August 10, 2025 • 42 mins
Today’s guest is Aaron Foster, a standup comic who brings humor to topics like mental health in his stand-up shows.
Aaron is touring now with his show “Mostly Jokes,” where he shares honest stories about being clinically depressed, his experience hosting an HGTV show, growing up with a bipolar father, and having a schizophrenic brother. At fifty, Aaron decided to follow his passion for stand-up comedy. I’m genuinely excited to introduce Aaron to you all, writers. Remember, it’s never too late to chase your dreams, and I believe Aaron’s story will inspire you to do just that.
The PAGE International Screenwriting Awards sponsors the WRITERS HANGOUT.
Executive Producer Kristin Overn
Creator/Executive Producer Sandy Adomaitis
Producer Terry Sampson
Music by Ethan Stoller
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Hello, my name is SandyAdamidis, the social media
director for the PageInternational Screenwriting
Awards and your host for theWriters Hangout, a podcast that
celebrates the many Frominspiration to the first draft,
revising, getting the projectmade, and everything in between.
(00:32):
We'll talk to the best and thebrightest in the entertainment
industry, and create a spacewhere you can hang out, learn
from the pros, and have fun.
Hey writers, it's Sandy.
I'm coming to you from StudioCity, the jewel of the San
Fernando Valley.
We are in the dog days of summerwith a full moon and
(00:55):
unbelievable heat.
Boy do we have a great show foryou.
Today's guest is Aaron Foster, astandup comic who is currently
touring with his show aboutbeing clinically depressed.
hosting A-H-G-T-V show.
Growing up with a bipolar fatherand having a schizophrenic
(01:18):
brother.
At 50, he decided to pursue acareer in standup comedy.
we all need that reminder thatit's never too late and Aaron
will inspire you to feel thatway.
Aaron Foster, thank you so muchfor joining us on The Writer's
Hangout.
Thank you for having me.
Happy to be here.
(01:38):
Hey, we connected in, the modernway I found your comedy online
and I followed you.
I just thought you were just sofunny.
And then I saw a post you put upon July 25th.
And it starts with, you quityour job at 50.
It has been three years, and yougo on to say you've been ignored
by dozens of bookers andcountless festivals.
(02:01):
Now, Erin, can you take it fromhere what the rest of the post
says?
Sure that post goes on to saythat I, wrote a 90 minute show
about my mental health or lackthereof, and did my own 40 city
tour.
Sometimes people come, sometimesthey don't.
But I also just booked my firstever headline gig at a comedy
club roosters Comedy Club inSunnyvale, California, September
(02:24):
11th.
It's never too late.
I love this post so much.
Congratulations, by the way, onRoosters at Sunnyvale's.
Can you tell me about what wenton behind the scenes?
did you just hit play Did you doedits?
Did you think about it for awhile?
Did you write it?
What went on behind that post?
(02:45):
Yeah, it's funny that that post,caught your attention because
it's really one of the more, Iguess, simpler posts that I've
made.
I'm still trying to navigate myway in social media and find a
voice that is repeatable andauthentic there.
But that was just me reacting inalmost real time.
Like having a discovery of oh, Igot booked at this club.
(03:05):
And then I should record areaction to this.
Because that's the way ourbrains get wired.
Now.
We spend all time on socialmedia.
Oh, this be good for socialmedia.
Stop.
Let's make it, let's make it apost.
But that's the world we live in,especially as aspiring
comedians.
Right.
Angling for content.
But yeah, I just set up thecamera and really thought about,
I had a little bit of, what isthe text of that video?
(03:27):
It's not a, there's not avoiceover or words being spoken,
but the text is what we covered,as I said, quit my job at 50,
rejected from festivals, bookerswon't call me back.
And then, just booked my firstheadlining spot and, breaking
out into a big smile.
So it's one of those things ofJust trying to figure out what
works on social media.
And I think there is hopefully,a level of authenticity to that.
'cause it definitely came from aplace of truth and of being very
(03:51):
excited.
And I don't get excited a wholelot even when good things
happen.
So the idea that, a club reachedout to me that somehow had seen
something I did somewhere, Idon't really know how it
happened and I figured I'm notgonna ask them until after the
show.
Good.
That's good.
Because I don't want them tosecond guess their decision.
(04:12):
But it's just one of thesethings of you just keep putting
things out into the world andmost of them seem to, land on,
on deaf ears or not go anywhere.
But I've had a couple of thingslately that, these moments where
like, oh, somebody is payingattention to something.
They saw me somewhere.
I always like to share with thewriters out there that when you
(04:34):
do, how does this go doingthings get lead you to doing
more things putting yourself outthere when you don't even think
anyone's paying attention.
Well, if you don't, then nobodywill pay attention.
And I would love for ourwriters, I don't know if I can
put it up on my socials or I'lljust direct them to your
socials.
They might go, I don't know whatto do on social media.
(04:56):
Well, your voice isn't even inthat post.
It's all captions.
It's done with music.
And any writer can do that.
Any writer can get on Instagramand go, Hey, a producer asked to
read my script.
I'm really happy about that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I've certainly done it of, you,I'm sure we all have creators
(05:16):
that we like and don't like.
And I think to start out,emulate somebody that you like,
copy their style, copy their,'cause most very popular
creators do one thing and theydo it over and over again.
And that's, all of the adviceof, find one thing and do it
well.
And I've been told a millionthings of like, well, you have
comedy clips, you have day inthe life clips, you have a
(05:37):
cooking recipe clips, like youneed to make separate pages for
all those things and just do onething on your comedy page and
one thing on your cooking page.
It's like, I'm not gonna dothat.
But that is the conventionalwisdom, which is to just do one
thing over and over again,because then people know what
they're gonna get on your page.
And that's interesting.
can we put a lantern on that?
So I think.
I'm going back in my brain, andyou're absolutely right.
(05:59):
We've been told to keep it, getyour what is it, your brand or
whatever it is, and just, beatit to death.
I like what you are saying and Ithink social media is with you
on that.
create a page and show up makeit interesting content and they
(06:19):
will come.
I hope so.
I think, the biggest thing isgetting over that sort of just
the fear of posting the kind ofcringe factor and the
embarrassment.
And the reality is, and Istruggle with this absolutely to
this day, it's a huge, hugeobstacle that I'm still trying
to get over.
But the reality is that nobodycares.
Especially if it's, I mean,what's, what's the word?
(06:40):
What if nobody watches?
Okay, well then nobody watchesit.
What if it goes viral?
Well, then it goes viral.
I mean, then a bunch of peoplelike it.
And yeah, you, you're always ofcourse open to those negative
comments and those are never funto get.
but, you hopefully build up atolerance to those two.
I'm still working on that aswell right now.
I once posted a video of BowenYang.
He was the Titanic iceberg, Haveyou seen that video I have, yes.
(07:04):
We can update.
He tells the story Yes.
From the point of view of theiceberg.
That is brilliant.
And I posted it because it'sperspective, it's point of view.
There's another way it coming atthe Titanic and a person wrote a
comment saying what does thishave to do with screenwriting?
Why do you think people do notunderstand that standup is
(07:27):
writing?
I think it's because whenstandup is done well.
Which is when most people seeit, most people see standup on a
special, a Netflix special, HBOspecial, whatever it might be.
And by that point, that materialhas been written and rewritten
and workshopped and tweaked andedited to, as close to
(07:48):
perfection as can be.
And when a comic does that.
When they're comfortable intheir skin and on stage, it
doesn't feel rehearsed orpre-written, comedy is a magic
trick.
it's, it's been written, it'sbeen memorized over and over and
over again, but somehow itdoesn't feel like that when it's
done well.
And I think, that's the bestanswer I can come up with that,
(08:08):
of why people might not considerit writing.
And certainly there are comicswho do lots of improv and things
like that, but I think certainlythe comedians that I really love
are writing and rewriting and,down to the comma, down to the,
everything.
When you're writing your bio,what do you like first?
do you like actor?
Do you like comedian?
Do you like writer?
Because you're all three ofthose.
well, I guess if you're gonnasubmit to a comedy club, you're
(08:32):
gonna put comedian, but the NewYork Times is knocking on your
door.
How do you want them to say yourname?
Oh boy.
these days I would certainly gowith comedian.
Yeah.
But that's been a reallychallenge for me to not admit
to, but, it's hard to write thatbecause it's like, well, do you
make your living that way?
I don't not right now.
I do a lot of shows and I bookmy own shows and I've been
(08:53):
touring and sometimes I makemoney on shows and sometimes I
don't.
And that's just the reality.
And that's not, it's certainlynot the way I make a living
right now.
So to say that is very tricky.
I made my living as an, artist.
Years and probably took me at 10those to ever say that I was an
artist can you define artistssure.
Yeah.
In thousand and one I was in thewholesale home furnishings
(09:14):
business, which is a whole otherstory, but I made for my
business partner a map of theUnited States that was made out
of recycled license plates.
So every state was cut out ofthat state's license plate.
It's a giant jigsaw puzzle ofold license plates.
Cool.
And that took off and became mycareer for the next 20 years.
(09:35):
And.
it, I had massive impostersyndrome.
Like, people like, oh my God,how'd you come up with the idea?
I'm like, I dunno.
It seems obvious to me.
How do you do it?
I was just, because I can't drawand I can't paint but I can make
just, especially now 20 yearsin, I can make just about
anything outta license plates.
And so that was a long challengefor me of literally, funding my
life, moving to Los Angeles,buying a house all with money I
(09:56):
made from art and stillstruggling to be able to call
myself an artist.
I've been very fortunate inthat, the very first thing I
made artistically, basicallymade me a living for the next 20
years and sort of funded apursuit of acting, pursuit of
writing and stand up and thingslike that.
So I, I was very fortunate withthat, You live in Reno now?
Now I drove to Tahoe once, did Igo by Reno?
(10:16):
From Los Angeles?
No, it's near, yeah.
I'm about, 45 minutes from, lakeShore at one one point South
Shore.
So not far.
Why Reno?
Why are we not?
I mean, that's a long story, butthe short version is I left la I
moved to LA in 2005.
I left in oh nine.
I did that TV show for a whileand then just nothing really
(10:38):
happened after that and gotfrustrated and, it's a lot of
rejection.
And so I moved to Boulder.
