Speaker 1: Thank you everybody so much for joining us on our
Speaker 1: Park Copper episode where we are going to be speaking
Speaker 1: to Disney Royalty. And again, if you haven't heard this
Speaker 1: name before, you're not familiar with the name of Stu Krieger,
Speaker 1: you are absolutely familiar with the projects that this man
Speaker 1: has been responsible for. We're talking Smart House, the Xenon Movies,
Speaker 1: Phantom of the Megaplex, cow Bells, True Confessions, Land Before Time,
Speaker 1: Gotta Kick It Up. I mean it's he's worked with
Speaker 1: Polly Shore, He's worked with Steven Spielberg, Kathleen. It's one
Speaker 1: name after another. So I don't think you'd be speaking
Speaker 1: out of turn by saying d coms would not be
Speaker 1: what they are without this man.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and we are so honored to have them here.
Speaker 2: So absolute, please help us welcome Stu Kreeger. Hello, We're
Speaker 2: so good. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: This is we say your name almost every week, so
Speaker 1: is great.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly exciting and very flattering. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I imagine that when you heard that, if you heard
Speaker 1: that there was a podcast re you know, going over
Speaker 1: and rewatching all the d coms, you would be getting.
Speaker 4: A call from us, hopefully to speak with you.
Speaker 3: Yes, suspected, I might.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest thing right now is you know,
Speaker 5: for us, we love doing the interview part of this.
Speaker 5: We've had a chance to talk to a lot of actors.
Speaker 5: We haven't had a chance to have legends like you
Speaker 5: that we're there from the start of these kinds of
Speaker 5: franchises Xenon, I mean just all of the different franchises
Speaker 5: that you've been a part of. To be at the
Speaker 5: start of the process, so we have to hear what
Speaker 5: you know, how is your process and how does that
Speaker 5: make you feel as you look back at these projects find.
Speaker 3: Of the most incredible thing. And it's so funny because
Speaker 3: I've currently been a professor since two thousand and six
Speaker 3: at U SEE Riverside, and in my class that i'm teaching,
Speaker 3: one of the two classes I'm teaching this quarter is
Speaker 3: called the Filmmaker's Life, and that class is designed to
Speaker 3: bring in panels of industry guests each week talking about
Speaker 3: their lives, their experiences, how they got their start, how
Speaker 3: they got their first job. And one of the things
Speaker 3: in the first session we had on Tuesday, Yeah, Tuesday,
Speaker 3: was it's kind of me introducing myself in my life
Speaker 3: and my career to them all, and I said, when
Speaker 3: I was in the middle of it, show business is
Speaker 3: designed and you can both attest to this. When you
Speaker 3: are in it, you are never a success because it's
Speaker 3: always about what's next, What happened to that thing you
Speaker 3: were working on? Way did that fall apart? Whatever? You know,
Speaker 3: you're always scrambling. And then when I started teaching full
Speaker 3: time in two thousand and six, the kids I was
Speaker 3: teaching were the generation that grew up on my mood movies.
Speaker 3: And suddenly, not exaggerating, at least four or five times
Speaker 3: a quarter some student would stick his or her head
Speaker 3: into my office and go, hi, I just wanted to
Speaker 3: tell you, dude, you wrote my childhood. Yes, And when
Speaker 3: you're hearing that and suddenly like wow, really. And then
Speaker 3: the other insane thing that's happened in the last year
Speaker 3: is I had a book come out in May that's
Speaker 3: a family comedy novel. And when the publishers first signed me,
Speaker 3: they said, we really feel like the people that grew
Speaker 3: up on your movies are now the audience for this
Speaker 3: book because they're, you know, young adults raising their own family.
Speaker 3: You need to be on social media, and I said
Speaker 3: that will not happen. Ultimately, at their insistence, what I
Speaker 3: ended up doing is hiring a former grad student to
Speaker 3: run it, curate it, tell me what to do, what
Speaker 3: I need to shoot, and suddenly we now have forty
Speaker 3: seven thousand followers. She's easy again. Ninety nine percent of
Speaker 3: the comments are about I can't believe how much these
Speaker 3: movies have resonated, They've stayed with me now I'm sharing
Speaker 3: them with my own children, and how much fun it is.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing that that kind of forced
Speaker 3: me to do after a couple of interviews was actually
Speaker 3: go back and watch them. Because I was doing these
Speaker 3: interviews where people would say so about this scene at Smarthause,
Speaker 3: and I would go, I love you, but I haven't
Speaker 3: watched it in twenty years. And I would make the
Speaker 3: sun Set Boulevard analogy and say, you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: Norma Desmond sitting home in a turban watching my movies
Speaker 3: over and over again. But if you're going to be
Speaker 3: asking me these questions, I got to watch them. So
Speaker 3: I happened.
Speaker 1: That's the thing We've noticed that we make sure we're
Speaker 1: watching every movie twice.
Speaker 4: We're looking at every kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But so Sabrina said something interesting at the beginning, which is,
Speaker 1: we do we get to speak to people who went
Speaker 1: through the process of actually filming you know, the characters
Speaker 1: and and you know what it was like to shoot
Speaker 1: the movie, how much it meant to them, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, which is wonderful to talk about. But we've
Speaker 1: yet to have the conversation of how did the movie
Speaker 1: get made in the first place? So what we're the
Speaker 1: I mean because again, the we did you're just a
Speaker 1: few of your credits at the beginning when you're talking
Speaker 1: about some of the biggest one Xenon, Smart House, going
Speaker 1: to the Map, got to kick it up. All these
Speaker 1: kind of movies were the majority of them? Were any
Speaker 1: of them? Were these your ideas that you went in
Speaker 1: and pitched? Was it Disney calling you saying we're doing
Speaker 1: this new franchise, we'd like you to write it.
Speaker 4: How did the entire process start?
Speaker 3: Well, the humble brag I will start the answer with
Speaker 3: was when they held a party celebrating the first fifty
Speaker 3: d coms. Gary Marsha was at that point the head
Speaker 3: of the network got up and he said, we have
Speaker 3: to acknowledge the fact that ten of these fifty movies
Speaker 3: were written by one guy. You know this guy. Wow.
Speaker 3: So part of the relationship began because I had done
Speaker 3: both Parent Trapped two with Haley Mills playing that character
Speaker 3: grown up, and the iteration of Freaky Friday that was
Speaker 3: Gabby Hoffman and Shelley Long. I had done those both
Speaker 3: for the Wonderful World of Disney, so I was a
Speaker 3: known entity there. And the first entree into the Dcome
Speaker 3: world that I got is that they called and Xenon
Speaker 3: was a very very thin little picture book, a kid's
Speaker 3: picture book called Xenon Girl of the first twenty first Century.
