Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce
Speaker 1: a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from
Speaker 1: video games to television series, two films to internet videos
Speaker 1: from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes.
Speaker 1: You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and
Speaker 1: subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech
Speaker 1: from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little
Speaker 1: bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably
Speaker 1: more than a few puns, because that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I roll enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Stuff, a
Speaker 1: production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive
Speaker 1: producer at iHeart Radio, and I love all things tech
Speaker 1: and we are going to continue our playlist on entertainment.
Speaker 1: And this episode involves a couple of the members of
Speaker 1: the crew for Stranger Things, the Netflix series, who came
Speaker 1: into the office and talked about what they do in
Speaker 1: order to make the sets work the way they're supposed
Speaker 1: to it actually, and how they look too, and you know,
Speaker 1: Stranger Things was set in the eighties, so getting everything
Speaker 1: to look period appropriate, if not you know, accurate, was
Speaker 1: a bit of a challenge, especially with all the tech.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a listen to this episode. I
Speaker 1: have to thank my two special guests who have joined
Speaker 1: me for this episode of tech stuff, Jess and John,
Speaker 1: who both have worked on multiple projects, but the one
Speaker 1: we're talking about specifically today is the Netflix series Stranger Things,
Speaker 1: a show that I binged immediately when the first season
Speaker 1: came out and fell in love with it, not just
Speaker 1: because I recognized some of the people in it, but
Speaker 1: because it really felt to me like it didn't feel
Speaker 1: like a show set in the nineteen eighties. It felt
Speaker 1: like a show that was made in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and somehow disappeared and then resurfaced twenty years later, and
Speaker 1: it's it's so evocative, and I wanted to have both
Speaker 1: of you on to talk about your roles in making
Speaker 1: this show what it was. So we're gonna talk today
Speaker 1: about sort of the text side, the the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes side of making a show and and the work
Speaker 1: that you do and how that ends up contributing to
Speaker 1: this overall effect whatever the show maybe or the movie,
Speaker 1: whatever the project is. In this case, we're talking about
Speaker 1: something that is a period piece. But you know, obviously
Speaker 1: there are other ones where you have a very different
Speaker 1: feel for whatever the project is. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: start with you, John, John, you are rigging gaffer. Tell
Speaker 1: listeners who have seen I'm sure the term gaffer in
Speaker 1: the credits what that means, because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of folks just don't know. The gaffer is just a
Speaker 1: department head that's in charge of the electrical so electrical
Speaker 1: distribution and lighting. Um. I think the term comes from
Speaker 1: old man. Yeah, with the old man on the crew,
Speaker 1: he's in charge of the lighting. Yeah. They have a
Speaker 1: the term gaffer in uh and Lord of the Rings. Actually,
Speaker 1: Sam Wise gamgees father is called the old gaffer. Uh.
Speaker 1: I say that because of my Lord of the Rings geek.
Speaker 1: So what are your responsibilities typically on a on a
Speaker 1: shoot as a riding gaffer. I'd provide the power to
Speaker 1: the set and any any lighting that we can get
Speaker 1: up before beforehand before photography, We'll get that done as well. Cool.
Speaker 1: So you are making sure that all the stuff that
Speaker 1: needs to work is actually going to work. An important
Speaker 1: role on any production and how did you get your
Speaker 1: start in in the business known as show I was
Speaker 1: a nanny for a director of photography in eight the
Speaker 1: summer of ninety eight, and I watched his kids during
Speaker 1: the summer and after at the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: he had me tag along with him to go work
Speaker 1: on a film. And after the film, he was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you'd be great this. You should move to l A.
Speaker 1: I got my friends that can hook you up at
Speaker 1: a camera rental house and you can do that for
Speaker 1: a little while. And I was like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. I want to move to New York
Speaker 1: City and be a bum. So I didn't get into
Speaker 1: it right away. I was a maintenance man and apartment
Speaker 1: complex and all my tools were stolen, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'll go work on movies a security circuitous route to
Speaker 1: get there. So did you have a background and electrical
Speaker 1: work before you even got into the movie. I've done
Speaker 1: like my dad does h V A C. So I
Speaker 1: kind of dabbled on that during the whole maintenance for
Speaker 1: apartment complex thing. I kind of understood electrical systems, right,
Speaker 1: So you then take that understanding and you start pouring
Speaker 1: it over to the production side. Where I imagine it's
Speaker 1: a a a fairly uh strenuous process to make sure
Speaker 1: everything is how it needs to be. Because obviously any
Speaker 1: time on any set is money, so anything that takes
Speaker 1: extra time is going to cost the whole production extra
Speaker 1: amounts of money. So I mentioned it's a fairly high
Speaker 1: stress environment. It is. Yeah, Uh, I don't get a
Speaker 1: lot of sleep. I always called Jesse will workaholic, but
Speaker 1: really it's for me. I do it all at home
Speaker 1: and she doesn't see it. It's fair. And now, Jess
Speaker 1: you you were a set decorator, are still our sick
Speaker 1: decorator for stranger things. Also, congratulations on getting an Emmy
Speaker 1: nomination for that. Thank you. That's amazing. I at this
Speaker 1: first time I think I've ever sat down at the
Speaker 1: table with an Emmy nominee. Uh yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: big moment for me, That's what I'm saying. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about what that means. What is what is actually
Speaker 1: set decorator on a set? UM? So I work under
Speaker 1: the production designer UM, and the production designer kind of
Speaker 1: sets the look like, helps pick locations UM and then
Speaker 1: you know, has a lot of references and different things
Speaker 1: as far as the minutia of how a set comes together. Um,
Speaker 1: there's an art director who kind of oversees more the
Speaker 1: construction end of things and then everything from like those
Speaker 1: four walls. For the most part, I kind of deal
Speaker 1: with so light fixtures and um, you know, carpet and
Speaker 1: sofas and electronics and all the garbage and some sets
Speaker 1: and piles up in the clutter. That's my specialty. So
Speaker 1: when a when the art department has said, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we've got this idea for what the the feel for
Speaker 1: this particular set needs to be, Uh, it's your job
Speaker 1: to go and actually procure all that, put it all together,
Speaker 1: make sure that it's matching the vision for whatever that
Speaker 1: that idea was right. Yes, and on a on a
Speaker 1: production that's a period piece, I imagine that also involves
Speaker 1: lots of hunting around for really obscure and obsolete stuff.
