September 9, 2025 • 48 mins
Writer Peter Murrieta talks about how teachers pushed him to a better life, riding in the car with his grandparents, baseball, creating TV, college training him to be a showman, being a rare latino at Second City, Danny Trejo, collecting baseball cards, loving writing, and becoming a teacher to give back.
Bio: Peter Murrieta is a two-time Emmy Award winning producer and writer who has contributed his voice to multiple projects that have expanded and further legitimized the entertainment value of telling stories about diverse cultures. After moving to Los Angeles, Peter was accepted into the esteemed ABC Writing Fellowship. His success during the fellowship led to writing positions on Jesse, Three Sisters and All About the Andersons, before he created the critically acclaimed series Greetings from Tucson, which tells the story of an upwardly mobile bi-racial. The series’ Latino cast is a perfect example of how he’s been able to bring the lighthearted examination of his culture to the predominantly white television landscape. As a producer, Peter is dedicated to ensuring that diverse and underrepresented persons have opportunities in the industry on both sides of the camera, as evidenced by his work on the Emmy Award winning, Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place.
Peter has produced and written on NBC’s Welcome to the Family, ABC’s Cristela, TV Land’s Lopez, Norman Lear’s Netflix re-boot of One Day A Time and CBS’ Superior Doughnuts. He was an Executive producer and writer on the Imagen Award winning Netflix series, MR. IGLESIAS, starring comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias. And most recently, he is a writer and an Executive Producer on the Amazon FreeVee series, “Primo,” for Universal. And wrote on the staff of the drama for Peacock, “Field of Dreams.” Peter was honored in 2018 with the Imagen Foundation’s Norman Lear Writer’s Award for his dedication to broadening the diversity of the entertainment industry. He was just named a member of the 2024 Influential Latinos in Media by the Imagen Foundation as well. Having taught at the prestigious American Film Institute, Peter is now a professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and is happy to have a foot back in his home state of Arizona, excited to serve as Deputy Director for The Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
Bio: Peter Murrieta is a two-time Emmy Award winning producer and writer who has contributed his voice to multiple projects that have expanded and further legitimized the entertainment value of telling stories about diverse cultures. After moving to Los Angeles, Peter was accepted into the esteemed ABC Writing Fellowship. His success during the fellowship led to writing positions on Jesse, Three Sisters and All About the Andersons, before he created the critically acclaimed series Greetings from Tucson, which tells the story of an upwardly mobile bi-racial. The series’ Latino cast is a perfect example of how he’s been able to bring the lighthearted examination of his culture to the predominantly white television landscape. As a producer, Peter is dedicated to ensuring that diverse and underrepresented persons have opportunities in the industry on both sides of the camera, as evidenced by his work on the Emmy Award winning, Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place.
Peter has produced and written on NBC’s Welcome to the Family, ABC’s Cristela, TV Land’s Lopez, Norman Lear’s Netflix re-boot of One Day A Time and CBS’ Superior Doughnuts. He was an Executive producer and writer on the Imagen Award winning Netflix series, MR. IGLESIAS, starring comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias. And most recently, he is a writer and an Executive Producer on the Amazon FreeVee series, “Primo,” for Universal. And wrote on the staff of the drama for Peacock, “Field of Dreams.” Peter was honored in 2018 with the Imagen Foundation’s Norman Lear Writer’s Award for his dedication to broadening the diversity of the entertainment industry. He was just named a member of the 2024 Influential Latinos in Media by the Imagen Foundation as well. Having taught at the prestigious American Film Institute, Peter is now a professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and is happy to have a foot back in his home state of Arizona, excited to serve as Deputy Director for The Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawt Media. I'm Peter Marietta. I'm very interested on being
alone with Jake Cogan.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Don't be Alone with jj Cogan.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to Don't be Alone with Jake Cogan. I'm your
host and your friend, Jake Cogan. It's great to have
you here with me as we have a wonderful podcast
for you today. Before we begin, I want to remind
you to write to me at dbawjk at gmail dot
com with any question, concern, comment, criticism, compliment, or a
question for any guests that we have coming up, A
(00:39):
random question for a general guest that you don't know,
but some live question you'd like answered by an artist
or a comedian or a figure of some note, and
I'll ask the question on your behalf and it's going
to be great. Also, I want to thank you for
all the positive feedback that you have left me. A
lot of fans are constantly writing in and complimenting us.
(01:02):
They're also subscribing to the show. If you subscribe it
to us on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music or
Amazon or wherever you listen to the show, I thank you,
it's great, it helps us. Please, if you like the show,
spread it around find a good episode and send it
to a friend that helps us too. I really do
(01:23):
appreciate the show growing and having a lot of people
reach back to me because I do it for the love.
I do it because I'm insecure, and that's all right.
We all have our ways of dealing with our own insecurities.
And speaking of insecurities, our guest today is Peter Murietta,
who is a great showrunner writer, has functioned in the
(01:45):
world of comedy for many many years. He was on
he was a part of The Second City, He's been
part of kids television, regular network television movies, he's been
late late show running a lot of big shows all
across the spectrum, some on network, some on cable, someone
uh streaming. So he's a big deal and I'm glad
(02:08):
to have him here. And the surprising thing about him,
as we'll learn, is he's a guy who always wants
to be part of a club that never felt that
he was really a member, partly because he's biracial, partly
because he's from Arizona, partly because he's just a regular
writer who's insecure like the rest of us. So we're
gonna hear about him and his life and his love
(02:29):
of baseball, and his love of comedy, and his love
of acting, and his love of the world. Right after this,
don't be alone. I knew you by reputation from Second City,
like your pals with a lot of my pals and
(02:53):
Peter Murria, just like you're beloved from a certain you
know whatever, your class era, my era, your era, who's
who's who's in your era? Gosh?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, I was Colbert's understudy, but in my touring company
was Susie Nakamora, who's.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Amazing, a friend of the pod.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And she oh great, great, she's great, She's great. Rose
Abdu a friend of the pod. Uh, Steve Carrell, who
I'm gonna Rosenthal, Teresa mol Again, Jenna Jalovitz, Tom Purcell,
and his writing partner at the time, Tyrone Finch do
you know Tyne? And of course Kenny Campbell. Kenny Campbell
(03:37):
lived down the block from my girlfriend and now wife,
and uh, when we moved out here, Kenny and Kathleen
went on a month long honeymoon and let us stay
at their townhos condo whatever it was in West Westmount
in West Hollywood for a month while we got our
(03:59):
ship together, which was great.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
But here's the thing, like, you know, by reputation, wonderful,
funny guy, all that stuff all true. I didn't know
until years later about you know Arizona, your heard any
of that stuff. I just thought you're just like another Chicago,
Chicago guy.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, just another Chicago was so funny. Well, you know, uh,
that's a great point. And I guess what's interesting to
me now, I've got to ask you a question about
before I answered that because I really want to. But
you want an Emmy?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yes, and I went for but yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Okay, great, great, that's great that you won four, but
you want an an Emmy. And I want to know
the year when you made a speech and you plugged
a dry cleaner your my mom's real estate, your mom's
real estate company. What year was that? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Kind of I get, I'm gonna say it was before
my son was born, so I'm gonna say like nineteen
ninety eight or ninety nine something.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I didn't know you but by reputation, and I thought
that was the best thing ever. And I was in
a room and I remember the room being very divided,
and I was like, what are you guys talking about?
That is the best thing ever, that's all we should
ever do.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, I agree, because my whole thing was if you
win an award, and as much as I just for it,
it's all luck. Right, So we we can agree that
the awards are stupid and yeah, yeah, but if you
get to get.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
In from of the microphone should say something worth while.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
You should make jokes. You get to make jokes. So
that was it. I just said, if I'm going to
get there, I'm gonna make jokes and enjoy myself. And
they let me do it. That was great.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
So about my background, like, so, I my dad is
an immigrant, and you know, I went to college in
the eighties and I wrote sketch comedy for this group,
and you know, I was a playwriting major. And then
I found my way to Chicago and I got hired
in the touring company about the same time as Ratio Sans,
(06:07):
and I remember the producer sort of being very very
supportive of us, but also telling us to like not
mess it up for anybody coming after it. It's like,
you guys are kind of the first couple of people
like this, and I don't want you to mess up. Well,
he did for a long time, and then the lot
(06:29):
not listening at the end. But we were touring, and
part of the job in the touring companies to do
everybody else's scenes. There was no culturally specific material, and
so we just kind of did you know. I did
Rick Hall's scene where he was a farmer and he
(06:49):
went to school and visited his kid, and his kid
made abstract art. And I did all these other different scenes,
some pasquasi scenes. And but I had always written about
it when I was writing plays, and I always done
a lot of like stuff about being in Arizona. It
just didn't fit at the time, right, And so I
found myself kind of doing what I think a lot
(07:10):
of people did in that era, which is you're trying
to succeed and you bury it because you're like, well,
I don't I don't know how, because I don't see
any real examples.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Right of success. Subsequently, even after I met you, went
back and did some research and learned about you know,
your your your start. A wonderful teacher sort of promoted
you up and said said, like you could be a writer.
Yeah right, yeah, doctor, doctor, So like tell the story.
Tell the story about this teacher, because I teach you teach, yes,
(07:39):
and so right now, I would like some love for teachers.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
All right, doctor Donna swam, I'm going to try not
to get emotional.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
She was my way. If you do get emotional, you
get a free coffee.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So oh my god. Yeah, now now I'm gonna fake
it exactly. Doctor Donnas Swain was my Humanity's two fifty
c teacher, which covered the arts in the Existential period.
