Watch Party S1 E13 Ft. John Billingsley | Ep. 39

It’s time to revisit Dear Doctor—and who better to join us than the man behind Phlox? John Billingsley stops by to share stories, insights, and plenty of laughs.

Each week, we explore and celebrate the lives that the Star Trek universe has forever changed. From former and future cast and crew members to celebrities, scientists, and astronauts whose personal and professkional journeys have been affected by the franchise, we sit down and dive deep with a new friend, laughing and learning from their stories. Sit back, grab a drink, and join our hosts, Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer, as we get geeky in The D-Con Chamber.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This show has been gun with car It's the.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Conch ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekky's and Trekkers.
Welcome back to another watch party episode of the Decon Chamber.
I'm your co host Donic Keating, joined us always by
my best team.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Mister Conreneer. Here you are down there.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're going to talk about episode thirteen, dear doctor, and
we are very fortunate to have in the house as
you see the lead actor of said episode, mister John Billingsley.
Welcome back, sir. Thank you Nate, last thing have you.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
It's really good to see you too, John, I was.
I was very thankful. I am not in this episode.
Oh you are, but not mine. I'm barely in this
Epis Belly in it too?

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Night You'll know what my experience was.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
More often, it's a lovely episode directed by James A.
Cottner and written by a wonderful team who went on
to have great success with Mad Men. I believe Andre
and Maria Jacques Moton. He wanted me to say that,

(01:17):
and it's a really lovely, lovely, well written episode, and
you were you certainly stepped up for it. John, So
I know what well, don't know where to start really,
I mean, well I would start with this, Dom, I
would say, like.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, John, I would think that this was for
you as your character is doctor Flox. The first episode
that was really focused on your character. Mm Hmstely And
how did you would your take on that?

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Well, you know, playing Adnobulan and they're playing a bulcan,
you're playing a Klangon. You've got a whole. You know,
the work is done. You know Klaangon saw. You know,
I didn't know what a Denobilan was. So there was
some interesting discoveries along the way.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
For instance, in this they didn't squawk and the.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
End's block had I my d brothers. I felt a
whole flappy thing I could do. It was interesting as
a for instance in this episode, to learn that we
are we do not like to be touched. No, I
didn't know they either yeah or it ever have occurred
to me. Because we live on the most populated planet

(02:22):
in the galaxy. You had to think you can't help
getting touched.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
And everyone's got three husbands and wives.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Though it did it did lead me in an interesting way,
As was true generally in this episode, it led me
back to some re evaluation and rethinking of the Dnobulin story,
I decided, for instance, that we had to have extremely
elaborate rituals, courtship rituals that would lead us to the
point where we could touch if we were that phobic

(02:49):
about it. And I suppose the idea being that on
a planet where you know space is at a premium,
you have to preserve that space you have. But it
was interesting, and I think there are some other things
that came up in the episode that for the first
time made me go back and think, let me review
some of the decisions I made about who I think
this cat is with this new information in mind. So

(03:12):
that was definitely the first episode that kind of did
that for.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Me, all right. And also I think it was the
first and one of maybe very few episodes where it
was run by voiceover.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, so that was my first prank.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yes, you did something on with Scott, didn't you. Scott
in the scene in the messle when you go.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
No, no, I was on the bridge. I was never
on the bridge.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Thank god I was on the bridge with it, because
you used recorded it and then shot the scene to
the voice sivers.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
All right, I'm never on the bridge. I don't they
have me on the bridge because the gag is it's
my video diary. So I had you on the bridge
to witness us picking up the ship and distress and
the you know the way this works when you're providing voiceovers,
it's ms. They shoot it without without anybody talking, but
they play the audio recording so that the actors understand

(04:07):
the length of the material they're having to match to.
They were going to play my blah, and I pre
recorded something else instead, And so when we called action,
what everybody actually heard was, as I was standing on
the bridge behind Scott, look at the ass on Captain
archer S and Juicy, I wonder if I could lure

(04:28):
him down into sick day under some pretext. And it
was a great treat to break up Scott. That was
always fun.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah, I like the voice ever, it was very short, Shank,
I thought, what what what did you think about the
You know, pretty quickly we come into a scenario where
we're trying to figure out, uh, what to do about
these two different vision Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
So on this planet, two species, one of which is
essentially a subservient species, not as blade species necessarily. That's
one of the lines they kind of which I think
is one of the reasons this episode made me somewhat uneasy.
I thought they were kind of maybe having their cake

(05:20):
and eating it too in terms of the power dynamic
they set up between the overlords and the underlings. Yeah,
the overlord species have a disease, and the disease is
killing them. The species is gonna die wiped out entirely
unless I can come up with a cure. For those
of you who haven't seen the episode, spoiler alert, I
come up with a cure, but I'm not too happy

(05:43):
about providing the cure because if I provide the cure,
will continue to have a society in which their overlords
and underlins, and maybe nature intended for the overlords to
die off so the underlins could actually begin to blossom
and become you know, the yeah the guys. Well, yeah,
it's not a disease all of a sudden.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Then you have to consider, like, you know, what does
what do people do when denobula? Which I got the
impression watching this episode is that they were kind of
cool with that.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yes, as somebody who's lived with this episode for many,
many years, and it has definitely become a love hate episode.
There are people who I hear say all. Not all
the time, but not infrequently. I soured on doctor Flox
after he decided to commit an act of genocide. And
I remember when we shot this thinking, Okay, this is

(06:36):
the first episode in which we really get to meet
doctor Flox. He is making a decision that is definitely
going to be interpreted by many people as a genocidal act.
And I remember thinking at the time, you know, although
I liked many aspects of the episode, I loved working
with Kelly Waymeyer, it was hmm, I think had some
very strong moments.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
I remember the time thinking, oh, man, I don't know,
I don't know if my character is gonna be uh
well I will, I will abe gen Like in the
in the very first scene, you walk in and you
are feeding you know your your different.

