1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,400
Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio.

2
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

3
00:00:12,039 --> 00:00:15,080
Speaker 1: that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating

4
00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:18,720
Speaker 1: facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows

5
00:00:18,760 --> 00:00:22,040
Speaker 1: and more. We are your too Scholastic book Fair staffers

6
00:00:22,040 --> 00:00:26,000
Speaker 1: of Spooky Season. I'm Alex Heigel, I love you so

7
00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:30,000
Speaker 1: much right now, and I'm Jordan run Talk and Jordan's

8
00:00:30,280 --> 00:00:33,440
Speaker 1: Today we are notching uh t m I first by

9
00:00:33,479 --> 00:00:38,040
Speaker 1: covering our very first book. Wow, that's that's our first book.

10
00:00:38,200 --> 00:00:39,919
Speaker 1: That's nuts, although I can't think of a better way

11
00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:44,959
Speaker 1: to kick it off. Who is this? Or Lolita um this?

12
00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:51,800
Speaker 1: Or Warren Peace this or Myra Breckinridge Well book series

13
00:00:51,800 --> 00:00:54,840
Speaker 1: and TV show and movie. No, we're not talking about

14
00:00:54,920 --> 00:00:58,960
Speaker 1: Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. We're talking about Mother Truck

15
00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:04,600
Speaker 1: and goose Bumps, Jordan's What's Your Beef with the Bumps?

16
00:01:04,959 --> 00:01:08,600
Speaker 1: O beef, no beef, nothing but love. I I spent

17
00:01:08,720 --> 00:01:11,720
Speaker 1: all my spare pocket money as a kid on these books.

18
00:01:11,760 --> 00:01:15,280
Speaker 1: I literally used to measure chores in terms of how

19
00:01:15,319 --> 00:01:17,319
Speaker 1: close it would get me to obtaining a new goose

20
00:01:17,360 --> 00:01:19,840
Speaker 1: Bumps book with my allowance. I was never in a

21
00:01:19,840 --> 00:01:22,000
Speaker 1: Harry Potter was never an animals. It's never in the

22
00:01:22,040 --> 00:01:24,000
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings or anything like that. All about

23
00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:27,440
Speaker 1: goose Bumps. Not even to choose your own adventure versions

24
00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:30,840
Speaker 1: of Goosebumps. No, I wanted straight classic, slappy from another

25
00:01:30,920 --> 00:01:34,640
Speaker 1: living dummy. One of the most perfect literary villains. Say

26
00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:37,280
Speaker 1: Cheese and Die, and it's equally good sequels, say Cheese

27
00:01:37,319 --> 00:01:40,679
Speaker 1: and Die again. Brilliant. Collecting these it was like collecting

28
00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:43,360
Speaker 1: trading cards or something. They just were so colorful and

29
00:01:43,400 --> 00:01:46,280
Speaker 1: the graphics were so evocative, you know, I mean, I

30
00:01:46,360 --> 00:01:49,120
Speaker 1: hear all these stories about you know, our parents generation

31
00:01:49,240 --> 00:01:52,240
Speaker 1: would buy Sargeant Pepper the album and go home on

32
00:01:52,320 --> 00:01:55,280
Speaker 1: the bus and read the album cover and try to

33
00:01:55,400 --> 00:01:57,600
Speaker 1: study it for clues and stuff, because it was just

34
00:01:57,840 --> 00:01:59,840
Speaker 1: there was so much happening in that cover. That's what

35
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:01,840
Speaker 1: I used to do on the ride home from the

36
00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:04,720
Speaker 1: bookstore with the Goosebumps books. Like the covers, there was

37
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:07,600
Speaker 1: just so much happening there. I loved it so much.

38
00:02:08,120 --> 00:02:10,200
Speaker 1: The only downside for me it was really this sort

39
00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:13,919
Speaker 1: of vague sense of day after Christmas depression that I

40
00:02:13,960 --> 00:02:17,079
Speaker 1: would feel after finishing one of the books. What was it,

41
00:02:17,160 --> 00:02:19,519
Speaker 1: something like sixty two books in the original series. I

42
00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:22,440
Speaker 1: must have had at least fifty at very least. They

43
00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:24,679
Speaker 1: gave me so much joy. I loved them. I think

44
00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:27,440
Speaker 1: I was somewhere in there I wrote earlier three dozen,

45
00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:30,160
Speaker 1: but now I can't remember if I because I don't

46
00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:32,160
Speaker 1: think you could always get them in order, so I

47
00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:34,040
Speaker 1: think I was kind of catch just catch can and

48
00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:36,880
Speaker 1: hopped around like, oh yeah, but also you don't you

49
00:02:36,919 --> 00:02:39,200
Speaker 1: don't have to read them. You're not missing anything if

50
00:02:39,240 --> 00:02:41,880
Speaker 1: you're like reading them out of order. They weren't connected.

51
00:02:42,200 --> 00:02:44,160
Speaker 1: There were ones that didn't really interest me, Like I

52
00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:46,400
Speaker 1: was never really into the animal ones. I was more

53
00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:49,679
Speaker 1: into the weird creepy like there was one about like

54
00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:52,239
Speaker 1: a magic set with like a rabbit on the cover,

55
00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:55,600
Speaker 1: I remember, and the dummy ones, and I was like

56
00:02:55,840 --> 00:02:58,720
Speaker 1: the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena, Like all these just kind

57
00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:02,560
Speaker 1: of weird, like off kilter stories as supposed to, like

58
00:03:02,760 --> 00:03:06,480
Speaker 1: things with ooze and guts and creepy animals and stuff

59
00:03:06,480 --> 00:03:08,520
Speaker 1: that wasn't really my thing. I think my favorite stay

60
00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:11,720
Speaker 1: Out of the Basement, because it has that iconic cover

61
00:03:11,919 --> 00:03:14,840
Speaker 1: of hand reaching the plant, monster hand reaching out of

62
00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:18,040
Speaker 1: the basement. Haunted mask is also really really good one

63
00:03:18,240 --> 00:03:23,000
Speaker 1: that all time book cover stolen from Halloween three, the

64
00:03:23,080 --> 00:03:27,400
Speaker 1: movie Everything's People. Just John Carpenter Man. Everyone knows him

65
00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:32,760
Speaker 1: in every episode well, from the winding road that R. L.

66
00:03:32,840 --> 00:03:36,120
Speaker 1: Stein took to become a fabulously wealthy children's horror magnate,

67
00:03:36,720 --> 00:03:39,680
Speaker 1: to the planned feature film adaptation of the series debut

68
00:03:40,280 --> 00:03:43,920
Speaker 1: by Horror Film Royalty, to Stein's relationship with his fellow

69
00:03:43,960 --> 00:03:48,120
Speaker 1: horror icon Stephen King. Here's everything you didn't know about

70
00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:58,480
Speaker 1: goose Bumps. Robert Lewis stein Vinson. That's not his name.

71
00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:01,000
Speaker 1: His real name is Robert Lawrence. Nine was born on

72
00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:05,960
Speaker 1: October in Columbus, Ohio, and started writing short stories and

73
00:04:06,120 --> 00:04:08,600
Speaker 1: jokes at the age of nine on a typewriter he

74
00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:11,400
Speaker 1: found in the attic of his home. He says this

75
00:04:11,640 --> 00:04:14,480
Speaker 1: constantly in interviews. I never wanted to be scary. I

76
00:04:14,640 --> 00:04:17,440
Speaker 1: only wanted to be funny, and then he would shortly

77
00:04:17,480 --> 00:04:20,559
Speaker 1: after get it nicer typewriter for his bar Mitzvah present.

78
00:04:20,920 --> 00:04:23,280
Speaker 1: Finding an old typewriter in your attic sounds like the

79
00:04:23,320 --> 00:04:26,440
Speaker 1: start of one of his books. Yeah, exactly. Uh, my

80
00:04:26,600 --> 00:04:29,920
Speaker 1: family was very poor, he told The Guardian. There were

81
00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:32,120
Speaker 1: five of us. We lived in this tiny little house

82
00:04:32,160 --> 00:04:34,800
Speaker 1: on the edge of a very wealthy suburban community in Ohio,

83
00:04:35,200 --> 00:04:37,920
Speaker 1: three doors from the railroad tracks. Again, it sounds like

84
00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:39,400
Speaker 1: a plot from one of his books. I love that.

85
00:04:40,360 --> 00:04:42,360
Speaker 1: I can't tell if he's putting this next interviewer on,

86
00:04:42,520 --> 00:04:45,680
Speaker 1: but in an undated interview with The Strand magazine, he

87
00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:48,480
Speaker 1: says he's never learned how to type properly. He said,

88
00:04:48,520 --> 00:04:50,800
Speaker 1: I'm totally left handed, and I just started typing with

89
00:04:50,880 --> 00:04:54,680
Speaker 1: my pointer finger, nothing else, just one finger, not even two.

90
00:04:54,960 --> 00:04:57,239
Speaker 1: And I've now written three d books on this finger.

91
00:04:57,640 --> 00:05:00,880
Speaker 1: My typing finger is totally bent, totally curved from all

92
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:03,120
Speaker 1: these books. I don't know my dad types in a

93
00:05:03,240 --> 00:05:04,840
Speaker 1: similar way, like I know a lot of people who

94
00:05:04,839 --> 00:05:07,640
Speaker 1: can do the hunt and peck method. So yeah, I

95
00:05:07,680 --> 00:05:10,680
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe it's true anyway. He says, I never

96
00:05:10,760 --> 00:05:13,279
Speaker 1: planned to be scary. I always just wanted to be funny,

97
00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:16,120
Speaker 1: told the Huffington Post and many many other people. It's

98
00:05:16,200 --> 00:05:19,000
Speaker 1: just like his stock SoundBite answer. He said, I'd be

99
00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:21,240
Speaker 1: typing up these funny stories but I don't know why,

100
00:05:21,680 --> 00:05:23,800
Speaker 1: and my mother would be outside my door and she'd say,

101
00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:27,000
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? Go outside? And play. Stein also

102
00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:30,000
Speaker 1: drew inspiration, as a lot of kids from his generation did,

103
00:05:30,160 --> 00:05:33,520
Speaker 1: from the groundbreaking tales of the Crypt comic series, as

104
00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:35,640
Speaker 1: well as movies and the Twilight Zone. A lot of

105
00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:38,200
Speaker 1: the Goosebumps titles are these fifties horror movies my brother

106
00:05:38,320 --> 00:05:41,120
Speaker 1: and I saw every week. He told up post it

107
00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:43,640
Speaker 1: Came from Beneath the Sea, became a goose Bumps book

108
00:05:43,640 --> 00:05:46,280
Speaker 1: called it Came from Beneath the Scene. That kind of thing.

109
00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:49,960
Speaker 1: In particular, he started in movie called Dead of Night

110
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:52,720
Speaker 1: where event Triuliquist has a dummy that comes to life,

111
00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:56,599
Speaker 1: as being particularly formative on his signature character Slappy, as

112
00:05:56,680 --> 00:05:59,000
Speaker 1: well as a chapter in the original Pinocchio where Pinocchio

113
00:05:59,080 --> 00:06:01,360
Speaker 1: falls asleep with his feed on the stove and burns

114
00:06:01,440 --> 00:06:05,880
Speaker 1: them off. I don't remember that that book is wild, Yeah,

115
00:06:05,960 --> 00:06:09,560
Speaker 1: the original Italian book. Yeah, I had it as a kid.