Speaker 3: And kind of the main elements that have remained from
Speaker 3: that picture book to the franchise was she was a
Speaker 3: kid living on the space station with a crush on
Speaker 3: a rock star named Protozoa and a friend named Nebula.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the point. And another story that I
Speaker 3: just told in Glass on Tuesday, because it's exactly what
Speaker 3: you're asking was I said to the students, when you
Speaker 3: get these kinds of meetings, do your research, do your
Speaker 3: due diligence. Know who you're going to meet with, know
Speaker 3: what they do. And so when I got called into
Speaker 3: that first meeting, is it was at the production company
Speaker 3: of Suzanne to Pass and Suzanne Cooston, who were the
Speaker 3: producers of Xenon, and their head of development said, I'm
Speaker 3: going to be incredibly candid with you. We have had
Speaker 3: eighteen writers come in before you. Nobody's nailed it yet.
Speaker 3: What is it you know? What would be your approach
Speaker 3: to adapting this book? And the other thing I had
Speaker 3: done prior to the meeting is I said, if this
Speaker 3: is a new franchise, are any of them done yet?
Speaker 3: Is there anything I could take a look at to
Speaker 3: get a sense of what it is you're going for?
Speaker 3: And at that point Under Wraps was the only one
Speaker 3: that had been shot and it was still in post production.
Speaker 3: So they said, we can send you a rough cut,
Speaker 3: not color corrected, not anything, just the rough cut, and
Speaker 3: I go, cool, I just want to see, you know,
Speaker 3: the wheelhouse of what you're trying to do. Watched that,
Speaker 3: we read the book, went into them and I said,
Speaker 3: Xenon is Eloise at the Plaza on the Space Station.
Speaker 3: And if you know that emblematic kid's book from the fifties,
Speaker 3: it was a kid living at the Plaza Hotel in
Speaker 3: New York, creating mischief and wreaking havoc and getting into
Speaker 3: places she shouldn't be. And I said, it's Eloise at
Speaker 3: the plaza on the space station, and they went, you're hired.
Speaker 3: And the reason you were hired is eighteen writers before
Speaker 3: you came in and said it's They said it was
Speaker 3: a variation over and over again of its nine O
Speaker 3: two one Oho meet Star Trek. Disney Channel would not
Speaker 3: do nine two Disney gentlemen, not do Star Trek. No,
Speaker 3: thank you. And you came in and said, Eloi's at
Speaker 3: applause of this on the space station. That's who we are,
Speaker 3: that's what we do. Boom, let's go wow wow. That
Speaker 3: was initial foot in the door. And then really it
Speaker 3: was just a series of meetings to begin with a
Speaker 3: pitching the story, fleshing out of the story, deciding the
Speaker 3: arc of how we would expand it. The whole plot
Speaker 3: of Lots and Windom and the missing earring being the
Speaker 3: code to the meltdown, and all of those plot machinations
Speaker 3: were stuff that I just kept evolving with them, and
Speaker 3: how about if we do this and how about that
Speaker 3: turn to passing. Houstin known as the Suzannes, were wonderful
Speaker 3: to work with. They were really story savvy. Michael Healy,
Speaker 3: who was the head of movies for most of my
Speaker 3: tenure there, was also really really good at knowing their audience,
Speaker 3: knowing what it was they were aiming for. And then
Speaker 3: the thing that I will say, and I think it's
Speaker 3: why I was able to ultimately do twelve movies with them,
Speaker 3: was that they were really really good about allowing my
Speaker 3: creative freedom. And one of my lines in the Sand
Speaker 3: was I said, I am a father of two who
Speaker 3: my wife can go away for the whole weekend and
Speaker 3: when she comes home and the kids aren't dead, there's
Speaker 3: nobody missing, the top is not off, the washing machine
Speaker 3: with a tons across the floor, and the blender. So
Speaker 3: I said, the only thing I will never do in
Speaker 3: a movie for you is I will not portray a
Speaker 3: stupid dad. I want to be showing that fathers are
Speaker 3: as competent as moms, and so that is something you
Speaker 3: cannot ever expect me to do in any of the
Speaker 3: films I do with you. A couple of times I
Speaker 3: had to fight for that. Wouldn't it be funny if
Speaker 3: dad fell down the stairs? No, it wouldn't be fun
Speaker 3: So that was kind of my line in the sand
Speaker 3: and something that I was happy that I was able
Speaker 3: to maintain the integrity of through all the films I
Speaker 3: did with them.
Speaker 1: Now, was it normally Disney coming to you and saying,
Speaker 1: here's the idea we have, or were any of the
Speaker 1: films your idea?
Speaker 4: That you pitched?
Speaker 3: Most of them? It was interesting because in the heyday,
Speaker 3: they were doing a movie a month. Yeah, So I
Speaker 3: also think part of the reason I was as employed
Speaker 3: as I was was I was also somebody if they
Speaker 3: said we need the script in three weeks, it's like,
Speaker 3: you'll have it in three weeks. I can do that.
Speaker 3: So my other point of pride is that of all
Speaker 3: the movies I did with them, I was either the
Speaker 3: last writer or the only writer. So you know, as
Speaker 3: you guys will know, the last writer means you're the
Speaker 3: one who got the draft Greenland to go into production.
Speaker 3: And so some of them, like smart House, had already
Speaker 3: been in development for more than a year. They were
Speaker 3: at the point where like the basic structure of this,
Speaker 3: the premise of it, the idea of what the smart
Speaker 3: House is, we really like, we don't feel the humanity
Speaker 3: is there yet. And they said to me, that's something
Speaker 3: you do really well go back and kind of reinvent
Speaker 3: the characters and reinvent the emotional plot of the movie.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I was kind of struck
Speaker 3: by and again when I went back to watch it
Speaker 3: after not having seen it for a couple of decades,
Speaker 3: was there's kind of a really hard emotional truth in
Speaker 3: that movie that I had forgotten was there. And for example,
Speaker 3: it's the scene when Ryan Merriman and Kevin Kilner end
Speaker 3: up in his Ryan's being a brat in front of
Speaker 3: the girl that the scientists that dad has a crush on,
Speaker 3: and he storms out and the father comes up and
Speaker 3: they have this hard to heart about you know, you're
Speaker 3: going to replace mom. She's mom doesn't deserve to be replaced,
Speaker 3: and the father yells at him, You're not the only
Speaker 3: one who lost somebody, and it says like the real
Speaker 3: talk moment between them when I went Dan Sun, you know,
Speaker 3: and I was kind of I was proud of myself,
Speaker 3: but I was even more proud of Disney that they
Speaker 3: allowed us to go into some of these real spaces
Speaker 3: that I think are a lot of the reason why
Speaker 3: these movies have resonated and sustained over the decades. That
Speaker 3: they have because those things, you know, the truth of
Speaker 3: that resonates no matter what generation it is.
