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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

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Speaker 1: that brings you the secret history and little loan facts

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Speaker 1: behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We

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Speaker 1: are your highly literate Jack Russell Terriers of Trivia. My

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Speaker 1: name is Jordan Runt Dog, and I'm Alex Age. Now, folks,

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Speaker 1: Higo and I have been doing the show twice a week,

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Speaker 1: sometimes more for eight months now, and frankly our marriage

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Speaker 1: of the minds has gone a bit stale. So today,

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Speaker 1: to spice things up, we brought in a third person.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop that analogy right there. We are very,

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Speaker 1: very honored to be joined by an extremely special guest,

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Speaker 1: Mr Morocca. He is a journalist who is as brilliant

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Speaker 1: as he is hilarious. His passionate and insightful dispatches on

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Speaker 1: CBS Sunday Morning, The Daily Show, the Food Network, not

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Speaker 1: to mention his books in his podcast, have long served

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Speaker 1: as a reminder to me and surely so many others,

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Speaker 1: to stay curious. It's so important, and I'm grateful for

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Speaker 1: all the joy that he's given me and for all

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Speaker 1: that I've learned through him. MO, thank you so much

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Speaker 1: for taking the time to join us today. Jordan, thank

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Speaker 1: you for that introduction. I'm happy to be with you both.

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Speaker 1: In addition to everything I've just mentioned, Mo is responsible

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Speaker 1: for a beloved part of my televisual if that's the

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Speaker 1: word upbringing, and perhaps yours as well. Wishbone. Yes, the

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Speaker 1: little dog with the big imagination who introduced me and

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Speaker 1: many of my millennial kin to classic literature. We'll dive

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Speaker 1: into the creation of this beloved PBS classic in a moment,

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Speaker 1: but before we get to that, Mo, you're in the

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Speaker 1: midst of the third season of your incredible podcast, Mobit Juries,

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Speaker 1: And for any who don't know, and if you haven't listened,

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Speaker 1: please pause this right now and go subscribe. It's based

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Speaker 1: on your book of the same name, which offers deep

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Speaker 1: dives into extraordinary lives that have been sort of relegated

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Speaker 1: to the sidelines of history despite their fascinating stories. Are

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Speaker 1: there any episodes for you that have stuck out as

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Speaker 1: being the most surprising or intriguing boy and the most

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Speaker 1: surprising and intriguing, Well, it was fun doing an episode

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Speaker 1: on names that have died in the whole podcast is

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Speaker 1: sort of my kind of salute people and things that

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Speaker 1: I don't feel like got the proper send off the

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Speaker 1: first time around, or maybe even any sent off at all.

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Speaker 1: And so it was fun chatting with John mcward, who's

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Speaker 1: a linguist about names that have come and gone over

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Speaker 1: the over the years. Um, we focused on Mildred, Bertha,

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Speaker 1: and Todd because I had no idea that Todd really

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Speaker 1: fell off a cliff in the early Yeah. So I

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Speaker 1: think if you were in high school in the late eighties,

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Speaker 1: like I was, you knew a lot of Todd's. But

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Speaker 1: that was the last wave of Todd's. There are no

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Speaker 1: baby Todds running around right now. Who tracks that? Uh,

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Speaker 1: the Social Security Administration. There's a website and yeah, and

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Speaker 1: they track it, and they don't have a lot of

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Speaker 1: Todds to keep track up. And they've got even fewer

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Speaker 1: Mildred's in Bertha's. But I'm just wondering, you know, old

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Speaker 1: timey names like that. It's sort of you know a

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Speaker 1: lot of here about celebrities naming their kids Hazel and

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Speaker 1: things like that, right right, right, And but but you know,

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Speaker 1: no birthas, no Mildred's, you know. So I feel about Gary.

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Speaker 1: We need a baby Gary, a baby Gary with one

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Speaker 1: hour or two. I feel I feel like I feel

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Speaker 1: like a baby named Gary was born with a bad

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Speaker 1: back and five o'clock shadow and a mortgage. I was

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Speaker 1: reading about, as I often do, uh, the Universal Monsters era,

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Speaker 1: and do you know Todd Browning, the director who did

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Speaker 1: Freaks and Dracula. He made his name with one D

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Speaker 1: so it would be the German word for death. So

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Speaker 1: can you bring that back? Well, he really wasn't freak.

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Speaker 1: He was a weird dude. Weird dude. I was telling

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Speaker 1: Jordan when he came up at one point, and he

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Speaker 1: had one of those bizarre early twenty century American man

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Speaker 1: cvs that don't happen anymore. Like he was like a

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Speaker 1: star boy tenor in his choir and then became like

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Speaker 1: a hobo roustabout Tyler, you know, and then in the

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Speaker 1: transition from silence to talkies, uh, sort of lost his way,

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Speaker 1: but a fascinating guy. God, can you imagine being able

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Speaker 1: to put on your checks return hobo roused about are

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Speaker 1: going to this year? You've tried? Yeah, Well, there's just

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Speaker 1: so many great stories. I mean, we did an episode

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Speaker 1: recently on how the Grinch Stole Christmas? And I love

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Speaker 1: that you saluted the woman of a thousand voices, June Frey.

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Speaker 1: Being from outside of Boston, I loved your episode on

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Speaker 1: von Meeder jfk impersonator who his career took a dive

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Speaker 1: pretty quickly for obvious reasons. Well, you know, he was

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Speaker 1: so famous in that comedy album one album of the Year,

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Speaker 1: The First Family, where he and some other actors portrayed

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Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy and his family, and after the president

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Speaker 1: was murdered. I mean, granted von Meeter lived, that's a

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Speaker 1: good thing, but he became this living reminder of this

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Speaker 1: terrible day, and it was almost sort of kind of

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Speaker 1: I mean that he lived for forty years kind of

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Speaker 1: in the desert, just walking around. The thing that I

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Speaker 1: found the most sort of kind of haunting is in

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Speaker 1: this old archival tape we found of him, taken towards

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Speaker 1: the end of his life. He mentioned walking down Second

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Speaker 1: Avenue in Manhattan and a construction worker stopping what he

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Speaker 1: was doing, walking over to von Meter displacing his hand

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Speaker 1: on his shoulder like comfortingly, and that von Meter kind

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Speaker 1: of wanted to smack the guy and say I'm not dead,

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Speaker 1: you know, But people were treated him almost kind of

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Speaker 1: like a ghost. Wow, that is incredible. I mean down

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Speaker 1: so many. I mean I also I need to ask you,

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Speaker 1: just as a big sitcom fan, and this has troubled

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Speaker 1: me for for many years. Richie cunning Him Richie Cunningham's

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Speaker 1: older brother, rather Chuck. Where is he well, I mean

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Speaker 1: all he Chuck cunning him, the former older brother, but

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Speaker 1: she cunning him did for those first couple of seasons

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Speaker 1: of Happy Days was dribble of basketball and Edith Sandway

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Speaker 1: and I think sometimes do that at the same time.

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Speaker 1: But he just went upstairs one episode and never came down.

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Speaker 1: And Gary Marshall, the creator of Happy Days, was kind

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Speaker 1: of smart enough to know that the audience would just

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Speaker 1: be okay with that that all we needed was the

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Speaker 1: fons all Richie need. Why would he go to Chuck

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Speaker 1: for any advice on on dating or anything else when

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Speaker 1: he had the fons out back? And for the record,

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Speaker 1: at two are Gary, that isn't Gary, that is you

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Speaker 1: know he my favorite Gary's have two rs. Gary Trudeau

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Speaker 1: is a two are Gary. Yeah. And then Garry Gilmore

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Speaker 1: the serial Killer was a one R Gary. That tells

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Speaker 1: you something towards the unified theory of garyus. The Gary

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Speaker 1: cinematic universe is building. Yes, well, there are just so

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Speaker 1: many amazing stories on Obituarious. And I didn't know until

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Speaker 1: listening to an episode from this season called Death of

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Speaker 1: a Working Dog that you wrote for Wishbone. It was

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Speaker 1: really your first professional writing gig, and it sounds like

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Speaker 1: it was a formative influence on you. You've described it

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Speaker 1: as a storytelling boot camp said at one point in

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Speaker 1: the episode, everything you do seems to come back to Wishbone,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted to ask you more about that, like,

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Speaker 1: how did that influence your storytelling? Oh? Gee, was you know?

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you in the middle of it. The Wishbone

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Speaker 1: for your audience members who don't know, was that Jack

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Speaker 1: Russell Terrier who in his dream life became the heroes

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Speaker 1: of classic novels. It was. It was a pretty trippy

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Speaker 1: idea ran on PBS during the nine nineties. You know.

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Speaker 1: One of the things I learned doing it because we

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Speaker 1: would have these little focus groups of kids, and as

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Speaker 1: I said, the audience was six to eleven year olds,

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Speaker 1: and I remember I had the kindergarten group and it

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Speaker 1: was so great to try out material with them and

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Speaker 1: to interview them and realize that they would lose interest

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Speaker 1: if the plot wasn't moving forward basically at all times.

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Speaker 1: So you couldn't just have characters just kind of talking

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Speaker 1: and marking time and bullshitting like they Things had to

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Speaker 1: keep moving forward. Had to be really, really lean. And

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Speaker 1: that's sort of the bigest lesson, one of the biggest

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Speaker 1: lessons I learned in you know, writing a script and

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Speaker 1: telling a story is just how to keep the thing

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Speaker 1: moving forward. Um, So that was one of the lessons.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I basically was taking books for the episodes.