116
00:06:10,320 --> 00:06:13,920
Speaker 1: That's really upsetting cool. I think he likes squashes, Jimminy

117
00:06:13,960 --> 00:06:17,760
Speaker 1: cricket or something like. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Um, like

118
00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:21,240
Speaker 1: everyone his age, he loved Twilight Zone, calling Rod Serling

119
00:06:21,320 --> 00:06:24,400
Speaker 1: a hero of mine. His tastes are really really funny.

120
00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:26,560
Speaker 1: We'll talk about Ray Bradberry in a second um. He

121
00:06:26,680 --> 00:06:29,920
Speaker 1: loved Kurt Vonneguett. He has also called P. G. Wodehouse

122
00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:34,760
Speaker 1: his hero of the Jeeves and Booster books. Yes, very much.

123
00:06:35,279 --> 00:06:39,960
Speaker 1: Although he's funny, like, he doesn't that sort of English sardonic,

124
00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:45,239
Speaker 1: almost Hitchcock like sense of humor. I'm surprised skills insult

125
00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:49,480
Speaker 1: comics for like slappy yeah, but I mean, I don't know.

126
00:06:49,520 --> 00:06:52,440
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of like all the the Albert Hitchcock presents stuff,

127
00:06:52,440 --> 00:06:55,160
Speaker 1: which I don't think he's really mentioned much of, but

128
00:06:55,360 --> 00:06:58,440
Speaker 1: that seems to have that that wary like if you

129
00:06:58,480 --> 00:07:00,240
Speaker 1: look at interviews with him, he has that kind of

130
00:07:00,600 --> 00:07:02,680
Speaker 1: the way Hitchcock just kind of has this like wary

131
00:07:02,839 --> 00:07:06,080
Speaker 1: bemuse the look in his face as like he turns

132
00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:08,640
Speaker 1: and there's like an axe in his head or something like. Yeah,

133
00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:11,680
Speaker 1: he is that really dark, dry sense of humor in

134
00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:14,360
Speaker 1: interviews and when you see him on camera that, um

135
00:07:14,760 --> 00:07:16,920
Speaker 1: he's very English. I feel like, so I can actually

136
00:07:16,920 --> 00:07:20,280
Speaker 1: see him being a pig Woodhouse fan. Um Man. Those

137
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:26,360
Speaker 1: dummies really traumatized our parents generation. Like my mother forbade

138
00:07:26,440 --> 00:07:28,760
Speaker 1: me from ever having Evangelik was dummy in the house

139
00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:31,000
Speaker 1: because I mean, I get it. They're unnerving, like in

140
00:07:31,040 --> 00:07:33,480
Speaker 1: the same way the clowns are unnerving, but so many

141
00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:35,560
Speaker 1: people of a certain age that I know are just

142
00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:38,920
Speaker 1: like hell no when it comes to those Ventulok was Dummies,

143
00:07:38,960 --> 00:07:41,640
Speaker 1: which I was kind of drawn to because I love

144
00:07:41,720 --> 00:07:45,960
Speaker 1: that whole Villian variety shows thing. Yeah, I was. I

145
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:48,840
Speaker 1: could see that night. Yeah, right, was Dead of Night,

146
00:07:48,960 --> 00:07:53,120
Speaker 1: like a big horror movie. Um. It's interesting because it's

147
00:07:53,120 --> 00:07:56,320
Speaker 1: an anthology horror movie one part of it. Um, and

148
00:07:56,400 --> 00:07:59,640
Speaker 1: there's like an H. T. Wells adaptation, and it's interesting.

149
00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:02,520
Speaker 1: Is a kind of a curiosity because horror films were

150
00:08:02,640 --> 00:08:05,920
Speaker 1: banned during the war, like you were just not allowed

151
00:08:05,960 --> 00:08:08,800
Speaker 1: to meet in Britain. Yeah, and it's from forty five,

152
00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:12,120
Speaker 1: so they were like literally, you know, going against the

153
00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:15,240
Speaker 1: against the law there. I was just wondering if that

154
00:08:15,440 --> 00:08:18,480
Speaker 1: was like in the sun way that Jaws made people

155
00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:22,160
Speaker 1: afraid of going to the beach that summer, or Psycho

156
00:08:22,320 --> 00:08:24,560
Speaker 1: made people afraid of taking showers and stuff, like, if

157
00:08:24,600 --> 00:08:27,640
Speaker 1: that movie really made an indelible mark on a certain

158
00:08:27,680 --> 00:08:30,560
Speaker 1: generation for being freaked out by Ventril like with Dummies.

159
00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:36,079
Speaker 1: Martin Marty Scorsese as a fan back to r L.

160
00:08:36,200 --> 00:08:38,480
Speaker 1: He said, I didn't read books until I was nine

161
00:08:38,600 --> 00:08:40,720
Speaker 1: or ten, but I was a real comic book freak.

162
00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:44,160
Speaker 1: Talking to Time magazine in June of this year, there

163
00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:46,520
Speaker 1: were those scary ec comics when I was a kid,

164
00:08:46,840 --> 00:08:48,880
Speaker 1: Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. I

165
00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,440
Speaker 1: loved those. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and one

166
00:08:51,480 --> 00:08:53,559
Speaker 1: day my mom dropped me off at the library. The

167
00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:56,319
Speaker 1: librarian said, Bobby, I know you like comic books. I

168
00:08:56,400 --> 00:08:58,439
Speaker 1: have something else you might like, and she took me

169
00:08:58,480 --> 00:09:02,040
Speaker 1: to a shelf of Ray Bradberry's stories. They were so wonderful,

170
00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:05,079
Speaker 1: get your mind out of the gutter. They were so

171
00:09:05,200 --> 00:09:08,360
Speaker 1: imaginative and so well written, and all had great twist endings.

172
00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:10,920
Speaker 1: He also told the Strand that he liked Isaac Asimov

173
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:14,280
Speaker 1: and Robert Checkley, and he was able to meet Kurt Vonnegut,

174
00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:16,839
Speaker 1: who is also a favorite of his, because Kurt Vonnegut's

175
00:09:16,920 --> 00:09:20,040
Speaker 1: daughter loved goose Bumps, and that got him invited over

176
00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:24,959
Speaker 1: to the Vonnegut's for dinner. That's adorable, that said Stein was,

177
00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:27,360
Speaker 1: by his own admission, faint of heart. He said, I

178
00:09:27,520 --> 00:09:29,520
Speaker 1: was scared of everything. He's talking to Barnes and Noble

179
00:09:29,559 --> 00:09:32,920
Speaker 1: in seriously, I was a very fearful kid. I think

180
00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:34,839
Speaker 1: this is one reason why early on I stayed in

181
00:09:34,920 --> 00:09:37,439
Speaker 1: my room typing out stories. I was very shy and

182
00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:40,040
Speaker 1: very fearful. I'd be riding my bike at night, and

183
00:09:40,080 --> 00:09:42,080
Speaker 1: when I was bringing it back, I always thought someone

184
00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:44,920
Speaker 1: was lurking in the garage. I always knew something was

185
00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:47,000
Speaker 1: in there, so I tossed my bike in and run

186
00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:48,839
Speaker 1: into the house. It was not a good way to

187
00:09:48,920 --> 00:09:51,120
Speaker 1: be a kid, being fearful, but it helped me later on.

188
00:09:51,360 --> 00:09:53,640
Speaker 1: I can remember that feeling of panic and use it.

189
00:09:54,120 --> 00:09:56,560
Speaker 1: He's either lying or he's over it, because he told

190
00:09:56,800 --> 00:09:59,360
Speaker 1: people as an adult, he's told people like he he

191
00:09:59,440 --> 00:10:01,960
Speaker 1: doesn't get Garrett anymore like he was. He's talking about

192
00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:04,000
Speaker 1: watching horror movies. He said he really like The Shining.

193
00:10:04,480 --> 00:10:06,760
Speaker 1: He talked about watching it follows, but he's like, I'm

194
00:10:06,800 --> 00:10:09,199
Speaker 1: just not afraid of things anymore. So either he grew

195
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:11,400
Speaker 1: out of it, or he's lying to all of us.

196
00:10:12,040 --> 00:10:14,320
Speaker 1: Um So, if you were a loved one can confirm

197
00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:18,360
Speaker 1: that r L sign is capable of feeling fear. I

198
00:10:18,679 --> 00:10:21,120
Speaker 1: could provide proof of that to us. Well, that made

199
00:10:21,120 --> 00:10:24,360
Speaker 1: you five bucks. Uh so young r L would actually

200
00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:28,120
Speaker 1: distribute self penned joke magazines around school, to the point

201
00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:31,320
Speaker 1: where his teachers actually asked him to stop. He claimed

202
00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:33,120
Speaker 1: to g Q last year that he had written over

203
00:10:33,280 --> 00:10:36,800
Speaker 1: a hundred joke books. The fun fact from that interview

204
00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:39,559
Speaker 1: is that he's written forty books across the Fear Street

205
00:10:39,559 --> 00:10:41,959
Speaker 1: and Goosebumps series that were set at summer camps. He

206
00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:45,360
Speaker 1: never attended summer camp as a child. Did you ever

207
00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:47,760
Speaker 1: sell stuff that you made to your elementary school class

208
00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:53,520
Speaker 1: or middle school? No? No, I've been make what would

209
00:10:53,520 --> 00:10:56,040
Speaker 1: I have made? I got in trouble because I was

210
00:10:56,120 --> 00:10:58,560
Speaker 1: really in the robots in like first and second grade,

211
00:10:59,040 --> 00:11:01,240
Speaker 1: and I used to take soda boxes and cover them

212
00:11:01,240 --> 00:11:04,160
Speaker 1: with tinfoil and deal the stuff to make robots out

213
00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:07,360
Speaker 1: of him. And I brought one in that I put

214
00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:09,959
Speaker 1: the box on a remote control car and kind of

215
00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:13,920
Speaker 1: like very furtively use the remote control car, you know,

216
00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:16,120
Speaker 1: the remote to drive it around. But it looked like

217
00:11:16,240 --> 00:11:18,760
Speaker 1: this robot I had made was like, if not sentient,

218
00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:21,599
Speaker 1: like able to move, which was cool. So that I

219
00:11:21,679 --> 00:11:24,079
Speaker 1: was I would like take orders to build some for

220
00:11:24,200 --> 00:11:25,839
Speaker 1: my friends, But then of course I'd give it to

221
00:11:25,960 --> 00:11:28,360
Speaker 1: him and the remote control car wouldn't be in it

222
00:11:28,559 --> 00:11:32,760
Speaker 1: and they'd complain, and I got in trouble for doing that. No, um,

223
00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:36,160
Speaker 1: perhaps uh, perhaps predicting a life spent in the arts.

224
00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:39,040
Speaker 1: I had absolutely no instinct for making money as a child.

