September 27, 2025 • 55 mins
A Conversation With The Creators of the new Time Traviling Audio Drama, and their Kickstarter Campaign.
Hear the pilot now https://media.rss.com/cheating-history/feed.xml
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cheatinghistory/cheating-history-season-one
Bios Of The Creators... Jennifer Sterner is a screenwriter and producer with a mix of academic and creative experience. she’s developed a manga for Seven Seas Entertainment, created the web series Searching for Eden, and wrote on the YouTube drama Apartment 30. She serves as Associate Chair of Screenwriting at the New York Film Academy, where she teaches courses on storytelling.
Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir are a writing duo known for their acclaimed runs at Marvel and DC, as well as creator-owned projects like Skinwalker and Three Strikes from Oni Press. Beyond comics, they’ve brought their storytelling skills to television on HBO’s Arli$$ and serve as educators at the New York Film Academy, where they mentor aspiring writers.
Hear the pilot now https://media.rss.com/cheating-history/feed.xml
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cheatinghistory/cheating-history-season-one
Bios Of The Creators... Jennifer Sterner is a screenwriter and producer with a mix of academic and creative experience. she’s developed a manga for Seven Seas Entertainment, created the web series Searching for Eden, and wrote on the YouTube drama Apartment 30. She serves as Associate Chair of Screenwriting at the New York Film Academy, where she teaches courses on storytelling.
Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir are a writing duo known for their acclaimed runs at Marvel and DC, as well as creator-owned projects like Skinwalker and Three Strikes from Oni Press. Beyond comics, they’ve brought their storytelling skills to television on HBO’s Arli$$ and serve as educators at the New York Film Academy, where they mentor aspiring writers.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, Welcome back time again for word Balloon, the
comic book conversation show John Centris here, but we are
deviating from comic books today sort of. I've got non
Zo d Philippus and Christina Weir. They of course have
done a lot of comic books for Marvel and DC
and for Ony and a lot of companies, and they've
also done TV work as well. But actually I'm talking
(00:20):
about another one of my favorite subjects, and that is
audio drama. I'm a big fan of science fiction, I'm
a big fan of audio drama, and I'm a big
fan of time travel stories. We are getting all that
in a brand new podcast drama called Cheating History. But
I'm also happy to get to know Jennifer Sterner, who
is working with Nunzio and Christina on this excellent time
(00:44):
travel drama. Really interesting think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with
kind of a time twist. But instead of fictional literary characters,
real people that went missing, people like Amelia Arhart, people
like dB Cooper, people like Jack the Ripper, They're all
players in this very interesting story. Now they have released
(01:06):
the pilot for this and if you go to the
description of the episode, either audio or video. You'll find
the link to that. There's also a Kickstarter campaign because
while you can listen to the pilot now and it's
totally free, they would like to raise funds and make
a whole season. So we're here to talk about that,
the premiums that they're offering, but also the challenge of
(01:28):
all three of them to write an audio drama because
Nunzio and Christina did our lists back in the day
on HBO, and of course have done their comics and
now Jenny also is someone that has done scripted drama
on camera, working on shows like Apartment thirty. So it's
(01:50):
really great to get all these people who are used
to on camera drama, how do they handle audio only?
What kind of casting is involved? Some interesting names are
involved in this cat as well, So it's all about
cheating history audio podcasts and these very interesting people. I
think you're going to enjoy this conversation on today's word Balloon.
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(02:58):
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(03:18):
The League of Word Balloon Listeners. Check it out today
at Patreon dot com slash word Balloon. Welcome back everybody
time again for another word balloon the Comic Book Conversation Show.
John stutters here, although we're deviating from comic books and
we're talking about one of my favorite subjects, and that
is audio podcasting. And you know something, I'm going to
even give us the whole view of the gallery, so
(03:40):
you see everybody that's going to talk to us today.
But I'm happy to welcome back Christina ware Nunzod Philippus,
and happy to welcome Jennifer Sterner for the first time
on the show. Welcome everybody. Good to see everybody, good
to see you.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
So this is really exciting. I love audio dram I
was telling you guys off the air, A long time
old time radio fan, going back to my childhood. My
parents hooked me into it and it was magical to me,
I you know, especially growing up on TV and getting
this kind of full audio drama and stuff. So I'm
so thrilled that podcasting has really taken effect and brought
(04:20):
back this wonderful format to the American audience. So so yeah,
so only I mean Nuns and Christina, you guys have
been on before, and I know you have a big
background in you know, comics, graphic novels television as well.
But so so I don't know jump Ball, who should
talk first at about this new project.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, you know the thing is that all of us,
Christina and I work at the New York Film Academy
and we teach there, and then Jenny has come on
to teach and to be the associate chair of the
screenwriting Department, which I oversee you wherein also teaches. And
we we teach our students you go where the story
(05:03):
is going to take you whatever. It's the most natural
form for the story you want. And one of the
virtues we teach because you know, it's a screenwriting school
in a film school, so screenwriting is.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
What people come for.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And it was hard when I started teaching there to
get students to even be interested in writing television, which
is strange to say now because most of our kids
love television and I moved away from feature film. But
we try to introduce them to comics. And one of
the virtues we teach them in comics is that you're
not as limited by a budget. You find the right
(05:36):
artist who has the right skill, you can tell any
kind of story in a comic. It doesn't cost you
more the way it does to have effects laden story
or so on and so forth.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
And in the.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Last few years we've now expanded that we're teaching them podcasting.
And we've always loved old time radio shows like Greg
Rocca gave Christina as a present because Christina got very
fascinated by The Shadow, the old radio dramas of the
Shadow for us to listen to. And it's such an
amazing form to pull you in on voice alone sound effects,
(06:16):
you know, and just like have you fill in everything else,
but to have the sense that we that we start
with be sound is just a great way to build
a story. So we brought in some teachers there who
have experience in podcasts, and we sat in on their
class when they were being hired, and we sat in
on their class just for fun and watched it and
(06:37):
just kept thinking, this.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Is a form that we want to try something in.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, why not doing this?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
And it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Because it was easier or more expedient career wise, it
was just there's something beautiful about the form that we
just wanted to tell a story in that form. And
then this particular story started because well it's started because
there's a mass effect ride in at an amusement park
(07:08):
in Santa Clara, Clarita y Santa Clara, Santa Clara, and
we went up to because I wanted to go because
it was going to close and I'm a big mass
Effect fan, and Jenny is like amusement park, signed me up,
so we all went. Christina is not an amusement park fan,
but she's a huge mass.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Effect fan, so we we we we went there and
then we explored.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
We stayed in San Jose and we explored San Jose
and Jenny has massive yelp skills, like wherever we would go,
she would find the greatest restaurants or taverns or whatnot.
And she found a place called Five Points in San
Jose and we were there just having food and drink
and drinking.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Drinking, yeah, drinking, Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There we were just talking and I guess we were
talking about time and my personal theory of time travel
is it's really interesting when you do the terminator thing
in history can't be changed. I know, Terminator two undid
that and said if you really want it badly enough,
you can change. And then Terminator three was like, or
not so fast, you can't again, and so on and
(08:16):
so forth.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
And they've been dancing with that.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
But that clean clear first Terminator movie notion of everything
that could be done by time travel already was done
by time travel. We just started kicking around, well what's
a cool time travel story? Because it's a great concept,
but there's no real interesting story if you can't do
anything with time travel.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
And so we just started talking.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
About, well, what it would it be like if you
what would happen to the people who if they were
taken out of their time nothing would change. That kind
of has to suck to be that person. And then
one of the first we went to was Amelia Earhart.
You know, she just she vanished, right, nobody knows what
happened to her? Yea, well what happens if someone pulled
her out of her time? And from there we literally extrapolated, like, okay,
(09:03):
what's because time travel stories are always about something went
wrong and we're going to use time travel to fix it.
So we just started picturing what went wrong, what's somebody
trying to fix and what happens when they discover you
can't change anything? So instead they decided to like cheat
and grab people to help them fix their present. Because
for me, the whole appeal of time travel is you
get to do over, you get to start again, you
(09:24):
get to fix it all, and it avoids the hard
work of fixing the world that got screwed up in
the first place. So this character is going to fix
the world that got screwed up in the first place,
but she's going to do it with the help of
people that history hasn't necessarily been kind to, who that
she can pull and help because they have skills that
she'll need. That's really where it all. And I don't
(09:46):
know if we had been having this conversation at a
restaurant as opposed to a tavern, if we would have
come up with this story.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I think.
Speaker 5 (09:54):
Well, also five points to going along with pulling people
from history. Five points is a bar that is themed
around five points New York, so Gangs of New York,
and it's got like all these like famous gangsters and everything,
Billy the Butcher and everything up on murals all over
the bar.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
So we're definitely.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
In a history is cool kind of literal space and
then kind of talking with time travel and who would
they take and just kind of all rolled with cocktails
and price as happens.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
That's great no, I think that's awesome. Tell us you know,
obviously let the people know the title and where they
could find it.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
Obviously, well it's called cheating history. So we were playing
around with that whole concept. And the pilot episode is
up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and like a
whole bunch of other just podcasting sites, so very easy to.
Speaker 6 (10:51):
Fill podcasts on YouTube, it's up on YouTube as well.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Hey, great and smart because truly, I you know, for
years I was just doing audio only. And even then
I had at a seminar and Chris Hardwick was there
and he's like, why is it your stuff on YouTube?
And I'm like, it's not cats playing with themselves, it's
you know, it's just it's it's audio. It's an Audioay,
It's like, get it on YouTube, and no, absolutely, my god,
(11:16):
it is. It is the place to be. But it's
great that you're everywhere where audio.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Is absolutely just trying to spread it far and wide.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, and we we we picked the brains of those
teachers who work in that space.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
More and so a lot of our.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Road mapping of launching the podcast came from their advice,
and a lot of our road mapping of how to
launch the Kickstarter itself for it. And that's the other
thing is where we're kickstarting. We recorded the pilot and
we did it in a sort of let's all get
together and make a podcast kind of vibe, where all
(11:55):
our actors work for free, our sounded work for free,
our composer work for free. Well, wow, we can't keep
asking people to work for free, of course, so we
put together a budget to pay them for the pilot
and for season one. And that's what we're doing on Kickstarter,
is we're trying to raise enough money to get a
first season together, and so we're following advice on how
(12:20):
to run successful Kickstarter campaigns from people we know who've
run successful Kickstarter campaigns. And that's the beauty of working
at a film school is that everyone there is making
art and offering insight as to the art itself and
to the business of the art. And so you feel
like when when I was younger, I felt like, oh,
when you're I'm a writer, and when I teach.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
It'll be when my career is done. This entire school
is the New York Film Academy, filled with teachers. Nobody's
career is done. They're all still working.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So we're all bringing back insight as to what we
encountered when we tried this or that, and we become
each other's support network. And I have to tell you
a whole bunch of the teachers have supported the kickstarter.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
It's a great community to be part of.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Jenny, forgive me, have you been on camera? Because you
really do look familiar? And forgive me if I'm not
associating you with on camera work.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
I have not been on camera, but.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Okay, whatever again, you know Jewell Stay from uh you know,
a Firefly and all that stuff. We were at a convention.