Speaker 4: It does well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of true moments, one of the last films that
Speaker 1: we watched covered and absolutely love was Going to the mat.
Speaker 6: He loved that movie. Either one of us had seen
Speaker 6: it before.
Speaker 4: Oh nice, and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: It was incredible, And we got to talk to Andy
Speaker 1: a little bit about what it was like to you know,
Speaker 1: portray the character and to shoot the film. But what
Speaker 1: was it like getting to write I mean, it was
Speaker 1: such an interesting story because at its heart it's a
Speaker 1: Disney sports story, but at the same time.
Speaker 4: It's so much more than that. So can you talk
Speaker 4: a little bit about how you approached writing that script.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was another script that was in process when
Speaker 3: I came aboard, and I would say probably all of
Speaker 3: the movies that I was brought into that were already
Speaker 3: in process. It was about that emotional pass, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of we're locked into the premise, we're locked into
Speaker 3: some of these signposts of the movie, but here's what's missing.
Speaker 3: And so the very first thing I did was Tom
Speaker 3: Sullivan is a writer actor who is blind and did
Speaker 3: wrestle as a young person. So the producer, and I
Speaker 3: set up a meeting with Tom and spent the afternoon
Speaker 3: with him, and that was so incredibly helpful to just
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want to mess it up. I
Speaker 3: don't want to fake it. And then the other thing
Speaker 3: about doing due diligence is I had a nephew who
Speaker 3: was a wrestler and both high school and college, and
Speaker 3: I called him and I said, I got some technical questions,
Speaker 3: how about this? How about that? Side note? To this day,
Speaker 3: I thought I was doing him a big favorite. I
Speaker 3: wrote a character with his name into it, who was
Speaker 3: one of the ancillary wrestlers, and then when the movie aired,
Speaker 3: he goes, dude, I knew my name was in it.
Speaker 3: So I had all my friends gathered together to watch
Speaker 3: the movie. My character got pinned. I couldn't want And
Speaker 3: to this day, however, many years later, every time we're
Speaker 3: together in person, at some point it hit me in
Speaker 3: the shoulder and go, yeah, that, my god, get bimmed.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: One of the other things we hear sometimes is that
Speaker 1: sometimes the writers are on the set when things are
Speaker 1: being shot.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they aren't you there when most of these films
Speaker 4: are being done.
Speaker 3: I'm a really funny and somewhat you neque writer in
Speaker 3: terms of I absolutely hate being on the set. I
Speaker 3: think it's so intrusive, and then like, there's no way
Speaker 3: not to be in the way when you are a
Speaker 3: writer on set. And so the thing that I did
Speaker 3: with almost all of them except Z three shot in
Speaker 3: South Africa and Z two shot on New Zealand, and
Speaker 3: they weren't about to fly me over for the those.
Speaker 3: But other than that Toronto, Vancouver, La, Salt Lake City,
Speaker 3: what I would do is I would go for the
Speaker 3: week before when we did the table read rehearsals, hearing
Speaker 3: it out loud, seeing if there was any problems, work
Speaker 3: on the script while I was there with the actors,
Speaker 3: with the director, with everybody, and then usually stay for
Speaker 3: the first three or four days of shooting and then
Speaker 3: peace out. If you need me, I'm at home. Yeah.
Speaker 3: All of my writer friends would always say to me,
Speaker 3: at some point, you're going to have to direct because
Speaker 3: they're going to mangle your work, and they're like, no,
Speaker 3: know what, I'm perfectly happy being home with my family.
Speaker 3: Once upon a time, click click click here, you go
Speaker 3: make it and call me when it's done. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: one of the great stories. Does that point is when
Speaker 3: we were doing poof Point that shot in Salt Lake City,
Speaker 3: and Neil Israel, who directed it, was a friend of mine,
Speaker 3: and I did exactly what I just described, you guys.
Speaker 3: I was there for all the rehearsals at table Read,
Speaker 3: and then the first or second day on set they
Speaker 3: were shooting in a diner and the juke box was
Speaker 3: pushed in the corner, and I again doing everything I
Speaker 3: could to be out of the way. So I was
Speaker 3: sitting up on the juke box with my legs crossed,
Speaker 3: just observing, and I thought I was being so subtle.
Speaker 3: And at one point Neil walks over to me and
Speaker 3: he goes, you hate being here, don't you? And I
Speaker 3: go why And he goes, I'm looking at your face
Speaker 3: and You're like, look like you'd rather be anywhere else.
Speaker 3: And I went, well, I'm you know, I'm basically what
Speaker 3: am I here to do?
Speaker 4: What am I here for?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So I love you well.
Speaker 5: Even though you didn't get a ton of time on
Speaker 5: you know, it sounds like you really kind of have
Speaker 5: allowed the directors and the actors to do their work
Speaker 5: after your job, you know, felt good and done. Was
Speaker 5: there any of the young actors that. I mean, you
Speaker 5: have so many that have been in your d coms
Speaker 5: or any of them, ones that when either you saw
Speaker 5: the finished product or the part on set that you
Speaker 5: did be a part of, where you walked away and said, wow,
Speaker 5: that that little actor stood out so much.
Speaker 6: Was there anyone that.
Speaker 3: Realized Actually quite a few. I mean I thought Ryan
Speaker 3: Merriman was an incredible actor always. You know, Raven was
Speaker 3: either twelve or thirteen when we did the first zene
Speaker 3: on and it was very clear where she was going.
Speaker 3: One of the lovely things about the whole social media
Speaker 3: happening was I did get sometime more than a year
Speaker 3: ago now, I got to reach out with a DM
Speaker 3: from Taylor Hanley, who was the star Phantom of the Megaplex. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he was like, hey, buddy, it's so great to
Speaker 3: see on social media how you been. And we had
Speaker 3: been in touch for several years after the movie, but
Speaker 3: then lost touch, and so I got back in touch
Speaker 3: with Taylor, and then one of the things we do is,
Speaker 3: if you remember the movie Mason monologue that Mickey Rooney
Speaker 3: delivers about the magic of the movies and Phantom of
Speaker 3: the Megaplex, Taylor and I did a dramatic reading back
Speaker 3: and forth of that. That's somewhere on the Instagram account.