225
00:11:39,840 --> 00:11:46,800
Speaker 1: Um if I got busted for frauds. So the two genders. R. L.

226
00:11:46,880 --> 00:11:50,439
Speaker 1: Stein attends Ohio State University in Columbus, and because his

227
00:11:50,480 --> 00:11:52,240
Speaker 1: family was so poor, he had to live at home

228
00:11:52,280 --> 00:11:55,599
Speaker 1: while attending school with his brother as his roommate. But

229
00:11:55,679 --> 00:11:58,360
Speaker 1: he found a new outlet for his comedic aspirations. He said,

230
00:11:58,400 --> 00:12:00,959
Speaker 1: at the time, every college had a humor magazine. He's

231
00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:04,400
Speaker 1: talking to the verge in Very few of them are left.

232
00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:06,839
Speaker 1: They all pretty much died out in the sixties and

233
00:12:06,920 --> 00:12:10,440
Speaker 1: were replaced by underground newspapers. Ohio State had this humor

234
00:12:10,480 --> 00:12:12,800
Speaker 1: magazine called the Sun Dial, and that was the editor

235
00:12:12,880 --> 00:12:15,320
Speaker 1: for three years. That's basically all I did in college.

236
00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:17,719
Speaker 1: I never went to class, and I guess as the

237
00:12:17,880 --> 00:12:22,199
Speaker 1: editor of the magazine, he was entitled to of the profits,

238
00:12:23,080 --> 00:12:26,439
Speaker 1: which I don't ever remember being a thing for any

239
00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:29,280
Speaker 1: of the school papers I was involved with. I mean

240
00:12:29,840 --> 00:12:34,000
Speaker 1: different profits. Yeah. Um, So he used this money as

241
00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:37,319
Speaker 1: profits from the college paper to move from Ohio to

242
00:12:37,400 --> 00:12:39,599
Speaker 1: New York because he thought that if you wanted to

243
00:12:39,640 --> 00:12:41,360
Speaker 1: be a writer, he had to live in New York.

244
00:12:41,880 --> 00:12:45,360
Speaker 1: So Sein drove from Ohio and a white corvet. Speaking

245
00:12:45,440 --> 00:12:50,880
Speaker 1: of Crazy Corvet, it's the book that Ralph Nader wrote,

246
00:12:51,120 --> 00:12:53,559
Speaker 1: Unsafe at any Speed about there. I was supposed to

247
00:12:53,600 --> 00:12:56,800
Speaker 1: be really unsafe, because I think the gas tank was.

248
00:12:57,400 --> 00:13:00,720
Speaker 1: I might be thinking of the Pinto but that exploded

249
00:13:00,760 --> 00:13:03,439
Speaker 1: in rear rear collisions. Yeah, this one, I think it

250
00:13:03,520 --> 00:13:05,760
Speaker 1: was in the front. There was something about the way

251
00:13:05,800 --> 00:13:07,800
Speaker 1: it was made made it very unsafe, and I think

252
00:13:07,840 --> 00:13:11,640
Speaker 1: it exploded to well. It got r l in New

253
00:13:11,720 --> 00:13:14,040
Speaker 1: York and he sold it for four dollars when he

254
00:13:14,080 --> 00:13:18,120
Speaker 1: got there and got him to his first apartment, which

255
00:13:18,200 --> 00:13:21,920
Speaker 1: is on Waverley Place, at the bottom of a shaft. Uh.

256
00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:26,280
Speaker 1: He gave this. I guess the air shaft in the apartment,

257
00:13:26,360 --> 00:13:28,240
Speaker 1: Like you know how the New York City apartment buildings

258
00:13:28,280 --> 00:13:30,880
Speaker 1: are often built around a courtyard to get some air

259
00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:33,640
Speaker 1: draft into the inner city, into the inner apartments. I

260
00:13:33,640 --> 00:13:35,480
Speaker 1: guess he would have been at the bottom. He gave

261
00:13:35,520 --> 00:13:37,360
Speaker 1: this great interview to the Village Voice all about his

262
00:13:37,480 --> 00:13:40,160
Speaker 1: time in New York. In he said, I'd have to

263
00:13:40,280 --> 00:13:42,800
Speaker 1: call out to get the weather forecast because I couldn't

264
00:13:42,800 --> 00:13:45,400
Speaker 1: see out the window. My parents would send me news

265
00:13:45,480 --> 00:13:48,160
Speaker 1: clippings of bad things that happened in New York three

266
00:13:48,280 --> 00:13:50,360
Speaker 1: killed in bars and say, how can you live in

267
00:13:50,440 --> 00:13:53,360
Speaker 1: that jungle? He was, in fact robbed at least once.

268
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:56,000
Speaker 1: I told the A V Club that his first adult

269
00:13:56,080 --> 00:13:58,800
Speaker 1: purchase was a TV set, which was stolen from his

270
00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:01,920
Speaker 1: apartment on the very same day he bought it. Oh

271
00:14:02,520 --> 00:14:04,640
Speaker 1: did he do? David Lynch like? I feel like they

272
00:14:04,679 --> 00:14:07,040
Speaker 1: would have been able to commiserate on these kinds of

273
00:14:07,559 --> 00:14:10,400
Speaker 1: mean ready spooky tales while living in a spooky world

274
00:14:10,840 --> 00:14:13,520
Speaker 1: or else. Steins still lives in New York. He's never left.

275
00:14:13,640 --> 00:14:15,440
Speaker 1: He has a place in sag Harbor, but I think

276
00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:17,400
Speaker 1: he still lives in the Upper West Side. He loves

277
00:14:17,440 --> 00:14:22,280
Speaker 1: going to the met Opera. Something I learned um about

278
00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:25,080
Speaker 1: him while researching this. What is his net worth? Roughly

279
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:31,160
Speaker 1: is in the hundreds of millions? It must be yeah, yeah, yeah, deserves.

280
00:14:32,440 --> 00:14:34,240
Speaker 1: His first job as a writer in the Big Apple

281
00:14:34,360 --> 00:14:37,200
Speaker 1: was making up interviews for women who ran six movie

282
00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:41,880
Speaker 1: magazines out of Brownstone On. I never saw her dressed,

283
00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:45,479
Speaker 1: he told The Verge. She was always in this brown bathrobe.

284
00:14:45,800 --> 00:14:48,520
Speaker 1: She never went to the movies. She just did these magazines.

285
00:14:48,760 --> 00:14:50,240
Speaker 1: I would come in in the morning and she'd say,

286
00:14:50,280 --> 00:14:52,480
Speaker 1: do an interview with Diana Ross. So I'd sit down

287
00:14:52,560 --> 00:14:54,640
Speaker 1: type type type type type, and I'd write an interview

288
00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:56,840
Speaker 1: with Diana Ross, and she'd say, do an interview with

289
00:14:56,880 --> 00:14:59,280
Speaker 1: the Beatles fine type type type. And we made it

290
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:01,920
Speaker 1: all up. It was a great job, and I had

291
00:15:01,960 --> 00:15:03,320
Speaker 1: to write three or four of them a day, so

292
00:15:03,400 --> 00:15:05,720
Speaker 1: it taught me to write really fast. It didn't last

293
00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:08,720
Speaker 1: very long. How is this legal? If you were a

294
00:15:08,760 --> 00:15:12,440
Speaker 1: loved one has ever been harmed by inaccurate celebrity magazines?

295
00:15:12,920 --> 00:15:17,120
Speaker 1: Gest written by Robert Lewis Robert Louis Stein Vinson, you

296
00:15:17,240 --> 00:15:20,960
Speaker 1: may be entitled to take part of class action class

297
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:24,560
Speaker 1: action lawsuit being brought against him by the podcast Too

298
00:15:24,640 --> 00:15:29,280
Speaker 1: Much Information Anyway. After that, Robert H. R. L. I

299
00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:32,520
Speaker 1: Can was weird calling him. Robert Stein went to what

300
00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:35,440
Speaker 1: he called the worst year of my life, which was

301
00:15:35,520 --> 00:15:38,040
Speaker 1: as an editor at a trade magazine for the soft

302
00:15:38,160 --> 00:15:41,120
Speaker 1: drink industry. He told the Verge, I would write about

303
00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:43,480
Speaker 1: new syrups and flip top cans, and there was a

304
00:15:43,520 --> 00:15:46,000
Speaker 1: big debate back then over whether soda could come in

305
00:15:46,080 --> 00:15:49,960
Speaker 1: plastic bottles. I had to cover bottlers conventions. He made

306
00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:53,280
Speaker 1: a hundred forty dollars a week, and hilariously, the offices

307
00:15:53,320 --> 00:15:57,120
Speaker 1: were across the street from the candy industry journals. Jordan,

308
00:15:57,200 --> 00:15:59,960
Speaker 1: this sounds like your dream job. Actually, which way? Both

309
00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:02,600
Speaker 1: of them? I guess, Yeah, you could moonlight for one.

310
00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:07,040
Speaker 1: You could yeah, oh man, buddy, and maybe even you know,

311
00:16:07,280 --> 00:16:11,680
Speaker 1: contribute freelance articles at Diabetes Weekly. In r L S,

312
00:16:11,720 --> 00:16:13,320
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just gonna go with r L and r

313
00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:15,560
Speaker 1: L S a V Club interview. He also said that

314
00:16:15,560 --> 00:16:18,119
Speaker 1: he had spent some time writing for a men's magazine,

315
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,880
Speaker 1: which he described as the worst job he ever had.

316
00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,200
Speaker 1: He said, I think it was a sex and sadism

317
00:16:23,320 --> 00:16:25,280
Speaker 1: kind of magazine because they would give me all kinds

318
00:16:25,320 --> 00:16:28,040
Speaker 1: of photographs, and they were always photographs of women all

319
00:16:28,080 --> 00:16:31,040
Speaker 1: tied up. They were very vile photographs, and I would

320
00:16:31,040 --> 00:16:33,560
Speaker 1: write short stories to go with the photographs. I was

321
00:16:33,640 --> 00:16:35,440
Speaker 1: kind of ashamed, and I wasn't really proud of what

322
00:16:35,520 --> 00:16:37,560
Speaker 1: I was writing, so I wouldn't sign my name. I

323
00:16:37,720 --> 00:16:42,760
Speaker 1: signed the name of my high school principle instead. That's funny. Yeah,

324
00:16:44,120 --> 00:16:46,640
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight or nineteen sixty nine. Stein goes

325
00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:49,560
Speaker 1: to work for Scholastic after answering an ad in The Times,

326
00:16:49,640 --> 00:16:53,080
Speaker 1: and he becomes an editor for Scholastic Junior, writing history

327
00:16:53,120 --> 00:16:56,280
Speaker 1: and geography articles and news stories, and eventually running his

328
00:16:56,320 --> 00:16:59,040
Speaker 1: own magazine Search. He said it was a history and

329
00:16:59,080 --> 00:17:01,760
Speaker 1: current affairs mag gazine for junior high kids, but written

330
00:17:01,800 --> 00:17:05,640
Speaker 1: at a fifth grade level, sucking a mental floss. That's

331
00:17:05,680 --> 00:17:07,879
Speaker 1: how I learned about reading levels. I learned all the

332
00:17:07,960 --> 00:17:10,399
Speaker 1: vocabulary lists for fourth and fifth grade, and that's how

333
00:17:10,440 --> 00:17:14,000
Speaker 1: I kept goose Bumps easy to read. So totally unrelated.