I didn't I wasn't watching it at the time, and
I'm sitting in a lobby and I'm like, I'm sorry,
she's like fireflying. No, it's like startgated Lance. I'm like, yes, okay,
now we're now we're don't forgive me, Jenny, but.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
Yeah, you look like hilariously I knew her from Nickelodeon's
TV show Space Cases.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That's fantastic. That's great, so Fort and you know, again,
that's great that you were able to assemble everybody. Christina.
Let me ask you, like, like, do you guys think
is everyone committed? If you guys get the funding to
come back, or are you gonna have to obviously recast?
Speaker 7 (13:58):
No, I feel like everyone's really And the thing is
one of the one of the people were working with
is one of our other teachers, Collette Friedman, who I
feel like knows everyone. She's just one of those people
who knows everyone, and she is She's playing our Amelia Earhart,
and she helped us line up a whole bunch of.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Other actors for the show.
Speaker 7 (14:15):
So we have all these people set up who aren't
even in the pilot, because we've got characters that are
going to be recruited as the season goes on.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And they're all sitting there.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
Being like, yes, we want you to get funding because
we want to be able to record season one. So
we've got an amazing cast line up. Nancio, Jenny Am
I allowed to say, who are our big person in
the pilot is?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I was like, So Collette hooked us up with John Cassier,
who was a crip keeper. Sure, do we want to
hold back who he's playing or do we want to.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Well, those of you haven't listened to the pilot, which
is available to listen to pause at this moment, go
listen to.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
The pilot for two one. He's playing Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
Yep, no one knows what happened to him, so yep,
so he's been displaced from time because there's at least
one character in this who She's trying to assemble a
team full of heroic sorts who can save her future
from the sort of oppressive government. But somebody else is like, no,
you don't topple oppressive governments with good guys like Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
You need people who will do the dirty work that
needs to get done. So he picked the dirtiest workers
that you can find, and so he's not just gonna
pick Jack the Ripper. That's literally spoiler for the last
minute of the podcast.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
That's who shows up.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
It's great because we have John Cassier and he has
like one line in the polote, but he has been
spreading the word trying to get people to back the kickstarter,
so we know he's on board.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yeah, and we've got.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Basically when the sea and continues, our hero doctor Elna
Reid is assembling a team full of people that are
either heroes or anti heroes, people like Yasuke the African
Samurai our or d b. Cooper, who's a bit less
of a hero, but he and he's not a bad person,
(16:24):
very nice to the flight attendant's on that flight.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
He didn't he didn't hurt anyone. It was a it
was a great scheme. So they need him to plan stuff.
And then we've got Virginia Dare from the Lost Colony
of Rono. But on the other side it's Jack the Ripper.
We're going to get Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who theoretically they
do know how she died. She's like the source of
(16:51):
a lot of the Dracula legends, Like this.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Is like.
Speaker 6 (16:56):
Serial female serial killer.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
She Wow, she murdered a bunch of young women and
bathed in their blood so that she could stay young.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Okay, sure, as you do, as you do.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And the only member, the only high ranking member of
the SSS who was never caught, Heinrich Mueller. And then
Jesse Evans, the gunfighter that Billy the Kid was scared of.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Interesting, Billy the Kid wrote a.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Letter when he was in prison saying, I'm afraid that
Jesse Evans is going to get me.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Wow. That must have been fun trying to find these,
you know, people that you can say displaced and everything,
and you know legends that you know, under mysterious circumstances
disappeared or we don't know what happened, you know.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, And in Batho's case, they locked her in her castle, okay,
her to die, and eventually her bodyguard came out and
said she's dead.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
So in this case, that team is like, but do
we know it? And they're really taking a chance, and
since she's able to come with them, they're correct. She
did not die in that castle.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Everyone else just sort of vanished. Evans when he got
out of jail himself, just got on a horse, rode
off into the sunset and just disappeared, Okay, d V Cooper,
as we know, jumped out of that plane. Who knows
what happened him.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Jack the Ripper just never caught, Yeah, yeah, never committed.
His final murder.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Was working with Oda Nobunaga in Japan, and after Oda Nobunaga.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Lost, Okay, they claim that the other side saw Yaske
as a man of honor and released him, but nobody
knows where he went or what he did after that.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Interesting, No, it's that's that's cool all right now. Again,
I know I know Nunsen and Christina's CV to a
degree and everything. Jenny, give us your background more sure?
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Well, I uh, I know these two because I actually
did go to NAIFA from my master's degree a while ago,
and then I started working there. I now teach and
the associate chair at the New York cindeg the Screenwriting Apartment.
I worked with Christina for a while on a comic
for My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, which we did
(19:10):
not get to go forward, but it was aw fun
time when we were working on it.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
We had so much fun, like watching the episodes and
pitching ideas and.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
It was so much fun.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
We were like very immersed in the pony world and
it was awesome. I was the showrunner on a anthology
web series called Apartment thirty, which is sort of about
an airbnb that has a guestbook that grants wishes whether
they're good or bad. And I wrote one of the episodes,
which is a horror episode, which is super fun. Cool,
(19:43):
And now working with these guys on this awesome podcast
and hopefully and.
Speaker 7 (19:48):
The little plug for Jenny. That web series is available
on YouTube Apartment thirty.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
People should go check it out.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Isn't that amazing? Truly? And especially Christina Nunn's coming. You
know our list, right guys back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Which,
by the way, I finally got to interview Robert wool
after I've interviewed you guys. Oh yeah, it was. It
was fantastic. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And I love that he's he's quick on his feet too,
like like he like a conversation with Robert. There's there's
no roadmap for it. It's just gonna go where his
head goes. And that was That was every day on
the staff there.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
No, I believe it, but it is. Isn't an interesting
and certainly television itself has certainly changed since ourlos But
isn't it interesting that the kids you guys are teaching
they don't want to be with TV. And every time
I talk to film people and television people, animation people,
I'm like, you know, the younger audience, they're all going
to the kids if you will, they they're all they
(20:46):
got to have a hula hoopes, they're you know, stret
veins and then they're all on TikTok, all grouped up
on God. But no, you know, the short the short
attention and also the short content and I'm like, you know, okay,
you guys are the biz and women, it's like, what
are you doing with short content?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Now?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Again? I mean, I'm assuming for the podcast, it's like,
you know, maybe thirty up thirty minutes. What are the
experts telling you guys for drama? What works for podcasts.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Are pilots about twenty five minutes. It's usually the idea
because a lot of people will do it on a commute,
So what's a good amount of time that like you
get in your car and you want to put something on.
So that was definitely, you know, some of the guidelines
that we were given for.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
That, I understand. Yeah, you know, I think Quibi and
that idea of short content nine minutes or whatever, and
even Jennifer Jennifer for Apartment thirty. I have another friend
that made a YouTube series when YouTube was confined in
nine minutes before I really expanded. I don't know if
you had that restriction with Apartment.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
They didn't have the restriction, but we were when we
were in the writer's room, we were trying like.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
Ten minutes or less.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
I did, Yeah, you know, if we could get into
like seven, that was great. But I think they all
came out around ten minutes. But yeah, it's that idea
of like, yes, there's definitely longer form content on YouTube.
I certainly watch people who put thirty minute videos or
more out, but like in general, it's something that you
can you can get in and out real fast. So
(22:16):
if you can make it ten or under, that's that's
the idea, and you can, you know, it's it's so
funny when we were doing that web series, so many
of the people that I had working with me that
or the other writers are used to TV feature and
it was like, no, you can tell a great story, guys,
in under ten minutes.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
You can. You can absolutely do it.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
You can make something that's engaging, great characters, are, conflict, structure,
all of that.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
You've got to write.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
It's a challenge, but it's fun and it's a great
you know, it's a great way for people to get
in and out and get a story.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
So love it. Love the short content, but I love
the short form as well.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
And I was gonna say we could have targeted shorter
like than that, but once we got the word that
you know, just keep it under half an hour, and
that seems like a reasonable length. The old time radio
fan in me, you know, because all those shadow episodes
were like.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Twenty nine thirty minutes long.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, like, so we we're just aiming for that much
story in each episode.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Now, and also,
do you have act breaks? I mean again, you can
obviously when you decide to start putting it out as
a series. I'm listening to the Star Trek Con audio
drama currently. You know, they're three episodes in and they
have act breaks in everything. And then you know, hey, listen,
I run commercials. There will be breaks in this. I
(23:40):
don't kid yourself, so no, but you know, yeah, you know. So,
so we didn't. We didn't, We didn't.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
We didn't paste it specifically like three acts where we
were deliberate in the breaking. But there are specific points
in the story where if we got sponsorship, we would
be able to break the story cleanly. And it does
break into three acts simply because that's just how we
think of story beginning.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Middle, and end.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
So so we we have it run straight through. But
there are if you're listening clearly, you can hear clear
moments where this phase of the story has come to
a close and now another phase of the story has
kicked in and it you know, there's the opening, there's
(24:33):
the whole middle conflict, and then there's the journey.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
From an acting standpoint, are are people?
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Are they all in LA?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Are they all in the studio together? I know certainly
since COVID, uh, you know, that's you know, rarely an
occurrence or even pre COVID where people might not you know,
just do their part and then you layer everything together.
How are you doing well?
Speaker 7 (24:59):
So interestingly, for the pilot, we did all of our
main actors were here in LA.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
We've got two people.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
One of our actors is in Chicago and he recorded
his line separately and sent them to us. But we
did We used Knipha's sound recording booth to record the pilot,
and then realized it was only big enough for one person,
so we couldn't even have them playing off of each other.
It was like, oh, we're going to record one person's lines,
we're going to record the other and then cut them together.
(25:27):
But we wanted that feeling of everyone together. Going forward,
I think it's going to be more expedient. We're going
to have people record their lines at home or wherever,
if they have their own recording studios, or whatnot, and
then we'll assemble everything together. But we wanted that excitement
and energy for the pilot of getting them begin and.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I think you know with what we want to do
with the actors is we're going to we're going to
try and get SAG contracts so that the actors who
are SAG members will you know, and actors who are
trying to become SAG members. Whatever small amount this pace
goes towards that through this. So what we want to
do is make this as convenient and easy for them
(26:05):
to fit.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Amongst their other jobs as possible.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
So if this gets funded, the first thing we're going
to do, because we have it all mapped and even
have certain scenes in our head, it's just sit down
and write the entire season and then send everyone the
entire season and then have them just in one sitting
or whatever's most convenient for them, record all their lines
for the whole season, and then we'll do the heavy
(26:29):
lifting on the edit. We have a sound editor and
a sound designer and it did an excellent job in this.