Speaker 6: Oh that's cool, My gosh, that's so great.
Speaker 4: Cool, that's cool.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that you'd go a week before you'd
Speaker 1: be there for some of the rehearsals and the table read.
Speaker 1: Was there a project that after the table read or
Speaker 1: rehearsals they were like, no, this needs this needs major
Speaker 1: work and you had to go and kind of rewrite
Speaker 1: before they shot.
Speaker 3: No, it was part of the beauty of the machine
Speaker 3: of you know, needing to do a movie a month
Speaker 3: that by the time they green led it, they were
Speaker 3: really committed to this is the movie we're making. And
Speaker 3: then the other thing that was a benefit for me
Speaker 3: as a writer who didn't want to direct, was because
Speaker 3: of that, ninety nine percent of what was on the
Speaker 3: page ended up on the screen. So there really was
Speaker 3: I don't think among the dcoms, I don't think there
Speaker 3: was any of them where were so radically different by
Speaker 3: the time the movie was finished the way they end
Speaker 3: up in feature films often being rewritten daily, and they
Speaker 3: didn't really have the time or the budget to be
Speaker 3: doing that. So I think the biggest thing was when
Speaker 3: they were shooting the second scene on the Zequal, which
Speaker 3: years later I was railing against the chipmunks when they
Speaker 3: had the squeakwall. It was like, I want credit for that.
Speaker 6: I did that?
Speaker 4: I did that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. But when they were shooting the Zequel, I
Speaker 3: got a call and whatever I forget it was, you know,
Speaker 3: like eighteen hour time difference. And I got a call
Speaker 3: very late in the afternoon saying we're about to shoot
Speaker 3: the climactic song tomorrow. We just got it back from
Speaker 3: the Disney songwriters. They don't get what these movies are
Speaker 3: all about. The melody's great, the lyrics are terrible. Would
Speaker 3: you want to take a crack at them? And I said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: I'm a songwriter not but I could do that. And
Speaker 3: they said, okay, the only problem is we needed back
Speaker 3: at about six hours because we have to record it.
Speaker 3: We're doing the playback shooting of it tomorrow afternoon. And
Speaker 3: once again it was like, all right, that's what you need,
Speaker 3: that's what you're yet and bing bing bing banged up
Speaker 3: the Galaxy is ours said it back to them and
Speaker 3: they said, everybody here loves it. We're recording it tonight.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: They shot day and I still get a roy when
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed now, just through the regular flow of
Speaker 1: social media and of your students, have you we've we've
Speaker 1: started to see a very big resurgence in all of
Speaker 1: these d coms.
Speaker 4: Have you started to feel that Have you noticed that
Speaker 4: from the people you're talking to?
Speaker 3: I've noticed it from by residuals. There.
Speaker 4: There you go, that works too.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to I do not say that factiously,
Speaker 3: because there was many years between you know, the Disney
Speaker 3: Channel heyday when they were on every minute, and then
Speaker 3: the lull, and then as soon as Disney Plus happened. Yes,
Speaker 3: I mean before I even knew all the machinations of
Speaker 3: Disney Plus. One of my students called me and he said,
Speaker 3: I'm going through the menu here, dude, and there's like
Speaker 3: fifteen of your movies here, like your whole career is
Speaker 3: here on Disney Plus. Yes, yes, that can be bad.
Speaker 3: And then, like I said, the bump in residuals in
Speaker 3: the last two or three years since that resurgence tells
Speaker 3: me as much as the students tell me.
Speaker 5: Well, what's amazing with Disney Plus is you know, like
Speaker 5: we all know with the channel, was they pumped them
Speaker 5: out and then they put it was Xenon, Xenon, zene On, Zenon.
Speaker 5: You know, they just kept going, so the audience just
Speaker 5: really kept falling in love with those kinds of movies
Speaker 5: even more now with Disney Plus, it has this way
Speaker 5: of bringing in shows that are somewhat like the shows
Speaker 5: that you watch, and they just start, you know, suggesting them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right exactly, and so they start. You get to
Speaker 6: go down memory lane.
Speaker 5: If it's something you grew up with, which is what
Speaker 5: I grew up with, you get to go down memory lane.
Speaker 5: Or for the new generation, they get to find it
Speaker 5: out of nowhere and it feels like, you know, so
Speaker 5: that's so exciting that Disney Plus has done that.
Speaker 1: Because my Disney Plus just suggests, Stu Kreeger, I suggest,
Speaker 1: so before we get off of dcoms, because we have
Speaker 1: other films that you've done that I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: I have to do something that might be a little
Speaker 1: bit mean, and I know that I shouldn't, but I
Speaker 1: have to ask which one's your favorite?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, that's rough.
Speaker 3: I think it is the original Xenon. For a couple
Speaker 3: of different reasons. One is I had so much fun
Speaker 3: inventing the language for that movie, and where it all
Speaker 3: came from was I'm always a character driven writer, And
Speaker 3: when you asked earlier about the process, I always start
Speaker 3: from who's my hero, what do they want? What's in
Speaker 3: the way of the wand what is their world? You know,
Speaker 3: all of those questions for myself, and I usually do
Speaker 3: character bios before I even begin to think about the plot.
Speaker 4: Hmmm.
Speaker 3: And so with Xenon, it was like, you know, I
Speaker 3: want to do some kind of what would be her
Speaker 3: modern slang? What would be the clueless equivalent for Xenon?
Speaker 3: And my two things were, well, she grew up on
Speaker 3: the space station, so she looks out of her window.
Speaker 3: These are space terms, so things like it's a problem
Speaker 3: major or problem minor, was you know, URSA major, ursa minor,
Speaker 3: galaxies and all the rest of it. And she knows technology,
Speaker 3: so all the macro and micro in any of those terms,
Speaker 3: it was all her frame of reference would be technology
Speaker 3: or space. And so you know, it's very funny watching
Speaker 3: how everybody mangles seed this lapitas because online there's like
Speaker 3: seven hundred and twenty seven spellings of it, and I'll
Speaker 3: always respond back and go, see this c e t
Speaker 3: Us as a constellation. That's where that came from. And
Speaker 3: then I just made up a stupid word to rhyme
Speaker 3: with it, so it's like her version of cheeper screepers
Speaker 3: or holy cow?