334
00:17:14,280 --> 00:17:19,040
Speaker 1: Do you remember great illustrated Classics? Oh? I had so many.

335
00:17:19,080 --> 00:17:21,199
Speaker 1: I love those books. They were even doesn't know. They

336
00:17:21,240 --> 00:17:26,280
Speaker 1: were these abridged versions of every great piece of literature

337
00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:29,840
Speaker 1: that you could imagine. There were hundreds of them, and

338
00:17:29,920 --> 00:17:33,920
Speaker 1: I didn't realize until I was shamefully old that they

339
00:17:34,359 --> 00:17:38,840
Speaker 1: were rewritten. Very I was very upset to learn that

340
00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:43,560
Speaker 1: I had not actually reads. Oh yeah, no, great expectations

341
00:17:43,680 --> 00:17:47,440
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I was Alexander Dumas, I Victor Hugo.

342
00:17:47,520 --> 00:17:50,280
Speaker 1: I thought i'd read all those by age you know, eleven,

343
00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:53,760
Speaker 1: And turns out I read a very dumb down version,

344
00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:55,719
Speaker 1: but I love them anyway. In fact, to this day,

345
00:17:55,760 --> 00:17:58,119
Speaker 1: I don't know which of those have actually read versus

346
00:17:58,240 --> 00:18:03,080
Speaker 1: Like the Real Thing. Four years after search, Stein's dream

347
00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:07,440
Speaker 1: came true when he was given Bananas, his own humor magazine,

348
00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:09,920
Speaker 1: for which he wrote under the name. Yes, he was

349
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:15,440
Speaker 1: given Bananas and he thought, Gee, this is tops. I

350
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:18,879
Speaker 1: can move back to Ohio now. Um. Yes, he was

351
00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:22,560
Speaker 1: given Lordship over Bananas, which was a humor magazine under

352
00:18:22,600 --> 00:18:26,119
Speaker 1: the imprimature of Scholastic, for which he wrote under the

353
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:31,119
Speaker 1: name Jovial bob Stein. Some of the book titles from

354
00:18:31,119 --> 00:18:34,240
Speaker 1: around this area that he wrote included How to Be Funny,

355
00:18:34,680 --> 00:18:37,920
Speaker 1: Miami Mice, and A hundred one Kid Jokes. He also

356
00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:41,920
Speaker 1: wrote novelizations of movies like Ghostbusters, Too Big Top, Peewee,

357
00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:46,840
Speaker 1: and under different aliases James Bond, Indiana Jones novels like

358
00:18:47,080 --> 00:18:49,800
Speaker 1: I Think the certainty that you have read a Jovial

359
00:18:49,840 --> 00:18:53,280
Speaker 1: bob Stein work in everyone I'm speaking in the general

360
00:18:53,359 --> 00:18:57,200
Speaker 1: population is approaching one like this guy has more written

361
00:18:57,280 --> 00:18:59,359
Speaker 1: words out there than like. It's like him and Joyce,

362
00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:02,040
Speaker 1: Carol Oates and Stephen King at like a distant third

363
00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:06,680
Speaker 1: that is crazy Yeah. Anyway, Bananas was published five Scholastic

364
00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:11,800
Speaker 1: Press for seventy two issues between nineteen seventy and then

365
00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:16,000
Speaker 1: apparently they fired him or it folded unclear. That was

366
00:19:16,080 --> 00:19:18,440
Speaker 1: like my life's dream, and when it ended, I thought

367
00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:21,080
Speaker 1: I'd just coasted the rest of my career, he told NPR.

368
00:19:21,400 --> 00:19:23,119
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was in store for me.

369
00:19:23,640 --> 00:19:26,320
Speaker 1: I thought, God, I'm never going to shave again, never

370
00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:29,960
Speaker 1: get dressed, to mental floss, adding that around this time

371
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:33,360
Speaker 1: he was making ends meet by writing Bazooka Joe comics

372
00:19:33,840 --> 00:19:37,000
Speaker 1: and jokes for bubble Gum Rappers, along with Rocky and

373
00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:41,080
Speaker 1: Bullwinkle and Mighty Mouse coloring books. What a time to

374
00:19:41,200 --> 00:19:45,920
Speaker 1: write professionally when you could write Bazooka Joe comics and

375
00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:49,440
Speaker 1: jokes for bubble Gum and earn a living wage. I

376
00:19:49,600 --> 00:19:54,760
Speaker 1: just that's that's beautiful to me. Yeah. Different, It was

377
00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:57,720
Speaker 1: a different time, perhaps a better one, certainly a kinder,

378
00:19:57,800 --> 00:20:00,920
Speaker 1: gentler time. I'm always are you curious about the people

379
00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:03,639
Speaker 1: who write the fortunes for Fortune Cookies? I wrote a

380
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:06,360
Speaker 1: script once in college about somebody that was their job,

381
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:08,919
Speaker 1: and I still I could have taken that as an

382
00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:12,080
Speaker 1: opportunity to actually learn like what people who actually do

383
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:14,240
Speaker 1: write those what their lives are like, but never did.

384
00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:17,320
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you were a loved one writes fortunes

385
00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:20,639
Speaker 1: for fortune cookies. Please get in touch and high go

386
00:20:20,800 --> 00:20:26,119
Speaker 1: with m au five bucks. As you meditate on that,

387
00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:29,240
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more too much information after

388
00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:42,359
Speaker 1: these messages, stein Os is big break in horror. To

389
00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:46,119
Speaker 1: another sadly unnamed horror writer, this is again in that

390
00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:49,200
Speaker 1: Mental Flass interview. I was having lunch with Gene Firewell,

391
00:20:49,320 --> 00:20:52,040
Speaker 1: the editorial director It's Glastic. At the time. She just

392
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:54,440
Speaker 1: had a fight with a young adult horror writer and said,

393
00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:56,680
Speaker 1: I'm never working with him again. You could write a

394
00:20:56,720 --> 00:20:59,520
Speaker 1: good teen horror novel, how about it. I hadn't read

395
00:20:59,560 --> 00:21:01,560
Speaker 1: any teen horror novels, but I didn't say no to

396
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:04,040
Speaker 1: anything in those days. I ran into the bookshop and

397
00:21:04,080 --> 00:21:07,960
Speaker 1: bought a bunch of horror books. So in Stein publishes

398
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:10,760
Speaker 1: his first novel, Blind Date, and it hit number one

399
00:21:10,800 --> 00:21:13,280
Speaker 1: on the publisher's weekly list, and he follows it up

400
00:21:13,320 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: with a few more in the same vein The Babysitter,

401
00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:19,359
Speaker 1: Beach House, Hit and Run, and The Girlfriend. I've never

402
00:21:19,440 --> 00:21:21,600
Speaker 1: heard of any of these. I don't think they're part

403
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:23,800
Speaker 1: of the fair Street series, but they are, like you know,

404
00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:27,760
Speaker 1: they're under his name. Um. Bizarrely enough, he also finds

405
00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:29,840
Speaker 1: time around this period of his life to co create

406
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:35,200
Speaker 1: and script the Nickelodeon show Eureka's Castle. What Yeah, times

407
00:21:35,280 --> 00:21:37,359
Speaker 1: not a lot of people that know that. Uh no,

408
00:21:37,600 --> 00:21:40,600
Speaker 1: A lot of people know that jovial Bob Stein, Um,

409
00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:44,040
Speaker 1: she wrote. He told the A V Club. This came

410
00:21:44,040 --> 00:21:47,040
Speaker 1: to him by a producer named kit Leybourne, who get this,

411
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:50,920
Speaker 1: remembered Stein from when they both worked on an animated

412
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:55,760
Speaker 1: project about the toy color forms. Remember color forms? Yeah,

413
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:58,840
Speaker 1: I remember color forms? Well, they could They helped Bob

414
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:01,960
Speaker 1: Stein get a job at Nickelodeon. How would you define

415
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,359
Speaker 1: like basically reusable stickers, right, Like that's the best thing.

416
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:07,720
Speaker 1: And I guess this is like a promotional video that

417
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 1: they made and this guy, kid Layborne, remembered Bob from

418
00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:14,320
Speaker 1: it and offered him the job of head writer on

419
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:17,719
Speaker 1: Eureka's Castle. Moral of the story is, kids, if you're

420
00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:20,600
Speaker 1: a freelance writer, never turned down a job and be

421
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 1: nice to everybody. Yeah, seriously, it's a good life lesson

422
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:27,680
Speaker 1: in general, but especially for freelancers. Wow, I'm just I'm

423
00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:29,560
Speaker 1: I had the fact check this because I used to

424
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:31,760
Speaker 1: watch this all the time and I absolutely no idea

425
00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:35,160
Speaker 1: written by R. L. Stein head writer. Damn, that's crazy.

426
00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:39,960
Speaker 1: I'd always liked puppets, he said in the A V

427
00:22:40,080 --> 00:22:43,840
Speaker 1: Club interview. I don't know, I think that's creepy. Anyway,

428
00:22:43,840 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: the show debut, which is the same year that he

429
00:22:46,640 --> 00:22:49,200
Speaker 1: launched the Fear Street series. I actually didn't know that

430
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 1: Fear Street predated goose Bumps. Um, but they did. Fear

431
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:56,520
Speaker 1: Street is like the teen version of goose Bumps where

432
00:22:56,560 --> 00:23:00,640
Speaker 1: they're like children are actually murdered. Yeah, they were adapted

433
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:03,639
Speaker 1: for Netflix, and the Netflix series is like super gory,

434
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:05,800
Speaker 1: like he They asked him about it and he was like, well,

435
00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 1: they really ratcheted up the gore. Um. Apparently he was

436
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:14,119
Speaker 1: also uh Bob jovial. Bob Stein was the first editor

437
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: of Nickelodeon magazine. You know that, and he hated Barney.

438
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 1: That also came up in the court of my research.

439
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,840
Speaker 1: He hated Barney because he thought it was lazy compared

440
00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:25,439
Speaker 1: to the other kids programming that they were doing. Uh.

