LA multi-talented film/TV producer Alan Katz explains on "How NOT to Make a Movie”!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, this is Eric Diamond and you're listening to
The Mike Wagner Show.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
The Mike Wagner Show is powered by Sonicweb Studios.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Hi This is Memos are also known as Mia No
Time for Love.

Speaker 4 (00:11):
Check out my latest book, Lifting, available on Amazon.

Speaker 5 (00:14):
The Mike Wagner Show also brought to by The Sweet
Somuch by Serena Wagner, Available on Amazon, highlighted up Bogo, David.

Speaker 6 (00:24):
It's now time for The Mike Wagner Show. Powered by
Sonic Web Studios. Visit online at Sonicquebstudios dot com for
all your needs. The Mike Wagner Show can be heard
on Spreaker, Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube, iTunes, Anchor, FM Radio Public,
and The Mike Wagner Show dot Com. Mike brings you
great guests and interesting people from all across the globe.

(00:44):
So sit back, relax, and enjoy another great episode of

Speaker 5 (00:56):
Everybody, It's Mike from The Mike Wagner Show, powered by
Soundweb Studios, official sponsor to Mike Wadner Show. Internetion, Worrying
Out There Me and Mulson's Missing available on Amazon and
paperback and ebook coming soon, Missing Two by Meamulsons, The Double,
The Spence Double, The Fun.

Speaker 7 (01:09):
Check it out on Amazon.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
Also brought to by A Sweet Salmist by Serena Wagner,
based on a life of gaving, including three Squiz of PAGs, King,
David Salms and morm. Check out The Sweet Sumist today,
Amazon dot com. Keywords Sweet Samas, Serena Wagner and the
Sensea Swinging Eric Diamonds. The list released All of Me
feature new music titled Track and more new music coming
soon ericdimand Music dot Com.

Speaker 7 (01:31):
Follow on Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and more.

Speaker 5 (01:33):
We'll hear the Terrific Jentleman who's a multi talented film
TV producer, writer and script editor of Los Angeles. He's
a following CEO of Costort and Touchstone Productions. He began
his podcast company, whose mission is to make the world.

Speaker 7 (01:46):
A better place through storytelling.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
Recognized by Entertainment Weekly as best Film Podcast of twenty
two for one of his podcasts, He's got not one,
not two, not.

Speaker 7 (01:56):
Three, by four of them.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
I think this is going to blow many people away,
including mine. He's also done a love movies like I Remember,
Tales from the Crypt, The Outer Limits, and also Children
of the Corn, Freddie's Nightmares. You're gonna recognize this gentleman,
Live Ladies and Gentlemen plus duties, beautiful Downtown Los Angeles.
The amazing multi talent film TV producer, writer and script
editor of Tales from the Crypt, The Outer Limits, Praise Nightmare,

(02:20):
Children Know the Corn, and He's guys all his podcasts.
Multi talent Alan katz Alan, Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

Speaker 7 (02:26):
Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Wherever you wherever we both are. Mike, it is a
pleasure to be here, there or everywhere.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
That's right and it's great. Twenty four seven, three sixty five.
That's why I say good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
I did not steal it from Jim Carrey. I got
tired of saying, you know, good morning, it's actually a
good afternoon.

Speaker 7 (02:44):
It's twenty four to seven. That's a great thing.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
So you're a multi talented film, TV producer, writer, script
editor all Los Angeles. You're found CEO of Coscer and
Touchsdowne Productions. You also begin to your podcast company, where's
mission is to make the world a better place through
storytelling and to recognized by Entertainment Weekly as best Film
Podcast of twenty two for How Not to Make a Movie,

(03:07):
plus House other podcasts The Hall Closet. He also got
Susie Wellness Sage, Wellness Within and also Wellness Yes That's right,
and also The Donor, a DNA horror story. And for
those who were fans of Tales of the Crypt The
Outer Limits also Children of the Corn phrase nightmares. This
guy right here has been behind everything for again on

(03:28):
Alan tell Us How I first got started.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I have been writing professionally since I was sixteen, but
I kind of took writing for granted. It was just
something I always was able to do. I wanted to
be an actor, and when I went to college, I
went to a place called Vassar. Excuse me, when I
went to Vassar, I was going to be an actor.
And when I graduated from Vassar, I went to one

(03:54):
audition and I was not prepared for it. I think
I was probably terrible, but I walked out of the audition.
I thought, I'm not kind of an idiot does this
for a living. I'm going to go be a writer instead,
the even bigger idiot. It was the only other skill
that I had, And like I said, I've been writing
professionally since I was sixteen, you know, getting paid for

(04:18):
my typing. I had a friend from school who'd become
an agent at William Morris in Los Angeles. Now I
was in New York after college. I was in New York.
I was looking to get into the theater. I was
writing little plays and a friend, a friend who would

(04:40):
entice me into Hey, let's write or write a screenplay together.
You've written a screenplay. And my friend Carol had said, hey,
you have you written any screenplays? You to send one
to me. And they sent it to her and she said,
this is pretty good. You should come out and meet
and greet people. So in June of nineteen eighty five,
I flew from New York to La Now I was
at at that point a burgeon in New Yorker. Yeah,

(05:03):
I was an East Coaster. Los Angeles was the stupidest
place on the planet. The lead of the avocado head
avocado heads, and now I heard of that one, but yeah,
I'll keep that in my next time, please please do.
So I got to Los Angeles and gosh, well, you know,
in June in New York it's hot and human already

(05:27):
and smells like everything smells like you're in at that
particular time in New York. In La there's no humidity.
It's the desert. It's it's warm and lovely. And back
then forty years ago, was a lot less crowded than
it is now, and there was some traffic, but it
was okay, and people were so nice to me. I

(05:49):
strongly recommend having copious amounts of smoke blown up your ass,
as I experienced. That was awesome. One night, my agent
took me to a movie premiere, Saint Elmo's Fire.

Speaker 7 (06:03):
Oh that was a great movie. I love it.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, William Morris represented the project, and so my view
of it all was backstage, and let me tell you
that was intoxicated.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
The very next morning, I had some time off a
someone that at at the after party, and boy was
that intoxicating. Said you should take a drive through Topanga Canyon,
which is a part of the within the city limits
of Los Angeles, and then it was a bit more
remote and wild. And as I was driving from the

(06:41):
freeway to the one and one through the Santa Monica
Mountains as they plunge into the Pacific Ocean at the
Pacific Coast Highway. By the time I got to the
water New York. Screw New York. I was moving to
Los Angeles, and La absolutely seduced me. It's I I
really I loved La really from that first week here,

(07:08):
and I've been trying to Yeah, it took me a
while to figure out what the appeal of it is.
But a big part of it is as sunshiny bright
as it is here in Los Angeles, there's a darkness
to the place that outshines the light a thousand times over.
And that's the appeal of Los Angeles. There's a reason

(07:29):
that film that well, the noir genre was created in
Los Angeles. It was a bunch of writers trying to
figure out what is it about this place? It's so
pretty and so corrupt at the same time. Anyway, Los
Angeles was great. Among the first people that I met
that first week in Los Angeles was a guy named

(07:50):
Gil Adler, and Gil became not only my best friend
for a decade, but my creative partner. Nice we wrote
things together. Now, Gil had trained He had come out
of theater, but he trained as an account and he
was a terrific producer. He understood this basic premise, if

(08:12):
you have a dollar to make your movie. Do not
spend a dollar one. You haven't got it. Now, if
you can make your movie for ninety nine cents, ninety
eight cents and make it look like that dollar even better, Hey,
if you could do it for ninety seven cents and
make it look like a dollar one or a dollar two, well,
now you're onto something. And so Gil's all creativity is

(08:37):
problem solving of one kind or another. And his answer
to the problem solving wasn't throw money at it, it
was throw more creativity at it. Well end up here too, yes, indeed,
Well that's how That's how I've always felt about the
creative process. And so Gill and I bonded and we
had a great relationship. Well, Gil Hbo was very fun

(09:00):
to Gil. He had produced a show for them called
The Hitchhiker. And when a big ticket show of theirs
called Vietnam War Stories, got into trouble, they called Gill
to go in and say it. It was over budget,
it was over scheduled, it was just it was a mess.
And Gil went in. He righted the ship and it

(09:24):
came in on time, one budget, and it won awards
nice a few A little while later, a few years later,
HBO was approached. The HBO had been approached by a
couple by four big movie producers, Joel Silver, Richard Donner,
Robert Zemeckis, and Walter Hill. Now, at this time, around

(09:45):
nineteen ninety, movies and TV were miles and miles apart.
These days, people traveled back and forth between talent I
mean by people talented actors and writers and directors go
back and forth from TV to movies all the time.
Back then, that did not happen. You were TV or

(10:07):
you were movies. You were occasionally a Tom Hankster, a
Robin Williams would go from from TV into movies. But
if you were heading from movies and the TV, it
meant your career was over right.