Speaker 1: Was we so literally we have as we're doing this,
Speaker 1: we have our producers checking in on the side, writing
Speaker 1: things like.
Speaker 4: Seat us lapedius with exclamation over. This meant so much.
Speaker 6: Are you into to techie things?
Speaker 5: Because I noticed that obviously with Xenon, But then you
Speaker 5: also have smart house. Is that something that you that's
Speaker 5: an interest for you as well, and that's where you
Speaker 5: draw from with those kinds of projects.
Speaker 3: Nope, not at all.
Speaker 6: That is so shocking. Are you mean serious?
Speaker 3: I've been one hundred percent serious tech. I am very
Speaker 3: happily and proudly refer to myself as a lud.
Speaker 4: Very too nice me too.
Speaker 3: If I did not have my student running the social media,
Speaker 3: it would not exist. And he runs it to the
Speaker 3: point where he will call me and to go. You know, dude,
Speaker 3: when you did that video that I asked you for,
Speaker 3: You're sitting and you look really kind of just frozen
Speaker 3: and not interest, stand up and walk around while you're talking.
Speaker 3: It's more interesting, and I just do what I'm told
Speaker 3: the tech side of things. What I did was xenon Is.
Speaker 3: I went to the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.
Speaker 4: Oh cool, and I.
Speaker 3: Got to meet the beautiful thing with all of those movies,
Speaker 3: was you call and say I'm working on a movie
Speaker 3: for Disney. Can I speak to someone? You get pretty
Speaker 3: much you know, the access you want. And so I
Speaker 3: went to JPL and I spent two days with the
Speaker 3: guys and just like, what kind of future tech are
Speaker 3: you working on? What kind of things could I extrapolate?
Speaker 3: And I would say now that I've probably done it
Speaker 3: at least somewhere around eight or ten interviews with either
Speaker 3: tech podcasts or like Wired magazine has reached out to me.
Speaker 3: I've done all these interviews and they're like, you know, dude,
Speaker 3: you predicted the future and Zeno and they have I
Speaker 3: pad like you know all this, and it's like, well,
Speaker 3: I really didn't, because again, kind of like the language
Speaker 3: my extrapolation was, computers started filling up an entire room,
Speaker 3: then they went to desktops, then they got smaller. Soon
Speaker 3: they'll be portable. You know, it didn't feel like you're
Speaker 3: a genius. What hasn't jobs reached out, it was just,
Speaker 3: you know, that's the next just.
Speaker 4: The credits, take the genius credit. Just take that's what
Speaker 4: you gotta do.
Speaker 5: With the With smart House, it's a high and having
Speaker 5: computer assistant, it's going a wire. Do you have a
Speaker 5: feeling that that's gonna happen to society? Do you do
Speaker 5: you worry for us? Because it would be something something
Speaker 5: along the lines that you've predicted in Smart House?
Speaker 3: Definitely, that's part of what that goes hand in hand
Speaker 3: with the lot. I think it's like, why don't you
Speaker 3: people understand these robots are gonna kill us all? What's
Speaker 3: the matter with you?
Speaker 1: It's good they're gonna be self aware at some point people,
Speaker 1: is no one seen a movie we come on?
Speaker 3: Exactly? And one of my favorite things since I've been
Speaker 3: on social media One day, Katie Sigal reached out and
Speaker 3: she said, I don't understand where my royalties are. I
Speaker 3: was the original theory she was. She totally was Was.
Speaker 1: There ever a project that you pitched for a d
Speaker 1: com that didn't get made that you wish had?
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of late in the run, I had a
Speaker 3: project that I took directly to Raven and she was
Speaker 3: at a point in her career where she was wanting
Speaker 3: to do more producing and wanting to more focus on
Speaker 3: her music for a while. It was before the Raven reboot,
Speaker 3: and it was a really fun caper thing that she
Speaker 3: was going to executive produce, write music for, and do
Speaker 3: a cameo in, but not starting. It was for a younger,
Speaker 3: like twelve year old actor when she was about eighteen
Speaker 3: or nineteen, and it was another one of those days
Speaker 3: where she and I went together to the network. We
Speaker 3: pitched it to the executives. They bought it in the room.
Speaker 3: We did two drafts, and then one day they just
Speaker 3: called and said, we've changed our mind and we're not
Speaker 3: making the movie.
Speaker 4: Oh no.
Speaker 3: And we never got any explanation. We never got any
Speaker 3: not like, you know, take one more pass it. It
Speaker 3: just boomed and that one didn't happen. That was too bad,
Speaker 3: because it was a really fun caper movie. It was
Speaker 3: a little bit more They were starting to take a
Speaker 3: little bit more risks in terms of, you know, they
Speaker 3: were so romance a verse to begin with. They were
Speaker 3: so chased in this kind of where you could push
Speaker 3: the stories, and this had a little bit more of
Speaker 3: an edge to it. That I was excited about, and
Speaker 3: then they just went never mind.
Speaker 4: Jeez.
Speaker 1: Okay, So before we came on, one of our producers
Speaker 1: popped on and said, do me a favor and please
Speaker 1: tell mister Kreeger that I'm still scarred from the Land Before.
Speaker 7: Time and I we talked a little bit about this
Speaker 7: tho this film because I mean produced by Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 7: Kathleen Kennedy, George Lucas, and Frank Marshall.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is there is no aer team than this,
Speaker 1: a team of filmmakers. How did this project come about?
Speaker 1: How did you sign on? And how did you scar
Speaker 1: an entire generation?
Speaker 3: It was my pleasure, But I also I would get
Speaker 3: back to the best part of the story because it's
Speaker 3: a good part of the story that I also got
Speaker 3: to relate to the students on Tuesday. But I was
Speaker 3: one of the writers and story editors on Amazing Stories,
Speaker 3: which was Spielberg's first four A into television.
Speaker 4: Awesome that came.
Speaker 3: About in a way that I'm going to take a
Speaker 3: moment to talk about because it's really really instructive to
Speaker 3: aspiring writers out there, which is a lot of people
Speaker 3: do not know that writers get typecast as quickly, as
Speaker 3: actors do. And so the first couple of things that
Speaker 3: I had done were kind of young coming of age
Speaker 3: stories of young people who filled with anxiety. And I
Speaker 3: had two or three low budget movies made in that genre,
Speaker 3: and that was the kind of stuff I was being offered.