Speaker 5 (07:11):
Uh medical animals, medical animals, and you know you you
take a bite of it, and which was very much
gives the audience the idea that you are someone who
is relatively altruistic in terms of how you feel about
the care of foreign beings.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Not the slug well, no, no, when you when you
feed the last one, you take, you eat, you eat the.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Little yeah, the plug, Yeah, yeah, I'm feeding I'm feeding
the beasties and I have a bite myself.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Yes, yeah, there it's this.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
There's a later episode where I feed a triple to
uh to, which is another moment where people will.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
But the decision too. I mean, it's not a disease,
it's a genetic misfunction, dysfunction in the Volakians that's gonna
make an extinct within a couple of centuries, you imagine
from your scientific findings. And uh, well, it's a.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Genetic malfunction because I mean the species has been around
for some time. So yeah, yes, I take your point.
But I think you could say here is something that
is I've argued, I've been on many panels of this
about the rhyme. I can argue both sides of that.
I think from you know, the point of view of

(08:27):
this was not an unconscionable act. The argument is this
was a species that up until recently had you know,
achieved great things and was thriving. This thing that happened,
you know, like sickle celenemia is a genetic function. If
sickle celenemia was actually affecting every African American and you

(08:48):
could come up with a cure, would you do it?
Or would you say, well, no, this is a genetic issue,
it's not really a disease.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
I mean to me, that's a distinction.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Without a difference in terms of what his moral responsibility
as a doctor is the question of whether or not
he chooses or not to do it based on the
repercussions to another species.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
So then is the heart of the matter that is, Yeah,
that's you have. Did you have conversations about this, yeah?
You know. The the thing is.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
It was so early in our first Yeah, and as
you say, this is the first episode that I've actually
really gotten it ought to do. And I didn't have
any kind of relationship with Rick and Brannon. I mean,
they'd cast me, they were nice, I'd liked them. I
never had a meeting with them about that abula. I
never had any elaborate conversations with them about you know,

(09:41):
here's how we see your character of all the YadA
YadA YadA. There was a big part of me that thought, oh, great,
first episode, I'm gonna call and say I have an
objection to the moral decision.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
But it was a it was a real uh thing
in this episode could or maybe should have been dealt with,
and didn't They try.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
I mean, you know, as written, they tried to provide
the counter argument, which to me rested in prime directive
stuff and our right to make decisions, which I bought,
which I always thought was like, Eh, the problem with
the old prime directive argument is to be out there,
you're interfering with other cultures, your sure existence is. So

(10:30):
the whole prime direct thing I always had objections to.
It's like that, that's kind of specious. It's like, here's
where we arbitrarily decide to divide the decision between what
we can and cannot do. It's like ten guys can
make that decision differently. To me, here's the analogy I
would use. Imagine that you know that the European settlers

(10:52):
are coming with their pocks ridden blankets, and you have
the ability to save the American Indian and by extension,
the entire now burgeoning culture of the Indian populations if
you stop them from bringing the pox ridden blanket, and

(11:16):
if you say, I'm turning your ships around, and in
so doing, I'm sending the box ridden blankets back to Europe,
and Europe's going to be decimated instead, would you do that? All? Right?
At least it becomes for me, you know, a sort
of analogy that you can kind of begin to go, oh, well.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
But John, to your argument that was a conscious act.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, I mean I think to very a cure is
a conscious act.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yes, I agree, And it wasn't. But it wasn't the
doc's decision. It was certainly you were in favor, you
advocated for it.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
But I went to the captain I'm more the game
and said, did you find a cure? And I was like, yeah,
I didn't, but I don't think we should use it.
And his first reaction is and so we had in
which I say, here's my rationale and blah blah blah,
I analogize it to the Neanderthal man and the agnin
and what's and he comes around. I felt badly for

(12:19):
Scott on a certain level because I didn't think the
argumentation I made was as strong as it would need
to be to lead him to make the decision.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
I agree, I agree. I thought. I thought it seemed
in the episode, you know, we we can use analogies
of of of all sorts of these scenarios, and Scott's
reaction seemed to be a little I don't know, obtuse

(12:51):
about the idea in the sense that what role are
we spoke, we've we've This has been used in a
couple other episodes prior to this, where we're trying to
discover determine how we're going to operate being other people
in other races, and in this one, I will say,

(13:16):
it sort of seemed like, well, they had nothing for us,
so we're not gonna really help them.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, and you know, I mean the hard thing is
if you have I think this is true dramatically speaking,
if a character says this is my moral bottom line, Oh,
I see your point, this is my bottom line. I
don't think that's always the strongest you know writing, and
it doesn't help a character. I mean, it kind of

(13:44):
makes you seem like you have less moral fiber, certain respects.
I sort of felt that the script undercut Scott more
than it did me. You could at least begin to
make arguments that in my culture, and this came up
in other episodes, that my mid I my moral compass
is just I come from a different culture. It's a
different compass for Scott and for earth Lanes to you know,

(14:10):
go along with the decision on the basis of the
argumentation that I provide, which I didn't think was robust enough.
I think weakened.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
And I will also say that I feel as though
the idea that we were somehow trying to figure out
the universal translator became much more of a storyline than
the notion of what we're going to do with helping
these people. It was an it was.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
I don't know if ambitious is the right word. There
were a lot going on in that episode. I mean,
you know, I have a love interest, for God's sake,
I mean, in a way it was. It was sort
of a slow build and a slow cook, and it
rests in the end, in a relatively short amount of time,
on a massive moral decision that felt kind of like
oddly rushed for the.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Weight of what was involved, and it was hinged on
something quite spurious, the fact that this second class citizenry,
the Manx, were they subjugated or weren't they? And that
that you know that it was AMBI it was ambivalent
at best.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, I'll give you that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean,
you know, having said that, I mean when I when
I look back on that episode, I have, you know,
really nice memories. I loved Kelly Waymeyer. I loved the
director James. I wish he had done more of our episodes,
and it was first opportunity I had to actually kind
of like, you know, oh, I will get something to

(15:35):
do on this.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
And you've got to actually flesh out this guy. And
I'm saw some interview you Gay where it was like,
oh god.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
I'm just going to be the comic. You know, almost
I don't want to say Neelix's relief, but you know.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
I was not as concerned about you know that after
a couple of episodes. I mean, they were clearly letting
me have, you know, some moral weight, but I was,
I was, you know, you just never know. I mean,
obviously it became a parent. You and I've had this discussion.
It became a parent and I can totally get what
they were thinking that they wanted to replicate the triangular