Speaker 7 (10:19):
It was kind of like a down cheft to a
career like that.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So suddenly, well HBO at that
point had they were basically still just movies, but they're
dipping their toe into the creative original material. They had
a show called First and ten and another one called
dream On, but these are basically just single camera shows
with nudity and profanity.

Speaker 5 (10:44):
Suddenly that that was probably the cheapest way to go too,
just like the the X ray industry, just like you know,
one camera, that's it and get by as very low
as possible.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, yeah, but but but but they were basically just
they were basically TV shows. There was nothing oversized about them.
Then these four mega producers, the names I just mentioned
to you, approached ABO. They said, we want to put
TV feature film vision inside your little TV box, and
HBO went yes, and they struck a deal in these

(11:17):
four producers wanted to bring a comic book that they
loved from their youth, tales from the crypt well ec comics.
They wanted to bring the easy World to television, and
HBO was excited. And the problem was that these four
movie producers didn't know much about television. And there's a

(11:41):
way there, there's a reason why TV gets made the
way that it did and does in order to make
a profit. When you set up a TV show to network,
for instance, you you get a deficit partner because whatever
the network pays the first time it shows, it's called
a license fee the first time, the second time, it's

(12:01):
never going to pay for the cost of production at
some point. Yeah, so you've got to bring someone to
pay for the actual cost of production and to basically
be the bank until it gets until you find profits.
In the old days, profitability in the TV world was
via syndication. Now HBO was a subscription model, completely different,

(12:27):
and so they didn't care about anyone having a deficit partner.
So the first season to Tell from the Crypt was
six episodes, the second season was eighteen episodes. There was
no deficit partner. Just we'll come back to this fact,
there was no one paying the actual cost of production.

(12:47):
At the same time, in order to take a comic
a comic book and turn it into a TV show, well,
you want to take all the franchise elements, the easy
comic elements that they loved, how do you turn them
into the TV show? How do you make every frame
of the TV show feel like the comic book. Well,

(13:09):
that takes work, and you really have to dedicate. Someone's
got to dedicate their time to making sure that every
story because you're going to hire a bunch of different writers,
but that everything feels like it's the same comic book
franchise as a TV show. They didn't hire anyone to
develop Tales from the Crypt and make sure to take
the franchise from the comic book into the show. In

(13:34):
the middle of the second season, there was nobody minding
the store, and so really the show lost its edge,
it lost its direction because they didn't have to run
a TV show. They went way at the second season
in those eighteen episodes, they went way over budget, and

(13:55):
HBO was doing was cash flowing the whole thing. The
night before the rap party, the HBO handed the executive
producers of financial statement that said, you're a million dollars
cash in the whole if you want your third season,
pay us now now. For the executive producers, they'd get
paid money in the third season, so it was worth
a lot of money to them, and they figured they

(14:15):
could take the million dollars out of the budget the
season three. So they got up their check well, first
they canceled the wrap party, they fired everybody, and then
they got out their checkbooks and wrote a check to
HBO to cover the million dollars that they knew they
were going to get back anyway. HBO, knowing it had
a problem on its hand, hands turned to guilt and

(14:36):
they said, Gil, we'd like you to come in and
oversee the last third and last season of Tales from
the Crypt As I was Gill's writing partner and Gil
saw the situation and said, well, you need a story editor,
You need something to come aboard and take the franchise
from here to there. And HBO didn't care. The partners
didn't care because they didn't have to run a TV show.

(14:57):
And so even though I was really not qu qualified
to run Tales from the Crypt, I got to hired
the run Teals from the Crypt. So my two jobs
on Tels from the Crypt were, as I said, First
of all, to make sure that every frame of the
TV show was redolent of the Tales from the of

(15:18):
the stuff in the comic books that the executive producers,
our audience loved. That I loved because I was a
huge fan of Bill Gay everything that Bill Gaines did.
I loved Mad Magazine.

Speaker 7 (15:31):
Oh yeah, that was my fervor what mech.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Was Also that was also Bill Gaines. I loved his
whole universe, all right. My other job, well, that meant
that every single script had to go through me. I
was the last person who was going to type them
any words in the script before it went to our
department heads to casting to anyone. So I was the
final word on the script. My other job was to

(15:57):
write the Cryptkeeper segments. Now, as I said, the show
never went through a development process, and they never developed
the show, and they never developed the Cryptkeeper. The crypt
Keeper in the comic books is an old white guy
with stringy hair. The executive producers wanted their own Cryptkeeper,

(16:18):
and one day one of the executive producers, Joel Silver,
found Kevin Yaeger, a special effects makeup genius who, among
other things, he created Chucky. Oh yeah, that's also Kevin
Yeger creation. And Kevin created the puppet. And then Kevin
found John Cassir, who became the voice of the Cryptkeeper.

(16:42):
But no one developed the character. No one asked the question, okay,
who is he? Whoever wrote the scripts for the episode
would throw some words at the Cryptkeeper, and that's what
the Crypkeeper would say. As I sat down to write Cripkeepers, says,
I bumped into the problem, how do you write for

(17:03):
a character that doesn't exist. I don't know how you
write for a cipher And if you wanted the character
to be funny, too, well, a generic character will give
you generic everything. No, can't do it. So just to
do my damn job, I had to create a character
for the Crypkeeper, Now, I grew up loving old movies.

(17:25):
I was a huge fan of the Marx Brothers.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
Love Oh Yeah, my daughter's favorite.

Speaker 7 (17:32):
Very true.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
I ended up turning the Crypkeeper into my little Groud
show because it was all about wordplay. That's what the
Crip Keeper was was all about. Was was was wordplay
and having to had to fill in with it to
give him a character and her personality, and being a
writer and therefore a little bit lazy, I reached for
the closest personality at hand, which was me, and I

(17:54):
filled the crip Keeper with me. So though he looks
like the puppet and he sounds like John Cassier, every
word out of his mouth, every thought out of his head,
it was me. Now, A funny thing happened over the
course of that third season. As I said, it was
supposed to be the last season of Tales from the Crypt,
But because Gil and I we went back to the

(18:19):
studs in getting the franchise back into every single episode,
and that reinvigorated the show to a degree. We got bigger,
big stars to come back into the show, and that
reinvigorated to a degree. But it was what it was,
the transformation of the Crypt Keeper from the Cryptkeeper puppet
into the crypt Keeper, the franchise character that we're talking

(18:43):
about today. That's what really kept the series and the
franchise alive a bunch of years ago. Has They've been
trying to remake Tales from the Crypt for a while,
but it will never happened, and I'll explain why. It's
it's an absolute impossibility. The problem is that it's there

(19:07):
are two separate pieces of intellectual property. Uh m Night
Shiamelin wanted to remake Tells from the Crypt. Uh TNT
was going to do a Thursday Night Horror Wheel and
m Night Chamelin option Tells from the Crypt. He bumped
into the problem that the Cryptkeeper he got was the
old white guy with stringy hair, not the crypt Keeper. Oh,

(19:33):
two separate pieces of IP. William Gaines and his family
they owned the old white guy with stringy hair, that
crypt Keeper the puppet is owned by the crypt Partners and.