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Speaker 1: I wrote books that you know, I probably should have

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Speaker 1: already read at that point maybe, but now I was

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Speaker 1: getting paid to read them and boil them down and

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Speaker 1: turned them into half hour versions for kids with a

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Speaker 1: dog as the lead. I mean, it was completely insane,

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Speaker 1: this an assignment. Well, without further ado, let's dive in

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Speaker 1: from the real life Jack Russell terrier who inspired the

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Speaker 1: titular dog, to the herculean efforts that went into costuming

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Speaker 1: the show, the painstaking process of rewriting classic literature for

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Speaker 1: a dog, and infuriating reasons the show was prematurely canceled.

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Speaker 1: Here is everything you didn't know about Wishbone. Wishbone was

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Speaker 1: the brandchild of Rick Duffield, the producer who was working

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Speaker 1: at Lyrics Studios, Texas based production company that was responsible

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Speaker 1: for Barney and Friends. In After the global success of Barney,

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Speaker 1: they were looking for new material and Duffield had young

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Speaker 1: kids at the time, and he felt that there was

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Speaker 1: a certain sensibility that was missing from the airwaves. To

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Speaker 1: paraphrase something Moses in his episode of Mobituaries, there were

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Speaker 1: shows that taught kids how to read, but not why

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Speaker 1: to read. Rick was a big dog lover, and to

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Speaker 1: amuse his kids, he up and told stories around the

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Speaker 1: house from the point of view of the family's Jack

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Speaker 1: Russell terrier, and this led to his Eureka moment, As

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Speaker 1: he told The New Yorker in two thousand nine, I

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Speaker 1: had gotten into the habit of giving voice to my

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Speaker 1: own dog's expressions and exploits around the house. One afternoon

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Speaker 1: in late is I struggled to convert that impulse into

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Speaker 1: a show. I gazed at the row of books on

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Speaker 1: my credenza. The one that caught my eye that day

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Speaker 1: was Frank McGill's masterpiece of World Literature. Well, what if

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Speaker 1: a little dog with a big imagination could take us

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Speaker 1: into some of the greatest stories ever told, and why

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Speaker 1: not make him the hero? And the idea had legs

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Speaker 1: with action packs You like that? Yeah, with action pack

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Speaker 1: stories and an adorable dog, it seemed like the perfect

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Speaker 1: way to make reading appealing for kids. The idea morphed

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Speaker 1: into kind of a Walter Midi premise about this day

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Speaker 1: dreaming animal with a fairly boring life and a wrestless imagination,

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Speaker 1: and so there'll be a story set in the real world,

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Speaker 1: which the dog would then liken to a story in

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Speaker 1: classic literature. Duffield really saw this as the perfect time

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Speaker 1: to swing big because this is a fairly elaborate production,

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Speaker 1: because the studio was flushed with Barney Bucks and more

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Speaker 1: apt to take a chance on this cinematic children's show.

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Speaker 1: And apparently there was actually an early version of the

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Speaker 1: show about a bulldog named Knuckles that lived in New Orleans,

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Speaker 1: which sadly didn't make it far off the drawing board.

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Speaker 1: But speaking of dogs, it was time to make a pilot,

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Speaker 1: and that meant that Duffield needed his canine star. In

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Speaker 1: the summer, they auditioned between one hundred and a hundred

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Speaker 1: fifty dogs over the course of two or three days

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Speaker 1: at a Marriott courtyard in Valenti see a California the

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Speaker 1: Duffield later said he didn't have a specific dog in

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Speaker 1: mind when he dreamed up Wishbone. He admitted to being

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Speaker 1: predisposed to the kind of dog he had at home,

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Speaker 1: a Jack Russell Terrier, the same kind as Frasier's dog Eddie,

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Speaker 1: as well as Milo in the Mask and the dog

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Speaker 1: in the artist uh Uggy. I believe that dog's name

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Speaker 1: was I think he had two movies out that year,

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Speaker 1: um popular dog. As far as training goes, easy to

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Speaker 1: train smart dogs, As he told the Albany Sunday Gazette,

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Speaker 1: Duffield not the dog. These are great, great dogs. They

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Speaker 1: have an intelligent look, the way they look and tilt

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Speaker 1: their head like they've got an idea or a thought.

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Speaker 1: They're really very smart, with a bright, eager and attentive quality.

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Speaker 1: The team met some high profile hounds, including those who

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Speaker 1: had started homeward bound and look who's talking now. Then

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Speaker 1: in walked to Jack Russell terrier named Soccer. We should

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Speaker 1: punch in some kind of musical sticker there. John Williams

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Speaker 1: should have scored Wishbone. Honestly, really piss away all that

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Speaker 1: Barney money and just swing for full scale set recreations

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Speaker 1: that John Williams score. Roger Deakins is the cinematographer. Uh

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Speaker 1: Sally Menick is the editor. That's at the end of

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Speaker 1: my behind the scenes Hollywood knowledge. Um. Apparently he was

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Speaker 1: the last dog of the casting session. Whatever the case,

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Speaker 1: it was love at first, bark all out. Maybe you're

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Speaker 1: familiar with Soccer's early work. This is where we've gotten

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Speaker 1: what's his name? Hi, I'm Troy mclarre. No, I'm who's

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Speaker 1: the weird Canadian dude who ambushes musicians with their oldps

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Speaker 1: Nord War surprising Soccer with early commercials for Mighty Dog

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Speaker 1: and Chuck Wagon Dog Food. The dog is a soccer,

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Speaker 1: both due to his markings, which made him resembled the

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Speaker 1: checkered ball, and also his fondness for mini soccer balls.

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Speaker 1: He'd recently fallen on hard times because producers thought that

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Speaker 1: he looked a little too much like the dog from

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Speaker 1: the Little Rascals movie. Pet looks like that, putts pat

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Speaker 1: Get him out of my site, Get him out of

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Speaker 1: my office, blacklist him. You'll never work in this town again.

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Speaker 1: But tail on the way out. So now, at the

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Speaker 1: age of six, Soccer was something of a middle aged

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Speaker 1: has been, or at least until the faithful day he

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Speaker 1: walked into the Marriott courtyard and blew the Wishbone team's

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Speaker 1: collective mind. According to Delfield, the production crew was dazzled.

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Speaker 1: He continued, I thought Soccer was magic as soon as

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Speaker 1: we saw him. He was so expressive. Duffield later said

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Speaker 1: he had a calm, almost zen look. Soccer's sire was

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Speaker 1: the first winner of the Russell Terrier Best of Breed

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Speaker 1: prize at the Cruft's Dog Show in is that the

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Speaker 1: Golden Globes to the Westminster. That sounds about right? Yes, okay,

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Speaker 1: so clearly he had the looks, but he also had

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Speaker 1: the skills. He did a backflip in his audition that

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Speaker 1: blew the producer away. That dog did a backflip. Bring

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Speaker 1: him back, Use the Bonnie money, use the Bonnie slush fond.

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Speaker 1: I want that backflipping dog. Of course, behind every great

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Speaker 1: dog is an equally great trainer. Jackie Captain, the woman

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Speaker 1: who owned Soccer, is something of a legend in Hollywood.

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Speaker 1: She coached the Doberman's that are memorably head conked together

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Speaker 1: after chasing Arnold Schwartzenegger In True Lies by My Beloved

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Speaker 1: James Cameron, who went on to direct Titanic, which is coming.

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Speaker 1: We are doing that soon. You're precious large boat. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Captain also worked with the St Bernard for Coujo, and

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Speaker 1: she helped Ethan Hawk bond with a wolfhound in White Bang.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting. I mean, I wouldn't say that Soccer, who

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Speaker 1: was the dog who played wish Fund had intimacy issues.

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Speaker 1: I think you've just been a star attitude. But we

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Speaker 1: were allowed, very few of us were allowed to touch soccer.

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Speaker 1: And I don't want to be weird about this. I mean,

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Speaker 1: but like because Jackie Captain the amazing and with with

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Speaker 1: her own great history trainer of soccer, and I mean

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Speaker 1: this in the best sense of the word, a real broad.

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Speaker 1: She she really laid down the rules for soccer. And

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Speaker 1: because she needed to have such a connection with the dog,

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Speaker 1: and she needed to be right off camera, right out

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Speaker 1: of the frame of the lens whatever. She needed to

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Speaker 1: be able to have absolute perfect communication with the dog

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Speaker 1: and get Soccer to do whatever she needed him to do.

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Speaker 1: She couldn't have the dog distracted by bonding with too

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Speaker 1: many other people. So the dog could be petted by

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Speaker 1: the actor who played his owner and you know, the

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Speaker 1: mother and the family by a few people and by

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Speaker 1: Jackie off camera, but the rest of us had to

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Speaker 1: really keep our distance from the dog. I just want

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Speaker 1: to make that clear. So I didn't really bond with

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Speaker 1: Soccer at all. I didn't have a real relationship with him.

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Speaker 1: With the dog, I was just a writer, which probably

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Speaker 1: if he were a human he would have treated me

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Speaker 1: the same way because I was a writer. But we

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Speaker 1: did keep pushing the sort of behaviors like we would

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Speaker 1: you know, you know, I can't, but I think the

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Speaker 1: Robin Hood writer had him shooting a bone arrow and

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Speaker 1: which made Jackie go crazy. He did indeed end up

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Speaker 1: doing it because we would use prosthetics. I will say

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Speaker 1: the most complicated thing I probably had him do in

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Speaker 1: a script is in the time Machine, pulled the lever

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Speaker 1: on the actual time machine, and he did manage to

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Speaker 1: do it. I mean, Jackie got him to do it.

