I’m yet to do my first one if this post dosen’t count, so I’m learning here.
This isn’t my moment, so I don’t know if this counts, but I was involved.
I used to work for a guy who had the only catalog of contemporary radio theater in the U.S. (I have so many crazy stories). He was, to put it mildly, a person with many problems and a bit of a celebrity fetish which was not helped by the fact that it was a point in the late 90s/Early 00s when audiobooks were getting big and famous people were getting into the idea of doing radio drama.
So we started carrying Alien Voices radio dramas. They were produced and starring Leonard Nimoy and John DeLancie (amongst others). They’re also not very good in my opinion, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, he gets word somehow that Leonard Nimoy is going to be in Chicago and tells me that he and I will be going up there, a 5-hour drive, to meet him. I’m thinking this must be a business meeting or something. So we’re driving up there and he keeps building things up more and more, talking about “when we see Leonard” as if they were friends… it even became “Lenny” eventually.
Finally, we get there… to a mall. And inside the mall is a mall bookstore like they had at the time, maybe a Waldenbooks. And there’s a sign up that he’s having a book signing. Things are starting to seem weird. So he has us just get in line with all the fans and things are getting weirder.
Finally, we get up to the table, and my boss introduces himself and says who he works for. Nimoy looks at him with a look that he almost certainly gives to fans when they say things to him and he has no idea what they’re talking about and we both shake his hand and leave.
Then drive another five hours home.
And that’s the day I got paid to drive ten hours round trip to shake Leonard Nimoy’s hand.
Later I got to shake John DeLancie’s hand for the same reason, but under circumstances where things had been explained to him. Not much conversation there because he had a bad cold… and then I spent the rest of my time at that convention hoping I wouldn’t catch John DeLancie’s cold.
I honestly could write a book about working for that guy with all the crazy stories I have.
Edit: By the way, this is the very short version of that story.
I honestly could write a book about working for that guy with all the crazy stories I have.
Or make it a podcast and stylize it like an old radio drama
That would be some good revenge considering some of the shit I went through, but I’d do it after I know he’s dead or he’d probably start calling me at 3 am to bitch at me about it and threaten to send his lawyers that he can’t afford because he already used up his trust fund on all kinds of stupid shit including a lawsuit that lasted years and went nowhere and I don’t want to deal with that.
Oof, gotcha. I would say call blocking and getting some kind of agent/publicist/distributor with very humorless attorneys on retainer could counter all that, but I can definitely understand not wanting to deal with all those headaches.
Just saying, if you do ever make something like this I would probably buy a copy. Good human level story telling is entertaining and captures facets of our real lived histories that get lost otherwise.
When I lived in L.A., I used to say if I got high enough in the entertainment industry chain (which I never did), I’d pitch it is a sitcom. Just the cast alone- there’s him, there’s cheery goth office manager, there’s the alcoholic in charge of another part of the business (it was also a recording studio and audio duplication house), there’s my musician friend from high school working under the alcoholic who would loudly sing Frank Zappa at random times, and there’s weirdo me running the studio or doing assistant work when my boss was running it, working on radio commercials, and helping out others when the studio wasn’t booked.
There were a lot of fun things about working there as well as a lot of the terrible stuff. In terms of a job right out of high school, it was definitely worth keeping for 5 years. Why did I have a job like that right out of high school? I had already been part of a radio drama troupe he had founded by 3 years at that point and had worked my way up to president of the troupe and so at the time, I was sort of a radio drama wunderkind. At this point, I haven’t actually worked on any in many years, but I still enjoy listening to it. Mostly BBC stuff. It also started me off on a career of over a decade doing VO work- not due to him though. He had a classic 70s radio announcer voice and basically only used my voice, which is much more contemporary, when he needed a second voice or needed my ability to do characters and impersonations. Essentially, he ground me down until one day I said, “wait a second, I’m more talented than you are!” And I was, as my career showed. But I had to leave there first.
I will say there was one thing working there which I was able to get away with that I would never have been able to get away with anywhere else- namely, my boss was being such a colossal dick one day that I screamed, “fuck you!” and stormed out and went home and that was not my last day on the job or far from it.