But you know, it's crowdfunding, so you know, when we
move on to season one, the most likely outcome is
that the three of us will be doing the editing,
and that we're going to have him on as a
sort of post production supervisor, sort of making recommendations on
(26:50):
sound effects and assembling an initial cut for us, and
then we'll move and fine tune so that we're not
taking advantage of anybody working at a low rate or like,
we want people for the time they put in to.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Get paid fairly.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
So what we do to keep it low budget is
organize our work in such a way that they can
do it as quickly as possible makes sense, so that
they can get on with their lives and hopefully still
and still put everything into the performance.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Like it was great actually.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Having them in the in the booth this one time,
and and but it would take so much more time
and that's a much bigger ask for them totally get
especially other jobs to audition for and to do well.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And especially if they're all, you know, spread out and everything,
like you said, having one person in Chicago, I don't know,
do I know the actor who's the actor from Chicago?
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Because name is David Blitzed playing.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
He plays our doctor Allen Croatoa, the uh, the mentor
of our lead actress, our lead character Ellie who is
collecting his less than savory people who will get things done.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Do you want to name check everybody else that's in
the cast?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Okay, So Doctor Eleanor Reid is played by Winter Bassett,
who is amazing and a sort of now just exploding
as an actor. So I suspect we're getting her on
the right side of her career. She she just recently
had a movie Lost Joy come out, And as we mentioned,
(28:30):
Collette Friedman is playing Amelia Earhart. Collect brought Winter to
the table. Collect brought David Blix to the table, John
Cassier to the table. David Blix is playing doctor Allen
Crowatoa and John Cassier is playing Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Now in the pilot, we also have.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
A military colonel played by Chris Ianacone who is a
friend of ours, who is one of the voices on
the Get Bien other podcast where they talk about you know, hey,
here's a movie that's popular, Get me another one of those,
you know, like get me a Diehard but sit it
on a plane or those kinds of things.
Speaker 7 (29:11):
Yeah, I think Ninzio is failing to mention the two
most important actors in the pilot. There is a young
there is a young private, a soldier played by Ninziod Philippis.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is a big acting career.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
And then featured throughout our show is the creepy AI
Voice of the Future, and that is voiced by Jenny Sterner.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That's great, Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. No,
you know, honestly, I love the fact that as the
studios are are trying to figure out their worlds and
over the air network TV is trying to figure out
its world that independent creators with the ability of crowdfunding
(29:57):
and the platforms like audio with new avenues of entertainment,
and I think I am you know, hey, thirty years
in Chicago radio and you know twenty years now as
a podcast you're doing interviews. So no, I'm all for it.
And again, I just love how the technology has democratized
the ability to storytelling everything. And I'm glad you guys
(30:19):
are all doing that. I think it's wonderful.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
Yeah, that's one of the things we've been teaching our
students as we've brought in you know, comic book writing
and web series and podcasting.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
We're like, look, you know, sure, we're all like.
Speaker 7 (30:30):
The dream is you know, the big Hollywood movie, you know,
the hit TV show, but you also can get your
own material out there, and here are all these avenues
that allow you to do that.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
And it is like this, you know, with web series,
with podcasts, with games, with comics. Being able to crowdfunding,
kickstart and get everything out there is such a great
way to just make something. Just start getting your stories,
your voice out there. And it's something that's so accessible,
you know, So it's so great we we think about
(31:01):
you know, yeah, there are all those podcasts and things
that have really big name actors and people attached to them,
but anyone like you can make this. It's totally doable.
And that's such a great way to just be a creator.
And there's such a great time to be a creator.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
And you know, and Christina and I have been taking
two dusting up some of our ideas and making and
writing novels. And I have nothing against novels. I've prose
is more Christina's form than mine. So I'm like, let's
do this, and then if I try to write it,
it would be like three pages. And she's like, Okay,
let's actually put some pros into this thing.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
But well, one of the things I like about doing
a podcast or doing a comedy or.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Doing any of these others, is it gets you that
sense of community you don't get with a novel. Like
when you write a novel. The only community that Christina
I have is each other. And then if we send
it to an editor or but to make this podcast
had to go and work with these actors who are amazing,
and then we did when when we wrote the pilot,
(32:05):
we then sat down with Collette and Winter and did
a table read, and then we did a whole rewrite
based on their feedback on how these characters would think
or act. And there's so many writers who their whole
point of view is you know, I want my words
exactly as I wrote them put out there, and I'm like,
(32:28):
you want And if you were getting a comic, you
want the artists to shape that story probably more than
you like you You put the skeleton. Everything else is them.
And in this podcast, it's the same with the actors.
I mean, and you make a film or TV, there's
a director, there's a whole lot of and there's a
there's a real good chance that your voice as a
writer maybe gets drowned out, particularly in film, gets drowned
(32:52):
out in a podcast. We are the directors, sure, but
because it's all words and sound effects, the relationship is
really us and the actors. What what are we saying?
Speaker 4 (33:09):
What do we mean when we're saying this?
Speaker 7 (33:11):
And oh, I realized I did want to name check
one other person as we went through all of this,
which is our brilliant composer for the Pilot, who.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Also happens to be mine in Nunzia's nephew, Max Kaufman.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
He's he is an up and coming musician, composer, and
when Nunzia's talking about community and working with people like
we had some great conversations with him when he was
asking us, you know, what's the feel you're going for here?
Like things I don't necessarily think about when I'm looking
for music, and he did some great original pieces for
us for the Pilot.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
That's excellent. No, that's like the colorist you know in
a comic book that can add mood. Yet no music
and especially again it's all audio. So music is incredibly important.
And that's wonderful that you know your nephew's talented and
you give him the opportunity. That's wonderful.
Speaker 7 (34:00):
Still, remember when he was you know, yay II and
arguing about like bedtime or thing like this, which he
will hate me for saying. But now he's like a
full grown adult and really talented, and it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
One I have had one quote with regardless to him
and bedtime, and he's going to listen to this podcast
and he is going to text us and be so
pissed because he's a he's an adult like he's and
and and and a very talented composer. But I still
remember when he was told that.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
He had to take a bath.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
And then he could watch one more episode of I
believe it was, uh was a Thomas the Train one
one more episode of Thomas and he was and he
looked up in his little kid voice and went, I
have an excellent idea.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
How about I watch one more episode and then.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I take a bath? There you go, very nice. That's sorry, Max,
We've all been there. Don't worry about it, man. They
all have stories on us. That's what that's what the
that's what the other people do that. So it's fine.
What kind of Kickstarter premium are you offering premiums for?
(35:16):
You know, for the various tears? You know what what.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Do you so, so we did.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
We did some stuff as add ons, like we signed
books and stuff. Those will be add ons, So you
make a pledge and then you can add on a
book or stickers that we designed with the logo for
the podcast, or logos from within the world of the podcast.
But the Tears themselves, there's one where we where they
(35:43):
we will do a script consult on anyone's script. There's
another where the like this is on the high end,
stuff like you can name a character in the podcast. Uh,
there's one where you can voice a role in the podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
I don't going to promise it's going to be a
big role. We have no idea.
Speaker 7 (36:05):
But we also have the dedication like getting an episode
dedicated to a person.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
You can do that too.
Speaker 5 (36:11):
And we are planning on attending Comic Con next year
and so one of the tears is get a meal
and we'll hang out with you.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
The world.
Speaker 7 (36:25):
But we also have planned some bonus content that we
want to record with our lead actors, so like the
private logs of doctor Ellie Reid, or.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
Some alertatious letters between Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
Things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I gotta ask because I keep hearing in the background
is a pet having trouble. It's totally no, no, guys,
it's so fine. It's it's so fun. I love when
the pets walk past.
Speaker 7 (36:57):
I was wondering if it could be heard she's been
having like I guess all small dogs have a problem
with collapsing tracheas and things like that, and so it
makes it it sounds worse than it is. We're assured
by our vet that she can breathe and she's fine,
but it does sound like, oh my god, she's hacking.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
She can't breathe.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
It well, she also has like a touch of bronchitis.
So what happens is she'll call from the bronchitis. It'll
make the trachy collapse, and for the next half an
hour or so, she'll just think there's something stuck in
her throat and there really isn't. She looks so annoyed
when it happens, She's like, why isn't this clearing?
Speaker 6 (37:35):
She can?
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 8 (37:38):
That's what we're gonna say that.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
There was a distressed bet so I am assured everything's good.
Everybody watching it.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
She's fine, well fine, adjacent let's call it that. I mean,
she would not agree that she's but it's not as
bad as she makes it sound. She's also a little
bit of a drama queen. So there's that.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
That's all right, But were you going to say something regarding, yeah,
you know, the tears or whatever other bonus things that
you're you got going on for the.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
I think, yeah, we we have bonus content. That was
what Preson was talking about where we were. The bonus
content is worked into the budget for season one, so
when we have because these are just going to be
single character narrated short clips that just add flavor to
the story. So if you never listen to them, the
(38:30):
story still works, but if you want a little bit
more about the character's point of view or in the
case of doctor Reed of Ellie, how she came about.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
Came upon this plan, and.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
We're like, the second episode is gonna put all the
pieces that you need to know in, but then the
bonus content is going to fill in all sorts of
her life story stuff that and the same thing with
Amelia Earhart's letters. The stuff you need to know is
in the show, but this bonus stuff will fill it out.
And so we're just going to have them when they
(39:02):
record the season, record that stuff, and then we'll send
it out to also anyone who pledged above a certain level.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
And that level is pretty low on.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
The list of tiers, honestly, because we want most people
to get it, and then we have tiers above that
that we're going to create a discord server and we're
going to go on the discord server and people can be.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Can ask questions, ask questions.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Or or talk to each other or talk to us
about it, and then we'll send out PDFs of the
script for the pilot and the season breakdown that we
did and the series breakdown that we did that we're
going to mark up with our comments on how we
came up with this stuff, sort of taking a page
from what dark Horse did on our Dragon Age comics
(39:53):
with those library editions where we got to put our
thought processes in the margins.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
We're going to do that on those on those documents
and then get about people.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
That sounds great, Yeah, you know, it reminds me of
the many episodes we got during the aughts on certain
shows that you know, during like I remember Galactica did
that that had a whole storyline that was on many episodes. Yeah, no,
that's it's smart.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
And you remember not knowing about those many episodes in Galactica.
And then they would go like previously on Balsar Galacia
and they show me a scene and I'm like, I
never saw that scene? Where'd that come from? Like I
got so angry. I was like that, you can't. You
can't insert a fake scene. And somebody's like, it's not fake.
They released it separately.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
It's true. No, it's it's it is so interesting. And
I and I again with audio podcasts and stuff, we're
in that same period of experimentation and everything. So I
think I think that's great. Any any uh pitfall advice
that you were given by the people that are, you know,
experts in audio drummer or even things you've experienced making
the pilot that you would tell someone you know to
(40:55):
avoid X.
Speaker 7 (40:56):
You know, it's interesting because we were told upfront, and
we were really hard to do this in the pilot
of like not having too many voices because it is
all audio and you want to.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Keep track of everyone.
Speaker 7 (41:06):
So the bulk of the pilot is between two characters.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
We got to the end with an end to.
Speaker 5 (41:11):
Edit, and.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Well, you know, what.