Speaker 5 (19:44):
So so I had some legos a confusion going on
right there.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Well, he simply didn't get the m Night Chamelin, didn't
get the crypt Keeper he thought he was going to get.
He just didn't understand that there was two different pieces
of ip and the problem is that amongst those four
mega producers, Joel Silver was always the most prominent in
terms of doing Crypt's business. And Joel is a huge

(20:15):
personality and impresario ave ego and one of the biggest
assholes on the planet by a long shot, and a
lot of most people and virtually everybody gets to a
point where they suddenly think life is too short. They
ever worked with Joel Silver ever again. Oh, and that

(20:36):
includes Bill Gaines's family. They would never make a deal
with Joel ever again. They don't trust them ever.

Speaker 7 (20:43):
Ooh that sounds scary.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
And so the tells from the Cryptotomic books and the
crypt Keeper are forever divorced. Where will the children go
for Christmas? I don't know.

Speaker 5 (20:57):
Well, well, speaking of children as well too. You did
childing know the corn You also did the Outer Limits
Weird World phrase nightmare is one of the favorites. To
get to more of that with Amazing Alan Cats. But
first you listen to the mic Wider's show at the
mic waders Show dot com powered by Soundcrab Studios. Visit
online at soundcrab Studios dot com. Frolly needs look on
a professional website without breaking budget soundoquab Studios is the answer.

(21:18):
Soundcrab Studios offer as fast, affordable custom web designs that
blow the comptishuway. Called today one of eight hundred three
oh three three nine six zero. It's twenty one hundred
three oh three three nine six zero per email to
support at soundqub Studios dot com mention the Mike Wider's Show.
Get twenty percent off your first project Sounoquab Studios. Take
your imageon next level. Also time give official shout out

(21:39):
to official sponsor to The Mic Wider's Show, You're Not Worrying.

Speaker 7 (21:42):
Author MEA.

Speaker 5 (21:42):
Mulson's thea. If you love fast based mysteries, you love
Missing by Me Mulsons. The available on Amazon, paperbacking ebook.
Missing is fast pacing and intriguing with an unfigurable twist.
Takes place in four countries, two strangers, one target, where
truth is illusion and those who will be the first
go missing. It's available on Amazon and paperback and ebook
Missing Me and moulsons z has Gone Great and Evil
and George by Howards the Lover is including Join Cassie

(22:05):
forst Riley and Medialist. So grab your compy today for
it goes Missing by Me and Wilson's The available on
Amazon coming soon, Missing Too by Me and Molsons, The Double,
The Spence Double, The Fun. Check it out on Amazon.
Also brought to by The Sweet Salmis by Serena Wagner.
Based on the life of David and Clueen theories Quiz
the Pains and King David Psalms, The Sweet Semist gives
a new perspective Dave through the sums he wrote as

(22:26):
the time of ship where it started and complicate your
Turbert Royceship of King Saul. It's star of love, betrayal, repentance,
hope and more. Check out The Sweet Samas by Serena
Whiter on Amazon Today keyword sweet Sommas Reena Wagner. Also
brought to by Sensa Swinging Eric Dimers Lawyer's Lease All
the Meat, featured on the Todd track I've Gotten You
a Heartache, Bring Me Sunshine and marm Eric's and multi

(22:46):
war winning artists including Inductive Newers, Hall of Fames album
Entertainment the Year and release the new CD Soom. Check
out the amazing Eric Damond today, Ericdimsa dot com, follow
on Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and more. Also check out the
Mike Winner Show at The Mike Winner Show dot com,
forty podcast platforms, hurdle Hound countries. Take us with you
on any mobile device. Follow us on Facebook, Spreaker, Spotify, YouTube, Anchor, FM, iHeartRadio.

Speaker 7 (23:09):
Twitter and more.

Speaker 5 (23:10):
And for great gift ideas, t shirts, pop sockets, throw pillows,
tope bags, hoodies, Amazon dot com, keywords, The Mike Whitner's
Show and more Greek gift ideas, go to Amazon dot com.
Check out the Me and Wilson's Historic Great Books, Merchandise
and mark and Sports, Mike Winners Show and griffem Heypal
and The Mic Winners Show dot com. It's amazing multi
talented film, TV producer, writer, script editor Alan Katsi on

(23:32):
The Mic Winner's Show. And before we talk about the
one thing that you're really passionate about somewhere on the
lines that thirteen million of us are doing right now
on planet Earth, we'll get that and just meant you
all did the Our Limits, Weird World, Children of the
Quarrant two and Freddy's Nightmares, and tell us more about
that ready.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Freddy's I did with Gil Well. Gil produced the show
and I wrote several episodes with Well that started up
during the The An earlier writer's strike back in God
was that about nineteen eighty seven there was a writer's
strike that was a Rubik's Cube of a TV show.

(24:18):
It was a puzzle to put together the executive producers
what new line. Bob say wanted that every hour you
could break down into two half hours, so every again
it was an anthological show, but that each episode could

(24:38):
play as a half hour or a full out so
story total full half hour story to full half hour
stories that also played as a full hour. Okay, the
second season it got even more complicated. They suddenly thought, hey,
we could sell these as movies in Europe. So then

(24:59):
every episodisode. Every yeah, every episode had to be two
half hour independent half hour episodes that played as an
hour but also played as a part of another u
two half hours that played as an hour, the thing
played as two hours.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
Oh wow, So it's almost like a little soap opera
mini series and everything like that.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
It was figuring it was figuring out calculus was easier.
Was was easier then figuring out an episode of Freddy's Nightmares.
But it got done and the show looked terrific, in
part because I think it's a testament to Gill's strength

(25:48):
as a producer. It was an amazing team and a
lot of the team that made Freddy's later made Crypt Together. Okay,
In particular Greg Melton, the production designer on Yeah, what
he did on Freddie's was remarkable when you think about

(26:08):
he had to There are no standing sets in a
regular series, Gud you got standing sets and regular actors
with their regular wardrobes and everyone. Yeah, you can kind
of coast for a bit. But doing an anthology, every
episode is completely different. There there's no standing set. Every
every episodes completely different. And somehow, Yeah, they figured out

(26:32):
a way to get an incredible amount of wonderful, incredibly
different work done in a remarkably short span of time.
That was part of how we got Grip done was
through the genius of Greg Melton. But working on Freddie's

(26:54):
was what was fun. Writing for that particular franchise character
was fun. Putting words in Freddy's mouth was was a hoot.
It was much more fun writing for the crypt Keeper.
Although I will say that writing for the crypt Keeper
was the hardest job I ever had because because he

(27:18):
had to he could only say particular things. And you know,
once I figured out what he was going to be
doing that episode. All right, he's going to be playing golf,
all right. Then I'd go through an entire every huge
list of words, golf words, the things you'd say on
a golf course here on a golf course, things golfers,
and then I'd have to find a way to turn

(27:40):
them into something how the Cryptkeeper would say them, like
he would say, you know that he was talking about
his his his caddy was named one and he put
a hole in one.

Speaker 5 (27:51):
Oh, I got it, okay.

Speaker 7 (27:55):
So that so.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
That was part of part of what I'd have to
do to make every world that we possibly could, and
to bring the crypt Keeper into it and how would
he explain the world in his terms? But it was
like pulling organs through your nose.