I started a business out therewith my college roommate.
I left that in 2015.
And I started a restaurant in atiny little town, about an hour
west of Reno where I had grownup going camping and whatnot.
And then, that was really greatfor a year.
And the second year was like,this is lonely.
It's really only busy there forabout 90 days out of the year
(11:01):
during the summer.
So I closed that up and wantedto open up a place where that
was not seasonal and had atleast.
Some chance of a social life andthings like that.
So I moved to Reno and I alsowas like somewhat affordable,
certainly more than like, goingback to Boulder, going back to
Los Angeles or San Franciscowhere I grew up, that kind of
thing.
Now you mentioned your TV show.
That was HGTV, right?
(11:21):
HGTV, yeah.
Home and Garden Television.
It was one of these homemakeover shows that were so
popular back in the day.
Who doesn't love HGTV?
not my, my favorite, but again,that's another long story.
I mean, I don't wanna get off ontoo much of a tangent.
I was fired and subsequentlybanned from the network.
It's a long story I talk aboutin my show, but and not for, bad
(11:43):
behavior, well, bad behavior oftelling the vice president.
I, I thought he was not a goodperson.
But I signed like, the worstcontract in the history of
entertainment and, which at thetime I was fine with, I was, my
art was doing great.
I got this opportunity.
I'd been in LA less than a year.
Hey, do you wanna host your ownshow?
Here's the contract.
It doesn't pay anything.
(12:03):
And it's a pain in the butt.
You're gonna have to get toMinneapolis every other week
for, forever.
Essentially, at the time it was195 episode contract.
Wow.
so I didn't know if I had anyleverage,'cause I had never had
a job before in entertainmentand in retrospect I, it wasn't a
great deal, but like I couldhave gotten an agent with that.
I have a contract on the table.
It's not for a ton of money, butit is a legitimate contract with
(12:24):
the television network.
I could have reached out to anagent and got, but I, it's like
I gotta give these guys ananswer.
And, we did negotiate a littlebit, but I signed a bad deal,
which is totally on me, but Iwas doing well with my art and I
thought if you just get on tv,if you're any good, it'll lead
to other things.
And if you're not, it won'treally matter in the big
picture.
That was how I justified it tomyself.
But then it, went from bad toworse as they wanted me to do
and more and more work that wasoutside of the original scope of
(12:47):
contract for no money.
And I also, I wanted to be anactor.
I wanted to do real work.
I didn't wanna be the host of aninterior design show.
I just saw it as well, it seemslike you should take any job you
can get.
You've been here for six months.
Didn't seem like a thing thatyou should turn down at that
point of your, couldn't evencall it a career at that point.
I'd been in acting class for sixmonths.
I think and I know a little bitabout this'cause I watched your
show and you go into more detailand I think you made the right
(13:10):
move your first job in thistown.
I mean, I could line up 20writers and they would say, oh,
we had to take a magnifyingglass to the contract to find
the compensation.
You just get beat up.
And that doesn't mean it'sright, but I think you did the
right thing and then you did tryto negotiate But I mean, wow,
(13:33):
congratulations just gettinginto town and doing that.
I can see you hosting a show andjust being so charming and me
just wanting to watch it just tosee what you are gonna say next.
thank you.
I really didn't expect to begood at it because, at that
point I had, I certainly hadn'tdone standup.
like I said, I'd been in actingclass for six months and before
I moved to LA I'd never been onstage in my life.
(13:54):
So I felt again, impostersyndrome where I had gotten this
job hosting the show, I feltlike I had fooled everybody.
And I thought, well, they'll flyme out to do the pilot, and then
halfway through that they'llfire me and this'll be like, all
right, I did half of a pilotonce, and that's a, the first
rung in the ladder of trying tobuild this career.
But I ended up, I think, to no,nobody more surprised than I
(14:14):
was, that I was pretty good atit.
And I discovered, I think I'mmore comfortable.
On camera, on stage than I'm ata party or something like that,
or in day-to-day life forwhatever reason.
now you, we've been talkingabout imposter syndrome and you
are self-proclaimed sensitive.
I too am sensitive, and by theway, I just wanna say this to
(14:36):
the world out there yelling at asensitive person, you're being
too sensitive.
Doesn't help us.
it's not ideal.
It's not ideal.
Do you think being sensitivehelps or hinders when you want
to write, act, and do standup?
I think for the most part, Ithink it helps immensely, but
only if you're willing to shareit in your writing or in your
(14:58):
performance.
I mean, if you are sensitive butyou don't let onto that, then I
think, there's gonna be someinauthenticity in your writing
or in your performance.
that's one of those things,especially as a standup stand
that the audience, they mightnot know, but they know somehow
if you're not authentic or ifyou're not really in the moment.
And it can just be such a smallchange where I've had nights
(15:18):
like fantastic, amazing setsnext night, same exact set, and
like, it just doesn't work andsomething's off and you just
can't quite figure it out.
and I think sometimes comedians,you can be afraid to be
sensitive on stage or unwillingto, I mean, I spent a ton of my
life like wanting to be, andlike trying to be cool.
And there's nothing less coolthan someone who's trying to be
(15:40):
cool.
And I think, one of the ways Iwent about that, was to be, or
at least seem to be likeindifferent, unaffected,
unbothered.
And I, think.
Whatever cool is, cool is, isnot the leather jacket and the
sunglasses.
It might be like, James Dean wascool, but Peewee Herman's pretty
cool too because he'sauthentically himself, I mean, I
(16:02):
know it's a character and allthat, but, cool is, or
authentic, being passionate andbeing vocal about who you're,
and just being real.
I think that's, people find thatattractive, especially on social
media.
I mean, obviously not everybody,but it's just'cause it's so rare
nowadays.
Everything is just soperformative and especially
social media.
Mm-hmm.
And I don't know that I've founda way to do that online in my
(16:24):
social media, not in a like,repeatable way.
I do find moments and I, it's, Ireally strive for it, but I also
struggle with content becauseI'm afraid of being cringe.
I have a friend of mine whoworks in social media manages
huge accounts for corporationswith millions of followers.
she understands social media ina way that I think a lot of
people don't.
But she says, you have to climbCringe Mountain and you just
have to post and post and postand find your people and your
(16:46):
people will find you and notworry about the sort of
embarrassment or the not beingcool, like I said.
And, and I think beingsensitive.
I think everybody's sensitive.
I think everybody has emotionsand some people certainly don't
admit it and that's fine.
Erin, I just love what you justsaid and I whoever this woman
who's your friend what a great,you gotta get over Cringe
(17:09):
mountain for our writers outthere.
You've gotta get over CringeMountain if you wanna learn how
to pitch, if you wanna learn howto network and start with your
social media, it's just a greatplace to do that.
And I think you showed yoursensitivity in that post that
(17:29):
drew me.
To call you.
I love standup.
I have tons of standup people onmy algorithm, but that just hit
me that night of like, oh mygosh, Erin, it would be just
perfect for the podcast.
And I'm glad you are sensitive,Erin.
Well, thank you.
It's taken me a long time to notto be sensitive, but to lean
(17:51):
into it in any kind of a publicway.
you wrote a 90 minute show aboutmental health, which I watched
and I loved.
It's funny, the theater looks,at first I thought you were up
somewhere on Hollywood BoulevardBut you were in Idaho and Wow.
that was?
Some dark stuff But you know,those are tough people and they
enjoyed it.
(18:12):
Can you tell the writers aboutyour process from the initial
ideas till you know what you didon stage and.
Again, this is some of thedarkest stuff I have laughed at
or heard heard in a long time.
Well, that's great.
I'm glad you laughed at it.
'cause Yeah, It does get a bitdark here and there, which is
(18:32):
why I call the show mostlyjokes.
It's mostly jokes, but yeah,that, I mean that most of that
show I wrote over the course ofseveral sessions with a group of
comics that I write with andthat I started with in January
of 2023.
I opened a restaurant in Reno.
A month later, COVID happened.
That was the next two years ofmy life.
(18:52):
I kept my restaurant afloat bydoing all kinds of crazy, silly
stuff on social media, whichmade me fall back in love with
writing and performing.
And I was lucky enough to sellmy restaurant, get out under.
And then I got in with thiswriting group of a bunch of
brilliant comics people thatwrite on TV shows that have done
late night spots, all kinds ofpeople.
And we do these sessions thatare about 10 weeks and you write
together and it's, and you getfeedback and every week you
(19:15):
bring in five or six minutes.
Like, here's what I wrote onthis topic.
And you essentially do a sat,it's on Zoom, and so it's an
open mic, but an open mic.
You just have 14 comics withtheir arms crossed who refuse to
laugh at anybody who's funnybecause they get jealous and
better, whatever.
I mean, they're not all likethat.
But yeah, I mean, I live in, Ilive in Reno and I in Reno,
they're all like that.
I'm like, what am I getting outof being here?
I mean, I'm getting a little bitthicker skin I guess.
(19:37):
This is a completely differentmonster where you do your,
here's what I wrote this week,and everybody comes back and
says, Hey, like, this was great.
I didn't understand this.
What if you change this?
What if you talk more aboutthis?
What about this for a punchlineinstead of that?
And so it's a communal effort,which is, it's really just an
acceleration of the processbecause, stand up.
editing obviously, I mean,editing any writing, editing is
(19:59):
obviously, hugely important.
And ultimately the audience isthe ultimate editor to an
extent.
you can write and sit at homeand write genius.
If they don't laugh, they don'tlaugh.
you can't keep it more than acouple shows if it's not
working.
You have to either change it ordrop it.
and working with so many reallysmart, talented, experienced
people, you accelerate thatprocess of getting feedback and
(20:20):
not completely having to figureout every single beat entirely
by trial and error.
It helps a bit.
So that's how I started writing.
But I wasn't writing with theidea like, I'm gonna have an
hour or an hour and a half show.
I was just writing to startdoing standup.
And I wrote so much in thatfirst six months that there was
a point when all these notecards on my wall, and I don't
know, saw the matrix of oh, Ithink this could all fit
(20:42):
together into one thing.
Because I, mostly what I writeabout mental health and my
family and my father passingaway and my brother passing away
and all the stuff that I realizeit sounds hilarious, but stay
with me.