Speaker 3: And so it was like, I'm going to take three
Speaker 3: months off. I'm going to write a very naked, autobiographical,
Speaker 3: more adult script that I want to kind of represent
Speaker 3: who I think I am as a writer. And I
Speaker 3: wrote a very personal family comedy about three generations of
Speaker 3: actually four generations of a family coming together for the
Speaker 3: grandparents sixtieth anniversary, and all the family secrets, all the
Speaker 3: stuff that have been tamped down for years, blows up
Speaker 3: in the middle of this party. At the time, the
Speaker 3: equivalent of Franklin Leonard's Blacklist in that day was American
Speaker 3: Film Magazine would do the ten best done produced scripts
Speaker 3: in Hollywood. And my script was called Kinfolk, and it
Speaker 3: ended up on that list. Oh and first it got
Speaker 3: to Josh Brandon John Folsey, who became the executive producers
Speaker 3: of Amazing Stories. They read it and loved it. They
Speaker 3: gave it to Steven to read. He really liked it,
Speaker 3: and they ended up hiring me to write one episode
Speaker 3: of Amazing Stories. I wrote that, I got a letter
Speaker 3: that's still framed on my office wall from Steven Spielberg
Speaker 3: saying you took my because it kind of the reason
Speaker 3: Amazing Stories existed was because he had all these ideas
Speaker 3: for things that he realized weren't quite feature film ideas
Speaker 3: but could be more anthology, short story kind of films.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of the episodes were just literally
Speaker 3: a scribbled page of Steven with an idea on it,
Speaker 3: and then take this idea and make it an episode.
Speaker 3: And the letter I have from him, he said, you
Speaker 3: took my little idea and made it one of my
Speaker 3: favorite episodes of the season. Thank you very much, and
Speaker 3: that's cool, signed Steven Spielberg. And so then out of
Speaker 3: that he hired me to do two more episodes, and
Speaker 3: then for season two, I was part of a panel
Speaker 3: of story editors and we're in the middle of doing
Speaker 3: that and as head of development, Deborah Newmeyer took me
Speaker 3: to lunch since she said, Stephen and I were talking
Speaker 3: the other day and we both feel like you've become
Speaker 3: a better writer since you become a dad Steven and
Speaker 3: George have for a long time have this idea for
Speaker 3: an animated dinosaur movie they want to do. They had
Speaker 3: another team of writers on it, weren't happy with what
Speaker 3: they did. Do you want to write this movie? And
Speaker 3: what I said to my students on Tuesday is when
Speaker 3: somebody says, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas want you to
Speaker 3: write this movie, you say yes, yes, yes, don't say
Speaker 3: how much will I be paid? When is it due?
Speaker 3: You say yes, yeah, and you figure everything out after that.
Speaker 3: But that's what I did, and I said to them,
Speaker 3: if you're not happy with the existing script, I'd rather
Speaker 3: hear what you are happy with what it is you're
Speaker 3: attached to what it is you want to do, and
Speaker 3: not have to read the script and have pieces of
Speaker 3: it stuck in my head that you don't, you know,
Speaker 3: are drawn to. So they ultimately gave me a folder
Speaker 3: filled with scraps of paper that said, like dinosaurs walked
Speaker 3: by verning volcano, you know, just kind of sket and
Speaker 3: there was already some preliminary character sketches that were done.
Speaker 3: Littlefoot's name at the time was Thunderfoot. And then they
Speaker 3: found out there was a series of kids books in
Speaker 3: the UK with a dinosaur named Thunderfoot. Petrie's name was
Speaker 3: originally Terry the pterodactyl, but that was pee Wee's playhouse,
Speaker 3: as I had to tell them, and Dan Donald and
Speaker 3: Dan Petrie soon Senior were all friends of mine, so
Speaker 3: I said, how about we name him Petrie. So I
Speaker 3: have been told the Petries claim him more than they
Speaker 3: even claimed in their own films, which I really love.
Speaker 3: Let's go, so that's how that happened. And then to
Speaker 3: your question to begin it all, Uh, it's always my
Speaker 3: pleasure to be very very happy to throw Stephen under
Speaker 3: the bus because he was the one that first brought
Speaker 3: up the idea of Littlefoot's mom died, and his justification
Speaker 3: for it was I was fully traumatized by Bambi's mother
Speaker 3: dying when I was a kid's to do it to
Speaker 3: a new general.
Speaker 1: Like the credits are still rolling when Baby's mom days,
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: The beautiful part of my legacy has been that you
Speaker 3: know that movie came out in nineteen eighty eight. When
Speaker 3: my kids were in elementary and middle school, I would
Speaker 3: often do career day and career day I would have
Speaker 3: the DVDs or BHS tapes on the table and some
Speaker 3: original artwork from Land Before Time to show the kids,
Speaker 3: and the artist gave me a couple of cells from
Speaker 3: the movie that I would take into my whole dog
Speaker 3: and Pony show, and somebody's mother would always come. And yet,
Speaker 3: so you're the reason my kids. And in those days
Speaker 3: I was still prolific and active enough that I didn't
Speaker 3: throw Stephen under the bus. In those days, I'd go, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was me.
Speaker 4: Now I'm perfectly happy. Okay we answered that question.
Speaker 6: It's even worse because he did it on purpose. I
Speaker 6: can't get over that.
Speaker 5: Tell me you stay on set for like a couple
Speaker 5: days and that you've enjoyed it a little bit more.
Speaker 6: We're in the Army Now with Pollie Shore. Tell me
Speaker 6: that he's the best thing in the world.
Speaker 5: And it's so funny on an off camera because I
Speaker 5: have him on this just giant pedical.
Speaker 6: I love him in his movies. I was so excited
Speaker 6: to hear that you are a part of in the
Speaker 6: Army Now.
Speaker 3: I mean, so, here's how small the world is. Who
Speaker 3: is the director of In the Army Now, Dann Petrie Junior.
Speaker 7: Oh jeez, okay, wow, right, Well that's La that's for
Speaker 7: sure the industry.
Speaker 3: So Petrick is back. The thing that was really really
Speaker 3: impressive about Poullie because how I got involved in that movie.
Speaker 3: I was working on a project at Disney at the
Speaker 3: time on the feature side of things that was a
Speaker 3: romantic comedy that Goldie Hawn was going to produce and
Speaker 3: star in. So she had an overall deal with them,
Speaker 3: a five picture deal. The beauty of show business is
Speaker 3: what I'm saying about your number of success as long
Speaker 3: as you're in it, multimillion dollar five picture deal. They
Speaker 3: never made any of the movies that she took to them,
Speaker 3: not what she got to collect her paycheck she needs.