441
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: He unsurprisingly for a man who's written more words than

442
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:34,960
Speaker 1: God by himself, he called the collaborative process of TV

443
00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:37,919
Speaker 1: the hardest thing to get used to. I'd write a script,

444
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:39,640
Speaker 1: I'd bring it to a script meeting at this long

445
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: table with all the puppeteers, producers, directors and all these people,

446
00:23:42,840 --> 00:23:44,640
Speaker 1: and they would rip my script apart, and I would

447
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:47,040
Speaker 1: go home and write another one. And I wasn't used

448
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:49,399
Speaker 1: to that at all. I mean, that sums up my

449
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: entire experience in my screenwriting program at school and college. Well,

450
00:23:56,160 --> 00:24:00,320
Speaker 1: Eureka's Castle ended, which is two years after Stein launched

451
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: Fear Street. I mean, even if you don't like this

452
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:08,920
Speaker 1: dude's output, he was he is a worker. So Eurku's

453
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:11,680
Speaker 1: Castle ends in which is two years after he launched

454
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:15,000
Speaker 1: Fear Street. Following his initial run of those one off

455
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 1: teen horror books that we talked about earlier. He explained

456
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:20,400
Speaker 1: to the Huffington Post that the publisher wanted one a year,

457
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, one a year. There must be

458
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 1: a way to do a series. And then we started

459
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:27,440
Speaker 1: thinking about location and that kind of thing, and I thought,

460
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: if I can think of a good name for the series,

461
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:32,040
Speaker 1: I'll be off to a good start. I always wonder

462
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: why they don't move to Happy Street. It's funny he's

463
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 1: He's talking multiple in multiple interviews I've read about him

464
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: being like, They're like, how do you come up with ideas?

465
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:43,160
Speaker 1: And he's like, I start with the title and work

466
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 1: and just work from there. He's been doing that since

467
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:51,159
Speaker 1: at least Fear Street. God love him. Fear Street is

468
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,400
Speaker 1: markedly different from what Goose Bumps will become, mostly because

469
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:58,480
Speaker 1: of its violence. Uh. He told the Village Voice, I

470
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 1: killed a lot of teenagers, and I wondered why I

471
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 1: liked it so much. Then I real time quote right there.

472
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 1: Then I realized it's because I had one at home

473
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 1: even better. But the series was an enormous success. I

474
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: read that as of two thousand ten, they sold over

475
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 1: eighty million copies of just the Fear Street ones. So

476
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 1: that's not even factory in goose Bumps. Uh. And that

477
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: has to have grown, because, like I said, they recently

478
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 1: rebooted it for Netflix. I can't I've never heard of

479
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: this series until this very moment. Wow, did you read

480
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:32,119
Speaker 1: any of those when you were done with They were

481
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:36,880
Speaker 1: too they were too too adult for me? Yeah? Um

482
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 1: so Stein was leary too. In the words of my Glove.

483
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:44,960
Speaker 1: With the formula, I was very reluctant to do goose

484
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: Bumps because I was doing Fear Street books for teenagers

485
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to mess up the older audience,

486
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: he told Time. But it was actually Stein's wife, Jane,

487
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: who actually was also the editor of the Goosebumps series,

488
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: and her business partner, Joe Marrica, who convinced them to

489
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:01,720
Speaker 1: do the goose Bump series in the first place. He said,

490
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: my editors, my wife and her partner said no one's

491
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,440
Speaker 1: ever done a series for seven to eleven year old

492
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:08,960
Speaker 1: scary books. We have to try it, and I didn't

493
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: want to do it. This is him talking to the

494
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 1: Today Show. But then he said, that's the kind of businessman.

495
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: I Finally I said, all right, well, okay, if I

496
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 1: can think of a good name for the series, maybe

497
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: we can try a few of these. He's stuck in

498
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,639
Speaker 1: the Strand magazine. And a few weeks later, I was

499
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:24,880
Speaker 1: reading TV Guide and I was flipping through the TV

500
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 1: listings and there was an ad at the bottom of

501
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: the page and it said it's goose Bumps Week on

502
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:32,960
Speaker 1: Channel eleven, and there it was. I thought, God, that's perfect.

503
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 1: It's the perfect name, right, So we tried it. I

504
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: didn't have high hopes. No one had done it before.

505
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: None of us really expected much. And I guess originally

506
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:44,440
Speaker 1: they were only contracted for four books, and uh it

507
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:48,400
Speaker 1: brought out a new one every two months. And talking

508
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: to the Boston Globe and he said they just sat around.

509
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: There was no advertising or hype. I didn't do any appearances.

510
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: This was all before social media, so it was kids

511
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:00,879
Speaker 1: discovering the books and kids telling kids. It was entirely

512
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:03,959
Speaker 1: the Secret Kids Network. The second contract is for eight

513
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: more books, and then it took off and he continued

514
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: to eat news in When goose Bumps first came out,

515
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: no one bought them. They sat on the shelves for months,

516
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: and today with all the computers and everything, they would

517
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: have been yanked off. They would have disappeared. But somehow,

518
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: after three or four months, kids discovered them and took

519
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 1: them to school and showed them the other kids. How

520
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:25,600
Speaker 1: did you first come across goose Bumps? I'm trying to remember.

521
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I think definitely like a Scholastic book fair.

522
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:33,440
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, actually, now that you mentioned it, probably me too. Um,

523
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: just being a little weirdo that I was, I was

524
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 1: like just the art sold to me we'll get to

525
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: the art for real art. Um Stein's productivity is famous.

526
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: At one point, he was writing a goose Bumps and

527
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: a fear Street novel every month. He told The Village Voice,

528
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: I never went out for lunch. I would do twenty

529
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: pages a day. That's insane. It takes me a full

530
00:27:56,359 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: day to do fifteen pages of these episode outlines. Well,

531
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 1: I have all the information in front of me. We're researching, though,

532
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,440
Speaker 1: he's just banging out. Oh, that's even hard. Make stuff out,

533
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: that's even harder. I can do it, he's he told

534
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 1: Mental Flaws. I can do a goose Bumps outline, which

535
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: is to thirty chapters in three or four days, but

536
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 1: if it's not going well, it might take me two weeks.

537
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,120
Speaker 1: In that outline, he told Scholastic, I created a cheat

538
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:22,640
Speaker 1: sheet of every character in the book. I write down

539
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 1: the character name and a few characteristics, and that really

540
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 1: helps me. I work backwards from most authors, he told Huffpoe.

541
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: Most authors have an idea for a book they write

542
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 1: there writing later on, they think of a title. I

543
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:36,320
Speaker 1: have to start with the title. It leads me to

544
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: the story. Kids always ask everyone asks, where do you

545
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: get your ideas? I want to say, where do you

546
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: get your ideas? Because we all get ideas. Mine actually

547
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: come from thinking of the title first, where do you

548
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: get your ideas? Punk hostile response to the kids. The

549
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 1: guy's been one of the biggest authors in the world

550
00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: for like thirty years. I think he's probably pretty sick

551
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 1: of PLASTI where he gets his ideas? Like you know.

552
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: He also was a number of guiding rules for his books.

553
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:11,320
Speaker 1: For one, he told having Compost that he'll never set

554
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: a book in New York because the suburbs are more relatable.

555
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: He said, it's a superstition. I've never done it. A

556
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 1: lot of kids don't know New York. They know a

557
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: nice suburban backyard, but they don't know New York City.

558
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: It's kind of elait in some ways. I think. I

559
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: think it would make the stories more obscure for kids

560
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 1: and secondly for goose bumps. He said, I have to

561
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 1: make the kids know that what's happening in the book

562
00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: couldn't really happen, that it's just a fantasy. And then

563
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 1: when I write the Fear Street books or an adult book,

564
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 1: I have to make people think it could happen. It's

565
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: kind of the opposite but he also admitted that he

566
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: didn't have the formula nailed down right out of the gate,

567
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 1: and says that the first book in the series, Welcome

568
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: to Dead House, some of these titles are very bad.

569
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,880
Speaker 1: It was too scary. He told Tom Magazine. I didn't

570
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: have the right combination yet. It doesn't have the humor.

571
00:29:57,080 --> 00:29:59,120
Speaker 1: But by the second book, Stay out of the Basement,

572
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:01,719
Speaker 1: I got it. I just figured I don't really want

573
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 1: to scare these kids, So anytime the scene gets really intense,

574
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: I throw in something funny, and of course there's a

575
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 1: punch line at the end of every chapter. Yeah, Goosebumps

576
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: introduced me to the idea that the first installment of

577
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: any series is usually terrible because they're just like finding

578
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 1: their footing. Welcome to Dead House was lamb, not animorphous.

579
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: Uh you know who liked? You know who like Welcome

580
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: to Dead House. George Romero. So shows what also crucial

581
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: to Stein's process his wife Jane. He told The Village

582
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: Voice that he had been in New York for two

583
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 1: years when he met her at a party in Brooklyn.

584
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: That quote, I didn't want to go to because it

585
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: was raining, and I thought, how am I going to

586
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: get back from Brooklyn for forty years later, those of

587
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: us who lived in Brooklyn were saying the same thing

588
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: about going to parties in Manhattan. He said. When we

589
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 1: got married, I was twenty five and Jane was twenty two.

590
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell she was doing. Our

591
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: first apartment when we got married was on seventy five,

592
00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: between Columbus and Amsterdam. He told the Village Voice, you

593
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: wouldn't go to Amsterdam because it was too dangerous. What

594
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: are favorite old John and Yoko up there? That's just

595
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 1: a few blocks from the Dakota where they used to

596
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 1: hang out. Weird sliding doors kind of moment um to

597
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: the verge, he explained. We were both at Scholastic for

598
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 1: many years. She was actually my boss for four years there.

599
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: That was not great. I got lousy raises. Yeah, yeah,

600
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: he just if you just imagine him as like a

601
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: cat skills like like borsched belt comedian, it's just become

602
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: these very hilarious She'd be embarrassed to give me a

603
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 1: really good raise since we were married, So I got

604
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: very bad raises. So funny. Jane approves the chapter by

605
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 1: chapter outlines that Stein drafts of each book, and he

606
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: still remembers getting one back from her, and in his words,

607
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: up at the top of the outline were two words.

608
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 1: It said, psychotic ramblings. That was it, psychotic ramblings. That's

609
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: been your notes on some of my out Yes, that's true. Yeah,

610
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 1: she's a very tough editor, he continued, She's really smart,

611
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: and she's just too good. Too good an editor. You

612
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: don't want an editor that good. I don't get away

613
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: with anything. I always say, she's like a hockey goalie.

614
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: Nothing gets past her. Uh. Speaking of the Stein family,

615
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 1: his son apparently had a cozy little side hustle while

616
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: he was in elementary school and the books were at

617
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: the height of their fame. He said, I think my

618
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: son used to sell parts in Goose Bumps for ten dollars.

619
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 1: He would come home and say, Dad, you have to

620
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: put James in the next one, or Dad, you have

621
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: to put will in, And of course I always did.

622
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 1: That's possibly my favorite part of this entire episode, kidding.

623
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: If I was in Goose Bumps, I would dine out

624
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: on that for the rest of my natural life. That kid,

625
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 1: kid is a genius. Stein later told the Boston Globe

626
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: the book started and around I was the best selling

627
00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: author in America. We sold four million books a month

628
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: at a time. Nine five The Hide of goose Bumps.

629
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: The USA Today Top fifty books list was usually twenty

630
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 1: to twenty five goose Bumps books. This is our al

631
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 1: Stein talking to the Verge. But series unfortunately wasn't without

632
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: its attractors. Stein, talking to the Boston Globe, said, in

633
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 1: the beginning, there was a big resistance to the books

634
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: because no one had ever done a horror series for

635
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 1: seven or twelve year olds, and the covers were scarier

636
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: than the books. That's very true. In fact, the goose

637
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: Bump series landed near the top of the American Library

638
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: Association's Challenged Books of the Nineties list at number fifteen.