And I was floating through school for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I was solid student.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Uh yeah, but I want to give you a real
taste of how lazy. I went to my advisor as
a freshman, and my goal was I'm gonna I'm gonna
get through school somehow. And what I really want to
do is teach high school English and coach junior varsity
baseball because varsity baseball is too stressful.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So I am in school and when I talk to
my advisor.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
And anyone who knows you at this point thinks you
could probably coach a major League baseball team.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Probably probably, okay, and so but at the time, I
was like, there's too much stress there, right, And so
I I was the advisor says to young Peter, so
are you, I said, I'm an English major.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Are you creative writing major or English Lit. Now I
was not fresh off the farm, but oh mo. I
was like, what's the difference and she said, well, one
of them is about the analysis of texts and everything,
and the other one is like writing. And I said
the writing thing sounds like less trips to the library.
I'll do that.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So that's how negligible I felt as an art.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
And also how little you knew how hard writing was.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
For sure, if I could have written the thirty thousandth
book on Chaucer where I just quoted the other books.
So I wrote a paper for her that was about
existential philosophy, and she wrote, see me on it in
my office, no grade. And I went to her office
very scared, and she said this is the funniest paper
(09:44):
I've ever read on existentialism. And I was like, cool,
what's my grade? And she said I can't give you one.
You have no citations, you have no thesis. These are
just rambling jokes. And I said okay, And she said,
but I do want you to meet these students in
another class of mine who do sketch comedy, and you
could write sketch comedy and you could be a writer
(10:05):
and it was the first person that had ever encouraged
me to do anything.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Let's talk about Wizards of Waverly Place, gigantic hit. People
loved it. What happened that last season.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, I think I had always been very rigorous. I
think the first problem was I came into it from
prime time, like a lot of people do. But I
came to it with the attitude of like, Oh, you're
going to give me notes and I'm going to take
the good ones and I'm not going to take the
(10:39):
bad ones. And that's kind of how we operate. That
wasn't their idea. Their idea was you're going to do
everything we say, and so I just bucked at that.
And then we had a show that was popular, and
we had a show that was winning awards, and I
assume that means like, hey, we're gonna continue down this path.
(11:00):
But they were never happy about that path, and I
think it kind of reached ahead. At the end of
the third season. I had done a movie and the
movie did really well, and the third season was doing
really well, and I got word that at the end
of the year they were going to let me go
quietly from a writer who they were negotiating with my
(11:22):
job right, and so I just finished off the four
weeks knowing it right, and then and then that was it.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's interesting, like, yeah, that part of what at Disney's specifically,
what they wanted to do was not just create good
children's television, but have a massive control, massive over every
aspect of the thing, as if they were the Bengalis
who knew what the magic was.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, And I think that a good example of that
that's not repetitive with other things I've said before is
you know, I was able to get Shaki to come
beyond the show. And I did that because I was
at an award situation. Ceremony was at UCLA, I think
(12:11):
at Royce Hall. I don't remember what the awards were,
but she was there performing and I was there with
a couple of the members of the cast and we
went backstage and she said, oh, I love the show.
And I said, oh, would you be on the show?
And she said, uh yeah, And I said, cool, is
your manager here? And then she goes, yeah, I go
when you go get your manager And she went to
(12:31):
get the manager and the cast members were like, what
is that about? I go, this is gonna be about
whether or not she really means it is what we're
about to find out, right, And so the manager came over.
We started talking, but Disney was like, well, we're going
to choose which song and I was like, no, and
I'm not going to choose which song. Shakira will choose
her song. And they said, well, when the runner up
on American Idol was on Sweet Life, we chose the song.
(12:55):
And I said, right, the runner up on American Idol
YouTube the song one hundred and fifty million worldwide. She
chooses a song, I go, now, standards and practices, I
get sure, but you're not this fngale that gets to
choose what song she's gonna sing.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Right, some Disney decides her hips do lie yes, then
you have to.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Figure that out. And so like, those were the kind
of things that we just went back and forth about
and I won almost every battle. And then I would
even argue, while it felt at the time like it
was the worst thing that ever happened to me and
I lost the war, I feel like it. You know,
my friend's Perry and Gigi always say that, like, you know, no,
this is the thing that got you back into the
(13:35):
world of primetime where most of us can't get back to.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I did a few pilots, a few things for Disney.
They would run about, like what shoes is this character
wearing and like, and I would say, well, that characters
wearing sneakers, and this other character because they're snippers wearing shoes. Yeah,
and they say, wear are the shoes? And I said, well, there,
they don't have them yet, we're running down to look
at them, yep, Like can I just take a photo
(14:00):
of them? Like can the description of Sam?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
They would say to me that we think when we
do rack check of wardrobe, it is as important as
the material. They said that to me, Yeah, And I
understood from the marketing point of view because they were
making Selena dresses and everything. But I know that that's
a great point. And I think the stand I wanted
to take was the one I took, which was like,
(14:23):
I think we're doing something special here. And then in
the subsequent years, like another stand I took is I
wouldn't go back there to pitch because I was like, well,
you guys got rid of me, and I had like
the number two movie of all time and then two
Emmys and a third on the way and and you
fired me. So I don't really know what I could
(14:45):
do for you to guarantee that you wouldn't do that again,
So I'm not gonna. And I remember running into friends
that were there that had also been fired. It was
a common occurrence, and they were like, I'd see them,
what are you guys doing. Oh, we're getting ready to
go pitch Adam and Gary, and I was like, why
why why? So I think they went their way and
(15:08):
I went my way, and I was happy.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
With what I did. I had kids on my Kids
Show and Nickelodeon come and talk like this, and then
I would say, well, we don't have to talk like this,
and they said I don't have to like they were relieved.
They had been trained to talk in sort of a stiff,
stilted manner, and I said, no, no, you just be
yourself and it's fine, and they were so happy. And
but one of my actors who when my series got canceled,
(15:32):
because all my series get canceled, everybody gets canceled, I guess,
so you rarely sometimes you get to choose. When one
of my actors from my show, when my show went down,
went back to a different kids show, and he said,
they're making me do the thing again, and I was like,
I'm sorry, kid, Like you didn't have to do it
for me. You gotta do it, you gotta do it
for them.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I got some texts from some actors after they relieved
me in my responsibilities at Wizards right in that last
season that would just text me them in a cal costume,
or it would text me, oh my god, what is
happening over here?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Don't Be Alone with jan.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, let's talk about you coming on my show. I
would have you on my show because you're interesting, you
have an interesting point of view. I'm a subscriber to
your substat I like reading your your your stuff. But
at one point you said I really want to be
on Don't Be Alone with Jake Hogan. Yes, you're the
only person who's ever said that, as far as I know,
(16:47):
the only person who's ever asked to be on my show.
And of course immediately I wrote.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
To you, Well you did immediately, absolutely, you said you're
gonna make my Christmas dreams come to you.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Exactly why did you want to be on Don't Be
Alone with Jake Coogan?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I think because I I think I have to go
one more beat backwards to the stump, because I was
hanging around as a young writer Jonathan Prince, Julie Warner's
house uh a Jay Segal uh and that crap and
(17:20):
Craig and so I would be at their house to
watch movies or Jackson Prince and my oldest are two
weeks apart and kind of grew up together. And I
would hear about it, and I would ask people, never you,
But I would always ask the people in that circle like, hey,
that sounds interesting. And I was always basically face planted,
(17:44):
you know what, this is a thing that you don't
you know whatever?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And so as I've most of my life, I think psychologically,
because of my biracial upbringing, because of my family history,
I've always been in a place of where do I belong?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And as a young writer, I wanted to belong who
doesn't right?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And so I always felt like, oh, did you ask
me to be on this se No? I didn't, Okay,
And then you know.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
The qualification to be on the stump asking J Cogan,
it was the only qualification. That's it, Jesus, that's it.
There was no other qualification anyway. So I can you
are you funny? And can you keep your mouth shut.
In other words, yeah, people writing horrible things. That's what
I am.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
That's what I heard.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
So the whole point was right, if you if you
so read whatever you read, keep yourself, keep yourself, keep yourself.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So I think you made me laugh because somebody not
you posted like, oh remember the stump and you said
something about it, and I said, oh, I remember. It
was the thing I always wanted to be on and
no one would let me, which was true. And uh,
and I think you said yep, because we were talking
about you, and I see that's the thing. That's the
(19:04):
kind of the back and forth I love. And so
I saw that you were doing the podcast and I
was like, this is what I'm gonna write about this week.
I'm gonna write about how that hurt me then and
acknowledge it. But I'm also going to say, like, you
know what I want to do now. I want to
be on Jay's podcast. I'm glad I could make your
dreams come true. Tell me this and this is I'm
just flip gears for a second. Yeah, baseball, yeah, very
(19:28):
deep in your soul, is very very deep. Why and
why the Dodgers?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Why the Dodgers? Okay, by the way, saying this as
somebody who loves the Dodgers. Of course that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I grew up in Arizona, so we didn't have the Diamondbacks,
we didn't have a pro tea, right, we had the
Tucson Toros, and I used to go to those games
all the time. They were Oakland A's affiliate, and.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Then I used to ask for affiliate.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
My grandpa used to take me to them. I remember
very distinctly a memory, very seminal memory, of him getting
off work. He worked as a mechanic at a car
dealership and it was teeming rain in August, the monsoon.
The game was for sure rain now, but they were
giving a poster out of the team and him driving
(20:19):
me in the monsoon weather to High Corporate Field, where
I ran in the rain to the gate where there
was some poor forlorn security guard who went and got
me a poster, and and and so it's it's deep.