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Speaker 1: They didn't have to use a prosthetic for that. That

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Speaker 1: was actually his paw. I think pulling the lever back

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Speaker 1: and you know, thrusting himself a millionaires or whatever it

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Speaker 1: was into the future. But yeah, they were in the

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Speaker 1: red batch of courage. I think, you know, the writer

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Speaker 1: initially had him handling a musket or something like that,

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Speaker 1: and it was nuts. He wouldn't do water work. He

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Speaker 1: was a real diva about water. So in the Odyssey

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Speaker 1: we had a really groundbreaking female stump dog. Her name

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Speaker 1: was Phoebe, and she was sort of like our Linda Hamilton.

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Speaker 1: She could do anything, and she did a lot of

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Speaker 1: stuff with water. Um. Soccer didn't want to go around water.

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Speaker 1: He didn't like loud noises. So there was a I

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Speaker 1: always forget his name, a dog with a face that

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Speaker 1: looked like Jimmy Duranti and I might think Jimmy Durranty,

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Speaker 1: this star slugger, thank you. Yeah, the slugger I think

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Speaker 1: was forced to do the stuff for Red Badge of

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Speaker 1: Courage because I didn't. I don't think Soccer wanted to

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Speaker 1: deal with the noises that come with the Civil War,

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Speaker 1: So in all seriousness, I don't. It's hard to think

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Speaker 1: of another dog on a series that just had to

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Speaker 1: do that much. I don't think last he did that much,

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Speaker 1: and Benji didn't really do anything, and Kujo didn't work

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Speaker 1: that hard. Soccer really busted his little tail on the set.

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Speaker 1: Jackie talks about Rick Dulfield giving her a list of

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Speaker 1: tricks that he wanted her to teach the dog while

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Speaker 1: they were shooting the pilot episodes. Obviously you're more pause

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Speaker 1: on the ground, stuff like hitting your marks, looking right,

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Speaker 1: looking left back. Ha ha. We're not like pun people,

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Speaker 1: but something about this episode is really bringing it out

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Speaker 1: on us. Then when the show got picked up, he

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Speaker 1: came back to her with a longer list, and she said,

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Speaker 1: his little brain can only take so much. Who among us,

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Speaker 1: But by the end of the series, Soccer had learned

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Speaker 1: something like forty behaviors, which is just mind boggling. He

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Speaker 1: was both a total pro and beloved figure on the set.

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Speaker 1: Director of photography Burt Guthrie told Texas Monthly that he

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Speaker 1: would hit his marks as accurately as any actor on

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Speaker 1: his show. I want to go to Burt Guthrie's IMDb

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Speaker 1: and see who he could possibly be shading with that.

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Speaker 1: Actors loved him because he was so expressive. One of

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Speaker 1: the actresses on a behind the scenes clip said he

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Speaker 1: made it so easy for her to tearfully tell him

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Speaker 1: not to go off to war, or how much she

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Speaker 1: really loved him because his face always seemed infused with

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Speaker 1: so much emotion um. His limitations did include people in

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Speaker 1: wigs and beards, and he did not enjoy wearing pants

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Speaker 1: for his for his costumes, but again who among us

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Speaker 1: Soccer hitting his marks, he would earn treats, although sometimes

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Speaker 1: things went south when he found a prop that he'd

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Speaker 1: like that he would rather play tug of war than

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Speaker 1: relinquished it. Between scenes, he did get to hang out

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Speaker 1: in his air condition to dressing room. According to a

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Speaker 1: People Magazine article written by our former worker Tom Glato,

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Speaker 1: Soccer kept in shape for his time on camera with

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Speaker 1: a diet of skinless chicken, grilled and lightly seasoned, and

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Speaker 1: regular exercise. Among his only diva tendencies on set is

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Speaker 1: that he would bark in the car when he wanted

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Speaker 1: the A C turned on, which, granted it was Texas

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Speaker 1: in the summer, I bark in the car when I

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Speaker 1: went the A C turned on. It's fifty degrees in

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Speaker 1: Sonny in northern California. Sadly, Soccer died on June two

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Speaker 1: thousand one, just after his thirteenth birthday, but Jackie had

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Speaker 1: some kind words for him in an oral history If

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Speaker 1: We Bone published in Texas Monthly magazine. Not every dog

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Speaker 1: is made for Hollywood. It takes a special kind of

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Speaker 1: dog that enjoys it. Soccer wasn't the smartest dog I've

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Speaker 1: ever trained, but he had that willingness to please, and

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Speaker 1: he had a great heart. I mean, he'd walk on

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Speaker 1: water for me. Soccer is buried at the Plain, oh

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Speaker 1: Texas ranch he's shared with Jackie, or the Jackie shared

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Speaker 1: with him. She liked to say in her later years

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Speaker 1: that Soccer really taught her. No, she didn't. Sorry, that's

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Speaker 1: not binding. We're going to take a quick break, but

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Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more, too much information in

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Speaker 1: just a moment. So we have a dog, but now

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Speaker 1: we need his voice. And this proved harder than you

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Speaker 1: might think. Rick Duffield said that he was sent dozens

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Speaker 1: of voice over demos from casting agencies, but all the

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Speaker 1: actors sounded like, according to him, they were doing Shakespeare,

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Speaker 1: as Duffield said, they didn't stop to think about the dog.

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Speaker 1: Larry Brantley, however, did. The twenty four year old stand

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Speaker 1: up comic was trying to break into acting when he

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Speaker 1: got the call to audition, and he got the gig

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Speaker 1: through what he called the weirdest audition that's ever been

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Speaker 1: or ever will be. And he told the following story

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Speaker 1: to Entertainment Tonight. In he came in with basically no

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Speaker 1: information about the show whatsoever, thinking that he was going

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Speaker 1: to read the scene, you know, like an audition, but

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Speaker 1: it was basically just like a five minute impromptu thing

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Speaker 1: with the dog. Soccer was having a break and Rick

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Speaker 1: Duffield said to Larry, well, watch the dog and just

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Speaker 1: kind of follow along and see what he's doing right now.

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Speaker 1: And Soccer, I guess, was obsessing over this tennis ball.

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Speaker 1: So Larry did a whole impromptu inner monologue of what

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Speaker 1: was going through Soccer's mind as he played with the

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Speaker 1: tennis ball, and Larry thought he was just goofing around,

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Speaker 1: and after a few minutes he grabbed the script and

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Speaker 1: as the producers you know what are we gonna start?

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Speaker 1: And they said, oh no, that was the audition, and

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Speaker 1: this poor guy left thinking, I can't believe I just

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Speaker 1: did five minutes about it and his ball. And then

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Speaker 1: he got the gig, probably because it was closer in

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Speaker 1: spirit to the off the cuff stories Rick Duffield used

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Speaker 1: to do with his family dog that had inspired the

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Speaker 1: show in the first place. Larry tells this great story

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Speaker 1: about being so nervous after the audition that he went

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Speaker 1: up to his uncle's cabin and the Smoky's way in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, just unlined, and that's where he

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Speaker 1: got the call that he got the gig. And he

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Speaker 1: was on the phone discussing all the finer points of

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Speaker 1: the contract and the production. You know, six days a week,

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Speaker 1: fourteen hours a day for a year, which sounds pretty grueling. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And the producer from whish Bone hangs up, and Larry

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Speaker 1: hears another voice on the line, a thick accent. They're

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Speaker 1: gonna pay you to be a TV show. And Larry

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Speaker 1: didn't realize his uncle was so far out in the

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Speaker 1: sticks that he had a party line, which I mean

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Speaker 1: people probably even know what that is now. It's a

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Speaker 1: line that's shared with multiple people on a block. So

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Speaker 1: when you would get a call of everybody on this

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Speaker 1: mountain's phone would ring and you pick it up and

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Speaker 1: you hear that it wasn't for you, and you hang

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Speaker 1: back up. But this guy was so fascinated by the

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Speaker 1: deal making that he stayed on the line for an

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Speaker 1: hour listening to all the contract details. And then Larry

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Speaker 1: spent another twenty minutes afterwards awkwardly answering questions for this guy,

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Speaker 1: like you know, no, the dogs don't actually talk, and

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Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Many of the people who

427
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:14,720
Speaker 1: worked on Wishbone would go out of their way to

428
00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 1: say that the books were the stars of the show.

429
00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 1: But we must take a moment to salute the show's

430
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:22,320
Speaker 1: main human characters, the Talbot's, whose real world lives and

431
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:26,479
Speaker 1: desires inspire Wishbones literary flights of fancy. Twelve year old

432
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:29,160
Speaker 1: Joe Talbot played by Jordan Wall lived in the fictional

433
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:32,479
Speaker 1: town of Oakdale, Texas with his widowed librarian mother Ellen

434
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:35,479
Speaker 1: played by Mary Chris Wall, who I believe is no relation.

435
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:39,040
Speaker 1: There's also his quirky next door neighbor Wanda, his best

436
00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: friends Sam Kepler and David Barnes, and the bully DeMott.

437
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:46,160
Speaker 1: These stories act as a framing device for the literary

438
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 1: fantasy sequences because the themes were similar to whatever the

439
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:51,560
Speaker 1: sixth grader was going through, which is a really clever

440
00:23:51,600 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: way to help young viewers relate to the lessons from

441
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:56,680
Speaker 1: these books and embrace them more fully. And now we're

442
00:23:56,680 --> 00:23:57,920
Speaker 1: at the part of the show that I'm the most

443
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: excited to talk about. The writing. The head writer was

444
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: New York based playwright and dancer Stephanie Simpson, and I

445
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,880
Speaker 1: believe her Dallas based mother taught Rick Duffield's son Joe,

446
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:10,200
Speaker 1: and drama class, which I believe is how she wound

447
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 1: up with the gig mo. Taking it all the way

448
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: back to the beginning, How did you first get the

449
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,919
Speaker 1: job on Wishbone? What was your relationship with Stephanie Simpson?