639
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: It was apparently challenged more than Madonna's Sex, the Anarchist Cookbook,

640
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 1: and Howard Stern's Private Parts, But you know, it was

641
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: number one on that The Scary Stories to Tell the

642
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: Dark series probably the only other children's book horror series

643
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 1: that beats goose Bumps in terms of actual horrifying impact.

644
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: I never read those, Were they Oh my god? Well

645
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: more so? Yeah, they were, but maybe more so you

646
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: want to talk about illustrations. I do remember the like

647
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 1: skull ap peering out of the smoke on the cover

648
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, yeah, those books holy crap. I mean,

649
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: just like grizzly skulls. And that's the thing. I was

650
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,400
Speaker 1: never really like a horror guy or into spooky stuff

651
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:26,399
Speaker 1: as a kid. All that said, Stein initially thought, he said,

652
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: he thought there would be more protests than there were. Uh,

653
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: he said to the Hollywood reporter, I thought people would

654
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: be very reluctant, but partly because the covers were so

655
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: much more scarish and scary than the stories. A lot

656
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: of parents were upset. They were trying to get goose

657
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:41,360
Speaker 1: Bumps out of school libraries, and that happened quite a

658
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: bit in the early days before people really knew what

659
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 1: it was. But it happened a lot less than I thought.

660
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 1: Speaking of those covers, they are the work of an

661
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: illustrator named Tim Jacobus, who had been working for Scholastic

662
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: for a few years. The publisher offered him and another illustrator,

663
00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:00,280
Speaker 1: Jim Thizen, each a cover to audition for goose Bumps,

664
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: and Jacobs was assigned goose Bumps number one, the aforementioned

665
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dead House. He got a whole chapters background

666
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:10,279
Speaker 1: which would later winnow down to a single paragraph of

667
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:14,399
Speaker 1: description as his working relationship with Stein evolved. That's all

668
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: you got out of Jovial Bob was one graph to

669
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: write the whole cover off. I like Tim's art right

670
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: from the start. Stein told the aga or the what

671
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: is that the American Institution of Graphic Artists Graphic art

672
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: dot org. Yeah, I thought Tim captured just the right

673
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: level of scariness for the age group. We didn't really

674
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 1: want to terrify kids, but we did want to excite

675
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:37,320
Speaker 1: them with our covers. I was most happy that his

676
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: covers captured the humor of the stories as well as

677
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 1: the whore. Each cover took Jacobs around thirty five hours

678
00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 1: to produce. The format was always square canvas sands the

679
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: iconic goose Bumps logo, which was created in house at Scholastics.

680
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,359
Speaker 1: It was not his work. He usually produced around three

681
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: eight by ten sketches for each cover before developing a

682
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: color study and turning to his acrylic based paints and

683
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:07,720
Speaker 1: an airbrush on a slightly textured number eighty illustration board

684
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: for the final product. As way more detail than I

685
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: thought I was ever going to get to give everyone

686
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:17,280
Speaker 1: about the process behind making Goose bumps covers. Uh. Sometimes

687
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: when the characters from the books were featured in the design,

688
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:23,200
Speaker 1: he was given a budget for artistic models, although one

689
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: of the most famous ones, the Haunted Mask, he simply

690
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: used his niece. I mean, I'm glad you gave all

691
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: that information because these are I feel like the like

692
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:36,279
Speaker 1: the hr Geiger illustrations for young millennials, Like these are

693
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: seared into my my cortex, so so evocative. But naturally,

694
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:44,800
Speaker 1: because these books were for kids, there were some constraints.

695
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 1: Blood was green, not red. No kids were shown getting injured,

696
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,840
Speaker 1: no kids were shown getting killed. There were no weapons

697
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:57,439
Speaker 1: except for an executioner's acts in a night and tower.

698
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,400
Speaker 1: Remember that. Yeah. Jacoba said he only ever had to

699
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: make one significant change to a painting of the publisher's request.

700
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: On the cover of Revenge of the Law Gnomes. He

701
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 1: said that one of the title characters was shown picking

702
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: his nose, and at the last minute somebody said, I

703
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:15,959
Speaker 1: don't want to hear any blowback from teachers or moms

704
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 1: or parents, let's just change it. But aside from that,

705
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: they gave him his head, and uh, all of his

706
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: designs are fairly iconic. I would say, yeah, he says

707
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: a couple of them are still at um Hey on

708
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: display in Scholastic. Before we get to the next part

709
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 1: of this, I just want to drop that, as of

710
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 1: at least two thousand eight, I dropped a ball. I

711
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:42,439
Speaker 1: didn't look updated sales figures. Stein's books have sold over

712
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 1: four hundred million copies worldwide. Is there any kind of

713
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: list of like most books moved by a single author,

714
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: Like that's god to be. I know, Stephen King, I'm sure,

715
00:37:56,400 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: James Patterson, Well, it's it's Shakespeare. Okay, Unfortunately it's bad

716
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:11,240
Speaker 1: that I'm almost like doesn't count. But yeah, best selling

717
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:14,279
Speaker 1: fiction authors. Oh no, he's on there. He is at

718
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: least on Wikipedia's um. He's under Dean Kunts. He's under Wow,

719
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: it's William Shakespeare. I get the Christie number two. That

720
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, Danielle Steele is up there. J. K

721
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: Rowling obviously, Dr Seuss, Tolstoy, Dean Koon's Horatio Alger, Rob

722
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:37,760
Speaker 1: Jovial Bob Stein, right under Nora Roberts and right above

723
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 1: Alexander Pushkin. He's above Stephen King, though he beat out

724
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:44,879
Speaker 1: Stephen King. I can't believe both of them are under

725
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: Dean Koon's. Yeah, something about that seems wrong anyway. Um,

726
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 1: do you know what they're called piccolia brividi in Italy,

727
00:38:56,440 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 1: which means little shivers? No, m that's what beautiful, if

728
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,240
Speaker 1: not slightly obscene. One thing that I find really sweet

729
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: is that he would answer every handwritten snail mail letter

730
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 1: he got from kids at the height of his fame.

731
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: Not the ones that came in his emails, not the

732
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: ones that were type but if some kid actually wrote

733
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:17,239
Speaker 1: him out a letter, he would answer it. He said,

734
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: that's hard for kids. It's time consuming and hard to

735
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: write a letter, so they deserve an answer. Every kid

736
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 1: gets an answer. Oh did you ever write to anybody? Nope?

737
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:31,600
Speaker 1: Really nope. I wrote the Paul McCartney that's you did,

738
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: eleven year old, and I got a form letter back

739
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 1: explaining that if he answered everybody's letter, he wouldn't have

740
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: time to make music, which fair soften the blow. Stein's

741
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: favorite was a kid who wrote him a letter that

742
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: read simply, in its totality, Dear R. L. Stein, I've

743
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:51,160
Speaker 1: read forty of your books and I think they're really boring.

744
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:58,879
Speaker 1: Did you write that? No? Uh, We're going to take

745
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 1: a quick break, but will be right back with more

746
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 1: too much information in just a moment. So with such

747
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: insane sales numbers, of course, media adaptations were inevitable. Stein

748
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 1: told Cinema Blenden, we had a movie deal to do

749
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:24,439
Speaker 1: a goose Bumps movie, like at the Height of goose

750
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: Bumps back around there, and we actually had to deal

751
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: with Fox to a movie, and Tim Burton was going

752
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:33,200
Speaker 1: to be the producer. We had a big meeting and

753
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, that'll be great Tim Burton and goose Bumps,

754
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: it'll be great. We had a nice meeting with him

755
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:39,719
Speaker 1: and we had a great time. We talked about what

756
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:43,799
Speaker 1: we should do, and then nothing happened. How this always goes.

757
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: He got involved in some Superman project that also never happens.

758
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: Stein continued, he was gonna do Superman, and then we

759
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:51,759
Speaker 1: never heard from him again, and that was the end

760
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:55,319
Speaker 1: of it. Stein is referring to Superman Lives, an early

761
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:58,360
Speaker 1: reboot attempt for The Man of Steel post Christopher Reeves

762
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 1: that was going to start. Nicholas Cage a Superman got

763
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:04,840
Speaker 1: as far as screen tests with Cage in the costume.

764
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:06,839
Speaker 1: You can google it. There are pictures of Nick Cave.

765
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: Nick Cage in the Superman almost said Nick cave in

766
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,839
Speaker 1: a Superman costume. That's a very different that's a very

767
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 1: different thing. That's finale was very much like that. Um. Yeah,

768
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 1: and it died obviously. But even crazier than that was

769
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,439
Speaker 1: apparently Night of the Living Dead, Uh, Day of the Dead,

770
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:29,800
Speaker 1: Dawn of the Dead, Many of the Day, you know.

771
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 1: But yes, iconic horror director George Romero was attached to

772
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:36,320
Speaker 1: a goose Bumps movie at one point. This was to

773
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,520
Speaker 1: have been produced by twenties Century Fox's Family Film division,

774
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: and Romera's goose Bumps movie began with the Fox Family's

775
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:48,799
Speaker 1: vice president, Kevin Bannerman, who I guess thought he would

776
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: do a great job with it. And um, there is

777
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,320
Speaker 1: this is awesome. There's a George A. Romero archival collection

778
00:41:57,520 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: at the University of Pittsburgh. It's where he sent his

779
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: archives when he died. Um, and this is in there.

780
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: This is a letter from Romero to the Fox vice

781
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:12,680
Speaker 1: president from um. And it seems that Bannerman suggested a

782
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:15,959
Speaker 1: number of Stein novels goose Bumps books for him to read,

783
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 1: and Romero picked Welcome to Dead House the first one. Uh.

784
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: And he also reveals in the course of this letter

785
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:25,319
Speaker 1: that Romero had wanted to make films for younger audiences,

786
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: and that he'd been a fan of goose Bumps, even

787
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:31,879
Speaker 1: having read several of them to his twelve year old son, Um.

788
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 1: And he did pen a rough outline for this adaptation,

789
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: which rough outline. It's basically a complete screenplay. It's a

790
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:42,439
Speaker 1: hundred page outline, Um, and it's out there for people

791
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 1: to read. It's the plot is different. But and of

792
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 1: course it's set in Pittsburgh. But it just never happened

793
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:52,359
Speaker 1: until I think, Yeah, I don't, I didn't. I don't

794
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,839
Speaker 1: give a about those movies. Well, I'll wave my hand

795
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: in their general direction later. But I think it died

796
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: until two eight. I think Umbia let the rights. Columbia

797
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 1: acquired the rights to the film in two thousand eight,

798
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: and then the Jack Black movie didn't even get made

799
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 1: until like twenty So, yeah, they just let it die development.

800
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 1: Hell baby. So now we must come to the goose

801
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:20,319
Speaker 1: Bumps TV show, which aired from October November. You said

802
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:22,719
Speaker 1: you didn't watch this, not at all. No. I thought

803
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: it was like a watered down version of the Dark

804
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:29,399
Speaker 1: And it was in a sense, it was watered down

805
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 1: because they wanted it to well I'm getting ahead of myself.

