitten.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well left hand drive, Aaron.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I know it had been it had been converted.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, you could buy a light now.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
But I love this and just just quickly your inspiration
at home, like is the studio still the same or
have you have you have you decked that out.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Or do you still get the studio? Is it's my
it's my magic place. It's hard to describe people. It's
a little too much for people sometimes when they walk in.
I've it's it's quite a big space, two levels, and
every single surface is covered with an image that was
significant somehow, whether it be old movie posters or things.
(13:47):
But it's like an onslaught of imagery and I kind
of described to kind of describe it as the inside
of my brain.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
On the outside, it's like.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
A shortcut I can look ause a lot of my
stuff comes from taking two ideas that don't really belong
together and clicking them together. So it's like a way
that when I'm thinking of something, I can look around
and just I don't consciously do it, but things sort
of click by doing that.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Absolutely love it.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Aaron.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
We're coming to the Blue Mountains. We're hanging out at
your studio.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
You're very welcome, very welcome.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
We'll bring a bottle of whiskey, if that's all right, mate, Aaron,
this is unbelievable. Bad guys too. It's out in Cinema's
next Thursday Advanced screenings. Now you can go suss it out.
I mean, if your kids haven't seen the first one. Now,
my kids are addicted to it. We watched it so
many times and they are so excited for the second movie.
We know how busy you are, sir, so we appreciate
your time. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's in Whipper with Kate Ritchie is a Nova podcast
walk great shows like this.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Download the Nova player by the App Store or Google
playing the player
This is the Fits In with Her with Kate Richie podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, this is exciting but also a bit scary because
we've got one of the original Bad Guys in the studio,
real bad Guy, right, forty Bad Guys books in ten years,
and we have Bad.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Guys Too coming out at the movies. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The Fitzgerald family is salivating over this advanced screenings at
the moment.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
But it comes out next Thursday.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And the man behind Bad Guys is the magnificent Aaron
Blaby Joneses.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Now Hello, well, hello, just checking Aaron's canser on do
they work?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, Aaron, Aaron, welcome to the studio, buddy, Thank you
very much. Can we go back?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I mean, Bad Guys is massive in our house too,
fits and we can't wait to see the new movie.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
But I just want to go back because if we talk.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
About, you know, Pig the Pug and the earlier books,
what was it that made you want to master the
art of writing kids' stories?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
It was very pragmatic.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
My little my youngest was six, and the books that
he was being sent home from school with were such
absolute trash careful yeah, and they were literally so boring
that he would they were making cry. I remember sitting
(01:21):
on the sofa with a six year old who would
cry when it was time to read a book, and
I thought, well, I've got to come up with something
better than that.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Was that was a simply it was as simple as that.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So, what was the first book that you produced.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Well, I did eight books before they got popular, my
early ones. I couldn't give them away really, And then
it was Pig Pig and Pig Thumbing in the corner
and the Bad Guys all happened in the one year.
They were actually all invented on the same day. It
sounds it sounds like cobblers, but it's not.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
That day.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
I went for a walk and I was I was
forty year old with two young kids, who was desperate
to not work in advertising anymore, and I thought, this
is pretty much my last shot on forty and I
went for a walk, and for some reason, the universe
dropped all three ideas into my head on the same day.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Aaron, this fascinates me.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
This fascinates me because even then, I mean, it's just
it's an epiphany, right, So yeah, I mean, you don't
know where to go with this, But like so when
was the moment. Okay, from then then you start writing
and it starts coming to you. But when did you
start thinking to yourself, this is actually getting really popular.
Was there a moment where you just thought, our kids
(02:34):
are really starting to love this, Aaron, it was twofold.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
There was when Pig dropped. He was immediately really popular
in Australia, which was incredibly exciting. But I remember the
first print run was like forty thousand copies, which seemed
gigantic to me at the time. But then the first
Bad Guy's book dropped in the school system in America
and in a week they'd done half a million copies
(02:59):
and it was just and I'd never sold more than
four thousand of anything to that point. It was like,
what's happening? And then it just escalated, continually escalated. It's
I think, I think we're just about it's sixty.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Middle and now I see the bad guys.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
In total total bad Guys about getting close to forty
I think.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And the movie's catapulted it even more. The movie is unbelievable. So, Aaron,
were there days in that period where it just exploded?