So an unknown comic with nofollowing, I can't get five
minutes at a comedy club, letalone an hour.
I, someone told me about theHollywood Fringe Festival and I
looked into that and, booked atheater to do nine shows.
(21:04):
I mean, a 22 seat theater, whichis perfect.
So I'm on the hook to do anhour, six months from now, and
that gave me the extra push toreally work on it.
The deadline.
And it changed, it changed fromthe first show to the ninth
show, and it changes every day alittle bit.
So, standup is all about justthese kind of endless little
tweaks over and over again.
And sometimes a joke that is 25words becomes nine words, or it
(21:28):
becomes two jokes, or it,disappears altogether.
And doing the show over and overagain, it gets more jokes and it
gets more refined.
And that's been my process oftrying to do the major work with
this writing group that I'm into get sort of 80% of the way
there.
And then the rest of it is justa matter of trial and error in
front of audiences, so youdidn't sit down and say, I'm
(21:50):
going to do a one man show aboutmental health.
About mental health in myfamily.
You were putting yourself outthere and I'm repeating this
because I just really want ourwriters out there who are trying
to break into the business.
you just cannot do it justsitting in your living room.
You just have to keep throwingthings at the wall.
So you were basically throwingthings at the wall and then one
(22:13):
day, like your license plate, itbecame the United States.
It became your 90 minute show.
And it is so honest.
Did you leave things on thecutting room floor?
Sure, yeah.
and the show, initially was anhour at the Hollywood Fringe.
was an, I had a 60 minute Heartout.
They cut your mic basically.
(22:34):
'cause they have another showcoming in 15 minutes.
So it's grown over time.
And this chunk about my brotherand his suicide.
I mean, that, I guess obviouslyit started as one joke and you
write two jokes, but it startedas three or four jokes in 2023.
And that my comedy group lovedand that when I did them live
did not go great because peopleon a Friday night at a comedy
(22:56):
club are not really in the moodfor that necessarily, especially
in a 10 minute set from somebodythat they don't know.
Like, wait, what is he, what ishe talking about?
Suicide.
Like, I don't wanna hear that.
So that took me two years tofigure out and is now almost a
20 minute section of the show tofigure out how to make it work,
to give it a through line, togive the audience permission to
laugh at it, but also give theaudience permission to not laugh
(23:17):
at it under understand why.
I do comedy about it.
you put it in a really goodspot, it's towards the end and
you talk about your mother andyour father beforehand, and your
mom's.
Okay.
Your mom's out there.
Hi, mom.
Right.
Do you wanna say hi to your mom?
Yes.
Yes.
My mom just, she will hear this.
I thought that you placed itbeautifully.
It gave me a time as an audiencemember to get to know you and to
(23:43):
get lulled into the sense of, ohyeah, he's dark, but I can
handle it and then bam, it getsdarker.
Yeah.
It's, and then, there's asection in the first couple of
minutes where I mentioned thatthere are gonna be some jokes
about this topic, but they'regonna come later.
And that's a part that got addedin, really only in the last
couple of months I realized,That I had to set that up at the
top.
(24:03):
Interesting.
Did is, was that a note orsomething you sensed It was
something I sensed and it was areally interesting experience
because when I promote my showI'm just renting theaters in
small to mid-sized towns for themost part.
And I post Instagram andFacebook ads and I post
everywhere I can, but I, all ofmy posts have something to do
with either, a quote or a reviewor, I never laugh so hard about
(24:24):
mental health or, dark comedywith a huge heart.
Some of these quotes that I'vehad from reviews that I feel
like just I need people to knowthat it's not crowd work and,
dick jokes side note.
Do you like to do crowd work?
No, I hate crowd work.
And there's multiple reasons forthat.
would you explain to the writerswhat crowd work is?
So Crowdwork as a comedian is,Hey, where are you from?
What do you do?
(24:45):
Who are you here with?
What do you do for work?
It's, stopping your show andtalking to the audience,
engaging the audience, and I getit.
And there, there are comics thatare good at it that are amazing
and it's impressive, but it hasreally impacted comedy in a big
way because that is whatcomedians like to post on social
media because then you don'thave to post your jokes because
that's, crowd work is a one-timething.
(25:05):
It happened that night.
And if you get a funny reaction,you can post content to engage
your audience.
Yeah.
That makes so much sense.
are you happy with the outcomeof the show?
The outcome.
Hmm.
Yeah, I'm proud of it, which, isa big thing for me to say.
I've done a lot of things withmy life and I've struggled to
(25:26):
accept that I was good at themor that they turned out well,
or, that I might be good atsomething.
That's been a difficult, like Isaid, it took me more than 10
years of making a very goodliving as an artist to ever call
myself an artist.
Yeah, I'm, I mean, especially,the one you saw, it was in
Ketchum, Idaho a couple of weeksago, and, thank you for
watching.
there are a couple things that Ithink it still needs.
I think it's good.
(25:46):
I don't think it's great.
And when I say great, I say it'snot, I just watched Mark Marin's
new special.
It's not that, of course, markMar's been doing this for 35
years and he's one of the bestever do it.
So like, well, maybe I shouldn'tbe comparing myself to that, but
it's not that, and it's not MikeLia, his new special.
The good life is great.
And so I want it to be that.
And I have ideas of how to getit there, but it's just a long
(26:09):
process for me.
But overall, yes, I'm happy withit and I'm proud of it.
And, and you saw one of the bestshows I've ever had.
I loved it.
Now you mentioned in thatspecial that you learned love
from comedy films.
Yeah.
That's funny.
That is some new material that Idropped into the middle of that
one that I've done a few timesand I'm sort of like, yeah,
(26:30):
romantic comedies.
I'm exploring that.
I, the stuff that I'm writingnow is, it all seems to be
coming from some version of allof this talk these days about
the new masculinity and alphamales and all this stuff.
Whereas like, I'm a sensitiveguy.
I grew up watching romanticcomedies and I still like
watching romantic comedies andtrying to navigate that There's
a new male loneliness epidemic,which, first of all, I have no
(26:52):
sympathy for a new maleloneliness epidemic.
I have been lonely for decades,so I'm getting lonely guys.
But I mean, that's a joke forthe most part.
But I just, I'm like, if youguys would stop worrying about
your abs and sitting in freezingcold water and just like, learn
how to roast a chicken and makea creme brulee, you would never
be lonely again.
they're going about it all wrongand they, the romantic comedy as
(27:14):
part of that, of, of like beinga sensitive guy and learning all
the wrong things aboutrelationships from those movies.
Yeah.
Do you have a favorite romanticcomedy?
Oh boy.
I don't flip around the channelsanymore'cause who, I don't have
cable or any, but, back in theday, there's something about
Hugh Grant that really ismagical.
He's just, he's such acurmudgeon in sort of real life,
(27:34):
and he's such a sweetheart inhis movies.
it's hard for me to say outloud, like nodding hill.
Like I, if that's on, it's,there's something about that
movie Aaron, I still hear thisin my head at least once a week,
I still hear this Oopsie daisy,right?
Yeah.
That's him going over the fence,right?
He's going over the gate.
And it's a weird thing because,there's a lot of, sort of men
(27:58):
being emotional has come a longway and being able to talk about
it and being sensitive and allthat, but there's a fine line.
Everybody has a different sortof limit, women, I love an
emotional guy, okay, but Do youmean a single tier at the end of
Field of Dreams when Costa getsto have a catch with his dad?
Or do you mean sobbing on thefloor at the end of Nodding
Hill?
Because like those are twodifferent things.
(28:20):
Exactly.
Hey, I'm gonna list a bunch ofmovie tropes about falling in
love.
Okay.
All right.
I want you to decide which onewriters should keep or delete,
never to be seen again.
Now, here's the trick.
The makeover, the main charactergoes under a noticeable
(28:40):
appearance change that makesthem more attractive.
I mean, yeah.
Doesn't that imply that they'reonly like worthy if they're hot?
Yes.
100% Aaron?
I think all those moviesprobably have a reveal where
then they figure out that no, Iactually do really, even though
(29:01):
but you're not.
Yeah, you let your hair down,you took your glasses off.
Like she was like a nine beforeshe did that.
Now she's a 10.
Like, I mean, you think aboutthe people that play those parts
in those movies, they're notexactly, unattractive to start
out.
They, they do what they can.
They put'em in, frumpy clothesand glasses, but it's like, come
on.
(29:22):
The one exception and see if youagree with this one.
The one exception that I likedabout a movie makeover was
Sandra Bullock and MissCongeniality.
Oh, oh yeah.
That one is, yeah.
That's a great.
A great movie.
You got Michael k her the powerat the end.
She meets up with Benjamin Bratand he's whoa.
And she's like, you like me?
(29:46):
Yes.
Yeah.
Which again, I don't care whatSandra Bullock's wearing, she
was hot at the beginning of themovie too, yes.
She was.
Okay.
Here's another, the trope.
A rich person falls in love witha poorer person.
of course you've got PrettyWoman.
Usually the man is rich and thewoman's poor.
I think that's probably thetrophy aspect of that.
So again, I mean, I think if youbreak these things down far
(30:07):
enough, they get somewhatproblematic of.
Of all you're rich.
What do you care?
Who cares if she has money ornot?
Or she's from the wrong side ofthe track.
So I'm wonderful that, wheredoes that go?
I just watched that recently.
That's Rich.
That's Rich girl, poor boy.
Eric s That's a great movie.
Yeah's poor.
And she's, well, she's actuallynot rich.
She's also poor.
But she hangs out with the richpeople'cause she's so hot.
(30:29):
It's, it's very, these are allvery problematic in retrospect,
these movies.
I think I, the only thing I canremember is she wore gloves with
fringes hanging off of them.
'cause she was a drummer and Ireally thought those, that is
the other character that is MaryStewart Masterson.
Yeah.
I thought those gloves werecool.
Yes.
(30:50):
Oh wait, I, I totally messed upour game here.
Let's go back to number one.
Are we gonna keep the makeoveror are we gonna delete it?
I think my answer, I hesitate tosay that there's an answer to
all of these that's the same.
I think, you have to find aunique way to do it, or you, or.
Or you have to do it?