Speaker 1: It does. I spend a lot of time and I
Speaker 1: always tell everyone dead ladies, basements, the state sales. I'm
Speaker 1: always like emptying out the leftovers of houses, you know,
Speaker 1: um after an estate sales over um. And you know.
Speaker 1: In Stranger Things is one of those weird shows, especially
Speaker 1: where everything is a little bit interactive kind of which
Speaker 1: is why, Um, that's why I wanted John to be here,
Speaker 1: because he's I think he's sold himself short a little
Speaker 1: bit as far as like just preparing or providing power
Speaker 1: to a set. Because we had so many interactive elements,
Speaker 1: you know, lights and otherwise that um kind of had
Speaker 1: to be period and had to be functional and do
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things. So yeah, a good example
Speaker 1: that would be, of course, the Christmas lights make up
Speaker 1: play a huge role in that season of Stranger Things.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a communications device, and I don't
Speaker 1: know how many of my listeners know this. Christmas lights
Speaker 1: don't work that way. Typically you have them all rigged
Speaker 1: ump so that if one goes out, they all tend
Speaker 1: to go out, especially the period ones. So getting them
Speaker 1: so that they very they light up in very specific ways,
Speaker 1: uh probably meant a little bit of rewiring work and
Speaker 1: a little bit of rigging things in an interesting way
Speaker 1: so as you could get to do it on command.
Speaker 1: That was such an important integral part of the storyline.
Speaker 1: I remember. I remember when they came and asked me.
Speaker 1: They were walking through the Buyer's House set. It was
Speaker 1: Chris and Jess and Todd and they were like, we
Speaker 1: want to make each light go off and on d visually.
Speaker 1: Is it possible? Yes? And I turned around and I
Speaker 1: walked back in my little office and I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: how am I gonna make this wart? Like, technically yes,
Speaker 1: it's possible, practical not really, So so how did you
Speaker 1: go about solving that problem? Um? I just started scribbling
Speaker 1: a lot and locked my door and just trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get lights to go on and
Speaker 1: off individually, which means we had to build individual strands
Speaker 1: of lights. So I ended up, I guess it's on
Speaker 1: a low tech We're kind of getting at low tech
Speaker 1: as possible. So I ended up using Cat five cable
Speaker 1: and taking all the different strands and making them individual
Speaker 1: and soldering them into old Christmas likes that Jess would
Speaker 1: bring us. Wow. So you were actually hand designing something
Speaker 1: so that you could achieve this effect in a practical approach.
Speaker 1: That's one of the other things, by the way, that
Speaker 1: I love about stranger things and being I was born
Speaker 1: in the seventies, so seeing uh, not just something that
Speaker 1: is set and appears to have been made in the eighties,
Speaker 1: but to rely so heavily upon practical effects. That warms
Speaker 1: my heart because I grew up watching films that relied
Speaker 1: heavily on practical effects, and I think it is very
Speaker 1: important to get across that same feel in order to
Speaker 1: get the effect that you want and not rely too
Speaker 1: heavily on anything that's computer generated. Not to dismiss computer generated,
Speaker 1: it certainly has a place a storytelling, but to me,
Speaker 1: at least in maybe this is my own bias, has uh,
Speaker 1: it just it just has a different look and a
Speaker 1: different feel, you know, there's something genuine about practical effects.
Speaker 1: And not all of ours went. Uh. We had different
Speaker 1: test runs that the Duffers for would they kill if
Speaker 1: any of those videos ever got out. Some of the
Speaker 1: ones that didn't work as well. Um with like the
Speaker 1: monster coming through our latex. We have you know, printed
Speaker 1: the wallpaper and stuff in the buyer's house onto latex,
Speaker 1: and we had all these different tests so we did
Speaker 1: with various um, you know, slimy substances and things on. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they didn't all it took a while to kind of
Speaker 1: get that just tweaked, you know, just right fashing the
Speaker 1: surface of the wall, and originally they had him breaking
Speaker 1: through the wall entirely. They're trying to do it all practical,
Speaker 1: and um, I think it's nice to have technology options
Speaker 1: where VFX could just take what we did and really
Speaker 1: enhance it. And you know, uh right, yeah, eventually you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you just say, you know,
Speaker 1: physics just doesn't work that way. Yeah. Like, I like,
Speaker 1: I appreciate where you're trying to go with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that there was a latex approach a practical
Speaker 1: approach with that too, because I mean I also, full disclosure,
Speaker 1: my sister's a puppeteer, so I see the puppeteer side
Speaker 1: of sort of this kind of stuff all the time.
Speaker 1: And to appreciate practical effects where you're using something like
Speaker 1: a latex sheet and you're using some form of whether
Speaker 1: it's an actor, a mask, a puppet, or whatever, to
Speaker 1: to create that effect. I mean, there is something really
Speaker 1: visceral and and the textures are really impressive. It's something
Speaker 1: that goes again beyond just that. Oh, there's a very
Speaker 1: clever animation. Uh. And and also it just shows a
Speaker 1: level of care that you know, you have to have
Speaker 1: all of that work back behind the scenes to get
Speaker 1: that effect to happen on on screen. Uh. That is
Speaker 1: happening in real time somewhere. It's it's it's not a
Speaker 1: bunch of people staring at a green wall pretending that
Speaker 1: they see something that is really effective and then having
Speaker 1: to react to nothing at all. They actually have stuff
Speaker 1: to react to in those practical effects. Uh. I am
Speaker 1: not an actor that's good enough to react to a
Speaker 1: green screen with and and make that at all convincing.