Were there days where you were just getting phone calls
from publicists and book companies just going, oh, you've sold
another million today?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Or was there were there days like that?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It was a little bit. You've got to remember what
I do.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Like I'm I mean, I'm a hermit to begin with
and as autistic as they come.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
So I'm in my That's true.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
I'm in my studio just alone, like and I was
in there doing this for ten years, you know. So,
And it's funny.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
My agent in.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Angeles, who's amazing, who did the deal for the movie
and everything. He tried to contact me. I think it
was three or four times, and his assistant called a
couple of times, and I just told him to clear off,
and because it just seemed it just seemed too unlikely.
You know, I'm sitting in my little studio in the
Blue Mountains and a guy calls up claiming to be
(04:20):
a big Hollywood agent.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
You kill you.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Yeah, So that happened for a bunch and eventually emailed
me and sent me a long thing, and yeah, we
kind of explaining that it's well, you know what though,
it's really funny. The first time I went to LA
for the meetings, I was still convinced I was being punked.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
The whole time.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It wasn't.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
It wasn't until we ended up like because that week
we met all the heads of all the studios and.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I thought, Okay, well maybe this is legit. But it was. Yeah,
it took a long time.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Can we go back to the start bay You've got
that day when all the ideas dropped. There's a big
difference between having an idea and what you think is
a good idea enough to pursue it, and then actually
making it happen.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
So when you.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Wrote the first A Pig Pug, what was that process like,
Because obviously you'll very quickly you've mastered the art of
storytelling for kids, because many books have been written by
people and they just become a book.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Written by someone.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
I think it was a combination, Like it was written
specifically for my kids, so I knew his sense of humor,
so it was about that. As much as I hate
to admit it, my brief stint in advertising I think
did help me. I think the difference between my old
books that didn't sell and the ones afterwards that did
was the ability to condense an idea into something that
(05:33):
was really sharp and really funny and just sort of
clear messaging.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Yeah, and hit. And it wasn't conscious.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
I think it was just I'd spent two years thinking
like that and then i sat down to write a
book about a disgusting little dog and it it just
fell into place.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
This is the Fitsy and with Kate Richie podcast.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Aaron, what's the fine line and Bad Boys? I mean,
you have a look at some of the characters. What's
the fine line of you pushing it too far? Because kids,
I mean we all know. I mean you look at
roll dar books, you look at them all that the
naughty side of books is what kids love, and that's
what stands out the most. But are there were there
(06:15):
moments that you had to pull stuff out because you went, oh,
this is too full on for kids, or.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
I spent that That was always the game for me
is how far you can you could push the Oh?
Absolutely And look, there's a perfect example in one of
in the second half of the Bad Guys series, from
about book thirteen on or something. I've got a character
with chainsaw hands, right and and what because the original
idea was sort of like Tarantino for kids, and that
(06:43):
sounds inconceivable. But the game for me was how can
you take adult iconography. The kids like love the look
of but aren't allowed to watch. How can you take
bits of that make it? And I think that's what
happened in the American schools with the first Bad Guys
book was kids picked it up, saw these gangsters on
the front of the I can't believe this is in
(07:05):
the library. Sure are we meant to have this?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
This feels like it? Yeah, And I that was intentional.
It really was, because I just thought about the stuff
that I loved when I was that agent.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
Because it was the eighties, it was access to any
any inappropriate material you wanted to get your hands on,
and that sort of got so it was I think
there's a bit of a spirit of that that I
kind of brought into it. But it was just to
have for myself, to have fun and to make my
kid laugh.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
It was as simple as that.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I'd be fascinated to know too, because you know of
the world wide success, you know with the movies, who's
who's contacted you or tried to reach you even though
you were a herb it self described.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
I haven't met I have met, and he's lovely. I
have met Lawrence Bender, who produced pulp fiction and Reservoir Dogs,
and it was actually face timed me on the carpet
for this movie, which was utterly surreal because I was
wearing a T shirt with his old logo for the
first film. Yeah, look, it's it's it's a trip. I
(08:12):
know that there was a There was some highly exclusive
agency in LA that only has twelve clients, all of
them are mega, mega famous, and they approached one of
the clients wanted to talk about the bad Guys after
we'd already sold it to Dreamwork. So yeah, I don't
know which one it was, but it was somebody like
the list of twelve is ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
They're all whole names. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So the voices in the movies, I mean, Sam, I
rate Sam Rockwell as an actor so much.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
He's one of the best that the world's got at
the moment. So do you get it?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Do you in the process of mister Wolf, I mean,
that's your most probably crucial character in the movie. Did
you get a say in that or did you leave
that up to everyone else?
Speaker 5 (08:53):
So the process of the big with the voice cast
was because it's it's strange with animation, because you can't
really get movie stars to audition for that time. They
just sort of throw in old performances, do a rough
animation and see and there was a discussion around all
the characters. But Sam was just like a note brainer.