Well, I mean, I, I realizethat's such a, like, well, yeah,
(31:11):
obviously, but, I'm on the boardof a film festival here in Reno,
so I watch a ton of short filmsand I think a big mistake that I
see is people try to like rereinvent the genre and just like
do something that's so uniqueand it's like just you can do
something that is a story thatwe've seen a hundred times, but
(31:31):
if you do it really well.
That still can be great.
It, a simple love story wherethe families don't want them to
be together.
Okay.
We've all seen that since Romeoand Juliet.
But if it's done well, it'sacted well and it's written
well.
It still works.
I mean, there's a reason I thinkwe're like, oh, there's only six
stories.
Or, whatever they say about,plot lines and things like that.
(31:51):
I think, you just have to find away to do it that we haven't
seen before.
I agree with that 100%.
Okay.
Number three, the trope is thebig time player meets the one,
the main character, Has ahistory of dating many people
until one day they meet thatsomeone who changes all their
(32:14):
views.
Two weeks notice, which we are,we're talking about Sandra and
Hugh.
That would be one.
Do you like that trope?
I'm trying to think of this.
Okay, so again, I'm trying tobreak these down.
So this is, this is a person whohas been, lived their whole
lives in a very shallow way.
(32:35):
And then I'm taking thesenegative spins on all of these
tropes.
I apologize.
But, and then decides to see thenew person in a, in as three
dimensionally.
Yes.
Which is, I mean, did, were,were all the sort of people you
were dating before this, reallynot worthy of respect and being
treated kindly and not one nightstands and whatnot.
(32:57):
I mean, I get it.
You have to, you have to havesome kind of a plot line, right?
Like what's the, what's thestory?
It's like this guy meets, thismeets that or whatever.
Yeah.
I can speak for myself.
I'm 53 now, but my thirtiesliving in la, making a great
living as an artist and being ona, granted a super cheap TV
show, but I'm still on a TV showand nobody else in my acting
class was on a TV show.
So like, I, I, I dated around abit.
(33:18):
I had a good time.
Aaron, let's pause the show.
Pause the quiz.
Where did you go during thatperiod of time?
What restaurant?
What club?
I'm just fascinated to knowwhere now?
Oh my God.
Back in my LA days.
Oh yeah.
That's, I did not go to a lot ofdifferent places.
(33:38):
I worked from home with myartwork, which was nice.
I never really had to deal withthe chaos of traffic and
whatnot.
My favorite first date place wasa restaurant called Jones on
Santa Monica.
Yes.
It's open late.
It's very, it's probably not.
I do, I have been back there acouple times recently when I do
shows and stuff, because they'reopen late and there's a bit of a
(33:59):
nostalgia to it for me, it's abit loud for me these days, but
it looks exactly the same as itdid 20 years ago inside.
is that near it's across fromFormosa.
Yes.
That's it.
It's across from, yes.
I, I went to Jones.
Once and I liked it Yeah.
It's, cool booths and there's avibe, there's an la vibe
happening there.
And there's a great jukeboxwhere there used to be, I'd go
(34:21):
on these first or second datesthere, and I look, if you're
gonna have Bob Dylan blonde onblonde on the, on the jukebox,
I'm gonna play, the 12 minutesong three times and you're just
gonna have to deal with it.
But so that's a nostalgia placefor me.
Now, I didn't go on a, I don'tknow that I went on many dates
or any to a restaurant called aOC.
That was really one of myfavorite haunts.
(34:42):
they used to be on third, downtowards Fairfax, but at some
point, I dunno, it's probably 10years at least.
They moved, they're still onthird, but they're way down
towards like, the Beverly Centerdown there.
So they're, they're stillaround.
But I used to go there everySunday night.
It was pretty close to my houseand ended up becoming friends
with, everybody that workedthere on Sunday night.
And it was really a nice way toend the week and weekend for me
(35:04):
to go.
But I would, I went there bymyself probably 99% of the time.
When I was, I'm okay one-on-one,but I'm not great.
Outside of that.
Socially, when I was going outwith my friends and stuff, if we
were going dancing, it wasalways like a group dancing at
the crush Club or something, andthere was no dress code.
There is no right.
$25 drinks.
(35:25):
It really was just fun.
I don't currently know what thekids are doing in LA right now.
But one thing that I do envy thekids have is Uber, because yeah,
I would've liked that when I wasgoing out, when I was younger.
Yeah, I mean that's, that'scertainly a game changer.
I'm not, I've never been a hugedrinker, but I, not that I'm
(35:47):
paying attention, but I'm notsure I've, last time I heard of
a celebrity getting a dui.
I'm sure it still happens, butthat seems, well, thanks for
making it seem like I'm a bigdrinker, Erin.
I really appreciate that.
You bet.
You bet.
Okay, back to our quiz, thetrope best friends to lovers
main characters in love withtheir best friend.
(36:07):
They don't realize it.
they either pursue them or theydon't.
There's a obstacles in the way.
Do you like the trope the bestfriends to lovers Yeah, I like
those movies and I think we'veall had those experiences and
relationships and I certainlywhen I was younger, especially
like as a very shy kid, and thegirl that lives around the
(36:28):
corner that you've known foreverand you, but you don't know how
to do anything.
And because you're so close inthese other ways and friendship
ways and, and yeah.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it'sgreat We're gonna keep that one
last one.
The trope, the contractrelationship.
The main character findsthemselves in a fake
relationship, but ends upfalling in love for real.
(36:51):
I would say like the proposal,another Sandra Bullock, right.
Right.
God, I'm drawing a blank.
It was one of my favorite movieswhen I was a kid that Patrick
Dempsey can't Buy Me Love.
Oh, that one.
Yes, I remember that.
Where he's just the nerd with nofriends and again, the girl he's
had a crush on forever, althoughthey're not really friends.
Maybe they were friends in likeelementary school, but now she's
(37:13):
the popular cheerleader and shegets in a jam and he helps her
out financially to Greece todate him for, a month or
something like that.
again, they're tropes for areason because I think people
identify them within some way.
And they work out the way wewant them to, right?
they have the arc of eitherforced together.
One of'em doesn't like it.
And then of course somebodyscrews up and then they end up,
(37:35):
figuring it out and being decenthuman beings in the end.
Erin, I have two more questionsfor you.
Are you watching, reading orlistening to something that you
enjoy, that you'd like to sharewith us?
Listening to, I mean, I guessreal briefly, I have my favorite
podcast WTF, mark Marin, whichI'm heartbroken is ending
(37:55):
because I'm never gonna be aguest on it, mark is hanging up
the police.
He's hanging it up.
Yeah.
16 years.
I think in the end of September,I don't think there's not an
official end date announced, buthe has said in September, like,
we're, we're packing it in.
Hey Aaron, if I find out hisaddress, do you wanna just go
and break into the garage?
That, I don't feel like thatwould end well.
the cats won't bark.
(38:16):
The cats won't bark.
I do have a half a, I have an acompletely, I mean this, I
haven't looked at this foryears.
I have a, an unfinished scriptthat opens with essentially me.
On essentially Mark Marin's doorwith a gun saying, put me on
your podcast.
But that never went anywhere.
Which is probably for the best,mark.
don't worry.
Well, you're gonna have Mark onyour podcast, so it'll work out.
(38:39):
Sure.
let's go with that.
And just because this is forwriters and creatives, in case
anybody has not does not know ofMike Burley's podcast called
Working It Out is really greatfor creatives.
It's all about the process ofwriting and refining and all
that kind of stuff.
So I think people, if people arenot familiar with that, you
might find it interesting.
And I, lately I've been watchinga lot of standup specials but
(38:59):
watching them in a differentway, not just for the jokes,
watching it for.
Mannerisms and facialexpressions and eye lines and
what they do with their hands.
And the biggest thing that hasreally, I've noticed, not that I
ever thought any comic with anactual special was not
confident, but the level ofconfidence on these comedians
that have been doing it for 20or 30 years is really just, it's
(39:23):
so impressive.
I feel like I'm confident onstage, but it's another level
and it's really fascinating towatch, mark Mar's new special.
And I went back and watched oneI had in Gadsby's her second
one, Douglas.
And Gary Goldman is really myfavorite comic, I think in terms
of like, just sheer joy.
He's so smart and so brilliantand I have, so I identify with
(39:44):
so many things about his sort ofperspective on life.
And so that's been a reallyinteresting thing to see.
And, from a writing standpoint,Mike Burley's new special called
The Good Life is fantastic.
And I saw it about a year beforehe put it out.
When was working on it, it wasstill called The Good Life, but
his dad had not had a strokeyet.
His new specialist, the throughline is his father having a
(40:04):
stroke and mortality and kind.
So it was really amazing to seehow he had pivoted to this
entirely new through line whenI, when I saw the show in LA a
year before, I was like, oh,he's done.
Like, he must be taping thissoon, like he's done.
that's amazing.
So that was really interestingto see that he was able to just
be like, Nope, I'm gonna do thisother thing.
And obviously, he leaned into itand decided that was what he
(40:27):
wanted to talk about.
So that was interesting from a.
Perspective of a comic of like,man, that's, and I dunno, maybe
his next hour will just be allthe stuff that he didn't use in
this one.
I dunno what he's gonna do.
I doubt it.
I dunno that he's necessarilywired that way, but maybe.
But it was just, it was reallyinteresting to see, like, I
think he's got a done thing andthen to see how much he changed
(40:48):
it was inspiring and sort ofkind of terrifying.
Like, oh my God, you dropped 45minutes of really solid material
because, this other thing cameup.
It's like, wow.
So it's, I mean, watching peoplewho are really, really, really
at the top of their game and doit the way that I, would like to
ultimately do it it's mostlyinspiring.
(41:08):
It's a little bit intimidating,but it's mostly inspiring.
But it's cool, it's educational,yeah.
Would you like to share yoursocial media and where could our
writers find you?
Sure.
Instagram is probably where I'mmost active, which is Aaron
Charles Foster.
But you can find everything justthrough my website, Air and
foster com.
That's probably the easiest wayto find all of my stuff Aaron
(41:30):
Foster, thank you so much.
You've shared so much of yourtime, so much of your journey,
so much of your artistry.
I really think our listeners arejust gonna walk away with, the
desire to get out there and justkeep creating.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.
And that's a wrap for theWriter's Hangout.
Thanks so much for listening.
(41:51):
If you enjoyed the show, pleasetake a moment to leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts.