Speaker 3: Never made one of those movies. But the project we
Speaker 3: did for them, hand to god people, we did twenty
Speaker 3: one drafts of before they finally said, yeah, not so much.
Speaker 3: We're not making your mom. But in the middle of it,
Speaker 3: they came to me and they said, we have this
Speaker 3: Polly Shore movie that's fairly well down the tracks, but
Speaker 3: again not all the way there in terms of the script.
Speaker 3: We want to lot Dan Petrie. I don't even think
Speaker 3: Dan was attached to direct yet at that point, but
Speaker 3: Dan was a friend of mine and then a third friend,
Speaker 3: Ken Kaufman, and they said, we want to take you
Speaker 3: Dan and Kenn and basically lock you in her room
Speaker 3: for two weeks and have you finished this script because
Speaker 3: we have a firm production day because Polly has other
Speaker 3: commitments after that that we got to get him in
Speaker 3: and out for this date. So I kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, is this the point in my life where
Speaker 3: I want to do a poll Shore movie? Dad? And
Speaker 3: then they were like, do you want your Godi Han
Speaker 3: project made?
Speaker 6: Rely?
Speaker 3: I want to work on this and you know, so
Speaker 3: it was like, you know, I love kenon Dan and
Speaker 3: I was like, we'll have fun. It's fine, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So we, you know, began with a couple of meetings
Speaker 3: with Paulie and the thing that was so impressive was
Speaker 3: he was so clean and clear on who that character
Speaker 3: was and what it was about that character that his
Speaker 3: audience loved. And so before we would go to writing
Speaker 3: script pages, we would just pitch them, how about this idea,
Speaker 3: how about this turn? What if the character did this?
Speaker 3: So the plot took that twist, and he would say,
Speaker 3: my audience isn't going to care about that? And another
Speaker 3: movie that would probably work to spend there at one
Speaker 3: point it was a love story angle that we were introducing,
Speaker 3: and you go, they don't want to see me in
Speaker 3: a love story. That's not what my audience cares about.
Speaker 3: They want the weasel, they want mister if they want
Speaker 3: all of those things. And he was right, you know,
Speaker 3: and ultimately the movie succeeded in large part because he
Speaker 3: was so good at steering us toward this is what
Speaker 3: my audience expects and wants and needs to have in
Speaker 3: the movie to make it work. And at some point
Speaker 3: in that process they approached Dan about directing. So the
Speaker 3: answer to your question was I was around quite a
Speaker 3: bit for that because they shot locally and it was
Speaker 3: the kind of thing where Dan would go, hey, we're
Speaker 3: doing this scene today. It might be fun for you
Speaker 3: to come out and watch and see what we're up to.
Speaker 3: And so the other thing to learn is find out
Speaker 3: what the lunch break is time your visit to either right.
Speaker 6: Before get so good, catering nice.
Speaker 4: That's brilliant, smart way to do it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So, you've mentioned that you're a professor, have been since
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. Is there one you prefer? Do
Speaker 1: you prefer screenwriting? Do you prefer teaching? Is it a
Speaker 1: combination of the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Part of the reason for the last several years,
Speaker 3: I've been writing fiction. Like I said, the book that
Speaker 3: came out in May called Raft, the story of a
Speaker 3: children's book author who has a midlife crisis and wakes
Speaker 3: up and he's a penguin.
Speaker 4: Well that sounds awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the way I pitched it to the publisher, as
Speaker 3: I said, some guys leave their wives for a younger woman,
Speaker 3: some buy a sports car. Clark Whittaker turned into a penguin,
Speaker 3: happens to deal with it. So it's the common adventure
Speaker 3: of what happens to the family when dad becomes a
Speaker 3: penguin and how do we undo whatever happened. So anyway,
Speaker 3: part of the reason I turned to novel writing was
Speaker 3: the first year and a half that I was at
Speaker 3: UC Riverside. I was also the head writer and story
Speaker 3: editor on Toot and Puddle for Nickelodeon, and suddenly I
Speaker 3: was working ninety five hours a week. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I wrote nine episodes. I story edited the rest of them.
Speaker 3: I was responsible for coordinating the writing staff, taking the
Speaker 3: notes from the studio and filter room back to the writers.
Speaker 3: Doing all that while teaching full time and I went, yeah,
Speaker 3: not really what I'm inspiring to do at this point
Speaker 3: in my life. And so again I believe in the
Speaker 3: gods intervening. And I was at Paradigm at the time,
Speaker 3: and my agent called and he said, I'm jumping out
Speaker 3: of agenting to become a manager. Do you want me
Speaker 3: to introduce you to some other agents here? And I said, no,
Speaker 3: that's the universe. I'm good, I'm out, you know, very
Speaker 3: happy with the career I have, very happy with the
Speaker 3: resume I have. I'm going to focus on academia now,
Speaker 3: but I'm a writer. I will always need to write.
Speaker 3: And with the books, it really it's done. When it's
Speaker 3: done is as long as it is. The first novel
Speaker 3: was like a historical alternate fiction type of novel, and
Speaker 3: so that was almost six years of research before I
Speaker 3: even started writing, and then you know, another two years
Speaker 3: before the book came out. And then with raft it
Speaker 3: was about a two and a half year process to
Speaker 3: get that out.
Speaker 4: What was the first one called? What was the first
Speaker 4: one called the historical fiction?
Speaker 3: That one cigarette?
Speaker 4: Okay, and what's that? What's that one about?
Speaker 3: So what the jumping off point is, it's four families
Speaker 3: and four different parts of the world that you don't
Speaker 3: know what their common thread is until the very very
Speaker 3: last chapter when they finally come together. But the jumping
Speaker 3: off point, there's a guy in nineteen sixty three in
Speaker 3: Dallas trying to quit smoking, and he works at the
Speaker 3: Texas Book Depository and he goes up to the fourth
Speaker 3: floor to have his last cigarette. I'm gonna done today,
Speaker 3: cold turkey after this cigarette, and walks into the loft
Speaker 3: just in time to see Oswald pick up the rifle,
Speaker 3: tackles into the ground, knocks them out of the way.
Speaker 3: JFK doesn't die, and then it's the ripple of what happened? Cool?
Speaker 4: Okay, Wow, that's my Those are like my kind of stories.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna have to go check that out absolutely.
Speaker 3: Because I'm very proud of it and pleased with it.