I have a deep love for it. I played it,
and I loved the game. And for a lot of
(20:41):
time I was a Red Sox fan because I had
relatives and my uncle Dave was a Red Sox fan,
and so I kind of grew up with that. But
because I'm a baseball fan. I don't I don't partake
of like you're a Padre fan. Screw you, you know.
And the more I learned about the game, the more
(21:03):
I learned about Jackie Robinson, the more I learned about
the history of the game, I was like, I think
the Dodgers on my team, most people go Yankees when
they learned the deep.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
History of the game.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Sure, most people go, but remember I started as a
Red Sox gran so like.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
You couldn't love the Yankees.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So I did that, and I think that it cuts deep,
like and then to go even deeper, I learned about
Fernando and like the history of Echo Park, the history
of Chavez Ravine. You know, I've written about it. I've
It's in one of my pilots. The idea that I
(21:39):
think the Dodgers themselves are often pilloried for the building
of the stadium, when in fact it's the city council's
promised it was going to be public housing and then
took everybody out of there. Then only then did the
Dodgers come to a vacant lot that had already been
scandal rid. So like, I feel like Fernando's return to
not return his arrival has made the Dodgers the most
(22:02):
Mexican American team in the country.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, I mean it's fascinating how baseball I mean is
so Latin. I mean it's it's so Latin.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah. I always tell I've tried for years Isaac gon
Zales and I to try to get someone to let
us reboot and remake Major League because we think it's
the easiest pitch ever where they go, what's your take? Nothing,
It's the same movie, but instead of one guy who's Latin,
(22:34):
there's one white guy. Right, that's our take, and we
want to go do it. Yeah, it's so different than
it was when we were kids.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Being a baseball dad was one of the greatest thrills
of my life. When my kid was playing, and where
do they play league but North Venis San Fernano and
you know Little League great little and Joaquin used to
take batting lessons from Reggie Smith.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yes there, because he was a switch hitter. Absolutely, and
so some coach was like, you got to go to
Reggis drive to.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
My kid took some coaching from Reggie as well.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And I got to see Reggie two months ago out
a game, and my seats are close to this staircase
that go to a place where these kind of people
hang out. And he came up, and I don't usually
do this, like I'm really a living but I was
like Reggie, and I said, my kid da da da
(23:27):
and took from you and I said, I'm sure you
don't remember, but I just wanted to tell you. He's
a hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Dominican
And he lit up. He was like, oh my god, Yeah,
that's great. That's great to hear these in the game.
And he still loves the game.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Let's talk a little bit about your sub stack and
one of the things that you wrote recently, an article
about all the places you used to write that no
longer exist, and the show Don't Belong with j Cogan
is all about solving my problems.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yes, I want to I want to solve.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And my problem is how do I deal with the
strange nostalgia for things that were or no longer exists
that I still long for but no, in reality it
popped up again. I probably wouldn't go like, there's a
weird thing about it.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Oh, that last part is a nice wintail.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
It's it's it's it's it belongs where it is, which
is in history, but part of us and my dad
is huge on this, wants it just to still exist.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Give me one example, not a bunch, Give me one example.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Okay, here's a perfect example. Du Pars at the Farmer's
Market says it might be closing. Yep, Okay. So I
haven't been to that due Pars in many, many years,
and I may not go before it closes. But the
fact that it's closing is going to really make me sad.
(24:49):
It's gonna make sad, make me sad because things are
going to change in a way that I don't want.
I don't whatever's going to be there put in its
place a Boa steakhouse or some other that I wouldn't
want to be there. I'm gonna be bummed out by.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I'm going to go backwards and tell you that my grandmother,
who was incredibly close with had polio during the epidemic,
and she was in a wheelchair the whole time I
knew her, and frequently this grandfather, the same one that
took me to get the poster, after he would get
off work and I would go spend weeks with them
(25:27):
at a time Sometimes he'd get off work and we'd
have dinner and he'd say, let's go for a ride,
and we'd get her in the car and we'd go
for ride. And I was a kid, and what I
was just thrilled was I was in a car with
my grandparents and there was gonna be ice cream at
the end of Basking Robinson and we'd go for ride.
(25:49):
And all those rides I took were I didn't know,
but they were my grandparents who had lived in Tucson
for forty years. They were driving places and saying things like, oh,
that's where Dave Blumen's son's was. Remember we got your
(26:10):
mother's you know, brother's christening outfit there or something, and oh,
that's the dealership that was the Plymouth dealership where your
grandfather first worked. They did that, and so they're driving
through their history. Yeah, and it comes alive when I
reflect upon it. And then I think about the disordered
(26:34):
chaos of my mind. I think of the modern mind,
and I think that I admittedly drive in my circumference
past lots where buildings were just two months ago that
I'm like, what the hell was there? What the hell
(26:56):
was there? And I can't remember and I will be
as I'm determined not to not remember. I will go
home and go to Apple Maps because I know, well,
you're not gonna update it that fucking fast, and I'll go,
oh shit, it was that house.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
It was this house.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
There's a lot by Osria Buka and it's a lot
and I'm like, oh my god, that's that house that
had a billboard pole in the middle of it and
it had a hobby horse in the front. And it's gone. Okay,
now I know. And I feel like when I think
about things like the pantry, I think about the meals
(27:30):
I had there, I think about the people that I
knew there, and when I drive by it, like I
will leave my house some days and go downtown to
my office and think I'm going down there. I want
to drive by the pantry. I just want to market
and by marking it, I say it exists, but I
don't have to get out. And I think that's because
my grandmother, we couldn't get out and go look at
(27:51):
these places. We couldn't go knock on the door. Right,
she was in the chair, she was in the car.
So I feel like I got that imprinted on me.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
And when you do market when you do go past
the building, what does it do for you?
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I think it's mostly I'm in touch with who I
was and the people I knew at that moment in
my life. And like driving by the old Highland Grounds,
which was one of the coffee shops I think I mentioned,
you know, it made me think of I didn't write
about this, but it made me think of one night
I was pulling out of there and there was this big, loping,
(28:25):
gawky looking person with shorts on and dress socks and
sandals in the alley behind Highland Grounds and he looked
at me because my headlights had thrown up, and it
was Tarantino. And I remember having this thought, not because
I don't like him or I love him. I love
(28:46):
his movies and I like him, but because of his movies,
I remember thinking like, oh my god, I don't know
you at all, and it's ten o'clock in this alley.
I could kill you and no one would know, and
there's non us right, this is a great Tarantino scene.
And so like, I remember those things, and I feel
like it keeps me in touch with who I was.
(29:08):
It makes me remember the experiences, and it reminds me
that it's gone, right, right, because I feel differently about
the arc Light. Yeah, because the arc Light. I still
get off my couch. Even two days ago. I see
the tom Cruise trail and I'm like, fucking I want
to go see that in a giant screen. And I
get up and I'm like, oh, yeah, right, arc Light's
(29:29):
not there, right right. I am stunned it's not there.
You're mourning that, and I'm mourning it. And I don't
have the sense of like, I'm glad it existed. I
remember all those cool things. I'm like, this is a
gaping wound in the middle of Hollywood that needs to be.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Fixed in the vein of memorializing things that may have passed.
I noticed recently you've put online some scripts that are
dead otherwise dead, but you want to have a Yeah,
that was an interesting thought. I really thought that was
a great idea.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
What made you decide to just pop those up?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And two things? Courage right right? I think it took
me a long time in my writing career. You know,
when you write a pilot and then they don't shoot it.
When I was a younger writer, I would beat myself up. Really,
(30:27):
I didn't do it enough. I didn't do it right.
This isn't this. And then I wrote a script that
I haven't put up online that was about me and
my youngest who's non binary, and the idea of a
non binary person and a biracial father connecting in unusual ways, right.
(30:51):
And I wrote it for CBS, and I remember getting
a call from the exact who said, I need to
tell you that we didn't know when we bought this
in July that the only thing that was going to
work for us this season was Ghosts. And I've been
(31:13):
told the only thing that we should be shooting as
a companion to Ghosts. And I said, oh, so, my vulnerable,
funny and poignant discussion of race and gender is probably
not that, right, Yeah, And so I think with a
different eye, the courage of like, oh, these are fine
(31:35):
pieces of writing. In fact, I'm very proud of them,
and I do want them to have another life. And
then the second part of it is looking at substack
and looking at some of these people that I really
like and read, like Sam Widows, who's Jamie's son, who's
writing a lot of amazing things about like what does
independent television look like? Right in the world of how
much things cost to make now, and so I'm not
(31:58):
saying I'm putting them out there hoping that someone's going
to do anything with him. But I'm thinking now like, oh,
they have life as stories that have an audience. I
have a number of subscribers now.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And did you have to ask Pete Holmes to put
it up?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
I did not?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Okay, interesting, I did not.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I maybe I should have, but I don't know. I mean,
he and I have a good relationship. I don't imagine
he would feel.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
But I did.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I also didn't ask Universal, which I wrote them on
both under like there's a little bit of a pirate
in me. That's like, all right, yeah, well people are
going to read it, and if you're upset about it going.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
That's always the tricky thing is like they own it,
like it's they paid you, it's theirs, but they're not
going to ever do anything with it, right, So it's
such sitting there, right and they don't even know they
owned it. That's the well.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yes, and that brings me to Dead Pilot Society. Have
you ever done anything with them?
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So I am friends with Danny Treyo.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
By the way, Danny Trejo's that's the first time anyone
has dropped his aim is a celebrity on this show.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I bet it is.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
So many first people have said machete, but they've not
said nanny.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
So I got an email once from them from Dead
Pilot Society. I got very excited because I like, Oh,
they're gonna ask me to do one of my pilots.