Speaker 7 (28:17):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Who is a very process because the cryptkeepert old on,
can I still hear you now? Because the Keeper? Yeah,
Universal Pictures wanted us to do a bunch of feature
films and all had all of them had to be different.

(28:40):
And so the first Tellson the crypt feature film that
we did was a very good movie called Demon Knight,
which Ernest Dickerson directed. Billy Zaine is the villain. He's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
Jada Pinkett and Bill Sadler are the heroes. The whole
cast is terrific. For the Second Tells from the Crypt
feature Will, which Gil was going to direct, and we
were writing. Neither Gill nor I were horror guys. We
were both comedy guys, but horror is kind of where
we ended up. We didn't want the town to think

(29:14):
of as as a one trick ponies, because that's what
that's what Hollywood does. He goes, Oh, your horror guys,
that's it.

Speaker 5 (29:19):
Well, it's like that pigeonhole use stereotype type of course,
that's like career killers right there.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh my god. So we saw the Second Tells in
the Cold feature film as an opportunity to show the
town that we could do a lot more than just horror.
And we we had developed a script ultimately called Dead Easy,
very different from the first movie, which was a monster movie.
Dead Easy was a taught psychological thriller about a recovered memory.

(29:49):
It took place in the swamps outside New Orleans. It
had a fantastic villain, this harlequin character. Universal Pictures our studio.
Happy with the script, we we started down the production road.
We spent months in pre production. We were casting. We
had a young unknown actress named Salma Hayak cast as

(30:09):
a female lead. We were in New Orleans getting ready
to start shooting the movie in three weeks before the
start of principal photography would have started. The New Orleans
Universal called us and they said, stop, don't spend another time.
Come back to Los Angeles.

Speaker 7 (30:23):
Really, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
We returned to LA and they said, you're not gonna
make that movie. You're gonna make this other movie instead.
And they stuck a script under our nose called Bordello
of Blood.

Speaker 5 (30:34):
Oh yeah, And they said, just tell more about that instead.

Speaker 8 (30:39):
Here.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna do that. And they said,
but you're still start in three weeks. So get cracking, guys.
You gotta rewrite this. You got to you gotta get
this movie ready to shoot.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Now.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Where did Bordella of Blood come from? All?

Speaker 8 (30:50):
Right?

Speaker 3 (30:51):
At about this time a new studio had formed called DreamWorks.
DreamWorks was Steven Spielberg leaving his deal in Universal. Not
the lot. He stayed on the lot, but he left
his deal to become a new studio. Well, the next
thing he began doing is a new studio would have to.
He began making talent deals, and Universal was desperately afraid

(31:13):
of using of losing another big piece of talent one
of my executive producers, Bob Zimechis. Bob had done, of
course Back to the Future of Forrest Gump.

Speaker 7 (31:23):
Who framed Roger Rabbit, one of my favorites, and.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Who framed Roger Rabbit, and of course Tales from the Crypt.
Universal was desperately afraid of losing Bob, and they said, Bob,
I don't know any other part of that deal obviously
was good enough that Bob stayed.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
I know.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
One deal point, Universal Pictures agreed to buy the first
student script that Bob Zimechis and Bob Gail the Future
Back to the Future guys ever wrote as film school
students at at USC a thing called or Dello of
but for half a million bucks. It was a deal

(32:03):
point simply to to get Bob to stay at Universal.
There was no intention to ever make this student movie.
But then Universal began to say, Hey, wait a minute,
we're just gonna eat half a million bucks. Bob's about
to executive produce this other horror movie, this dead easy thing.
We'll screw that. That costs what fifty thousand bucks that
script cost? It will take it out of their budget. Guys,

(32:25):
you're gonna make Bordello of Blood instead. Hey, look, it's
got Bob's and mechics and Bob Gel's name on it,
bigger than Alan Katson gil Adler's name on a script.
And so for that reason, we went from the whole
creative team making a movie we had spent a year
and a half developing and were incredibly devoted to, because

(32:46):
we all saw it as a way to show the
town we could do more than just horror movies. From
doing a project that we were all passionately devoted to,
to making the student movie, Oh my gosh, and a
student movie called Bordella of Blood. I mean, this was
almost an insolent as a slap in the face, But what

(33:10):
can you do. You really don't have a choice. If
you walk away, you walk away from Tales from the
Crypt and probably ever working in this town again.

Speaker 7 (33:18):
So you're kind of you're kind of stuck in the middle.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
And so we set forth to make a movie that
literally nobody who made Bordella of Blood wanted to make
literally nobody, and I can tell you, if you go
and you get involved in any kind of enterprise of
this kind with no desire to do it, do not
be surprised if every day is stupider than the day

(33:46):
before it. And that is exactly what happened. It turned
into my own personal waterloo. Hey. The problem was I
took the money to produce the movie, and so even
though I did not want to do it in the
worst way possible, I should have been a better producer.
But after Universal seemed to not care about what movie

(34:12):
we were making, suddenly our executive or my executi producer,
Joel Silver, kind of took his eye off the ball too,
and he decided he wanted to cast our three leads.
We One of the problems with the script was that
it was not possible to rewrite it into anything good.

(34:33):
You could write its core. One of its core problems
is that the hero is a small town detective. Now
ask yourself, how much business can the detective really do
in a small town? Not? Not, not much, And so
really he's he's a non He's a non ended. He
doesn't actually exist except in the heads of film school

(34:54):
students who don't know anything because they're just students, and
so it was an impossible character to turn into anything
of substance. We wanted Danny Baldwin to play the character,
and he was ready to do it, but Joel insisted
on casting Dennis Miller instead. And to this day I
could not tell you why he wanted Dennis Miller. Our

(35:17):
audience wanted gore and splatter and those kinds of things.
Miller was a political comedian, nothing to do with our audience.
I have no idea why Joel Silver hired him. Dennis
did not want to do the movie, Dennis said. After
Joel made him, said hey, want you to do the movie?

(35:37):
Dennis said, all right, I'll do it for a million dollars,
figuring no one in the right mind would pay Dennis
Miller a million dollars to be in a movie. No
one did pay Dennis Miller a million dollars to be
in a movie before. But for some reason, Joel said, yes, Well,
we didn't have a million dollars in our budget. We
were a twelve million dollar movie. We had half a
million for our lead actor. We went to Universal, We said, hey,

(35:59):
can we get help your little breakage? They said, Dennis
Miller is nothing to us. We don't even know why
you're hiring him, and so we had to take it
out of our budget. All the money in ours in
our movie was in special effects makeup, which is what
our audience came to see. We took the money at
his special effects makeup. You took it out of what
our audience came to see to pay an actor our

(36:21):
audience didn't give a fuck about. All right, and then,
and even though we were paying him a million dollars,
he still didn't want to be there, did not want
to be there, and was difficult to work with every
single day.

Speaker 9 (36:35):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
I understood, I understood why Joel wanted Eric a Lenniac,
but he was never going to get what he wanted
from her. She was in the long term relationship, and
just after she agreed to do the movie, a movie
called Bordelua Blood, she suddenly decided she didn't want to
be that kind of actress doing this kind of movie.
What you just said, yes, And so before she would

(36:57):
get on a plane, we had already started production on
a massive rewrite before she get on all right. So
that was Erica. Now with the villain of the piece,
you know, the villain's the most important character in the
horror movie Billy Saying is wonderful in Demon Night. Here Here,

(37:22):
here's the thing I've cast over the course of my career,
lots and lots of actors. I have never, in my
entire life ever cast an actor for a movie or
TV show to act. Acting is the last thing I
ever wanted them to do, because, all right, if you're
gonna when they're on stage, yeah, they got to act
because the people in the last row got to see
and hear them. But on film or TV there's a

(37:44):
camera and the camera is right at their face. If
they act, the camera will see them acting and we'll
have to cut all that out. What I want actors
to do in a for the camera is b as
emotionally naked and honest as they possibly can be. Give
them a different name. We'll put some words in their mouths,

(38:06):
but at certain key moments, we need them to click
these emotions on, not act them, be them, and so
be them.