Your positive feedback will helpus keep the show going so we can
continue bringing you morefuture episodes.
Remember, keep writing.
The world needs your stories.
The Writers Hangout is sponsoredby the Page International
Screenwriting Awards, withexecutive producer Kristen
(42:13):
Overn, producer Sandy Adamides,and myself, Terry Sampson.
And our music is composed byEthan Stoller.
Hello, my name is SandyAdamidis, the social media
director for the PageInternational Screenwriting
Awards and your host for theWriters Hangout, a podcast that
celebrates the many Frominspiration to the first draft,
revising, getting the projectmade, and everything in between.
(00:32):
We'll talk to the best and thebrightest in the entertainment
industry, and create a spacewhere you can hang out, learn
from the pros, and have fun.
Hey writers, it's Sandy.
I'm coming to you from StudioCity, the jewel of the San
Fernando Valley.
We are in the dog days of summerwith a full moon and
(00:55):
unbelievable heat.
Boy do we have a great show foryou.
Today's guest is Aaron Foster, astandup comic who is currently
touring with his show aboutbeing clinically depressed.
hosting A-H-G-T-V show.
Growing up with a bipolar fatherand having a schizophrenic
(01:18):
brother.
At 50, he decided to pursue acareer in standup comedy.
we all need that reminder thatit's never too late and Aaron
will inspire you to feel thatway.
Aaron Foster, thank you so muchfor joining us on The Writer's
Hangout.
Thank you for having me.
Happy to be here.
(01:38):
Hey, we connected in, the modernway I found your comedy online
and I followed you.
I just thought you were just sofunny.
And then I saw a post you put upon July 25th.
And it starts with, you quityour job at 50.
It has been three years, and yougo on to say you've been ignored
by dozens of bookers andcountless festivals.
(02:01):
Now, Erin, can you take it fromhere what the rest of the post
says?
Sure that post goes on to saythat I, wrote a 90 minute show
about my mental health or lackthereof, and did my own 40 city
tour.
Sometimes people come, sometimesthey don't.
But I also just booked my firstever headline gig at a comedy
club roosters Comedy Club inSunnyvale, California, September
(02:24):
11th.
It's never too late.
I love this post so much.
Congratulations, by the way, onRoosters at Sunnyvale's.
Can you tell me about what wenton behind the scenes?
did you just hit play Did you doedits?
Did you think about it for awhile?
Did you write it?
What went on behind that post?
(02:45):
Yeah, it's funny that that post,caught your attention because
it's really one of the more, Iguess, simpler posts that I've
made.
I'm still trying to navigate myway in social media and find a
voice that is repeatable andauthentic there.
But that was just me reacting inalmost real time.
Like having a discovery of oh, Igot booked at this club.
(03:05):
And then I should record areaction to this.
Because that's the way ourbrains get wired.
Now.
We spend all time on socialmedia.
Oh, this be good for socialmedia.
Stop.
Let's make it, let's make it apost.
But that's the world we live in,especially as aspiring
comedians.
Right.
Angling for content.
But yeah, I just set up thecamera and really thought about,
I had a little bit of, what isthe text of that video?
(03:27):
It's not a, there's not avoiceover or words being spoken,
but the text is what we covered,as I said, quit my job at 50,
rejected from festivals, bookerswon't call me back.
And then, just booked my firstheadlining spot and, breaking
out into a big smile.
So it's one of those things ofJust trying to figure out what
works on social media.
And I think there is hopefully,a level of authenticity to that.
'cause it definitely came from aplace of truth and of being very
(03:51):
excited.
And I don't get excited a wholelot even when good things
happen.
So the idea that, a club reachedout to me that somehow had seen
something I did somewhere, Idon't really know how it
happened and I figured I'm notgonna ask them until after the
show.
Good.
That's good.
Because I don't want them tosecond guess their decision.
(04:12):
But it's just one of thesethings of you just keep putting
things out into the world andmost of them seem to, land on,
on deaf ears or not go anywhere.
But I've had a couple of thingslately that, these moments where
like, oh, somebody is payingattention to something.
They saw me somewhere.
I always like to share with thewriters out there that when you
(04:34):
do, how does this go doingthings get lead you to doing
more things putting yourself outthere when you don't even think
anyone's paying attention.
Well, if you don't, then nobodywill pay attention.
And I would love for ourwriters, I don't know if I can
put it up on my socials or I'lljust direct them to your
socials.
They might go, I don't know whatto do on social media.
(04:56):
Well, your voice isn't even inthat post.
It's all captions.
It's done with music.
And any writer can do that.
Any writer can get on Instagramand go, Hey, a producer asked to
read my script.
I'm really happy about that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I've certainly done it of, you,I'm sure we all have creators
(05:16):
that we like and don't like.
And I think to start out,emulate somebody that you like,
copy their style, copy their,'cause most very popular
creators do one thing and theydo it over and over again.
And that's, all of the adviceof, find one thing and do it
well.
And I've been told a millionthings of like, well, you have
comedy clips, you have day inthe life clips, you have a
(05:37):
cooking recipe clips, like youneed to make separate pages for
all those things and just do onething on your comedy page and
one thing on your cooking page.
It's like, I'm not gonna dothat.
But that is the conventionalwisdom, which is to just do one
thing over and over again,because then people know what
they're gonna get on your page.
And that's interesting.
can we put a lantern on that?
So I think.
I'm going back in my brain, andyou're absolutely right.
(05:59):
We've been told to keep it, getyour what is it, your brand or
whatever it is, and just, beatit to death.
I like what you are saying and Ithink social media is with you
on that.
create a page and show up makeit interesting content and they
(06:19):
will come.
I hope so.
I think, the biggest thing isgetting over that sort of just
the fear of posting the kind ofcringe factor and the
embarrassment.
And the reality is, and Istruggle with this absolutely to
this day, it's a huge, hugeobstacle that I'm still trying
to get over.
But the reality is that nobodycares.
Especially if it's, I mean,what's, what's the word?
(06:40):
What if nobody watches?
Okay, well then nobody watchesit.
What if it goes viral?
Well, then it goes viral.
I mean, then a bunch of peoplelike it.
And yeah, you, you're always ofcourse open to those negative
comments and those are never funto get.
but, you hopefully build up atolerance to those two.
I'm still working on that aswell right now.
I once posted a video of BowenYang.
He was the Titanic iceberg, Haveyou seen that video I have, yes.
(07:04):
We can update.
He tells the story Yes.
From the point of view of theiceberg.
That is brilliant.
And I posted it because it'sperspective, it's point of view.
There's another way it coming atthe Titanic and a person wrote a
comment saying what does thishave to do with screenwriting?
Why do you think people do notunderstand that standup is
(07:27):
writing?
I think it's because whenstandup is done well.
Which is when most people seeit, most people see standup on a
special, a Netflix special, HBOspecial, whatever it might be.
And by that point, that materialhas been written and rewritten
and workshopped and tweaked andedited to, as close to
(07:48):
perfection as can be.
And when a comic does that.
When they're comfortable intheir skin and on stage, it
doesn't feel rehearsed orpre-written, comedy is a magic
trick.
it's, it's been written, it'sbeen memorized over and over and
over again, but somehow itdoesn't feel like that when it's
done well.
And I think, that's the bestanswer I can come up with that,
(08:08):
of why people might not considerit writing.
And certainly there are comicswho do lots of improv and things
like that, but I think certainlythe comedians that I really love
are writing and rewriting and,down to the comma, down to the,
everything.
When you're writing your bio,what do you like first?
do you like actor?
Do you like comedian?
Do you like writer?
Because you're all three ofthose.
well, I guess if you're gonnasubmit to a comedy club, you're
(08:32):
gonna put comedian, but the NewYork Times is knocking on your
door.
How do you want them to say yourname?
Oh boy.
these days I would certainly gowith comedian.
Yeah.
But that's been a reallychallenge for me to not admit
to, but, it's hard to write thatbecause it's like, well, do you
make your living that way?
I don't not right now.
I do a lot of shows and I bookmy own shows and I've been
(08:53):
touring and sometimes I makemoney on shows and sometimes I
don't.
And that's just the reality.
And that's not, it's certainlynot the way I make a living
right now.
So to say that is very tricky.
I made my living as an, artist.
Years and probably took me at 10those to ever say that I was an
artist can you define artistssure.
Yeah.
In thousand and one I was in thewholesale home furnishings
(09:14):
business, which is a whole otherstory, but I made for my
business partner a map of theUnited States that was made out
of recycled license plates.
So every state was cut out ofthat state's license plate.
It's a giant jigsaw puzzle ofold license plates.
Cool.
And that took off and became mycareer for the next 20 years.
(09:35):
And.
it, I had massive impostersyndrome.
Like, people like, oh my God,how'd you come up with the idea?
I'm like, I dunno.
It seems obvious to me.
How do you do it?
I was just, because I can't drawand I can't paint but I can make
just, especially now 20 yearsin, I can make just about
anything outta license plates.
And so that was a long challengefor me of literally, funding my
life, moving to Los Angeles,buying a house all with money I
(09:56):
made from art and stillstruggling to be able to call
myself an artist.
I've been very fortunate inthat, the very first thing I
made artistically, basicallymade me a living for the next 20
years and sort of funded apursuit of acting, pursuit of
writing and stand up and thingslike that.
So I, I was very fortunate withthat, You live in Reno now?
Now I drove to Tahoe once, did Igo by Reno?
(10:16):
From Los Angeles?
No, it's near, yeah.
I'm about, 45 minutes from, lakeShore at one one point South
Shore.
So not far.
Why Reno?
Why are we not?
I mean, that's a long story, butthe short version is I left la I
moved to LA in 2005.
I left in oh nine.
I did that TV show for a whileand then just nothing really
(10:38):
happened after that and gotfrustrated and, it's a lot of
rejection.
And so I moved to Boulder.
I started a business out therewith my college roommate.
I left that in 2015.
And I started a restaurant in atiny little town, about an hour
west of Reno where I had grownup going camping and whatnot.
And then, that was really greatfor a year.
And the second year was like,this is lonely.
It's really only busy there forabout 90 days out of the year
(11:01):
during the summer.
So I closed that up and wantedto open up a place where that
was not seasonal and had atleast.