And instead they said, we know you're friends with Danny
and Bill Lawrence has a pilot he's doing for Dead
Pilot Society and it's got a character like that, and
we want to know if if you think Danny's a
(33:26):
good table reader. And I was like, that's the most
polite way of you asking me if he reads English,
or like, I don't know what you're exactly. He's a
professional actor with a lot of credits. I bet he
knows how to read a script. But I was like, oh, okay,
and h I didn't. But I was very excited, like, Oh,
(33:49):
that's an outlet for a pilot. So I think I'm
excited by the turns the internet's taking right now and
substack in specific where you can put these things out
and people can read them and give you back.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Now it's time for listener man.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
This question is from Nathan. This was a question that
was sent to me and a random guest, which happens
to be you. Oh so, dear Jay and guests. As
a working writer, how do you motivate yourself to write
on subjects that you may not care about or that
bore you. There's always the overall caring about getting the
project finished, but individual pieces can feel like a slog.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
It's finding little things inside it that will delight you.
Like I remember having to write a scene in a
show I did not my voice, you know, and U
and it was the sort of act to break scene
(35:05):
in a crazy gang reway. And there was this person
who was sort of a thin antagonist, a very thinly
drawn sketch. Yeah yeah, and off I go. And I
(35:26):
had a real good friend in college named Richard Sodo.
And Richard's Soto was a Chippendale's dancer okay, and a
stuntman any fencer and an actor and a gunfighter at
old too, so like he did all and so I
just started to get tickled by the idea of like,
(35:47):
it's Richard Soto, and I'm going to do all the
beats that they need. But like I did throw some
stuff there where, like he would say, like, well, it's
like when I was a Chipendale's dancer and you have
the protagonist of the scene and be like, wait a minute, right,
wait a minute, we're back up a second and he's like, well,
I'm not backing up for anybody, and you're like great.
So I managed to find a few things that would
tickle me. And I also knew when I turned it in,
(36:11):
I was like, I'm cool if the boss Man strips
all this out, right, but I got the job done.
You know, did the Chippendale stuff stay in the script?
The Chipennail stuff stayed in the script and test because
you could see where it was a thinly drawn character
and now it's something that an actor might be interested in.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Right, But also as a writer, like you're filling out
a character. You're making somebody come alive. And thank god,
even if it's a if it's a one off, one
moment in a script, somebody it's like great improv. Like
you're adding information and you're and you're filling out the world.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
What do you tell your writing students? You know, you're you're.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I'm the deputy director, deputy director of the Sydney Partier,
who is famous for his Arizona work Two Things Okay
directed right, a feature there of the three he directed,
and and the first Academy Award nomination he got was
for a movie he made in Arizona, Fantastic, which is
why his family was interested.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I love it anyway. So you're you're there. You're teaching
students who want to make a career in the content
creation industry.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yes, what do you tell them? I try to be real, real,
and that doesn't mean it's over what I try to
tell them. I've also heard a lot of people say
lately like I tell them the wait a year, and
I'm like, I don't want.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
I tell students, here are the challenges right now. I
tell my writing students. Most of the writing students that
I have and I had at Afi too, think expansively
and dream big, and I'm not there to kill their dreams.
But I am there to say, hey, you know what
(37:49):
you're going to do. Before you create five shows, you're
going to work on seven. So in the time between
now and your first gig, just keep writing. I feel
like right is the thing that we don't have to
ask permission to do now. We do need to find
another job while we do it, but we can continue
to get better at that. We can continue to build
(38:12):
a network. We can continue and not just they here's
my email network. But I mean, I'm always telling students like,
you don't want to hear from me about what I think.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Get six of you together, yes.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Start reading each other's stuff, start having readings, start inviting
people to it, and I'm like, you will be surprised
not just about how your writing is going to grow,
but you're going to be surprised that somebody's going to
come in and say, hey, I heard about this job.
I can't do it. And that network is going to
be the people you trust.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
That scene we call it building a scene. If you
build a scene of people, there's going to be somebody
that's going to break out and have take you with it,
or you're going to be the one to break out
and you're gonna you're going to turn to when you
need help, the people that you've trusted already. So it's
it's it's very, very.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
And so there's no it's not not delaying anything.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Just start, all right. So so let's do the moment
of joy, A moment of job.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So I have two yes. The first is about giving
away tube socks, okay, and I want to tell you
the circumstances.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
I don't think we need to hear the circuss. Everybody
knows giving away tube sox is a joy joyful thing, right.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I had a when I first met a friend of mine,
when we were down with our first meeting, it was
creative meeting. He said, hey, go get Peter a package
of tube sox and I said, what do you well,
I don't I'm fine, I don't need any thank you,
And he said no. He goes, here's the deal. When
(39:53):
you pull up to a freeway exit, or you go
buy a coffee shop, or you go buy a corner
and you see somebody's in trouble, he said, you don't
know if they've got mental health problems. You don't know,
if they're an addict. You don't know, if they're just
down on their luck. You don't know if you give
them money, what they're going to spend it on. Everybody
out on the street needs a pair of socks, clean
(40:14):
pair of socks. I promise you, if you give those away,
you will see how important and impactful they are. And
to that day when I got to packatu from him.
When I run out, I go buy more. And that's
what I do, and it gives me a tremendous amount
of joy personally, and it is incredible to be with people.
(40:34):
It's a habit now. So if we're riding somewhere and
I'm somebody and it happens, I forget and it's over
and somebody goes I can't believe what I just saw,
because I don't try to force them, because you want
to give everyone dignity and choice, power of choice. So
I just go, hey, could you use a pair of
fresh new socks? And then we're off to the race.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
How often are you told no?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I'm say one out of ten, but more often the
biggest preponderances yes is The second biggest is the consideration
of what's just happened, which I think has to do
with someone's actually seeing you seeing me right, Yeah, I
(41:21):
get that, And so that's one for joy. The other
is when I was a kid and I would get
money from either helping my dad with the yard or
chores with cars, I would ride my bike up to
reliable drug store and I would buy like two packs.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Of baseball cards and.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I thought, And they were behind the counter too, because
the guy that ran reliable drugs didn't trust us. Okay, right,
all the candy, everything behind the count. It was crazy,
the amount of not trust.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Sure, but not crazy. If you've run a drug store, maybe.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Maybe give it.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Given the times in the place. Maybe h And I
always said to myself, man, when I make it, and
I didn't even know what excuse me, remember it was
gonna be English teacher. I was like, Oh, if I
make it, I'm gonna someday have enough money to buy
a whole box of baseball cards. And so I went
on my merry way and I came out to La
(42:28):
I got my first job. I was working at Radford
Lot and I was driving home making staff writer minimum
and I saw a sports card shop on Ventura Bleward.
I was like, and it all came back to me
in a flash, very much like we've been talking about
(42:48):
places and things.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
And I was like, oh my god, I can do it.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
I can do it. And I pulled in and I
walked in and I said, I want one box of
tops baseball cards. Goes okay, and he game to me
and we rang them up and it was twenty nine dollars,
and I was like, oh, I've cheated myself out of
twenty years. I could have been doing this thirty dollars exactly,
(43:11):
and thirty dollars yep, but I did it. And so
I would say, and I brought them with me because
one of my greatest joys is having the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
I'm off my.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
But the opportunity to open up packet baseball.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
That's fantastic. So I brought two all right.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
That we can open all right here, they are all right,
and you can keep whatever's in there, all right, because
it could be an autograph. It could be, it could be,
could be.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
It almost never is. I've had many many baseball cards.
There are very few are things that are amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Here's what's great about these. These are top heritage. And
what's great about being old is I remember buying this
graphic design when it was the first time, because every
year they put out a different design based on however
long ago.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
So let's see what we got hold on hour glasses.
You go, Popper Assad from the Cubs, nice uh, Connor
Norby from the from the Marlins.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Sean Burke from the White Sox.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Ryan Bliss the Mariners.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Nice I got one of these, who was one of
my favorite cards as a kid, because I thought I
got three cards in right, So I got this Strikeout Leaders,
I got Skerbluh Gilbert and Reagan's.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Victor Robles, the Mariners, Nice, Big Meg Mariners.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Big Mariner's pack. Jake Berger, which also sounds like a
nineties uh sitcom Navy, Yes, exactly, Jake Burger's gonna make
me go to the Burgers again. Come on, uh right,
Rinaldo Lopez from the Braves, Okay, George Kirby Mariners, Big Mariner's.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Day, Bradley Blaylock, Rockies.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Okay, Grant Holmes, Braves.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Look at that hair, let me see look at Oh yeah,
Gene Carlo Stanton the Yankees.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Oh that's a big card.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
That's a good card.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
This is sadan Rafaella. But this is also a blue border,
so I guess that's a special card.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
That's a special card. Reese Olsen from the Tigers.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
All right, and then Jackson Cheerio a record breaker, first
MLB player to record a twenty homer plus twenty steel
season at age twenty.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Very nice. And Tyler O'Neil from the Orioles wearing a
weird Orioles cap. I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
It's a weird ools cap. Yeah, so this gives me joy.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, it's fantastic. Do you have a large baseball card
collection now at this point I do? Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
And Fred Willard and I used to go buy boxes,
right because he was so tickled when I told him
the story. But I thought I had it made. I
can go buy a whole box and he's like, it's
such a great indication of how low Right succession was
so great. Sure, Fred's son in law, Mitch, also buys cards.