(16:10):
relationship that existed between Spock, McCoy and Kurk, and they
were doing that with with Connor and Joe and the Captain.
And I think it became a parent in the first
half of the first season. That the rest of us
would have moments and have episodes, but like as not,
we were going to be a little more a little
more back as the only kind of older fact. I

(16:31):
wasn't necessarily expecting to be like, you know, punching.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, you weren't pissed off when you weren't on the
billboards in the space ship.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
See.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
But so and you know, I mean I like to
work and I like to not work. So it was
fine by me. But it was it was nice to
get a little bit of, you know, purchase on who
the guy was.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, we've talked about this, dom and I haven't don
these watch parties that in the first season, the first
half of the season, for the most part, everybody got
their shot m and this was definitely Flox's shot. And
did you know that did you feel that when you

(17:15):
were doing it? Well? You, Hey, John, did your Twitter?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
It's your only shot. I mean that's a did you Yeah?

Speaker 3 (17:24):
But did you care?

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Well, I mean, don't like to work, so you know,
you certainly care in the sense of why I'm a
series regular here, and you know it would be kind
of a drag if I just never, you know, got
much to do. On the other hand, I always catched
the paycheck on a weekly basis with great joy.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I didn't have a pot to piss it pretty nigh ill,
so you know, I.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Mean, well, the hour was brutal.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
I mean, and now I think about it, I mean
you must have been were you in the chair at
two thirty some mornings?

Speaker 3 (17:52):
And no, no, it was.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Never as early as that. And you know they you know,
the whole sofa money thing, which is for those who
are watching, I'm sure you've probably.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Heard that you did a lot of turn around, did he.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Well, no, they made sure you didn't because they don't
want to pay nine hundred and fifty bucks. So it
seems like it would be brutal, but they jiggered the
day so that they weren't going to have to pay
you for a short turnaround. I think I had one.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Is that right? That's pretty impressive given that you're in
a lot of it.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
And yeah, yeah, James was a very fast shooter. I
don't know, yes, yeah, I mean he wasn't David Livings
and God bless you. James was the opposite of David.
James knew what he wanted. He went in, Okay, let's go,
I got it.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Okay, Yeah, I remember him. He was very workman like.
Did you did you do? You know the whole apotopisson
do you know, the whole term of all of us.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
I believe so.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yes that back in the day, I'm a big fan
of did you know?

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yes, you may have read it on Facebook recently, because
I saw myself on Facebook that as an as a
measure of wealth, the idea that you could actually I mean,
I can't remember all the different gradations, but there was
some because piss was actually a value that if you
didn't have a pot to collect a piss, well for tanning,
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
For tanning, yeah yeah. Uh and and if and if
and if if, if you were piss poor, you had pot.
And if you were the other you didn't even have
a pot, you didn't have a pot to put the
piss in it.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yes, So if you were selling your piss to tan
not you mean you piss pol.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
In my head, there was some other value to piss
that I'm not and I'm not recalling what that was.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
It's a fetish.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember what was. I
also remember that they got married, and they tended to
get married in a particular time because they only got
to bathe like once a year, so they'd want to
bathe shortly after their annual bath, they'd want to marry
after shortly after fair enough so yeah, which I personally,
I think the idea of just an annual bath. It's like,

(20:01):
let's bring that back.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
I got blessed her. She was your lovely actress, wasn't she?
And a very sad Kelly. I think this was the
last episode she did, if.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
I'm not right. If I'm right, I think.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, No, she came back a couple of times. I
think the last one she did I was, which was
another episode I was. I was more featured in h
I'm hibernating.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
They wake me up because Anthony has had an accident
down on the surface rock climbing, and in the middle
of my hibernation, I am. I am, like, you know,
so looped that I can barely function. And Kelly's in
that one. She is But did you know John, did
you know Gary Smooth Hell? YESU yeah, yeah, yeah, I

(20:48):
mean from Seattle days.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah yeah, So you know Kelly passes uh and then
you know, ten years later he dies of it was
it kidney cancer?

Speaker 1 (20:59):
And they know, yeah, Kelly undiagnosed heart condition. I mean
Gary comes home and finds her dead on the sofa.
She was what twenty nine. Yeah, and she had just
had I don't know if you were uh, oh, what
does that show about the two guys who work on
a mortuary? That? Oh, excuse under she had I don't
know if you saw, but you know, right around the

(21:21):
time she was doing our stuff, she had like a
great multi episode arc.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Oh, and then she did a show for Fox about
this strange she was on he was going.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
To blow up. Yeah, so much so that although there
had been speculation that she would be made a series regular,
it's like, I don't know if she would have wanted
that job, right. Yeah. I loved working with her. She
was so lovely and a marvelous actress, you know, and
I never had and there was no there was no
whiff of love interest after that for doctor Flox. Finally

(21:55):
had my wife, finally had a wife, and then she
makes a pass at you. I'm going to tell you
one brief story which has nothing to do with this episode,
but always makes me laugh because very few people ever
catch this. In the episode where I am woken up hibernating,
I slipped a dirty joke in and very few people
ever caught it. They said, you know, oh, the ends

(22:16):
in Mayweather he has an emergency and I'm lying here
in Mayweather and I lift the blanket as if he
is underneered. I thought they're not going to let that go,
and I let it in. I never watched that episode.
We all get to it bowling in the direction the

(22:37):
doctor Flox is imagining.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
There's three penises, that's the right to the Blue Moon.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
A fan says that, but were you.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Suggesting, And though yes it was, it was you don't
just think about the episode. I also love is it's quiet.
It's a quiet episode.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
It is the most unexcit in cold open in the
history of cold opens. I mean it's like I walk
into sick Bay, I feed my animals, I have a bite,
and we're out. It's right on another pulse pounding episode
of enterprise.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, Brandon thought it was the best one we did
that year. I mean, I've read when we all came
together for that ten year anniversary. Yeah, he's quoted as
saying he wished they could all have been I mean,
on my own sir album, my.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Caveats are quibbles aside. It does do what I like
star Trek, That's what it does. It It like does
something that makes people like you know. Yeah, this episode
is the one that I get asked about more than
any other, and it's because of this, you know argument,