450
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 1: So I am and was already at that point very

451
00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: good friends with Stephanie and her sister, Jeanie. Jeanie Simpson

452
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:29,200
Speaker 1: was on many many episodes and terrific actress, and she

453
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:31,520
Speaker 1: was she actually was Joan and Jonah Bark, So she

454
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:33,760
Speaker 1: got burned at this fake she was Juliette and Romeo

455
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 1: and Juliet. She was in a whole bunch of episodes.

456
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 1: But we had gone to college essentially together, um different years.

457
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:44,720
Speaker 1: And then we were living around the corner from each

458
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 1: other in New York, all kind of struggling, as you know,

459
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: aspiring actors. And for my twenty five birthday, no one

460
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 1: remembered my birthday my birthday, and so I called them

461
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 1: on that they lived above a jap He's restaurant around

462
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: the corner for me and so I called them and

463
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 1: I said it's my birthday and they went, oh my god,

464
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: we're so sorry. I said, don't worry, no one remembered.

465
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 1: And I said, I'd really like an anchovy with a

466
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 1: pizza with anchovies. Uh. And it was that was I

467
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:13,880
Speaker 1: was going through a face and where I really liked

468
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 1: pizzas with anchovies and uh. And so I had nothing

469
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,239
Speaker 1: to do with them living above a Japanese restaurant, so

470
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: they ran over with a pizza with anchovies. I think

471
00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:25,919
Speaker 1: it actually might have had anchovies and pepperoni, and and

472
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: it was just the kind of thing they do. And

473
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:29,600
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with them offering me a

474
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: job on wish Phone. But I just it's just a

475
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: really wonderful memory. And then anyway, then Stephanie left for

476
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 1: what I think she thought would be like a weekend

477
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: in Dallas to kind of help workshop this idea that

478
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: was sort of brewing, kind of the the idea before

479
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: wish Phone, really, and she kind of ended up staying

480
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,200
Speaker 1: there for a long time, and she she called up

481
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 1: and she said, Hey, this is going to become a

482
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 1: TV show. Do you want to come down and work

483
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 1: on it? And then I came down and I interviewed

484
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:01,960
Speaker 1: with Rick Duffield, the executive producer, and then he gave

485
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 1: the okay and they hired me to work on the show.

486
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,199
Speaker 1: I'd been in a production at the time. I was

487
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: doing musicals. I'd been in the Southeast Asia toward the

488
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 1: musical Greece. Um. We played Jakarta, Singapore. Who were you

489
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: in it? One of the tea birds, you know? I

490
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: was duty yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were canceled in

491
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:26,719
Speaker 1: Kuala lumpur Um and then I came back and I

492
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 1: was doing South Pacific at a theater called paper Mill Playhouse,

493
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: and that's when Stephanie called and she said, you want

494
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: to come down here? So I dropped everything. I said,

495
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 1: somebody else will have to play the professor. He only

496
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:39,400
Speaker 1: has one solo line and there's nothing like a dame.

497
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: And then I went down there. So yeah, So I

498
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: mean I was lucky, fortunate. I don't like lucky. Well,

499
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,159
Speaker 1: I was lucky. Yeah. Was there a writer's room? It

500
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: was how many of how big was the crew writing?

501
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 1: There were two other staff writers, one of whom was me,

502
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: and then a couple a few freelancers, So there was

503
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: no writer's room really in the beginning. There were three

504
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: or four of us maybe sitting around kind of hashing

505
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:03,920
Speaker 1: stuff out, but then we call We eventually sort of

506
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: went off into our own corners. Um, but Stephanie was

507
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:10,920
Speaker 1: supervising and often rewriting. Was there a kind of code

508
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 1: of silence among you guys when you hadn't read any

509
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: of these books? How easy it was it for you

510
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: to come come to each other and be like, guys,

511
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:21,480
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know Silas Marner. Oh my god,

512
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: Silas Marner. Yeah, and I never read it. I mean, god,

513
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: I was not as signed don Qyxote. I mean, that

514
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:30,120
Speaker 1: would have broken me. It would have broken me. There's

515
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 1: a reason I chose the time Machine, which is really

516
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 1: kind of fun. And there's a movie right with even

517
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:39,120
Speaker 1: me MEU and uh and Rod Taylor right right. So yeah,

518
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: and so so that was convenient, right, And I think

519
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: it's like under two hundred pages. It's like, I don't

520
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 1: like movies that are longer than a hundred minutes. I

521
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: don't like Broadway shows with intermissions. I like this whole

522
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: intermission list thing that's going on. And I don't like

523
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,159
Speaker 1: my books to be more than two pages. But it

524
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: was really I really like doing Treasure Island. I pitched

525
00:27:57,040 --> 00:28:00,679
Speaker 1: that Treasure Island action packed sort uh. And then I

526
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:02,880
Speaker 1: did want of Mexican folk Tales, which is a way

527
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: of just saying like, okay, well, we're just making stuff

528
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:09,120
Speaker 1: up now. And then I did uh the Inspector General

529
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 1: go go. Yeah, it's great, it reads really fast, it's

530
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 1: a play. Yeah. And uh and what was the last

531
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: one I did? I'm leaving something out. I wrote five

532
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 1: of them and uh, it was I'll remember eventually, But yeah, no,

533
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:27,639
Speaker 1: I could not. I that would have been too much

534
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: to do. But cliffs notes, as I learned from this,

535
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,159
Speaker 1: or's that extra hass in there. It's like Brussels sprouts,

536
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: just really on it. I just my my my laptop

537
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: is drenched right now. But so but the cliffs notes,

538
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: I realized, are pretty damn good. You would have thought

539
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: I'd been familiar with those beforehand, but I was too

540
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:50,760
Speaker 1: lazy for that. Before this project. Even Jordan and I

541
00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: were both talking about on an earlier episode, the Great

542
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 1: Illustrative Classics series do you do Amer? Those they were

543
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: like chat books, but they were like but they were

544
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: just the kids version of all this stuff. And then

545
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:04,479
Speaker 1: for the longest time, I personally labored under the delusion

546
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 1: that that was the real book too. Totally imagine my

547
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: shock and horror when it wasn't. Those things. I think

548
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: people collect those now. I still have them all at home,

549
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: so maybe I'm sitting on a gold mine. They're right

550
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: up next to the old Beanie babies. I'm curious about

551
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: some of the folk tale ones, like how did those

552
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: come up? And as far as the pitching process, because

553
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: you know you've mentioned it was a little bit self directed,

554
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: and then there's obviously like sort of the bigger, broader

555
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: strokes of literature that you hit, but like, how did

556
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 1: you arrive at like the African myths as a rubric

557
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 1: for an episode? Well, so, I mean collectively, but really

558
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: sort of lead on this score by Stephanie Simpson. And

559
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: this was you know, twenty five years ago? Is that

560
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: how long ago it is? Yeah, it's in nineteen ninety six.

561
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: Where are we in time? You can you can lie

562
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: to ninety years ago? God? Is it thirty years ago? Yeah,

563
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: it's almost almost thirty years to go. So, I mean,

564
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: I would like to think that this was somewhat forward thinking.

565
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: Stephanie wanted to make sure that this wasn't just Western Cannon,

566
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: and so she and the writer of that episode, Vincent Brown,

567
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 1: if memory serves, I thought it was important to do

568
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 1: one around African folk tales, and a Nancy the Spider

569
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: was the story that they wanted to tell. I wanted

570
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: to do something that was Hispanic, that was Latino, my

571
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: mother's Colombian, and I think probably somewhat influenced by doing

572
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: this in Dallas and Texas. Mexican legends and folk tales

573
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 1: seemed like a good subject matter for an episode like

574
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: that UM. And so what I did is I took

575
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: two stories, the kind of the origin story of Mexico

576
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: UM with the t T mex who would eventually become

577
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 1: the Aztecs on the shores of Lake Texcoco. And I

578
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 1: think it's a symbol in the middle of the of

579
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: the Mexican flag, right with the eagle and the snake.

580
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: I'm sort of forgetting this a little bits, a little boggy,

581
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: but that had to do with the origins or of Mexico.

582
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: And then the other great symbol of Mexico, our Lady

583
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 1: of Guadalupe UM and the marrying apparition there was sort

584
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: of the other story, and we combined them both so

585
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds kind of heavy, and it was.

586
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: But I have to say it was a really fun

587
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 1: challenge taking material like this and saying, all right, how

588
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: do we make it entertaining and go down easy for

589
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 1: a six to eleven year old? And it just was.

590
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: I mean it was kind of a sort of a

591
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: dream assignment. I think it's like something that an English

592
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:35,920
Speaker 1: professor on acid writing for Massido was signing. It's kind

593
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 1: of crazy, right, I mean, let's make the dog one

594
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: diego the peasant in the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

595
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of crazy, right, and uh, but

596
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: it works. It was a great first job to have.

597
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: I can't believe I wasn't after after that. The next year,

598
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: I applied to me a writer around Boy Meets World

599
00:31:54,560 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 1: and they didn't. They didn't hire me. I mean, after

600
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: I'd written a story about the Chichi Max with with

601
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: the Jack Russell Terrier as an aspect warrior, I couldn't.