806
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 1: Steve Leviton, the show's producer, told a site called Conventional

807
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 1: Relations for their oral history of the show that he'd

808
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: been producing a TV series called My Secret Identity with Scholastic,

809
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: and after the contract for that shows up, Scholastic told

810
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 1: him about the runaway success of goose Bumps at a

811
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:49,800
Speaker 1: meeting and gave him a few of the books. He

812
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:52,840
Speaker 1: flew back to Toronto and yes, like are You Afraid

813
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: of the Dark? The goose Bumps show is a maple

814
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,759
Speaker 1: syrup and poutine drenched production of the Great White North,

815
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: And he called them and he wanted to make a

816
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 1: TV show. Leviton would go on to create Modern Family, Wow,

817
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:09,240
Speaker 1: and it's some other stuff including My Beloved just shoot

818
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 1: Me Yeah, whoa Yeah, a young me's glimpse into the

819
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: high paced, exciting world of magazine writing. My God made

820
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: me want to write for a magazine. I didn't know

821
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:28,320
Speaker 1: that was a goal of yours. I just know, I

822
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 1: just I think I've talked about this before. But like

823
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: my sitcom, like my whole family loved the Simpsons, but

824
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 1: like my sitcoms were not friends. I did not watch Seinfeld,

825
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: I watched Frasier and mash and just shoot Me and

826
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 1: uh Will and Grace. Three out of four of those

827
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: are like top notch. Yeah, well, I mean it's just funny,

828
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: like everyone and a lot of people our age are

829
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:57,359
Speaker 1: like friends or Seinfeld and I'm like, no, just watch

830
00:44:57,400 --> 00:44:59,239
Speaker 1: a lot of Frasier and watched it. Just shoot me,

831
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:03,880
Speaker 1: um Leviton said. The first response was, I don't think

832
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:05,799
Speaker 1: we can make a deal with you because Fox bought

833
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 1: the movie rights. It turned out Fox did not buy

834
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: the TV rights, though, and oddly enough, he said, once

835
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,440
Speaker 1: we got the TV rights, Fox Kids Networks was our

836
00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:17,839
Speaker 1: broadcast here. The show's writing team was led by Billy

837
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 1: Brown and Dan Angel, and they had a deal with

838
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 1: Stein where he could approve or reject every script based

839
00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 1: on their first drafts. So none of these got made

840
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 1: without jovial Bob's stampud approval on them. Okay, I'm gonna

841
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him that forever. It's just too funny.

842
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: Here you go. Early conversations concerned how this show would

843
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:39,279
Speaker 1: differentiate itself from Are You Afraid of the Dark, which

844
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: hilariously entailed poaching writer, director, producer Ron Oliver from that show.

845
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: So yes, this guy went over from Are You Afraid

846
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:51,919
Speaker 1: of the Dark to goose Bumps, um Leviton said, goose

847
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 1: Bumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark were in

848
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 1: the same genre, but goose Bumps always had an ironic,

849
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: humorous tongue in cheeks self consciousness that Are You Afraid

850
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:01,880
Speaker 1: of the Dark didn't have. I'm glad we went in

851
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:03,880
Speaker 1: that direction because I don't think there would have been

852
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,800
Speaker 1: enough room for two completely similar shows. Sure, I respect that.

853
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 1: I think that's why I didn't like the goose Bumps

854
00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: one's It always felt like it was kind of mugging

855
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 1: and winking to the camera and trying to like, you know,

856
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 1: like ached about comedian Okay, like as jovial Bob Stein

857
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: intended it to be okay, yeah, fair, Okay, that's yes,

858
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 1: like are You fred of the Dark? Every episode of

859
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: goose Slumps required a new cast, which meant that, as

860
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:33,320
Speaker 1: Stein later told The Verge, they went through quote every

861
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: Canadian kid there was. He added, I would do book

862
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:39,520
Speaker 1: signings here in the United States. Kids would be in

863
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 1: line and they'd say, I'm an actor, how could I

864
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:43,359
Speaker 1: be on the goose Bumps show? And I would say,

865
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 1: you have to be Canadian? And every time the kid

866
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 1: would say what's that? And also like are you Fred

867
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: of the Dark? A young Ryan Gosling appears in an

868
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: episode of goose Bumps, and Hayden Christensen and On the

869
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: World star Scott Speedman nineteen sixties Batman star Adam West

870
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:05,839
Speaker 1: also get start at one point that's a great get yeah.

871
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 1: Excitement around the show was so high it went to

872
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 1: production without a pilot, which is insane and unheard of.

873
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:14,240
Speaker 1: Leviton said, once we got the rights to do TV series,

874
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:16,839
Speaker 1: there were already a number of broadcasters interested in picking

875
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 1: it up. They didn't want to see a pilot. They

876
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 1: wanted to go right into production. Fortunately, they went into

877
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:24,520
Speaker 1: production with the Haunted Mask, which is one of the

878
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 1: most iconic goose Bumps titles and one apparently inspired by

879
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: Stein watching his young son get trapped in a Frankenstein's

880
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: monster Halloween Mask hilarious. He's called it his best Halloween

881
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:41,800
Speaker 1: story and his favorite episode of the show. Um. The

882
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: plot of the book is basically that Halloween Mask starts

883
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:47,720
Speaker 1: to take over a young girl's personality. She's having trouble

884
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 1: removing it from her getting it offer, and it starts

885
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:57,399
Speaker 1: to take her over. She's just become like really mean, yeah,

886
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 1: but the and this this one actually scared me because,

887
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 1: like the mask makeup that they used on this is

888
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 1: so good and so creepy. Um. We're talking earlier about

889
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:10,760
Speaker 1: some of the crappier goose bumps. Jovial Bob is aware

890
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: of them. Uh, he admitted to THHR there's some bad ones.

891
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:17,399
Speaker 1: Not all can be great. I looked at go eat

892
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,080
Speaker 1: Worms recently and I was like, that's a horrible book.

893
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 1: It's not good at all. There was another one that

894
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:24,440
Speaker 1: had a great evil dog on the cover called The

895
00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 1: Barking Ghost. That's a horrible book. I love that. He's

896
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: not just like, yeah, it wasn't that great. He was like, no,

897
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:33,359
Speaker 1: it's horrible. It is a great cover. It's like one

898
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:37,240
Speaker 1: of the more freaky covers. Um The girl who played

899
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: the lead in The Haunted Mass Catherine Long. She was

900
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,879
Speaker 1: a trooper for this episode. She spent two or three

901
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,360
Speaker 1: hours getting into the makeup for the mask and the

902
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: pilot and that is her actual voice reading those lines.

903
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,560
Speaker 1: It was not a d art, it was not manipulated

904
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 1: in post production. That is her actual voice doing the

905
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 1: creepy monster voice. Oh and she bit into an actual

906
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:02,399
Speaker 1: worm for the shot in which her character bites into

907
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: a worm hidden in a sandwich that was not fake.

908
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: Apparently all of this added into an episode that was

909
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: so scary. Fox rejected the initial cut, saying that they

910
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 1: would not show its children. How did you bite into

911
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: a worm? Wasn't? Where was the humane society on that? Like?

912
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:21,800
Speaker 1: Not not in Canada? Baby. I don't actually know that

913
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 1: for a fact, but I assume. When the episode premiered

914
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 1: on October, it was watched by almost eight million households

915
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: in the US. It sold nearly three million copies when

916
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,359
Speaker 1: it was released on VHS the following year. Now, much

917
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:40,280
Speaker 1: like Are You Afraid of the Dark, production was essentially

918
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:43,920
Speaker 1: tasked with creating a new short film every week. A

919
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:47,279
Speaker 1: s FX production artist, Ron Stefaniek, who's gone on to

920
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,279
Speaker 1: work on stuff like Bride of Chucky, explained, we only

921
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:53,280
Speaker 1: had five days to build these things. We were building

922
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:55,080
Speaker 1: all the way through the day and all the way

923
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:57,399
Speaker 1: into the night. Then it was raced off to set

924
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 1: and puppeteered by the same people. Sometimes the shooting day

925
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 1: would go on for fifteen or sixteen hours, and then

926
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:05,439
Speaker 1: there'd be an hour and a half of celebrating after

927
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: it was done. Then in eight hours, the whole thing

928
00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:11,719
Speaker 1: starts up again. That went on for four years. One

929
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: of the episodes that went above and beyond in terms

930
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 1: of location at least, was the two parts Special A

931
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 1: Night and Terre Tower, which was partially filmed at Toronto's

932
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 1: Casa Loma, which is a Gothic revival castle built in

933
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:26,719
Speaker 1: the nineteen tents by eccentric, wealthy Canadian. I looked it

934
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: up and I didn't feel like getting into the history

935
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: of this thing. But the one architectural detail that has

936
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:33,719
Speaker 1: stuck in my mind since reading it was that it

937
00:50:33,840 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: boasted an oven so large it could cook an ox,

938
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 1: which I was like, I can only imagine that they

939
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 1: they tested that. I was like, why is that the

940
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: standard of measurement? Think of a bigger you can cook

941
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: a whale, use your head, apply yourself. Um that that

942
00:50:55,200 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: castle has been seen an x men, Strange Brew, Chicago,

943
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:02,440
Speaker 1: Scott Program Versus the World, and Crimson Peak, among many others.

944
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 1: Other episodes were significantly more low tech. For the episode

945
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:10,160
Speaker 1: Bad Hair Day, which involved the talking rabbit, which was

946
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: voiced by whose lines that anyway start calling mockery mockery yes, uh.

947
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:20,839
Speaker 1: Production took meetings with c G I artists, an animatronics team,

948
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 1: and an animal wrangler, and the animal wrangler ended up

949
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:26,640
Speaker 1: getting the job and the talking rabbid effect was achieved

950
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:29,800
Speaker 1: by having him stand off camera and squirting the rabbit

951
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:33,879
Speaker 1: with sugar water, causing its mouth to move again. Where

952
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 1: was the Humane Society on this one? I can't remember

953
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: who's telling this story. It's either stefaniec or Um or Leviton,

954
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: but he talks about this meeting where he's like they

955
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: have three separate meetings. The c g I people came

956
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 1: in and were like, all right, we'll do it this way,

957
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 1: and it was going to be expensive and it was

958
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: going to be coming in late because he was like

959
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: that's just how the technology was the time. It was

960
00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 1: super expensive and they would never finish on time. And

961
00:51:57,560 --> 00:51:59,680
Speaker 1: then the animatronics people came in were like, all right,

962
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 1: I can build you this robot rabbit like blah blah

963
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: blah blah blah and there, and but it's gonna be

964
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: this amount of money. Then the animal wrangler came in.

965
00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:08,400
Speaker 1: It was like, I can make that rabbit talk, how

966
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:09,880
Speaker 1: where do you where do you? Where do you need it?

967
00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: Just set it up and starting squirting sugar water into

968
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:19,839
Speaker 1: its face from off screen. Uh, you need a rabbit

969
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 1: to talk. I can get you a rabbit. I get him.