(23:50):
and I now I appreciate Like the Coach editor I
think was another one. Yeah, those episodes that are are
rooted in tough ethical, moral decisions that have to do
with cultures. I think are when we're at our best.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah great, I mean I I you know, when I
watched it, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
This the first time.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
As you say that, the word directive is used that
it's the first time as a pre Yeah, it's the
first time, Scott says something like that.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Some directive.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
I also like the the the duality of what the
Vulcans did for us and the fact that they spent
ninety years, you know, coaching us to get to where
we were then in space. And I also liked the
fact that that you know, we we we wouldn't give

(24:51):
them warp drive to go because they couldn't handle it.
That they couldn't handle.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
If we know that, mm hmm. The did we know
that they couldn't handle it? They wanted well, it's the
handling of antimatter. Yeah, we were pretty sure though.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
They specifically wanted is so they could go out and
see it and search each other. So to be able
to say, you know, not only are we not going
to give you warp drive, but we found the cure.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
We're not going to give you that either. I mean,
it wasn't even a discussions to whether, look, we're not
sure about the relationship you have with the minx.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
I mean, it was never never even discussed with them
that you know, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
I mean you know it.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
I mean there was a whole set of I think
it was interesting because, you know, the whole concept became
about a fight over evolution. It's like, evolution isn't a theory, right,
but Dodger plus was so sure about the nature of
what the evolutionary path had to be, right, how the
diso mink are not going to develop on their own
into a species that is perfectly capable. Plus, there was

(25:55):
no there was no physiological argument. I mean, the reason
the chromagnans did survive and and and the anderthal man
did had physiological right. You know, there was nothing that
would have doomed the mink to servitude in perpetuity. And
now I could tell it was it was a culturation clash.
And if our whole point is that we don't get

(26:17):
involved in culturation. Then we put our finger on the
scale and we said, we're going to choose this group
because my cultural point of view is that they're oppressed
and this will liberate them.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
There, you know, that needed to be the argument, and
it was.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
A very flimsy, uly drawn interpretation of subjugation and an
oppression indeed.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Indeed, and that's where I feel like, you know, that's
one thing. I mean, if you're gonna make them slaves,
I mean, at least you know, it kind of gets
you to a point where you could say I cannot
tolerate lay slave owners. To use another historical analogy, if
you could have built off the Southern slave owning class,
and if you didn't, there was going to be a
slave class and perpetuity. But they weren't slaves. They were

(27:03):
like you know, they were docile, they were sweet at
upple servants. Yeah, and how he it seems it softened
that line to such a point that it became like
really problematic to me. M hmm.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Is there a episode where that's addressed or it's not?
Is it it's it's it's they just live where they are.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, well they can't live where the soil is fertile,
So they are they're totally at the beck and call,
as it were, the valky Vallachians, who will feed them
and you know, keep them in servitude. But obviously they
they were developing skills and you know intelligence, that was Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
I argument is, I can see they have capacities, but
I into it that they will never be given enough
of an opportunity to develop this, which to me is
sort of like, you know.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
How do you know?

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Right?

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Uh, what about the sort of the the sort of
sort of the.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
B line story I found with the film Night Stuff
and what it is to be human and to be
overly compassionate. How did you feel that that sort of
fitted in was woven into this dilemma, this this moral dilemma,
because I think that was part of it. I mean,
I know that Fox couldn't didn't want to be touched

(28:26):
before this.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
No, no, I know, I had no idea. No, No,
it was when in this in the scene in the
hallway where we're sort of you know, well, I'm walking
with Kelly Waymeyer. Kelly, although she was Marvel's actress, had
never done a Wonner before. Oh so it was like, Kelly,
let's let's just practice the Wanner, because you know, there's
nothing worse than like you're halfway down the hallway and

(28:48):
you're out of all right, stop arbitrarily, So let's just
precic wanner a lot. And in the course of that scene,
she kind of moves in and I go, that was
the moment when it's like, I don't like to be
touched my species. What the.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Our wonderful executive producer, mister Dave Tabb is in the
house today.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
God bless him.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Thank you, Dave, Thank you very much.

Speaker 6 (29:16):
Hey everyone, Connor here, We just want to take a
moment to thank you so very much for tuning in
and being a part of the Decon Chamber family.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
Your support keeps us going and we couldn't do this
without you.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
And if you love what we do and want to
help us even more, please consider joining us on Patreon.
You'll get exclusive perks, behind the scenes content, and even
opportunities to chat with us directly.

Speaker 6 (29:40):
And don't forget to check out are awesome mergh because
who doesn't want to wrap their favorite podcast in style?

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Baby?

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Every little bit helps, I promise you, and we're really
very very grateful for all of you who make this
show possible. So thanks for being there, and please enjoy
this episode of the Decon Chamber.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
I know matter.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
When I got this gig, I thought, how do you
justify we've never seen a Genobilan before? And I thought,
all right, as a monastic species or only nine of
us left, I leave the Nobula because I'm lonely. And
then it turns out, as I've often said with the
buddies of the universe and I because he's a room
all right, so go you know, it goes to show

(30:26):
you no matter how much homework you do. Then the
script drives. Well.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Then also, you know what happens is is that you're
now having a pen pal conversation with a human Who'sbula.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah, yes, doctor Jeremy Lucas, Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Which made sense. I mean, you know, it was part
of an exchange program, and so that that that made
perfect sense. It made perfect sense that I was he.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Must have had sex all out.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
I tried so hard to make sure. In fact, I
think I think you've you've you've seen my my pride
and Joli, Yes, which I somehow managed to convince some
fans to make from his response to Wilson Cruz who
was talking to you know, people were talking about what

(31:14):
a gay I Connie was. I said, hello, I don't
know with anything that moved there was. It was a
night in Sick Bay when all that stuff about his uh,
you know, marriage, the Danobulan marriage rituals came up and
I tried so hard to act with an eyebrow. It's like,

(31:36):
wasn't in the text. It's like, how do I signal that?

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Like, I've never been able to do that one? Can
you do an icon?

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Do? I? I don't know. I Fortunately there are enough
polyamorous people in Star Trek to have they've come up
and said, oh, yeah we got that.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah we got you.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Might have been the you know, wishful film one of
your part, but yeah you were everything absolutely your question
dom I yeah, I I didn't. I didn't have strong
feelings about that. There were times I think when they
kind of wanted to like Flox's behavior, when I thought,
oh that's too silly. That didn't bug me, particularly although

(32:16):
it begs the question of what you don't have narrative
under no Zone because it's just the movie's narrative and
a narrative illicit's feeling. So to me, that was one
of those instances where I thought, I I kind of
question whether there's any advanced species or culture that has

(32:37):
achieved the level of sophistication. And he clearly has the
ability to make a joke. What's a joke but a story? Right,
So I don't buy the idea that somehow, how could
they get involved in this movie and actually have an
emotional right. I thought that was kind of like, no,
that's you're making a point, but if you think about it,
that's just not possible.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
All right, Yeah, indeed, and it's for hitting the bell
tulllls too.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
But I liked, as a flip side of that, I
like the fact that early on he said I think
those people might go copulate, could I watch? Watched? I
like the fact that he would eat anything that wasn't
nailed down. I liked anything that was about a reflection
of a different set of manners and rays. But I
do think it's important to draw a distinction between different

(33:22):
or simply don't pretend that.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
And then he gets stuck into a you know, an
ethical dilemma.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yes, and a huge ethical dilemma, and one that you know,
in my opinion, was an interesting one to debate, an
interesting one to consider, but that finally was not handled
as well as I would applied.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
I would agree, I would agree, I you know, it
would have been more dynamic to make. I don't know,
any choice as opposed to, uh what.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Justify that the argument has to be you know, I
mean that's always a thing to me. It's like, if
you're gonna hear if they's gonna be a show that
revolved around a moral argument, have the moral argument, and
it's got to be robust and you've got to consider
both sides, and yeah, you know, it's like you watch
a good debate debate, like an American presidential debate, it
isn't a debate. No debate is actually like no, no, no, no,

(34:17):
no no no. That was missing in this episode.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
All right, right, And I think that I think that
it's Paul's character. Joline's character to Paul would have had
a fair amount to have to do with that that
she didn't you know, really all we did was you
fixed her tooth?

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Oh did that happen in that episode? I did not
watch this episode in advance of this, so I was
drawing on my on my memories.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
I didn't even go a good memory.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
I've had a pretty good memory because I've seen this
one a few times, right, But that was about it.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
That was about all that to Paul carried on this,
and she interestingly was relatively passive in terms of the
determining factors about what happened.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
If anything, she seemed a bit shady and duplicitous as
to whether the Vulcans had met the Feringi or forget
the other race that she said to Ferringy and the
Alakians had met some other whoop species WOLP capable species.

Speaker 7 (35:19):
But I thought that I think that you're right, you know, John,
I think that there was there are moments that could
have been that were missed, And well, I still think
it's a very good episode.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
I I think that, you know, if you're going to
throw out a real uh dynamic element about what we're
talking about in regard to race, class and all that,
I think that her character could have been much more

(35:53):
inclusive in including into what we're doing. Yeah, I mean,
I understand the still radio changed.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
They wanted the ending change from whatever was written, and
I don't know what that was. You only idea what
that was, John, no, they actually they came in and
actually forced this issue, that this was beuty.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
And if I'm surprised to hear that, because one would
have thought that if it was going to be a
forced issue, would have been forced in the other direction.
If I, if I'm a studio boss, I'm thinking, do
we really want one of the League characters, two of
the League characters, including the Captain, to land on what
could argue arguably be a pro genocide position. I don't
know about that.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Right, so, you know, but well, the idea of not
playing god. But I agree that this the the is
it the scales weren't heavy enough on the other side
for us to.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
You know, yeah, I mean I yeah, yeah, But that
has always been my you know, as I said, I
find the whole prime director stuff to be sort of like,
you know, it's always self surveyed. It's like, however, you
want to move, we'll say all the private director.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, otherwise we are I sort out your move on. Yeah,
you Nazi bastards.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Other than that, though, some lovely acting man, and you
were really nuanced and that you held the camera beautifully mate,
And really I was moved that scene you have with
Linda when you're both at the messle speaking to Nobulan
is really quite lovely and charming.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
It was lovely to get to. I mean it was
interesting because early on they had, you know, developed this
sort of which I think which I appreciated, because the risk,
as you say, of being Neelix is that it's all
just yuck yuck. Doctor wants to watch people have sex,
Doctor eats other people's food, Doctor doesn't know what a
movie is. But the actual notion I've helped a little
barely for Linda, that she was put in the position

(37:49):
that here's his crew member who's like and the doctor
is able to say give here. If they had not
given me that an episode, I would have been a
little more concerned. That told me and gave me a
purchase in who this guy, you know, could be that

(38:10):
you know, he's got an interesting sense of humor. He's
got a very different worldview, but he can see somebody
struggles and he can psychologize.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Them as as an actor. How does that, you know,
manifest itself? You know, you were halfway into a first season.
There's some very clear elements of flocks one not being squawking,
but you know, you were the doctor and you know

(38:40):
what points up to this point in our travels, had
you found what you thought Flocks was.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
I think so, I think I pretty much knew right away.
I mean, the only thing, you know, sometimes I think
it's just sort of like, you know, here's the here's
the emotional spectrum, and it's like, is it here? Is
it here? When he gets big? Is it big? I think,
you know, the pilot kind of which I think is
not unusual in our industry. The pilot, you're kind of
going how you're either like I'm afraid all right, so

(39:16):
you're you're closed in, or you're thinking how far can
I go? When you go back and you watch, you
think not that far. That was probably what I learned
from the pilot. It's like, okay, not far right in
a little bit, but beyond that kind of like, you know,
just accordion the size down a little bit.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
Well, you know, for instance, you know, we're now given
a circumstance where someone's touched Fox. Yes, and that's a
that's a dynamic move.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, and you know it's like, Okay, I'm gonna have
to let that one go because there's no way I
can own that for the rest of the series.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Right, I don't. It doesn't. I don't doesn't even ease
of it. I don't ever remember, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
I let it go. I just thought. I was like, Okay,
I will have to internalize this and say in this moment,
because this woman is clearly being romantic, it's a cop.
It's that I thought, okay, put it into a purely
romantic and sexual context. It's not that you can't bump
elbows on a numbian subway. It's that if somebody you're
going out with somebody, any overture that is physical has

(40:26):
to go through a much more elaborate court chime. Yeah,
do you and think of it that way?

Speaker 3 (40:32):
Did it ever appear again?

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Never? A period nine? Never? He never appeared again. I know,
I never played it, and I was like, I'm not
gonna let that come in because it's like I've seeing them,
gonna have to be going. But I'll talk about to me,
touch me, don't touch me, and you just you can't.
You can't, you know, And there are no there are
things like that. There is reference once too, in an

(40:57):
episode where I'm supposed to be dealing with a guy
who's my race is mortal eneme representative of my races
mortal Enemey and his reference that we have fought wars
as you know in our history. And then once upon
a time I was a medic in the Dnobulan infantry.
I remember I asked, Yeah, my wife and I both,
Buddy and I both and we saw that it's like

(41:19):
the Dnobild and the infantry.

Speaker 4 (41:22):
I think feels a little bit like I don't know
that they had one of those. And then I'm going
to get in my Danobulan corvette and go to the
bath seven.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Eleven Bydnobulan Slurpy. It's like.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Every now and again, I'd feel like, generally speaking, I
thought they were pretty great at kind of giving you know,
me enough purchase to feel like I can be an alien.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Were there eight points? John? I mean, I know in
my character I think probably you as well, Dom that
you know, there were some points in the course of
our series where I make a call and said, if
you want this, it's this. I don't think you want that,
so let's not do that. Whether was there anything about

(42:10):
doctor Flocks that you were committed to having a call about.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
No, I never I mean that that's the only one
that comes up as just a piece of writing that
I thought was like, but that wasn't a It wasn't
it didn't impose a behavior on me. I see, I
would have felt like in that episode generally it was
a little bit of a reach, and they rooted it
in the fact that you know.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
It was.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
It was tricky sometimes to kind of feel like, you know,
you've gone to great lengths to give him this extreme
a level of moral complexity, which I really appreciate, and
then to kind of pull that rug out and have
him be almost sort of a reflexive and strident bigot

(43:01):
there was in that episode for me, and they justified
in the writing. And it's like, you know, okay, I
get you. I mean, you know that's the point is,
no matter how cultured and sophisticated and intelligent we can be,
there is still a strain of nativism in US, and
a strain of reflexive bigotry and exists in all of this.
And I understod they wanted to make my character or
repository of that to a certain extent, because I'm the

(43:22):
last person in the world you think it's going to
exist in right, Yeah, But as an actor, there's a
little part of you that goes.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
All right, I am I going to sell this.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I understand for dramaturgical reasons why you feel like this
would be kind of an interesting wrinkle. But you know,
I've been living in the guy's skin and I don't
buy this. But you know that's having to call them
and say I disagree with the premise of the episode and.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, and then then they spent a long time writing this.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
And I did notice also the lighting that Billy Peats
was had given you when you deliver your verdict to
the captain, did you have if you have to go
back and look at it, but you're sort of half
in shadow. I mean, you're like the specter coming in
to deliver the hatchet and you really.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Really hated my guts I know, and sometimes he.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Did, actually he told me someone time.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
But it was actually a very effective lighting and rather
dramatic and a little.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah interesting. I wanted to ask you a bit, John
about your makeup. I know that everybody who's had some
sort of a face piece over the course of their
experience has been minimized. Like Michael Dorn by the time
he was done, had like, you know, a dot here
and a dot and he could pull it off from

(44:45):
the beginning to the end. What was your makeup experience like?
It wasn't bad.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
I mean it if it took a while. I think
it was two and a half hours from you know,
sitting down in a chair to being done. Chunk that
was in hair.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
It's a lovely haird piece you have, Yeah, and you
know and that and that.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
It took a while for them too.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
It was it.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
It isn't so much weather a piece is itself intricate
as it is, the fact that everything still has to
be glued, So even a small pigs it has to
be glued, ears have to be glued, and then it
has to be painted. Took a while.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Brad was very lovely. There wasn't bra It's.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Very very very lovely, very specific, very meticulous. Fortunately we
were ill. We were well met in that I would
be first thing, first thing in the morning. Brad was quiet.
I brought the New York Times. He put on classical music.
It was actually very RESTful, very nice, up until Anthony
Montgomery ruped.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Funny thing. Funny thing. I turned the teat on today
just before to watch this episode, and what's on but
Leprechaun in the hood. Nice share. Yeah, that's serious sounding
about that person.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
I called him the human car Alarm, which he did
not like. And I also called him Force because you
could hear him come on to the lot.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, like cha hello, little kiddy cat like unt blessed.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Well, you know the story when I did that episode
with him on the comments and we were in the
EV suits and we were all plugged in all day long,
I mean, you know, and it took its toll on
me those suits. And I was in a corner, huddled
in the dark, and he's bouncing around the lot from
craft service to make up, and in the end.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
I just went act.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
He's a poorty and he's just got as Connor once
said to me, he's got to got bigger batteries than
you don.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
One big breath in the morning, I know.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
I know. And now he's in his fifties, it's like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Yeah, it looks like he's thirty. I know that he
looks amazing.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
I saw something on social media a couple of days ago.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
He's climbing up some you know, one of those walls,
and uh yeah, good on him.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
I bless him him all.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
At the same time, I feel that way about both
of you guys too though, so you know, I mean
you're all you're all running around having fist fights and
showing off your pecks and your abs, and you got
gym equipment and your trailers.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
It's like we did all that.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, lord knows, I've still got that Jim stuff in
the garage and I finally cleared it out at Christmas
time and got it got uncovered and it's been back
in use again.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Right, What else did I want to say? Uh?

Speaker 2 (47:39):
I mean, I think I'm just looking at my notes.
I didn't know you do you know that Paul face?
I mean, there were two of them, but that one
that was used in this episode was called Prada.