Sam's been my you know, one of my top five
(09:15):
favorite actors since he first turned up in The Green
Mile back.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
In the nineties.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I mean, I just love him and he's a really
sweet guy. So we'd met on Zoom until this this
premiere in LA I got to meet him in person
and then saw him a bunch of times when we
were there, and he's great.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
He's such a cool guy.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
How do you like La Aaron? Well, that was what was.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Weird like for ten years.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
I mean, COVID got in the way for a while,
but for ten years I was either in Lura, in
the Blue Mountains or in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
It was one of the other. And it was such
a trip.
Speaker 5 (09:54):
You know, it just does your head in and you know,
and I would I would alternate, you know, La Crazy
with Katoomba Crazy, like those two things weird, but but no, look,
it's it's a trippy place. And I've had the most
perverse and surreal experience of Los Angeles. I've never once
(10:17):
been to. I've been like fifteen sixteen times or something
now and I've never once been where it wasn't as
weird as it gets. You know, I'm at a studio,
I'm meeting whoever.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
You know. It's it is. It is bizarre. I'm weirdly
quite fond of it. Actually.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
It's something if you're a big movie fan like I am.
In music, it's just so sort of laden with history,
you know, so, but it's you know, at the same time.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's it's it's I've always described as like Paramatta Road
with palm trees.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
Aesthetically, I mean that's what it looks.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, upraight.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I mean, it is so exciting to see the success
of this, and it just news to grow and grow,
so your mind must run to what's next.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Oh, I'm in the thick of that at the moment.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I bet you are anything to share.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
When The Bad Guys was finished, I finished episode twenty,
I announced.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Prematurely that I had retired.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I took two years because I was bugged after ten
years because I was doing one hundred hours a week
pretty much to get it all done. Because I do
everything I do, all the drawings and all this stuff,
so wow. So I had two years break and then
my agent, who I was talking about earlier, he said,
I can put it together a deal for a new
because I had no idea that he knew that I had,
(11:41):
which is the next thing. And I said, no, I
don't want to do it, and I to make him
go away. I thought of the silliest number I could
and I said, look, you can get that.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
We can talk about it.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
And he came back two weeks later and he tripled it.
So it's crazy, quite a bit out of that, absolutely
absolutely surreal. So I signed with McMillan earlier this year
and went over and they're great on congratulations. It was crazy,
(12:14):
but it's called the new ones called Game of Pets.
It's out of pets.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Love this.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
You don't seem like a man who needs indulgence, but
you know you've had success.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
But is there something? Is there a luxury item that
you've brought yourself just to say thank you to yourself?
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I do it all the time.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
What my favorite though, he's actually just come home. I
have a it's not dissimilar to the Bad Guys car.
I have a Dodge Challenge.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
That I love very dearly. And then about fifteen months ago.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
We were driving from Melvine, Sydney and a gigantic rue
came out.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
We're doing one hundred and ten and we're.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Lucky to be alive. He saved our life, the big guy. Yep,
a bomb and because you can't get parts. It took
fourteen months. But he's home and purring, purring like a kitten.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well left hand drive, Aaron.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I know it had been it had been converted.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, you could buy a light now.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
But I love this and just just quickly your inspiration
at home, like is the studio still the same or
have you have you have you decked that out.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Or do you still get the studio? Is it's my
it's my magic place. It's hard to describe people. It's
a little too much for people sometimes when they walk in.
I've it's it's quite a big space, two levels, and
every single surface is covered with an image that was
significant somehow, whether it be old movie posters or things.
(13:47):
But it's like an onslaught of imagery and I kind
of described to kind of describe it as the inside
of my brain.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
On the outside, it's like.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
A shortcut I can look ause a lot of my
stuff comes from taking two ideas that don't really belong
together and clicking them together. So it's like a way
that when I'm thinking of something, I can look around
and just I don't consciously do it, but things sort
of click by doing that.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Absolutely love it.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Aaron.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
We're coming to the Blue Mountains. We're hanging out at
your studio.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
You're very welcome, very welcome.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
We'll bring a bottle of whiskey, if that's all right, mate, Aaron,
this is unbelievable. Bad guys too. It's out in Cinema's
next Thursday Advanced screenings. Now you can go suss it out.
I mean, if your kids haven't seen the first one. Now,
my kids are addicted to it. We watched it so
many times and they are so excited for the second movie.
We know how busy you are, sir, so we appreciate
your time. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's in Whipper with Kate Ritchie is a Nova podcast
walk great shows like this.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Download the Nova player by the App Store or Google
playing the player
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