(46:18):
Now he just buys. He will go on and eBay
and buy the tops twenty five heritage collection that somebody else.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Would put together.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Right, But I pressed him to buy boxes, and we're
trading these to see who can get So we're actually trading, like, oh,
I have two Jake Burds to try to get a
full set.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, so that's that's a joyful thing.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Very nice. Well, congratulations, it's a it is a beautiful,
joyful thing. Well, Peter, thanks for being here, man, Thanks Jay,
it was so great. Thank you for asking to be here.
And I'm so glad I could make the dream you
made my dream come true because I love sitting here
talking so much fun. And the last time we did
it was at Farmer's Market and the two bars were
near two bars. Yeah, I don't know if we were there,
(46:59):
but we're definitely close by. And uh and that was
that was a good time. And this is a good time.
So it's good to touch base with you again. And
I wish you nothing but good. H me too, maybe
a little bit, I mean, just to make me feel better.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
So what are you working on you?
Speaker 3 (47:15):
I'm doing this. I'm trying to. I'm in the middle
of pitching some stuff to try and get paid for
writing something before I write it. That'd be nice. But no,
I mean it's it's pretty dead. It's pretty quiet. But
we'll see what. We'll see what, we'll see what comes
with show business. Yeah, and so thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Thank you, thank you for being here, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
And thank you thank you for tuning in to Don't
Be Along with Jay Coogan. If you have a question,
a comment, or suggestion, write to me at dB A
w JK at gmail dot com and I will respond
to it. And if you have a question for the show,
give it to me and I'll ask a guest. It's
that simple. And if you want to be on the show,
you can write to me. We'll see what happens. I
don't know. You got to be pretty cool like Peter
to be on my show. That's that's what happens. But anyway,
(47:54):
you don't be alone, have a conversation with somebody, sit
down and talk. Don't be lonely, don't be long, all right,
and see you next time.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Don't be alone with Change Cogain
Speaker 4 (48:08):
M. H.
Strawt Media. I'm Peter Marietta. I'm very interested on being
alone with Jake Cogan.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Don't be Alone with jj Cogan.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to Don't be Alone with Jake Cogan. I'm your
host and your friend, Jake Cogan. It's great to have
you here with me as we have a wonderful podcast
for you today. Before we begin, I want to remind
you to write to me at dbawjk at gmail dot
com with any question, concern, comment, criticism, compliment, or a
question for any guests that we have coming up, A
(00:39):
random question for a general guest that you don't know,
but some live question you'd like answered by an artist
or a comedian or a figure of some note, and
I'll ask the question on your behalf and it's going
to be great. Also, I want to thank you for
all the positive feedback that you have left me. A
lot of fans are constantly writing in and complimenting us.
(01:02):
They're also subscribing to the show. If you subscribe it
to us on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music or
Amazon or wherever you listen to the show, I thank you,
it's great, it helps us. Please, if you like the show,
spread it around find a good episode and send it
to a friend that helps us too. I really do
(01:23):
appreciate the show growing and having a lot of people
reach back to me because I do it for the love.
I do it because I'm insecure, and that's all right.
We all have our ways of dealing with our own insecurities.
And speaking of insecurities, our guest today is Peter Murietta,
who is a great showrunner writer, has functioned in the
(01:45):
world of comedy for many many years. He was on
he was a part of The Second City, He's been
part of kids television, regular network television movies, he's been
late late show running a lot of big shows all
across the spectrum, some on network, some on cable, someone
uh streaming. So he's a big deal and I'm glad
(02:08):
to have him here. And the surprising thing about him,
as we'll learn, is he's a guy who always wants
to be part of a club that never felt that
he was really a member, partly because he's biracial, partly
because he's from Arizona, partly because he's just a regular
writer who's insecure like the rest of us. So we're
gonna hear about him and his life and his love
(02:29):
of baseball, and his love of comedy, and his love
of acting, and his love of the world. Right after this,
don't be alone. I knew you by reputation from Second City,
like your pals with a lot of my pals and
(02:53):
Peter Murria, just like you're beloved from a certain you
know whatever, your class era, my era, your era, who's
who's who's in your era? Gosh?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, I was Colbert's understudy, but in my touring company
was Susie Nakamora, who's.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Amazing, a friend of the pod.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And she oh great, great, she's great, She's great. Rose
Abdu a friend of the pod. Uh, Steve Carrell, who
I'm gonna Rosenthal, Teresa mol Again, Jenna Jalovitz, Tom Purcell,
and his writing partner at the time, Tyrone Finch do
you know Tyne? And of course Kenny Campbell. Kenny Campbell
(03:37):
lived down the block from my girlfriend and now wife,
and uh, when we moved out here, Kenny and Kathleen
went on a month long honeymoon and let us stay
at their townhos condo whatever it was in West Westmount
in West Hollywood for a month while we got our
(03:59):
ship together, which was great.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
But here's the thing, like, you know, by reputation, wonderful,
funny guy, all that stuff all true. I didn't know
until years later about you know Arizona, your heard any
of that stuff. I just thought you're just like another Chicago,
Chicago guy.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, just another Chicago was so funny. Well, you know, uh,
that's a great point. And I guess what's interesting to
me now, I've got to ask you a question about
before I answered that because I really want to. But
you want an Emmy?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yes, and I went for but yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Okay, great, great, that's great that you won four, but
you want an an Emmy. And I want to know
the year when you made a speech and you plugged
a dry cleaner your my mom's real estate, your mom's
real estate company. What year was that? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Kind of I get, I'm gonna say it was before
my son was born, so I'm gonna say like nineteen
ninety eight or ninety nine something.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I didn't know you but by reputation, and I thought
that was the best thing ever. And I was in
a room and I remember the room being very divided,
and I was like, what are you guys talking about?
That is the best thing ever, that's all we should
ever do.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, I agree, because my whole thing was if you
win an award, and as much as I just for it,
it's all luck. Right, So we we can agree that
the awards are stupid and yeah, yeah, but if you
get to get.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
In from of the microphone should say something worth while.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
You should make jokes. You get to make jokes. So
that was it. I just said, if I'm going to
get there, I'm gonna make jokes and enjoy myself. And
they let me do it. That was great.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
So about my background, like, so, I my dad is
an immigrant, and you know, I went to college in
the eighties and I wrote sketch comedy for this group,
and you know, I was a playwriting major. And then
I found my way to Chicago and I got hired
in the touring company about the same time as Ratio Sans,
(06:07):
and I remember the producer sort of being very very
supportive of us, but also telling us to like not
mess it up for anybody coming after it. It's like,
you guys are kind of the first couple of people
like this, and I don't want you to mess up. Well,
he did for a long time, and then the lot
(06:29):
not listening at the end. But we were touring, and
part of the job in the touring companies to do
everybody else's scenes. There was no culturally specific material, and
so we just kind of did you know. I did
Rick Hall's scene where he was a farmer and he
(06:49):
went to school and visited his kid, and his kid
made abstract art. And I did all these other different scenes,
some pasquasi scenes. And but I had always written about
it when I was writing plays, and I always done
a lot of like stuff about being in Arizona. It
just didn't fit at the time, right, And so I
found myself kind of doing what I think a lot
(07:10):
of people did in that era, which is you're trying
to succeed and you bury it because you're like, well,
I don't I don't know how, because I don't see
any real examples.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Right of success. Subsequently, even after I met you, went
back and did some research and learned about you know,
your your your start. A wonderful teacher sort of promoted
you up and said said, like you could be a writer.
Yeah right, yeah, doctor, doctor, So like tell the story.
Tell the story about this teacher, because I teach you teach, yes,
(07:39):
and so right now, I would like some love for teachers.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
All right, doctor Donna swam, I'm going to try not
to get emotional.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
She was my way. If you do get emotional, you
get a free coffee.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So oh my god. Yeah, now now I'm gonna fake
it exactly. Doctor Donnas Swain was my Humanity's two fifty
c teacher, which covered the arts in the Existential period.
And I was floating through school for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I was solid student.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Uh yeah, but I want to give you a real
taste of how lazy. I went to my advisor as
a freshman, and my goal was I'm gonna I'm gonna
get through school somehow. And what I really want to
do is teach high school English and coach junior varsity
baseball because varsity baseball is too stressful.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So I am in school and when I talk to
my advisor.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
And anyone who knows you at this point thinks you
could probably coach a major League baseball team.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Probably probably, okay, and so but at the time, I
was like, there's too much stress there, right, And so
I I was the advisor says to young Peter, so
are you, I said, I'm an English major.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Are you creative writing major or English Lit. Now I
was not fresh off the farm, but oh mo. I
was like, what's the difference and she said, well, one
of them is about the analysis of texts and everything,
and the other one is like writing. And I said
the writing thing sounds like less trips to the library.
I'll do that.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So that's how negligible I felt as an art.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
And also how little you knew how hard writing was.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
For sure, if I could have written the thirty thousandth
book on Chaucer where I just quoted the other books.
So I wrote a paper for her that was about
existential philosophy, and she wrote, see me on it in
my office, no grade. And I went to her office
very scared, and she said this is the funniest paper
(09:44):
I've ever read on existentialism. And I was like, cool,
what's my grade? And she said I can't give you one.
You have no citations, you have no thesis. These are
just rambling jokes. And I said okay, And she said,
but I do want you to meet these students in
another class of mine who do sketch comedy, and you
could write sketch comedy and you could be a writer
(10:05):
and it was the first person that had ever encouraged
me to do anything.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Let's talk about Wizards of Waverly Place, gigantic hit. People
loved it. What happened that last season.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, I think I had always been very rigorous. I
think the first problem was I came into it from
prime time, like a lot of people do. But I
came to it with the attitude of like, Oh, you're
going to give me notes and I'm going to take
the good ones and I'm not going to take the
(10:39):
bad ones. And that's kind of how we operate. That
wasn't their idea. Their idea was you're going to do
everything we say, and so I just bucked at that.