Speaker 1: I need to have some sort of monster thing coming
Speaker 1: at me so that I can really, you know, be
Speaker 1: somewhat convincing in my response. And the Christmas lights is
Speaker 1: the same thing, because we um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it looked a lot more authentic and better to have
Speaker 1: it practical. But even um, there's like the scene where Holly,
Speaker 1: the the young Wheeler daughters like following the Christmas lights
Speaker 1: down the hallway. Um, and I think if we didn't
Speaker 1: have all of those actually lighting up in her having
Speaker 1: that direction and sort of all the interaction you know,
Speaker 1: with the lights and actors, it wouldn't have been the same. Now,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to get that tension. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great moment, So tell me also, I mean the
Speaker 1: Christmas lights. I think that's one of those that I
Speaker 1: that I definitely wanted to hit upon because a deceptively
Speaker 1: simple technology that ends up actually requiring thinking outside the
Speaker 1: box in order to get the effect they wanted, so
Speaker 1: then requiring you to actually solder things weeks weeks. We wow,
Speaker 1: So if you had to estimate, like how many weeks
Speaker 1: are you talking about for that just to make sure
Speaker 1: you could get that effect to work properly, it was
Speaker 1: two weeks. That's I mean, that's a lot of work
Speaker 1: to get Christmas lights the light up built. I think
Speaker 1: we only built out of the twenty that we were
Speaker 1: going to build, we only built seventeen because that's all
Speaker 1: we had time to do on top of everything else
Speaker 1: that we had to do. Yeah, yeah, so because then
Speaker 1: they would so they would solder these little strands, you know,
Speaker 1: onto the sockets, and then we had it involved me
Speaker 1: going back to props Um the lights that Joyce originally
Speaker 1: buys at mel Ball's Um props. I guess it just
Speaker 1: sort of had newer lights in the box and wasn't
Speaker 1: really thinking about the bigger picture, so we had to
Speaker 1: go back. Can have switched those out for the older
Speaker 1: strands to have like the green and red twisted sort
Speaker 1: of look. So that we could that that was the
Speaker 1: easiest thing for us to copy, so they would finished
Speaker 1: soldering and then we would paint them green and red
Speaker 1: and twist them all together. Um. You know, so there's
Speaker 1: like a whole there's a whole collaborative effort annuity right
Speaker 1: there making sure that like because I mean I see
Speaker 1: a lot of movies where clearly that that level of
Speaker 1: care was not quite taken. You'll look at something and
Speaker 1: things like that's not even the same prop as what
Speaker 1: he was holding a second ago. So having that kind
Speaker 1: of level of detail is really cool. Uh So I
Speaker 1: assume there was someone just like actually just manually operating
Speaker 1: those lights for all those sequences. We had our demmer
Speaker 1: board operator Jim Dornoman. He programmed all that and operating
Speaker 1: real temperate, in real time. He's another one of my
Speaker 1: heroes too, because these guys because it wasn't because the
Speaker 1: Christmas lights were one thing. And then um there's also
Speaker 1: like the scene with the lamps and in in the bedroom,
Speaker 1: um and Winona having to you know, bring it. I
Speaker 1: guess we never had a scene at first they're going
Speaker 1: to show her like bringing all the lamps in and
Speaker 1: setting them up, and that was going to be like
Speaker 1: a whole other nightmare. But um, once they were sort
Speaker 1: of you know, they're just getting those programmed right to
Speaker 1: do that effect. Um, Jim stayed late with me one
Speaker 1: night and just like we did, you know, kept practicing
Speaker 1: and getting all that down. So see, to me, that's
Speaker 1: really cool because it's not just technical, it's it's a
Speaker 1: level of performance. I mean, you we're playing effectively another
Speaker 1: character in the scene, and so you know it's there's
Speaker 1: there's all the timing that's required in that too, and
Speaker 1: again to get what the director wants in order for
Speaker 1: that to have the emotional and psychological impact on the viewer, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, credibly effective because I loved it. Uh
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm my hat's off to you because
Speaker 1: I occasionally am a performer, but I couldn't do any
Speaker 1: of the rest of it, whereas you guys are doing
Speaker 1: all of that. So I'm really I'm really pressed. I
Speaker 1: assume that it's is pretty tricky outfitting entire sets with
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties era uh, carpet ing, furniture, the technology in particular,
Speaker 1: because we're not so far removed from the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: that we think of those things as antiques, so therefore
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of work in preserve preserving them.
Speaker 1: But we're far enough out where nobody wants to hold
Speaker 1: onto them anymore. So was was that a challenge to
Speaker 1: you to to find things that could incorpe that could
Speaker 1: live in that early eighties setting? Not as hard as
Speaker 1: you would think. I think pigion mostly just because thank
Speaker 1: God for state sales and Atlanta being a good estate
Speaker 1: sales city. Um. I've worked in other cities where you
Speaker 1: just don't, you know, they just don't operate like that.
Speaker 1: You don't. I don't know how people get rid of
Speaker 1: their stuff after they've passed. I don't know, but um,
Speaker 1: Atlanta is good about it. There are other like I've
Speaker 1: done other movies. I did a movie, um that It
Speaker 1: was a news station set in the seventies. Um and
Speaker 1: that's one of those like there's already not a ton
Speaker 1: of like news broadcast station equipment out there, not like
Speaker 1: you know, old nintendos and things, but um and and
Speaker 1: then it was so fragile. It was sort of that
Speaker 1: like just that first wave of like electronic technology and
Speaker 1: the old analog stuff from like the fifties was you know,
Speaker 1: you can get that kind of stuff. Um, but that's
Speaker 1: but getting stuff that worked that was that's sort of that.