602
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 1: I couldn't write for Boy Meets Worrel. I am just

603
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: revisiting the show. I am blown away by how Wishbone

604
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: didn't talk down to kids at all. I mean, they

605
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: had some pretty terrifying moments in there with Joan of

606
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: Arc getting burned at the stake, and in Hunchback and

607
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 1: Notre Dame they go down to the gallows. And you

608
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: mentioned I mean in Red Badge of Courage, Wishbone with

609
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: the Little Musket. I mean, was it hard to strike

610
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 1: the balance between staying true to the source material and

611
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: also uh knowing your audience. Yeah, I think so, Like, uh,

612
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 1: you know, with Romeo and Juliette, there was no suicide,

613
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And I'm trying to think that there

614
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 1: were characters. I think for Frankenstein, he was Dr Frankenstein.

615
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: He was not the monster. I think that that it

616
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: was decided that that would just be too weird to

617
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 1: have him as the monster on would have been really weird,

618
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: heart hard having the dog through the little girl into

619
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: the lake too, I mean, and um, yeah, so I

620
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: think I wish I could remember some of the things

621
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: that we couldn't do that we wanted to do we couldn't.

622
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: But yeah, you couldn't have Wishbone. You couldn't have Wishbone

623
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: kill anyone the dog do that, um, and obviously didn't

624
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 1: wanted to die. Um yeah, um, yeah, I can't think

625
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 1: of of things that we started down the path. I'm

626
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: sure there were, I just don't remember was anything shot down?

627
00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember. I'm sure that stuff was

628
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:43,760
Speaker 1: because I saw the metamorphosis in here, and it took

629
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: me a second to realize it wasn't the Cough Gust story.

630
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: I thought I had completely memory hold that Andie James

631
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: Joyce in there. Yeah, Wishbone woke up and found himself

632
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: transformed into a bug. That would have been great. I

633
00:33:58,160 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: love that when you got him in the splitter, you

634
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: got him the spider costumes, so they costume yeah, um, yeah,

635
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 1: So you know nothing that you off the top of

636
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:10,279
Speaker 1: your head, you remember. I don't remember, and I'll tell you.

637
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 1: I also need to tell you that one thing is

638
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: I will never forget that the pilot episode, which Stephanie

639
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 1: wrote was Oliver Twist, and I remember the PBS executive

640
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: coming down and they said you're going to meet a

641
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: television executive and this is we're all gonna have this meeting.

642
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 1: Her name was Alice Kahn, and she looked at I

643
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: think a rough cut of the episode, and then afterwards

644
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: there was a like an involved discussion about the themes

645
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 1: that have been chosen from Oliver Twister really highlight. And

646
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: then somebody turned to me, I can't remember who was,

647
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: and said, don't get used to this. This is not

648
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,160
Speaker 1: normally what happens in TV that a network executive would

649
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:52,319
Speaker 1: be talking to you about these things. You suddenly would

650
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: feel like you're in a seminar and you know, in

651
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 1: college or something as opposed to I really think Samantha's

652
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: harreny to be a shade lighter like like like it wasn't.

653
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:08,360
Speaker 1: I mean, it really was very special. My completest streak

654
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: in the demands that I take a brief moment to

655
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 1: break down the author's stats for Wishbone. Eight authors have

656
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 1: had more than one of their works featured on the show.

657
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain

658
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 1: each had three of their works adapted for Wishbone. Well

659
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: Jane Austin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, should Say,

660
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: Alexander Dumas and Washington Irving had two of their works featured,

661
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,839
Speaker 1: and Sherlock Holmes is the only character Wishbone played in

662
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 1: more than one episode. In addition to the quality of

663
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: writing on the show, We also have to talk about

664
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 1: the quality of the production, which is extra astonishing considering

665
00:35:41,239 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: the tight deadline that they were up against. This thing

666
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: was like shooting SNL on speed with a dog on

667
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: location on location. Rick Duffiod admits that he freaked out

668
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,400
Speaker 1: when he got the order for forty episodes of this

669
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:56,360
Speaker 1: show due in a year, and he said his first thought,

670
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: because as part of any good traumatic response, you start

671
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: right sitalizing and compartmentalizing, his first thought was, well, there's

672
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,680
Speaker 1: fifty two weeks in a year, maybe we can do this.

673
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 1: The problem was, this wasn't Barney with one set on

674
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 1: a sound stage, a single group of kids, and a

675
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 1: multi camera setup that you could run like a play.

676
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:17,839
Speaker 1: Wishbone was both on a studio and on location. Each

677
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:20,239
Speaker 1: episode had an A and a B plot, one with

678
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: Joe and his family shot the present day, and the

679
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: other drawn from classic literature. Duffield later noted we were

680
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 1: basically shooting two different shows at once. Every episode. You

681
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:32,320
Speaker 1: couldn't have actors from the Oakdale scenes show up in

682
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: the fantasy scenes. Why was that? Just because you know,

683
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, kids are dumb, the show is magical.

684
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: Kids are dubbed. Also Bear in mind. It was a

685
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:49,279
Speaker 1: new universe every episode, by which we mean one week

686
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:51,480
Speaker 1: they'd be in Victorian England, the next week they'd be

687
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 1: with the Aztecs. So every episode required a completely different

688
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: cast drawn from the local repertory actors, and completely different

689
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,799
Speaker 1: sets and locations, all of which is to say it

690
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 1: was hard to pull off. Shooting these episodes over the

691
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: course of five days. They worked in a sound stage

692
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:09,919
Speaker 1: as well as the Lyrics Studios ten acre back lot

693
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 1: in Plano, Texas, outside of Dallas. The sets for Wishbone,

694
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: I mean, this thing. I cannot tell you how lavish

695
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: this was. It was a lot of Barney money. Okay,

696
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: the family I'm whispering a list of them, No one

697
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:25,799
Speaker 1: else like the family that ran this thing had a

698
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 1: lot of Barney money. Okay, and Barney had been driving

699
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 1: everyone crazy. But one of the residual effects of this,

700
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 1: right that the zillions of money it made up the

701
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:39,360
Speaker 1: back of taxpayers, I mean sort of, well not really. Uh,

702
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:44,359
Speaker 1: it's um um that they could fund Wishbone, and thank god,

703
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,720
Speaker 1: what a great way to use all those extra zillions

704
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: of dollars. And so we had just on believable sets,

705
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: and so I think I remember pitching the time Machine

706
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: because I thought, wow, well we've got the money to

707
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: build like a whole new world a million years in

708
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:05,160
Speaker 1: the future. And they just the production designers, I think

709
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: Chris Henry and Doug Leonard. I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out.

710
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:12,360
Speaker 1: Barry Phillips. Also, they just would build these crazy sets.

711
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 1: So sort of in the early stages a c G. I.

712
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:17,840
Speaker 1: So there was a woman in Karis Turpin who was

713
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: really great with green screens when this stuff was fairly new.

714
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:23,840
Speaker 1: I think they were blue screens back then, mostly for

715
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: compositing and creating whole new worlds. But a lot of

716
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 1: these sets were truly built from the ground shop And

717
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 1: yet understand, we built a whole back lot for the

718
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:34,759
Speaker 1: whole contemporary world for those who know Wishphone of the

719
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 1: fictional community of Oakdale. So there was a whole neighborhood,

720
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: you know, built in the suburbs of Dallas on this

721
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: back lot for all the contemporary scenes, but then for

722
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 1: each episode, and episodes are being shot like every ten days.

723
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 1: This was an extraordinary amount of material to be producing.

724
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: We would like Sherlock Holmes, is you know home or

725
00:38:56,560 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: in this you know, in the world of the Morlocks

726
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: Eloy from the time which or you know, I remember

727
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: for a Treasure Island, I wanted Samantha, one of the

728
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: main characters in the show, to fall in love with

729
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: some old barn that in the middle of the episode

730
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:13,359
Speaker 1: would get burned down. So they built a barn and

731
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: burned it down and they would get do crazy stuff

732
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: like this. I mean, we were spending so much money

733
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: on this and what was something like forty episodes in

734
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: a year or something, which the initial order I think

735
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: the initial order may have been six episodes, but the

736
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 1: first season ended up being forty episode so it was

737
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 1: no it was tremendous and I and I would I

738
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: would just hang around on the set because I wasn't

739
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 1: really needed on the set unless it was for an

740
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: episode I had written, but just watching and trying to

741
00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 1: absorb and sitting in an edit room. I mean, you

742
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: guys know this. You just learned so much about how

743
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: not only TV is made, but I know it sounds

744
00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 1: awfully precious, but you learned how to tell a story

745
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: when you're watching smart editors at work. And we haven't

746
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:59,399
Speaker 1: even gotten to talk about the costumes. Each episode had

747
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:03,239
Speaker 1: complete different sets of period costumes for humans and animals,

748
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 1: and Wishbone's team won two Emmys for the hundred plus

749
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: velcrow fastened costumes that they created for the show, which

750
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:13,439
Speaker 1: not only had to look good but also be something

751
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: that Soccer agreed to wear. Remember he has a thing

752
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:20,959
Speaker 1: about pants and hats. Costume designer Steven Schoodage created looks

753
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,760
Speaker 1: that included molded plastic armor for Odysseus, a white beard

754
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,840
Speaker 1: for ripped friend Winkle, and a plumed hat for Syrano

755
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 1: de Bergerac. Although they issued the fake nose, shooting for

756
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: the first episode began in August, and remember this was

757
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: in Dallas, So Oliver Twist costumes where shall we say

758
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: not ideal? Trainer Jackie Captain recalled, I didn't know you

759
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: could sweat in that many places. That kind of heat

760
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 1: was probably our largest challenge because we'd film outdoors one

761
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: or two days a week and he had to put

762
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: clothes on a dog in July. He'd look at you like,

763
00:40:56,719 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: what are you nuts? I'm not cold. I don't want

764
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:02,280
Speaker 1: that on speaking of the dogs thoughts, we should probably

765
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: add that it was decided early on consciously that viewers

766
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 1: could hear Wishbone's thoughts, but his lips would not be

767
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:10,320
Speaker 1: moving because c g I effects were at that point

768
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 1: in their infancy and very expensive. We never had the

769
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: dog's lips move. I think that was a decision that

770
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 1: that would have been too creepy, even though it kind

771
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,760
Speaker 1: of worked for Babe the movie when Babe the Movie

772
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,320
Speaker 1: came out not long afterwards. But for Babe at Work,

773
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:27,719
Speaker 1: I think for the animal's lips to move because the

774
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 1: movie there was something ominous about it, right if I

775
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,720
Speaker 1: remember that correctly, for which would have been too creepy.

776
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,279
Speaker 1: So it was it worked better for it to be

777
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,320
Speaker 1: his internal monologue. And after all, in his dream life

778
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: he's heard by the other characters, but that's his fantasy,

779
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: that's his dream. What was the Mr Ed? Didn't they

780
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:50,359
Speaker 1: do the didn't they do peanut butter for his what

781
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 1: Jordan's this is all you for? Mr? Ed? They just

782
00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 1: slathered his his his labia with Peter butter, and then

783
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: they would just cut to this poor horse trying to

784
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: choke down this peanut butter, and they'd be like, Oh,

785
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 1: that's how he's talking. You know, I'm glad we got

786
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,960
Speaker 1: Mr Ed in here. Mr Edin wishbone The high culture

787
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: and low culture of talking animal shows. Given the scope

788
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 1: of production, some of the actors admitted that they had

789
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: a tough time they were remembering this was all for

790
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,600
Speaker 1: a Jack Russell Terrier. Actor Matthew Thompson explained to you

791
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: Texas Monthly. I mean, this incredible costume on this incredible set,

792
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,040
Speaker 1: with this interesting dialogue, working with his cracker Jack crew,

793
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: and I turned to my scene partner and it's a

794
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 1: Jack Russell Terrier in a costume. But once you accepted

795
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 1: that much in the same way you ruefully accepted Santa

796
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 1: Claus is real, then you just treated Soccer like another actor.

797
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: And I will tell you that I don't think I

798
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 1: was gonna say, like, does this sound patronizing, It's not.

799
00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 1: It's a truth. Is when you shoot a show in

800
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 1: a place like Dallas, and I just finished shooting something

801
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: for many seasons in Detroit, it's like, look, they're great.

802
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 1: Crew was everywhere. But I think they were so excited

803
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: to have a show in Dallas, especially one that was

804
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: produced with the real money that I mean, people just

805
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: threw themselves into this like you wouldn't believe. And the

806
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:17,080
Speaker 1: actors there were plenty of good actors in Dallas who

807
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 1: and I'm not kidding here. You know who had been

808
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: on like Walker, Texas Ranger was big at the time.

809
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 1: I think there might have been one other show in Dallas.

810
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:26,920
Speaker 1: But this is a real gift to them, especially the

811
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 1: actors who were in the fantasy sequences, because right, each

812
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 1: episode was divided between the contemporary world of wish Phone

813
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,720
Speaker 1: and the fantasy sequences. So they were essentially a repertory company.

814
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: And you know, one week they might be playing a

815
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: French nobleman in Joan of Arc and then the next week,

816
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,319
Speaker 1: you know, playing a pirate and Treasure Island, or you know,

817
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:49,399
Speaker 1: somebody in the Count of Money Cristo or I mean

818
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: it was I mean, I think it was kind of

819
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: a dream job for a lot of people. Did you

820
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:59,200
Speaker 1: ever meet Chuck Norris? I sat across from Chuck Norris

821
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: at Race Yourself Mary Poppins. I was at Mary Poppins

822
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:11,800
Speaker 1: on Broadway, and Chuck Norris was right across the aisle

823
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 1: from me, and he is, you know, he's he's compact,

824
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 1: and he was with his wife and a couple of kids.

825
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: I don't think Chuck had been like, please, honey, can

826
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: we go to Mary Boffins, Like I think they're kids

827
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that their kids, but it could have been

828
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: maybe Chuck Norris loves Mary Poppins. Maybe he's you know,

829
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's gone down a chimney or two on

830
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:36,880
Speaker 1: that series. I'm sure, yeah, But I don't think he

831
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: really liked it. I don't. Yeah. And you know, they

832
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 1: do this amazing thing where the Dick van Dyke character

833
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,680
Speaker 1: like actually walked up the procemium and I thought, Chuck

834
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: Norris has got to be impressed. He was like walked

835
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:54,880
Speaker 1: up the side the procemium. It was like more impressive

836
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 1: than when Fredda Stair dances around the bull room, right

837
00:44:57,760 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 1: and like the ceiling in the walls. But that was

838
00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: a rotating thing. This is this is the theater was

839
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: not rotating, and Chuck Norris was like, uh, now, I'd

840
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:10,440
Speaker 1: rather be a cats or whatever. I mean, it does

841
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:12,759
Speaker 1: seem like more of a Cats guy. I mean, that's

842
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:14,440
Speaker 1: why you never stopped by that. Maybe that's why you

843
00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: never stopped by the set of Wishbone. He never did.

844
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:20,320
Speaker 1: He never did. I think the Chuck Norris is probably

845
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: more of a phantom god because the handle that he's

846
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: crashing down, I mean that gets really scary as you

847
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too

848
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 1: much information. After these messages, Wishbone premiered on PBS on October,

849
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,160
Speaker 1: and the fifty total episodes aired over the course of

850
00:45:50,200 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 1: two seasons. The show won four Daytime Emmy's, two for

851
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: the costumes, one for titles, one for set design, honors

852
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: from the Television Critics Association, and a peep Audio Award

853
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:03,479
Speaker 1: that Rick Duffield accepted on behalf of Wishbone, of whom

854
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:05,640
Speaker 1: he said, given the chance, he'd like to bury it

855
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 1: in the backyard with all of his other prized possessions

856
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:12,919
Speaker 1: and bodies. His zombie is right away that the show

857
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: you like that? Wow, I'm just pitching. I'm pitching Wishbone episodes.

858
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,280
Speaker 1: Did they do the Vincent Bugliosi book The Helter Skelter?

859
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:27,880
Speaker 1: You put him in like a buckskin shirt talking about

860
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 1: piggis uh. Duffield had received many letters from young children, parents,

861
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:38,319
Speaker 1: and teachers. He later said, we were tickled at so

862
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 1: many college students like the show. Some of them would

863
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 1: write us later thank you notes for helping them pass

864
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 1: freshman lip class. Producers sent the voice of Wishbone Brantley

865
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: on the press tour where he encountered college kids and

866
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: young married couples with no kids who were fans. He said,

867
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:56,840
Speaker 1: I remember meeting an entire retirement community in a suburb

868
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: of Chicago. They bust them in and they were all

869
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,760
Speaker 1: fans of the show. It was amazing to me. Speaking

870
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,880
Speaker 1: of Wishbone tours, wishone went on a mall tour of

871
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 1: the United States between the first or second season, not

872
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 1: unlike Debbie Gibson in the eighties, where he greeted his

873
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: fans from a giant red armchair. According to an article

874
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:17,760
Speaker 1: in People magazine with the incredible headline reign of Terrier,

875
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: that's good stuff. Yeah, is that Tom? I think so?

876
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 1: M hm, shouts Tom Guiotto, who I guarantee doesn't listen

877
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 1: to podcasts soccer. The dog flew first class, stayed in

878
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 1: four star hotels, and had handlers who referred to him

879
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:38,920
Speaker 1: as the President. This would result in hilarious, presumably hilarious,

880
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: I think it's hilarious, hilarious scenarios When they would take

881
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: him outside to do his business, the handlers would speak

882
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: into their headsets, we've lost the president. When he would,

883
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 1: for example, go behind a bush or tree. And then

884
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:51,800
Speaker 1: when he reappeared, there would be relieved cries of we

885
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 1: have eyes of the President, found the President. Their appearance

886
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 1: at the Ball of America drew seven thousand people, a

887
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 1: bigger crowd than the opening of Planet Hollywood, which had

888
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:08,359
Speaker 1: actual a list Hollywood celebrities, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwartzenegger. None

889
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: of them could hold a candle to Wishbone. MO, what

890
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: was it like when the show premiered, Because on your

891
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:17,279
Speaker 1: mobiituarious podcast you interview some Wishbones super fans, and I

892
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: was wondering at what point it became apparent that this

893
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,360
Speaker 1: show was making a big impact outside of the realm

894
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 1: of just children's television. You know, it started probably pretty

895
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 1: soon after the show premiered. I don't remember much merchandizing

896
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 1: at all. So I had a Wishbone T shirt that

897
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 1: was just the crew for the company, and I remember

898
00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:38,840
Speaker 1: that I would have people come up to me, mothers

899
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 1: usually and say this is the only show I'll let

900
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: my kid watch. That kind of a thing. So I

901
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 1: noticed that pretty early on Stephanie had designed the show.

902
00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: She was really scrupulous about it not dating, so there

903
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 1: were no episodes about the kids excited about whatever was

904
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 1: going on in pop culture at the time, Like they

905
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,160
Speaker 1: don't talk about like, um, handsome as that was that

906
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:03,840
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties. They don't talk about whatever was

907
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: like in the nineties. Um, there weren't any really gadgets

908
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:10,920
Speaker 1: things like that, so the show didn't date. And then

909
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 1: I started when I was on The Daily Show. Actually,

910
00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:16,840
Speaker 1: I remember one of the first things I'm just remembering

911
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: this that John Stewart said to me was his mother

912
00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 1: was a teacher, I think, and he said, he loves

913
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:26,560
Speaker 1: that you wrote for Wishbone, and she loves that because

914
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:29,840
Speaker 1: teachers he used it. So that was I remember that. Um,

915
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: And then realizing that this thing that we had, you know,

916
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: anything good as hard, that we had worked so hard

917
00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: on and so earnestly on, had kind of not a

918
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:42,759
Speaker 1: hip appeal but had a more extensive appeal than I realized.

919
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 1: And then when I gave this speech at Sarah Lawrence College,

920
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: you know, and I was kind of ticking through my

921
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 1: own history and I was kind of taken aback at

922
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: the response at Wishbone. God, so there's like a real

923
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 1: reservoir of goodwill, a real depth of affection for it.

924
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:01,680
Speaker 1: And I think it's probab will believe because you know,

925
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 1: and this is I think what we wanted is we

926
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:07,320
Speaker 1: were the introduction. I think that show was the introduction

927
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:11,319
Speaker 1: for many people to these great works of literature. And

928
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: I did actually, I know it was always a joke

929
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: with us even back then, but I did have people

930
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:18,359
Speaker 1: come up to me and say, you know, I only

931
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:21,520
Speaker 1: passed this exam because I seen the Wishbone episode that

932
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: was always fun. Yeah, well seriously about me, I know,

933
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,879
Speaker 1: for Alex and myself, I mean, you did introduce us

934
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: to all sorts of stories that really we keep close

935
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: to our hearts. And you know, we're both avid readers,

936
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:37,799
Speaker 1: and you know, we're we're writers for a living, and

937
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:40,920
Speaker 1: that's a huge part of our own store, in our

938
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,480
Speaker 1: own history. And there is a huge sense of gratitude

939
00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: towards you and your your friends and colleagues for that gift.

940
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:48,840
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there was. I think it was

941
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 1: in your episode you said, yeah, there are a lot

942
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:52,480
Speaker 1: of shows that taught kids how to read, but very

943
00:50:52,520 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: few that taught kids why. And I think that really

944
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 1: gets to the heart of it for me, at least,

945
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:02,719
Speaker 1: tremendous mat gratitude. Well, I appreciate that. And listen and

946
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:04,399
Speaker 1: you know, and and one of the things is when

947
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 1: I think about it, taking great books and adapting them

948
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: for kids for a dog, but in certain time constraints.

949
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:18,399
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a great writer's exercise. I mean

950
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 1: it just is to have to do that. And also

951
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 1: learning that a book like a Don Quixote or like

952
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: Homer's Odyssey has so much going on and having to

953
00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: like select one theme. You know, each of these books

954
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:37,560
Speaker 1: could have supported fifty different episodes of Wishbone. I guess

955
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 1: one of one of the things it taught me is

956
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 1: how to make choices and to zero in on something

957
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,359
Speaker 1: and be really specific in writing. Also, listen, as I said,

958
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: it was a great first job to have. It's a

959
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:51,879
Speaker 1: great it was almost really unrealistically. So yeah, getting from

960
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 1: the wonderful legacy and the valedictory part. Can we touch

961
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:58,120
Speaker 1: a little bit on when you maybe new things were

962
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: going the writing was on the wall, because I mean

963
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 1: even Good Cop, Bad Cop that right there. Yeah, I'm here,

964
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:07,759
Speaker 1: I'm not. Now let's talk about the worst part of

965
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 1: your history now, um no, I you mentioned a little

966
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 1: bit that money was flush from from Barney and then

967
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: once maybe the I don't know what the accounting department

968
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: it's PBS looked like. But I'm imagining they've got the

969
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:23,759
Speaker 1: line sheet at the end of the year and said,

970
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:29,239
Speaker 1: you're spending what how much on velcro costumes? So I

971
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:31,919
Speaker 1: left after the forty episodes, and there were only eight

972
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: episodes after that. I left to move to l A,

973
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: you wrote off triumphantly, Yes, exactly. I took off right

974
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 1: with the explosion behind me. I went up to l A.

975
00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 1: And so I wasn't around for the next eight episodes.

976
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: I think that the second season lasted eight episodes. I

977
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: promise you. If I knew, I would tell you. But

978
00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 1: all I know is that they didn't order more beyond that,

979
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:01,920
Speaker 1: and it may have been because it was so expensive,

980
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: to which I say, thank god they didn't catch on

981
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 1: sooner that they just allowed those episodes to kind of

982
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:13,799
Speaker 1: be as pristine as they are. But yeah, so I

983
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: wasn't around for a dramatic sort of cancelation notice, and

984
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:20,799
Speaker 1: I know very little about kind of how that went down.

985
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:23,840
Speaker 1: So now we get to the mystery portion of this program,

986
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 1: which is why did wishbone the show? It was beloved

987
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,880
Speaker 1: by fans and critics alike, only last for a season

988
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,440
Speaker 1: and a half. Well, it sounds like it was a

989
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: two pronged problem. As we taked so earlier, it was

990
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 1: a complex and relatively costly production, and it was greenlit

991
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:40,280
Speaker 1: at a rare time when there was money in children's

992
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:43,399
Speaker 1: public television thanks to the success of Barney, and as

993
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:45,480
Speaker 1: a result, people with the purse strings were more willing

994
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:48,319
Speaker 1: to take risks. But that only lasts so long. The

995
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: crucial difference between Barney and Wishbone was that the former

996
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 1: had the bonus of launching a toy empire, whereas the

997
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:57,400
Speaker 1: powers that be felt that there was quote limited marketing

998
00:53:57,400 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 1: potential for Wishbone and executive at kenn Toys. Once you

999
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:03,760
Speaker 1: used the term toy yettic to Steven Spielberg to describe

1000
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 1: et and apparently Wishbone was not toy yetic. That's a

1001
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,760
Speaker 1: gross They couldn't have taken some some toy etic license.

1002
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: It's with him doing anything busy for another week. The

1003
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:23,799
Speaker 1: producers could have used the merchandising income to finance what was,

1004
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:27,719
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, a very complicated production. Duffield later

1005
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:29,920
Speaker 1: said up the show's downfall, it was money. We just

1006
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:32,399
Speaker 1: couldn't finance it. PBS couldn't come up with the money

1007
00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:34,799
Speaker 1: we couldn't come up with the money, and the way

1008
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 1: PBS rolled Wishbone out could have also hurt the show.

1009
00:54:37,880 --> 00:54:39,840
Speaker 1: The network wanted this to be a daily show, and

1010
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:42,840
Speaker 1: all forty episodes for the first season aired over nine

1011
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:47,480
Speaker 1: months between March and November. And compare that to pbss

1012
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:51,720
Speaker 1: forty episode first season rollout of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, which

1013
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: made it through fifteen months. So in short, PBS burned

1014
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: through the episodes quickly, which was a disservice to such

1015
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:01,080
Speaker 1: a labor intensive, meticulous show. It really should have been

1016
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:03,680
Speaker 1: a weekly show like Mr. Rogers and allowed to build

1017
00:55:03,680 --> 00:55:06,840
Speaker 1: an audience and grow. They didn't even get renewed for

1018
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: a full second season, just a truncated ten episode run,

1019
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: plus a full length movie called Dog Days of the West,

1020
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:17,080
Speaker 1: based on the Oh Henry short story Heart of the West.

1021
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: And it was just after a month long shoot in

1022
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: Santa Fe wrapped in late nine seven that Duffield learned

1023
00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:25,880
Speaker 1: that the show was not coming back and the film

1024
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:30,759
Speaker 1: would be Wishbone Swan Song and unfortunately, adding sort of

1025
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 1: insult to injury, they still had some contemporary scenes to

1026
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 1: shoot for the movie at a carnival, so Duffield took

1027
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:38,600
Speaker 1: this as this big moment to address the cast and

1028
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:41,960
Speaker 1: crew and thank everyone, and voice of Wishbone Larry Brantley

1029
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: recalled him saying, we're not coming back. We tried to

1030
00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: find the money, We did everything we could. I want

1031
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:48,960
Speaker 1: you to remember this. You weren't just a part of

1032
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:51,840
Speaker 1: something great. You were part of something important. They're going

1033
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 1: to remember the stories that you told and the way

1034
00:55:54,239 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 1: you told them. The final episode of Wishbone aired on

1035
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: December five, almost years ago exactly. And Rick Duffield, that's

1036
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,279
Speaker 1: a quote that makes me want to give him a

1037
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 1: big old hug. He said, it was very sad for me.

1038
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 1: You don't want to fire your best friends. I felt

1039
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: responsible for it, and I felt like I failed. I

1040
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 1: loved all these people, I still do so much. I

1041
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:17,600
Speaker 1: felt like I was hurting my own family, like I

1042
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 1: was letting them down, and it really got to me.

1043
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 1: But thankfully, or maybe thankfully, Wishbone was granted a belated reprieve. Recently,

1044
00:56:25,840 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 1: there was some news back in that there's going to

1045
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:30,920
Speaker 1: be a Wishbone reboot movie by the Fairly Brothers or

1046
00:56:30,920 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: Peter Fairley. Mo I was what you think about that?