And then we had a show that was popular, and
we had a show that was winning awards, and I
assume that means like, hey, we're gonna continue down this path.
(11:00):
But they were never happy about that path, and I
think it kind of reached ahead. At the end of
the third season. I had done a movie and the
movie did really well, and the third season was doing
really well, and I got word that at the end
of the year they were going to let me go
quietly from a writer who they were negotiating with my
(11:22):
job right, and so I just finished off the four
weeks knowing it right, and then and then that was it.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's interesting, like, yeah, that part of what at Disney's specifically,
what they wanted to do was not just create good
children's television, but have a massive control, massive over every
aspect of the thing, as if they were the Bengalis
who knew what the magic was.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, And I think that a good example of that
that's not repetitive with other things I've said before is
you know, I was able to get Shaki to come
beyond the show. And I did that because I was
at an award situation. Ceremony was at UCLA, I think
(12:11):
at Royce Hall. I don't remember what the awards were,
but she was there performing and I was there with
a couple of the members of the cast and we
went backstage and she said, oh, I love the show.
And I said, oh, would you be on the show?
And she said, uh yeah, And I said, cool, is
your manager here? And then she goes, yeah, I go
when you go get your manager And she went to
(12:31):
get the manager and the cast members were like, what
is that about? I go, this is gonna be about
whether or not she really means it is what we're
about to find out, right, And so the manager came over.
We started talking, but Disney was like, well, we're going
to choose which song and I was like, no, and
I'm not going to choose which song. Shakira will choose
her song. And they said, well, when the runner up
on American Idol was on Sweet Life, we chose the song.
(12:55):
And I said, right, the runner up on American Idol
YouTube the song one hundred and fifty million worldwide. She
chooses a song, I go, now, standards and practices, I
get sure, but you're not this fngale that gets to
choose what song she's gonna sing.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Right, some Disney decides her hips do lie yes, then
you have to.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Figure that out. And so like, those were the kind
of things that we just went back and forth about
and I won almost every battle. And then I would
even argue, while it felt at the time like it
was the worst thing that ever happened to me and
I lost the war, I feel like it. You know,
my friend's Perry and Gigi always say that, like, you know, no,
this is the thing that got you back into the
(13:35):
world of primetime where most of us can't get back to.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I did a few pilots, a few things for Disney.
They would run about, like what shoes is this character
wearing and like, and I would say, well, that characters
wearing sneakers, and this other character because they're snippers wearing shoes. Yeah,
and they say, wear are the shoes? And I said, well, there,
they don't have them yet, we're running down to look
at them, yep, Like can I just take a photo
(14:00):
of them? Like can the description of Sam?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
They would say to me that we think when we
do rack check of wardrobe, it is as important as
the material. They said that to me, Yeah, And I
understood from the marketing point of view because they were
making Selena dresses and everything. But I know that that's
a great point. And I think the stand I wanted
to take was the one I took, which was like,
(14:23):
I think we're doing something special here. And then in
the subsequent years, like another stand I took is I
wouldn't go back there to pitch because I was like, well,
you guys got rid of me, and I had like
the number two movie of all time and then two
Emmys and a third on the way and and you
fired me. So I don't really know what I could
(14:45):
do for you to guarantee that you wouldn't do that again,
So I'm not gonna. And I remember running into friends
that were there that had also been fired. It was
a common occurrence, and they were like, I'd see them,
what are you guys doing. Oh, we're getting ready to
go pitch Adam and Gary, and I was like, why
why why? So I think they went their way and
(15:08):
I went my way, and I was happy.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
With what I did. I had kids on my Kids
Show and Nickelodeon come and talk like this, and then
I would say, well, we don't have to talk like this,
and they said I don't have to like they were relieved.
They had been trained to talk in sort of a stiff,
stilted manner, and I said, no, no, you just be
yourself and it's fine, and they were so happy. And
but one of my actors who when my series got canceled,
(15:32):
because all my series get canceled, everybody gets canceled, I guess,
so you rarely sometimes you get to choose. When one
of my actors from my show, when my show went down,
went back to a different kids show, and he said,
they're making me do the thing again, and I was like,
I'm sorry, kid, Like you didn't have to do it
for me. You gotta do it, you gotta do it
for them.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I got some texts from some actors after they relieved
me in my responsibilities at Wizards right in that last
season that would just text me them in a cal costume,
or it would text me, oh my god, what is
happening over here?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Don't Be Alone with jan.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, let's talk about you coming on my show. I
would have you on my show because you're interesting, you
have an interesting point of view. I'm a subscriber to
your substat I like reading your your your stuff. But
at one point you said I really want to be
on Don't Be Alone with Jake Hogan. Yes, you're the
only person who's ever said that, as far as I know,
(16:47):
the only person who's ever asked to be on my show.
And of course immediately I wrote.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
To you, Well you did immediately, absolutely, you said you're
gonna make my Christmas dreams come to you.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Exactly why did you want to be on Don't Be
Alone with Jake Coogan?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I think because I I think I have to go
one more beat backwards to the stump, because I was
hanging around as a young writer Jonathan Prince, Julie Warner's
house uh a Jay Segal uh and that crap and
(17:20):
Craig and so I would be at their house to
watch movies or Jackson Prince and my oldest are two
weeks apart and kind of grew up together. And I
would hear about it, and I would ask people, never you,
But I would always ask the people in that circle like, hey,
that sounds interesting. And I was always basically face planted,
(17:44):
you know what, this is a thing that you don't
you know whatever?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And so as I've most of my life, I think psychologically,
because of my biracial upbringing, because of my family history,
I've always been in a place of where do I belong?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And as a young writer, I wanted to belong who
doesn't right?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And so I always felt like, oh, did you ask
me to be on this se No? I didn't, Okay,
And then you know.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
The qualification to be on the stump asking J Cogan,
it was the only qualification. That's it, Jesus, that's it.
There was no other qualification anyway. So I can you
are you funny? And can you keep your mouth shut.
In other words, yeah, people writing horrible things. That's what
I am.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
That's what I heard.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
So the whole point was right, if you if you
so read whatever you read, keep yourself, keep yourself, keep yourself.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So I think you made me laugh because somebody not
you posted like, oh remember the stump and you said
something about it, and I said, oh, I remember. It
was the thing I always wanted to be on and
no one would let me, which was true. And uh,
and I think you said yep, because we were talking
about you, and I see that's the thing. That's the
(19:04):
kind of the back and forth I love. And so
I saw that you were doing the podcast and I
was like, this is what I'm gonna write about this week.
I'm gonna write about how that hurt me then and
acknowledge it. But I'm also going to say, like, you
know what I want to do now. I want to
be on Jay's podcast. I'm glad I could make your
dreams come true. Tell me this and this is I'm
just flip gears for a second. Yeah, baseball, yeah, very
(19:28):
deep in your soul, is very very deep. Why and
why the Dodgers?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Why the Dodgers? Okay, by the way, saying this as
somebody who loves the Dodgers. Of course that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I grew up in Arizona, so we didn't have the Diamondbacks,
we didn't have a pro tea, right, we had the
Tucson Toros, and I used to go to those games
all the time. They were Oakland A's affiliate, and.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Then I used to ask for affiliate.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
My grandpa used to take me to them. I remember
very distinctly a memory, very seminal memory, of him getting
off work. He worked as a mechanic at a car
dealership and it was teeming rain in August, the monsoon.
The game was for sure rain now, but they were
giving a poster out of the team and him driving
(20:19):
me in the monsoon weather to High Corporate Field, where
I ran in the rain to the gate where there
was some poor forlorn security guard who went and got
me a poster, and and and so it's it's deep.
I have a deep love for it. I played it,
and I loved the game. And for a lot of
(20:41):
time I was a Red Sox fan because I had
relatives and my uncle Dave was a Red Sox fan,
and so I kind of grew up with that. But
because I'm a baseball fan. I don't I don't partake
of like you're a Padre fan. Screw you, you know.
And the more I learned about the game, the more
(21:03):
I learned about Jackie Robinson, the more I learned about
the history of the game, I was like, I think
the Dodgers on my team, most people go Yankees when
they learned the deep.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
History of the game.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Sure, most people go, but remember I started as a
Red Sox gran so like.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
You couldn't love the Yankees.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So I did that, and I think that it cuts deep,
like and then to go even deeper, I learned about
Fernando and like the history of Echo Park, the history
of Chavez Ravine. You know, I've written about it. I've
It's in one of my pilots. The idea that I
(21:39):
think the Dodgers themselves are often pilloried for the building
of the stadium, when in fact it's the city council's
promised it was going to be public housing and then
took everybody out of there. Then only then did the
Dodgers come to a vacant lot that had already been
scandal rid. So like, I feel like Fernando's return to
not return his arrival has made the Dodgers the most
(22:02):
Mexican American team in the country.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, I mean it's fascinating how baseball I mean is
so Latin. I mean it's it's so Latin.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah. I always tell I've tried for years Isaac gon
Zales and I to try to get someone to let
us reboot and remake Major League because we think it's
the easiest pitch ever where they go, what's your take? Nothing,
It's the same movie, but instead of one guy who's Latin,
(22:34):
there's one white guy. Right, that's our take, and we
want to go do it. Yeah, it's so different than
it was when we were kids.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Being a baseball dad was one of the greatest thrills
of my life. When my kid was playing, and where
do they play league but North Venis San Fernano and
you know Little League great little and Joaquin used to
take batting lessons from Reggie Smith.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yes there, because he was a switch hitter. Absolutely, and
so some coach was like, you got to go to
Reggis drive to.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
My kid took some coaching from Reggie as well.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And I got to see Reggie two months ago out
a game, and my seats are close to this staircase
that go to a place where these kind of people
hang out. And he came up, and I don't usually
do this, like I'm really a living but I was
like Reggie, and I said, my kid da da da
(23:27):
and took from you and I said, I'm sure you
don't remember, but I just wanted to tell you. He's
a hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Dominican
And he lit up. He was like, oh my god, Yeah,
that's great. That's great to hear these in the game.