Some chance of a social life andthings like that.
So I moved to Reno and I alsowas like somewhat affordable,
certainly more than like, goingback to Boulder, going back to
Los Angeles or San Franciscowhere I grew up, that kind of
thing.
Now you mentioned your TV show.
That was HGTV, right?
(11:21):
HGTV, yeah.
Home and Garden Television.
It was one of these homemakeover shows that were so
popular back in the day.
Who doesn't love HGTV?
not my, my favorite, but again,that's another long story.
I mean, I don't wanna get off ontoo much of a tangent.
I was fired and subsequentlybanned from the network.
It's a long story I talk aboutin my show, but and not for, bad
(11:43):
behavior, well, bad behavior oftelling the vice president.
I, I thought he was not a goodperson.
But I signed like, the worstcontract in the history of
entertainment and, which at thetime I was fine with, I was, my
art was doing great.
I got this opportunity.
I'd been in LA less than a year.
Hey, do you wanna host your ownshow?
Here's the contract.
It doesn't pay anything.
(12:03):
And it's a pain in the butt.
You're gonna have to get toMinneapolis every other week
for, forever.
Essentially, at the time it was195 episode contract.
Wow.
so I didn't know if I had anyleverage,'cause I had never had
a job before in entertainmentand in retrospect I, it wasn't a
great deal, but like I couldhave gotten an agent with that.
I have a contract on the table.
It's not for a ton of money, butit is a legitimate contract with
(12:24):
the television network.
I could have reached out to anagent and got, but I, it's like
I gotta give these guys ananswer.
And, we did negotiate a littlebit, but I signed a bad deal,
which is totally on me, but Iwas doing well with my art and I
thought if you just get on tv,if you're any good, it'll lead
to other things.
And if you're not, it won'treally matter in the big
picture.
That was how I justified it tomyself.
But then it, went from bad toworse as they wanted me to do
and more and more work that wasoutside of the original scope of
(12:47):
contract for no money.
And I also, I wanted to be anactor.
I wanted to do real work.
I didn't wanna be the host of aninterior design show.
I just saw it as well, it seemslike you should take any job you
can get.
You've been here for six months.
Didn't seem like a thing thatyou should turn down at that
point of your, couldn't evencall it a career at that point.
I'd been in acting class for sixmonths.
I think and I know a little bitabout this'cause I watched your
show and you go into more detailand I think you made the right
(13:10):
move your first job in thistown.
I mean, I could line up 20writers and they would say, oh,
we had to take a magnifyingglass to the contract to find
the compensation.
You just get beat up.
And that doesn't mean it'sright, but I think you did the
right thing and then you did tryto negotiate But I mean, wow,
(13:33):
congratulations just gettinginto town and doing that.
I can see you hosting a show andjust being so charming and me
just wanting to watch it just tosee what you are gonna say next.
thank you.
I really didn't expect to begood at it because, at that
point I had, I certainly hadn'tdone standup.
like I said, I'd been in actingclass for six months and before
I moved to LA I'd never been onstage in my life.
(13:54):
So I felt again, impostersyndrome where I had gotten this
job hosting the show, I feltlike I had fooled everybody.
And I thought, well, they'll flyme out to do the pilot, and then
halfway through that they'llfire me and this'll be like, all
right, I did half of a pilotonce, and that's a, the first
rung in the ladder of trying tobuild this career.
But I ended up, I think, to no,nobody more surprised than I
(14:14):
was, that I was pretty good atit.
And I discovered, I think I'mmore comfortable.
On camera, on stage than I'm ata party or something like that,
or in day-to-day life forwhatever reason.
now you, we've been talkingabout imposter syndrome and you
are self-proclaimed sensitive.
I too am sensitive, and by theway, I just wanna say this to
(14:36):
the world out there yelling at asensitive person, you're being
too sensitive.
Doesn't help us.
it's not ideal.
It's not ideal.
Do you think being sensitivehelps or hinders when you want
to write, act, and do standup?
I think for the most part, Ithink it helps immensely, but
only if you're willing to shareit in your writing or in your
(14:58):
performance.
I mean, if you are sensitive butyou don't let onto that, then I
think, there's gonna be someinauthenticity in your writing
or in your performance.
that's one of those things,especially as a standup stand
that the audience, they mightnot know, but they know somehow
if you're not authentic or ifyou're not really in the moment.
And it can just be such a smallchange where I've had nights
(15:18):
like fantastic, amazing setsnext night, same exact set, and
like, it just doesn't work andsomething's off and you just
can't quite figure it out.
and I think sometimes comedians,you can be afraid to be
sensitive on stage or unwillingto, I mean, I spent a ton of my
life like wanting to be, andlike trying to be cool.
And there's nothing less coolthan someone who's trying to be
(15:40):
cool.
And I think, one of the ways Iwent about that, was to be, or
at least seem to be likeindifferent, unaffected,
unbothered.
And I, think.
Whatever cool is, cool is, isnot the leather jacket and the
sunglasses.
It might be like, James Dean wascool, but Peewee Herman's pretty
cool too because he'sauthentically himself, I mean, I
(16:02):
know it's a character and allthat, but, cool is, or
authentic, being passionate andbeing vocal about who you're,
and just being real.
I think that's, people find thatattractive, especially on social
media.
I mean, obviously not everybody,but it's just'cause it's so rare
nowadays.
Everything is just soperformative and especially
social media.
Mm-hmm.
And I don't know that I've founda way to do that online in my
(16:24):
social media, not in a like,repeatable way.
I do find moments and I, it's, Ireally strive for it, but I also
struggle with content becauseI'm afraid of being cringe.
I have a friend of mine whoworks in social media manages
huge accounts for corporationswith millions of followers.
she understands social media ina way that I think a lot of
people don't.
But she says, you have to climbCringe Mountain and you just
have to post and post and postand find your people and your
(16:46):
people will find you and notworry about the sort of
embarrassment or the not beingcool, like I said.
And, and I think beingsensitive.
I think everybody's sensitive.
I think everybody has emotionsand some people certainly don't
admit it and that's fine.
Erin, I just love what you justsaid and I whoever this woman
who's your friend what a great,you gotta get over Cringe
(17:09):
mountain for our writers outthere.
You've gotta get over CringeMountain if you wanna learn how
to pitch, if you wanna learn howto network and start with your
social media, it's just a greatplace to do that.
And I think you showed yoursensitivity in that post that
(17:29):
drew me.
To call you.
I love standup.
I have tons of standup people onmy algorithm, but that just hit
me that night of like, oh mygosh, Erin, it would be just
perfect for the podcast.
And I'm glad you are sensitive,Erin.
Well, thank you.
It's taken me a long time to notto be sensitive, but to lean
(17:51):
into it in any kind of a publicway.
you wrote a 90 minute show aboutmental health, which I watched
and I loved.
It's funny, the theater looks,at first I thought you were up
somewhere on Hollywood BoulevardBut you were in Idaho and Wow.
that was?
Some dark stuff But you know,those are tough people and they
enjoyed it.
(18:12):
Can you tell the writers aboutyour process from the initial
ideas till you know what you didon stage and.
Again, this is some of thedarkest stuff I have laughed at
or heard heard in a long time.
Well, that's great.
I'm glad you laughed at it.
'cause Yeah, It does get a bitdark here and there, which is
(18:32):
why I call the show mostlyjokes.
It's mostly jokes, but yeah,that, I mean that most of that
show I wrote over the course ofseveral sessions with a group of
comics that I write with andthat I started with in January
of 2023.
I opened a restaurant in Reno.
A month later, COVID happened.
That was the next two years ofmy life.
(18:52):
I kept my restaurant afloat bydoing all kinds of crazy, silly
stuff on social media, whichmade me fall back in love with
writing and performing.
And I was lucky enough to sellmy restaurant, get out under.
And then I got in with thiswriting group of a bunch of
brilliant comics people thatwrite on TV shows that have done
late night spots, all kinds ofpeople.
And we do these sessions thatare about 10 weeks and you write
together and it's, and you getfeedback and every week you
(19:15):
bring in five or six minutes.
Like, here's what I wrote onthis topic.
And you essentially do a sat,it's on Zoom, and so it's an
open mic, but an open mic.
You just have 14 comics withtheir arms crossed who refuse to
laugh at anybody who's funnybecause they get jealous and
better, whatever.
I mean, they're not all likethat.
But yeah, I mean, I live in, Ilive in Reno and I in Reno,
they're all like that.
I'm like, what am I getting outof being here?
I mean, I'm getting a little bitthicker skin I guess.
(19:37):
This is a completely differentmonster where you do your,
here's what I wrote this week,and everybody comes back and
says, Hey, like, this was great.
I didn't understand this.
What if you change this?
What if you talk more aboutthis?
What about this for a punchlineinstead of that?
And so it's a communal effort,which is, it's really just an
acceleration of the processbecause, stand up.
editing obviously, I mean,editing any writing, editing is
(19:59):
obviously, hugely important.
And ultimately the audience isthe ultimate editor to an
extent.
you can write and sit at homeand write genius.
If they don't laugh, they don'tlaugh.
you can't keep it more than acouple shows if it's not
working.
You have to either change it ordrop it.
and working with so many reallysmart, talented, experienced
people, you accelerate thatprocess of getting feedback and
(20:20):
not completely having to figureout every single beat entirely
by trial and error.
It helps a bit.
So that's how I started writing.
But I wasn't writing with theidea like, I'm gonna have an
hour or an hour and a half show.
I was just writing to startdoing standup.
And I wrote so much in thatfirst six months that there was
a point when all these notecards on my wall, and I don't
know, saw the matrix of oh, Ithink this could all fit
(20:42):
together into one thing.
Because I, mostly what I writeabout mental health and my
family and my father passingaway and my brother passing away
and all the stuff that I realizeit sounds hilarious, but stay
with me.
So an unknown comic with nofollowing, I can't get five
minutes at a comedy club, letalone an hour.
I, someone told me about theHollywood Fringe Festival and I
looked into that and, booked atheater to do nine shows.
(21:04):
I mean, a 22 seat theater, whichis perfect.
So I'm on the hook to do anhour, six months from now, and
that gave me the extra push toreally work on it.
The deadline.
And it changed, it changed fromthe first show to the ninth
show, and it changes every day alittle bit.