Speaker 1: Um that first generation plastic electronic disposable almost like technologies
Speaker 1: was harder. But um, fortunately for you know, Sears catalog days,
Speaker 1: a lot of Americans all had the same stuff and
Speaker 1: enough people held onto it her pack rats that we
Speaker 1: could kind of curate and go through and find everything
Speaker 1: we needed. Yeah. I I went to a panel with uh,
Speaker 1: the art director from Stranger Things, and he talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about the sess of identifying the different the
Speaker 1: different types of of fabrics and the different color schemes
Speaker 1: that we're going to be important and how you know,
Speaker 1: certain certain houses we're gonna look like they were more
Speaker 1: of a holdover from maybe the mid to late seventies
Speaker 1: and some were a little bit more modern in the
Speaker 1: sense of the early eighties. And uh and that also
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me, this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: you're not just you're not just creating creating a huge
Speaker 1: pile of stuff from a general era. You actually have
Speaker 1: to give each of these places its own personality. Well
Speaker 1: that's yeah, there is a I tell people the story
Speaker 1: that one of our accountants came to me after we
Speaker 1: were like up in filming the first week or so
Speaker 1: on stage and um, she said, you know, Jess, I
Speaker 1: saw your sets. They look really great, but gosh, like
Speaker 1: is this this is the eighties and they look very
Speaker 1: seventies to me, And I was, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: one of those like not every socioeconomic group is going
Speaker 1: to just instantly have you know, the eighties. Yeah, from
Speaker 1: like that's year's catalog that year. It's all. It's more
Speaker 1: of a you know, when did they build a house,
Speaker 1: When would they have you know, renovated or was there
Speaker 1: you know, what did they have the means to update
Speaker 1: the carpet, wallpaper or whatever, and kind of have to
Speaker 1: just think it through. Um, each character having its own
Speaker 1: sort of storyline with their home keeping everything consistent. I
Speaker 1: mean that is clearly very important if you want to
Speaker 1: establish things, like, you know, u believable character. It would
Speaker 1: be weird to go into a home of a person
Speaker 1: who was presumably just scraping by and you see what
Speaker 1: it appears to be a brand new apple two gs
Speaker 1: in the background. You're like, that's a couple of grand
Speaker 1: Where did they get that money for that? They? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So was there anything in particular that you either of
Speaker 1: you that you think was really interesting or really cool. Uh,
Speaker 1: something that you had not anticipated, uh that you know,
Speaker 1: that's like your go to. Like you know, if if
Speaker 1: people are asking you, what was it like, Well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you this particular thing that I was really
Speaker 1: excited about. Whether it was something that turned out the
Speaker 1: way you expected at the beginning or something that completely
Speaker 1: went a different direction. Getting getting invited back to season two,
Speaker 1: that was that's good. That's good. I think if you
Speaker 1: were able to take all of those Christmas lights and
Speaker 1: make them light up individually, that's a really good start. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't that's I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: I was thrilled to be here today and asked John
Speaker 1: to come to because for me, that sort of like
Speaker 1: a collaborative overlap um my thing. And he knows this well,
Speaker 1: is it like today? In film? Um? Like everyone loves
Speaker 1: led lights lighting, even if they're trying to make even
Speaker 1: if it is like period or they wanted to look um,
Speaker 1: you know, period, they still kind of fall back on
Speaker 1: LEDs because they're easier to control and and I kind
Speaker 1: of hate them, so, um, I mean I'm coming around
Speaker 1: to some of them. But anyway to have them to
Speaker 1: have our electrical department have the patients to kind of
Speaker 1: like really do it right and work with the older technology.
Speaker 1: And and you know that that was a it was
Speaker 1: a long process. But the fluorescent fixtures lots fluorescence because
Speaker 1: their period of course, and hardly anyone stocks fluorescent ballast
Speaker 1: that we had to replace hundreds of ballast in high
Speaker 1: schools and Melvols and all over Georgia we replaced ballast. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big undertaking. That was awful, But
Speaker 1: but it pays off on screen because it does give
Speaker 1: you that like like that's why it feels like it
Speaker 1: was made in the eighties is because it has all
Speaker 1: of this this love and care behind it. And you
Speaker 1: can see that rolling out through other projects that are
Speaker 1: clearly following that same philosophy. I mean, Stephen King's it
Speaker 1: coming out, Like, I think the look of it owes
Speaker 1: an awful lot to Stranger Things. It has a very
Speaker 1: similar kind of field to it. For that that second,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing to me that they went ahead
Speaker 1: and decided to set the adult story in modern day,
Speaker 1: which conveniently made the children's story set in the eighties.
Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of parallels there. But
Speaker 1: it's funny because of course Stranger Things also, you could
Speaker 1: tell has a little bit of the the influence of
Speaker 1: Stephen King is certainly in the Stranger Things universe as well.
Speaker 1: So it's all kind of feeding in on itself. It's
Speaker 1: um collaborative and cooperative as well as competitive process. I'm sure. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: were there any particular sets that you really liked working
Speaker 1: on or any that you really did not like working on?
Speaker 1: I don't, John, I probably will have different responses, but um,
Speaker 1: I mean the Buyer's House is one of them. I
Speaker 1: tell everyone, it's like its own sort of character that
Speaker 1: we have. You know, it's at least we shot it
Speaker 1: in a for the most part chronological order, because we
Speaker 1: really literally destroyed it completely, um as we went and
Speaker 1: you know, Joyce ripping things apart and monsters smashing things,
Speaker 1: and um, I will say it was it was towards
Speaker 1: the end of it when all the Christmas lights were
Speaker 1: up and like half pulled down, and it was an
Speaker 1: absolute nightmare for the shooting crew. I mean, for a
Speaker 1: boom operator to operate in that setting was just like
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, it's everyone was getting like tangled
Speaker 1: and um, it was Yeah, it was truly like a
Speaker 1: It was a it was kind of fun to watch
Speaker 1: it progress, but it was a it took a lot
Speaker 1: of patients. They're not not every shooting crew would be
Speaker 1: cut out to kind of handle that. That setting. My
Speaker 1: least favorite was the high school because we had again
Speaker 1: we had to go in and replace every fluorescent, most
Speaker 1: of the ballast in there. And then towards the end
Speaker 1: of it, when they had the scene with eleven and
Speaker 1: the monster, everything starts to go crazy and flickers, we
Speaker 1: had to take everything out and we reinstalled our own
Speaker 1: led rips throughout the school so we could make everything
Speaker 1: flicker on and off. That's a lot of work. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of work. And it wasn't even just led tubes.