970
00:52:23,719 --> 00:52:30,400
Speaker 1: I don't ask questions. Now we get your rabbit. I

971
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: get your rabbit bite three pm today. Now we must

972
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:35,479
Speaker 1: come to the true star of the series, the true

973
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 1: king of all media, Slappy the Dummy Baby. Yes, oh

974
00:52:39,680 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 1: my god. Yes. Slappy's book was Night of the Living Dummy,

975
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: and he went on to appear in more books and

976
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: media than any other goose Bumps character, including three episodes

977
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: of the TV series, both movies, and he even got

978
00:52:52,680 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: his own book series in two thousand and seventeen called

979
00:52:55,200 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 1: Slappy World. What I Know where I didn't know that.

980
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:04,359
Speaker 1: Here's a quick sidebar on evil dummies in uh in media. Um,

981
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: there's the Great Gabbo ninety nine, which is where the

982
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 1: Simpsons get their their ventrilocust dummy from. Uh Danny Kay

983
00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:18,279
Speaker 1: started knock on wood. Um, then we start getting into

984
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: spooky dummies. The Glass I seven episode of Alfred Hitchcock

985
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:26,359
Speaker 1: Presents the Dummy ninety two episode of the Twilight Zone

986
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:29,360
Speaker 1: Caesar in me A nineteen sixty four episode of the

987
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone nine six four is devil Doll. Uh, Sir

988
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 1: Anthony Hopkins in ninety eight stars in Magic but based

989
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:44,879
Speaker 1: on a screenplay by William Goldman about an evil ventriloquist dummy. Uh.

990
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: And then we get into stuff like the Puppet Show,

991
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:50,960
Speaker 1: which is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Um

992
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: yeah wow, And rounding out our evil dummy list, James

993
00:53:56,040 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: Gordon a topical humor ah Man, well done, thank you,

994
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: Slappy comes to life when a phrase caru mari o'donna

995
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: loma MoU karano, which supposedly translates to you and I

996
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:18,480
Speaker 1: are one now, was precited. Yeah, much like how Chucky

997
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 1: transfers his soul back and forth in the Child's Play franchise,

998
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: which is great because you just hear Brad de Reef

999
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: doing his Danny DeVito impression. He's like, grant me the

1000
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 1: power I beg of you. It's so funny. We've been

1001
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: watching a bunch of those is for Halloween season and

1002
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 1: Brad Brad dref tremendous actor, one of my favorites, but

1003
00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 1: he is just doing Danny DeVito as in those early episodes,

1004
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:42,400
Speaker 1: because you forget he's in uh one flew over the

1005
00:54:42,440 --> 00:54:44,879
Speaker 1: Cuckoo's Nest, so he must have gotten some he must

1006
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 1: have been. He had that Danny DeVito impression in his

1007
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:54,480
Speaker 1: back pocket. Don't put the chuck. Uh. Similar to those

1008
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:57,480
Speaker 1: movies by which I mean the child's play movies. Uh,

1009
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,359
Speaker 1: Slappy was animated with a combination of p a tree

1010
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: and a young girl in a costume, which is always

1011
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: hilarious in the child's play movies because you get these

1012
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: really well done animatronics and then you just get like

1013
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: clearly they just like shoved a toddler in the wardrobe

1014
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:15,800
Speaker 1: and we're like run down the hallway. But because he

1015
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:19,319
Speaker 1: was Slappy was built like an actual ventriloquist dummy as

1016
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 1: an out of wood. He weighed considerably more than a

1017
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:25,719
Speaker 1: normal puppet. So imagine having to be under like a

1018
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 1: table holding of ventriloquis dummy up for like hours at

1019
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: a time puppeteering it. That must have sucked. Um. They

1020
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:36,240
Speaker 1: just have like arms like bowlers, or it's just running

1021
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:41,600
Speaker 1: really thick arm like muscular arm um, or like the

1022
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:45,800
Speaker 1: arm wrestling championship guys, like ungodly ripped and then just

1023
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: like a weak, normal normal arm um. So fanniek is

1024
00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaker 1: often erroneously credited as providing the voice of Slappy. That

1025
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:57,400
Speaker 1: is not true. He told Conventional Relations that the actual

1026
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: voice actor once called him and left him a rather

1027
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 1: snotty message blaming him for going around taking credit for

1028
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 1: the role of Slappy. So just one set the record straight.

1029
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 1: I actually don't even know the guy's name, so it

1030
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:16,919
Speaker 1: sounds like he's snotty. Yeah. Sadly, the fates of both

1031
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 1: the book series and the show wound up becoming intertwined.

1032
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:23,759
Speaker 1: Oliver said that after four seasons. He said, I think

1033
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:26,359
Speaker 1: it ended because the book stopped selling a certain point.

1034
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:28,879
Speaker 1: The sales dropped and they were like, well, I guess

1035
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 1: that's the end of that. Levit In, for his part, posited,

1036
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:34,720
Speaker 1: I think what happened was Fox as a kid's network

1037
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 1: was coming to an end. A few years after it

1038
00:56:37,160 --> 00:56:39,880
Speaker 1: stopped being a kid's network, other things came along that

1039
00:56:39,920 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: were more lucrative for networks. Pokemon and Power Rangers were toys,

1040
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:46,239
Speaker 1: that's big business. Goose Bumps was just a TV show,

1041
00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:48,439
Speaker 1: and even though we tried to get merchandise and going,

1042
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 1: there's just no defining character. There's no one look for

1043
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:56,560
Speaker 1: goose Bumps other than Slappy. Uh. Jovial Bob was a

1044
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:59,399
Speaker 1: fan of the show, but he uh he also liked

1045
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 1: the two movie, so I don't know. He might just

1046
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: be towing the party line. I don't know anything about

1047
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:11,759
Speaker 1: those movies. Um, I don't care to our time. Well yeah, yeah,

1048
00:57:11,880 --> 00:57:14,720
Speaker 1: they're not really the focus here, and they apparently well reviewed.

1049
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:18,800
Speaker 1: Um Jack Plaque plays a caricatured version of our old

1050
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 1: Stein in it. I guess he got Stein's blessing too,

1051
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: portray him that way. Um where a Jane jacket and

1052
00:57:27,520 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: leap around too. They they yeah, they smack of weaponizing

1053
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:35,440
Speaker 1: millennial nostalgia to me, which is what we do. No,

1054
00:57:35,800 --> 00:57:40,040
Speaker 1: I take offense to that. We we cultivate new appreciation

1055
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:43,120
Speaker 1: on what's already there. We try to We try to educate.

1056
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,000
Speaker 1: We don't try to sucker people into buying something new.

1057
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 1: It was just done in the same flavor of some

1058
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 1: beloved classic movie or TV show. No, we would. We

1059
00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 1: cultivate appreciation. And now, folks, stay tuned for our episode

1060
00:57:56,680 --> 00:58:03,080
Speaker 1: on Hocus Focus. Oh cipitated by Hocus Pocus too, available

1061
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:09,240
Speaker 1: now to stream on Disney Plus Disney Check. Notcipitated by

1062
00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: that specificated but a lot of people wanted to hear

1063
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:14,360
Speaker 1: about that because it meant something to him. But even

1064
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:18,080
Speaker 1: if it didn't mean something to I just wanted to

1065
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:23,680
Speaker 1: hear you choke on your impotent rage. Um. Jovial Bob

1066
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 1: told The rap In that they were like seventeen or

1067
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: eighteen scripts being bandied around for that movie at one point.

1068
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 1: Though he may have been exaggerating, but he did single

1069
00:58:32,440 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 1: out the film's Danny Elfman score as be particularly noteworthy.

1070
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:39,160
Speaker 1: So yeah, he would. Maybe he's a big Oino Boingo fan.

1071
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:43,040
Speaker 1: I can absolutely see that. Um. And then the Fear

1072
00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:46,000
Speaker 1: Street series which came out on Netflix recently, so that's

1073
00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 1: also brought old old old jovial Bob back into the spotlight. Uh,

1074
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:54,280
Speaker 1: it was so he said, it was so graphic that

1075
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:56,360
Speaker 1: it shocked him. But he said it was well, well

1076
00:58:56,440 --> 00:58:58,560
Speaker 1: staged and well directed. I didn't know where else to

1077
00:58:58,640 --> 00:59:00,320
Speaker 1: put this. Oh, maybe we should have it when I

1078
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:03,360
Speaker 1: was talking about Stephen King earlier, but comparisons between the

1079
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:06,680
Speaker 1: two of them were inevitable and uh but despite both

1080
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:11,080
Speaker 1: being millionaire horror book authors, they only met once. And

1081
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,760
Speaker 1: this is Stein talking to The Guardian. The one time

1082
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:17,280
Speaker 1: I ever met him, four or five years ago. He

1083
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:20,960
Speaker 1: never leaves Maine. We had a nice talk. I said

1084
00:59:21,000 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: to him, Steve, do you know that a magazine once

1085
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:27,080
Speaker 1: called me a literary training brawl for you, and he said, yes,

1086
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:31,400
Speaker 1: I know. He also said that at that point Steve

1087
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,600
Speaker 1: gave him Stephen Stephen King gave him crap for using

1088
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: every single possible permutation of an amusement park whrror. He said,

1089
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 1: he's used up all the good ideas. That's all I

1090
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 1: got on goose Bumps. I I don't know anyone who

1091
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:52,840
Speaker 1: who who who dislikes goose Bumps, who's coming against Yeah,

1092
00:59:52,880 --> 00:59:56,080
Speaker 1: it's right, Uh, you know they're not chaucer, but not

1093
00:59:56,160 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: everything has to be. And I really came away with

1094
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:02,800
Speaker 1: from this with a a deeper, deeper, and more abiding

1095
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:06,600
Speaker 1: love for jovial Bob Stein. He just seems like a

1096
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:08,960
Speaker 1: chill dude. He's still in love with his craft, he

1097
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:12,640
Speaker 1: still loves writing, and you know he's got the right

1098
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 1: view on it. I want to leave you with a

1099
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 1: quote from actually just June of this year, you told

1100
01:00:17,800 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 1: today what's most satisfying to me is the millions of

1101
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: kids who learned to read from goose Bumps and who

1102
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:27,160
Speaker 1: learned to really enjoy reading. Now, on Twitter and everywhere,

1103
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:29,840
Speaker 1: I hear people saying I wouldn't be a librarian today.

1104
01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for your books, I hear things like

1105
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be a writer today. I just had my

1106
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:37,840
Speaker 1: first book published. Thanks to you, or thanks for getting

1107
01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: me through a difficult childhood. That's the most satisfying thing.

1108
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:44,320
Speaker 1: You never get tired of hearing that. Good on yet,

1109
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 1: jovial bob folks, thank you for listening. This has been

1110
01:00:47,640 --> 01:00:51,200
Speaker 1: too much information. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan around Talk.

1111
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:58,640
Speaker 1: We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a

1112
01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:01,800
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are

1113
01:01:01,880 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 1: Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is

1114
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:08,000
Speaker 1: Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by

1115
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:11,040
Speaker 1: Jordan run Talk and Alex Heidel, with original music by

1116
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like

1117
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:16,160
Speaker 1: what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.

1118
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I

1119
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:21,840
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to

1120
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:22,680
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.