So, standup is all about justthese kind of endless little
tweaks over and over again.
And sometimes a joke that is 25words becomes nine words, or it
(21:28):
becomes two jokes, or it,disappears altogether.
And doing the show over and overagain, it gets more jokes and it
gets more refined.
And that's been my process oftrying to do the major work with
this writing group that I'm into get sort of 80% of the way
there.
And then the rest of it is justa matter of trial and error in
front of audiences, so youdidn't sit down and say, I'm
(21:50):
going to do a one man show aboutmental health.
About mental health in myfamily.
You were putting yourself outthere and I'm repeating this
because I just really want ourwriters out there who are trying
to break into the business.
you just cannot do it justsitting in your living room.
You just have to keep throwingthings at the wall.
So you were basically throwingthings at the wall and then one
(22:13):
day, like your license plate, itbecame the United States.
It became your 90 minute show.
And it is so honest.
Did you leave things on thecutting room floor?
Sure, yeah.
and the show, initially was anhour at the Hollywood Fringe.
was an, I had a 60 minute Heartout.
They cut your mic basically.
(22:34):
'cause they have another showcoming in 15 minutes.
So it's grown over time.
And this chunk about my brotherand his suicide.
I mean, that, I guess obviouslyit started as one joke and you
write two jokes, but it startedas three or four jokes in 2023.
And that my comedy group lovedand that when I did them live
did not go great because peopleon a Friday night at a comedy
(22:56):
club are not really in the moodfor that necessarily, especially
in a 10 minute set from somebodythat they don't know.
Like, wait, what is he, what ishe talking about?
Suicide.
Like, I don't wanna hear that.
So that took me two years tofigure out and is now almost a
20 minute section of the show tofigure out how to make it work,
to give it a through line, togive the audience permission to
laugh at it, but also give theaudience permission to not laugh
(23:17):
at it under understand why.
I do comedy about it.
you put it in a really goodspot, it's towards the end and
you talk about your mother andyour father beforehand, and your
mom's.
Okay.
Your mom's out there.
Hi, mom.
Right.
Do you wanna say hi to your mom?
Yes.
Yes.
My mom just, she will hear this.
I thought that you placed itbeautifully.
It gave me a time as an audiencemember to get to know you and to
(23:43):
get lulled into the sense of, ohyeah, he's dark, but I can
handle it and then bam, it getsdarker.
Yeah.
It's, and then, there's asection in the first couple of
minutes where I mentioned thatthere are gonna be some jokes
about this topic, but they'regonna come later.
And that's a part that got addedin, really only in the last
couple of months I realized,That I had to set that up at the
top.
(24:03):
Interesting.
Did is, was that a note orsomething you sensed It was
something I sensed and it was areally interesting experience
because when I promote my showI'm just renting theaters in
small to mid-sized towns for themost part.
And I post Instagram andFacebook ads and I post
everywhere I can, but I, all ofmy posts have something to do
with either, a quote or a reviewor, I never laugh so hard about
(24:24):
mental health or, dark comedywith a huge heart.
Some of these quotes that I'vehad from reviews that I feel
like just I need people to knowthat it's not crowd work and,
dick jokes side note.
Do you like to do crowd work?
No, I hate crowd work.
And there's multiple reasons forthat.
would you explain to the writerswhat crowd work is?
So Crowdwork as a comedian is,Hey, where are you from?
What do you do?
(24:45):
Who are you here with?
What do you do for work?
It's, stopping your show andtalking to the audience,
engaging the audience, and I getit.
And there, there are comics thatare good at it that are amazing
and it's impressive, but it hasreally impacted comedy in a big
way because that is whatcomedians like to post on social
media because then you don'thave to post your jokes because
that's, crowd work is a one-timething.
(25:05):
It happened that night.
And if you get a funny reaction,you can post content to engage
your audience.
Yeah.
That makes so much sense.
are you happy with the outcomeof the show?
The outcome.
Hmm.
Yeah, I'm proud of it, which, isa big thing for me to say.
I've done a lot of things withmy life and I've struggled to
(25:26):
accept that I was good at themor that they turned out well,
or, that I might be good atsomething.
That's been a difficult, like Isaid, it took me more than 10
years of making a very goodliving as an artist to ever call
myself an artist.
Yeah, I'm, I mean, especially,the one you saw, it was in
Ketchum, Idaho a couple of weeksago, and, thank you for
watching.
there are a couple things that Ithink it still needs.
I think it's good.
(25:46):
I don't think it's great.
And when I say great, I say it'snot, I just watched Mark Marin's
new special.
It's not that, of course, markMar's been doing this for 35
years and he's one of the bestever do it.
So like, well, maybe I shouldn'tbe comparing myself to that, but
it's not that, and it's not MikeLia, his new special.
The good life is great.
And so I want it to be that.
And I have ideas of how to getit there, but it's just a long
(26:09):
process for me.
But overall, yes, I'm happy withit and I'm proud of it.
And, and you saw one of the bestshows I've ever had.
I loved it.
Now you mentioned in thatspecial that you learned love
from comedy films.
Yeah.
That's funny.
That is some new material that Idropped into the middle of that
one that I've done a few timesand I'm sort of like, yeah,
(26:30):
romantic comedies.
I'm exploring that.
I, the stuff that I'm writingnow is, it all seems to be
coming from some version of allof this talk these days about
the new masculinity and alphamales and all this stuff.
Whereas like, I'm a sensitiveguy.
I grew up watching romanticcomedies and I still like
watching romantic comedies andtrying to navigate that There's
a new male loneliness epidemic,which, first of all, I have no
(26:52):
sympathy for a new maleloneliness epidemic.
I have been lonely for decades,so I'm getting lonely guys.
But I mean, that's a joke forthe most part.
But I just, I'm like, if youguys would stop worrying about
your abs and sitting in freezingcold water and just like, learn
how to roast a chicken and makea creme brulee, you would never
be lonely again.
they're going about it all wrongand they, the romantic comedy as
(27:14):
part of that, of, of like beinga sensitive guy and learning all
the wrong things aboutrelationships from those movies.
Yeah.
Do you have a favorite romanticcomedy?
Oh boy.
I don't flip around the channelsanymore'cause who, I don't have
cable or any, but, back in theday, there's something about
Hugh Grant that really ismagical.
He's just, he's such acurmudgeon in sort of real life,
(27:34):
and he's such a sweetheart inhis movies.
it's hard for me to say outloud, like nodding hill.
Like I, if that's on, it's,there's something about that
movie Aaron, I still hear thisin my head at least once a week,
I still hear this Oopsie daisy,right?
Yeah.
That's him going over the fence,right?
He's going over the gate.
And it's a weird thing because,there's a lot of, sort of men
(27:58):
being emotional has come a longway and being able to talk about
it and being sensitive and allthat, but there's a fine line.
Everybody has a different sortof limit, women, I love an
emotional guy, okay, but Do youmean a single tier at the end of
Field of Dreams when Costa getsto have a catch with his dad?
Or do you mean sobbing on thefloor at the end of Nodding
Hill?
Because like those are twodifferent things.
(28:20):
Exactly.
Hey, I'm gonna list a bunch ofmovie tropes about falling in
love.
Okay.
All right.
I want you to decide which onewriters should keep or delete,
never to be seen again.
Now, here's the trick.
The makeover, the main charactergoes under a noticeable
(28:40):
appearance change that makesthem more attractive.
I mean, yeah.
Doesn't that imply that they'reonly like worthy if they're hot?
Yes.
100% Aaron?
I think all those moviesprobably have a reveal where
then they figure out that no, Iactually do really, even though
(29:01):
but you're not.
Yeah, you let your hair down,you took your glasses off.
Like she was like a nine beforeshe did that.
Now she's a 10.
Like, I mean, you think aboutthe people that play those parts
in those movies, they're notexactly, unattractive to start
out.
They, they do what they can.
They put'em in, frumpy clothesand glasses, but it's like, come
on.
(29:22):
The one exception and see if youagree with this one.
The one exception that I likedabout a movie makeover was
Sandra Bullock and MissCongeniality.
Oh, oh yeah.
That one is, yeah.
That's a great.
A great movie.
You got Michael k her the powerat the end.
She meets up with Benjamin Bratand he's whoa.
And she's like, you like me?
(29:46):
Yes.
Yeah.
Which again, I don't care whatSandra Bullock's wearing, she
was hot at the beginning of themovie too, yes.
She was.
Okay.
Here's another, the trope.
A rich person falls in love witha poorer person.
of course you've got PrettyWoman.
Usually the man is rich and thewoman's poor.
I think that's probably thetrophy aspect of that.
So again, I mean, I think if youbreak these things down far
(30:07):
enough, they get somewhatproblematic of.
Of all you're rich.
What do you care?
Who cares if she has money ornot?
Or she's from the wrong side ofthe track.
So I'm wonderful that, wheredoes that go?
I just watched that recently.
That's Rich.
That's Rich girl, poor boy.
Eric s That's a great movie.
Yeah's poor.
And she's, well, she's actuallynot rich.
She's also poor.
But she hangs out with the richpeople'cause she's so hot.
(30:29):
It's, it's very, these are allvery problematic in retrospect,
these movies.
I think I, the only thing I canremember is she wore gloves with
fringes hanging off of them.
'cause she was a drummer and Ireally thought those, that is
the other character that is MaryStewart Masterson.
Yeah.
I thought those gloves werecool.
Yes.
(30:50):
Oh wait, I, I totally messed upour game here.
Let's go back to number one.
Are we gonna keep the makeoveror are we gonna delete it?
I think my answer, I hesitate tosay that there's an answer to
all of these that's the same.
I think, you have to find aunique way to do it, or you, or.
Or you have to do it?
Well, I mean, I, I realizethat's such a, like, well, yeah,
(31:11):
obviously, but, I'm on the boardof a film festival here in Reno,
so I watch a ton of short filmsand I think a big mistake that I
see is people try to like rereinvent the genre and just like
do something that's so uniqueand it's like just you can do
something that is a story thatwe've seen a hundred times, but
(31:31):
if you do it really well.
That still can be great.
It, a simple love story wherethe families don't want them to
be together.
Okay.
We've all seen that since Romeoand Juliet.