And he still loves the game.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Let's talk a little bit about your sub stack and
one of the things that you wrote recently, an article
about all the places you used to write that no
longer exist, and the show Don't Belong with j Cogan
is all about solving my problems.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yes, I want to I want to solve.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And my problem is how do I deal with the
strange nostalgia for things that were or no longer exists
that I still long for but no, in reality it
popped up again. I probably wouldn't go like, there's a
weird thing about it.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Oh, that last part is a nice wintail.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
It's it's it's it's it belongs where it is, which
is in history, but part of us and my dad
is huge on this, wants it just to still exist.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Give me one example, not a bunch, Give me one example.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Okay, here's a perfect example. Du Pars at the Farmer's
Market says it might be closing. Yep, Okay. So I
haven't been to that due Pars in many, many years,
and I may not go before it closes. But the
fact that it's closing is going to really make me sad.
(24:49):
It's gonna make sad, make me sad because things are
going to change in a way that I don't want.
I don't whatever's going to be there put in its
place a Boa steakhouse or some other that I wouldn't
want to be there. I'm gonna be bummed out by.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I'm going to go backwards and tell you that my grandmother,
who was incredibly close with had polio during the epidemic,
and she was in a wheelchair the whole time I
knew her, and frequently this grandfather, the same one that
took me to get the poster, after he would get
off work and I would go spend weeks with them
(25:27):
at a time Sometimes he'd get off work and we'd
have dinner and he'd say, let's go for a ride,
and we'd get her in the car and we'd go
for ride. And I was a kid, and what I
was just thrilled was I was in a car with
my grandparents and there was gonna be ice cream at
the end of Basking Robinson and we'd go for ride.
(25:49):
And all those rides I took were I didn't know,
but they were my grandparents who had lived in Tucson
for forty years. They were driving places and saying things like, oh,
that's where Dave Blumen's son's was. Remember we got your
(26:10):
mother's you know, brother's christening outfit there or something, and oh,
that's the dealership that was the Plymouth dealership where your
grandfather first worked. They did that, and so they're driving
through their history. Yeah, and it comes alive when I
reflect upon it. And then I think about the disordered
(26:34):
chaos of my mind. I think of the modern mind,
and I think that I admittedly drive in my circumference
past lots where buildings were just two months ago that
I'm like, what the hell was there? What the hell
(26:56):
was there? And I can't remember and I will be
as I'm determined not to not remember. I will go
home and go to Apple Maps because I know, well,
you're not gonna update it that fucking fast, and I'll go,
oh shit, it was that house.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
It was this house.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
There's a lot by Osria Buka and it's a lot
and I'm like, oh my god, that's that house that
had a billboard pole in the middle of it and
it had a hobby horse in the front. And it's gone. Okay,
now I know. And I feel like when I think
about things like the pantry, I think about the meals
(27:30):
I had there, I think about the people that I
knew there, and when I drive by it, like I
will leave my house some days and go downtown to
my office and think I'm going down there. I want
to drive by the pantry. I just want to market
and by marking it, I say it exists, but I
don't have to get out. And I think that's because
my grandmother, we couldn't get out and go look at
(27:51):
these places. We couldn't go knock on the door. Right,
she was in the chair, she was in the car.
So I feel like I got that imprinted on me.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
And when you do market when you do go past
the building, what does it do for you?
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I think it's mostly I'm in touch with who I
was and the people I knew at that moment in
my life. And like driving by the old Highland Grounds,
which was one of the coffee shops I think I mentioned,
you know, it made me think of I didn't write
about this, but it made me think of one night
I was pulling out of there and there was this big, loping,
(28:25):
gawky looking person with shorts on and dress socks and
sandals in the alley behind Highland Grounds and he looked
at me because my headlights had thrown up, and it
was Tarantino. And I remember having this thought, not because
I don't like him or I love him. I love
(28:46):
his movies and I like him, but because of his movies,
I remember thinking like, oh my god, I don't know
you at all, and it's ten o'clock in this alley.
I could kill you and no one would know, and
there's non us right, this is a great Tarantino scene.
And so like, I remember those things, and I feel
like it keeps me in touch with who I was.
(29:08):
It makes me remember the experiences, and it reminds me
that it's gone, right, right, because I feel differently about
the arc Light. Yeah, because the arc Light. I still
get off my couch. Even two days ago. I see
the tom Cruise trail and I'm like, fucking I want
to go see that in a giant screen. And I
get up and I'm like, oh, yeah, right, arc Light's
(29:29):
not there, right right. I am stunned it's not there.
You're mourning that, and I'm mourning it. And I don't
have the sense of like, I'm glad it existed. I
remember all those cool things. I'm like, this is a
gaping wound in the middle of Hollywood that needs to be.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Fixed in the vein of memorializing things that may have passed.
I noticed recently you've put online some scripts that are
dead otherwise dead, but you want to have a Yeah,
that was an interesting thought. I really thought that was
a great idea.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
What made you decide to just pop those up?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And two things? Courage right right? I think it took
me a long time in my writing career. You know,
when you write a pilot and then they don't shoot it.
When I was a younger writer, I would beat myself up. Really,
(30:27):
I didn't do it enough. I didn't do it right.
This isn't this. And then I wrote a script that
I haven't put up online that was about me and
my youngest who's non binary, and the idea of a
non binary person and a biracial father connecting in unusual ways, right.
(30:51):
And I wrote it for CBS, and I remember getting
a call from the exact who said, I need to
tell you that we didn't know when we bought this
in July that the only thing that was going to
work for us this season was Ghosts. And I've been
(31:13):
told the only thing that we should be shooting as
a companion to Ghosts. And I said, oh, so, my vulnerable,
funny and poignant discussion of race and gender is probably
not that, right, Yeah, And so I think with a
different eye, the courage of like, oh, these are fine
(31:35):
pieces of writing. In fact, I'm very proud of them,
and I do want them to have another life. And
then the second part of it is looking at substack
and looking at some of these people that I really
like and read, like Sam Widows, who's Jamie's son, who's
writing a lot of amazing things about like what does
independent television look like? Right in the world of how
much things cost to make now, and so I'm not
(31:58):
saying I'm putting them out there hoping that someone's going
to do anything with him. But I'm thinking now like, oh,
they have life as stories that have an audience. I
have a number of subscribers now.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And did you have to ask Pete Holmes to put
it up?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
I did not?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Okay, interesting, I did not.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I maybe I should have, but I don't know. I mean,
he and I have a good relationship. I don't imagine
he would feel.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
But I did.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I also didn't ask Universal, which I wrote them on
both under like there's a little bit of a pirate
in me. That's like, all right, yeah, well people are
going to read it, and if you're upset about it going.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
That's always the tricky thing is like they own it,
like it's they paid you, it's theirs, but they're not
going to ever do anything with it, right, So it's
such sitting there, right and they don't even know they
owned it. That's the well.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yes, and that brings me to Dead Pilot Society. Have
you ever done anything with them?
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So I am friends with Danny Treyo.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
By the way, Danny Trejo's that's the first time anyone
has dropped his aim is a celebrity on this show.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I bet it is.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
So many first people have said machete, but they've not
said nanny.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
So I got an email once from them from Dead
Pilot Society. I got very excited because I like, Oh,
they're gonna ask me to do one of my pilots.
And instead they said, we know you're friends with Danny
and Bill Lawrence has a pilot he's doing for Dead
Pilot Society and it's got a character like that, and
we want to know if if you think Danny's a
(33:26):
good table reader. And I was like, that's the most
polite way of you asking me if he reads English,
or like, I don't know what you're exactly. He's a
professional actor with a lot of credits. I bet he
knows how to read a script. But I was like, oh, okay,
and h I didn't. But I was very excited, like, Oh,
(33:49):
that's an outlet for a pilot. So I think I'm
excited by the turns the internet's taking right now and
substack in specific where you can put these things out
and people can read them and give you back.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Now it's time for listener man.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
This question is from Nathan. This was a question that
was sent to me and a random guest, which happens
to be you. Oh so, dear Jay and guests. As
a working writer, how do you motivate yourself to write
on subjects that you may not care about or that
bore you. There's always the overall caring about getting the
project finished, but individual pieces can feel like a slog.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
It's finding little things inside it that will delight you.
Like I remember having to write a scene in a
show I did not my voice, you know, and U
and it was the sort of act to break scene
(35:05):
in a crazy gang reway. And there was this person
who was sort of a thin antagonist, a very thinly
drawn sketch. Yeah yeah, and off I go. And I
(35:26):
had a real good friend in college named Richard Sodo.
And Richard's Soto was a Chippendale's dancer okay, and a
stuntman any fencer and an actor and a gunfighter at
old too, so like he did all and so I
just started to get tickled by the idea of like,
(35:47):
it's Richard Soto, and I'm going to do all the
beats that they need. But like I did throw some
stuff there where, like he would say, like, well, it's
like when I was a Chipendale's dancer and you have
the protagonist of the scene and be like, wait a minute, right,
wait a minute, we're back up a second and he's like, well,
I'm not backing up for anybody, and you're like great.