Speaker 5 (38:16):
Yeah, just like Robert Daro Marinane, the part.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
He has to be. It's be now. Billy Zaying is
as a wonderful villain because he's an ego maniac. There
are yes, he's a monstrous egomaniac. Yeah, there's some dark
some dark parts to Billy and that's why he makes
a great villain. That's why he plays in Titanic. He
is a great villain. He's not acting. There's darkness inside him. Okay, uh,

(38:46):
stick a pin in this in this concept. At the
time that we were making all Right, we wanted to
hire Robin Gibbons to be the villain in Bordello of Blood.
But at the time that we were making Demon, We're
about to start making a bordello. Joel was making another
movie at the same time in Seattle, Oh okay, a

(39:07):
thing called Assassins with the Antonio Banderis and Sylvester Stallone.
And one day, one day on the set of Assassin,
Stallone walks up to Joel Silver and he says, hey, hey, Joeli,
he you're gonna be making another movie Vancouver, won't you
heard my girlfriend and you put in the movie there
where we con visited each other a close the border.
And Joel, instead of being a responsible executive producer and

(39:30):
saying that's a.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
Great idea, slie, but let me check with the guys
to make sure it's okay with them, he said, he said,
that's a great idea sle period, and he committed us
to hiring Sylvester Stallone's girlfriend to be the villain in
our horror movie.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Now, look, Angie's a really genuinely a wonderful human being.
She's a great, a lovely person. But she was a
great supermodel. She was big looking for work as an actress.
But let's go back to the point I just made.
We didn't even we didn't need someone to act a
part of the villain, such as where Billy z ain't

(40:10):
is great because there's something the villain is inside him. Right,
Angie's a lovely person. The only way that Angie could
portray a villain is if she acted it. Ah, there's
the problem. You can't act. You can't act it because
we'll see it. And so Angie, it was an unfair
ask to ask Angie to do a part that she

(40:30):
did not have the chops, the qualifications or really really
the that's not who she is, and so it was
wrong casting. But we didn't cast it because we said,
we thought to ourselves, this will be genius, this is
this is a this will be a fine note. We
cast it to keep an actor happy on another film set,

(40:52):
and it turned out that Stallone had an ulterior motive.
We were the Consolation Prize. He fully intended to break
up with Angie, which he did two thirds of the
way through our movie, and he was gonna say to her,
which he did, Hey, I got your movie, didn't he?

Speaker 5 (41:07):
And that is not how to make a movie, I
guess said. Well, speaking of that, we're gonna talk about
what Alan katz And was for a podcast to listen
to The Mike Wadner Show at the Mike Watershow dot
Com powered by Soundwebstitos brought to broy official sponsor to
the Mike Widner's Show, internat Warring out of Me and Muslims.
They are missing The Sweet Somas by Serena Wagner based
on Life of King David thirty Squizze of Pains King

(41:29):
David Salmson. More Amazon dot com keywords sweet Samserena Wagner,
and the sense is wag Eric Diamond with his release
All of Me New music coming soon ericdi Music dot com.

Speaker 7 (41:38):
We're back in multi tell Alan Katz half this time.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Hey everybody, this is Eric Diamond and you're listening to

Speaker 2 (41:45):
The Mike Wagner Show is powered by Sonicweb Studios. If
you're looking to start or upgrade your online presence, visit
www dot sonicwebstudios dot com For all of your online needs.
Call one eight hundred three oh three three nine six
zero or visit us online at www dot sonicwebstudios dot

(42:06):
com To get started today, Mention the Mike Wagner Show
and get twenty percent off your project. Sonic weeb Studios
take your image to the next level.

Speaker 9 (42:15):
Hi, I'm Burl Bear, legendary American author, and I'm here
to tell you about Missing. The new mystery suspense novel
by me and mosen Ze is really a good book,
very surprising. Never metaphor I didn't like. Especially in this book.
Here you have a main character whose wife has been
filled with the spare His wife died a nine to
eleven is a young daughter died of a rare disease.
He's not a happy camper. What does he do for

(42:37):
a living. He's a physical fitness trainer. When somebody hardly knows,
somebody's never met. He always encountered of our internet chat
line goes missing. This is his journey. He's going to
go rescue them. This is his search for redemption and
search for his own personal promise. Land. He couldn't do
anything about the death of his wife, the death of
his child, but maybe he could rescue this woman he's

(42:58):
never met, that is, if she exists. Missing by Me
and Moss and zea international en scope vastly entertaining, full
of surprises. I suggest you get it either paperback or
an electronic condition for your kindle. Missing by Me and
moson Zia.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Hey everybody, this is Eric Diamond. You're listening to The
Mike Wagner Show. You can check out.

Speaker 8 (43:17):
Our music and know all about us at www dot
ericdimondmusic dot com. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok.
You can friend me on Facebook. You can follow me
on Facebook, and.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
You can even buy both of my albums off of Facebook.
Just get a hold of me on the Facebook Messenger.
We have them available in CD or thumb drive. Thank
you so much and hope you have a great day.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
The Mike Wagner Show is brought to you by Serena
Wagner's book The Sweet Saw is now a velve On Emson.
This book includes thirty exquisite pintings by well known and
unknown painters, and Kingdavid songs. The Sweet Samist gives us
a new perspective on his life in this book through
the songs he wrote. His time as a shepherd in
the field is will. The book starts, and it goes
on to describe as complicated and turbulent relationship with King Saul,

(44:02):
as well as other events. It's a story of love, betrayal, repentance,
and more. It also offers advice on approaching God and
living a life that pleases him. Check out the book
The Sweet Sawmist by Serena Wagner, now available on Amazon
keywords Sweet Saalmis Sorena Wagner.

Speaker 7 (44:17):
Hey, Hey, this is Ray Powers and boy are you
in luck right.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Place, right time?

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Tuned into the Mike Wagner Show.

Speaker 8 (44:26):
You heard me.

Speaker 5 (44:31):
Amazing multi tile film, TV producer, writer, script letter Alan
Katcha and The Mike Wagner Show. And also Ease also
got into podcasting, started company whose missions and made the
world a better place through storytelling.

Speaker 7 (44:43):
And one of them is the how not to make
a movie?

Speaker 5 (44:47):
I think we just like explained that in bordell A
Blood and How Not to Make a Podcast. Tell us
more about that, But first of all, I just first
get involved in podcasting.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Well, it was actually it was kind of crypt kind
of got like.

Speaker 7 (45:02):
From the Tales Tells from the Crypt like tell Us
from the Crypt.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
The the the pandemic happened, and during the pandemic there
was a couple of Tales from the Crypt fans put
together a podcast called Dads from the Crypt and they
from three different parts of the country. They what they
were doing their podcast. They would review episodes of Tells

(45:28):
from the Crypt and give parenting advice.

Speaker 7 (45:30):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
And one day one of the dads, a guy named
Jason Stein, reached out to me. He said, we're going
to be reviewing one of the episodes you wrote. Would
you like to sit in with us? And it sounded
like fun And I would get to give parenting advice too,
And I've got two kids, so perfectly happy to provide,
you know, my two cents of parenting advice. And I
said yeah, And it was great fun, really had a

(45:52):
great time. A couple of weeks later, Jason reached out again.
He said, we're going to be reviewing Ordella of Blood.
You want to sit in again? And I said, Jason,
the story of the making of bordellau Blood is nine
a half hour conversation with you. It's podcast unto itself,
and I suddenly realized what it was that I had

(46:13):
to do, and I the first season of The Hell
Not to Make a Movie Podcast was subtitled The Making
of Bordello of Blood, and it was really I I
had been telling Bordella of Blood stories for two decades now.
Making Bordella of Blood was a terrible experience. But as

(46:35):
a result, because it was such a it was such
a negative, terrible experience, Gil Adler and I broke up.
We stopped being friends, we stopped being creative partners. We
didn't speak for twenty five years.