1047
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 1: And if you have any intel on well, I know

1048
00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:38,400
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's by that. I think they they So

1049
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 1: the headline was from the makers of Green Book, and

1050
00:56:40,600 --> 00:56:42,279
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, it's the dog going to be in

1051
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 1: the ma hershaw Alle role or in the Bigo Mortenson role.

1052
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,799
Speaker 1: I mean, like so anyway, I don't know, I know

1053
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: nothing about it, um about the movie, but hey, listen

1054
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:57,440
Speaker 1: it think it could be brought back at the same caliber.

1055
00:56:57,520 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: I think that would be a great thing. And if

1056
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:02,920
Speaker 1: if the show, um, if the series, the TV series,

1057
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:06,000
Speaker 1: would be great if they brought that back in some way.

1058
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:07,960
Speaker 1: You said, I think this might have been in a

1059
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 1: really beautiful commencement speech you gave. It's Sarah Lawrence a

1060
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,200
Speaker 1: few years back, where when you were living in Texas

1061
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:16,800
Speaker 1: you were intrigued, at least in the in the suburbs

1062
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: around Dallas because there wasn't much acknowledgement of the past.

1063
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 1: I think were your words and that really sparked something

1064
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:25,800
Speaker 1: for you. I wanted to ask you you more about that.

1065
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,240
Speaker 1: That really seemed to send you on a on a journey. Well,

1066
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 1: you know, when I lived in I was living in Plano, Texas,

1067
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:34,920
Speaker 1: and nothing against the people plain oh, but it was

1068
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:38,320
Speaker 1: just sort of one sort of Pointe House after another,

1069
00:57:38,480 --> 00:57:42,040
Speaker 1: like a very McMansion eye and it was kind of sterile,

1070
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 1: and it felt like anything that was like pre Watergate

1071
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: would qualify sort of as like an historic monument or something.

1072
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: I mean, everything was so new. I used to go

1073
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:55,640
Speaker 1: to the Albertson's there and it was so overly air conditioned,

1074
00:57:56,080 --> 00:57:58,120
Speaker 1: and it felt like that scene at the end of

1075
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:00,960
Speaker 1: the hurt Locker, Like I go down the curial aisle

1076
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: and it was just like, why they're like thirty five

1077
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: different brands of like you know, frosted flakes or something.

1078
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: There was something kind of I don't know, sort of

1079
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,720
Speaker 1: soulless about it. And so then from then I said,

1080
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 1: you know, I want to know wherever I live, who

1081
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:20,400
Speaker 1: lived here before me, what happened in this place before me,

1082
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: just to get a sense of, I don't know, rooted

1083
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,520
Speaker 1: nous or whatever. And so then I began this thing.

1084
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:28,320
Speaker 1: I just kept stopping wherever I was and looking at

1085
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: historic markers. Ohio has a really great State Historical Association.

1086
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 1: They have like a little kind of brown little roadside

1087
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 1: signs everywhere, and so whenever I'm in Ohio, I'm stopping

1088
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:44,920
Speaker 1: the car a lot to read them. And so I

1089
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:48,040
Speaker 1: just started going around and visiting, and somehow that got

1090
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 1: me onto visiting, you know, the homes and grave sites

1091
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 1: of past presidents, like the obscure ones, the ones between

1092
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:58,680
Speaker 1: Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. You usually have a lot of

1093
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:01,080
Speaker 1: facial hair. A couple of them are knocked off, you know,

1094
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 1: I mean, one by an anarchist, the other by an

1095
00:59:03,440 --> 00:59:06,360
Speaker 1: a grieved office seeker. And I would find that if

1096
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:08,880
Speaker 1: I visited these homes and these sites, it was not

1097
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 1: only interesting, but the docents the people, which is a

1098
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 1: very NPR word, I realized, but the people that would

1099
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:18,040
Speaker 1: work there were so committed to them. So I like,

1100
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: I ended up in Indianapolis visiting the home of Benjamin Harrison,

1101
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 1: which is a very nice home on Delaware Avenue, UM,

1102
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:27,240
Speaker 1: and I met this woman who was decked out in

1103
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:30,120
Speaker 1: a Victorian gown, who had been volunteering there for twenty

1104
00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:32,480
Speaker 1: two years. And so I just was really sort of

1105
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: compelled by these stories and and these sites, this kind

1106
00:59:36,400 --> 00:59:39,080
Speaker 1: of marginalized history, and that sort of set me on

1107
00:59:39,120 --> 00:59:41,439
Speaker 1: my next on my on my next path, and sort

1108
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:45,400
Speaker 1: of frankly kind of got me onto TV by studying

1109
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: all these historical figures and doing the research and telling

1110
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:50,480
Speaker 1: that story and presenting it to people. What was it

1111
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:53,080
Speaker 1: like doing this Wishbone episode, doing that for your own

1112
00:59:53,120 --> 00:59:57,440
Speaker 1: paths and your own history. Oh for you, Yeah, it

1113
00:59:57,560 --> 01:00:01,400
Speaker 1: was emotional. It was emotional because I really because I

1114
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:05,680
Speaker 1: really um that job, and Stephanie Simpson in particular, I

1115
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:10,000
Speaker 1: really considered sort of mentoring experiences and teaching me kind

1116
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 1: of how to work hard, also how to push through

1117
01:00:13,040 --> 01:00:15,680
Speaker 1: when something doesn't feel like it's working, when something's not

1118
01:00:15,720 --> 01:00:19,040
Speaker 1: coming together. You know that when you walk through a

1119
01:00:19,080 --> 01:00:22,080
Speaker 1: store or mold your head up. I write, like carouself,

1120
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 1: that experience of instead of going it's not working or

1121
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:30,880
Speaker 1: just handing and you know which, just like really bearing

1122
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:35,080
Speaker 1: down and pushing through until something works. And that's kind

1123
01:00:35,080 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 1: of where I learned that how to do that and

1124
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,680
Speaker 1: how satisfying that is, you know, that difference between when

1125
01:00:40,760 --> 01:00:43,360
Speaker 1: something is sort of ninety five percent done and when

1126
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:46,720
Speaker 1: it's really done and uh yeah, and how satisfying it

1127
01:00:46,720 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: can be to like, you know, write something that holds

1128
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:54,080
Speaker 1: together and tells the story well. So really to be

1129
01:00:54,160 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 1: able to interview her about that and Jackie Captain about

1130
01:00:57,040 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: the dog, about soccer Um, and also to thank them

1131
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:03,520
Speaker 1: was emotional for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because really I

1132
01:01:03,560 --> 01:01:05,440
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was doing beforehand. I didn't you know,

1133
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 1: you can have a fancy education, expensive education like I

1134
01:01:08,840 --> 01:01:13,520
Speaker 1: did and not know what you're doing. Well before we

1135
01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:15,439
Speaker 1: say goodbye, high gol, I know there was a quote

1136
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:17,480
Speaker 1: from an article that you wanted to share. This is

1137
01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:20,600
Speaker 1: an article from two thousand fifteen written at the Toast,

1138
01:01:20,720 --> 01:01:23,760
Speaker 1: my beloved site that has since gone under the writer's

1139
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:27,000
Speaker 1: name is Abby Fenber, and she is the whole gist

1140
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:30,920
Speaker 1: of the piece, is imagining the pitch meeting for Wishbone,

1141
01:01:31,000 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: and thanks to move for taking the time. We know

1142
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 1: that it didn't go down like this, but I'd like

1143
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:38,600
Speaker 1: to go out with a line from this piece that

1144
01:01:38,640 --> 01:01:43,440
Speaker 1: she wrote. Wishbone's eyes are fathomless pools of knowledge, reflecting

1145
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:46,760
Speaker 1: all the pathos of great literature, the suffering and beauty

1146
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:49,520
Speaker 1: of humanity, bled onto the page and breathed in by

1147
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:53,920
Speaker 1: generations of readers, connecting them us in an unspoken communion

1148
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 1: of shared loneliness that both celebrates and eases our pain.

1149
01:01:57,520 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 1: This is where we see that books do more than

1150
01:01:59,320 --> 01:02:02,800
Speaker 1: describe our human condition, by shaping our minds and drawing

1151
01:02:02,840 --> 01:02:07,280
Speaker 1: us ever closer together they create it. You know Jack

1152
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 1: Russell's terriers eyes, Yes, yes, Is that what Peter Graabrier

1153
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 1: wrote that song about. Oh well, thank you so much

1154
01:02:15,400 --> 01:02:17,200
Speaker 1: for taking the time. Oh this has been just such

1155
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:21,760
Speaker 1: a blast. Thank you guys. Oh man, this was such

1156
01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:23,720
Speaker 1: a fun episode. Thank you folks for taking the time.

1157
01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:25,640
Speaker 1: Thank you moll Rock for taking the time. Thank you

1158
01:02:25,760 --> 01:02:29,760
Speaker 1: Jordan for doing most of it. I'm Alex Hegel, I'm

1159
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:37,440
Speaker 1: Jordan run Talg. We'll catch you next time. Too Much

1160
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:40,200
Speaker 1: Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's

1161
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 1: executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runt Talk. The

1162
01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:47,920
Speaker 1: show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written,

1163
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:51,040
Speaker 1: and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and Alex Hegel, with original

1164
01:02:51,120 --> 01:02:54,120
Speaker 1: music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If

1165
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:56,160
Speaker 1: you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us

1166
01:02:56,160 --> 01:02:58,959
Speaker 1: a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit

1167
01:02:58,960 --> 01:03:01,880
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio, a Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1168
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. M