So I managed to find a few things that would
tickle me. And I also knew when I turned it in,
(36:11):
I was like, I'm cool if the boss Man strips
all this out, right, but I got the job done.
You know, did the Chippendale stuff stay in the script?
The Chipennail stuff stayed in the script and test because
you could see where it was a thinly drawn character
and now it's something that an actor might be interested in.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Right, But also as a writer, like you're filling out
a character. You're making somebody come alive. And thank god,
even if it's a if it's a one off, one
moment in a script, somebody it's like great improv. Like
you're adding information and you're and you're filling out the world.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
What do you tell your writing students? You know, you're you're.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I'm the deputy director, deputy director of the Sydney Partier,
who is famous for his Arizona work Two Things Okay
directed right, a feature there of the three he directed,
and and the first Academy Award nomination he got was
for a movie he made in Arizona, Fantastic, which is
why his family was interested.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I love it anyway. So you're you're there. You're teaching
students who want to make a career in the content
creation industry.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yes, what do you tell them? I try to be real, real,
and that doesn't mean it's over what I try to
tell them. I've also heard a lot of people say
lately like I tell them the wait a year, and
I'm like, I don't want.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
I tell students, here are the challenges right now. I
tell my writing students. Most of the writing students that
I have and I had at Afi too, think expansively
and dream big, and I'm not there to kill their dreams.
But I am there to say, hey, you know what
(37:49):
you're going to do. Before you create five shows, you're
going to work on seven. So in the time between
now and your first gig, just keep writing. I feel
like right is the thing that we don't have to
ask permission to do now. We do need to find
another job while we do it, but we can continue
to get better at that. We can continue to build
(38:12):
a network. We can continue and not just they here's
my email network. But I mean, I'm always telling students like,
you don't want to hear from me about what I think.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Get six of you together, yes.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Start reading each other's stuff, start having readings, start inviting
people to it, and I'm like, you will be surprised
not just about how your writing is going to grow,
but you're going to be surprised that somebody's going to
come in and say, hey, I heard about this job.
I can't do it. And that network is going to
be the people you trust.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
That scene we call it building a scene. If you
build a scene of people, there's going to be somebody
that's going to break out and have take you with it,
or you're going to be the one to break out
and you're gonna you're going to turn to when you
need help, the people that you've trusted already. So it's
it's it's very, very.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
And so there's no it's not not delaying anything.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Just start, all right. So so let's do the moment
of joy, A moment of job.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So I have two yes. The first is about giving
away tube socks, okay, and I want to tell you
the circumstances.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
I don't think we need to hear the circuss. Everybody
knows giving away tube sox is a joy joyful thing, right.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I had a when I first met a friend of mine,
when we were down with our first meeting, it was
creative meeting. He said, hey, go get Peter a package
of tube sox and I said, what do you well,
I don't I'm fine, I don't need any thank you,
And he said no. He goes, here's the deal. When
(39:53):
you pull up to a freeway exit, or you go
buy a coffee shop, or you go buy a corner
and you see somebody's in trouble, he said, you don't
know if they've got mental health problems. You don't know,
if they're an addict. You don't know, if they're just
down on their luck. You don't know if you give
them money, what they're going to spend it on. Everybody
out on the street needs a pair of socks, clean
(40:14):
pair of socks. I promise you, if you give those away,
you will see how important and impactful they are. And
to that day when I got to packatu from him.
When I run out, I go buy more. And that's
what I do, and it gives me a tremendous amount
of joy personally, and it is incredible to be with people.
(40:34):
It's a habit now. So if we're riding somewhere and
I'm somebody and it happens, I forget and it's over
and somebody goes I can't believe what I just saw,
because I don't try to force them, because you want
to give everyone dignity and choice, power of choice. So
I just go, hey, could you use a pair of
fresh new socks? And then we're off to the race.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
How often are you told no?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I'm say one out of ten, but more often the
biggest preponderances yes is The second biggest is the consideration
of what's just happened, which I think has to do
with someone's actually seeing you seeing me right, Yeah, I
(41:21):
get that, And so that's one for joy. The other
is when I was a kid and I would get
money from either helping my dad with the yard or
chores with cars, I would ride my bike up to
reliable drug store and I would buy like two packs.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Of baseball cards and.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I thought, And they were behind the counter too, because
the guy that ran reliable drugs didn't trust us. Okay, right,
all the candy, everything behind the count. It was crazy,
the amount of not trust.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Sure, but not crazy. If you've run a drug store, maybe.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Maybe give it.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Given the times in the place. Maybe h And I
always said to myself, man, when I make it, and
I didn't even know what excuse me, remember it was
gonna be English teacher. I was like, Oh, if I
make it, I'm gonna someday have enough money to buy
a whole box of baseball cards. And so I went
on my merry way and I came out to La
(42:28):
I got my first job. I was working at Radford
Lot and I was driving home making staff writer minimum
and I saw a sports card shop on Ventura Bleward.
I was like, and it all came back to me
in a flash, very much like we've been talking about
(42:48):
places and things.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
And I was like, oh my god, I can do it.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
I can do it. And I pulled in and I
walked in and I said, I want one box of
tops baseball cards. Goes okay, and he game to me
and we rang them up and it was twenty nine dollars,
and I was like, oh, I've cheated myself out of
twenty years. I could have been doing this thirty dollars exactly,
(43:11):
and thirty dollars yep, but I did it. And so
I would say, and I brought them with me because
one of my greatest joys is having the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
I'm off my.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
But the opportunity to open up packet baseball.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
That's fantastic. So I brought two all right.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
That we can open all right here, they are all right,
and you can keep whatever's in there, all right, because
it could be an autograph. It could be, it could be,
could be.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
It almost never is. I've had many many baseball cards.
There are very few are things that are amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Here's what's great about these. These are top heritage. And
what's great about being old is I remember buying this
graphic design when it was the first time, because every
year they put out a different design based on however
long ago.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
So let's see what we got hold on hour glasses.
You go, Popper Assad from the Cubs, nice uh, Connor
Norby from the from the Marlins.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Sean Burke from the White Sox.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Ryan Bliss the Mariners.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Nice I got one of these, who was one of
my favorite cards as a kid, because I thought I
got three cards in right, So I got this Strikeout Leaders,
I got Skerbluh Gilbert and Reagan's.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Victor Robles, the Mariners, Nice, Big Meg Mariners.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Big Mariner's pack. Jake Berger, which also sounds like a
nineties uh sitcom Navy, Yes, exactly, Jake Burger's gonna make
me go to the Burgers again. Come on, uh right,
Rinaldo Lopez from the Braves, Okay, George Kirby Mariners, Big Mariner's.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Day, Bradley Blaylock, Rockies.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Okay, Grant Holmes, Braves.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Look at that hair, let me see look at Oh yeah,
Gene Carlo Stanton the Yankees.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Oh that's a big card.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
That's a good card.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
This is sadan Rafaella. But this is also a blue border,
so I guess that's a special card.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
That's a special card. Reese Olsen from the Tigers.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
All right, and then Jackson Cheerio a record breaker, first
MLB player to record a twenty homer plus twenty steel
season at age twenty.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Very nice. And Tyler O'Neil from the Orioles wearing a
weird Orioles cap. I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
It's a weird ools cap. Yeah, so this gives me joy.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, it's fantastic. Do you have a large baseball card
collection now at this point I do? Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
And Fred Willard and I used to go buy boxes,
right because he was so tickled when I told him
the story. But I thought I had it made. I
can go buy a whole box and he's like, it's
such a great indication of how low Right succession was
so great. Sure, Fred's son in law, Mitch, also buys cards.
(46:18):
Now he just buys. He will go on and eBay
and buy the tops twenty five heritage collection that somebody else.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Would put together.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Right, But I pressed him to buy boxes, and we're
trading these to see who can get So we're actually trading, like, oh,
I have two Jake Burds to try to get a
full set.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, so that's that's a joyful thing.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Very nice. Well, congratulations, it's a it is a beautiful,
joyful thing. Well, Peter, thanks for being here, man, Thanks Jay,
it was so great. Thank you for asking to be here.
And I'm so glad I could make the dream you
made my dream come true because I love sitting here
talking so much fun. And the last time we did
it was at Farmer's Market and the two bars were
near two bars. Yeah, I don't know if we were there,
(46:59):
but we're definitely close by. And uh and that was
that was a good time. And this is a good time.
So it's good to touch base with you again. And
I wish you nothing but good. H me too, maybe
a little bit, I mean, just to make me feel better.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
So what are you working on you?
Speaker 3 (47:15):
I'm doing this. I'm trying to. I'm in the middle
of pitching some stuff to try and get paid for
writing something before I write it. That'd be nice. But no,
I mean it's it's pretty dead. It's pretty quiet. But
we'll see what. We'll see what, we'll see what comes
with show business. Yeah, and so thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Thank you, thank you for being here, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
And thank you thank you for tuning in to Don't
Be Along with Jay Coogan. If you have a question,
a comment, or suggestion, write to me at dB A
w JK at gmail dot com and I will respond
to it. And if you have a question for the show,
give it to me and I'll ask a guest. It's
that simple. And if you want to be on the show,
you can write to me. We'll see what happens. I
don't know. You got to be pretty cool like Peter
to be on my show. That's that's what happens. But anyway,
(47:54):
you don't be alone, have a conversation with somebody, sit
down and talk. Don't be lonely, don't be long, all right,
and see you next time.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Don't be alone with Change Cogain
Speaker 4 (48:08):
M. H.
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