Speaker 8 (47:50):
Do you remember that there was there was there was,
there was there was a amazing Prada. I didn't that
it was Prada. It was Prada and oh god the
other name. There were two siblings. They were both sisters.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
One they they were they were girls. Yeah, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
I I didn't even remember that I dealt with a
dog in this episode. There was an episode where I
was walking naked around the ship and I was with
that was like to do I mean, to do a
waterer with the dog was like you know the Wanner
quick stop in the middle of the scene.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Yeah, you have to.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
There's there's a there's a ruse, isn't that You're looking
at some X ray or something or CT scatter everybody.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Everybody's been put to sleep because we're what we're moving.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Yeah, and I'm walking around also in my underwear. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
The reason they did that in the first place is
Chris Black. Remember Chris Black? Yeah? Yeah, who I love
uh as a dear friend Chris Black. At a party
at Brannon's in his grotto back when Brandon and Jerry
were together. I was saying, everybody's running around their blue
Hondy pants. What are you gonna see me in my
blue Monty pants? And he said if they didn't know,

(48:59):
ze wear undypants, And I said, bring it on. He
said you wouldn't. I said, yeah, I would, So in
this episode there I am. And he refused that he didn't.
Actually he wasn't around at the time, although he put
the notion in the writer's heads. I suggested, this is
the storytell all the time. But it makes me laugh
that I walk in Sick Bay. I turned sharply to

(49:21):
the left and all the way across the room. A
flower pot hits the ground.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
I was like, well, well, I mean, you know, we
we could have the Was it just one year we
had the Halloween extravaganza? Oh yeah, where what was your name? Michelle?

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Melissa?

Speaker 3 (49:41):
Melissa?

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Thank you the focus?

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Yes you were the I T C eights. I won't
say it, you can say it on your own. This
is the folks.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Melissa's the focus piller. I left for work that day.
It was likely a costume contest. Today I hate dressing up.
Oh well, I show up. Melissa, whose last name is
escaping me. She was a focus puller and she and
Billy were going to be a dominate a dominatrix, dominatrix
and sub He chickened out, so she was at Rugby.

(50:12):
She was there and she was like, you know, she
was looking for a submissive, and I said, I'll be
your submissive. I asked wardrobe to raid the closet and
get me everything, and she put me on a dog
leash and paraded me across the stage and I sat
in the captain's chair. She whipped me with a cat
of nine tails and I came home that day, Bonnie,
I won first prize contest. That was a early that

(50:38):
was the first year because my prize was a framed
poster of Enterprise. And you can tell it was from
early days because Connor was all all the way in
the background and I was all the way in the foreground.
It was like, well, this is a this is a
poster before they realized what they had.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
Bless it. I also want to I want to mention
circling back to the episode of self and hopefully we
can get this person on the music in this quiet episode.
It extraordinary. We we really had kind of had prior
to this episode. Everything was sort of like smash bang boom,

(51:21):
you know, and that was our episode and how we
finished out the smash bang boom. This one was so quiet,
so character driven, and you had such lovely scenes with
Linda Kelly Kelly, the captain uh and and and they
were they were you know, this was to me as

(51:43):
I watch it. No actors acting well, the actor in
the appreciated it.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
There's no doubt. I mean I definitely remember thinking, oh,
this is it's so much fun to go to work
and I like to work, and I hadn't really felt
like I had, you know, that much opportunity like you know,
isolated scenes. It was great. It was great, and we
felt this. We talked about this once. It's it's you know,
you get into this business because you like to work,
and to be able to go to the set every
day with interesting stuff to do is sort of why
you want to do it.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
Yes, it was.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
It was a great episode for me to feel like,
oh yeah, I really like this. Then then you count
back to not having so much to do next episodes.
It's purely the moralist in me that objected to the
aspects of the story and and to a certain extent,

(52:32):
the my my own, my own storytelling aesthetic was was
but for the most part as an actor and as
you say, the writing that allowed for it to be
as as as as graceful, you know, was lovely and
I did appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Well, it's lovely saying again John, and thanks for spending
time with us.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
I also I want to add, you know, John As
and his wife Bonnie have done extraordinary work with the
Hollywood Food Coalition, and we will put this up for
anybody watching. We've all been a part of it. And
you know, I'm I'm blessed to know you as a person,

(53:18):
an actor, and a friend, but also someone who cares
and considers about the the lesser of us and how
to make their lives better. And the Food Coalition.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I'll trumpet Hofoko because we this is a bit a
really big year for us. One. We did do trek
tots on Eightpril five and we made about eighty thousand dollars,
which even care what's going on in the economy these days,
you know, it's like, okay when I thought. We also
this year have moved into a new E's Change space.
The exchange is where all the food we rescue from
around the city lands. We've been doing around two and

(53:53):
a half to three million pounds of food a year.
We moved into a much bigger space and we're sharing
it with three other local community groups that also do
food aspects of food rescue and including a great community farm. Yeah,
and another organization that does something similar to what we do,
and an organization that is specifically working with the Asian

(54:14):
Island population to find ways to get a population that
tends not to want to ask for help access to food.
So it's so much what I love about this organization
that I have been fighting for for years, the idea
of the coalition building, which is you know, Star Trek
is at the heart of the work and finding out

(54:35):
ways to lift each other up as groups and as individuals,
as sort of the essence of what we do. Are
you still doing the round bags? Yes, Bonni is stepping down.
My wife, Benita Friederici, has been leading that what we
call volunteer led initiative for five years. It is now
going to be formally adopted by our organization as a
staffed and funded program. She steps down at the end.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Of May well plas she's been tile us and.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
Yeah, facing eight hundred, eight hundred and fifty thousand lunch
bags later. We started in twenty twenty when COVID hit
and those lunch bags, which are multi element really nice
lunch bags that community members make from all over the
city go out to anywhere between ten and twenty five
groups fanning out all over the city, largely going to
homeless encampments.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
And anyone who's who's local. By watching this, you know,
if you're interested, you know you can sign up with
the Hollywood Food Coalition and make you know, you know
you can make thirty fifty one hundred brown bag lunches
and in them out.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
And you can volunteer at our exchange if you want
to help the two to half three million pounds of
food of years. It comes in. We sort, we call
we process, and we ship out to various groups to
augment and buttress their meal programs. We serve a hot,
multic multi course meal seven nights a week to all comers.
You can come and make. I started making a fruit
salad eight years go, and then I became the board president,

(56:01):
which only in America.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Oh nuts, al I staughter, you started doing helping making
a fruit salad. I didn't know that, souther.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Trump one the first time I wanted to. I wanted
to kind of put acting on the back burner and
figure out things to do that would be much more
about community involvement and and among other things. We started
doing this volunteering in the soup kitchen, wash it dishes,
making fruit salads, and I got to know them. It
was like, how's your board going, because it seems I'm

(56:30):
just curious, because it feels like there may be some
like disconnect because nobody seems to know who you are
or what you do or what are your goals? Do
you have a budget. It was like they were great
they've been around for ages, but they didn't have any money,
and they didn't have any kind of like growth plan.
They hadn't you know, I didn't have a strategic plan.
And right like I was like, can I do on
your board?