Speaker 7 (46:50):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
In wow tense, Adam, I mean really a lot of
animosity went on between us. I after Yeah and Bordella
Blood kind of set me onto a kind of a spiral,
a downward spiral. I did two seasons on The Outer Limits,
which was terrific, but I lost my way and I

(47:14):
for two decades. I went into a deepening depression, in
a writer's block that I didn't even know I was in,
and a lot of it stemmed from Yeah, what had
happened on Bordello in part Yeah, I was not a
strong producer in Bordeaux. I was making a movie I
didn't want to make. And where's if I'd been a stronger,

(47:38):
more confident producer I could have I could have at
least made that a tolerable experience for everybody.

Speaker 5 (47:42):
She didn't have your heart in the whole thing, and
pretty much you didn't have your mindset.

Speaker 7 (47:46):
You just wanted to just get through it. Get paid.

Speaker 5 (47:47):
So I come on, let's just get this orf onods.
I take the money and run, just yell, yeah, skim
the water.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
So, like I said, I went through this depression, and
three days before Christmas twenty sixteen, I came within literally
which is a killing myself. And I had known I
was in a terrible death spiral psychologically, mentally, excuse me.
And I'd been researching mood stabilizers because I grew up

(48:17):
in the medical culture. My dad was a surgeon, and
so I knew that with this kind of medication, whatever,
the less pharmaceutical rep to walk through the office, you say, hey,
you got me to press patience and we make this
try this out, see if it helps them well. With
that kind of that kind of medication, it's going to

(48:39):
take you six eight weeks usually to find out is
it going to work? Is it not gonna work. It's
a big enough crapshoot as it is. I didn't want
to add that additional crapshoot element to it. I'd done
my research and so, knowing that I was now quite
capable of extreme self harm, I went to my GP
and I said, here's what I just did, Here's what

(48:59):
I want to do. I want to Will you prescribe
this for me?

Speaker 9 (49:02):
Please?

Speaker 3 (49:02):
And he got out his smartphone and he said, okay,
that makes sense, and he prescribed it and I picked
it up and I went home. I told my family
what I was going to do, and I took the
first dose and I got super lucky. Within thirty six hours,
I leveled. I fell Wow. The darkness, the darkness doesn't

(49:22):
go away, but suddenly it was in a box where
it could no longer get it. And because the darkness
could no longer get it me, I could finally deal
with the fact the thing that had been driving all this.
I've been keeping a secret from myself for forty five
years that I knew what happened to me when I
was fourteen, utter denial that it had happened, What had happened,

(49:45):
and I was sexually molested twice by the religious director
at the synagogue where my family belonged outside of Baltimore.
And it's not the first time is bad. It's the
second time that really screwed me up because the second
time happened because I didn't say anything about the first time.

(50:05):
So when you walk in the second time, thinking, well,
the first time never happened, and now the second time
it starts to happen, well, you did this to yourself.
You didn't say anything. And so from that day forward
I began to blame myself for every terrible thing that happened.
It didn't matter, didn't it The logic didn't matter. And

(50:26):
as my world got worse and worse and worse, I
blamed myself. But now that I could confront what was
really at the heart of it all the hardest weekend
of my life, finally confronting that. But it's so true
what they say the truth will set you free. Absolutely

(50:50):
set me free confronting this, and it was important not
just for me to tell the story to me, but
to tell the story to other people. Now this suddenly
it occurred to me, Gosh, if you can't tell your
own story to you. Really, if you can't tell your
own story, can you really tell anyone else's. But once

(51:13):
I could tell my story to me and tell my
story to other people, because that was very important. Keeping
it a secret was was not knowing me any good
telling the story was viol Once I could tell my
story with balls to the wall honesty, I could tell
anybody's story. And it was really really important to me
in telling the story of the making a Bordella of

(51:36):
Blood in the first season of The Hell Not to
Make a Movie Podcast that I tell the story with
absolute falls to the wall honest day and right were
there were. I wasn't looking to bring anyone else. I
wasn't looking to blame anyone else. There are two people
I wanted to take the task, and that was Dennis

(51:59):
and that Sly because of you know, because of the
Sly had no business doing to us what he did
and doing he did a terrible thing to Angie. Yeah, yeah,
for that, you deserve to be called out. But aside
from that, there was only one person I wanted to
take the task, and that was me for being a
weak producer, Yeah, doing something I didn't want to, But

(52:21):
that was part of the important catharsism telling the story
now in order to tell it all too well. Honestly,
I knew I was going to have to bring Gill in,
and so I reached out to Gil and for the
first time in twenty five years, we talked and I said, look,
there's a lot of stuff we haven't confronted about what
happened to us emotionally and really a lot of animosities.
I said, I want to have I want to have

(52:44):
all these conversations, all these conversations on Mike and make
them part of the podcast. And he said, okay. It
was the craziest decision he ever made. But Wow. Entertainment
Weekly called the Clark Collis, who wrote the after he
listened to the podcast The Honesty, he thought, are you
guys putting this on? And when he interviewed us, that

(53:07):
was the question he wanted to know, Are you guys
really dishonest about your lives and with each other?

Speaker 7 (53:12):
And yeah, oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Now doing the podcast, First of all, it renewed my relationship,
my friendship with Gil, our creative relationship with working on
a couple of things.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
But it.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
It I suddenly found it telling a story in the
medium of the podcast was enthralling, and the first season
that those ten episodes, and I didn't want to do
a continual thing. I didn't want to do a weekly.
I wanted to do a limit. I wanted to tell
the story and be done with it. And once that

(53:51):
was done, the second season, yeah, I decided to do
a second season and that became a weekly. Unintentionally, yeah,
it became a weekly. I just put it on hiatus
for a little bit because I've got so many other
podcasts going. But doing the doing the podcast, I fell
in love with the medium. I a friend of mine

(54:13):
from school approached me with a project that he wanted
to turn into a TV series, something that actually happened
to him. Now here's here's the thing, and this is
what I explained to him, the process of turning. All Right,
if I want to take an idea from my head
and turn it into a TV series or movie. But
let's say a TV series, We'll take me a year,

(54:36):
two years or so. If I'm lucky to get that
script exactly where it needs to be so it's ready
for the marketplace, all right, if it's a DV, if
it's a TV series. In addition to the first episode
I'm going to happen, but.

Speaker 5 (54:51):
I think we're on some technical difficulties with Alan Katle
Mike Why in your show, and I think somebody from
the Crypt conor frosis a little bit.

Speaker 7 (54:58):
Maybe it was Chucky or something.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
So I'm sorry, check you coming again as the cript keeper,
not not getting getting his word.

Speaker 5 (55:04):
And I think that's what happened too. So I guess, well,
where did Chucky coming back?

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Where did you lose me?