But if it's done well, it'sacted well and it's written
well.
It still works.
I mean, there's a reason I thinkwe're like, oh, there's only six
stories.
Or, whatever they say about,plot lines and things like that.
(31:51):
I think, you just have to find away to do it that we haven't
seen before.
I agree with that 100%.
Okay.
Number three, the trope is thebig time player meets the one,
the main character, Has ahistory of dating many people
until one day they meet thatsomeone who changes all their
(32:14):
views.
Two weeks notice, which we are,we're talking about Sandra and
Hugh.
That would be one.
Do you like that trope?
I'm trying to think of this.
Okay, so again, I'm trying tobreak these down.
So this is, this is a person whohas been, lived their whole
lives in a very shallow way.
(32:35):
And then I'm taking thesenegative spins on all of these
tropes.
I apologize.
But, and then decides to see thenew person in a, in as three
dimensionally.
Yes.
Which is, I mean, did, were,were all the sort of people you
were dating before this, reallynot worthy of respect and being
treated kindly and not one nightstands and whatnot.
(32:57):
I mean, I get it.
You have to, you have to havesome kind of a plot line, right?
Like what's the, what's thestory?
It's like this guy meets, thismeets that or whatever.
Yeah.
I can speak for myself.
I'm 53 now, but my thirtiesliving in la, making a great
living as an artist and being ona, granted a super cheap TV
show, but I'm still on a TV showand nobody else in my acting
class was on a TV show.
So like, I, I, I dated around abit.
(33:18):
I had a good time.
Aaron, let's pause the show.
Pause the quiz.
Where did you go during thatperiod of time?
What restaurant?
What club?
I'm just fascinated to knowwhere now?
Oh my God.
Back in my LA days.
Oh yeah.
That's, I did not go to a lot ofdifferent places.
(33:38):
I worked from home with myartwork, which was nice.
I never really had to deal withthe chaos of traffic and
whatnot.
My favorite first date place wasa restaurant called Jones on
Santa Monica.
Yes.
It's open late.
It's very, it's probably not.
I do, I have been back there acouple times recently when I do
shows and stuff, because they'reopen late and there's a bit of a
(33:59):
nostalgia to it for me, it's abit loud for me these days, but
it looks exactly the same as itdid 20 years ago inside.
is that near it's across fromFormosa.
Yes.
That's it.
It's across from, yes.
I, I went to Jones.
Once and I liked it Yeah.
It's, cool booths and there's avibe, there's an la vibe
happening there.
And there's a great jukeboxwhere there used to be, I'd go
(34:21):
on these first or second datesthere, and I look, if you're
gonna have Bob Dylan blonde onblonde on the, on the jukebox,
I'm gonna play, the 12 minutesong three times and you're just
gonna have to deal with it.
But so that's a nostalgia placefor me.
Now, I didn't go on a, I don'tknow that I went on many dates
or any to a restaurant called aOC.
That was really one of myfavorite haunts.
(34:42):
they used to be on third, downtowards Fairfax, but at some
point, I dunno, it's probably 10years at least.
They moved, they're still onthird, but they're way down
towards like, the Beverly Centerdown there.
So they're, they're stillaround.
But I used to go there everySunday night.
It was pretty close to my houseand ended up becoming friends
with, everybody that workedthere on Sunday night.
And it was really a nice way toend the week and weekend for me
(35:04):
to go.
But I would, I went there bymyself probably 99% of the time.
When I was, I'm okay one-on-one,but I'm not great.
Outside of that.
Socially, when I was going outwith my friends and stuff, if we
were going dancing, it wasalways like a group dancing at
the crush Club or something, andthere was no dress code.
There is no right.
$25 drinks.
(35:25):
It really was just fun.
I don't currently know what thekids are doing in LA right now.
But one thing that I do envy thekids have is Uber, because yeah,
I would've liked that when I wasgoing out, when I was younger.
Yeah, I mean that's, that'scertainly a game changer.
I'm not, I've never been a hugedrinker, but I, not that I'm
(35:47):
paying attention, but I'm notsure I've, last time I heard of
a celebrity getting a dui.
I'm sure it still happens, butthat seems, well, thanks for
making it seem like I'm a bigdrinker, Erin.
I really appreciate that.
You bet.
You bet.
Okay, back to our quiz, thetrope best friends to lovers
main characters in love withtheir best friend.
(36:07):
They don't realize it.
they either pursue them or theydon't.
There's a obstacles in the way.
Do you like the trope the bestfriends to lovers Yeah, I like
those movies and I think we'veall had those experiences and
relationships and I certainlywhen I was younger, especially
like as a very shy kid, and thegirl that lives around the
(36:28):
corner that you've known foreverand you, but you don't know how
to do anything.
And because you're so close inthese other ways and friendship
ways and, and yeah.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it'sgreat We're gonna keep that one
last one.
The trope, the contractrelationship.
The main character findsthemselves in a fake
relationship, but ends upfalling in love for real.
(36:51):
I would say like the proposal,another Sandra Bullock, right.
Right.
God, I'm drawing a blank.
It was one of my favorite movieswhen I was a kid that Patrick
Dempsey can't Buy Me Love.
Oh, that one.
Yes, I remember that.
Where he's just the nerd with nofriends and again, the girl he's
had a crush on forever, althoughthey're not really friends.
Maybe they were friends in likeelementary school, but now she's
(37:13):
the popular cheerleader and shegets in a jam and he helps her
out financially to Greece todate him for, a month or
something like that.
again, they're tropes for areason because I think people
identify them within some way.
And they work out the way wewant them to, right?
they have the arc of eitherforced together.
One of'em doesn't like it.
And then of course somebodyscrews up and then they end up,
(37:35):
figuring it out and being decenthuman beings in the end.
Erin, I have two more questionsfor you.
Are you watching, reading orlistening to something that you
enjoy, that you'd like to sharewith us?
Listening to, I mean, I guessreal briefly, I have my favorite
podcast WTF, mark Marin, whichI'm heartbroken is ending
(37:55):
because I'm never gonna be aguest on it, mark is hanging up
the police.
He's hanging it up.
Yeah.
16 years.
I think in the end of September,I don't think there's not an
official end date announced, buthe has said in September, like,
we're, we're packing it in.
Hey Aaron, if I find out hisaddress, do you wanna just go
and break into the garage?
That, I don't feel like thatwould end well.
the cats won't bark.
(38:16):
The cats won't bark.
I do have a half a, I have an acompletely, I mean this, I
haven't looked at this foryears.
I have a, an unfinished scriptthat opens with essentially me.
On essentially Mark Marin's doorwith a gun saying, put me on
your podcast.
But that never went anywhere.
Which is probably for the best,mark.
don't worry.
Well, you're gonna have Mark onyour podcast, so it'll work out.
(38:39):
Sure.
let's go with that.
And just because this is forwriters and creatives, in case
anybody has not does not know ofMike Burley's podcast called
Working It Out is really greatfor creatives.
It's all about the process ofwriting and refining and all
that kind of stuff.
So I think people, if people arenot familiar with that, you
might find it interesting.
And I, lately I've been watchinga lot of standup specials but
(38:59):
watching them in a differentway, not just for the jokes,
watching it for.
Mannerisms and facialexpressions and eye lines and
what they do with their hands.
And the biggest thing that hasreally, I've noticed, not that I
ever thought any comic with anactual special was not
confident, but the level ofconfidence on these comedians
that have been doing it for 20or 30 years is really just, it's
(39:23):
so impressive.
I feel like I'm confident onstage, but it's another level
and it's really fascinating towatch, mark Mar's new special.
And I went back and watched oneI had in Gadsby's her second
one, Douglas.
And Gary Goldman is really myfavorite comic, I think in terms
of like, just sheer joy.
He's so smart and so brilliantand I have, so I identify with
(39:44):
so many things about his sort ofperspective on life.
And so that's been a reallyinteresting thing to see.
And, from a writing standpoint,Mike Burley's new special called
The Good Life is fantastic.
And I saw it about a year beforehe put it out.
When was working on it, it wasstill called The Good Life, but
his dad had not had a strokeyet.
His new specialist, the throughline is his father having a
(40:04):
stroke and mortality and kind.
So it was really amazing to seehow he had pivoted to this
entirely new through line whenI, when I saw the show in LA a
year before, I was like, oh,he's done.
Like, he must be taping thissoon, like he's done.
that's amazing.
So that was really interestingto see that he was able to just
be like, Nope, I'm gonna do thisother thing.
And obviously, he leaned into itand decided that was what he
(40:27):
wanted to talk about.
So that was interesting from a.
Perspective of a comic of like,man, that's, and I dunno, maybe
his next hour will just be allthe stuff that he didn't use in
this one.
I dunno what he's gonna do.
I doubt it.
I dunno that he's necessarilywired that way, but maybe.
But it was just, it was reallyinteresting to see, like, I
think he's got a done thing andthen to see how much he changed
(40:48):
it was inspiring and sort ofkind of terrifying.
Like, oh my God, you dropped 45minutes of really solid material
because, this other thing cameup.
It's like, wow.
So it's, I mean, watching peoplewho are really, really, really
at the top of their game and doit the way that I, would like to
ultimately do it it's mostlyinspiring.
(41:08):
It's a little bit intimidating,but it's mostly inspiring.
But it's cool, it's educational,yeah.
Would you like to share yoursocial media and where could our
writers find you?
Sure.
Instagram is probably where I'mmost active, which is Aaron
Charles Foster.
But you can find everything justthrough my website, Air and
foster com.
That's probably the easiest wayto find all of my stuff Aaron
(41:30):
Foster, thank you so much.
You've shared so much of yourtime, so much of your journey,
so much of your artistry.
I really think our listeners arejust gonna walk away with, the
desire to get out there and justkeep creating.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.
And that's a wrap for theWriter's Hangout.
Thanks so much for listening.
(41:51):
If you enjoyed the show, pleasetake a moment to leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts.
Your positive feedback will helpus keep the show going so we can
continue bringing you morefuture episodes.
Remember, keep writing.
The world needs your stories.
The Writers Hangout is sponsoredby the Page International
Screenwriting Awards, withexecutive producer Kristen
(42:13):
Overn, producer Sandy Adamides,and myself, Terry Sampson.
And our music is composed byEthan Stoller.
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