Speaker 3 (56:54):
Not how that happened? I didn't know, John, That's amazing
and it's truly Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
How was it being I mean, how was it? How
was it around at that time? I mean was it
about the skin of his teeth?

Speaker 1 (57:05):
The skin of his teeth? All volunteers. We had two
part time paid drivers and a part time cook who
had formerly been a homeless person. And the woman who
was the chief cook and bottle washer, Sherry Banana and
you know, for whom my admiration is mountless because she
did everything for twenty years, every sporting, the banana's cooking.

(57:27):
But consequently you didn't have time to, like, you know,
think about how do you go out and make money?
How do you know? The marketing plan? I just fell
in love with its. Uh, there's something so marvelous about
a whole bunch of volunteers getting together and also breaking

(57:47):
down this artificial barrier that exists. It says, you know
that they the other ick. Yeah, right out to meet
a lot of people who just but for the grace
of God, you know, yeah, and to be there every day,
every day, every day, every day. What would you like
can we help you? Would you like a vegetarian? Would
you like a carnivorium made something to go? You know,

(58:10):
from the regularity and consistency and the quality of that
daily service comes the connectivity that allows people to get
into housing, programs, that allows people to get mental health care.
Food is a way in just immediately felt like, okay,
I gotta I got.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Some thoughts right right, Yeah, it gives it Suddenly the
person that you're helping has time to actually get themselves up.
They don't have to think about where I'm gonna get
fed or how I'm gonna get fed.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
And we have this tattered social safety net now and
a federal government that is completely abdicating its responsibility to
care about citizens, cumbent upon communities to recognize, just as
Francis Perkins did, who was the architect of the New
Deal under Roosevelt, all right, absolutely critical for cities to
figure out how they stop this onslaught. So you struck

(59:00):
sures are there even if they're not federal structures anymore.
The day comes, we aren't completely bereft and we've got
some vision that people can use. Well, how does it
sit now? The organization is great. We are a six
million dollars a year budget. We about three million in
cash a little under and the rest in food donations.

(59:22):
We have a twenty nine person staff. We have a
fabulous executive director. We just hired our first true operations manager,
which was a necessary step to kind of building out
an organization. Is like, you know, if you ever start
a theater company, you have to have you cannot be
the development director and the marketing director and the stage
manager and the tech director and the artistic director and

(59:44):
the board president. Building a staff out and enough administration
to actually run something recond. There's a set of very
intricate and specific steps over time, and I feel like
BONDI and I both like leaned into let's build programs.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
That was her.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Let's build staffing and infrastructure and tell the story.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Did you well?

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Was it?

Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
Was it?

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Book it in Seattle? Yeah? Did that help and assist
you everything?

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Yeah? Bought me so much? Yeah, I you know, that
was just I don't even know what I was thinking
I'd done a show at the Seattle Rep and I thought,
you know, this is a great company, but I'm not
part of it. I've just jobbed in. And I'm not
going to spend the rest of my life like jobbing
in to companies and playing you know, smaller parts and
being in somebody else's I got to start my own thing.

(01:00:34):
And I got a hundred actors together and said, here's
the gag. Everyone should have carte blanche to find fiction
that they dig of any length and presented in a
monthly in house past the hat on the basis of
what we collectively decide those pieces at work, we take
after the community, we take to prisons, we take to schools, YadA, YadA, YadA,
and the best of the best of the best. We

(01:00:56):
start performing it in a regular basis. And that's how.
And I had to run it and figure it out
and start a board and write the bylaws and have
meetings and you know, referee and come up with rules
and what's the criteria for this is good? This is
not good? And it's like, you know, you don't know
you can run a business until you run business, actually

(01:01:16):
do it right. Yeah, And and when I left and
handed it off and I came here. Not only was
I able to kind of take that skill set into
eventually social service work, but more to the point, it
was like I know how to run my career now
no interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Oh yeah, it's like you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Know, you're you're your own boss. You gotta not be
you be fearless about taking meetings. You got you know
your agent works for you. Knock on the door, I
gotta have a meeting. This is what I'm going for,
This is what I think we need to do. Are
you doing it right? Fired so many agents.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Because it was like, yeah, I've not been as ruthless
as I should have been. I think, yeah, and yeah,
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
They why they stop being ambitious? And I thought like, okay, no, no,
I'm not that concerned.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
John. You are in a coterie of people based on
your talent, and what are you up to? What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Well? Like you, I mean, I've had four auditions this
year and it's the worst time. I mean, I've never
never been this slow. I worked at Fairmount last year.
I like to work, but I don't sweat it. If
I'm not I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Reading, I'm really.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Now we're traveling a lot more.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Oh yeah, nice.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Bonnie's stepping down from the lunch bags or time in
space that we haven't really had. Last eight years. Have
been intensely about social service stuff the board last year,
and that opened up a lot of my time. I
still the tract talks takes up some time. I do
the PANCN stuff, pan grate a Cancer Action Network stuff,
But generally speaking, I've been kind of feeling like footloots

(01:02:53):
and fancy free for a year. Bonnie's still been swamped.
So now she's unswamping and we're like, we're going to
New York, We're going to Seattle, We'll go into Hawaii,
We're going to that's you know, very nice.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Well, John, thank you so much so much for being
a part of this uh party. Yeah, thank you, pal.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
We run the success and on the ongoing. It seems
like you've had everybody in their brother on except not.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
We're trying. We're trying. Yeah, there's a lot a few
brothers hanging out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Let me know if you're looking for anybody in particular
and hangs up, we will Actually I'll be in touch