Speaker 3: But like I said, it's the four different families that
Speaker 3: you follow each of them through the decades and then
Speaker 3: finally they all dovetail and an event on the last.
Speaker 6: Chapter that's very wow.
Speaker 1: Well I could talk to you with seriously, we could
Speaker 1: this could just be the podcast.
Speaker 4: We could just do this every week and just talk
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 1: The whole time. This has been so amazing. Thank you
Speaker 1: for spending the time with us to take a.
Speaker 3: Moment to say. Both of my children are huge Cheetah
Speaker 3: Girl and boy Be's World fans, so they are so
Speaker 3: tickled that we're doing this. Oh oh right, wow, ooh
Speaker 3: you get to do what.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm so.
Speaker 5: Happy to hear that you said you're at UC Riverside.
Speaker 5: Are you still living in LA and doing that drive?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What I do and have done since two thousand
Speaker 3: and six is I am able to set my schedule.
Speaker 3: So usually, like this quarter, I teach on Tuesdays and Wednesdays,
Speaker 3: but I always go there when traffick's coming this way. Okay,
Speaker 3: I spend Tuesday night in Riverside. I teach Wednesday morning,
Speaker 3: I leave after lunch and I'm home before traffic coming
Speaker 3: the other way. There you go, smart, and yeah, so
Speaker 3: I've got it wired.
Speaker 5: I live in Orange County, so I'm in the middle.
Speaker 5: So I know the traffic going that way could be madness,
Speaker 5: and I know the traffic going towards LA could be madness.
Speaker 5: I'm like, that would be oh mad.
Speaker 1: Is there any chance we could we could ask you
Speaker 1: to come back and you know, talk another movie with us,
Speaker 1: But we haven't gotten a smart house yet. Xenon's next.
Speaker 1: So maybe if we when we do another one of
Speaker 1: your films, maybe you could come back and we could.
Speaker 4: Talk a little more. Would that be possible? Oh heck yeah, ah,
Speaker 4: so thank you so much.
Speaker 3: One of the things I said in class on Tuesday
Speaker 3: is the beautiful thing about being at this stage of
Speaker 3: both my life and career is I'll have guests to
Speaker 3: come to my filmmaker's life classes. Go I'm going to
Speaker 3: tell you about this incident, but I really am not
Speaker 3: comfortable naming names, and I'm like, I'll name names like, yeah,
Speaker 3: all the bodies are buried in all the tea, because
Speaker 3: what have I got to lose at this point?
Speaker 1: So I think that's great. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Everybody, go pick up both those books
Speaker 1: because I want to. I'm going to be reading both
Speaker 1: of those so I can't wait.
Speaker 3: I think you will enjoy. I feel very comfortable.
Speaker 1: Thank you for writing so many people's childhoods, and thank
Speaker 1: you for scarring so many people with land before time.
Speaker 3: It's true my pleasure, but.
Speaker 6: It's still one of my favorite.
Speaker 4: Course.
Speaker 6: Of course, I do have a three year old.
Speaker 5: She's not ready for that, yet she will not be
Speaker 5: watching that any time.
Speaker 3: Timing is every thing. One of the first insane things
Speaker 3: that happened when we joined the social media world was
Speaker 3: there was a video about Sarah. You know, people all
Speaker 3: like I said, the suggests all came from my assistant
Speaker 3: reading comments and saying somebody asked this question, respond directly
Speaker 3: to that, or somebody asked that question. And there was
Speaker 3: this whole thread of people going, how come the dinosaurs
Speaker 3: were littlefoot and Spike and Sarah had a human name,
Speaker 3: and so I did this really kind of snarky it
Speaker 3: was ce r A because she's a try Sarah dats
Speaker 3: And in two days that video had two point eight
Speaker 3: million views, and the common thread was either, well, duh,
Speaker 3: I knew that, or I had close captions so I
Speaker 3: knew that, or dude, you just blew my mind. It
Speaker 3: was it was either or.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad your fans get to reach out to you,
Speaker 1: because you've got tons of them out there and the
Speaker 1: stories are great. I can't wait we were bringing you back.
Speaker 1: So we'll just we'll have to figure out at the
Speaker 1: time because there's too much to talk about.
Speaker 3: I really really appreciate you guys, and appreciate the research
Speaker 3: and the thoughtful questions, and it was a ton of fun.
Speaker 4: Oh thank you so much for joining us. We'll see
Speaker 4: you next time.
Speaker 3: Are making right?
Speaker 1: I I could do that all day. I could do
Speaker 1: ten episodes of that right in a row, just hearing
Speaker 1: all the cool stories.
Speaker 5: I love it too, because I think the more he
Speaker 5: like would get to know us, it'd be feeling a
Speaker 5: little bit more like Disney after Dark, Like I think
Speaker 5: you can give us some real good tea, you know,
Speaker 5: like it would be so awesome to know some.
Speaker 6: Of the fun, fun fun times and things like that.
Speaker 5: And I love that he has reasons to like his
Speaker 5: inside of he doesn't like to be on set. He
Speaker 5: feels like it's intrusive to the actors. That that's so
Speaker 5: cool because sometimes it's totally different. You know, you have
Speaker 5: a writer that's it right over your shoulder if she
Speaker 5: was like while you're while you're filming, And he.
Speaker 1: Just seems amazing to hear the different processes that the
Speaker 1: writers have, Like, you know, he does the character work
Speaker 1: before even coming up with the story, So he's doing
Speaker 1: character bios before even figuring out the story. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to tell him that I hadn't seen most of
Speaker 1: the films yet. I kept so like Xenon, Smart House,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to watch these.
Speaker 4: I'm very excited.
Speaker 5: Well, Xenon, I've watched smart House, I watch, but I
Speaker 5: don't remember a lot of it, so I'm excited to
Speaker 5: see that again.
Speaker 6: But he was just awesome.
Speaker 5: It totally would have expected him to be this like
Speaker 5: it total, you know, I.
Speaker 6: Don't know, He's like, absolutely not. That is not me anyway.
Speaker 6: He just was so much fun.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you again everybody for joining us for this
Speaker 1: park Opper episode with the amazing Stu Krieger and those stories.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to hear more of them.
Speaker 1: We will have him back because he's just a font
Speaker 1: of knowledge.
Speaker 4: I cannot wait to hear more. And thank you for
Speaker 4: joining us.
Speaker 1: And don't forget our next movie is Xenon zhow Xenon
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century?
Speaker 6: Wait for you to know what that means.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see the entire thing. So thank
Speaker 1: you again for joining us, and join us next time. Bye, everybody,