Speaker 7 (41:14):
I'm just gonna throw his name on out there. Greg
Recca listened to it and he was like, your two
leads sound really similar.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Interesting, and so we were like, oh no.
Speaker 7 (41:25):
So our sound engineer was playing a little bit with
the pitch of one of them to sort of adjust
it and make sure that it's like you absolutely know
who's talking.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And we had to go to collect who plays Amelia,
and say, would it be all right if we brought
your pitch down a little bit to create a little
distance between you and Winter's Ellie. And to her credit,
because because I was worried, like you can't tell an
actor on a project where their voice is all that
(41:54):
they all they have to convey, Oh, we need to
fix your voice. And she literally said, always wanted a
deeper voice.
Speaker 6 (42:04):
Give me a throaty Belie, so nice. So yeah, she
was totally that's.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Great to hear, all right, I got to ask. Obviously
we mentioned that Christina is a big fan of the Shadow,
but as far as old time radio or even current
audio drama that you guys all admire, let's let's hear
I'll even uh, I'll switch and again we'll have the
roundtable happening here there we go. So, yeah, you know,
tell tell me your favorite audio dramas, either older or current.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
A current one I listened to as we were getting
started on this because I wanted to listen to other
stuff out there. That I really got sucked into was
ad Lusome, which and that was when I.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Was like, wait, this is Chris Pine, Like is that?
Speaker 7 (42:45):
Like we had like big names in there, but it
was very immersive and I was going to say really
quickly too. One of the things I think that's interesting
different from old time radio is headphones now, So like
I'd be walking down the street listening to this and
I could hear like sound on one side or the other,
and I was like.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
It's so immersive, this is so.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Amazing, absolutely great. But yeah, go ahead to anybody else favorite.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
Well, I.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
A long time ago ran into night Vale Welcome to
night Vale, So that's been I've left. Loved that one
for a long time and had like my I got
my dad into it, who got really nerdy about it,
and that was super fun. So and I really liked
lime Town when that one was on I it was
kind of a sci fi mystery. They I think they
(43:34):
did not end up getting enough funding to go forward
with it. So there's only two seasons, which is a
bummer because it ends on a really good Cliveyre that
we never got a finale to, but that one was
really good. And then for classics there's the like audio
dramas for I mean, the War of the World's the
original for it's like a classic is always a great
(43:56):
one that I always think of of that and how
cool like an entire world essentially listening to it and
being terrified of an innovation is so amazing.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Couldn't agree more incredible story and Winston Walls always said,
and I got to agree having heard so many of
his other radio shows. Radio really was his greatest medium.
I love his films and appreciate his experimentation. But yeah, man, no,
I'm a big fan of the third Man radio show.
He did The Lives of Harry Lyme, which is fanta
(44:27):
and it's just him being a comment and being crazy
and stuff, and it's wonderful. None's how about you?
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Well, I have to shout out the thrilling Adventure Hour,
even though a lot of my experience with it was
sitting in the audience while they were recording it, so
it's not it's kind of a cheat for me because
I did get to watch the actors be physical when
they were doing it too, But it just it's a
great and.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Then I'm going to go old time as well.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Besid Aside from The Shadow, which I love, the Hitchhiker's
Guide radio series really really influenced me when I was
in college, and then the radio shows they did of
the Star Wars movies, like I was.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Like they were just there was there was a space
when I was growing.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Up when we were past the age of these old
radio shows, and we are way far away from the
current age of podcasts. But it felt like they were
doing before their books on tape. They were doing these
sort of radio They were taking things and making radio versions.
In the case of Hitchhikers it was first, I believe,
but in the Star Wars it was definitely an adaptation.
(45:31):
But I love that stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Well really only in America did radio drama close down.
And I think sixty two in two years before I
was born. But I sadly, but but no, I am
thrilled at the rest of the world, you know, just
chugged along and everything. And in the seventies and early eighties,
(45:53):
CBS said the radio Mystery Theater and it was pretty
good for what it was. It was on AM AM,
so it didn't have the that we have now. And
like Christina, you're so right, how immersive You slip your
earbuts in and you are transported and it's absolutely so
I get it absolutely, And really, Nuns, you're right. Hitchhikers
was made for radio. Douglas Adams is the radio thing.
(46:16):
And again I constantly on BBC Radio seeing what's on
Channel four Extra and that's kind of the dramatic channel
and everything, and still great stuff is being made.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
And I remember too when I was in and this
is I don't think he'll wind. But when I went
to college. When we went to college, Greg had his
gaming group where he would like his group of they
played a Star Trek game and he missed them. So
he gathered all these people on his hallway from his
(46:50):
freshman year and cast them as characters from their campaign
and wrote a radio drama of an adventure for them
and cast me in it. And it was like I
had met him already and we had become friends, but
this was like one of the things that really accelerated
the friendship with him.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
And so.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
I had gone off to college, not sure whether I
was going to be a writer or an actor, and
then I did this and I was like, maybe I'll
be an actor. And then I founded a comedy troupe
and I went on stage and I'm like, I am
not an actor.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Fun to be in this one because it brought me
back to where I was like, oh, I can be
an actor when no one's looking at me.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
You know. I did stand up coming out of college
for a couple of years, and then thankfully I caught
the tail end of sketch comedy on radio and groups
like the Fire Sign Theater and The Credibility Gap and
The Committee, and I loved their albums. And thankfully here
(47:54):
in Chicago we had a couple of Second City vets
and they would come on the classic rock station and
do a three minute bit and they were the usual suspects,
and you know, so then when sports radio started here
in Chicago, I lucked in and I would do fake
commercials and SOCID parodies, but no, nuns, I hear you,
because it was so much better making something and playing
it rather than being on stage and you suck you
(48:17):
know or whatever you name your favorite halfle and everything,
and it's like, I'll pre record, I think that's safe.
Speaker 7 (48:24):
Oh, I admire people who do stand up that like
scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Yes, And the thing was the sketch comedy I did.
It was at Vassar College, and Faster is a fairly
left of center.
Speaker 4 (48:36):
My politics are left of center.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
But sure, when you're doing comedy, you're gonna piss people off,
and people at college age are easily pissed off.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
So it was just it was a.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Lot for me as someone who probably wouldn't have been
that comfortable on stage under the best of circumstances, but
to do comedy in front of angry college students, it.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Was like, okay, no, no, no, oh. And by the way,
did you ever listen to the Frantics?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Yes, I have, I even had, Oh god it one
of the who did I have on from the Frantics? Oh,
like Rick and I can't He was on one of
those Canadian on camera shows as well, but no, Frantic
Doctor Demento introduced me to the Frantics, So yeah, you.
Speaker 4 (49:22):
Know, I I love the Frantics.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
And to the horror of comedy, yes, the whole taekwon
leap sketch that goes into it or or and this
is cruder, but the person who goes off to the
bathroom and craps a piece of pie and it's not
it's not poop.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
It looks like a piece of pie.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
It's a whole piece, of course it is and it
and it's the kind of comedy that only works when
you're not physically showing it to us.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
And you forced the characters to just talk about it.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Hilarious. That's fantastic.
Speaker 4 (49:55):
No.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
I again, I also had the pleasure from Fireside Theater. Okay,
now I'm blank that his name. Uh, he's a great
voice actor too. I can't think of his name right now,
shame on me. But one of the surviving Fireside Theater people.
And yeah, it was a thrill because again as a
high school kid, I was listening to their comedy albums
and then you know, to actually talk to one of them,
it was like. And also Tony Hendra, whose Final Tamps
(50:19):
manager in the first movie and a big part of
National Lampoon Radio Hour and the albums, and I got
to interview him and thankfully, uh, the last couple of
years of his life, he assembled a new group doing
sketch comedy, audio sketch comedy and stuff. So you know, yeah, no,
I again. I am thrilled that the format is back
(50:41):
and you can do a lot with it as you
are proving with your project and everything. So let's uh,
let's give everybody a final plea to get give us
the details of your show.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
Okay, so is this full into me? Or do you
two want to do this? I talk a lot, but
you do it so well? Oh thanks?
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (51:05):
So our podcast is called Cheating History. It is a
sci fi time travel story. What is it that we've
been saying? The future is doomed, the past cannot be changed,
but what if you can cheat history a little bit?
It is available on Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts.
Please go listen to the pilot. We are kickstarting season one.
(51:29):
We really we've got a whole like big adventure planned
in mind, and we've got some great actors. We've got
a lead on a potentially really big name for season
one who we can't shout out just yet, but it
would be super exciting.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
So you know, check out.
Speaker 7 (51:44):
The pilot, check out the kickstarter campaign, and you know,
spread the word even if you if you can't donate,
you know, tell all your friends about it.
Speaker 6 (51:54):
Yeah, I mean one other little thing which is.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
All created and recorded put together by actual people, know AI.
As was mentioned earlier, the AI voice is me being
very robotic with a little bit of a filter, but
still me doing the recordings. So absolutely no at AI.
In fact, that's one of the big things that we're
(52:19):
talking about in the in the story is how damaging
it can be to our future.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
So I will also as as a shout out, say
there there are a lot of very.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
Talented actors that are lined up.
Speaker 5 (52:36):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
We have we have Ozzy.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Rodridriguez Rodriguez lined up to play dB Cooper. We have
Scout Party lined up to play Virginia Dare If you
haven't seen her movie Pilgrim, which was at Dances with
Films recently and I don't know when it will be
released more widely, but she is a revelation in that movie.
Speaker 4 (53:02):
And we have gotten.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Super super excited for writing Virginia Dere because we have
some really cool stuff lined up for her, including in
episode two she's going to face off against Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
So that's great, no, excellent and again like a good
first issue cheating history the pilot is available, so you can,
you know, hey, no obligation check it out. And if
you really really like the pilot, obviously support the kickstarter
and help these people out because I love what they're doing.
It's great. I mean truly, you know, Nuns sent the
(53:39):
email out or you both did, and I got it,
and I'm like, oh cool. And again I knew your
worked from your comics. I knew you. I enjoyed your
r list work, so I was already, you know, at
least willing to listen. Well, you convinced me. And that's
why the episode today so nice going and truly I
hope this all. I hope this all works out, and
truly I hope it's the first of many other storytelling
(54:03):
ideas for all of you, whether you all work together
or do separate projects as well.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I literally handed a piece of paper to Jenny a
couple of weeks ago, and that was like, if we
get this thing going and we want to do a
second podcast, here's a Western Oh fantastic.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
Oh man, Hey, by.
Speaker 6 (54:22):
The way, I love Mia Western.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Gun smoke and this I don't know if you guys
know Jimmy Stewart's one season radio show the six Shooter.
It is quintessential Jimmy Stewart and just Aweschucks and just
this gentle Western adventure that has Jimmy Stewart comedy and stuff.
But gun smoke, my god, it's like somebody. I mean,
it was such a shame that American radio wound down
(54:48):
when it did, because by the fifties the writing got better,
the acting got better. William Conrad, Jake and the Fat
Man and Cannon was I always call him the Spencer
Tracy of radio because you can that help but be
And also, by the way, the narrator of the Rocky
and Bullwinkle cartoons. You can't like. He is so compelling.