Speaker 5 (55:11):
I think it was around talking about the Crypt and
everything like that, but of course, you know, we can
get to that later. But you also did three podcasts
you mentioned as well too, like The Hall Closet, Sage,
Wellness Within, and The Donor, a DNA horror story.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
I had a friend, you know, I am doing the
the hell not to make a movie podcast. I've I
loved podcasting, and a friend approached me with a story
something that then happened to him. He wanted to turn
it into a movie or a TV series. This you know,
I'll get to what happened to him. But to take
an idea from from from your head, even if it's

(55:51):
a true story, into a movie or a TV series
years to write the script. If you're going to do
a TV series, you have to do what's called a
Bible two and that's well, what happens the second episode,
in the third episode, and the whole second season, in
the third season, and all the characters. That's sixty to
seventy pages. Oh wow, that takes really a lot of

(56:12):
time to write. And then just to get the executives
to read the material, you have to create what's called
a pitch deck, which is a comic book electronic comic
book version of the idea, just to get them to
read it. And that's just the executive at the top
of the meat grinder. And then if one of them
says yes, and you go into the production meat grinder,

(56:36):
there are thousands of assholes standing in your way, and
at any point, any one of those assholes can kill
your project dead just because you're an asshole. And it's
years of work in the process now to take that
same idea intern.

Speaker 7 (56:50):
Mhm okay.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
And so long as I'm willing to do the work,
I gotta find the audience. I gotta help the audience
find it. You know what. I'm in full control of
the story. Well with How's story, and how story was
so remarkable. There was no way you could turn it
into a TV series, right.

Speaker 6 (57:14):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
In the mid nineteen eighties, my friend Hal worked his
way through medical school as an anonymous sperm donor. Uh huh.

Speaker 7 (57:22):
And that's where the donor of DNA horror story comes down.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Yes, that's the donor of DNA horror story. Jump forward
twenty seven years. He's a successful radiologist. He joined twenty
three in me curious about his health Jeeves. It never
occurred to him the ramifications of adding his DNA to
a growing DNA database. That's which Oh wow, me is
he lost his donor anonymity? Suddenly seven total strangers found daddy?

(57:47):
What accept x?

Speaker 7 (57:50):
Oh my goodness, wow, who's.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
A sperm donor? Now? The seventh of the these genetics
of these donor conceived kids. And these are not kids,
these are adults. These are twenty five, twenty six year
old people. One of the daughters she brought a thing
called genetic sexual attraction. Okay, the adoption community has known

(58:19):
about genetic sexual attraction for for a long time. People
who are genetically related brothers and sisters, for instance, but
who are not raised together when they meet each other
later in life as.

Speaker 10 (58:30):
Adults, they have not had the The proximity has more
to do with the taboos than the actual blood relationship.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
There's there's research that says, yeah, actually it's the taboo
comes more from from proximity than anything else. The term
genetic sexual attraction was coined by a woman named Barbara Ganyer,
who gave her a son at sixteen for adoption. Oh,
when she met him twenty five years later he was

(59:06):
an adult, she fell head over heels in love with him,
and he fell in love with her. She was ready
to have sex, he was not. She described genetic sexual
attraction as the most intense thing she'd ever felt in
her entire life.

Speaker 7 (59:21):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Well, when this one of the daughters brought genetic sexual
attraction to this table, well, Hal had wanted. He had
been married for twenty years to a woman who brought
a son from a previous marriage. He adopted him later
as an adult, but he had never had the experience
of raising a biological child of his own. Suddenly having

(59:46):
seven biological children now, he wasn't going to raise them,
of course, and he was not going to be their father.
He didn't father them, but he was quite ready to
have a father. Lee relationship with him. He had a
lot of money. He was willing to cut them in
on the inheritance because they were blood. But the genetic
sexual attraction thrown in this was like a hand grenade

(01:00:10):
thrown into the circus tent.

Speaker 7 (01:00:12):
It destroyed everything and oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
I described the story as a DNA horror story. They're
very definitely as a monster. Well, I convinced How to
let me tell his story as a podcast, and that
became my first story podcast. It's seven episodes. The Donor
a DNA horror story, and it is. It's How's story really,

(01:00:38):
it's what happens with this wonderful technology, which you know,
we can know the truth about our DNA, right, but
there are ripple effects that people don't expect, like discovering
you're not who you thought.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
You were or your parents are so yeah so uh.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
While I was researching How's story and I'm not opening
a door onto the donor conceived community was fascinating. One
of the donor conceived people who agreed to give me
background was named Donna Hall.

Speaker 7 (01:01:11):
Okay, excuse me.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
And Donna. Donna had a She learned at forty that
she was donor conceived and that rocked her world. Oh mind,
she when she told me the rest of her story
blew my mind. I said, Donna, you're a podcast and yourself.
You said, I know. And she'd been trying to turn
her story into a podcast. But even a great story

(01:01:36):
has to be told the right way to be a
great story. And Donna's story is amazing. She grew up
in the eighties and nineties in a lower tier crime
family outside of Philadelphia. The Halls weren't the Corleones from
the Godfather movies, but they made national headlines just the same.
Donna's mom, phyllis maybe the worst mom ever. She spent

(01:02:00):
six months in prison for child endangerment. Donna's stepdad, John Hall,
truly a criminal mastermind, was the Philadelphia Police Department's favorite snitch.
He put more than twenty five people behind bars based
on bogus confessions he created to mitigate his own considerable
legal jeopardy among the people. Among the people he put

(01:02:22):
away was his own step son, Herb, who spent eighteen
months in jail waiting trial for a murder he did
not commit. John Hall put him in named Walter Ogrod
on death row in Pennsylvania for twenty four years for
a murder Walter did not commit. When Pennsylvania finally realized
it's a mistake, they gave Walter nine million dollars to

(01:02:44):
try to make up for it. There are still people
in prison, though John Hall died twenty years ago. There's
a man named David Dixon who's serving a life sentence
in Philadelphia based on a bogus John Hall confession. Well,
a story about growing up in a lower to your
crime family. Literally every day one or more of the

(01:03:07):
adults was committing a crime. An amazing story. I had
never heard anything remotely like it. Really true crime, like
you've never heard it before. But what makes don a
story really quite special, I think is the fact that,
first of all, she's an amazing storyteller, not an ounce

(01:03:27):
of self pity. She's very, very funny, But her story
is also a journey towards safety and most importantly, empowerment.
And so that's The Hall Closet. The first season of
The Hall Closet is eight episodes of true crime like
you've never heard it before. Yeah, really told from the inside,

(01:03:53):
true crime told from the inside. At a very granular level.
It is bread taking, breath taking stuff, I found as
I was in the middle of doing hell story that
I had found I had become the thing I always
wanted to be when I grew up, which is a podcaster.

(01:04:14):
I love storytelling in this medium. It's so intimate. People
take our voices and our stories and they listen to
with earbuds or headphones or even in your cars. It's
a giant soundbod And they take our stories and our
voices and they put them into their most intimate space
between their ears, inside their heads. Okay, and storytelling from

(01:04:39):
there I find so exciting. A great honor comes with
a lot of responsibility.

Speaker 8 (01:04:46):
And.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
I decided I didn't movies are TV. Yeah, it's too
much hard work to tell a story. Now. Part of
my aim though, with my little company Costed and Touchdown Productions,
and you can find more about us at cost and
toouchdoone dot com, our mission is to make the world

(01:05:10):
a better place through storytelling. M and podcasting is our
medium of choice. Uh In I I decided that, as
as I said out at this point, I've got four
more pod four new podcasts coming over the course of

(01:05:33):
the summer that I'm working with four different journalists on.

Speaker 7 (01:05:36):
Okay, uh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
I've got gosh, I'm doing another celebrity podcast with a
man named Sean Cassidy.

Speaker 7 (01:05:48):
Oh yeah, I remember, well, no.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
No, a different Sean Cassidy is. Remember Ted Cassidy who
played Lurch? Yes, I remember he is Ted Hassidy Sun
And the podcast is called Son of Lurch, Oh my gosh.
And and that one is about growing up the Son
of Lurch? Did Ted Cassidy sign and growing up in

(01:06:13):
LA in the sixties and seventies. He also spends a
lot of time hanging out with the Grateful Dead. Who
are his pals?

Speaker 7 (01:06:20):
Oh my gosh, that's so.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
It's so working on a podcast with him. There are
By the end of this year, Coster and Touchstone Productions
will have about a dozen different podcasts out in the world.