Ok, I’ve written enough novels for today. :)
Plenty of writers and producers of content have written lots of content about their lives masked as fictional entertainment. If you wrote about all the crazy stuff you’ve experienced and anyone calls you on it … you can just say it was all made up. If anyone wants to prove its true, they are basically revealing their own lives themselves.
Fictionalizing real life experience also take a certain level of confidence to the point of arrogance. I’m Indigenous in Canada and some of the most popular individuals in Native writing and producing are also the ones who are the most full of themselves. There is also a real big problem with Pretendians (non-Indigenous people masquerading as full blooded Indigenous people). At one point, even with all the obvious fakery and lies … all it takes is a dogged determination to just keep telling the same story over and over again. The republicans and Tr*mp are famous examples of that mentality.
I know a few writers and journalists and they all seem to fall into two categories in my experience. They are either good natured, good willed and honest people who just want to tell stories, share stories and hold a big giant mirror for the world to see it self. Or they are individuals that just see the industry as just another arena to manipulate people and popularity in order to make a bit of money.
And from what I’ve seen since I’ve been on Lemmy over the past year … you’re one of the good natured kind and instead of making a fortune manipulating the world, you spend a bit of energy here to give us a laugh and make our corner of the world a little bit better.
I appreciate the compliment. I’ve actually worked as a writer, but it’s all short-form stuff or scripts. Now it has all been humor, so it’s in the right area, but I don’t know that I have a whole book in me to be honest.
Edit: I should say that maybe one day I will. My mom started writing novels in her mid-70s and she’s now on novel number 6 at 82 and they get decent reviews and sell relatively well. Super dark shit though, not comedy.
I just watched this monstrosity the other day … four freaking hours because we got hooked on the first two episodes, lost faith in the third and hoped for the fourth but got severely disappointed.
The Signal - a netflix original
After watching it, I really wondered how and why it could have been so bad and then I noticed a few reviewers suggesting that it was most likely something slapped together using AI tools and text prompts … and when I thought about what I saw, what I heard, the lack of common logic and sense that was in the film and the atrocious voice over ending … it really made a lot of sense that this was something a few no name writers had created with AI, and then just lost it and wrapped it up with an AI text prompt.
If they can produce content like this for millions … I’m sure you could produce something worthwhile yourself.
It’s another thing I learned about writers, especially ones with a lot of potential … they lack confidence in their work. I wouldn’t wait until I was 70 like your mom (although I thoroughly enjoy the idea that she’s doing it) … I’d just go out there and write something … it certainly wouldn’t be any worse that a lot of million dollar productions being produced today.
If it means anything, I’m a fan of your work already.
Oh gosh, I wish I had one. I got my mom to make me a star trek uniform for halloween when I was like 8. She is a brilliant seamstress, so I got a red shirt that matched TNG, and she got me a communicator badge button I still have somewhere. Put that on for school because I think halloween was a Friday that year. I was the only Trekkie at school that year. I’m going to pretend I didn’t get teased much. I think we still have that shirt at the bottom of the costume bin even though I’ll never fit into it again.
I dressed up as Data one year in high school and not many people got it but the ones who did liked it!
That’s sweet.
Maybe that shirt is reserved for The Next Generation lol? I had a similar story with my mom helping me to look like a certain rock star no one recognized, but the real bummer is I don’t even have photoes left from that time, so you are luckier than me.
I had a Star Trek costume as a kid as well! This would have been a couple years after Enterprise ended, so the middle of the Star Trek drought. Only one person recognized it, but I thought it was awesome. My mom and I made a whole Borg suit, with all kinds of weird tech things from the early 2000s. The best parts were the left hand, which was a glove that played drum sounds when you tapped the fingers, and was all silver plastic and wires, and a mechanical head massager for the head piece, also silver plastic, that we connected to the body with vinyl tubing
You went all in while making this one. It’d be cool if you’d feel comfortable to post a photo of it somewhen.
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