His voice is just so just deep and resonant and everything.
(55:11):
It's again, that's his best meeting. So I'm glad it's back,
and I'm glad you guys are playing it.
Speaker 7 (55:16):
That's that's sent well you absolutely no.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
So everybody check out Cheating, his cheating history, and uh
you know, in the meantime, if you can handle another
audio or video interview, check out the next word balloon
coming your way. But thanks a lot for listening and
all of you thanks for playing today.
Speaker 4 (55:35):
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Hi, everybody, Welcome back time again for word Balloon, the
comic book conversation show John Centris here, but we are
deviating from comic books today sort of. I've got non
Zo d Philippus and Christina Weir. They of course have
done a lot of comic books for Marvel and DC
and for Ony and a lot of companies, and they've
also done TV work as well. But actually I'm talking
(00:20):
about another one of my favorite subjects, and that is
audio drama. I'm a big fan of science fiction, I'm
a big fan of audio drama, and I'm a big
fan of time travel stories. We are getting all that
in a brand new podcast drama called Cheating History. But
I'm also happy to get to know Jennifer Sterner, who
is working with Nunzio and Christina on this excellent time
(00:44):
travel drama. Really interesting think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with
kind of a time twist. But instead of fictional literary characters,
real people that went missing, people like Amelia Arhart, people
like dB Cooper, people like Jack the Ripper, They're all
players in this very interesting story. Now they have released
(01:06):
the pilot for this and if you go to the
description of the episode, either audio or video. You'll find
the link to that. There's also a Kickstarter campaign because
while you can listen to the pilot now and it's
totally free, they would like to raise funds and make
a whole season. So we're here to talk about that,
the premiums that they're offering, but also the challenge of
(01:28):
all three of them to write an audio drama because
Nunzio and Christina did our lists back in the day
on HBO, and of course have done their comics and
now Jenny also is someone that has done scripted drama
on camera, working on shows like Apartment thirty. So it's
(01:50):
really great to get all these people who are used
to on camera drama, how do they handle audio only?
What kind of casting is involved? Some interesting names are
involved in this cat as well, So it's all about
cheating history audio podcasts and these very interesting people. I
think you're going to enjoy this conversation on today's word Balloon.
Word Balloon is brought to you by Alex Rossart dot com,
(02:13):
the official showcase for the legendary comic book artist Alex Ross.
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Alex's artwork captures the power and humanity of the world's
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(02:37):
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(02:58):
Balloon e magazine featuring transcriptions of some of my best conversations.
Plus you'll be part of the Word Balloon Book Club,
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(03:18):
The League of Word Balloon Listeners. Check it out today
at Patreon dot com slash word Balloon. Welcome back everybody
time again for another word balloon the Comic Book Conversation Show.
John stutters here, although we're deviating from comic books and
we're talking about one of my favorite subjects, and that
is audio podcasting. And you know something, I'm going to
even give us the whole view of the gallery, so
(03:40):
you see everybody that's going to talk to us today.
But I'm happy to welcome back Christina ware Nunzod Philippus,
and happy to welcome Jennifer Sterner for the first time
on the show. Welcome everybody. Good to see everybody, good
to see you.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
So this is really exciting. I love audio dram I
was telling you guys off the air, A long time
old time radio fan, going back to my childhood. My
parents hooked me into it and it was magical to me,
I you know, especially growing up on TV and getting
this kind of full audio drama and stuff. So I'm
so thrilled that podcasting has really taken effect and brought
(04:20):
back this wonderful format to the American audience. So so yeah,
so only I mean Nuns and Christina, you guys have
been on before, and I know you have a big
background in you know, comics, graphic novels television as well.
But so so I don't know jump Ball, who should
talk first at about this new project.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, you know the thing is that all of us,
Christina and I work at the New York Film Academy
and we teach there, and then Jenny has come on
to teach and to be the associate chair of the
screenwriting Department, which I oversee you wherein also teaches. And
we we teach our students you go where the story
(05:03):
is going to take you whatever. It's the most natural
form for the story you want. And one of the
virtues we teach because you know, it's a screenwriting school
in a film school, so screenwriting is.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
What people come for.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And it was hard when I started teaching there to
get students to even be interested in writing television, which
is strange to say now because most of our kids
love television and I moved away from feature film. But
we try to introduce them to comics. And one of
the virtues we teach them in comics is that you're
not as limited by a budget. You find the right
(05:36):
artist who has the right skill, you can tell any
kind of story in a comic. It doesn't cost you
more the way it does to have effects laden story
or so on and so forth.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
And in the.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Last few years we've now expanded that we're teaching them podcasting.
And we've always loved old time radio shows like Greg
Rocca gave Christina as a present because Christina got very
fascinated by The Shadow, the old radio dramas of the
Shadow for us to listen to. And it's such an
amazing form to pull you in on voice alone sound effects,
(06:16):
you know, and just like have you fill in everything else,
but to have the sense that we that we start
with be sound is just a great way to build
a story. So we brought in some teachers there who
have experience in podcasts, and we sat in on their
class when they were being hired, and we sat in
on their class just for fun and watched it and
(06:37):
just kept thinking, this.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Is a form that we want to try something in.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, why not doing this?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
And it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Because it was easier or more expedient career wise, it
was just there's something beautiful about the form that we
just wanted to tell a story in that form. And
then this particular story started because well it's started because
there's a mass effect ride in at an amusement park
(07:08):
in Santa Clara, Clarita y Santa Clara, Santa Clara, and
we went up to because I wanted to go because
it was going to close and I'm a big mass
Effect fan, and Jenny is like amusement park, signed me up,
so we all went. Christina is not an amusement park fan,
but she's a huge mass.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Effect fan, so we we we we went there and
then we explored.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
We stayed in San Jose and we explored San Jose
and Jenny has massive yelp skills, like wherever we would go,
she would find the greatest restaurants or taverns or whatnot.
And she found a place called Five Points in San
Jose and we were there just having food and drink
and drinking.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Drinking, yeah, drinking, Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There we were just talking and I guess we were
talking about time and my personal theory of time travel
is it's really interesting when you do the terminator thing
in history can't be changed. I know, Terminator two undid
that and said if you really want it badly enough,
you can change. And then Terminator three was like, or
not so fast, you can't again, and so on and
(08:16):
so forth.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
And they've been dancing with that.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
But that clean clear first Terminator movie notion of everything
that could be done by time travel already was done
by time travel. We just started kicking around, well what's
a cool time travel story? Because it's a great concept,
but there's no real interesting story if you can't do
anything with time travel.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
And so we just started talking.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
About, well, what it would it be like if you
what would happen to the people who if they were
taken out of their time nothing would change. That kind
of has to suck to be that person. And then
one of the first we went to was Amelia Earhart.
You know, she just she vanished, right, nobody knows what
happened to her? Yea, well what happens if someone pulled
her out of her time? And from there we literally extrapolated, like, okay,
(09:03):
what's because time travel stories are always about something went
wrong and we're going to use time travel to fix it.
So we just started picturing what went wrong, what's somebody
trying to fix and what happens when they discover you
can't change anything? So instead they decided to like cheat
and grab people to help them fix their present. Because
for me, the whole appeal of time travel is you
get to do over, you get to start again, you
(09:24):
get to fix it all, and it avoids the hard
work of fixing the world that got screwed up in
the first place. So this character is going to fix
the world that got screwed up in the first place,
but she's going to do it with the help of
people that history hasn't necessarily been kind to, who that
she can pull and help because they have skills that
she'll need. That's really where it all. And I don't
(09:46):
know if we had been having this conversation at a
restaurant as opposed to a tavern, if we would have
come up with this story.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I think.
Speaker 5 (09:54):
Well, also five points to going along with pulling people
from history. Five points is a bar that is themed
around five points New York, so Gangs of New York,
and it's got like all these like famous gangsters and everything,
Billy the Butcher and everything up on murals all over
the bar.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
So we're definitely.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
In a history is cool kind of literal space and
then kind of talking with time travel and who would
they take and just kind of all rolled with cocktails
and price as happens.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
That's great no, I think that's awesome. Tell us you know,
obviously let the people know the title and where they
could find it.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
Obviously, well it's called cheating history. So we were playing
around with that whole concept. And the pilot episode is
up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and like a
whole bunch of other just podcasting sites, so very easy to.
Speaker 6 (10:51):
Fill podcasts on YouTube, it's up on YouTube as well.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Hey, great and smart because truly, I you know, for
years I was just doing audio only. And even then
I had at a seminar and Chris Hardwick was there
and he's like, why is it your stuff on YouTube?
And I'm like, it's not cats playing with themselves, it's
you know, it's just it's it's audio. It's an Audioay,
It's like, get it on YouTube, and no, absolutely, my god,
(11:16):
it is. It is the place to be. But it's
great that you're everywhere where audio.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Is absolutely just trying to spread it far and wide.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, and we we we picked the brains of those
teachers who work in that space.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
More and so a lot of our.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Road mapping of launching the podcast came from their advice,
and a lot of our road mapping of how to
launch the Kickstarter itself for it. And that's the other
thing is where we're kickstarting. We recorded the pilot and
we did it in a sort of let's all get
together and make a podcast kind of vibe, where all
(11:55):
our actors work for free, our sounded work for free,
our composer work for free. Well, wow, we can't keep
asking people to work for free, of course, so we
put together a budget to pay them for the pilot
and for season one. And that's what we're doing on Kickstarter,
is we're trying to raise enough money to get a
first season together, and so we're following advice on how
(12:20):
to run successful Kickstarter campaigns from people we know who've
run successful Kickstarter campaigns. And that's the beauty of working
at a film school is that everyone there is making
art and offering insight as to the art itself and
to the business of the art. And so you feel
like when when I was younger, I felt like, oh,
when you're I'm a writer, and when I teach.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
It'll be when my career is done. This entire school
is the New York Film Academy, filled with teachers. Nobody's
career is done. They're all still working.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So we're all bringing back insight as to what we
encountered when we tried this or that, and we become
each other's support network. And I have to tell you
a whole bunch of the teachers have supported the kickstarter.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
It's a great community to be part of.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Jenny, forgive me, have you been on camera? Because you
really do look familiar? And forgive me if I'm not
associating you with on camera work.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
I have not been on camera, but.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Okay, whatever again, you know Jewell Stay from uh you know,
a Firefly and all that stuff. We were at a convention.
I didn't I wasn't watching it at the time, and
I'm sitting in a lobby and I'm like, I'm sorry,
she's like fireflying. No, it's like startgated Lance. I'm like, yes, okay,
now we're now we're don't forgive me, Jenny, but.
Speaker 5 (13:34):
Yeah, you look like hilariously I knew her from Nickelodeon's
TV show Space Cases.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That's fantastic. That's great, so Fort and you know, again,
that's great that you were able to assemble everybody. Christina.
Let me ask you, like, like, do you guys think
is everyone committed? If you guys get the funding to
come back, or are you gonna have to obviously recast?
Speaker 7 (13:58):
No, I feel like everyone's really And the thing is
one of the one of the people were working with
is one of our other teachers, Collette Friedman, who I
feel like knows everyone. She's just one of those people
who knows everyone, and she is She's playing our Amelia Earhart,
and she helped us line up a whole bunch of.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Other actors for the show.
Speaker 7 (14:15):
So we have all these people set up who aren't
even in the pilot, because we've got characters that are
going to be recruited as the season goes on.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
And they're all sitting there.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
Being like, yes, we want you to get funding because
we want to be able to record season one. So
we've got an amazing cast line up. Nancio, Jenny Am
I allowed to say, who are our big person in
the pilot is?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I was like, So Collette hooked us up with John Cassier,
who was a crip keeper. Sure, do we want to
hold back who he's playing or do we want to.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Well, those of you haven't listened to the pilot, which
is available to listen to pause at this moment, go
listen to.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
The pilot for two one. He's playing Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
Yep, no one knows what happened to him, so yep,
so he's been displaced from time because there's at least
one character in this who She's trying to assemble a
team full of heroic sorts who can save her future
from the sort of oppressive government. But somebody else is like, no,
you don't topple oppressive governments with good guys like Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
You need people who will do the dirty work that
needs to get done. So he picked the dirtiest workers
that you can find, and so he's not just gonna
pick Jack the Ripper. That's literally spoiler for the last
minute of the podcast.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
That's who shows up.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
It's great because we have John Cassier and he has
like one line in the polote, but he has been
spreading the word trying to get people to back the kickstarter,
so we know he's on board.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yeah, and we've got.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Basically when the sea and continues, our hero doctor Elna
Reid is assembling a team full of people that are
either heroes or anti heroes, people like Yasuke the African
Samurai our or d b. Cooper, who's a bit less
of a hero, but he and he's not a bad person,
(16:24):
very nice to the flight attendant's on that flight.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
He didn't he didn't hurt anyone. It was a it
was a great scheme. So they need him to plan stuff.
And then we've got Virginia Dare from the Lost Colony
of Rono. But on the other side it's Jack the Ripper.
We're going to get Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who theoretically they
do know how she died. She's like the source of
(16:51):
a lot of the Dracula legends, Like this.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Is like.
Speaker 6 (16:56):
Serial female serial killer.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
She Wow, she murdered a bunch of young women and
bathed in their blood so that she could stay young.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Okay, sure, as you do, as you do.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And the only member, the only high ranking member of
the SSS who was never caught, Heinrich Mueller. And then
Jesse Evans, the gunfighter that Billy the Kid was scared of.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Interesting, Billy the Kid wrote a.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Letter when he was in prison saying, I'm afraid that
Jesse Evans is going to get me.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Wow. That must have been fun trying to find these,
you know, people that you can say displaced and everything,
and you know legends that you know, under mysterious circumstances
disappeared or we don't know what happened, you know.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, And in Batho's case, they locked her in her castle, okay,
her to die, and eventually her bodyguard came out and
said she's dead.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
So in this case, that team is like, but do
we know it? And they're really taking a chance, and
since she's able to come with them, they're correct. She
did not die in that castle.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Everyone else just sort of vanished. Evans when he got
out of jail himself, just got on a horse, rode
off into the sunset and just disappeared, Okay, d V Cooper,
as we know, jumped out of that plane. Who knows
what happened him.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Jack the Ripper just never caught, Yeah, yeah, never committed.
His final murder.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Was working with Oda Nobunaga in Japan, and after Oda Nobunaga.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Lost, Okay, they claim that the other side saw Yaske
as a man of honor and released him, but nobody
knows where he went or what he did after that.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Interesting, No, it's that's that's cool all right now. Again,
I know I know Nunsen and Christina's CV to a
degree and everything. Jenny, give us your background more sure?
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Well, I uh, I know these two because I actually
did go to NAIFA from my master's degree a while ago,
and then I started working there. I now teach and
the associate chair at the New York cindeg the Screenwriting Apartment.
I worked with Christina for a while on a comic
for My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, which we did
(19:10):
not get to go forward, but it was aw fun
time when we were working on it.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
We had so much fun, like watching the episodes and
pitching ideas and.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
It was so much fun.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
We were like very immersed in the pony world and
it was awesome. I was the showrunner on a anthology
web series called Apartment thirty, which is sort of about
an airbnb that has a guestbook that grants wishes whether
they're good or bad. And I wrote one of the episodes,
which is a horror episode, which is super fun. Cool,
(19:43):
And now working with these guys on this awesome podcast
and hopefully and.
Speaker 7 (19:48):
The little plug for Jenny. That web series is available
on YouTube Apartment thirty.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
People should go check it out.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Isn't that amazing? Truly? And especially Christina Nunn's coming. You
know our list, right guys back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Which,
by the way, I finally got to interview Robert wool
after I've interviewed you guys. Oh yeah, it was. It
was fantastic. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And I love that he's he's quick on his feet too,
like like he like a conversation with Robert. There's there's
no roadmap for it. It's just gonna go where his
head goes. And that was That was every day on
the staff there.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
No, I believe it, but it is. Isn't an interesting
and certainly television itself has certainly changed since ourlos But
isn't it interesting that the kids you guys are teaching
they don't want to be with TV. And every time
I talk to film people and television people, animation people,
I'm like, you know, the younger audience, they're all going
to the kids if you will, they they're all they
(20:46):
got to have a hula hoopes, they're you know, stret
veins and then they're all on TikTok, all grouped up
on God. But no, you know, the short the short
attention and also the short content and I'm like, you know, okay,
you guys are the biz and women, it's like, what
are you doing with short content?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Now?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Again? I mean, I'm assuming for the podcast, it's like,
you know, maybe thirty up thirty minutes. What are the
experts telling you guys for drama? What works for podcasts.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Are pilots about twenty five minutes. It's usually the idea
because a lot of people will do it on a commute,
So what's a good amount of time that like you
get in your car and you want to put something on.
So that was definitely, you know, some of the guidelines
that we were given for.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
That, I understand. Yeah, you know, I think Quibi and
that idea of short content nine minutes or whatever, and
even Jennifer Jennifer for Apartment thirty. I have another friend
that made a YouTube series when YouTube was confined in
nine minutes before I really expanded. I don't know if
you had that restriction with Apartment.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
They didn't have the restriction, but we were when we
were in the writer's room, we were trying like.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
Ten minutes or less.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
I did, Yeah, you know, if we could get into
like seven, that was great. But I think they all
came out around ten minutes. But yeah, it's that idea
of like, yes, there's definitely longer form content on YouTube.
I certainly watch people who put thirty minute videos or
more out, but like in general, it's something that you
can you can get in and out real fast. So
(22:16):
if you can make it ten or under, that's that's
the idea, and you can, you know, it's it's so
funny when we were doing that web series, so many
of the people that I had working with me that
or the other writers are used to TV feature and
it was like, no, you can tell a great story, guys,
in under ten minutes.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
You can. You can absolutely do it.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
You can make something that's engaging, great characters, are, conflict, structure,
all of that.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
You've got to write.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
It's a challenge, but it's fun and it's a great
you know, it's a great way for people to get
in and out and get a story.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
So love it. Love the short content, but I love
the short form as well.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
And I was gonna say we could have targeted shorter
like than that, but once we got the word that
you know, just keep it under half an hour, and
that seems like a reasonable length. The old time radio
fan in me, you know, because all those shadow episodes
were like.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Twenty nine thirty minutes long.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, like, so we we're just aiming for that much
story in each episode.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Now, and also,
do you have act breaks? I mean again, you can
obviously when you decide to start putting it out as
a series. I'm listening to the Star Trek Con audio
drama currently. You know, they're three episodes in and they
have act breaks in everything. And then you know, hey, listen,
I run commercials. There will be breaks in this. I
(23:40):
don't kid yourself, so no, but you know, yeah, you know. So,
so we didn't. We didn't, We didn't.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
We didn't paste it specifically like three acts where we
were deliberate in the breaking. But there are specific points
in the story where if we got sponsorship, we would
be able to break the story cleanly. And it does
break into three acts simply because that's just how we
think of story beginning.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Middle, and end.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
So so we we have it run straight through. But
there are if you're listening clearly, you can hear clear
moments where this phase of the story has come to
a close and now another phase of the story has
kicked in and it you know, there's the opening, there's
(24:33):
the whole middle conflict, and then there's the journey.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
From an acting standpoint, are are people?
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Are they all in LA?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Are they all in the studio together? I know certainly
since COVID, uh, you know, that's you know, rarely an
occurrence or even pre COVID where people might not you know,
just do their part and then you layer everything together.
How are you doing well?
Speaker 7 (24:59):
So interestingly, for the pilot, we did all of our
main actors were here in LA.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
We've got two people.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
One of our actors is in Chicago and he recorded
his line separately and sent them to us. But we
did We used Knipha's sound recording booth to record the pilot,
and then realized it was only big enough for one person,
so we couldn't even have them playing off of each other.
It was like, oh, we're going to record one person's lines,
we're going to record the other and then cut them together.
(25:27):
But we wanted that feeling of everyone together. Going forward,
I think it's going to be more expedient. We're going
to have people record their lines at home or wherever,
if they have their own recording studios, or whatnot, and
then we'll assemble everything together. But we wanted that excitement
and energy for the pilot of getting them begin and.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I think you know with what we want to do
with the actors is we're going to we're going to
try and get SAG contracts so that the actors who
are SAG members will you know, and actors who are
trying to become SAG members. Whatever small amount this pace
goes towards that through this. So what we want to
do is make this as convenient and easy for them
(26:05):
to fit.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Amongst their other jobs as possible.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
So if this gets funded, the first thing we're going
to do, because we have it all mapped and even
have certain scenes in our head, it's just sit down
and write the entire season and then send everyone the
entire season and then have them just in one sitting
or whatever's most convenient for them, record all their lines
for the whole season, and then we'll do the heavy
(26:29):
lifting on the edit. We have a sound editor and
a sound designer and it did an excellent job in this.
But you know, it's crowdfunding, so you know, when we
move on to season one, the most likely outcome is
that the three of us will be doing the editing,
and that we're going to have him on as a
sort of post production supervisor, sort of making recommendations on
(26:50):
sound effects and assembling an initial cut for us, and
then we'll move and fine tune so that we're not
taking advantage of anybody working at a low rate or like,
we want people for the time they put in to.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Get paid fairly.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
So what we do to keep it low budget is
organize our work in such a way that they can
do it as quickly as possible makes sense, so that
they can get on with their lives and hopefully still
and still put everything into the performance.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Like it was great actually.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Having them in the in the booth this one time,
and and but it would take so much more time
and that's a much bigger ask for them totally get
especially other jobs to audition for and to do well.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And especially if they're all, you know, spread out and everything,
like you said, having one person in Chicago, I don't know,
do I know the actor who's the actor from Chicago?
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Because name is David Blitzed playing.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
He plays our doctor Allen Croatoa, the uh, the mentor
of our lead actress, our lead character Ellie who is
collecting his less than savory people who will get things done.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Do you want to name check everybody else that's in
the cast?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Okay, So Doctor Eleanor Reid is played by Winter Bassett,
who is amazing and a sort of now just exploding
as an actor. So I suspect we're getting her on
the right side of her career. She she just recently
had a movie Lost Joy come out, And as we mentioned,
(28:30):
Collette Friedman is playing Amelia Earhart. Collect brought Winter to
the table. Collect brought David Blix to the table, John
Cassier to the table. David Blix is playing doctor Allen
Crowatoa and John Cassier is playing Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Now in the pilot, we also have.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
A military colonel played by Chris Ianacone who is a
friend of ours, who is one of the voices on
the Get Bien other podcast where they talk about you know, hey,
here's a movie that's popular, Get me another one of those,
you know, like get me a Diehard but sit it
on a plane or those kinds of things.
Speaker 7 (29:11):
Yeah, I think Ninzio is failing to mention the two
most important actors in the pilot. There is a young
there is a young private, a soldier played by Ninziod Philippis.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is a big acting career.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
And then featured throughout our show is the creepy AI
Voice of the Future, and that is voiced by Jenny Sterner.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That's great, Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. No,
you know, honestly, I love the fact that as the
studios are are trying to figure out their worlds and
over the air network TV is trying to figure out
its world that independent creators with the ability of crowdfunding
(29:57):
and the platforms like audio with new avenues of entertainment,
and I think I am you know, hey, thirty years
in Chicago radio and you know twenty years now as
a podcast you're doing interviews. So no, I'm all for it.
And again, I just love how the technology has democratized
the ability to storytelling everything. And I'm glad you guys
(30:19):
are all doing that. I think it's wonderful.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
Yeah, that's one of the things we've been teaching our
students as we've brought in you know, comic book writing
and web series and podcasting.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
We're like, look, you know, sure, we're all like.
Speaker 7 (30:30):
The dream is you know, the big Hollywood movie, you know,
the hit TV show, but you also can get your
own material out there, and here are all these avenues
that allow you to do that.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
And it is like this, you know, with web series,
with podcasts, with games, with comics. Being able to crowdfunding,
kickstart and get everything out there is such a great
way to just make something. Just start getting your stories,
your voice out there. And it's something that's so accessible,
you know, So it's so great we we think about
(31:01):
you know, yeah, there are all those podcasts and things
that have really big name actors and people attached to them,
but anyone like you can make this. It's totally doable.
And that's such a great way to just be a creator.
And there's such a great time to be a creator.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
And you know, and Christina and I have been taking
two dusting up some of our ideas and making and
writing novels. And I have nothing against novels. I've prose
is more Christina's form than mine. So I'm like, let's
do this, and then if I try to write it,
it would be like three pages. And she's like, Okay,
let's actually put some pros into this thing.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
But well, one of the things I like about doing
a podcast or doing a comedy or.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Doing any of these others, is it gets you that
sense of community you don't get with a novel. Like
when you write a novel. The only community that Christina
I have is each other. And then if we send
it to an editor or but to make this podcast
had to go and work with these actors who are amazing,
and then we did when when we wrote the pilot,
(32:05):
we then sat down with Collette and Winter and did
a table read, and then we did a whole rewrite
based on their feedback on how these characters would think
or act. And there's so many writers who their whole
point of view is you know, I want my words
exactly as I wrote them put out there, and I'm like,
(32:28):
you want And if you were getting a comic, you
want the artists to shape that story probably more than
you like you You put the skeleton. Everything else is them.
And in this podcast, it's the same with the actors.
I mean, and you make a film or TV, there's
a director, there's a whole lot of and there's a
there's a real good chance that your voice as a
writer maybe gets drowned out, particularly in film, gets drowned
(32:52):
out in a podcast. We are the directors, sure, but
because it's all words and sound effects, the relationship is
really us and the actors. What what are we saying?
Speaker 4 (33:09):
What do we mean when we're saying this?
Speaker 7 (33:11):
And oh, I realized I did want to name check
one other person as we went through all of this,
which is our brilliant composer for the Pilot, who.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Also happens to be mine in Nunzia's nephew, Max Kaufman.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
He's he is an up and coming musician, composer, and
when Nunzia's talking about community and working with people like
we had some great conversations with him when he was
asking us, you know, what's the feel you're going for here?
Like things I don't necessarily think about when I'm looking
for music, and he did some great original pieces for
us for the Pilot.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
That's excellent. No, that's like the colorist you know in
a comic book that can add mood. Yet no music
and especially again it's all audio. So music is incredibly important.
And that's wonderful that you know your nephew's talented and
you give him the opportunity. That's wonderful.
Speaker 7 (34:00):
Still, remember when he was you know, yay II and
arguing about like bedtime or thing like this, which he
will hate me for saying. But now he's like a
full grown adult and really talented, and it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
One I have had one quote with regardless to him
and bedtime, and he's going to listen to this podcast
and he is going to text us and be so
pissed because he's a he's an adult like he's and
and and and a very talented composer. But I still
remember when he was told that.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
He had to take a bath.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
And then he could watch one more episode of I
believe it was, uh was a Thomas the Train one
one more episode of Thomas and he was and he
looked up in his little kid voice and went, I
have an excellent idea.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
How about I watch one more episode and then.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I take a bath? There you go, very nice. That's sorry, Max,
We've all been there. Don't worry about it, man. They
all have stories on us. That's what that's what the
that's what the other people do that. So it's fine.
What kind of Kickstarter premium are you offering premiums for?
(35:16):
You know, for the various tears? You know what what.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Do you so, so we did.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
We did some stuff as add ons, like we signed
books and stuff. Those will be add ons, So you
make a pledge and then you can add on a
book or stickers that we designed with the logo for
the podcast, or logos from within the world of the podcast.
But the Tears themselves, there's one where we where they
(35:43):
we will do a script consult on anyone's script. There's
another where the like this is on the high end,
stuff like you can name a character in the podcast. Uh,
there's one where you can voice a role in the podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
I don't going to promise it's going to be a
big role. We have no idea.
Speaker 7 (36:05):
But we also have the dedication like getting an episode
dedicated to a person.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
You can do that too.
Speaker 5 (36:11):
And we are planning on attending Comic Con next year
and so one of the tears is get a meal
and we'll hang out with you.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
The world.
Speaker 7 (36:25):
But we also have planned some bonus content that we
want to record with our lead actors, so like the
private logs of doctor Ellie Reid, or.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
Some alertatious letters between Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
Things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I gotta ask because I keep hearing in the background
is a pet having trouble. It's totally no, no, guys,
it's so fine. It's it's so fun. I love when
the pets walk past.
Speaker 7 (36:57):
I was wondering if it could be heard she's been
having like I guess all small dogs have a problem
with collapsing tracheas and things like that, and so it
makes it it sounds worse than it is. We're assured
by our vet that she can breathe and she's fine,
but it does sound like, oh my god, she's hacking.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
She can't breathe.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
It well, she also has like a touch of bronchitis.
So what happens is she'll call from the bronchitis. It'll
make the trachy collapse, and for the next half an
hour or so, she'll just think there's something stuck in
her throat and there really isn't. She looks so annoyed
when it happens, She's like, why isn't this clearing?
Speaker 6 (37:35):
She can?
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 8 (37:38):
That's what we're gonna say that.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
There was a distressed bet so I am assured everything's good.
Everybody watching it.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
She's fine, well fine, adjacent let's call it that. I mean,
she would not agree that she's but it's not as
bad as she makes it sound. She's also a little
bit of a drama queen. So there's that.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
That's all right, But were you going to say something regarding, yeah,
you know, the tears or whatever other bonus things that
you're you got going on for the.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
I think, yeah, we we have bonus content. That was
what Preson was talking about where we were. The bonus
content is worked into the budget for season one, so
when we have because these are just going to be
single character narrated short clips that just add flavor to
the story. So if you never listen to them, the
(38:30):
story still works, but if you want a little bit
more about the character's point of view or in the
case of doctor Reed of Ellie, how she came about.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
Came upon this plan, and.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
We're like, the second episode is gonna put all the
pieces that you need to know in, but then the
bonus content is going to fill in all sorts of
her life story stuff that and the same thing with
Amelia Earhart's letters. The stuff you need to know is
in the show, but this bonus stuff will fill it out.
And so we're just going to have them when they
(39:02):
record the season, record that stuff, and then we'll send
it out to also anyone who pledged above a certain level.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
And that level is pretty low on.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
The list of tiers, honestly, because we want most people
to get it, and then we have tiers above that
that we're going to create a discord server and we're
going to go on the discord server and people can be.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Can ask questions, ask questions.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Or or talk to each other or talk to us
about it, and then we'll send out PDFs of the
script for the pilot and the season breakdown that we
did and the series breakdown that we did that we're
going to mark up with our comments on how we
came up with this stuff, sort of taking a page
from what dark Horse did on our Dragon Age comics
(39:53):
with those library editions where we got to put our
thought processes in the margins.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
We're going to do that on those on those documents
and then get about people.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
That sounds great, Yeah, you know, it reminds me of
the many episodes we got during the aughts on certain
shows that you know, during like I remember Galactica did
that that had a whole storyline that was on many episodes. Yeah, no,
that's it's smart.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
And you remember not knowing about those many episodes in Galactica.
And then they would go like previously on Balsar Galacia
and they show me a scene and I'm like, I
never saw that scene? Where'd that come from? Like I
got so angry. I was like that, you can't. You
can't insert a fake scene. And somebody's like, it's not fake.
They released it separately.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
It's true. No, it's it's it is so interesting. And
I and I again with audio podcasts and stuff, we're
in that same period of experimentation and everything. So I
think I think that's great. Any any uh pitfall advice
that you were given by the people that are, you know,
experts in audio drummer or even things you've experienced making
the pilot that you would tell someone you know to
(40:55):
avoid X.
Speaker 7 (40:56):
You know, it's interesting because we were told upfront, and
we were really hard to do this in the pilot
of like not having too many voices because it is
all audio and you want to.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Keep track of everyone.
Speaker 7 (41:06):
So the bulk of the pilot is between two characters.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
We got to the end with an end to.
Speaker 5 (41:11):
Edit, and.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Well, you know, what.
Speaker 7 (41:14):
I'm just gonna throw his name on out there. Greg
Recca listened to it and he was like, your two
leads sound really similar.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Interesting, and so we were like, oh no.
Speaker 7 (41:25):
So our sound engineer was playing a little bit with
the pitch of one of them to sort of adjust
it and make sure that it's like you absolutely know
who's talking.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And we had to go to collect who plays Amelia,
and say, would it be all right if we brought
your pitch down a little bit to create a little
distance between you and Winter's Ellie. And to her credit,
because because I was worried, like you can't tell an
actor on a project where their voice is all that
(41:54):
they all they have to convey, Oh, we need to
fix your voice. And she literally said, always wanted a
deeper voice.
Speaker 6 (42:04):
Give me a throaty Belie, so nice. So yeah, she
was totally that's.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Great to hear, all right, I got to ask. Obviously
we mentioned that Christina is a big fan of the Shadow,
but as far as old time radio or even current
audio drama that you guys all admire, let's let's hear
I'll even uh, I'll switch and again we'll have the
roundtable happening here there we go. So, yeah, you know,
tell tell me your favorite audio dramas, either older or current.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
A current one I listened to as we were getting
started on this because I wanted to listen to other
stuff out there. That I really got sucked into was
ad Lusome, which and that was when I.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Was like, wait, this is Chris Pine, Like is that?
Speaker 7 (42:45):
Like we had like big names in there, but it
was very immersive and I was going to say really
quickly too. One of the things I think that's interesting
different from old time radio is headphones now, So like
I'd be walking down the street listening to this and
I could hear like sound on one side or the other,
and I was like.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
It's so immersive, this is so.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Amazing, absolutely great. But yeah, go ahead to anybody else favorite.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
Well, I.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
A long time ago ran into night Vale Welcome to
night Vale, So that's been I've left. Loved that one
for a long time and had like my I got
my dad into it, who got really nerdy about it,
and that was super fun. So and I really liked
lime Town when that one was on I it was
kind of a sci fi mystery. They I think they
(43:34):
did not end up getting enough funding to go forward
with it. So there's only two seasons, which is a
bummer because it ends on a really good Cliveyre that
we never got a finale to, but that one was
really good. And then for classics there's the like audio
dramas for I mean, the War of the World's the
original for it's like a classic is always a great
(43:56):
one that I always think of of that and how
cool like an entire world essentially listening to it and
being terrified of an innovation is so amazing.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Couldn't agree more incredible story and Winston Walls always said,
and I got to agree having heard so many of
his other radio shows. Radio really was his greatest medium.
I love his films and appreciate his experimentation. But yeah, man, no,
I'm a big fan of the third Man radio show.
He did The Lives of Harry Lyme, which is fanta
(44:27):
and it's just him being a comment and being crazy
and stuff, and it's wonderful. None's how about you?
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Well, I have to shout out the thrilling Adventure Hour,
even though a lot of my experience with it was
sitting in the audience while they were recording it, so
it's not it's kind of a cheat for me because
I did get to watch the actors be physical when
they were doing it too, But it just it's a
great and.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Then I'm going to go old time as well.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Besid Aside from The Shadow, which I love, the Hitchhiker's
Guide radio series really really influenced me when I was
in college, and then the radio shows they did of
the Star Wars movies, like I was.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Like they were just there was there was a space
when I was growing.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Up when we were past the age of these old
radio shows, and we are way far away from the
current age of podcasts. But it felt like they were
doing before their books on tape. They were doing these
sort of radio They were taking things and making radio versions.
In the case of Hitchhikers it was first, I believe,
but in the Star Wars it was definitely an adaptation.
(45:31):
But I love that stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Well really only in America did radio drama close down.
And I think sixty two in two years before I
was born. But I sadly, but but no, I am
thrilled at the rest of the world, you know, just
chugged along and everything. And in the seventies and early eighties,
(45:53):
CBS said the radio Mystery Theater and it was pretty
good for what it was. It was on AM AM,
so it didn't have the that we have now. And
like Christina, you're so right, how immersive You slip your
earbuts in and you are transported and it's absolutely so
I get it absolutely, And really, Nuns, you're right. Hitchhikers
was made for radio. Douglas Adams is the radio thing.
(46:16):
And again I constantly on BBC Radio seeing what's on
Channel four Extra and that's kind of the dramatic channel
and everything, and still great stuff is being made.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
And I remember too when I was in and this
is I don't think he'll wind. But when I went
to college. When we went to college, Greg had his
gaming group where he would like his group of they
played a Star Trek game and he missed them. So
he gathered all these people on his hallway from his
(46:50):
freshman year and cast them as characters from their campaign
and wrote a radio drama of an adventure for them
and cast me in it. And it was like I
had met him already and we had become friends, but
this was like one of the things that really accelerated
the friendship with him.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
And so.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
I had gone off to college, not sure whether I
was going to be a writer or an actor, and
then I did this and I was like, maybe I'll
be an actor. And then I founded a comedy troupe
and I went on stage and I'm like, I am
not an actor.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Fun to be in this one because it brought me
back to where I was like, oh, I can be
an actor when no one's looking at me.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
You know. I did stand up coming out of college
for a couple of years, and then thankfully I caught
the tail end of sketch comedy on radio and groups
like the Fire Sign Theater and The Credibility Gap and
The Committee, and I loved their albums. And thankfully here
(47:54):
in Chicago we had a couple of Second City vets
and they would come on the classic rock station and
do a three minute bit and they were the usual suspects,
and you know, so then when sports radio started here
in Chicago, I lucked in and I would do fake
commercials and SOCID parodies, but no, nuns, I hear you,
because it was so much better making something and playing
it rather than being on stage and you suck you
(48:17):
know or whatever you name your favorite halfle and everything,
and it's like, I'll pre record, I think that's safe.
Speaker 7 (48:24):
Oh, I admire people who do stand up that like
scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Yes, And the thing was the sketch comedy I did.
It was at Vassar College, and Faster is a fairly
left of center.
Speaker 4 (48:36):
My politics are left of center.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
But sure, when you're doing comedy, you're gonna piss people off,
and people at college age are easily pissed off.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
So it was just it was a.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Lot for me as someone who probably wouldn't have been
that comfortable on stage under the best of circumstances, but
to do comedy in front of angry college students, it.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Was like, okay, no, no, no, oh. And by the way,
did you ever listen to the Frantics?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Yes, I have, I even had, Oh god it one
of the who did I have on from the Frantics? Oh,
like Rick and I can't He was on one of
those Canadian on camera shows as well, but no, Frantic
Doctor Demento introduced me to the Frantics, So yeah, you.
Speaker 4 (49:22):
Know, I I love the Frantics.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
And to the horror of comedy, yes, the whole taekwon
leap sketch that goes into it or or and this
is cruder, but the person who goes off to the
bathroom and craps a piece of pie and it's not
it's not poop.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
It looks like a piece of pie.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
It's a whole piece, of course it is and it
and it's the kind of comedy that only works when
you're not physically showing it to us.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
And you forced the characters to just talk about it.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Hilarious. That's fantastic.
Speaker 4 (49:55):
No.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
I again, I also had the pleasure from Fireside Theater. Okay,
now I'm blank that his name. Uh, he's a great
voice actor too. I can't think of his name right now,
shame on me. But one of the surviving Fireside Theater people.
And yeah, it was a thrill because again as a
high school kid, I was listening to their comedy albums
and then you know, to actually talk to one of them,
it was like. And also Tony Hendra, whose Final Tamps
(50:19):
manager in the first movie and a big part of
National Lampoon Radio Hour and the albums, and I got
to interview him and thankfully, uh, the last couple of
years of his life, he assembled a new group doing
sketch comedy, audio sketch comedy and stuff. So you know, yeah, no,
I again. I am thrilled that the format is back
(50:41):
and you can do a lot with it as you
are proving with your project and everything. So let's uh,
let's give everybody a final plea to get give us
the details of your show.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
Okay, so is this full into me? Or do you
two want to do this? I talk a lot, but
you do it so well? Oh thanks?
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Okay.
Speaker 7 (51:05):
So our podcast is called Cheating History. It is a
sci fi time travel story. What is it that we've
been saying? The future is doomed, the past cannot be changed,
but what if you can cheat history a little bit?
It is available on Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts.
Please go listen to the pilot. We are kickstarting season one.
(51:29):
We really we've got a whole like big adventure planned
in mind, and we've got some great actors. We've got
a lead on a potentially really big name for season
one who we can't shout out just yet, but it
would be super exciting.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
So you know, check out.
Speaker 7 (51:44):
The pilot, check out the kickstarter campaign, and you know,
spread the word even if you if you can't donate,
you know, tell all your friends about it.
Speaker 6 (51:54):
Yeah, I mean one other little thing which is.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
All created and recorded put together by actual people, know AI.
As was mentioned earlier, the AI voice is me being
very robotic with a little bit of a filter, but
still me doing the recordings. So absolutely no at AI.
In fact, that's one of the big things that we're
(52:19):
talking about in the in the story is how damaging
it can be to our future.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
So I will also as as a shout out, say
there there are a lot of very.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
Talented actors that are lined up.
Speaker 5 (52:36):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
We have we have Ozzy.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Rodridriguez Rodriguez lined up to play dB Cooper. We have
Scout Party lined up to play Virginia Dare If you
haven't seen her movie Pilgrim, which was at Dances with
Films recently and I don't know when it will be
released more widely, but she is a revelation in that movie.
Speaker 4 (53:02):
And we have gotten.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Super super excited for writing Virginia Dere because we have
some really cool stuff lined up for her, including in
episode two she's going to face off against Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
So that's great, no, excellent and again like a good
first issue cheating history the pilot is available, so you can,
you know, hey, no obligation check it out. And if
you really really like the pilot, obviously support the kickstarter
and help these people out because I love what they're doing.
It's great. I mean truly, you know, Nuns sent the
(53:39):
email out or you both did, and I got it,
and I'm like, oh cool. And again I knew your
worked from your comics. I knew you. I enjoyed your
r list work, so I was already, you know, at
least willing to listen. Well, you convinced me. And that's
why the episode today so nice going and truly I
hope this all. I hope this all works out, and
truly I hope it's the first of many other storytelling
(54:03):
ideas for all of you, whether you all work together
or do separate projects as well.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I literally handed a piece of paper to Jenny a
couple of weeks ago, and that was like, if we
get this thing going and we want to do a
second podcast, here's a Western Oh fantastic.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
Oh man, Hey, by.
Speaker 6 (54:22):
The way, I love Mia Western.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Gun smoke and this I don't know if you guys
know Jimmy Stewart's one season radio show the six Shooter.
It is quintessential Jimmy Stewart and just Aweschucks and just
this gentle Western adventure that has Jimmy Stewart comedy and stuff.
But gun smoke, my god, it's like somebody. I mean,
it was such a shame that American radio wound down
(54:48):
when it did, because by the fifties the writing got better,
the acting got better. William Conrad, Jake and the Fat
Man and Cannon was I always call him the Spencer
Tracy of radio because you can that help but be
And also, by the way, the narrator of the Rocky
and Bullwinkle cartoons. You can't like. He is so compelling.
His voice is just so just deep and resonant and everything.
(55:11):
It's again, that's his best meeting. So I'm glad it's back,
and I'm glad you guys are playing it.
Speaker 7 (55:16):
That's that's sent well you absolutely no.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
So everybody check out Cheating, his cheating history, and uh
you know, in the meantime, if you can handle another
audio or video interview, check out the next word balloon
coming your way. But thanks a lot for listening and
all of you thanks for playing today.
Speaker 4 (55:35):
Thank you, thank you, thank you
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