Speaker 1: It was like because they were soldering again. I just
Speaker 1: would see that, you know, you guys were on sodering
Speaker 1: in some old classroom, putting led strips in like twos
Speaker 1: or whatever you were doing. Yeah, that was well, what
Speaker 1: was what was it like working in Uh? Did they
Speaker 1: the facility? Wasn't that set in an old building and emory? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hawkins Lab Law was that experience. Uh, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of shows that film there. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like we were still in the early wave
Speaker 1: of like some of the shows that were like really
Speaker 1: working on all the different floors and stuff. So like
Speaker 1: especially John and having to go up and put you know,
Speaker 1: move ceiling tiles out of the way to run cable
Speaker 1: and stuff. Was like, you're for the first time in
Speaker 1: forty years, you know, you were you were you were
Speaker 1: the explorer that everyone else got the beef we found
Speaker 1: all the rat facing. Yeah, Well, for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about the building itself
Speaker 1: where the Hawkins Lab was, because I think you know, again,
Speaker 1: everyone sees it in the show, but they don't know
Speaker 1: what the actual space was. They might just think, oh,
Speaker 1: was that just a set on a studio, and in
Speaker 1: fact that parts of it at least were very much
Speaker 1: in a real building here in Atlanta. Yeah, we I
Speaker 1: will say, like when we were first when the Duffers
Speaker 1: were first here and we were gonna, you know, film
Speaker 1: Stranger Things in Atlanta and full disclosure, I sometimes location
Speaker 1: scout when I'm not decorating. It's like my secret job.
Speaker 1: So um, so I was doing a lot of the
Speaker 1: like early scouting, trying to figure out what Hawkins Lab
Speaker 1: was going to be and how undercover and small it
Speaker 1: was going to be or how big and um, you know,
Speaker 1: just what the look was going to be. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I we didn't all agree. I felt like that building
Speaker 1: at Emory, with its metal facade and kind of craziness
Speaker 1: on the outside, was a little like ostentatious for secret
Speaker 1: sort of from a facility. But um, anyway, but they
Speaker 1: loved I mean, it is a pretty impressive building and
Speaker 1: it's very distinct, and what they did within in posts,
Speaker 1: like putting the satellites and stuff on top of it,
Speaker 1: made it all kind of work. But um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's on Briar Cliff here in Atlanta, and it's
Speaker 1: an old mental hospital. Um and uh yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: truly creepy. It's not everything works in there anymore. Powers
Speaker 1: like kind of like hit or miss in some areas,
Speaker 1: and uh, a lot of leaks and things. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: so it must have been a tough one to work
Speaker 1: in as well, John, did you do you have a
Speaker 1: lot of challenges going through all that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like that place they just stopped one day and
Speaker 1: everyone left and then people came in behind them. And
Speaker 1: trashed the place. So there's broken glass everywhere, there were
Speaker 1: needles everywhere, um, and just trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: like how to power how does this light come on where?
Speaker 1: And you have to trace it all the way down
Speaker 1: sometimes in the floor underneath you or the sub floor
Speaker 1: underneath you. That was definitely a challenge. Wow. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure that was one of the more difficult ones to
Speaker 1: actually to power and make sure that everything was working properly.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. I saw the pictures of sort of the
Speaker 1: before and after during one of those presentations, and it
Speaker 1: was really, um, really alarming. Actually, there was a shot
Speaker 1: that was just down the hallway and it was possibly
Speaker 1: the most creepy looking photograph I had seen in a
Speaker 1: really long time. Well, the one thing I will say
Speaker 1: is that we had every intention when we first started
Speaker 1: of shooting um, like the the sort of rift lab
Speaker 1: in Hawkins, like where the tank and everything is. That
Speaker 1: was the tunnels leading up to that and the opening
Speaker 1: scene where he's like getting off the elevator and everything.
Speaker 1: We're going to do that at Emery, which is they
Speaker 1: actually have these like underground tunnels, um that are that
Speaker 1: are It's pretty bad. I don't even know yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like asbestos and all these like you know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's dark. There hasn't empowered on there forever um. And
Speaker 1: so at the last minute, I think they've done these
Speaker 1: like air quality tests and stuff, and they finally said,
Speaker 1: there's okay, this is great. The texture is great, it's authentic,
Speaker 1: but we like, really we cannot film down here. So
Speaker 1: we ended up copying the general look of it on
Speaker 1: our stage and we built a series of tunnels that
Speaker 1: were a lot more easy to control from a lighting
Speaker 1: standpoint in every other aspect, so right, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about breeding in Yeah, when we do that,
Speaker 1: I feel like the like John and I and our
Speaker 1: cruise that are there, you know beforehand, so early working
Speaker 1: on places, especially those guys with like the ceiling tiles
Speaker 1: are the hidden that's what is above those is uh
Speaker 1: the real you know there's yeah, there's there's a whole
Speaker 1: treasure of exactly. Yeah. Um. So we deal with the
Speaker 1: worst of it, and then I think shooting crew has
Speaker 1: a little better time. By the time they get in there,
Speaker 1: it's all been cleaned up a little bit. And then
Speaker 1: they course then you have you know, the very pampered
Speaker 1: people to actors. That's fantastic that they complain a little
Speaker 1: bit about it being a little chilly outside. Like listen,
Speaker 1: when we came here, there was no power, water was
Speaker 1: coming in and there were rats everywhere. So there's some
Speaker 1: sets like in season two, um which you know, who
Speaker 1: can kind of leave everyone just sort of experienced later
Speaker 1: this month, but um, it's there is an arcade and
Speaker 1: just know, like when we finished all this off, show
Speaker 1: you the photos. But the before was like an old
Speaker 1: launder matt dry cleaner place that had been sold, closed down,
Speaker 1: leaky roof, all the same stuff. The hoarder had taken
Speaker 1: it over and it was like to the ceiling with
Speaker 1: like mattresses and diapers and like whatever garbage. And so
Speaker 1: that process wasn't another good one. We've had a lot
Speaker 1: of stranger things. Is like people who hear about our production,
Speaker 1: I feel like who also shoot in Atlanta are like
Speaker 1: who he seet and kind of know what we started
Speaker 1: out with then what the final product is are like
Speaker 1: why you know your show is like does the craziest
Speaker 1: Like we're willing to put up with a lot more,
Speaker 1: I think than a lot of other like productions, Hollywood
Speaker 1: productions that you know, would never touch some places that
Speaker 1: we go into. Yeah, well again it pays off though,
Speaker 1: so I look forward to seeing those photos because of course,
Speaker 1: again growing up in the seventies and eighties, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of fond memories of arcades that you just
Speaker 1: you know, you very rarely encounter those kind of places
Speaker 1: these days. It's going to be another one of those
Speaker 1: like why would you put the effort into it? Like
Speaker 1: it's but it was just little architectural things about the
Speaker 1: building that we thought were kind of great. And I
Speaker 1: don't know everyone that you run into one of those
Speaker 1: places where you're just like, well, everything inside here is
Speaker 1: is trashed, but it's so evocative of that particular thing
Speaker 1: you're trying to do that you know, I'm sure it
Speaker 1: becomes one of those debates that rages in your mind,
Speaker 1: like is it going to be worth the amount of
Speaker 1: effort it's going to take to get this place into shape?
Speaker 1: And if the answer is yes, then you just have
Speaker 1: to grit your teeth and go for it and and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, get the work done. The library
Speaker 1: we had the Hawkins Library, Yeah, um, we another one
Speaker 1: of my really good ideas that there's a a library
Speaker 1: in downtown East Point, Georgia. That was, Um, it was
Speaker 1: like on the places in Peril like a story preservation list.
Speaker 1: It was. It was leaky roof, same thing, you know, asbestos, mold,
Speaker 1: tons of tons of mold. They had standing water in
Speaker 1: the basement for like two years, um. And we had
Speaker 1: the big idea to spend I don't know how much
Speaker 1: we spent there with like a full like mold remediation
Speaker 1: and abatement process. Um. And then you know, John went
Speaker 1: in and fixed all the light fixtures and we went
Speaker 1: in and put in you know, the bookcases and of
Speaker 1: a lot like twenty books and um, library card catalogs,
Speaker 1: all that stuff just to you know, for really not
Speaker 1: at all much screen time. Um. But you know, but
Speaker 1: you need a perior of library and you gotta start somewhere.
Speaker 1: So um, we ended up at actually donating I donated
Speaker 1: like the books and everything to the City's point to
Speaker 1: stay intact there so it can it kind of gets
Speaker 1: now rent out as a location for other productions and
Speaker 1: that money kind of goes into keeping the building up
Speaker 1: and they fix the roof and everything. So so it's cool.
Speaker 1: Saved it. Yeah, there's there's a little nice little byproduct
Speaker 1: of the production. It's not not just not just that
Speaker 1: you're making amazing entertainment, but that you can actually benefit well.
Speaker 1: And again this gets outside of tech, but we hear
Speaker 1: it all the time. I mean, there's always the discussion
Speaker 1: about the benefits of the film and television business moving
Speaker 1: into any place. When you can hear about stories like that,
Speaker 1: you're like, that's something that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of,
Speaker 1: just from the fact that we're getting this influx of
Speaker 1: productions coming into Atlanta. For those who do not know,
Speaker 1: Atlanta is one of the cities in the United States
Speaker 1: that's really taking off when it comes to film and
Speaker 1: television and music video production. And you know, there's certain
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, music video had been fairly big
Speaker 1: here for a while. Uh Television, some TV productions we're
Speaker 1: being were shot in here. But we're seeing more and
Speaker 1: more film projects as well, largely because of the construction
Speaker 1: of the Pinewood Studio that's south of the city, and
Speaker 1: they're especially like just around the area that we're in
Speaker 1: right now. We're at Pont City Market in Atlanta. Around
Speaker 1: this general area, you can't you can't go maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of miles in any direction before you start seeing
Speaker 1: signs for various productions, they're everywhere, uh and um. And
Speaker 1: so we're actually seeing some of that benefit now where
Speaker 1: we're seeing, you know, communities get potentially get the reuse
Speaker 1: of buildings that otherwise would have been remaining vacant um.
Speaker 1: From a similar perspective, although this wasn't from a film production,
Speaker 1: the building we're in right now was largely vacant for decades.
Speaker 1: It was a Sears distribution center. Then for a while
Speaker 1: the city of atlant had about ten percent of this
Speaker 1: building and the other was empty. I picked up many
Speaker 1: police reports and things here. Yeah, and you could get
Speaker 1: like art supplies, and I used to come here and
Speaker 1: get art supply. Yeah. Yeah. And to the point where
Speaker 1: if you were to walk around all the different offices here,
Speaker 1: first of all, they'd ask you to leave, But if
Speaker 1: you were to do that, you would probably see a
Speaker 1: lot of of old equipment, Like we have an old
Speaker 1: turbine in our lobby. And it's because every office was
Speaker 1: given some of the pieces of equipment that had been
Speaker 1: used when this was a big distribution center for Sears.
Speaker 1: I mean it was built right on the railroad. They
Speaker 1: would actually bring railroad cars into this place. So every
Speaker 1: office has some some element of that worked into it.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh it's it's again just one of those
Speaker 1: reminders of the history of the place that for decades
Speaker 1: went just completely unused. And this was literally just stuff
Speaker 1: that was piled up. So I guess it's kind of
Speaker 1: some lewarer to what you do, Jess, where you have
Speaker 1: to you have to go into interesting places and just
Speaker 1: kind of search around. I mean, Uh, there used to
Speaker 1: be a really great place very close to here that
Speaker 1: had crazy stuff for lots of antiques and a lot
Speaker 1: of old fixtures and things, and now it's a restaurant.
Speaker 1: And I'm always sad when I go by the Wrecking Bar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sad that that place is gone because I would
Speaker 1: find really interesting stuff there. But that was just for me.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't decorate sets at all. So what
Speaker 1: do you think out of maybe not just stranger things,
Speaker 1: but every anything, any production you've worked on. What was
Speaker 1: the the most interesting, uh, piece that you have ever
Speaker 1: found for a production? Well? This, um, the movie I
Speaker 1: was talking about, theo Wash took place in a tell
Speaker 1: Asian station. Um. It was set in nineteen in Sarasota, Florida,
Speaker 1: and the director, I don't know if he completely understood.
Speaker 1: He's a little bit of a Savanta and and wanted
Speaker 1: to have like a full working broadcast studio from that era.
Speaker 1: They just look but actually literally working, which yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: monitors in a control room and cameras and and all
Speaker 1: of it and all the editing and um and this
Speaker 1: is all still like film and stuff. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: there was this one piece a quadruplex machine. And this
Speaker 1: is like right when um, news gathering was like going
Speaker 1: electronic and so a lot of that technology was changing
Speaker 1: like in the moment. But um, this quadruplex machine that
Speaker 1: looks like a giant kind of real to real thing.
Speaker 1: Um that there are not that many of them and
Speaker 1: there are really not that many of them left now,
Speaker 1: especially working, which is like you know, and they're so finicky.
Speaker 1: There was like a place in the Rhode Island that
Speaker 1: had some museum and like a couple other places even
Speaker 1: like in l A what I would call the regular
Speaker 1: prop houses to ship it out here that they didn't
Speaker 1: have any so I just um was calling old TV stations,
Speaker 1: not that anyone has phones or answers their phone anymore. Anywhere.
Speaker 1: It's like an annoying another annoying landline thing. But um,
Speaker 1: so I was just driving around. We were filming in Savannah,
Speaker 1: and I was just driving like on the weekends too,
Speaker 1: smaller towns that used to have news stations. Um, just
Speaker 1: like looking for like that one place that has an
Speaker 1: attic or a basement that just dashed all the stuff
Speaker 1: and never threw it away. Um. And there was a
Speaker 1: guy in in making at a TV station and he
Speaker 1: was like literally the only guy like manning like reruns
Speaker 1: of the Simpsons or whatever they're you know, like I
Speaker 1: don't even think they did news anymore. Um. But he
Speaker 1: came to the door and I was asking him about
Speaker 1: like old equipment, and um He's like, well, we do
Speaker 1: have this old site out in the swamp that we
Speaker 1: used to use like as a studio. And I was like,
Speaker 1: do you think you have a quadruplex machine and he
Speaker 1: was like, oh yeah, I got that. I got like
Speaker 1: two of those out there. And I was just like literally,
Speaker 1: um yeah, that was like the best moment. And so
Speaker 1: I getting this guy's truck when right out to the
Speaker 1: swamp and uh, leaky roof, no power. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: same thing we always are dealing with UM, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're in the corner and like a dry corner was
Speaker 1: like this quadruplex and a bunch of other stuff that
Speaker 1: was really useful to have to we were able to
Speaker 1: kind of tinker and get it to work, and UM
Speaker 1: that was my That's by far my my like dries
Speaker 1: possession of all the things I've ever found. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. It's uh, sort of the sort of challenges
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily anticipate until you encounter one of those
Speaker 1: autour directors who has that that strong dependence upon authenticity.
Speaker 1: I'm sick of control panels. That's another Yeah, Like season
Speaker 1: two is uh yeah, you guys will see when that
Speaker 1: comes out, But there's a we did a whole control
Speaker 1: panel in the riff lab this time that we needed
Speaker 1: to be able to really control rather than getting prop ones,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what we had the first season
Speaker 1: and something I was never really that happy with UM.
Speaker 1: I had probably the bad idea of UM designing my
Speaker 1: very own UM control fannel with all these separate like
Speaker 1: old boat led lights and indicator lights and all these
Speaker 1: different things that I was trying to get John in
Speaker 1: like really early last season to help start like figuring
Speaker 1: out how we were going to empower each one and
Speaker 1: have each one on a separate control. I was told
Speaker 1: there would be no flickering season two because I was
Speaker 1: a big, big expense for production. And then then the
Speaker 1: board is a flickering mess of like yeah, like I
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like a little bit of it
Speaker 1: has been spoiled for me, but I will. I'll go
Speaker 1: into it just knowing there may be a flicker or
Speaker 1: two in season two. I don't know. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: any of the footage, so I'm not sure. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: that all got cut. I wasn't even or when it happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of a nightmare. And um, we've done
Speaker 1: all kinds of like even season one, um in the quarry,
Speaker 1: which you would think like that's you know, probably not
Speaker 1: even that much from a set deck standpoint and there,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't except they wanted to light some of
Speaker 1: that scene with search and rescue where they find um
Speaker 1: Will's body or not real body, but you know, um,
Speaker 1: they wanted to light that practically, and so we needed
Speaker 1: period whacker lights. Um. And just like the logistics of
Speaker 1: like me me finding the lights that were there, right,
Speaker 1: government auctions is my other go to UM and so
Speaker 1: we found something like Tennessee since since transpoke guys up
Speaker 1: there to go pick them up and bring them back.
Speaker 1: And then just John assessing that for the first time,
Speaker 1: is you know this like archaic mess of wires and
Speaker 1: different things and UM. But he rewired those and they
Speaker 1: looked great on camera. It's kind of funny. I I
Speaker 1: did an interview it's actually going to be the episode
Speaker 1: that follows this one, uh, with a guy who was
Speaker 1: hired to to write a full kind of like a
Speaker 1: workshop manual of the Ghostbusters technology. And he was given
Speaker 1: full access to all the different props and stuff. But
Speaker 1: it was his job to figure out not just what
Speaker 1: the stuff was, but what it used to be and
Speaker 1: how it actually works in real life and then how
Speaker 1: was it in in the mythology of Ghostbusters altered so
Speaker 1: that it works for that. And he started looking at
Speaker 1: all the different pieces like just imagine the top of
Speaker 1: Ecto one, like the top of that car and all
Speaker 1: the different coutrement that we're on top of it, and
Speaker 1: he had to source all of that and he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: they went to a junkyard that outside of a NASA
Speaker 1: site and they got all of that and I had
Speaker 1: to figure out what they were And then how does
Speaker 1: that help you catch ghosts? Is there really a junkyard
Speaker 1: outside of nasasite? That sounds amazing? And I'll put you
Speaker 1: in touch with him because he can tell you where
Speaker 1: they went to get all the different pieces because they
Speaker 1: had like various pieces of sonart they had They had
Speaker 1: an old uh uh. I think it was like an
Speaker 1: old ground to air missile launch case. There was nothing
Speaker 1: in it because apparently that would be bad to get
Speaker 1: out there. But yeah, so there's Yeah, I'll get you
Speaker 1: in touch with him because he can certainly tell you
Speaker 1: more about where they sourced all that stuff because it
Speaker 1: was it was somewhere out west, I know. But um
Speaker 1: and keep in mind Ghostbusters were made back in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, so maybe they've tightened up since then. But
Speaker 1: it was pretty it was pretty incredible. Uh And yeah,
Speaker 1: learning about that like that, that experience of having to
Speaker 1: uh to to really find out the way sources sometimes
Speaker 1: is fascinating to me because I hold onto stuff fairly
Speaker 1: for a fairly long time. But I mean it's just
Speaker 1: technology is just one of those things that goes obsolete
Speaker 1: so quickly. And uh and Also, there's just so many
Speaker 1: different parts that if any one part fails, the average
Speaker 1: person is more likely to either go out and buy
Speaker 1: a new one and just throw the old one away,
Speaker 1: or just do without, because a repair tends to be
Speaker 1: about the same amount of money as it would cost
Speaker 1: to just buy a new one anyway for a lot
Speaker 1: of the older tech, So I imagine it gets really tricky,
Speaker 1: especially if they want something that's gonna work on screen,
Speaker 1: if it's something that's just going to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: well we just need this this washer dryer that was
Speaker 1: back then, but they're never you're going to use it.
Speaker 1: We just need in the background. I guess that's one thing,
Speaker 1: but I like, we need a working one. That's a
Speaker 1: totally different thing. Yeah, it's uh. This season two has
Speaker 1: a lot of well, we have the Arcade, which has
Speaker 1: John and I. Early on we were getting the scripts
Speaker 1: and stuff with season two talking about like how to
Speaker 1: get arcade cabinets that were in good enough shape or
Speaker 1: you know, when we get real ones, and then there's
Speaker 1: all this Um I don't know if like the average
Speaker 1: viewer knows, but like playback, Um, it's a thing that
Speaker 1: we deal with constantly on Stranger things. It's um the
Speaker 1: frame rate adjustment and stuff on various like screens and monitors.
Speaker 1: So your screen that you're you're shooting is refreshing at
Speaker 1: a certain rate, the camera is going at a certain rate,
Speaker 1: and if that doesn't match up, probably that's when you
Speaker 1: start getting those weird lines that start scrolling across the screen,
Speaker 1: which is realistic, but it's distracting because now you realize
Speaker 1: you're looking through the lens of a camera as opposed
Speaker 1: to being an observer and a scene. So we have
Speaker 1: to fix that, all right, and so and and even
Speaker 1: UM season one was similar to the there's various UM
Speaker 1: security rooms like at Hawkins Lab and we I think
Speaker 1: I feel like I've bought every Commodore sixty four available
Speaker 1: because there they tend to be fairly reliable and easy
Speaker 1: to work with and you can input various things into them.
Speaker 1: And UM, so doing something similar, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of I think a lot of productions probably would have
Speaker 1: put like L E. D screens or CB you know,
Speaker 1: they would have updated with new technology and not dealt
Speaker 1: with the playback aspect of running through like CRT monitors
Speaker 1: with whatever we need to show on screen. UM, but
Speaker 1: we're we try to be as authentic as possible and
Speaker 1: stranger things, and so there's just a lot of our
Speaker 1: playback guy was always present. I felt like on every
Speaker 1: set it was always like real monitors. Um. Same with
Speaker 1: the arcade, and we did it all pretty practically, um,
Speaker 1: leaving a lot of those those old monitors inside the
Speaker 1: cabinets and then just like running stuff through them and
Speaker 1: adjusting the frame rate. That's great, I mean again, I
Speaker 1: just to me, that stuff definitely pays off. Like again,
Speaker 1: it gives that that feel that you want and uh,
Speaker 1: that that sense that you're watching something that was made
Speaker 1: years ago, um and yet with a modern sensibility. So
Speaker 1: it's anyone who grew up around the same time I did,
Speaker 1: I think, just has that deep connection when they see
Speaker 1: this there, you know, because it feels very buil Burgie
Speaker 1: in in many ways. You know, it's just it's very
Speaker 1: evocative of those uh, those great films and TV series
Speaker 1: in the eighties. So you guys did a phenomenal work
Speaker 1: to recapture that and to make it feel like it
Speaker 1: was on screen. It looks effortless. I know that that's
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite of what it really was. It was very,
Speaker 1: very full of effort, but from an audience perspective, um,
Speaker 1: it just it just works so well. So I'm really
Speaker 1: looking forward to season two. We keep hearing rumors about
Speaker 1: how many seasons they are going to be. I think
Speaker 1: there need to be as many seasons as there need
Speaker 1: to be to tell a story and then we can
Speaker 1: we can close the chapter on that book and want more.
Speaker 1: I'm happy with that. We'll see because who knows what
Speaker 1: what will happen down the line. But I am so
Speaker 1: really excited to see season two and beyond. And if
Speaker 1: you if you put a word in for they need
Speaker 1: a bald guy as an extra, you know, even if
Speaker 1: he's just screw in a light bulb in the background.
Speaker 1: I'm local, I'm right here, I know, I know Randy.
Speaker 1: So Randy and I go way back. I can. It's
Speaker 1: just throwing it out there. Maybe Randy needs an assistant, yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows, or maybe just like a guy to like
Speaker 1: deal with all the insanely attractive women that he's dating.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal. Really, It's like we had a discussion with
Speaker 1: him about that. Like that was to me, like everything
Speaker 1: was believable up until they showed you. Like I was
Speaker 1: buying into it, right into that, and he's like, thanks Jonathan,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, You're welcome, Randy, very good guy. Thank
Speaker 1: you Jess and John for joining me on this show.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the opportunity to explore what it is
Speaker 1: you do and get a deeper appreciation for the work
Speaker 1: that goes on behind the scenes. And uh, this was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: I wish you guys the best of luck and success
Speaker 1: in the future, and maybe we'll have you on again
Speaker 1: at some point. We'll talk about some other crazy stuff
Speaker 1: like you know, let me tell you what now is
Speaker 1: the hardest props I've ever had to find. You never
Speaker 1: know when that story is gonna change. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: guys again, Thank you. I hope you guys enjoyed that
Speaker 1: episode of text Stuff. We've got a lot more coming
Speaker 1: and let me know what you guys think if there
Speaker 1: are things you would like me to cover as we
Speaker 1: go through all this. I've got a big series about
Speaker 1: the PlayStation coming up soon. But if there are any
Speaker 1: other topics you would like me to cover, reach out
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I heart radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from My heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.