Speaker 7 (01:06:35):
Okay, And what's and what's their website again?

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Costard Andtouchstone dot com The c O S T A
R D A N D Touchstone t O U C
H S T O N E dot com.

Speaker 7 (01:06:49):
And where can we find your works at?

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Costardtouchstone dot com will link you to everything I'm doing?

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
All right, well, so let check that out with amazing
multi tele Allen cats here on the Mike Wdners show
with all kinds of podcasts, movies, everything else and besides
what you talked about for twenty twenty five coming up,
what else you got gone on plate for twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Podcast podcasts and more podcasts. I've said over the summer,
I'm working with four different journalists. After the last election,
legacy journalism, which was on the way to the graveyard,
kind of went the rest of the way there and
a lot of legacy journalists left the business, were forced
out because there's just not new So the print journalism

(01:07:33):
is almost dead, and so there are a lot of
very talented journalists who have stories to tell podcasting. Podcasting
is the perfect place for them because they can find
their audience and tell their stories. There's no corporate overlord
telling them what they can or cannot tell in terms

(01:07:54):
of their stories or how even to tell them right.
It's because of that direct relationship with the audience.

Speaker 9 (01:08:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
That that that I think is going to be quite
liberating for them. So there were four different journalists who
I've I'm now working with on four different journalistic podcasts,
including a Manila Chan was a journalist for twenty five years.
She's always wanted to tell the story. She's Lao American.
She's always wanted to tell the story of the Secret War. Okay,

(01:08:24):
the most the most bombed country in the history of
the world is Lavietnam. No Laos is Laos. We bombed
Laos every day for nine years, literally every single day
during the Vietnam War. We bombed Laus although we weren't
supposed to. We bombed it in secret because the North

(01:08:47):
North Vietnamese ran the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos.
The ho Chi Mi Intrail wasn't a trail, it was
a supply network and it ran through Laos, and so
they weren't supposed to do that, and so we bombed it,
which we weren't supposed to do it. Now, it's unfortunate
for the Lao people to this day. A third of

(01:09:08):
the country is uninhabitable because there's so much unexploded American
ordinance still sitting on the ground there. We dumped an
awful lot of ordinance there after the bombing run was done.
They would dumped the ordinance in Laos because they didn't
want to take it back with them and risk getting
shot down with it. What we did to Laos in

(01:09:29):
the Secret War was unconscionable. Manila has wanted to tell
this story her entire journalistic career, but couldn't get anyone interested,
and so I approached her. I said, let's do this
as a podcast. And so it's called a Secret War
because it's about Manila's war to tell the story of
the secret War as well.

Speaker 5 (01:09:51):
All right, so we'll certainly check that out here with
Alan Cats, who do you consider biggest influence in the career?

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
You know, among the people that that is his most
important to me is Bob's and mechis one of my
executive producers. On tells from the crypt everything I know
about the art of collaboration, of you know, of collaborating
with people. I learned from Bob how to get the
very best out of everyone you work there, there are

(01:10:19):
ways to do it. And yeah, he's not just a
genius movie maker. He is a he is he is
a genius at getting the very best out of everyone
he works with.

Speaker 7 (01:10:31):
Okay, that's certainly amazing.

Speaker 5 (01:10:33):
What's the best advice you can give to any by
at this point the.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
Truth will set you fore.

Speaker 5 (01:10:40):
You got that right? I think you said it perfect?

Speaker 7 (01:10:43):
Right there? Alan, we're here with.

Speaker 5 (01:10:44):
The amazing Alan Katz of of Thalsha and How Not
to Make a movie, All kinds of the mic Ware Show. Alan,
very big, thank you for time if you have been
absolutely fantastic, great stars to share, looking forward, having soon,
keeps up today, keep in touch, laugh at you back
and watch your website. How to people contact you and
what can people check out your works?

Speaker 9 (01:11:04):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
The best place right the right now. There are all
the different podcasts which are available wherever you listen to
your your favorite podcast, but at costered Andtouchstone dot com.
That's the ground zero for what we're doing and all
the things that are coming up, and we'll.

Speaker 7 (01:11:22):
Certainly check that out once again.

Speaker 5 (01:11:24):
Alan, very big, thanks for time, You've been absolutely fantastic,
Looking forward, Heaven soon, keeps up, Bake, keep in touch, live,
avy back. We wish all best and Alan, you definitely
have a great fit you Hey, you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
Thank you so much. Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
The Mike Wagner Show is powered by Sonicweb Studios. If
you're looking to start or upgrade your online presence, visit
www dot Sonicwebstudios dot com. For all of your online needs.
Call one eight hundred three oh three three nine six
zero or visit us online at www dot Sonicwebstudios dot com.

(01:11:55):
To get started today, mention the Mike Wagner Show and
get twenty percent off your product. Sonic Web Studios take
your image to the next level.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Hey everybody, this is Eric Diamond. You're listening to the
Mike Wagner Show. You can check out.

Speaker 8 (01:12:09):
Our music and know all about us at www dot
Ericdiamondmusic dot com. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok.
You can friend me on Facebook.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
You can follow me on Facebook, and you can even
buy both of my albums off of Facebook. Just get
a hold of me on the Facebook Messenger. We have
them available in CD or thumb drive. Thank you so
much and hope you have a great day.

Speaker 8 (01:12:33):
Hi.

Speaker 9 (01:12:34):
I'm Burl Bear, legendary American author, and I'm here to
tell you about Missing, the new mystery suspense novel by
me and mosen Ze. It's really a good book, very surprising.
Never metaphor I didn't like, especially this book. Here. You
have a main character whose life has been filled with
the spear. His wife died a nine to eleven is
a young daughter died of a rare disease. He's not

(01:12:54):
a happy camper. What does he do for a living.
He's a physical fitness trainer. When somebody hardly knows. If
somebody's never met he always encountered of our internet chat
line goes missing. This is his journey. He's going to
go rescue them. This is his search for redemption and
search for his own personal promise. Lad he couldn't do
anything about the death of his wife, the death of

(01:13:14):
his child, but maybe he could rescue this woman he's
never met, that is, if she exists. Missing by Me
and Most and Zia International in scope, vastly entertaining, full
of surprises. I suggest you get it either paperback or
an electronic condition for your kindle. Missing by Me and
Moss and Zia.

Speaker 5 (01:13:31):
The Mike Wagner Show is brought to you by Serena
Wagner's book The Sweet Sawmist now a velbon Emson. This
book includes thirty exquisite paintings by well known and unknown
painters and King David songs. The Sweet Salmist gives us
a new perspective on his life in this book through
the songs he wrote. His time as a shepherd in
the field is will. The book starts, and it goes
on to describe his complicated and turbulent relationship with King Saul,

(01:13:51):
as well as other events. It's a story of love, betrayal, repentance,
and more. It also offers advice on approaching God and
living a life that pleases him. Check out the book
Sweets Armers by Serena Wager now Availa one Amazon keywords
Sweet Sarmis Sorena Wager.

Speaker 6 (01:14:08):
Thanks for listening to The Mike Wagner Show powered by
Sonicweb Studios. Listit online at Sonicwebstudios dot com for all
your needs. The Mike Wagner Show can be heard on Spreakers, Spotify, iHeartRadio, iTunes,
YouTube Anchor, FM Radio Public, and The Mike Wagner Show
dot Com. Please sport our program with your donations at
the Mike Wagnershow dot com. Join us again next time

(01:14:31):
for another great episode of The Mike Wagner Show

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}LA multi-talented film/TV producer Alan Katz explains on "How NOT to Make a Movie”!

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

LA multi-talented film/TV producer Alan Katz explains on "How NOT to Make a Movie”!

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal