Podcast appearances and mentions of Mike Sacks

Andy Richter calls this week's guest “a bona fide weirdo with virtually no interest in satisfying anything other than his own personal obsessions.” The weirdo in question is Mike Sacks, who has written for the likes of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, McSweeney's and who has built something of an industry writing novelizations of movies that don't exist and memoirs of people who were never born. And then turning those works into audiobooks voiced by the funniest people on Earth, including Jon Hamm, Paul Reubens, Amy Sedaris and many more. In this interview, he talks about how he has found breakout success as a self-published author, how he's become someone the top names in comedy want to work with, and the secrets he learned about getting reviews after years of working at Vanity Fair.  He's got a new book out in April called This Is How We Love. Learn all about the punk rock aesthetic he embraces to bring his ideas to life, one bonkers book at a time. Whether you're looking for advice on making it in the world of comedy writing, or just looking for a laugh, this episode is for you. Find Mike's work here Find Dan's work here Find more Entrepreneur Media podcasts here

Content warning: substance abuse, suicidal ideation, domestic violence, child abuse, childhood sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual abuse. Mike Sacks is a hockey player, telecommunications engineer, founder of the non-profit organization, Survivors for Change, and a true change-maker. Through Survivors for Change, it has become his personal mission to aide survivors of sexual abuse and assault in their journey of healing, alongside Kelly Gee, whose story has also been featured in What Came Next episodes 51 & 52. But before Mike was able to begin helping others, he had to come to terms with his own abuse and begin healing from his childhood experiences. In these episodes, Mike candidly shares about his struggles, the healing process, and what it's like traversing the media in an attempt to improve procedures in the athletic world. The Broken Cycle Media team is deeply grateful for Mike's time, energy, and the ability to amplify his efforts towards curating change for athletes around the world. Resources: Survivors for Change: https://www.survivorsforchange.org/ Survivors for Change on FB: https://www.facebook.com/TheS4C WCN E51: [Kelly Gee] Against Big Odds // Part 1 WCN E52: [Kelly Gee] What Happens Next // Part 2 For additional resources and a list of related non-profit organizations, please visit http://somethingwaswrong.com/resources Sources: Goldberg, R. (2020, May 28). USA Hockey Pres. Jim Smith's Handling of Alleged Sexual Misconduct Investigated. The Bleacher Report. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2893866 Illinois General Assembly - Illinois Compiled Statutes. (n.d.). Illinois General Assembly. https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=073500050K13-202.2 Schulte, S. (2017, August 14). Illinois wipes out statute of limitations for child sex abuse. ABC13 Houston. https://abc13.com/illinois-sex-abuse-statute-of-limitations/2310638/ Strang, K. (2020, February 21). Former players say Chicago area hockey coach sexually abused them. The Athletic. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1591547/2020/02/21/former-players-say-chicago-area-hockey-coach-sexually-abused-them/

Content warning: substance abuse, suicidal ideation, domestic violence, child abuse, childhood sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual abuse. Mike Sacks is a hockey player, telecommunications engineer, founder of the non-profit organization, Survivors for Change, and a true change-maker. Through Survivors for Change, it has become his personal mission to aide survivors of sexual abuse and assault in their journey of healing, alongside Kelly Gee, whose story has also been featured in What Came Next episodes 51 & 52. But before Mike was able to begin helping others, he had to come to terms with his own abuse and begin healing from his childhood experiences. In the following episodes, Mike candidly shares about his struggles, the healing process, and what it's like traversing the media in an attempt to improve procedures in the athletic world. The Broken Cycle Media team is deeply grateful for Mike's time, energy, and the ability to amplify his efforts towards curating change for athletes around the world.  Resources: Survivors for Change: https://www.survivorsforchange.org/ WCN E51: [Kelly Gee] Against Big Odds // Part 1 WCN E52: [Kelly Gee] What Happens Next // Part 2 Sources: Goldberg, R. (2020, May 28). USA Hockey Pres. Jim Smith's Handling of Alleged Sexual Misconduct Investigated. The Bleacher Report. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2893866 Strang, K. (2020, February 21). Former players say Chicago area hockey coach sexually abused them. The Athletic. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1591547/2020/02/21/former-players-say-chicago-area-hockey-coach-sexually-abused-them/ For additional resources and a list of related non-profit organizations, please visit http://somethingwaswrong.com/resources

Clerks. is one of if not the most iconic and influential movie of all time, and a natural fit for a sitcom. However, it simply doesn't hit the same when you exclude all the gen xers and hire boomers to write and direct instead. We end up with a product that's about as edgy as a beach ball. Well, at least WE found a gen xer to watch it with US, Mike Sacks! https://www.mikesacks.com/ Oh, but then we shelved the podcast and waited a year and a half to release it and cut Mike out of 1/4 of it. Are we marketing geniuses? Well not really, this is a LOST EPISODE!! YES!! This was originally recorded February of 2023 and then almost lost forever. But now it's not, instead its available to listen to! And you should! and share it with your friends, loved ones, and enemies, and then write favorable reviews about how much you love the Piloting Error Podcast on the internet. Thank you for never giving up hope that we would eventually post the Clerks. episode! Sorry the pilot sucks and blows but the podcast is funny...

Mike Sacks, a renowned humor writer and author, discusses his unconventional journey in the world of comedy writing. From contributing to Mad Magazine to self-publishing his unique and quirky works, Sacks opens up about the creative freedom and challenges he encountered along the way. He dives into the art of crafting novelizations for non-existent movies, a concept that has allowed him to explore satire in ways traditional formats don't often permit. Sacks also shares the thrill of seeing his written work transformed into audio projects featuring top talent like Jon Hamm, Gillian Jacobs, and Bob Odenkirk.   Episode Highlights: Mike Sacks' Creative Journey: Explore the unique path of humor writer and author Mike Sacks, from his early contributions to Mad Magazine to the freedom found in self-publishing his distinct brand of comedy. Crafting Novelizations of Non-Existent Movies: Mike shares his fascination with creating novelizations for fictional movies, revealing the process behind his book "Stinker Lets Loose!" and its transformation into an audio production featuring stars like Jon Hamm. The Evolution of Comedy Writing: A deep dive into how the comedy industry has shifted from traditional publishing to self-publishing, allowing writers like Mike to maintain creative control and explore new comedic avenues. Influence of Pop Culture and Satire: Learn how the cultural moments of the 1970s and 1980s have influenced Mike's satirical works and his approach to comedy writing. Advice for Aspiring Writers: Mike offers practical tips and advice for those looking to break into the industry, emphasizing the importance of persistence, adaptability, and staying true to one's comedic voice.   You're going to love my conversation with Mike Sacks Mike's Website Books by Mike Doin' It with Mike Sacks - the podcast Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host): Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter Podcast website Podcast on Instagram Join my mailing list Subscribe to my Youtube channel (watch Crossing the Streams!) Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show Ways to support the show: Buy me a coffee (support the show) TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more! Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.    

Sitting-in for Thom Hartmann is Jefferson Smith of the Democracy Nerd Podcast. Guest Interview: Mike Sacks, Senior Advisor of Court Accountability and former lawyer who explains what the Supreme Court's decision really means. Plus a return of the red and blue yard sign messaging debate. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Sacks of the non-profit Court reform organization Court Accountability stops by Supreme Myths to discuss this wild SCOTUS term, the likely aftermath, and how his organization is gearing up to help save American democracy.

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls  The Stand Up Community Chat is always active with other Stand Up Subscribers on the Discord Platform.   Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  On today's show I have your news from Earth One and Lawyer and legal / political expert commentator and old friend Mike Sacks joins me at about 21 minutes in to today's show Mike is a Duke and Georgetown grad who I met when he was a host at Huffington Post Live. Mike has had and really impressive career in media and now is working in advocacy with Alex Aronson at Court Accountability  Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Follow and Support Pete

Liz talks to veteran legal journalist Mike Sacks about the Supreme Court and the decades-old plan to enshrine minority rule into law. How did the Chief Justice wind up frantically tapping the brakes as his own conservative colleagues are going pedal to the metal? And WTF is going on with Judge Cannon in the Trump docs case?   Links: US v. Trump [SDFL Docket via Court Listener] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67490069/united-states-v-trump/    Special Counsel Threatens To Go To 11th Circuit, Reminds Judge Cannon What Happened The Last Time She Tried This Shit https://abovethelaw.com/2024/04/special-counsel-threatens-to-go-to-11th-circuit-reminds-judge-cannon-what-happened-the-last-time-she-tried-this-shit/    Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod Patreon: patreon.com/LawAndChaosPod  

Tim Barnes introduces listeners to the You Are The Genre podcast featuring clips from upcoming interviews with Eliza Cossio, Mike Sacks, Ashley Ray, Steven Castillo, Zach Cherry, Milly Tamarez, James III, Freddie Nunez, and Greg Iwinski.Tune in for new episodes every Monday! Or, become a paid subscriber to listen ahead each week. For instance, paid subscribers can listen to the first full episode of the podcast with Eliza Cossio now!CREDITS:* Host: Tim Barnes* Theme Song: “You Are The Genre” by Freddie Nunez* Music Engineer: Adam Smith (@a_scug on Instagram)* Additional Sounds From: Breviceps, Beetlemuse, dbspin, musicandsoundyay, djlprojects, Thomas Bruderer, albertomarun, GeorgeHopkins, Scydan, holizna, & Ixwolf Get full access to Letters From African America at timbarnescomedy.substack.com/subscribe

In July, I hosted a webinar called "How To Get Past Hollywood Gatekeepers" where I shared my thoughts on creative things you can do now with the strikes happening, as well as what you shouldn't be doing. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch.Show NotesFree Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAutogenerated TranscriptMichael Jamin:You shouldn't. You should not try to work. I mean, you don't go on any guild SAG projects or guild projects, but you could do, if it's a non SAG project, like a student film or something, you can do that. You're not violating anything. You're not getting paid, but you can build your network. Exactly. Or make your own stuff. If you write your own mini scene or movie or whatever and you shoot it on your phone, you're not breaking any strikes. You're not selling it, you're just shooting it. You're listening to screenwriters. Need to hear this with Michael. Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Michael Jamin. I'm here with Phil Hudson and we are going to answer some questions. So as you may or may not know, we host a webinar, a free webinar every three weeks usually, and I try to answer a different topic. And the last topic we did was called How to Get Past Industry Gatekeepers. And we did an exclusive v i P room afterwards where people could ask questions. This is where the questions are coming from, Phil, right?Phil Hudson:No, these are actually the ones from the webinar. We didn'tMichael Jamin:Oh, these are from the webinar. Okay.Phil Hudson:Yeah, because we shifted things up and for people who, dunno, you were spending a lot of time, we were staying on for an hour doing q and a with everybody, and so we just decided to give everyone an opportunity to hop in and get FaceTime with you. It's limited seats of V I P Q and A, and this is for the people who ask questions during the webinar who didn't get their questions answered rightMichael Jamin:Now I'm confused. Okay. Yeah, so to be clear, the webinar is free, but we also did a little bonus thing afterwards that people can buy in so I can answer more questions. So these are questions. I didn't get it. We didn't have time to answer and Phil's going to cue me. What is it? Yeah,Phil Hudson:No, I was going to say we're going to dive in and I think it's just two things. If you want to have a question answered by Michael, there's two ways to get that done and you're very, very open with your time. One is to join the webinar. We typically have one, sometimes two a month depending on the month, and it's a different topic typically every time. But we have a couple that people really like, so we might be focusing on those. But if you can't get your question answered there, the v i P is an opportunity for them to hop in with you and really just spend that time, time you turn your camera on. You ask myMichael Jamin:Question. Well, it's not one-on-one. A small group of people.Phil Hudson:So it's not one-on-one in the sense that you sit there and you get to talk to Michael. You don't have to. It's not, yeah. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah. So yeah, let's dive in. And we've done previous episodes. I've broken these into subjects. So there are a couple key categories. This is heavily weighted towards breaking into Hollywood because that was the topic,Michael Jamin:ButPhil Hudson:I think the craft questions are always good. So starting there, Norville, scs, if a character changes for the better over the course of a story, is there initial likability, something to focus on?Michael Jamin:Well, likability is a complicated thing. Sometimes people, you'll get a note from the studio saying these need to be likable. And that's not the same thing as the audience needs to the characters, which is a different, okay, so Tony Soprano is not a likable person. You don't want to spend 10 minutes with the guy, he might kill you, okay? But the audience likes to watch him because he's interesting. But often you'll get a note from the studio saying, these characters, they're too unlikable. I don't have an answer to that. It depends if you're doing a drama or a comedy, but generally the note you're going to get is these need to be likable characters, especially if you're doing a comedy. We're spending time with them, we're spending a lot of time with them. So even in Cheers, I'm sure one of the notes was Carla's too unlikable, so they probably softened her up so she wasn't, because you're spending time with him, this is your family, I guess. I dunno if that answers the question. It's the best I can do. Well,Phil Hudson:I think the question comes from Save the Cat, which you've admittedly never read and you've never read, but it definitely talks about how your character should do something to make us like them in the first three to five pages because we'll want to root for them and it's a redeeming factor and there's plenty of evidence as to why that's not necessarilyMichael Jamin:Accurate. I don't subscribe to that. I don't subscribe to that. So yeah,Phil Hudson:As good as it gets. You recommended, I read that for a script. I was writing one point. Is that it? Where is that? Not Jack Nicholson.Michael Jamin:Yeah, I mean I love that, but I don't rememberPhil Hudson:Telling you, but he throws the dog down the garbage shoot.Michael Jamin:Oh yeah, it was the first time we seen him. He throws the dog down the garbage shoot.Phil Hudson:It's the opposite of saving the cat.Michael Jamin:And it'sPhil Hudson:A classic, it's incredible film.Michael Jamin:And that's a film, right? So that's not a sitcom. So again, I don't subscribe to this thing. The character has to do something likable. What is that? I mean, I think they have to do something interesting. Engaging and throwing a dog on a shoot is kind of interesting for sure. SoPhil Hudson:Yeah, what kind of person would do that? Use his questions. Jackie Smite. What if you have a script for a very specific franchise? Is it simply foolish if you are an inexperienced or is it a bad idea in general?Michael Jamin:Bad idea in general. And it's foolish. You got 'em both write. You can't write for a franchise. You don't own the ip, it's not yours, let it go. You don't write a Marvel movie, don't write a Disney movie with the princesses. It's not yours, so let it go. Don't write anything with a franchise.Phil Hudson:This is a very common one. I mean, most people have an idea for a story and it's based off of existing ip. I remember talking to a friend in 2008, a couple months after I really started studying screenwriting. She's like, oh, I have this enemy franchise. I want to adapt for tv. And I was like, okay, I don't think you could do that. And yeah,Michael Jamin:Reach out to, if you get the rights from them, then do it, but you don't have the rights, so don't do it.Phil Hudson:And that is a process and we'll probably circle back on that because there's a question about attorneys, which we'll get to in a minute.Michael Jamin:Oh, okay.Phil Hudson:Cliff Johnson ii. I write drama features to half hour comedy and also differing genres. Is it limiting to spread myself thin or should I keep building a diverse portfolio?Michael Jamin:You don't need a diverse portfolio. I'd say specialize in whatever it is you enjoy the most. Focus on that, get really good at it, and then market yourself as the best damn thriller writer there is. Or the best broad comedy writer there is. You don't need a broad portfolio. You need to have a specific portfolio that really showcases your excellence in this one area.Phil Hudson:Yeah. You've given advice as well in the past that let's say you're a sitcom writer, well get really good at writing half hour single camera sitcoms that do multi, then do animated. So you stay in that genre, but you can build a portfolio within that genre to show your base. But it's different than writing violent westerns and Taylor Sheridan style.Michael Jamin:Yes. Right. I'm glad you pointed at that. So if you want to be a comedy writer, you might want a Yes. A broad you should have, should have a grounded single camera comedy, but it's all comedy. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Awesome. Andrew James jokes, do you see everything from a certain comedic viewpoint when thinking of content or writing a script,Michael Jamin:A certain comedic viewpoint? I don't remember. Not sure what that means. There's things that strike me as funny. I'm not sure if I have. I thinkPhil Hudson:For me, I think I understand this question, but I don't want to interrupt you if you have something.Michael Jamin:No, what do you think?Phil Hudson:I think what's being asked is when I was told once that I have a particular view of the world and it often is a comical view of the world. I look at the ridiculousness of bureaucracy or rules and rather than get upset, I just make fun of them or I find ways to poke holes at them. To me it's really that question. Do you have that point of view to say, this is my Mike. Judge has, I would say, has a really clear point of view and the way he does his things. Do you look at things through a certain lens?Michael Jamin:I don't know if I do. I mean, I'm sure I have a voice. I'm always interested, I guess how do I like finding things, thinking of things that are funny, but I'm not sure if I have a specific I tact that I take, sorry, I can't help them more. I got to think about that more. Do I have a point of view? I tend to think silly and stupid, but I think I'm smart. I mean, I went to college and everything, but I don't think I'm dumb, but I think my voice is sometimes of a dumb person.Phil Hudson:When I think of your voice, I think of a lot of the things you share about the way you kid with your daughters,Michael Jamin:The way I kid with my daughters.Phil Hudson:Yeah, just like you've done a couple of social media posts where you're like, it's like dad jokes, but at a different level. It's an elevated dad joke almost.Michael Jamin:Well, I'm their dad.Phil Hudson:I know, but it's like dad jokes very punny. And then yours is one step further and you've done several of these quick bites on social media that are related to your conversations with your daughters. To me, that's Michael Jamin and Comedy.Michael Jamin:Oh yeah. I love having fun with my kids. They're so funny. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Cool. And then Phyllis Hill, Phyllis was pretty active, so we got a bunch of questions from her, but they were very good. I sorted through a bunch of 'em. And this is a little bit tied to something I know we've talked about before and I just thought it was good to put on the podcast. Have streaming platforms changed story structure, the same story structure that might've been used back during the day of network TV shows?Michael Jamin:Great question. Not in a hugely significant way. The biggest thing is probably, well, there's no commercial breaks, but so what? We still break the story still the same. We just don't go to commercial. But when we break it on the whiteboard, same thing. It doesn't matter. The only difference is streamers sometimes want you to have serialized stories. So the end, they want to end on a pregnant moment where, so it's continued. So the next story picks up where the last one ended. That's sometimes what they want so that you binge, but that's kind of easy. Often you can, if you go back and watch Weeds, the show Weeds, they did that really well see, they tell a full story and then at the end the story's over. They just do a weird little thing at the end of that story. And then that story would be the beginning. That beat would be the beginning of the next story. So it's super easy in terms of breaking it. It actually makes it kind of easy. It doesn't make, it's the same kind of storytelling. You're just adding one more beat at the end.Phil Hudson:Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's a very concise answer, Michael.Michael Jamin:I get paid by Word.Phil Hudson:I love that. I was going to say Charles Duma is Alexander Duma. I don't know who Charlie Duma is, but he's probably Alexander Dumas's cousin twice divorced. Some questions about your course which come up because during the webinar you're often, one of the things, people have a chance to win your course, you get lifetime access to the course. One person wins every time, but also you give a discount to the course.Michael Jamin:Yeah, if you're listening to this, come to these free webinars that I div, we give a good discount to anyone who attendsPhil Hudson:And that opens registration for that block of enrollment. Leonard h wanted to know, will the course do anything for someone working on documentaries?Michael Jamin:Yeah, I don't know. I mean personally I think yes, but I'm not a documentary filmmaker, but I have watched documentary films where I thought this would've been better if they went through my course. They would've dove into the emotional moments that I feel. But having never made a documentary, what the hell do I know? But I have watched documentaries where I thought this was good, but it wasn't great. It didn't really move me emotionally or I should. I think that's when documentaries really work is when or anything works when you finish watching it and you're still thinking about it, you're still feeling it the next day. So I don't want to promise, but I would think it would help. ButPhil Hudson:I have taken a documentary film class as part of my film school stuff. It's honestly one of the better classes I took. It was taught by a guy named Hank who was a Sundance fellow in the documentary labs and he done multiple documentaries. That's literally, he teaches and then he and his wife shoot documentaries and manage those tons of stuff in South by Southwest, the film fest, Sundance Film Festival, all that stuff. And absolutely story structure is a very vital part of that. And you get into the cinema verte and how you're doing your documentary and the influence of structure and story, but the story structure had to be there, or no one wants to watch what you're doing,Michael Jamin:Nobody cares. So the hard part is you can't invent that. You have to hopefully capture that and then know, oh, I captured this moment. This would be a good first act break.Phil Hudson:But they're scripted there. They're scripted. You need to understand what things you need to get, what beats you want to get as you tell the story. And then it evolves out of that. You often are surprised by what you get, but then there's the paper edit you do when you go into editing where you have transcripts of all the footage and you're looking for things. And it was a little bit uncomfortable for me then and still is now. He even encouraged that it's your job to tell the best version of that story as you can. And there is no such thing as cinema verite, truth of the camera, right? Truth of the lens. You can't because the moment you're there observing it, it changes. And that's a law of physics. You observe an Adam behaves different. And so he says at the end of the day, let's say that you filmed something out of order and there's a clip that you shot two months from now, but it helps tell the story that you need to tell. He had no problem rearranging things or cutting people out of order to get the story that he needed at the end of it.Michael Jamin:So your point is the story, our course would help. That'sPhil Hudson:Your point. Absolutely. Yeah, I absolutely would help.Michael Jamin:Alright,Phil Hudson:There you go. There you go. A couple of questions from Phyllis. Please compare your class to screenwriting classes like the ones offered on Masterclass.Michael Jamin:Well, again, I haven't gone through all the ones in Masterclass. I've watched a few videos of some of the speakers. I don't know, I mean I didn't watch all of it. I don't know. I really can't say having not watched all of it. I think mine is, I would expect mine is a little more hands-on in the sense that I'm teaching you literally how we break a story in the room. I don't fill you with a lot of terms that we don't use, but Phil, have you gone through Masterclass? Yeah. Maybe you'll know better than I do.Phil Hudson:Active subscriber to Masterclass for a long time and most of them I can't get through on Masterclass including, and look, I think Aaron Sorkin's one of the most prolific author writers of our time and I love everything he puts out. ButMichael Jamin:Yeah, he's Shakespeare. He's the Shakespeare of our time.Phil Hudson:Couldn't get through it, couldn't get through his course,Michael Jamin:Couldn't get throughPhil Hudson:It. No, a lot of, and actually I can tell you this because in my agency we have a client who is getting their own masterclass right now. So I've got a little view through the window of what that platform is. And I'm not saying all platforms are like this and I don't want to be saying anything disparaging against Masterclass. I really enjoy masterclass, but the amount of content they shoot versus what you get, it's like 20% of what that person did and they're not editing it. So Masterclass does this stuff, they're in Sorkin and then what you get on the back end of that or Shonda Rogers or whoever, you get to the end of that and it's like 20% of what they talked about. It's good, but it's not the meat. It's not the meat of what you want.Michael Jamin:I've watched some, not theirs, but I felt, and I love masterclass too, I felt you got a taste of everything. You can really learn a lot about cars and cooking and it's a really great, but I felt like from what I watched, it didn't go deep enough. That's not what it is. It's a sampling. And I thought it was interesting but not helpful for some of the ones I saw. Interesting but not helpful.Phil Hudson:The most practical one was Aaron Franklin's barbecue cooking class. And I put that one to good use with my smoker because it is very much, here's how you do it, here's how you tip things, here's how you wrap meat. It's just actionable. SoMichael Jamin:If I ate meat, I'd come over and make me a nice smoked dinner, but I don't,Phil Hudson:You'd be very happy.Michael Jamin:I'd probably start sweating.Phil Hudson:I'll meat sweats. Yeah, I'll make you some nice broccolini. How about that?Michael Jamin:Yeah, that'd be nice.Phil Hudson:Alright, and then just another question from Phyllis, and I think this is more broad about you and what you're doing for people online in the webinars with the course, everything. What is your motivation to offer this assistance other than money?Michael Jamin:Oh, well, when I broke into the business, this is back in the nineties, this was before the internet and I was living in New York. I knew nothing about the industry. I knew nothing. I knew no one, how would I know anything? So I just got in my car and I drove to LA thinking well get close. But now because the internet, social media, you can talk to people like me and get so much information for free and what a gift. And so I know people say it's impossible to break into Hollywood. Yeah, yes, it's hard, but it's even harder if you don't even know where to begin if you don't have these resources. But now I started building my social media profile back a little over two years ago as a way of building my platform so that I have a book that's coming out so that I could platform my agents has platform drives acquisition. I need a following to sell my book to perform and do all these things that I wanted to do. And so the way to build this platform was by just talking about what I know and giving 90% of it away for free. The other 10% is in this course that we have and that'sPhil Hudson:It. I a call from Michael and I was doing runs for Tacoma FD like season two or something. And you called me and you're like, Hey man, can you come over? I want run some stuff by you. I know many people know this, but some people don't. I know you through working at a digital marketing agency where I assisted your wife's e-commerce website and just worked for her for a couple of years doing whatever I could to take care of her. She'd been ripped off by the sales guy who sold her some stuff that we couldn't do and I had no idea who you were or what you guys did. And then one day you were going to join and it kind of put it together and you guys were just very kind and have always been kind to share your knowledge with me, but well,Michael Jamin:You started it. You started it by being kind first. Let's be clear.Phil Hudson:It was the right thing to do, right? It's a principle thing, which is very important. And at the end of the day, you called me over because I have that experience, that skillset, and we just had a sit down in your garage and you broke your Adirondack chair and then you told me that it wasMichael Jamin:Already broken. Broken, it was already broken,Phil Hudson:Was a big guy. I was sweating that once. I had to buy you a director's chair to replaceMichael Jamin:It.Phil Hudson:But anyway, we talked about this, what do you need to do? And I was like, finally, because I've been begging you for years to do this course and to put your stuff out there just because the private email lessons and the conversations we had were so incredibly valuable to me. And I was in flu school at the time and getting more value out of an email you'd send me over a weekend than I was getting in a week of lectures at that school.This is how you do what you need to do to sell your book and here's how you give. And the mantra of any good digital marketing platform is give, give, give, right, give, give, give. And there's an ask. There's always a right for an ask in there as well, because you are giving, and we talked about the course and you were very clear, I don't want to, you feel sleazy selling things. You don't want to do that you're, you're a writer, you're not a guy who does this. You're not pretending to be the answer to all things. And I said, but people will value what you have and they have to pay for it to value it. So I'm the one who pushed it. I'm the one who pushed the price and you've reduced the price over and over again because you just want to make sure that it's getting as many people as it can.You do, A lot of people don't know this. You offer basically free financing through yourself. People can sign up for the course on a three month plan, a six month plan, or pay in full and you don't bill 'em any interest. And there are plenty of ways for us to get interest off of people or get people to pay interest and that's just from my perspective, it's 100% honestly. How can I serve as many people as possible so that I can get this passion project of my book speaking as you to as many people as I can.Michael Jamin:Yeah, there you go. You answered it. Well, Phil, I think you said it better than I did.Phil Hudson:I'm growing long-winded in my as I wax old.Michael Jamin:Wax old.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Alright, cool. Now to the meat of the episode for the webinar was about breaking in and so there's some really good stuff here and so I know we'll be quick on some of this, but if you want, this full webinar broadcast is available for purchase as well on your website. It's like 29 bucks and it's lifetime access and they can watch the whole episode of this webinar.Michael Jamin:Yeah, go get it.Phil Hudson:Yeah, but Valerie Taylor, so once the script is done, what does it mean to build the mountain? What does the work have to do? And that's reference to a podcast episode we did recently that a lot of people really liked, which is Build Your Mountain.Michael Jamin:There are people doing this. I didn't come up with this idea. There are people on social media, content creators who are just putting their out there and because it's really good they're building a following. I dunno if that was their intention in the beginning, but that's what they've done. One I always mention is Sarah Cooper, I wish she would do my podcast. So have you reachedPhil Hudson:Interesting?Michael Jamin:I tagged her on something, but she's busy. She's busy, but I'm a huge fan of hers. So she's this vicious woman, young actress who as far as I can tell she couldn't get arrested in New York City. She just started during the pandemic posting kind of funny lip syncs of Donald Trump, but she wasn't just lip-syncing, was plusing it. She was adding her own comedy to it and her own reactions and it was really, she was great and she's just doing this and she wants to be an actor and a writer, but she's doing this and she was so great at it. She built a giant following and because this following people discovered her and because of that she gets, I think she got a Netflix special. She got a pilot out of it and where the pilot, she can write her own stuff now. I think some of the projects never went to air, but she sold it. She made a name for herself and she will continue making a name for herself because she built it first. She wasn't begging people for opportunities. It's the other way around. She started doing it and then because she was so good at it, people came after her. People started begging her.And you don't have to, and I think maybe Phil, we might even do a whole, I may save some of this information from our next webinar. I want talk. Yeah, I'm going to save, but I have more thoughts to this I I'll put in our next free webinar. Write. Write. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Can't wait. Oh, by the way, Michael puts a month worth of effort into writing every webinar. I see the revisions and I'm always like, Michael, I need this so I can make the workbook. Michael, I need this. And he's still editing. So Hayden, Sears, earlier you said to bring more to the table of an agency than a script. What else should I bring to the table?Michael Jamin:You could do what I just said with Sarah Cooper. She brought a huge following. She brought, you could bring talent, you could bring a movie that you launched, finance that you did yourself at Sundance that got accolades and now you're this hot new director or writer or whatever. That's bringing more to the table than saying, Hey, pick me. You're doing it already. You are already doing it. You're proving that you know how to do it. And people don't do it because it's work or they think it's too expensive. But I have to say, it's not the money that's holding you back. The money. You can raise $10,000 or $15,000. I know it's not nothing but it. We're not talking about a million dollars, we're talking about 10,000. You can raise it on a Kickstarter, you can raise it on a bake sale and you can shoot the damn thing on your phone and you can edit it on your phone.You just need good sound. That's what I recommend. But you don't need great locations. You can shoot the thing one, I always mention this, Phil is the whale, the movie The Whale, which is based on a play that was shot in an apartment. So don't tell me you need to have great locations to make something amazing. It was shot in a dumpy apartment and one of the most, it was a beautiful story. Beautiful. It was all because the writing, the writing was excellent and because the writing was X, it was able to attract great actors and the acting rose to the writing. If the writing was no good, who cares what the acting is?Phil Hudson:Yep. Cynthia always said that in our classes with Jill, your interacting classes, the writers put it on the page. Everything in actor needs to know is on the page. That's where the performance comes from.Michael Jamin:If it's a good script, yeah.Phil Hudson:Awesome. The cinema magician with the strike going on from both the writers and the actors now it feels like it wouldn't be fair trying to come get work this moment. How can I try to try for work and support the union?Michael Jamin:You shouldn't. You should not try to work. I mean, you don't go on any guild sag projects or guild projects, but you could do, if it's a non sag project, like a student film or something, you can do that. You're not violating anything. You're not getting paid. SoPhil Hudson:Build your network.Michael Jamin:Build your network. Exactly. Or make your own stuff. If you write your own mini scene or movie or whatever and you shoot it on your phone, you're not breaking any strikes. You're not selling it. You're just shooting it.Phil Hudson:Yep. Awesome. Love Leanne. Who is a member of your course, how should we speak to writers and other filmmakers on the picket lines? I've seen others not doing it very well and I'm kind of afraid to speak.Michael Jamin:Oh, well that's hard. I mean, all you got to do is don't act like you want something from them. Just act like you want to learn from them. Hey, tell me about your story. Tell me how did you start? How did you break in? What kind of shows do you like to write? What inspires you? Pretend like they're a guest on your radio show or your podcast. Interview them. We don't want anything from them. You're just curious to get their story. People will talk.Phil Hudson:Yeah, they definitely will. And when I've gone out and done picketing, it's really interesting. I don't talk to people, I'm just, who are you? Tell me about you. What are you doing here? Why are you here? What are you doing out on the picket line? Cool. Are you in industry? Breaking in the industry? Oh great. Oh, cool. You worked on that show. I love that show. Awesome. And then they ask you questions too, because walking in circles for hoursMichael Jamin:And you're a human being and they're going to make conversation. The conversation will eventually turn around to you and then you can talk about yourself.Phil Hudson:Have you noticed the people who put up their YouTube channel and stuff on flyers on the poles and stuff in the corners?Michael Jamin:No. I have not seen that. I have promoting their own channel.Phil Hudson:It feels a little skeezy to me. Personal. I'mMichael Jamin:Not. The problem is no one's looking at him anyway, so Yeah.Phil Hudson:Yeah, you haven't noticed. And when I see 'em, I'm just like, ah, man's. I don't know. That's the way to do that. You're basically saying, look at me. Look at me. Instead of being there, walking on the picket lines, talking to people and putting in effort to fight for the same things they're fightingMichael Jamin:For. Yeah. You don't have to promote yourself.Phil Hudson:Alright, Norville, scss. Does the strike lead to an increasing demand for scripts?Michael Jamin:Well, when the strike is over, there will be, everyone will flood the market with their scripts and that's just the way it is. SoPhil Hudson:Yeah. Demand, but also supply because all of these writers have time to write.Michael Jamin:Yeah, right.Phil Hudson:Antonia, Roman. Hey, Michael, met you yesterday on the picket. I appreciate your insight. How many script feedback reads should someone actually pay for? Sometimes the feedbacks contradict each other.Michael Jamin:Thanks. Oh, Phil, IPhil Hudson:Know.Michael Jamin:Here we go.Phil Hudson:My purpose. Yeah,Michael Jamin:Many. If you're paying in one of these services and maybe it's like 150 bucks for one of these services, you're going to get who you get who's reading the script other than it's someone who works at the service, they don't know more than you do. They just work there and they're making whatever, 20 bucks an hour or maybe less to read script after script. What's their qualifications beats the hell out of me. Other than the fact that they're working there and they're not industry deciders. They're not like they don't have jobs in SC screenwriting. If they did, they would be doing that. So a service, I'd pay nothing, because that's why you're going to get contradictory feedback. What do they know? They don't know more than you. If you can find a writer with experience, and there are writers who will do this as a freelance thing, check out their credits, go on their I M D B, what have they written? Ask to see their work. What have they read their work? Do you like their work? And if you do, then yes, then your feedback could be valuable. But I would never go through a service.Phil Hudson:Yep. We did talk about this where I sent Michael, I paid for feedback from some of these services on your behalf, listener to the podcast. And then I shared the emails back and forth from them, the reviews as well as when I questioned the validity of the feedback I received from them. I sent Michael those. And I think the feedback from the service was way more infuriatingMichael Jamin:Than the Yeah, it just made you mad. It made you feel like you got ripped off. Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creativeTypes. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Phil Hudson:Awesome. Ruth W should emerging rider approach breaking in differently than before, given the strike, are there any new approaches that should be considered? Thanks?Michael Jamin:I don't think, wait for the strike to end before you think about breaking in, but the landscape has changed so much with social media that you don't need anyone's permission. I just talked about this. You don't need anyone's permission to write and build up your brand. I'm not doing it. I'm not waiting for anyone's permission. I don't know why anybody else would. I have a good podcast guest this week? Well, I dunno when you're going to hear this Mike Sacks, go listen to him. See, he's an author and he talks about that himself. He has sold books to publishers and he's also indie published it himself and he makes a really strong case for just doing it yourself. And he's done both. And he's an editor at Vanity Fair. So the guy knows how to write.Phil Hudson:Yeah, yeah. Also, definitely don't try breaking him right now. They're very clear rules that the writer's guilds come out and said, if you even have meetings with producers, that is an act of crossing a picket line.Michael Jamin:No, I'm not talking to my agent, I'm not talking to producers. I'm not doing any of this. YouPhil Hudson:Mean they will literally forbid you from joining the guild. So any short term win now is basically a nail in the coffin of your career later and as it should be, Susan Mark, when you get the low paying non-union screenwriting gigs over and over, how do you move from that into network shows with four question marks?Michael Jamin:The fact that you're getting these jobs to begin with are great, even if they're non-union. So good for you. I mean, this is where if these movies are doing or shows are doing well and if they're well received and if they're written well, and this is what you show to an agent and you say, here's my body of work and here's a movie I did that it cost 10,000 to make, and the return on it was a hundred thousand. That's impressive. So that's how you can parlay that into bigger opportunities. But the problem is, if you're doing this work and the work isn't coming out good, it still has to be good. It has to be good. And people have, it has to have be one or the other critically well-received or makes a lot of money. It has to be a financial success. One or both. One or the other or both.Phil Hudson:Awesome. Roxanna Black Sea. How do you get over feeling guilty asking a friend or a mentor for a referral and how do you know you're ready and not wasting their time? This is a good one. I might as well wrote this, Michael.Michael Jamin:Well, if you have a friend who's in the industry, I dunno if they're in the industry or not, but you only have one chance to impress them. And if you give them something that's not great, it's a big ask. Hey, sit down and read this. It's going to take them an hour and a half or whatever. And if it's not great, they're not going to want to do it again. They'll do a favor once, but they won't do it again. So there's that. The get over the guilt. Well, if you've giving them a giant gift, you shouldn't feel guilty If it's giving 'em a piece of shit, well, you're going to feel guilty, but you just need to know what it is you're giving them.Phil Hudson:That takes a lot of introspection and a lot of self-analysis. I would also say it takes a lot of practice and study of existing high quality works to compare yourself.Michael Jamin:Yeah, high quality. That's the thing, Phil, if you're watching some crappy TV show and you go, well, I can write a crappy TV show that's not the barPhil Hudson:Crap. Plus one that's been around for since the a o l days crap plus one is I can do one better than that. It's not good enough. Yeah,Michael Jamin:Not good enough.Phil Hudson:Alright, Ruth w again, if you know an established riders working on a new project that you have happen to have particular rare knowledge on, is it appropriate to contact that rider even to work for free? And then there's a follow-up to this.Michael Jamin:Well, if they're on a show and you have particular knowledge, they're not going to let you work for free. You can't work for free. But you can share your knowledge and I don't know, it always, you can share your knowledge, but no one's, you're not allowed to work for free. So I don't know what if they're going to offer you a job or not,Phil Hudson:But is it okay to reach out to them?Michael Jamin:Why not? What's the harm? Yeah.Phil Hudson:I think the benefit of that is you are going in to say, Hey, I saw you're doing this. I happen to be a subject matter expert on that. Anything you want to ask me, I'm happy to go over with you and bring out any insights you want. You are now serving that person. You're not coming in and say, give me a job, give me a job. And you might hop on a zoom with them and have an intro. Now you've got a foot in the door to have an extended conversation as someone, and you've provided value to that person.Michael Jamin:Right. Then you're right. You're not asking for anything in return, but people tend to give things back when people give first.Phil Hudson:Yep. And the follow up question, is it okay to contact an agent to get the contact information for that rider that you would like to help for free?Michael Jamin:So you don't know this person. Yeah, you, the agent's not going to do anything with it. I would doubt they're going to do anything with it. You could reach out to them on LinkedIn, maybe you could tweet that.Phil Hudson:This might be a good time to slide into the dms. Right. And because you're not asking, you're providing valueMichael Jamin:AndPhil Hudson:Expect them not to reply.Michael Jamin:Right. Expect 'em not to reply. And it's because you, maybe they get too many solicitations or maybe it's just they find it weird. It's worth a shot.Phil Hudson:It also might just be that they don't have time to look at their social media, which is very real. Don't read into it. Just shoot your shot. Move on.Michael Jamin:Yeah, right. Don't wait. Don't hold your breath. Shoot your shot and keep shooting your shot. Keep working on yourself. Yep.Phil Hudson:Genova, is there anything we need to be wary of when approaching smaller agencies with our scripts so we don't get screwed?Michael Jamin:Well, the agencies, first of all, don't approach any agency that's going to charge you for to represent you. That's no legit agents work on commission. Now the big ones are not going to represent you. You have to reach out to smaller ones who are soliciting clients. I wouldn't expect an agent to, I wouldn't expect them to rip you off. That's not what they do. They're going to represent you and try to sell you. The agents are not producers, they're not screenwriters. So to me it's safe. But again, I don't give legal advice if you have to do what's comfortable for you personally, I don't worry about that. That's not something I worry about.Phil Hudson:And you started at a smaller agency that some could say screwed you, but I don't know that you see it that way, right? Because you got hip pocketed basically as a baby writer.Michael Jamin:They didn't screw me, they just didn't do anything.Phil Hudson:That's saying they didn't screw you. But some people might say they screwed you because they didn't do anything.Michael Jamin:Oh yeah. But they didn't steal anything from me. They just didn't help my career any.Phil Hudson:Yeah, and we talked about that in some of the early podcasts. If you want to go back and listen to those. I think it was the agents and manager episode is like episode five or something.Michael Jamin:SoPhil Hudson:95 something episodes ago. It'sMichael Jamin:Great. Yeah. You remember this stuff.Phil Hudson:Shem L. Do you think New York and LA are still the places to make it?Michael Jamin:No. I think LA is the place to make it. Take New York off the list. Where is Hollywood? This is a trivia question. Find it on the map. Hint, it's in Los Angeles. I understand that some television production or film production is done in New York. Some Where's the writing done? The writing's done in la. Same thing with Georgia or New Mexico. Sometimes they shoot things there for tax breaks, but the writing is almost always done in LA and even if some writing is done in these smaller cities, okay, fine, maybe you'll get incredibly lucky, but you're not going to be able to sustain a career there. The career's here, that's how I feel.Phil Hudson:All right. And Jill Hargrave. I'm a senior writer, 76 years old, transition from decades as a documentary producer to screenwriter. I have an agent and I'm in the news division with the W G A East. Any advice on how to get read by execs?Michael Jamin:I'm looking for, so she's a news writer.Phil Hudson:Sounds like she's a writer in the news division for the W G A East. She has decades of experience being a producer in documentary film. She has an agent advice on how to get executives to read your stuff.Michael Jamin:Sorry. Yeah, so you're in the same boat as everyone else. I don't think you got a leg up. You sound like you're very competent news producer, but you might as well be an orthodontist. It's a different kind of writing, but shePhil Hudson:Has an agent.Michael Jamin:Ask your agent. I suspect your agent's not going to give a crap. Your agent is able to get you news jobs. That's what you are and that's what you bring value to them. But they're not interested in you starting your career over from zero. My friend Rob Cohen talked about this in one of our podcasts. He was a very successful sitcom writer, wrote on a bunch of shows including The Simpsons, including Just Shoot Me where I was on maybe 20 or so years into his career as a TV writer, very successful TV writer. I ran into him and he's like, I want to be a director now. I want to direct TV and film. I thought, well, how are you going to do that? He goes, I don't know, but I'm going to make it happen. I said, well, is your agent helping you at all?No, the agent's not going to help me one bit, even though he's a successful TV writer because it's a different thing. It's directing. They don't want to sell 'em as that. They can sell 'em as a TV writer, but not as a director. So unfortunately, you're going to have to start over. You milk whatever context you have. Maybe your agent can set you up with a referral with another agent at their agency that they should be able to do. But at the end of the day, you unfortunately have to make your career. They're not going to make your career for youPhil Hudson:If they have an agent because they have some screenplay sample that they've submitted. My guess would be that that's when your agent would show those. When we're not on a strike, they'd take your samples and try to sell those things to people that get you staffed and they're going to do that job for you. But it sounds like through the question that you're right, Michael, that's not a writing agent in this space. It's documented or a new set,Michael Jamin:But talk to them, maybe get some tips. I mean, again, I've tried to do the same thing myself. My agents, I have big agents and manager. They don't give a crap unless I can make money for them today in my field. They don't really care.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Awesome. Ruth w this is miscellaneous. I've got three more questions here. Excuse me for, is there any value in getting an entertainment lawyer? Does this confer any legitimacy when trying to get people to read your script? Or is it just a waste of money and Yeah, there's some follow-up to this. We'll get to that.Michael Jamin:So no, an entertainment attorney is the best money I spend. My attorney takes 5% of all the deals that I make and they help negotiate these deals. Money well spent, but it's only when I'm negotiating a deal, that's when they get paid. They get a commission. I would never pay an entertainment attorney upfront. It doesn't help you make a deal. It doesn't help you look more important. You're just going to pay them a lot of money out of pocket for no reason. Attorneys are there to help you negotiate the deal and read the fine print so you don't get screwed. That's what they help you do, but you don't pay one upfront for any. As far as I know, I would never pay one upfront.Phil Hudson:I've had two in my career and the first one didn't do a lot. This one, and we worked with him on some stuff today, actually. You and I were going over some tree mark stuff with him. But anyway, he is great and he comes at it from the perspective of that, which is, my job is to protect you and I can be the bad guy. I can go fight the fight for you to get you what you want. And you can say, Hey man, that's just what my lawyer does. You're going to have to take that up with my attorney. And we talked in the podcast about this recent experience I had where he wrote this contract and the guy signed it and he ended up protecting my butt because he put a clause in that said nothing was executable until it was paid. Money was delivered.And so because this guy never exchanged money, he only talked about exchanging money. I'm not obligated to do anything for this guy. And had I walked into that, I probably would've just signed something and not had the foresight to have that. He also had it paid in steps. So above and beyond the WJ minimums, he structured it. So I'd get paid more money upfront like you want money in your pocket? And he deals with Sony and major country musicians. He's a real proper entertainment attorney. Incredibly valuable. And it looks like he answered honestly the question, what's the difference between an agent who's going to get 10%? What's a lawyer do? What's the difference? And the answer is the agent basically books the deal. The attorney gets you the most money they can out of that deal,Michael Jamin:And the agent's not going to read the contract. They don't read contract. They're not lawyers. They don't deal with that. So you need an attorney.Phil Hudson:Love it. Goddard Fin, any insight on getting a preliminary budget done by someone or a company like Mike Binder's, budget company? I'm assuming is this for an indie project?Michael Jamin:I never heard of that and I wouldn't know.Phil Hudson:Or it's a preliminary budget on a script.Michael Jamin:I thought he was an actor. Michael Binder. I thought he was an actor. I don't even know. I've never even heard of this, so I can't even answer.Phil Hudson:My feeling is, from what I understand from this question is there's zero value added to your script when you go to pitch your story by telling them, this is the budget I got for thisMichael Jamin:For somebody. No, they'll tell you the budget if that's what that is. It's interesting. Yeah. I thought maybe this is for indies. No, when you saw the MoVI, they'll tell you what the budget is. It is their money. You don't tell them what the budget is. They tell you.Phil Hudson:And the answer is in the indie film, if it is, that is you're going to scrounge with every dollar you can get, and then you're going to make what you can with the budget you got. And that's what a line producer does for you. And they basically manage the contracts and make sure your people get paid. And you don't go over budget and you can finish your project and they'll tell you, Hey, you can't do that. You don't have the money to do that.Michael Jamin:Right.Phil Hudson:Cool. Ruth w with another, one of the reasons I am reticent to fill my own stuff is because I don't have any money to pay actors. Is it okay to ask them to work for free?Michael Jamin:You can often, actors will do this just to have tape so that they can submit themselves. But the work has to be good. You're not going to, the better the script is, the easier it is to attract actors and better actors. And if it's a great script, they'll fall over themselves for to do this. So you ask them to do it for free. Definitely. You don't want to abuse them. You want to make sure, buy them pizza, buy them lunch, make sure there's water on set. Take care of them. That's the least you can do.Phil Hudson:Yeah. And people will absolutely do that. There's also, if you're a student, you can also look into sag, SAG after student agreements, which probably you might even still be able to do that during the strike. It's not really a paid project, but they have agreements that you can work with SAG qualified actors and you have to abide by those terms if they are a SAG actor. But you can get them in your projects I did in film school.Michael Jamin:Right. Okay.Phil Hudson:Last question. As a showrunner, do you direct episodes two or just focus on running the showMichael Jamin:As a showrunner? I have, but I'm not in animation. I direct the actors for sure to get the performances out of them. But in live action, I've only directed one. That's not my job. But my job is to be on set and to make sure I'm getting the shots that I want and to get the performances that I want. Ultimately in film, I'm sorry, tv, the director works for the showrunner. So on tv, the showrunner's in charge, in film the other way around, it's the director's in charge. The writer is nothing. So does that answer your question? I think it does. Yeah.Phil Hudson:I think it just for you specifically, what do you do? But I do know showrunners who do direct on Taco fd. Yeah, Kevin. Kevin and Steve. They split 'em up and they direct certain episodes. They also,Michael Jamin:Those guys are tireless.Phil Hudson:Tireless. Yeah. I dunno how they do. I toured with them for a press tour and I was exhausted and they were just still going and happy to go. And I get emails from 'em at two, three in the morning and they're just going, ohMichael Jamin:God.Phil Hudson:Oh God. But that's how they made their career. I mean, this just ties it all together for Michael. Make it happen. Put in the effort. Those guys made their own things happen. They have shows their names and you know 'em because they put in the work. Had they not done that, they wouldn't be anywhere.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:Cool. Michael, anything else you want to add?Michael Jamin:That's it. We did it, Phil. Yeah, we did it.Phil Hudson:So things people need to know. Michael, you got tons of free stuff. You talked about free samples of work, of writing.Michael Jamin:Yeah, I do free work too. I do free work here. We got a lot of free stuff we give away anyway on my website. If you go to michaeljamin.com, you can get sample scripts that I've written. You can get a free lesson that I've planned about story. You can sign up for my free webinars, which are every three weeks, which Phil helps me out with. You can come see me tour on one of my book drops, a paper orchestra. You can sign up for all of that and much, much more. And also, of course we have a course but that you got to pay for. But you know what it's worth. Every penny.Phil Hudson:Yeah, that's right. And again, get a discount when you come to the webinar.Michael Jamin:Nice. Nice discount. Don't tell anyone.Phil Hudson:And you could win a free access.Michael Jamin:Oh, you can win it. Yeah, you can win it.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Michael, thank you so much. Oh,Michael Jamin:And my newsletter. Phil, you can get on my free newsletter. I got that. Always forgetPhil Hudson:That. We also forget that that list is 30,000 deep or something like that right now. That's a good lists of people. That and industry, double industry open rates. People really like that list, that content.Michael Jamin:Yeah. The people like that. So sign up for my list.Phil Hudson:Be like the masses, be sheep. People join us.Michael Jamin:Okay, everyone, thank you so much. Until next week. Keep writing, right, Phil, fill that up.Phil Hudson:That is Wright, w r i t e. Right.Michael Jamin:Okay. Alright. Thanks guys.Phil Hudson:This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar@michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @Michael Jaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music, by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

On this week's episode Editor/Author Mike Sacks (Vanity Fair) discusses his career path, the importance of not asking for permission with your writing, as well as how he prepares for some of the artists he interviews.SHOW NOTESMike Sacks Website: https://www.mikesacks.com/Mike Sacks on Instagram: mikebsacksMike Sacks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelbsacksAUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPTMike Sacks:It's never been any time in publishing history where you could do this, where you could put out a book that looks professionally done. In the past, you'd have to buy 5,000 copies of your book, and they set Moldering in the basement. Yeah. Now it's a purchase. It's a paper purchase, so if someone wants it, they'll pay for it. Then it's published and it's not published until then.Michael Jamin:You're listening to Screenwriters. Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin.Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back to another Screenwriters. Need to hear this. We've got a surprise twist for you today. I've done over 90 episodes and today we're taking a turn to the world of high literature and publishing something I know very little about. And I'm very pleased to welcome my next guest, Mr. Mike Sacks, and he comes from the Mike. Welcome. Let me give you a proper introduction. I'm not done with you yet, before I let you say something. So Mike is, aside from being an editor at Vanity Fair, he's written a number of books, I don't know, 11 or 12 something. A lot of books. He's gotten his work in Vanity Fair, Esquire, gq, the New Yorker, time, New York Times, Washington Post MCs, Sweeney's, radar Radar. Funny or Die. He was Die Mad New York Observer, premier Believer, vice Max. It goes on and on. So this guy's from the world of literature. So thank you so much, Mike, for being on this show. I want to learn all about your experiences.Mike Sacks:Well, I'm from the world of literature, meaning I have no money and plenty of time. So this is nothing else to do,Michael Jamin:But why? Okay, but why was it that I want to talk about your books and all that, but okay, so what attracted you to the world of literature though?Mike Sacks:My biggest dream was to get into tv. I mean, I wanted to write for Letterman. I wanted to write for SS n l, but I didn't know how to do it. I mean, I didn't know any writers. I didn't know anyone who knew any writers, very mysterious world. So what I thought at that time was that I would write for the written page and then be discovered like I would from AA or AA to be pulled up to the majors. It doesn't work like that. I didn't know it at the time, but over having done that for so many years, I just came to actually prefer that, I guess, to any other medium. I've done a little bit of TV and a little radio, and I do a podcast in the end. You know what, I came to love? I love the control. I love the fact that there's no one over my shoulder telling me what to do, how to do it, and I think if I were at 2021 to have gotten a job on Letterman or S N l, I would've been in heaven. I think now it sounds like hell, and I don't think I would've last would last a week.Michael Jamin:But tell me when you say no, no, you get to do what you want of that. Is that entirely accurate when you're are working with a publisher or even a magazine?Mike Sacks:Not always, especially when it comes to humor, which is one of the reasons I stopped humor for magazines. I mean, what I found is that most editors view themselves as humor writers in disguise, and if they hadn't have to have a job, they would be famous humor writers. So a lot of them consider themselves humor genius as very high humor iq. So I would get a lot of rewrites based on that and also based off of, I was writing a lot of stories and pieces based off of current news. So that goes bad very quickly. So I prefer now, what I've been doing now is self-publishing and putting out evergreen pieces where meaning it's not tethered to any sort of current news. So when I look back at some of the GQ pieces, the Esquire pieces written in 2008, 2012, to whatever it is, it just seems very dated. The humor that I love is always tethered to character, and it is not dated. I mean, even going back to, or even I guess last century, Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, Steve Martin's, all character based, and that to me is what interests me now, and I wanted to bring that to the written page rather than have something that is say, Trump's tweets from the Middle Ages or some shit that it's not going to last.Michael Jamin:But you've been on both sides of this because you are an editor at Vanity Fair. So you obviously, you're rewriting, you're telling people you know what, what's going to play in this magazine? But you're also saying, and then human magazines, that you also getting 'em on the other side, I mean, right.Mike Sacks:And I think I have that advantage of knowing how to deal with editors, knowing what not to say, not to drive them crazy, and if they do have a suggestion to, usually it's not worth fighting over. But my job, inventing affairs, is not to edit humor, it's to edit hard news, preferably hard news, rather than puff piecesMichael Jamin:Especially. Yeah. How did you get that at Vanity Fair? Well, I was How did, go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, I have anotherMike Sacks:Question. Yeah, yeah. It was one of those things that you just kind of stumble into, and I was New Orleans. I was living in New Orleans, working in retail. Then I moved back to Maryland working in retail and got my first editing job in dc, which is a very DC type of job. I was editing a newsletter for an association that provided shareholder information to large institutional investors. So DC has a million associations, a million groups, they all need editors for their newsletters. So I got this first job. From there, I got a job working nights and weekends as an editor at the Knight Ritter Wire Corp, which used to put out articles sent around the world. And then from there, the Washington Post, and then from there, vanity Fair. So it was just sort of stumbling into one job after another, where at the time, what I really wanted to do was go to California, go to New York and write humor.It just never really seemed to work out that way. I just kept getting these jobs, and on the side, what I would do on my own time, I would write for Mad and National Lampoon and then later New Yorker. So it was just one of those things. Now, if I had to do it over again, I probably would've gone straight out to California or to straight to New York, rather than live in New Orleans and Maryland for a while. But you know, do what you do. And I didn't have the balls to do it. I didn't know anyone. I didn't have anyone to tell me, Hey, you can do this. Right. To me, it seemed very mysterious, like, Hey, how do you go to the moon? I have no fucking idea. Yeah, but itMichael Jamin:Was, it was mysterious. But you still figured it out on this other, that's the thing. You didn't know how to do it, but you did know how to do it for this other thing over here.Mike Sacks:Well, that's the thing. I mean, that's the irony is that you stumble into what you end up want to be doing, and I didn't, if I had known graduating that I would've been the circuitous route, I probably would've said, screw it. I don't want to spend seven years doing nothing, working in retail and then trying to get into magazines. But it just ended up working to my benefit where I think writing for the written page is really the best fit for me, more so than writing for TV or the movies. Not to say that I wouldn't love to have a script produced and this and that, but I do. I think I've worked alone for so many years. I wouldn't have the patience to work with producers and that timeframe. I like to put it work out and keep moving down the road. I don't like to stumble and sort of stagnate with the same piece.I've met writers who three years later will meet again working on just trying to pitch this same project. We didn't go into writing for that. I got into writing. I loved it, and I loved to write what I wanted to write. And I see too many writers out there, even in the comedy business who are miserable. And I always do try to remember, this is why I got into comedying and into writing, is because I used to have fun with my friends, and I used to go home and write and enjoy myself. And if I ever lose that, it's not something that I would want to necessarily live with. So what I do have now is a two-track system where I do make a living as an editor, and then on the side I am able to write what I want, how I write, how I want to write it, and I don't have to put out material that is not something that is something that I want to put out. Everything I put out is what I want to put out.Michael Jamin:But how many hours a day do you devote to your side writing projectsMike Sacks:Today?Michael Jamin:Well, on an average day, how much do you do on the side?Mike Sacks:I'd say at least six hours a day. I mean, I get up early,Michael Jamin:You six hours a day on your non-paying. In other words, you're not, you're non vanity. Fair job, you'reMike Sacks:Yes. And that's always been the case. I mean, there's no other way to put out material, whether it's articles or books, then to just simply do it. And it did take me giving up a lot of TV watching and a lot of drinking, which I had been doing, and to sit down and make this my O C D compulsion where I have to do this every day, and if I don't do it every day, I'm miserable. I'm just an absolute best. AndMichael Jamin:You've been both traditionally published and indie published as you're talking about, and why don't you talk a little bit, but the differences in why one appeals more to you than the other?Mike Sacks:Well, that's a great question. Now, I think there's different elements to self-publishing versus traditional publishing. If you have the opportunity to be a MCs or the New Yorker, certainly take it. I think when it comes to self-publishing, what I prefer is self-publishing books. Now, I published about four or five traditional published books when I first started, and what I ended up finding out was in the end, can, if you are competent as an editor and a writer, and if you can find a good designer, you can do all this on your own. And there's a lot of advantages to that. The main advantage is in humor. Most producers, most agents, most publishers do not have our humor sensibility. I'd say their humor sensibility lies more in the hit radio market than maybe the alternative market, which I think most writers are into. So first of all, it's going to be very, very difficult to sell the idea that you want to an agent, and that's the first step, which can take years.Yes. I know a lot of people who reach out to agents with their humor ideas, and before they know it, it becomes something else entirely, whether it's now geared towards children, whether it's a rom-com or whether it's this or that or ya novel, and then they're stuck with something that after a year doesn't sell anyway, so they wasted a year on a project that they're not happy with. I don't think you need an agent now for books. In fact, when I say books, I mean comedy books. This is very specific. If you want to put out a comedy book that's like, or similar to the Woody Allen books, you grew up reading to the National Lampoon books, you grew up reading to Mark Lehner, to anyone, Simon Rich that you grew up reading, that is not going to happen anymore. One and two, it's not necessary for it to happen. Any advantage that you have in the mainstream market can be reproduced on your own end much better.Michael Jamin:Well, let's talk about that because you can't get into, or it would be a lot harder to get your book into Barnes and Nobles, right? Well,Mike Sacks:Here's the thing too. Yeah. Everyone dreams about having their book in Barnes and Noble or an airport bookstore. It doesn't fucking make a difference anymore. So you have one copy of your book in the humor section, which is next to the restrooms. I mean, how many people are going to be stumbling by it anyway? It's not going to be on the front table. Right, okay. It's just not going to be. So when it comes to getting a book, even chosen by an agent, skip the two, three year long process and put it out yourself because an agent typically doesn't even read the book. And if they do read the book, they don't typically understand the book. What they're going to get is not much money anyway. Comedy doesn't bring in much money, so they get you a 3000, $4,000 advance. So that's something you can reap on your own without getting that advance, by putting it out yourself and having a hundred percent or not a hundred percent, maybe 60% of the profit coming back to you. So what I have done and what I recommend people to do at this point, this has never been, it's never been any time in publishing history where you could do this, where you could put out a book that looks professionally done in the past, you'd have to buy 5,000 copies of your book, and they set moldering in the basement. Now it's a purchase, a pay per purchase. So if someone wants it, they'll pay for it. Then it's published and it's not published until then. Do you and the pro,Michael Jamin:But do you get, this is, I'm getting a little off topic, but do you order a handful just so you have and send out with when people want to sign copies? I,Mike Sacks:Well, yes, it, it's the very specific process that I had that I have, which is that you as well as writing it, putting it out yourself, designing it yourself, you have to market it yourself. And I don't know if you want to get into that now later. Yeah, yeah,Michael Jamin:Let's talk about that. Okay.Mike Sacks:Yeah. Okay. So I have a very specific process, and I've been on the other end of this because I've been as a receiver of these books at Vanity Fair. And we would get hundreds of books per week from publishers. And what publishers would do was they would send out willy nilly all these advanced review copies arcs, which would end up just being in the free pile at work, 99% of which is never even looked at, 99% of which isn't even right for the magazine. So they would send out these books to me at Vanity Fair, and it would be totally inappropriate for the magazine. We don't do poetry. We don't do humor, we don't do sci-fi, so why are you sending me the books Now, the disadvantage of that to the writers, they end up in the free pile in a magazine like ours, and then typically the editorial assistants will then sell these books to the strand or on line.So you have these advanced review copies where no money is going to the author and they're getting these review copies before anyone else. So what I've tried to do with my own marketing is I'll order say 50 books and I'll pay for those myself. It's cheaper when you're ordering your own book. It's cheaper than it would be if you're paying for it otherwise. And then I send it out to a very specific group. It's more like surgical precision rather than going wide. And that group consists of comedians and actors and people who, with one mention on their Instagram can do more than a hundred advertisements can in the back of any magazine be beyond that. To get even more specific, what I'll do is I'll write the person's name, the receiver's name on the edge, the binding of the book. So they can't, or their assistant can't then sell it. I'd rather than just throw it out than it ending up being complicated.Michael Jamin:Why can't they though, if they name, why couldn't they? Because,Mike Sacks:Well, they could cross it out. They could black it out, orMichael Jamin:They could sell it with their name on it. What different, does it matter? Matter ofMike Sacks:Course. But who's, who's going to want to do that? No one's really going to want to do that. I'd hope it has happened in a few times that someone, I just out of curiosity, even before my book was legally supposedly come out, it's being sold on Amazon, I was like, who the hell is selling it? And I've purchased a copy and I'll see who then sold theMichael Jamin:Book, and then would you give 'em shit or something?Mike Sacks:No, I wouldn't. No. I mean, it's just a lousy thing to do, but I'm not going to get into it with them. But by doing that, it lessens the risk. So you do that, you make a pinpoint marketing plan rather than spreading it out wide, which is another thing that traditional marketing staffs don't do. Typically the marketing staff don't even read the book. They don't understand a book they can mostly consisting of 20, 30 somethings who don't have our sensibility and who are just sending out mass produce, press releases or versions of the book that in the end don't help you and could even harm you. So these are things that I learned by putting out in a traditional publishing venue of things to do and not to do when I would at one point when I plan to put out books by myself. So it's really important, I think, to know just as importantly, what not to do than it is what to do and what not to do is to spend thousands of dollars and sending it to every person who's in media, who's not going to be able to help you.Michael Jamin:You're very targeted. It's so interesting because there's so much, and I'm new to the publishing world, but there's just so much overlap in terms of how Hollywood works and how the publishing world works. My mind, it was publishing was a little more rarefied and maybe there was a No, it's not still about selling.Mike Sacks:No. The thing is that you have to understand that I think I understand is that publishing is not a money business. I mean, you're not going to sell a book for however much you might sell a comedy screenplay for. If you did really well for yourself, there's not much money in it. So if you're getting into it for money, I think you're doing it for the wrong reasons. But if you're getting into it for control, then it's for you. And then to have that control, why then give it to someone else to edit, to design, and then to market, it's then out of your hands for no reason. Because I, you've seen books, comedy books designed, and they overdesigned comedy more so than they underdesigned it. I'd rather have an underdesigned look thanMichael Jamin:I wacky. I wish you could mention some without. Well,Mike Sacks:I'll mention incriminating Yourself.Michael Jamin:I'llMike Sacks:Mention my ownMichael Jamin:That were Overdesigned.Mike Sacks:Yeah. And these were the first books that I put out my interview books. And here's the kicker, poking a Dead Frog and then also my collection.Michael Jamin:I'm going to pull it up hereMike Sacks:Of short humor. I had to pay for those to be redesigned. I wasn't happy with the original designMichael Jamin:That you designed.Mike Sacks:Well, no. Their design I wasn't happy with. Oh, I see. I'll tell you the typical look, it would be a chattering teeth on a bench with a microphone placed at it. It would be like a banana peel next toMichael Jamin:It. Just something that says comedy right. Comedy right.Mike Sacks:Because marketing swears by the fact that this will sell more copies. It has to do this. It's all a bunch of bullshit. Anyway.Michael Jamin:But here's the thing, does it though, I mean, they must have the numbers. They must not just say it like I am. I'm completely with you going through all this now, but are they right?Mike Sacks:No, they could be, but do you want your book to have a chattering teeth being interviewed? Right, right,Michael Jamin:Exactly. Sitting up,Mike Sacks:Sitting on a bench. I mean, I don't, so it sells another thousand copies. Who gives a shit? When you look at the classic books, especially the Woody Allen compilations, they're just white on black, right? I mean, it's very, very simple. You don't need something screaming out comedy. These are not a collection of hamburger puns we're talking about here. This is, unless it is a collection of hamburger pots, right? I'm talking about comedy that I grew up reading and I want out there. You're not going to get a cover that you're probably going to be happy with if you go traditional publishing.Michael Jamin:Right. It's so interesting because I'm going through, as you know, all of this now and everything you're saying is truly resonating with me. That's why we talked about a couple weeks ago, and it was so helpful. I want to even mention, I want to talk about some of your work because you sent me, you're very kind. You sent me some arcs and Well, you sent me a bunch of stuff. Let me put it up on the camera here. We're going to talk about this. This is your poking at Dead Frog. This is a book about, we interviewed some really great comedy writers, Woodmont College, which is a fun read. I want to talk about that as well. But first, this is the first, that book that I first dug into, and I have to send Mike, I think you are an artist. I really do because I do.But I mean, and he's being, he's blushing. You can't see on your podcast, but the book, to me, it has a very almost indie underground vibe it to me, and tell me if you're wrong, if this is not what you meant when you wrote it to me. It was like, the premise is very interesting. It's almost like a Russian nesting doll. The premise of this book is you, the author, are going through a garage, through a garage sale. You stumble upon this odd book that is written that it is the account of someone's life. The book that you wrote is called Randy, the Full and complete unedited biography and memoir of The Amazing Life and Times of Randy Ss. So you as the author, go into this garage sale or whatever, and you find this book written by this, some schmuck. Some schmuck wrote it about his friend or whatever, a guy he knows. And what's so interesting, and then you share the book. And so what's interesting to me, what I found very interesting, even about the premise of it, it's quite brilliant. It is basically, first of all, you're saying, look at this amazing book. I didn't write it. I have nothing to do with it. I just found it. It's amazing. And already you're hyping it up, but you're also distancing yourself from it saying, well, if you don't like it, it's, it's not mine. But you're also saying exactly,Here's a schmuck that the story's about, the book's about. Here's a schmuck who wrote about another schmuck and how amazing it is. And that's what I find it. So it's so almost indie. Like I said, it's like a Russian nesting doll. It's like no one has any attachment to this book, to this story. Here's this great story. I thought that was very funny premise ofMike Sacks:It. Well, thank No, that's really actually a good way to describe it. I mean, I always wanted to write a current day Medici book where some idiot is, pays an unemployed writer to write about his life in flowery terms, rather than it be 15th century Italy. It's, or Florence, it would now be 21st century Maryland. So that was one premise. Then on top of that, it would be a very mediocre life, written a very flowery type of way. But what I do love is found artifacts. I genuinely love finding shit, whether it's self-published memoirs or whether it's old or whether it's, that to me is fascinating. And what you mentioned really hits at the crux of it is that I'm not putting this book out. I'm two characters removed from the person. Yes. Writing it. And by doing that, by putting out a book like this, it's playing a character acting role where I'm not the person, and if you don't like it, it's really not my fault. Right. And by doing that, it frees me up as a writer to then take more chances because the margin of error is higher. If you don't like that joke, I had nothing fucking to do with it. I'm just reprinting. It'sMichael Jamin:Right. That's exactly my point. Yes, exactly. And that's so interesting about this because usually you write a book, you have a narrator. The narrator may even be talking about their life, but you, like you said, you're two steps removed and you don't even know who to believe is describing the story. Well,Mike Sacks:I'll tell you what I always think of, and that's Steve Martin. He was being interviewed about pennies from heaven, and he said, I can't dance, but if I play someone who can dance and maybe not well, but if I play someone who's dancing, then I can do it. So he's not even dancing. It's the character who's dancing it. And I always view that as what I'm trying to do is just have fun with it. I'm not the person in this book, my name isn't even on it. Hopefully. My father always used when he was alive, would say, why is your name, why are they not on these books? On the re-release? It was, but when I put it out myself, my name was not on any of these books. And to me, it's part of the joke. I want people to think it's real. I don't want them to think that I wrote it. I want them to come across this and say, oh, someone is republishing a shit self-published memoir. That's someone an idiot in Maryland published in 2013. Right. That really is my dream.Michael Jamin:Yeah. And that's so funny about it. It's, that's why I say it's almost underground. It's almost, yeah. I, I guess my question for you is, when you wrote this or any of your writing, are you thinking of of the audience or your reader in mind, or are you really just like, this is what I want to do? It sounds to me, I already know the answer, butMike Sacks:It's never what the audience necessarily wants. I mean, I found that by even writing Twitter jokes, if you put out what you think the audience is going to want, then I think it's not going to hit as hard. And that's part of the problem with what I had freelancing for magazines. What are the editors going to want? And then what are the editors going to want for the readers is you have to, it's not even running for yourself at that point, but for these projects, not by skirting around having an agent skirting around having a publisher, you can do whatever the hell you want. And by you, I mean me in this case, it's just these are projects that I just have an itch to scratch. I don't know why. And there's no one on earth who I think necessarily is the perfect reader for this.I just know that if I stumbled upon this book in a bookstore or online, I would fall in love with it. And that is really the, I'm trying to please myself. And it's a very specific thing mean, so specific that it'll sell a few thousand copies. This is never going to be in an airport bookstore. It's never going to be in any bookstores. I mean, it's sort of like the underground radio I used to play in New Orleans when I worked for the radio station. I love these groups, but they never would've been played on.Michael Jamin:But that's why I say you are an artist because you are doing this for the, with the purest of intentions, which is not cashing out like this is your expression.Mike Sacks:No, it isn't. But I have found one, it goes back to my O C D where if I don't do this sort of thing, I'm a mess. I'm a depressive mess, an anxious mess. The other thing that I've noticed is that by putting out these type of books and by genuinely not giving a shit, if anyone likes it, people do the right. People do tend to like it. And right with my upcoming book, I have a ton of actors and comedians who have liked the past books, John Ham and Paul Rubins and Amy Sedaris, who want to be involved in the next project. Again, I don't think it's going to certainly make them any money, and it's not going to make me any money, but it's just what I like. I genuinely like this. I, I'd rather watch an Albert Brooks standup bit from the 1970s than any of the most popular sitcoms or reality shows on now. That's just my what I like, my personal, and this is my personal, when it comes to books, very specific. It's not going to appeal to many people, but I have found that by putting out what you want, how you want, it means more to people, the right people, the people you respect, the people whose sensibility you got into the business to try to impress it has impressed those people.Michael Jamin:Tell me though, this takes me to, when you submit to let's say McSweeney's or any of these places, then are you writing with them in mind to this is what they want to buy, or are you just like, I wrote something and maybe they'll like it, maybe they'll like it.Mike Sacks:Well, you really do have to take in mind who you're sending it to. And I know this, having been friends with MCs, Sweeney's editors, they receive a ton of material that is not right for them. So don't waste their time by sending them something that is not going to be appropriate for the site. You really do. And that goes for anything that goes for Vanity Fair and New Yorker or anything. You have to know what they're looking for. And you can't be obnoxious about it. You can't say, this is a great piece, I want you to publish it, even though it's not right for the site. This is their site. I mean, this is right. That's up to them. And they have every right in the world to say, this is rightMichael Jamin:For us. But are you personally writing for them or have, or are you just writing and then you go, maybe they'll like it.Mike Sacks:Well, if I have an idea, I'll go through my mind. Would this be better for McSweeney's or New Yorker? And then you write, do have to play to the interest of the editors. You do have to play to what they're looking for style wise. If you're writing, none of these pieces would be submitted to the shouts and murmurs to New York. I just know that it wouldn't be accepted and they'd have every right not to accept it. But if there is an idea that does coincide with style and format to a specific magazine, I'll start thinking in terms of that and I'll start writing in terms of that. You do have to make it easy for the editors not going to want to rewrite, to take the time to rewrite what you're sending them. They want something coming in appropriate for the site or magazine and as clean as can be. And if you're difficult in any way, even if you're a genius, they're not going to want to work with you again.Michael Jamin:And they do give you notes, they give you feedback, and you got to take that because that's what they want.Mike Sacks:Well, what I found is typically the notes just consist of editing out, which is fine, rather than putting in, which was my problem with magazine writing was they would put in their own jokes. I'd rather just them I, I'd rather overwrite and have them take out.Michael Jamin:Now, aside from being really an honor, let's say, to be in the New Yorker, how does it help you as your career?Mike Sacks:I don't know if it does. I mean, I, embarrassingly enough, I never read the New Yorker until I was 25. Maybe I didn't know from it. And then once I did, I fell in love with it. I mean, I remember the first piece that I read in a public library in Maryland that just was blown away. It certainly doesn't hurt, but I don't think that, especially now with the daily shouts of murmurs, I don't think that will get you an agent automatically. I do think good things can come from it. Agents may reach out and if you have enough pieces you could put out in a book. But I don't know if it's a magic key to any kingdom. It perhaps used to be.Michael Jamin:Right. Oh, you think, why do you think it's changed then?Mike Sacks:I just think there's more opportunity out there for writers that can put out, there's a million places you can put up your own website and potentially be as read as by as many people as readers as the New Yorker has. I mean, this is all new. When I was first starting out, this was pre around the beginning of the internet, very few options. So there was Crack Magazine, there was Playboy, there was New Yorker, mad Magazine, maybe the end of National Lampoon. So six, five or six choices. Now there are thousands of choices. And if it's good, it doesn't really matter necessarily where it is, as long as it sort of stands out from everybody else.Michael Jamin:See, the thing is the game, the game has changed so much even in the last, let's say even 10 years, about how to make it as a writer. But I think, or screenwriter, and I think so many people are still hung up on playing the game the way it used to be played for some reason. I can't figure out why.Mike Sacks:I think so too. And that is something I try to tell young writers is that you don't necessarily have to play. If the game is working for you and you're getting in the New Yorker and you're getting an agent, fantastic. I mean, that's the way to do it. If you're not, you have to come in the back door. And that there even is a backdoor, I think is a tremendous opportunity. Right. Because I mean TV writing, how many voices would we not have heard writing for TV 30 years ago? I mean, a lot. Yeah. The avenues are much bigger now to hear a, which is better for comedy, a lot more voices, different styles of voices, there are fewer gatekeepers than there used to be.Michael Jamin:Now you never did, go ahead, I'm sorry.Mike Sacks:No, and to spend years of your life trying to do it the way that someone in the 1980s did, I don't think is conducive to any sort of success.Michael Jamin:Do you think it's do So what is it? Do you think it's just ego driven? Is that I want that pat in the back of having it in a New Yorker. I want the pat or the pat in the back of traditional publishing or whatever.Mike Sacks:Maybe. I mean it, it's, I think it goes for anything, but I think it's sort of basing your wants on a philosophy that doesn't have to exist anymore. It's like a restaurant trying to appeal to OTs. I mean, do they have to do that anymore? Do you have to appeal to only the New Yorker editor? Can you not put out what you want, how you want on your own? And that's another thing. You don't have to write for New Yorker. If you want to get into comedy. You can put out videos, you can put out standup, you can put out a one person show, you can put out a fake document. I mean, there's a million things you have to do. So to tailor your creativity into a mold that you don't want to fit in, I don't think is worth spending your time because there is no end of the rainbow necessarily. Even if you do get into New Yorker, I don't think your life is going to change to the point where it might have been worth it spending four or five years trying to do so while not using that time to put out your own thing however you want.Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.So it's not like you are constantly trying to come up with ideas and submit to the New Yorker. It's just like if they have something, you'll give it to them.Mike Sacks:Well, I did. I spent years doing that even before that, McSweeney's, and I love them both. I read 'em every day. I think the editors are amazing. I just don't, the ideas that I wanted to put across whether there was a fake novelization, whether it was a found fake memoir, whether it was a parody of a college catalog, whatever it was, didn't fit into that realm anymore. And I could've spent three years trying to get these books in there, and they probably wouldn't have. And even if they had, how would that have helped me? I think you really need, as a young writer, to sort of discern what you want to do and how you want to get it across, and what's the best way to do that? What's the best Trojan horse to get your idea into that castle? What's the best way? And if it doesn't consist of trying to get into New Yorker with a 1000 word short humor piece for shots and murmurs, don't feel that your writing is any lesser for not having for fitting into that category. You, there's a million ways now that you can get out your creativity and you don't have to go through traditional gates.Michael Jamin:The thing that I wanted to mention earlier is you were, because you said this is like, it's really about you can wait. You can spend years writing something or submitting something and waiting for the yes or waiting for someone's permission to take. And that waiting is fucking terrible. And if you put it out yourself, if you put your energy into something, more comes from it. You know what I'm saying? The more energy you put, the more creating you do, the more things that will happen if you just stop waiting around some sitting around begging.Mike Sacks:Totally. I mean, if you're going to wait for permission to achieve success, you're going to be waiting a long time. And really, this philosophy did not come for me, to me from writing. It came from music. I grew up in DC and I grew up around Discord records, which put out minor threat and Fugazi, and I always mention them because when I was growing up in the late eighties, nineties, they were doing, this is pre-internet, and they're putting out music on their own terms. And to me, out of DC, it was a miracle. I had never heard of such a thing. And they put out what they wanted, how they wanted. And to this day, Ian mackay, who ran Discord Records, owns all the rights. He only put out what he wanted, and he is living the good life. That to me, was really what influenced me more than anything.And after years of trying to break in, even when I did sort of break in, I found that it really wasn't worth it. And you found it wasn't worth it there. Well, no, it's not like you're tenured as a professor. Even if you get into New York, it doesn't mean you'll get in again. And even if you're in New York, it doesn't mean you'll get an agent. And even if you get an agent, doesn't mean that you're going to be able to publish your dream project. So I think really in the end, and we have this opportunity now to do so, you have to be in charge, good or bad. You have to put it out and just keep on moving. Don't stagnate. And I stagnated for a long time. You cannot. I did, because I would think of ideas and I would submitted and I would be accepted. Or I go to certain agents who handled my favorite writers and they didn't like it, and it would bother me. YouMichael Jamin:Feel like a failure.Mike Sacks:You feel like a failure. But even worse, you waste time. And what you find is as you get older is time really is the most important precious thing. Because there is limited time once you learn your craft to be able to put it out. And if someone is gumming up the system by saying, for whatever reason, I don't want to take on this project, I don't think it's worthy. Well, who gives a shit? You don't need them anymore. You don't fucking need them anymore. Put it out yourself like you would a garage band record and then keep moving. But whatever you do, do not stagnate. Because before you know it, 10 years have passed and you have produced nothing. And I'll tell you, there's nothing more depressing soul crushing than that. No one got into writing to be prevented for 10 years from doing something that's hell. And that out of everything is what you need to avoid, is you need to keep moving down the path.Michael Jamin:But the little X factor I think people forget about is the marketing aspect. People think, well, I can write it, but how do I get people to see it? How do you know, read it or whatever.Mike Sacks:I'll tell you, it's not as hard as you might think. The fact that word gets out there, especially in small communities, small communities go on small communities. So this small community I'm talking about is comedy. People who read written word comedy, people who love written word comedy. We're not talking about hundreds of thousands of people here. We're talking about a somewhat small community.Michael Jamin:So if you can, and where do you find this community?Mike Sacks:You find them online, you find them on podcasts, you find them on Instagram, you find, say, pat Oswald, who loves reading comedy, maybe he'll like this book. You send it to him. If it's a smaller project and you send it to someone who is famous, I don't think they're going to be upset about it. If you set, this is part of the marketing, Hey Pat, and I'm a big fan of your work. I put this out myself. If you liked it and only if you liked it, would you mind mentioning something online? And most people who are in comedy, remember what it was like to start off. Know what it's like to get a praise from someone who has followers and whose work means a lot to others. That's really how you spread the word. If you're, I took any of these books and sent them to a New York Times reviewer, they wouldn't know what the fuck was going on.And quite frankly, I don't know if the review readers would know what the fuck was going on. So you also do have to know your audience. It's like the alternative music I listened to in the late eighties, early nineties when I was at Tulane in New Orleans, working for the radio station. You know, appeal to those who like this music and it's new, so it's not going to appeal to everyone. And then hopefully a few years later, it will appeal to everyone. It does take some time. But until that point, you have to send your records to the college DJs. You have to send your records to people working in record stores. You have to pinpoint out who you're sending to, the people who are going to spread the word, the people who are coming up now and who comedy and who are going to be able to talk about it with their friends.Michael Jamin:And why not, though? I'm asking you personally, why not? Again, I think I know the answer. Why not write something more mainstream that you think will sell or whatever peopleMike Sacks:Will love. I just don't have any interest in that. I mean, it's like, why do I not listen to Taylor Swift? I respect her. I think she's amazing, I guess in theory, but I would rather listen to Portland, the man or whatever the music is. And I don't think that I appeal. You just sort of reach a point in your career where you have to say to yourself, I don't appeal to the mass amount of people. I mean, I show these books to my relatives. They don't know what the hell's going on. Which is fine. It's not for them. It's not for everyone. So I mean, I think really you have to put your head down and not even worry about that. But if it does come to you, sell the maximum amount that the public is interested in. Well, that's just the way it is. I mean, no one writes to, I don't think, to be popular. And you can sort of tell, I think like a, Paul McCartney and Elton John were just lucky enough to put out the records they wanted. And it appeals to everyone. But most people aren't that lucky. And I am one of those. I don't think that even if I wrote something to the top of my ability that I was completely happy with, it would ever appeal to more than maybe 5% of the readers.Michael Jamin:Well, here's a good segue. Read to this other book that you wrote, poking a Dead Frog, and this is available for everywhere. And these are conversations that you had you conducted with top comedy writers. And I think for this is particularly the place for, because I have a big audience who are into this, they should go check it out. There's a lot of really interesting conversations. Well, some were actors, bill Hader, but you also have, I'm just going through the list here. Yeah, James Downey, a lot of seven, eight live writers. James L. Brooks, you a got a lot of people. My buddy Mark Marin. You had a lot of people, a lot of really great people that you found. How did this come about?Mike Sacks:Well, that was through Selfish Reasons. That's the second book that I put out of interviews. The first book came out about five years earlier. That's called. And Here's the Kicker. And this is another case of wanting to do something and being prevented from doing so. That book, that first book, and here's the Kicker, where I interviewed comedy writers, was rejected 20 times really by publishers. The only reason why it was finally accepted was that I was friendly with an editor who used to work at McSweeney's named John Warner, who was working for a smaller publisher in the Midwest called Writer's Digest. It was only because of that book came out. That book came out when there was no podcast. Very little was out there about writing about comedy. I put it out only for the express selfish purpose of being able to talk to the people whose work meant a lot to me. I wanted to talk to them and pick their brains about how they got to where they got, what worked for them and what didn't work for them. Another thing was a lot of them were dying off. This was the first generation of comedy writers. Quite a few people I interviewed for that book were in their seventies and eighties and nineties, and they passed away shortly after that book came. How didMichael Jamin:You get contact with them?Mike Sacks:Well, what I found funny enough was the easiest people to contact were the older writers who were all on a o l at that time. They would get right back to you. They would not their assistant. Usually the font would be like 46 point. It'd be huge font. But they always got back to me whether they wanted to do it or not. The ones who didn't get back to me were the younger writers who either had their assistance say no or just never. I never, and to this day, I haven't received an answer from a lot of young writers, but the older writers always got back to me and usually said yes. In one case, I wanted to interview a comedy writer who worked in the early days of radio comedy writing. So at that point in 2007, 2008, there weren't many around. I reached out to someone who ran a newsletter on radio comedy shows, and he sent me a list of writers who still might be around out of that list. One was still alive, and I just happened to call the Town Council where she lived. I said, do you know a Margaret Lynch, a Peg Lynch? She wrote for radio. She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, peg Lynch, we know her well. I said, she's still alive. She goes, yeah, there, she's still alive. She's 95 and she's doing well. So I called her out of the blue, and I think it was a case of her thinking, why has no one called me before?Michael Jamin:AndMike Sacks:Talking to her was really something. I mean, I did, I wasn't familiar with her, but after doing research, after we hung up and I said, can I call you back? She basically invented the modern sitcom. She had a radio, then a TV show called Ethel m Albert, and she wrote, I think 30,000 scripts for radio and for movies. Jesus, Jesus. Some of them lasting 10 minutes or so. But it was all based on real life. It really was Seinfeld before Seinfeld. And the stories that she came up with, for instance, one was she grew up in Minneapolis outside the Mayo Clinic. Her mom was a nurse there at 14 years old. Peg Lynch took it upon herself to interview celebrities, PA passing through the Mayo Clinic for her little radio show that she had in town. The first person she asked to interview was Lou Gehrig when he was at the Mayo Clinic being diagnosed with a L Ss.And right Lou Gehrig said yes to that. Wow. Which I just found incredible. She also interviewed Newt Rockney when he was passing through the Mayo Clinic. So just to be able to talk to these people from another World Bridge to another time, that was really my selfish reason. I didn't think the book would sell. I didn't think it would really do well. I just wanted a product that I could have as an excuse to be able to talk to all these great writers. Some of whom, and most of whom maybe readers that weren't even familiar with. This was just my going after readers, writers that I liked and writers that I sort of stumbled upon,Michael Jamin:But poking at Dead Frog. And again, comedy students should pick this up because it is helpful to hear you talk about people's processes, how they broke it, not just how they broke in, but also writing how they approach the material. And it's just very interesting. But this must have been an easier sell. No,Mike Sacks:Yeah, that was easier because the first book did well. So by the time and that came around, I did get an agent and he did sell, and I did get it in advance, so that was much easier. But it also started coming around that people were talking about comedy, more analyzing comedy, having websites devoted to comedy. But when the first one came around, there really was not much out there. ItMichael Jamin:Was. And how were you conducting these interviews? Just over the phone. Yeah.Mike Sacks:Typically I prefer over the phone,Michael Jamin:But some of them looked like they just weren't interviews. Some of these pieces looked like they were just submission. Like you tell, Hey, write something for my, tell your process. They've submitted you something. Is that right? I like Mark Marin specifically. Specifically. ItMike Sacks:Seemed like he, yeah, well, mark Marin, that that's a case where I actually didn't even reach out to Mark. It was someone who was doing interviews for me. He reached out to Mark, but in other cases it was like, Hey, show me what it's like to submit a packet for a late night show. Can you just show me your packet? And they, yeah, that interesting. Send me your packet. But in most cases, it was me talking to them either on the phone or in some cases in person, after many, many, many hours of research. And that was part of the problem. I didn't know how good they would be to talk to until after I did all this research. So in a lot of instances, I interviewed a lot research though. Well, I mean, for each of these interview subjects, I would do 20 to 30 hours of research, reading everything they wrote, reading every interview they've done. And you really don't know what they're going to be like until you talk to 'em. So in a lot of cases, a lot of people did not make the book because either through my fault or the way they were feeling that day or whatever, it just wasn't jiving. So even after having done all that research, I would have to trash the interviews. So what you see in that book is really maybe 60% of the interviews that I conducted entirely forMichael Jamin:That book. Oh my God. Because it's not a thin book. There's a lot.Mike Sacks:That was a long year, man, putting that thing together. I mean, likeMichael Jamin:A year, huh? SinceMike Sacks:Year.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Wow. I mean, so yeah, it's just interesting that you, like even Mike Scher in here, I mean, yeah, Mel Brooks, Amy Poer, a lot of really interesting people being talked about their craft. I thought it was very interesting. Now, let's talk real fast about this one. Woodmont, this is your phony college brochure, and it's pretty funny. What is the audience for this? It seems like this would be great to leave in a dorm room somewhere, but what fuckingMike Sacks:I, well, what I was thinking was that, that I wanted it to be confused with a real, real college catalog. I thought that it was sort of ripe to be made fun of, because those catalogs are pretty ridiculous. Unfortunately. The first publisher we took it to, I have nothing bad to say about them, but they wanted to put it out in digital form only, which I did. And it looked good. But I wanted something tangible that you could sort of send to people. And I then took it to,Michael Jamin:Go ahead. Go ahead,Mike Sacks:Please. I took it to another publisher who was willing to put it out in hard copy form.Michael Jamin:And where does it get sold then?Mike Sacks:It's online. You can find it anywhere. It's on Amazon. It's,Michael Jamin:I mean, it's pretty funny. Welcome to Woodmont. And I guess their motto is No refunds,Mike Sacks:Right? It's all money based. I mean, I think it costs 150,000 per semester to go there. It's just the shittiest boutique college you can ever imagine. Yeah.Michael Jamin:Yeah. It's pretty funny read. Yeah. But that's what I say when this is just something that you wanted to do and you say you did it. Yeah. Yeah.Mike Sacks:And a lot of people might think, why? And I don't have any answer for that. There's no good answer. I don't know. I mean, it did. Okay. People seem to it. Did it change my life? No, but it just seemed like I had to do it.Michael Jamin:I'll tell you why about, I'll tell you why I've been, because I perform, I've been doing some performances, my little one man show, and every night before I go out, you know, can hear the audience. And I'm backstage and I'm starting to get nervous. And I always ask myself this question, why am I doing this? And then I only answer I'm able to come up with is because I can.Mike Sacks:But it's more than can. I mean, you can go to Mount Aetna and try to climb it, but you're not, so what is it about doing that? Is that you need to want to share it.Michael Jamin:Something.Mike Sacks:Yeah. Some itch that needs to be scratched. Right? Very specific itched. You could be home relaxing with your wife and family, but you're out at this club at 11 o'clock at night. Why are so, I mean, the question is really, why are you doing it. What is it about doing that that you need to do that you would prefer doing over, not just doing nothingMichael Jamin:Relaxing? Right. And that takes me to my last thing, my last question for you had one of the great honor, I would suppose of your career is that you've gotten to open for David Saris, and I want to talk to you a little about that mean. Yeah. Which pieces are you reading or did you read?Mike Sacks:I would usually write these pieces special for these shows. I mean, I have been doing this for a little while now, and I, I've found that the pieces I would write for McSweeney's in New Yorker wouldn't necessarily connect with a live audience. But what David does, he's such a genius, is that he'll write these pieces that appeal to not only a live audience, but also to an audience at home reading internally. I don't know if any other writer who does this, and by the time he turns into piece to New Yorker, he'll know what jokes work and what jokes. I mean, it reminds me of what the Marcus Brothers used to do. They used to travel around performing these movie scripts live to see what jokes worked and what didn't. So he's really unique in that sense. But when I would read these pieces, the reaction would not be that good.So I sort of had to tailor these pieces to a live audience. And it's a lot of work. I mean, these pieces are really meant to be read once, twice, three times, and then they're never heard from again. But it is an absolute thrill to do this because I have been out on tour where I have read to literally no one. I mean, no one has shown up, and I refuse to go out on a book tours now because of that. I don't think one sells many books. So it's like being in a bar band where never, no one shows up to opening for the Rolling Stones. I mean, it's just huge. And the fact that he allows me to do that, I mean, there's no one of his caliber who is as giving to other writers and readers as he's just spectacular.Michael Jamin:And how did you meet him then?Mike Sacks:Well, I met him interviewing him for the book, my book, and we just became friends. I think we talked for four or five hours the first time, and we just connected. And he's just a very giving person. I mean, no, what he'll do, this is what he does. And I don't, no other au author would do this. No one. When I read for him, he'll sometimes say, listen, if you want my autograph, you want me to sign your book? And these lines are hours long. You can wait in line. But if you buy Mike's books, you can go straight to the front.Michael Jamin:Isn't that nice?Mike Sacks:Isn't that ama? I mean, who else would do that? So people just out of wanting to get that, getting through the line more quickly. They'll buy my books and they'll sell out and they'll talk to me for a second and then talk to Dave. But no one else is as giving no other writer. How manyMichael Jamin:Books did you bring that they sold out? I would be like, shit, why don't I bring more?Mike Sacks:Oh, I don't know. I mean, bookstores provide them, I'm guessing 50 maybe. Okay. And the 50 of each book. Oh,Michael Jamin:Okay. A lot.Mike Sacks:There's a few books. There's a few books there.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Are you going out with him again soon?Mike Sacks:Yeah. And in fact, he just asked if I wanted to do some shows up in Maine, and I'm going to beat, my wife is from Maine, but we're not going to be there up there then. But he did very kindly ask me to be open for him in Baltimore, which is what I've done in the past. I am from Maryland, south of Baltimore, near the Virginia line. Oh, that'd be great. I love Baltimore. And yeah, I, last time I invited John Waters. Wow. Someone on whose work I absolutely love and have been in touch with. And he showed up to the reading and got to see me read. I actually read something from the Woodmont College catalog and through in the John Waters reference, just to appeaseMichael Jamin:Him. Oh, that's funny. Wow. This is Mike. I want to thank you so much. This has been a very illuminating talk for me to hear from your side of the world. Tell me, me, plug your books again all and tell me how people can follow you and find you and your podcast. Tell me, plug away.Mike Sacks:Yeah, I am on everything. Instagram, Twitter, blue sky everyth, the new piss stream or whatever it is for Instagram. I forget what threads. It'sMichael Jamin:Threads. I couldn't even get on Blue Sky. I don't know. Good for you.Mike Sacks:Yeah, someone asked me if I wanted to get, I had no idea what it was, but I'll say yes to anything. And I have my own site, mikes sex.com. And then I'm also a Wikipedia page as well. And honestly, I know what it was like to start off and not to know anyone. If anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm at Mikebsacks@gmail.com. I'll answer any questions. It is not as hard as you might think to publish a book. And I always encourage people to do so because I love to see people skirting the system to get what they want made. I think that's very important. Don't ever think that there's someone between you and success, especially when it comes to comedy. Yeah. Anyone can do it. And if you have any questions, feelMichael Jamin:Free, reach out. Wow, that's very kind and generous of you. That's very nice of you. Mike, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you. Again, don't go anywhere I want to sign out. Alright, everyone, thank you so much for listening. Lots of great resources on my website, Michaeljamin.com. Sign up, we've got free webinars coming up and my newsletter. Alright, until next week, keep writing.Phil Hudson:This has been an episode of Screenwriters. Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar @michaeljamn.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

Writer Mike Sacks (Poking A Dead Frog, Welcome To Woodmont College, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, Time) shares stories about the many people he has chosen to interview, including Natalie Merchant, and those he has no interest in talking with. Plus, Mike shares a memory from high school, about a party he didn't attend, that still haunts him. Listen! If you get a chance, will you please give me 5 stars and a good review on Apple? http://apple.co/1MceZ2Q AND follow my new show, My Life In 3 Songs! I talk to comedians about the 3 songs in their lives that have impacted them. Listen exclusively on Spotify! https://spoti.fi/3dpHX5X Connect with Story Worthy! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storyworthy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storyworthy YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/https://bit.ly/39OoTdw Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/storyworthy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/ christine-blackburn Website: https://www.storyworthypodcast.com/ Follow my new show on Spotify! https://spoti.fi/3dpHX5X    

Leaked intelligence documents suggest a challenge for Ukraine's air defense; The Day 6 Twitter account's blue check mark says goodbye; how Brownie Wise turned Tupperware into to a business empire powered by women; activist investors question Scotiabank's outsized investment in a controversial Israeli weapons company; new podcast helps people support the victims of gender-based violence; Mike Sacks remembers legendary MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee; and more.

Critically acclaimed author Mike Sacks joins us for the season premiere to discuss his work, his podcast, and participate in our Writer Fantasy Draft where we talk about some of the best writers of all time from Movies to TV to Books and more. Follow Mike Sacks! - https://twitter.com/michaelbsacks Buy Mike's Books inc. the recently re-released Stinker Lets Loose and Randy... https://tinyurl.com/mikesacks Our writer picks were: Mike Sacks- John Kennedy Toole, John Swartzwelder, Neil Innes Jay- Robert Smigel, Christopher Moore, Anthony Jeselnik, Dave Holmes Art- Dave Filoni, Mitch Hedberg, James Luceno Mike- Douglas Adams, Vince Gilligan, Mel Brooks Join our Patreon for a new exclusive episode every week plus vault access - patreon.com/mastersofnone Follow our new TikTok - tiktok.com/@mastersofnoneshow Buy us a beer! ko-fi.com/mastersofnone

On this week's episode, Alana chats with her guest Mike Sacks about advice for young writers and how important it is to get your work out there! Brought to you By: The Sonar Network https://thesonarnetwork.com/

An editor at Vanity Fair and a contributor to the New Yorker, among others, Mike Sacks is the author of ten books. Two of those books are collections of in-depth interviews with profoundly influential comedy writers from the legendary to the less known but no less important. His other books take a little more explaining. Two of them are being re-published this week: “Stinker Lets Loose” is a deliberately badly written novelization of a 1970's trucker movie that never actually existed. “Randy!” Is an “unpublished memoir” Sacks “found” at a yard sale written by an average Maryland dirtbag who's come into some money. Sacks also co-wrote “Welcome to Woodmont College,” a fake catalogue from a really expensive (and really shit) boutique college, out in hardback last month. Today we discuss his approach to comedy — both writing it himself and what he's learned from interviewing some of the best to ever do it.   Brooklyn news and views you can use: bkmag.com  Email: hello@bkmag.com  Follow along on Facebook: Brooklyn Magazine  Twitter: @brooklynmag  Instagram: @brooklynmagazine  Follow Brian Braiker on Twitter: @slarkpope  

The Spooky Storage Locker Brought to you By: The Sonar Network https://thesonarnetwork.com/

Today's episode is unique. Author and all-around "ideas man" Randy S. joins Rob to talk about his Vanderpump Rules fan fiction. Brought to you By: The Sonar Network https://thesonarnetwork.com/

Friends and guests of Finding Favorites are back to tell us about their favorite things from 2022. This is a clip show with SO many great recomendations, most of which are in the show notes below. This includes clips from How Did This Get Made (Leah asking a question at the Stone Cold live show in LA) and Doughboys (Burger King 6 with Jon Gabrus and Adam Pally) Leah Intro 1 - best movies of 2022 Steroid Saturdays Everything, Everywhere, All at once RRR 4DX theaters   Liz Nord Pennyworth on HBO Max  Steve Higgins Everything, Everywhere, All at Once Strange Loop (Broadway) Eight Billion Genies (Comic book)   Mark Smithivas Only Murders in the Building, Hulu Wakanda Forever Leah intro 2: The return of Live Shows with Friends Boston for a cancelled Doughboys show How Did This Get Made in LA with Esther and Susan Return to Boston for Doughboys and introducing Ronnie to the Doughboys in Milwaukee How Did This Get Made in  Chicago with Jocelyn over halloween LetterKenny live with Amy Guth and Kevin Alves Hadestown with Rob Going to Weird Al with Shai Korman's family in DC Esther Kustanowitz, The Bagel Report The Ringer-Verse Podcast  Shai Korman, The Friday Night Movie Podcast Weird Al at the Kennedy Center Pam Rose Stranger Things, Hulu Severance, Apple TV  Tehran, Apple TV Pachinko, Apple TV Kelsea Ballerini Tate McRae Mimi Webb Taylor Swift Love after Lockup, TV Rob Schulte Dark Web Comic Books His dog Elvis Bug Con (Bugmane event) Doin' it with Mike Sacks (Podcast) How Did This Get Made clip: Leah is the person in the audience. Episode is Stone Cold, recorded live at Largo Leah Intro 3: Cancer Stuff Finishing chemo, radiation and immunotherapy Celebrated with my trip to Boston after chemo and a trip to LA after Radiation Got a sparkly caftan for my radiation gong Three trips to the Mayo clinic Returning to Israel COVID Bivalent Booster, Flu Shot and the Pneumonia vaccine Cameron MacKenzie Premier League Football Jason Mathes Inside Job on Netflix Gravity Falls on Disney Caroline Berkowitz Uno Go Fish Taco Cat Go Cheese Pizza Scrabble Slam SET Sleeping Queens SkipBo Monopoly Deal Yahtzee Yam Slam Trouble Phase 10 Monica Reida Pentament (Xbox, PC video game) Crimes of the Future (movie) Leah Intro 4 101 Places to Party Before You Die Jackass Forever Mike Nichols, A Life by Mark Harris Art by Phineas Jones aka Octophant Lyndsey Little Doughscord Stories to Dismember Podcast Love on Netflix Doughboys Podcast Doughboys clip from Burger King 6 with guests Adam Pally and Jon Gabrus. Leah created the drop that Mitch plays towards the end of the clip. Robert Persinger Boston Milwaukee Great people Keidra Chaney Southside on HBO Max Bunny instagram Red Door Shelter Jocelyn Geboy Candy Chat Chicago 101 Places to Party Before You Die Avett Brothers The Diffs Firepits How Did This Get Made Jo Wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster and keep enjoying your favorite things.   Transcript 1:12:55   Zoom Bomb  00:00 Hello, hello. Hello. Hi. What's good? [Switches to German]   Announcer  00:08 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:20 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. It's that time of year, which is the last day of the year. And that means the Call-In Show, the best of 2022 is back. This is the second time I'm doing it. So that might mean it's a tradition. Check back in 12 months and see if that's true. Right now I've got clips about 10 clips. As I'm recording this intro, I might have more by the time I finish recording. But I'm going to break my favorite things of the year into three chunks. It'll be me a few clips me a few clips.   Without further ado, I wanted to kick off my best of ‘22 with my top movie theater experiences of the year. The year started, and I was finishing chemo, which meant that Ronnie and I were still celebrating what we lovingly called Steroid Saturdays, which is when I would get chemo, I would get steroids along with my chemo infusion. And then I would be wired on steroids. And the amount of time that I had energy from the steroids got smaller and smaller over the course of the three months of chemo. But what we did was every almost every Saturday morning, after I would get chemo on Fridays, we would go and see a matinee. And so I saw a lot of movies in the theater over the winter of 21 and 22. But my top three movie going experiences were not on Steroid Saturdays. it was seeing Everything Everywhere, All At Once, in a packed movie theater. This was the first time I had been in a packed movie theater part of going of the Steroid Saturdays, The MO was we went to matinees of things that have been open for more than one or two weeks. So generally, we went to private, we created private screenings for ourselves.   Everything, Everywhere, All At Once was at the theater on Diversey and Surf. So it was an it was a sold out theater. It was jam packed. There were not assigned seats. But seeing that movie, in a theater full of people was outstanding. It was such a great experience. And only topped by at the end of the year going to a sold out show at the music box. In a theater that holds 700 people to see the Indian movie, RRR. RRR was a movie I'd heard about on podcasts, where people were just like, don't know anything, go in blind and watch it. I watched it at home alone really enjoyed it. But getting to go with three of my friends to see our RRR in a movie theater where people cheered, booed, clapped along, plus the director was there in from Tollywood to answer questions. And that was very, very cool. Seeing an Indian movie in a packed house of people cheering for these historical revolutionaries set into magical realism. It was amazing.  And finally, I have to give a shout out to 4DX. Like I said, on previous episodes, I saw Wakanda Forever 3D 4DX. It's the fourth dimension. The chair is essentially a roller coaster through the whole movie. I'm still talking about it. It's been a month later. Don't see a movie in 40x If you want to experience emotions, other than the hysteria that comes from being on a roller coaster. So you're going to hear some people talk about Wakanda Forever because it was an outstanding movie. I did not connect to it emotionally because my chair kept making me laugh. That's all I can say.   Coming up in this first block. We've got a filmmaker Liz Nord is back. You just met her last week. So Liz Nord is back. Steve Higgins who has been on the podcast twice is back with his favorite movie Broadway show and comic book of the year. And then Mark Smithivas, who I've known on since the earliest days on Twitter and who has been the person… Probably the person I know into audio the longest of anyone I've known. He joins with a TV show and a movie recommendation. Without further ado, here are Liz, Steve and Mark   Liz Nord  05:32 Hi, I'm Liz Nord. I was just on the last episode of the show talking about my love for documentary films. But I watch a lot of other stuff too. And my guilty pleasures are the comic book sci fi supernatural TV series, usually aimed at young adults. My favorite discovery from this past year is probably Pennyworth. on HBO max is the origin story of Batman's infamous butler Alfred Pennyworth. In 1960s, London, we also meet a young Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane, the future parents of Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. No one has any superpowers in this show. They're just regular people in extraordinary circumstances. And that is part of what makes it so fun. It's funny and stylish and cheeky. And over the top. There are three seasons so far. The first one is probably the best because it doesn't try to be anything it's not. The show is a total romp. But note to parents, it's definitely not kid friendly. Enjoy and Happy New Year. Hello,   Steve  06:29 I am Steve Higgins. And I am here to talk about three of my favorite things of 2022. First, I want to talk about my favorite movie of 2022. I actually got to the theater quite a bit more this year than in the past two years, obviously, because of the pandemic. And one of the movies that I saw in theaters this year that absolutely blew me away. It made it shot to the top of my list. The second that I saw it, and it never left even though it was pretty early in the year and never left that top spot. And that is Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. I remember first seeing trailers for the movie and hearing the premise that it was kind of about alternate realities. And just how visually stunning the trailers were. And I was pretty interested. But then I heard that the directors of the film The Daniels, Daniel Kwan, Daniel shiner. Were also the directors of Swiss Army Man, that was a movie that I saw in theaters back in 2016. And I absolutely loved I thought it was brilliant. And so to find out that they had done this film as well, I was sold, I absolutely had to see it as soon as I could. You know, the the premise of it is very sci fi but I like to tell people it's sci fi like Slaughterhouse Five is sci fi it's it uses a science fiction premise, in order to explor human themes. You know, it's really about our hopes and dreams and desires in life and who we want to be who we wish we had been the regrets of choices that we made. The great what if what if I had done my life differently? So it's very much the road not taken. I think the premise then getting at the heart of it is yes. To story about, you can jump from one alternate reality to another and you can grab the skills of a different version of yourself from a different reality. But really, it's about people and connections and relationships. And how would you feel if somebody came to you and said to you, alternate realities are real there's a multiverse and in all the different versions of you that exist out there, you the version you are right here right now are the worst. You're the worst version of yourself that you could be and how, how hard that is. It's a movie that has a lot of heart. A lot of soul searching, the acting is fantastic. Michel Yao, Ki Quan, and Stephanie Chu is kind of the core family of Evelyn Waymond and joy are amazing. You feel like their family dynamic is real. And it's it's a really powerful film because of that dynamic. It's It's hilarious. It's got great action sequences. It's visually stunning. It's high concept. And it's, it's moving. It's incredibly, incredibly moving. And I think this film is not only my number one movie of this year, but might be, you know, the best movie that I've seen in In the past five or 10 years, probably barn on an amazing, amazing film.   Steve  10:07  I also got to go to the theater a little bit this year to see some live theater, took a trip to New York in June and saw some Broadway plays. And so my favorite experience with the live theater this year was seeing A Strange Loop. I saw it about three days before it ended up winning the Tony for Best Musical. And it was an amazing experience. I it's it's been a, it's been a work that I have had trouble recommending to people, because I feel like the soundtrack doesn't quite do it justice. The songs are good and powerful but it doesn't have the same gravitas to it as when you see it live. And you can see the the actors performing on stage and you can see the sets and you can you can be there. Unfortunately, it is wrapping up its Broadway production on January 15. I'm very hopeful that that means they're going to move it to another city. I'm really hopeful that that city in Chicago because I will absolutely drive up to Chicago to see it again. It was it was an amazing work. Now it being wards and all kind of portrait of a black gay man in New York City.   Steve  11:39 In the modern era, it is not a film. Sorry, it's not a play, that I would recommend to anybody. We actually had a friend of ours, who was going to New York with their teenage son and asked him he really wants to see this. Should we let him go see it? No, you absolutely shouldn't. It is. It is not appropriate for young audiences. There's a lot of very frank discussion of the realities of relationships and gay sex and things that you probably don't want your teenage son to hear.   Steve  12:30 But if that sounds like a thing that you might be interested in, you know, seeing a creative person floundering, not feeling like they're able to live up to their full potential, and not just creatively but also romantically also just in life. And see them kind of come to terms with that seems to be a bit of a theme between my film in my and my play that I chose, but I would recommend at least giving the soundtrack a listen. And if you think after you hear the soundtrack that interested me, then if you can get a chance to see it live, it will take it to the next level.   And then finally, I want to recommend a comic I'm a big comic fan comic reader read a lot of great comics this year, but one that really blew me away the most is a eight issue miniseries from Image Comics, written by Charles Soule, illustrated by Ryan Brown, it's called 8 Billion Genies. And the basic premise of this comic is that, at the same instant, every single person in the world is given a genie. And given one wish that they can make and how those wishes change the world for the worse unfolds over the course of the eight issues. The first issue is the first eight seconds. Second issue is the first eight minutes third issue is the first eight hours, and so on. Up to now only the first six issues have come out. Issue seven and eight are coming in January and February respectively. And that's the first eight decades and the first eight centuries to show how this world gets changed by the introduction of everyone suddenly getting one wish that they could make anything come true. How would that play out and people being people? It doesn't play out well, but the basic premise is the the our main characters are in a bar. And there's only a handful of people in the bar and the second that this happens, the bartender slash owner of this bar makes his wish that all of the effects of everybody else's will issues in the world will not affect what happens in the walls of this bar. So this bar becomes a safe haven, from all the craziness and chaos that goes on outside. It's beautifully drawn by Ryan Brown, who makes the characters seem real. And the fantasy elements are jarring, obviously, with the reality of the world, but in a way that it's cohesive, if that makes any kind of sense. It's a cohesive narrative, I should say. And again, the high concept from Charles Sol is just just brilliant. It's an absolutely great comic. If you only read one comic, check out 8 billion genies by Image Comics. So those are my three favorite things of 2022. The film, everything everywhere all at once. The play musical, a strange loop, and the comic, 8 billion genies. Hope you check them out. Hope you dig them. Thanks for having me back on the show.   Mark Smithivas  16:09 Hi, Leah, this is Mike Smithivas. I hope you're having a great end to the Year. Happy New Year. And my favorites that I wanted to let you know about is the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. I really loved this series with Steve Martin. It just had a level of sharpness to its writing, and the cast was top notch. And I like to say that it's a great achievement when you have a series that tries to parody something, in this case, True Crime podcasts while managing to also be what it's parodying. Meaning that I was kept guessing until the very end of who the murderer was. So I would highly recommend binge watching it. There's two seasons to it. Both seasons are really good in my opinion. And if you love that kind of New York, character actor, type of vibe, there are there are many veteran actors who are in that series. What else I just watched with my family, Black Panther to Wakanda Forever. And I was truly surprised that a movie could a Marvel movie could be something more than just your standard superhero movie. I know it had big shoes to fill, trying to be the sequel to an amazing breakthrough movie like Black Panther. But in this one, I think they managed to be poetic, while also celebrating or memorializing the death of Chadwick Boseman. And also highlighting a lot of strong black female characters. So I think it set the bar pretty high for what a Marvel superhero movie could be. And I'm hoping to see more of that in the in the future with other Marvel franchises. I think I'll stop there. I hope you have a happy new year again, and we'll catch up to you and 2023.   Leah Jones  19:00 All right, thank you, Liz, Steve, and Mark for your recommendations. All right, so in 2022, we were vaccinated. And for me, that meant the return of live shows and seeing live shows with friends. Again, a lot of my year was overshadowed by my treatment for breast cancer and a long slow recovery. That in part because I had an undiagnosed chronic illness on top of the cancer. A lot of my live shows were on my calendar as the emotional carrot to get through a part of cancer treatment. The first thing I looked forward to all through chemotherapy was going to Boston to see the Doughboys it was a doubleheader in January of 2022. And it got canceled because COVID was too high. I think that was the Omicron. It might have been Delta, like I don't even remember anymore. But their winter tour got cancelled. But I could not give up emotionally kind of could not give up the trip. So I went to Boston, I met a few people who also kept their trips. And so we hung out. And the week before the Boston trip, there was a Chicago show that got canceled. But people still came into into Chicago. So two weeks in a row, I got to hang out with my friend Geno, and then see other Doughmies in Chicago and Boston. And then other friends who aren't into the Doughboys but do live in Boston. So it was sort of like come hell or high water. I am marking the end of chemotherapy with Boston. And so I went to Boston in January, it was very cold. I slept a lot. I was very weak. But it was such a good trip.   A week, like a week after I finished radiation. I got on a plane again. I went to LA and that time it was for How Did This Get Made live show. It was right after my birthday. I stayed with my friend Esther. But this time I took… Esther and I have a mutual friend Susan, who is as into How Did This Get Made? Like we're both huge fans of it. And we have both gone to shows at the Largo and taken Esther and Esther is always a very willing guest. But this time Susan and I went together. And then when we got done with the show, Esther surprised me with a birthday charcuterie… a chocolate… a plate of chocolate for my birthday. And that was a fantastic trip.   Then Doughboys got rescheduled. So I went back to Boston again. And they had so I went to Boston and shot saw two shows in Boston. absolute blast. And then I got to take Ronnie up to Milwaukee to see the Doughboys live in Milwaukee, which I was just like, “your opinion of me might change a lot when you see the experience the live show of one of my favorite podcasts.” Introducing him to Doughboys at a live show was great seeing some Doughmies and Milwaukee. Having it was just a really fun trip.   And then Halloween I got to introduce Jocelyn, my co-host of Candy Chat Chicago to How Did This Get Made at the Chicago Theater. Again, this was one that had been in the summer got rescheduled pushed to October. I have talked about this show ad nauseam, especially on my interview with Kevin Alvis. So needless to say, this is the show. It was Morbius it's coming out next week finally, and this was the one where I realized that Jason Mantzoukas now knows who I am, which is mortifying and, but was wonderful. I got to see Letterkenny live this year with Amy Guth. That's also how I met Kevin Alves. My friend Rob and I, we went to see a ton… I would get Broadway in Chicago season tickets and Rob was my standing plus-one for a few years. Broadway in Chicago was back a highlight this year was seeing Hadestown. And finally, I went to Washington DC to meet up with Shai Korman and his family. Shai is from Friday Night Movie Podcast. And I got to go with his family to see Weird Al at the Kennedy Center, which was just the coolest venue and such a great group of people. So in this section, these are people that I have been to live events with or know through podcasts community. So we've got Esther Kustanowitz from the bagel report. Shai Korman from Friday Night Movie podcast. Pam Rose, who I know through How Did This Get Made? And Rob Schulte who I know through the Doughboys community.   Esther Kustanowitz  24:31 Hi, this is Esther Kustanowitz from The Bagel Report Podcast among other places. Leah Jones has been so instrumental in my own online development from blogging to Twitter to podcasting and I'm just thrilled to be able to continue in this tech meets pop culture dialogue that we have going on. So I have loved all of the pop culture this year except for Kanye obviously, not cool, but there was so much especially Within my chosen primary category of Jewish TV that I could talk about, but since I've already done an episode of finding favorites about that, I figured I'd focus on one of the other pod things that I loved the most this year, which was continuing to make the river ringer verse podcast part of my week.  I love a lot of other Ringer network podcasts with special shout outs to The Rewatchables, The Big Picuture as well as a lot of their other pop culture podcasts. But the Ringer-verse! they're my people. There are like two main teams and they're so dynamic and passionate about fandom. They're absolutely unapologetic about how nerdy they get about popular culture, sci fi, fantasy, etc. They totally like an every second of their recordings, they revel in how nerdy it is, and how intertextual it is, and how they know the comic books did this. And the previous movies did that. And I love the individual personalities that that are involved in recording this show and how they interrelate. And even when they disagree, and they sometimes really, really disagree, they all come back to the love they have for each other and for the primary cultural product. So I love that they can have a three hour discussion about a two hour movie, and they bring in experts to explain the lore, which helps me put things in a greater context. So being a regular listener has changed how I react to the pop culture that I consume. Because more often than not, I'll hear a phrase or a see a scene that I'll file away in my memory bank know just know somewhere in my like cells that the ringer verse team is probably going to talk about and love and criticize and contextualize and obsess over it. And I really just loved being able to partake in their conversational experience, even though it's really one sided, because I'm pretty sure they don't listen to the bagel report podcast, although, obviously they should. And I just had a guest spot on Jews on film podcast, where we talked about the fable mins for two hours so I'm honing my skills should they ever require an expert on Jewish content, I'm hoping that the reverse will give me a buzz. So if you are a fan of Star Wars or DC or Marvel properties or the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or anything else that kind of hits the the pop culture with a little bit of a sci fi fantasy heroes comic book infused element, the wringer versus a must listen. Thanks and have a great 2023 everyone.   Shai Korman  27:52 Hey there, Leah. This is Shai calling from the Friday Night Movie Podcast and my favorite of the year that I want to talk about is getting to go see the great Weird Al Yankovic at the Kennedy Center with none other than Leah Jones, host of Finding Favorites and Candy Chat Chicago because getting to see Weird Al with Leah Jones is one of the all time favorites that any person could experience. And I hope we get to do it again soon. And I love finding favorites and keep making this amazing show.   Pam Rose  28:35 Hi, this is Pam Rose. You may remember me from a previous episode talking about my love of one Jason Mantzoukas and How Did This Get Made. But right now I'm here to talk about things that I loved in 2022   Well, some of them at least in Number One on The List: Vechna from Stranger Things. Stranger Things came back with a vengeance this season. Epic epic episodes and at the center was the big bad vechna He was mean he was evil. He had the cutest bomb in the world and I want to be his best friend. So yeah, Batman. And speaking of TV and awesome TV, Apple TV continues to crush with its original programming. My number one favorite show of the year severance. Severance is so good if you haven't seen Severance please watch Severance. I was in California and vacation the night of the finale and my brother and I both put our headphones in and our beds. We watched the finale because I could not wait. I didn't want to get spoiled. But people talk about severance. We know how good it is.   But what about other shows on Apple TV? How about Tehran? Have you seen this show? Because it's awesome. If you'd like homeland, which is one of the all time greatest shows of all time, you might like Tehran it's got the same feel. Season two was stellar. Glenn Close was on season two she started speaking Farsi at one point what was happening, so 10 Iran I recommend it. Also, I'm not a girl who's into epic things, but let me tell you, Pachinko. Oh my god. So good apparently is based on a book. I don't have time for that. But I do have time for the TV adaptation of it and Pachinko is so good. It's multigenerational story about a family in Japan, Korea. I learned all kinds of things about history, but also so engrossing loved it so Pachinko check those things on an Apple TV if you have Apple TV if you don't get a trial of it, and you can watch these things. You could thank me later. On the music side. Kelsea Ballerini came out with a new album this year and it's her best one yet highly recommend it. We all know Taylor Swift killed it with her new album. Lavender haze midnight Rain Come on. Take McRae's debut album was awesome every track a banger and Mimi Webb continues to put out song after song. Never skip on any other things and I get to see her live twice this year. I was the oldest person there by about 20 years but that girl can sing her ass off. So watch out for that little 21 year old British girl because she's coming for you. She's putting out her first full length album next year. And don't sleep on it because she's great. And then if you need something trashy to get you through 2023 may recommend love after lockup. And I wish I was kidding. But really, it's so addictive. It's so trashy. We get love during lockup now. We get life after lockup. But love after lockup, we TV, you can catch the episodes once you watch one you're gonna get hooked. You're gonna say why am I watching this? What is happening? But then you'll keep watching, but it is that good. So anyway, those are some of the things that I loved. Yeah, here's to a great 2023 with awesome TV, music and movies. Let's do it. And also fellas, if you're single, I'm on Instagram hamster. Pam, come find me. Have a great 2023 guys.   Rob Schulte  32:09 Hey, Finding Favorites listeners. This is Rob Schulte. And I want to list off some of my favorite things of 2022. The Dark Web series of comic books. That's been fun. My dog Elvis, he's at the top of the list almost every single year. Bug Con, that was great. And let's see here is working on new episodes of Doing It with Mike Sacks. That has been a lot of fun. I think he was on his podcast as well. Great episode. Well, here's to you, 2022. And looking forward to 2023.   Clip from HDTGM: Stone Cold   Paul Scheer  32:52 Let me go to the audience here for a second. If you have any questions. You're in a beautiful shirt. It's like a baseball shirt. HDTGM shirt. I love this. Not one that we sell, but it's a great looking shirt. Okay, yes.   Leah Jones  33:10 So you mentioned before William Forsythe was also in Raising Arizona?   Jason Mantzoukas  33:13 Yes.   Leah Jones  33:14 So was Sam McMurry who played Lance the FBI agent.   Jason Mantzoukas  33:16 Yes.   Leah Jones  33:17 So my question is, who would you like Red Rover called over from Raising Arizona?   Jason Mantzoukas  33:22 Nicolas Cage.   Paul Scheer  33:23 Well, let me let me repeat the let me repeat these so I can make sure. So two of the actors in this film, the FBI agent and of course our second baddie, William Forsythe, were in Raising Arizona.  would there be anybody that we would call over from Raising Arizona?   June Diane  33:41 Imagine Holly Hunter as Nancy it's and it would be different and interesting. And they'd have to do something different   Jason Mantzoukas  33:50 Nicolas Cage as part of Boz.   Paul Scheer  33:54 Really? John Goodman as Ice   Jason Mantzoukas  34:04 I also think you could have John Goodman as the whip. [audience reaction] Guys. Cool. Cool. Okay. I know it's been a while but everybody be cool.   Paul Scheer  34:19 Great question. Great question. Great shirt.   Jason Mantzoukas  34:22 Great. Oh, so much overlap. Raising Arizona also because of the supermarket scene. I was thinking about Raising Arizona a lot during this movie. And I'm like, Oh, I gotta rewatch Ray's It's a great movie   Leah Jones  34:47 Awesome, thank you. Now you have got a lot of music to listen to and TV to watch podcasts to listen to. Here's my third chunk of things that my favorite things this year, which have to do with cancer, even though my treatments ended in March-ish, that's not true. Radiation finished in March. I was getting immunotherapy until October. But I had a really hard recovery from chemotherapy. And to get to the bottom of it, I wound up going to the Mayo Clinic this summer I drove up to the Mayo Clinic three different times. Each of those was a very fun road trip with a different friend and found out that there's a lot of good food in Rochester, Minnesota. There's a lot of good bartenders in Rochester, Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic for me was an outstanding experience. But finishing chemo in January and hitting the gong in March of '22. was incredible. And then finally getting a sarcoidosis diagnosis. And at the very end of the year starting treatment for sarcoidosis, starting my hormone therapy to gobble up all the estrogen in my body. I am finally walking without a cane. Breathing without coughing and feeling pretty good. I'm gonna put into this block.   In September I went to Israel went back to Israel hadn't been since 2019, which is a long gap for me. And with this incoming government, I'm not sure when I'll go back on that trip. I my goals were simple. At that point, I was still using a cane. Although it was getting stronger, I was still using a cane. So my goals were to have a hotel breakfast buffet every day and see a friend every day, which I did. There were some things that were really physically challenging about the trip emotionally challenging about the trip. But ultimately, I went to a beautiful breakfast buffet every morning. So at least one friend a day had ice cream had a few really amazing dinners laughed a lot, gotten the ocean. And it was a wonderful trip. So it was good to have to return to Israel, even if I don't know how to change a flight without accidentally getting charged $3,000. And finally I am going to give it up to science for the COVID boat bivalent booster, the flu shot and 15-20 years early I also have the pneumonia vaccine. So in this next block of people, we have Cameron MacKenzie, my friend Jason Mathes, my friend Caroline, get your pencils ready because she is recommending a dozen card games to play with your family. And Monica Reida is back with her favorite video game and movie of the year. Thank you to everyone who joined me on this clip show. And I'm sure I'll be back one more time for the last-minute clips that I have been asking people for.   Cameron MacKenzie  38:25 Hello, my name is Cameron MacKenzie. I had a book come out this year called River Weather from Alternating Current Press. And I wanted to talk about my favorite thing of 2020 to 2022 I think was really the year that I got into Premier League football. I'm gonna call it soccer for the sake of this conversation. Because the reason I got into Premier League football was that I got burnt out on American football, I grew up playing football. When I quit playing football, I started to watch it. But over the years, I just got ground down by the narrative of whatever Tom Brady is doing or the desire to buy Ford trucks or drink Budweiser beer. It's just sort of a constant loop and I couldn't take it anymore. My oldest boy is eight years old and he started playing soccer. And I realized I knew nothing about soccer. So I couldn't tell him what was good, what was bad what to do how to do it. So I started watching Premier League and I was blown a way the games are beautiful and exciting. The players are absolutely incandescent, the teams themselves. There's so much history to these teams and the fan bases are rabid. You if you're born in these places, you can't really choose what team you're going to watch. It's sort of handed down to you like a heritage or lineage. So if you're going to start watching Premier League, you got to choose a team and you got to stick with that team through the ups and through the downs through the good and Through the bad, the only thing I would compare it to in America maybe is college football, that sort of level of passion. But if you find yourself getting bored of the US sports landscape, give Premier League a try, you will not be disappointed. Just be sure that you choose team before you start. No arsenal.   Caroline  40:23 So I saw this tweet that said, a great alternative to screen time is playing cards as a family, so many learning opportunities. I taught my kids that there's no such thing as family while playing uno, and then I'll play I'll put a draw for down on a kindergartener and cackle like a swamp which, because I did not come to lose.   My name is Carolyn Musin Berkowitz, and I love playing cards with my family. So in my family, we play tons of card games, usually one or two per night. We started with uno, which is why I particularly like that tweet, but we've moved on a bit. Here are some of our favorites. We really like playing Go Fish. We even have a set of cards with fish on them. It's a nice easy one. It's how my little one learn to read. Sort of, we like Taco Pet goat Cheese Pizza, which is really funny to say and it's a quick game. And also, you might get your knuckles smashed. So buyer beware. Scrabble Slam is a super game that I found at Walgreens, by the way amazing games that you can find in the toy area at Walgreens. And it is a game where you make a four letter word, not one of those but whatever. And then you put other cards on top to make new words. Great way to teach your children spelling also, we have set my game of SET is probably from when I was a kid when I was a teen, and it is a math and patterns game. Super fun. There's also a junior version. But trust me, your early elementary child can handle the regular game.   Leaping Queens is a super fun game, where you have you want to collect as many queens as possible. But beware because your opponents are going to try to use knights to steal them or sleeping potions to put them to sleep. Skip It was a great counting game. And again to try to read your read yourself with all your cards before your opponents do super fun, lasts more than five minutes. Maybe it's 10 minutes. So it's good when you want something that will take a little longer. We also have been Monopoly Deal. If you've ever played Monopoly. With young kids, you know that it can last forever and it's not so pleasant. I recommend Monopoly Deal. It the game was over in 10 to 15 minutes. And I gotta tell you, my six-year-old was the first one figure out the strategy in this game. Super fun.   We also like Yahtzee not really a card game, but a pretty good game. Regardless. Yahtzee slam is a different version of Yahtzee a different iteration with poker chips. And it is super fun as with these. Now, this is not a card game, but I do have to mention trouble. It is a super game that requires zero skills, and a lot of trash talk when you send your opponents back to their home base. And finally a Chicago is about to have a terrible blizzard. And we're all going to be stuck inside for a few days. Let me introduce you to Phase 10, which is kind of like Rummy, you have to get certain arrangements of cards before your opponents do. You have to get through 10 rounds and it might take you more than 10 rounds to get there. So if you're going to be home for like a long Blizzard, make your hot cocoa sit down with phase 10 and enjoy a happy new year. I'm Caroline, and playing card games is one of my favorite things.   Jason Mathes  44:00 Hi, Leah Jones. This is past podcast guests, Jason Mathes checking in from Connecticut to tell folks about something that's probably popped up on the recommendations on Netflix and to tell them that it's worth the time. It's a cartoon, a very adult cartoon called Inside Job. And it features a lot of the comedians that I know both of us enjoy their work. Nominally it's the story of a young woman named Reagan who is a genius scientist whose father created the corporation that controls the world. So all the conspiracy theories that we've been told about the Illuminati, about the wizard people about those types of things are true. And this is the corporation that has to do all the grunt work to ensure that they dominate and control the lives of everyday citizens. It's a workplace calm empathy. It's also a father daughter divorce story. But it is highly intelligent. It's from at least executive produced from the gentleman who brought us. Gravity Falls, which is very popular in a lot of communities for being a, what I call the opposite of loss, the TV show, and so much that he weighed the show out. So there are easter eggs contain throughout and riddles and puzzles and Gravity Falls that we do to the answers. So if people have not checked out Gravity Falls, that's a completely kid appropriate. It was on Disney. And it's genius. It's smart. It's funny, it's very endearing. But inside job is all of those things, but it's for a PG 13 Plus audience, just just so folks know. And it's really great. It's a smart, funny comedy that people will enjoy. And it's something to binge watch over the holidays, and just enjoy the heck out of it, and laugh about it. And enjoy Happy Holidays to everyone and especially to the Jones family. Talk to you soon hopefully. Hello,   Monica Reida  46:22 my name is Monica Reida. And in 2022. I loved Pentamento and Crimes of the Future. Pentimento is a video game for Xbox and PC, where the premise is you are a young artisan who is in Bavaria in the 1500s. And you are currently working at a Abbey as working on illuminated manuscripts. And one day a baron comes to visit and the next day and there's a lot of you know, tension as to the Barrett and a lot of people in the village seem a little unhappy, he's there. And then the next day the Baron is found murdered in the Abbey. And so it's up to you, you are a scholar, you are a dropout from college like the best of us. And you have to try to figure out who killed the Baron to try to clear an elderly monk from being executed. The art style for the game, it looks like you're walking through an illuminated manuscript from the Middle Ages. It's one of the most beautiful video games I think I've ever played. And it requires a lot of critical thinking. It's kind of the opposite of a lot of games I tend to play where it's like, Oh, I'm just going to try to make the best moves and you know, score enough shots on goals in NHL 22. Or I'm just going to kill a bunch of guys to save the day in Yakuza. So it's kind of the opposite of that where you have to critically think about the choices you're making. And I'm not even close to being done with this game. But I already can't wait to play it again. And see how different choices affect the story how it affects the characters. So Pentiment on Xbox and PC.   One of the things I love this year, I also loved the new David Cronenberg film, Crimes of the Future. It takes place in a future where there are a lot of body mutilations and people enjoy getting surgery, including putting on performances to show off the mutilated bodies to show off the surgery. It is I would say kind of a form of sicko cinema that I think I associate with Cronenberg, and also John Waters. I mean, it's a film where people actually say surgery is the new sex. It is also I think, one of the funniest movies I have watched this year. I think benediction from Terence Davies is probably the only film that I saw this year that I think was funnier than crumbs of the future. But Cronenberg's dialogue and his most of which is delivered by Alyssa do. And I am just blanking on everybody else in the cast, Viggo Mortensen, Don McKellar, one of my boys and Kristen Stewart. It's delivered in just a brilliant, natural way that also lets the humor shine and put as a very dark and morbid film. But even just the visual cues and the cuts and the Justice positions of it the visual style. It's it's a very funny, very morbid film that has stayed with me since I saw it in theaters wearing a sickos shirt because yes, I do think that if you love Cronenberg, you might be a sicko, and the best way. So those were the two things I loved in 2022. I hope you and anybody else listening you know if you've got a fuzzy little friend or furry friend, curl up with them and enjoy some movies, enjoy some TV show, listen to some Quebec while pop and have a nice 2023   Leah Jones  50:41 and I'm back with my final block of favorite things from this year. Followed by a few more clips that have come in. So a favorite TV show of mine is 101 Places to Party Before You Die. It was on Tru TV. It is now available on HBO Max, so it's much easier to find than it was when it first came out. It is Jon Gabrus and Adam Pally. Adam, you might know from the TV show Happy Endings or from from The Mindy Project, John Gabriel was on a show called Guy Code that I never watched. I know John from podcasts. I originally saw him in a live episode of Nicole Byers podcast that was taped in Chicago many years ago. And then I started listening to High and Mighty, I started listening to Doughboys. His podcast is High and Mighty. He's a regular guest on Doughboys. I've seen him at two of the three Doughboy shows I've been to. And they have been best friends for 20 years. They came up together at UCB. And they got to shoot six episodes traveling the states. Going to bars going to restaurants, museums, and Jocelyn and I have watched it on my own at least twice. Jocelyn and I have watched it. There are times when we'll finish recording an episode of Candy Chat Chicago, and we'll just go back to the Denver episode because that is the episode that makes us cry from laughing so hard. What I love about it, honestly, it's the same things I loved about Jackass, which should have made the list (how did I not talk about Jackass Forever?), we are starting to get more positive representation of male friendship. And I think this show it was recorded both John and Adam have lost parents young. And this was recorded at a time when we had been vaccinated and the world was starting to open up again. And so they're they're traveling the country after a year of quarantine. really aware of what it means not to be with your friends and your family. And there's so much heart in between the laughter and so much realness that this little show. I hope someone picks it up for a second season. Let's keep talking about it. Let's keep watching about watching it and do watch the Denver episode all the way through the credits. Because you will be crying crying at the you'll just just watch it.   A book I read that then I bought for two people for Christmas and Hanukkah gift. So now I can talk about it is the biography of Mike Nichols called Mike Nichols a life by Mark Harris. Again, this was something that people were talking about on podcasts. And I had some audible credits and I picked it up and just lived in Mike Nichols world for like three weekends. just listened to it playing match three games on my phone and nonstop listening to Mike Nichols story. He is at some level, the for the real life Forrest Gump of pop culture and New York culture from like 1950 Odd. He is everywhere. He's friends with everyone. He's foes with everyone at certain times, but it is a compelling biography to understand pop culture, from truly from like the 1950s on, charted through his life. And then tonight, I ran out and picked up a painting by local artists Phineas Jones, other than my own dad's art, Phineas is the person is the next person that I have the most art in my house from. He was selling some original paintings and so I got an original little painting of some Chicago hot dogs. So with that, rounding out the podcast the best of 2022 Are. We've got clips from Lindsay Liddell, who I know from the Doughboys community, Robert Persinger, also known as drop King, who I know from the Doughboys community, Keidra Cheney, who is one of my very longtime Twitter pals. And Jocelyn Geboy, my co host on andy Chat Chicago Rounding things out. I do expect to wake up to two more clips. And so there will either be clips from Jaqui and Taylor when I wake up and they will be added to this, or you know that you will hear from him this year when I finally get to sit down and interview them. So with that, wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster and keep enjoying your favorite things.   Doughboys Excerpt: Burger King 6 with Adam Pally and Jon Gabrus   Mike Mitchell  55:59 Wiges, how are you?   Nick Wiger  56:00 I'm doing well.   Mike Mitchell  56:01 Look, we have we have one guest it's way overdue. And then and then another   Jon Gabrus  56:07 who's the exact opposite of overdue.   Nick Wiger  56:11 Our most frequent guest, this is this is the duo. This is the odd couple that we have with us today. And, Mitch, we want to we want to get to them because they've been doing media all day. I'm sure they're their little bushwhacked. But before we do that, you got your you got to drop.   Mike Mitchell  56:25 I'm looking for it. All right, just   Nick Wiger  56:29 I can't believeyou're not ready with this. I said.   Mike Mitchell  56:33 We usually talk for five to 10 minutes. Well, you could have read time.   Nick Wiger  56:38 Yeah, but our guests were like, Hey, we we've been we're fucking wiped.   Mike Mitchell  56:42 I know. But that's if you get into Rush mode, it's going to be a bad episode. So don't go into Rush mode.   Nick Wiger  56:49 Well, I'm not going to rush mode. It's going to be good episode because our guests are great. I guess.   Adam Pally  56:53 Is this the Podcast?  This is what it is. Yeah. Yeah.   Jon Gabrus  56:57 Honestly, dude, I'm the most frequent guest and more or less, this is what it   emma  57:02 Mitch, do you want me to play it?   Mike Mitchell  57:03 No, I got it. I got it. I found it.   Nick Wiger  57:05 Gabrus was was air drumming some Neil Peart, I should say at the mention of Rush, which was Rush mode. That was a lot of fun for me. I saw that was the first concert I went to at the Anaheim pond   Adam Pally  57:16 Really? The first concert you went to is rush?   Nick Wiger  57:18 Yes,   Jon Gabrus  57:18 Mine was Soul Asylum at Jones Beach.   Nick Wiger  57:21 Wow.   Adam Pally  57:22 New Kids on the Block Rush  on the continental arrowheads. Oh, yeah. That's awesome.   Mike Mitchell  57:27 Mine was WBCN River Rave I believe is the first concert I went to. I saw the boss the Mighty Mighty Bosstones less than Jake. Yeah. Let's just   Jon Gabrus  57:38 lead with artists so that people know what you're talking about. Yeah, I don't quite remember the name of the tour. I want you otters jug band Christmas that my first concert was jingle ball 1992. Sponsored by Cadillac. Play the drums bass Hall.   Mike Mitchell  58:02 I went to I went to Roger Waters concert. My friend my friend's mom, Mrs. Tufo. She gave us a ride. My friend Martin he gave me what he said was acid. I bought it from him. And I took it and I was in the van with Mrs. Too far. She drove us to the concert. And then when we got out, he was like, that was vitamin C. It wasn't acid at all. But I think they expected me to like flip out and act like be like, This is crazy, but I never did it. You know what I mean? I never felt for the I passed the test. You know what I mean? Right? And, but then I did take two tabs of mescaline at that concert. It was really crazy.   Jon Gabrus  58:36 For how could you tell what was the mescaline in Hi-C? Right   Mike Mitchell  58:42 Alright, here's the drop Hold on. I'm gonna I got it. I got it loaded up.   Jon Gabrus  58:48 And you're gonna leave all this in right?   Mike Mitchell  58:51 I just think the crowd was changing   emma  58:54 not editing this at all. We haven't even announced our names to happen yet. Yes. All this shit has to happen first.   Mike Mitchell  59:06 I was watching prehistoric planet alright, I'll save that for later alright, here we go. Here we go. Wiges, Here is a little drop. Here we go plastic fork city. The city is also weird That's it. Perfect fucking length. It was nice and short. It was nice and short when   Jon Gabrus  59:52 he sat literally that's the only clip I've ever heard that's both not too short and not too long.   Mike Mitchell  59:58 I was kind of perfect. Yeah, great length. Hey, while you Norman in Boston, Mitch asked us to get back to the simple life drops with one or two clips from the show. To that end. Here's my Ode to Guns and Roses. Hope to see in Chicago in 2022. Oh, that was cancelled because of COVID xoxo Leah, aka Chicago Leah and the Doughscord  Hey, thanks for Chicago Leah. Thanks, Chicago Leah. Thanks.   Lyndsey Little  1:00:29 I'm Lindsay Liddell. And this is a strange list, but three of my favorite things are monsters, food and podcasts. This year was very unusual for me in the sense that it became such a culmination of significant moments for me, all relating to three of my favorite things. The stranger still was how my favorite things all intermingled together in some way, it felt like synchronicity. It began when as an avid listener of the Doughboys podcast, I joined the fan community Doughscord. I quickly felt at home there and made many friendships with others who loved the hosts, Nick and Mitch, and we all shared a mutual love of fast food of course, separate from this and after some time had passed, I along with two others began hosting our own horror movie recap podcast called Stories to Dismember. Even though the three of us had met through Reddit we surprisingly and quickly formed friendships and almost a familial bond. It's been a really fun and fulfilling project. And it just really gives me a love for podcasts in a whole other way now, in fact, it was our pleasure to have Doughboys host Mitch on as our guest for Halloween. For some added complexity and confusion to the layers of my favorite things. Long before I was a Doughboys listener and Mitch starred in my favorite show love on Netflix, so for me personally, it was a dream come true for him to speak with us. As an aside, Nick, if you are serious about guesting with the stories to dismember team we would still love to have you. You know where to find me flitting around on Discord. So anyone listening to this if you love podcasts, I presume this is one of your favorite ones, but also check out Doughboys if you love fast food, and if you love horror movies or monsters, then check out stories to dismember. And if your favorite thing is just Mitch Mitchell, then check out our episode where he guested with stories to dismember. Thank you so much for letting me share some of my favorite things Leah and I hope you have a wonderful new year.   Robert Persinger  1:02:34 Hello, my name is Robert per singer. And my favorite things from this year were traveling to new cities. I visited Milwaukee in Boston for some live shows and had an amazing time seeing the sights and meeting some great people. In Boston, I wanted to shout out the TAM. Jam curlies, the Trillium beer garden, Regina pizzeria, Legal Seafood, tasty burger emack and folios Mangia Mangia, Mike's pastry and the union Oyster House. In Milwaukee, I wanted to shout out to Feroz while skis, Thurman 15. Up down the Milwaukee Public Museum, Boone and Crockett, the Milwaukee pedal tavern, 's ads foundation Culvers lakefront brewing, lost whale, burn hearts, straight shots. Ian's else's Bryant's and landmark lanes, so happy to have met so many awesome people in these cities. And I wanted to include them too. So shout out to Kevin, Chelsea, Phish greeing, Aaron, Gino, Zayn. Kev, Nick. smo, Shawn, demo, Jess ,Taylor, shifty, Lou. And of course, Leah. If I forgot anyone, I apologize. It was a very fun time after all, here's to a great 2023   Keidra Cheney  1:04:11 So this is Keidra. So I wanted to share a couple of things to be alive trying to figure out what to share for the best of 2022 because 2022 didn't seem terribly eventful. And when it was eventful, it wasn't so great. Um, but there were things that were really good about the year. And one of the best things for me this year in pop culture, which is my usual obsession is a show that I constantly talk about called south side, which is on HBO Max. It's a comedy very Chicago. It's done by a group of actors and producers who are from the south side of Chicago and So the humor is very, very Southside and very Chicago specific, really funny, very weird at times, like a lot of funny, weird sci fi and geek culture-oriented humor, but also just random humor. So if you like to think of what it might be close, I compared it to, It's Always Sunny in that the characters are not supposed to be characters that are like, moral in any way, or like people that you should look up to. They're just, you know, weirdos doing, doing their thing in the world, working at a rent to own center, and basically taking people's stuff back once they can't afford it anymore. I'm probably not explaining it very well. But it is really hilarious. It's really not meant to have like, any broader message outside of making you laugh. And it's made me laugh more than any show that I've seen in the past decade, except for maybe the first season of Arrested Development. And that is like, like, the gold standard for me in terms of making you laugh. So yeah, Southside on HBO Max, three seasons, just perfection to me, every season has gotten better. And I just laugh at it nonstop. And I'm probably going to turn this off and watch the third season over again, as soon as I'm done with this. The other thing that has been really great for me, for 2022 That was my personal best, is starting to follow a lot of rabbit accounts on Instagram and Twitter. I love rabbits. I hope next year I will finally have a rabbit of my own. I just think they're cute and funny and weird and just adorable. And interesting little guys, and I just love seeing them eat and jump and zoom around. And just be lovely, lovely fellas and ladies, I follow Red Bull shelter on Instagram and there is an account that I follow on Twitter every morning and every evening they basically show this rabbit eating a meal alongside of his person. So this person is like eating super avocado toast or whatever in the rabbit is just they're eating their pellets or hay or greens every morning and evening. And I love to start and end my day with watching that burn habits delicious meal. So those are my favorite things of 2022 the things that really made me smile and made my life better. And I am wishing you and everyone listening a very happy new year and here's to a much better 2023 Then this past year   Jocelyn  1:07:54 fix Harry it's Jocelyn did this last year kind of off the cuff this time I made notes. I am dears best friends with Leah and co host of our joint podcast. Candy Chat Chicago, come to the candy state with the chat. So that has been a joy that has continued to be a joy. This year has really been something Hmm. I've had I had the joy and the honor and the privilege of being able to be with Leah while she navigated and figured out did cancer. And I was glad to be a part of that journey. Even better to have her be on the other side of it. Um, lots of things happened not to me, but I've seen I saw friends get married. I saw friends have babies. I saw friends get engaged. I saw one dear friend get a new job. She was really excited. So I've kind of been watching and letting things swirl around me. Lee is going to talk about I'm sure but she turned me on to the show called 101 Places to Party Before You Die. It's Adam Pally and Jon Gabrus. Oh my god, it's I want to tell you all the funny parts but like, it's kind of like you literally had to be there so like just go watch it and maybe you maybe think it's funny. Maybe you will I just fucking couldn't stop laughing. Um, I got the opportunity to see the Avett brothers again in 2022 for three night run at the Chicago theater March 31 first through April 2 It's been a really long time since I'd seen them so that was really nice and it was really nice to see and catch up with old friends and make new friends as well. firepit is still fucking rock and life we know that it's it's it's it's always been good and it continued to be good to us this year as well. I this new band I really loved called The Diff. They're kind of back on tour from their from the 80s from out east I don't know Massachusetts or something And they came back together and did a reunion show. I don't know earlier this fall, and it was really great. And I was really excited to see them. So that was a fun part of this year. Um, How Did This Get Made podcasts championed by Leah for many, many years, and I have problems listening to words like talk radio and stuff. So despite the fact that I have a podcast, it's been sort of hard for me to listen to one, but this is Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas and these cats are off the chain so I went to a live courtesy of Leah to a live taping of a show. the premise they don't like you know, how did this movie Get me and Chicago show was Morbius Jared Leto vampires Matt Smith weirdness and so it was really fun to it was really fun to listen to you and to go to go to you to make part of and Leah got some really fun interactions with Mantzoukas and Paul and all of them actually. So it was really it was really great. That was fun. And other than that, I wrote all my notes. I'm just putting out there for the year. I have a lot of attentions, always right. I always want to write that book. I always want to do the one woman show. But ultimately, like I really had an epiphany Today I had a little mini meltham panic attack over really nothing really if in the scheme of things that were told you the story you'd be like, okay, but I really my intention for the years to let go of that which does not serve me immediately. possessions, attitudes mindsets. I don't think it's gonna be easy to do but I think one of the mindsets that dogs me is this all or nothing thing black or white? I do it or I don't. And so I think this will be a fun way to kind of exercise that is to like, let go stick stuff like that. Right? Like even if I'm not letting go of stuff like you realize, like, it's not all or nothing like I get every day and I can I can you know do it again over and over again. And meeting my friend Jo was a huge part of this year. Mutual actually of Leah, so that's always fun when that shit works out. But um, yeah, I really glad to be around again, the sun one more time. Sure. It's crazy, but she's great too. And I wish you all a very happy new year and a great 2023   Announcer  1:12:30 Thank you for listening to finding favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.   Steve  1:12:46 Now how do I stop this? That's a great question. Stop. I guess I'll just leave

Eric Jason Martin has narrated over 350 audiobooks, and over 450 features for The New York Times Audio, including several episodes of the The Daily podcast. He directed Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne's Heads Will Roll and Maximum Fun's Bubble. He produced and narrated the NY Times Bestseller Stinker Lets Loose!, an Audible Original written by Mike Sacks and starring Jon Hamm. Now he's back with New Arcadia: Revolution, the second installment of the of the Audible-bestselling New Arcadia series of multi-cast audiobooks featuring a star-studded cast of voice actors including yours truly in three small roles. Did I pester him into casting me? We find out on this episode. We also talk about how he got into this line of work, his time as an imagineer, why the present is all that matters, my true purpose on earth (to complain about Tony Thaxton), pronunciation, laryngeal massage, Mucinex and more! We also did a round of Just Me Or Everyone and HGFY. Products I Use/Recommend/Love: http://amazon.com/shop/alisonrosen Check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/alisonrosen Buy Alison's Book: Tropical Attire Encouraged (and Other Phrases That Scare Me)  https://amzn.to/2JuOqcd You probably need to buy the HGFY ringtone! https://www.alisonrosen.com/store/ Try Amazon Prime Free 30 Day Trial

Él Farto and Machine Bolt have an announcement. Super Caller Mike is milking a venomous spider into thimbles and condoms after the spider was smuggled to him in a Band Aid box. The competition is out of their coma and you'll never guess what jump-started them. Plus: Listener Review! Also: The phone line is sponsored by Fruitopia® and everyone in the world is filled with deep regret and painful awareness with regard to this. God save us all.

I embrace my Greek roots by soaring on gossamer wings of phyllo dough to the St. Nicholas Greek Folk Festival after a dinner with my lovely buddy Mike Sacks. And a night of improv ends very unexpectedly. Click here to listen to the latest episode of Papa's Basement in your browser. Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Stitcher YouTube Follow this episode's cast on Twitter and Instagram: Mollie Heckerling - Twitter - @MollieSchmollie, Instagram - @MollieHeckerling John Papageorgiou - Twitter - @PapasBasement, Instagram - @PapasBasement

Mike Sacks interviews 'outsider music' expert and musician Paul Major on the release of his fantastic new book 'Feel the Music: The Psychedelic Worlds of Paul Major.' An abundance of rare music clips!This episode was produced by Rob Schulte See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike Sacks interviews ‘outsider music’ expert and musician Paul Major on the release of his fantastic new book ‘Feel the Music: The Psychedelic Worlds of Paul Major.’ An abundance of rare music clips! This episode was produced by Rob Schulte Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

Mike Sacks returns from his yearly vision quest to introduce to the world his latest project, STINKER LETS LOOSE! Mike speaks with Seinfeld writer and Silicon Valley producer Alec Berg, and Ian Goldstein speaks with Jena Friedman about comedy’s role in politics. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

Mike Sacks returns from his yearly vision quest to introduce to the world his latest project, STINKER LETS LOOSE! Mike speaks with Seinfeld writer and Silicon Valley producer Alec Berg, and Ian Goldstein speaks with Jena Friedman about comedy's role in politics.This episode was produced by Rob Schulte See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week Rhea Seehorn of Better Call Saul speaks with Mike Sacks about acting techniques for stage and screen and talks character development for her current role as Kim Wexler. We're also lucky to have an interview with Mike Drucker, the former staff writer for The Tonight Show and currently the co-head writer of the new Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week Rhea Seehorn of Better Call Saul speaks with Mike Sacks about acting techniques for stage and screen and talks character development for her current role as Kim Wexler. We’re also lucky to have an interview with Mike Drucker, the former staff writer for The Tonight Show and currently the co-head writer of the new Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

Mike Sacks interviews the great Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and Mike reads a pet adoption notice for a demon-possessed pooch. Might you be interested? This episode was produced by Rob Schulte. Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

Humorist Mike Sacks loves the movie Over the Edge and had the unique privilege of writing an oral history that led to a DVD re-release with commentary tracks. We discussed the 1979 movie that featured first-time actor Matt Dillon, the DC culture that created Kavanaugh and teen culture in the 70s and 80s. Follow Mike Sacks on Twitter, his website or just send him an email. (No, really) Welcome to Woodmont College Passing on the Right audiobook Passing on the Right print I am Super Pumped!!! Let's Do This Shit e-book Show Links Over the Edge IMDB Over the Edge Oral History, Vice Over the Edge DVD DVD All Summer in a Day movie Heavy Metal Parking Lot Heavy Metal Parking Lot A description of Cruising the 'Bash and being goth in Terre Haute  Cruising Rockville Pike Breaking Away Steve Martin and Terre Haute

Mike Sacks speaks with American satirist Neal Pollack in Part 1 of Episode 4. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

Head of UTA publishing, Byrd Leavell, joins Mike Sacks in part 3 of episode 4.This episode was produced by Rob Schulte See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Head of UTA publishing, Byrd Leavell, joins Mike Sacks in part 3 of episode 4. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

Mike Sacks speaks with American satirist Neal Pollack in Part 1 of Episode 4. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A Classic Rock DJ suffers a nervous breakdown live on air, Colonel Sanders can’t make it through a commercial taping, Larry King has no idea what’s going on and Mike Sacks talks with writer David Sedaris and New York Times editor Emma Allen. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

A Classic Rock DJ suffers a nervous breakdown live on air, Colonel Sanders can't make it through a commercial taping, Larry King has no idea what's going on and Mike Sacks talks with writer David Sedaris and New York Times editor Emma Allen. This episode was produced by Rob Schulte See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Click here to listen to the latest episode of Papa's Basement in your browser. One of the great comedy minds of our time, Mike Sacks, is back on the show to talk about his latest work of satire, Passing on the Right, as well as its incredible companion book, I Am Super Pumped! Let's Do This Shit!!!!!!!!!!!": The Marketing of "Passing on the Right", which chronicles how he got ripped off to the tune of several thousand dollars by a publicist that got him jack crap in the end. On top of that, co-host Mollie Heckerling and I discuss with him: -A brother I never knew he had that lives in Israel under the sway of a radical rabbi -The oddest foods we've ever eaten in strip clubs -What he hates most in comedy today -A really weird aspect of Greek Easter celebrations that we've both been party to -Why, if you burn your foot in a restaurant deep fryer, you NEVER let them pay you off with free food for life It's a fantastic episode, and Mike is an incredible mind that I'm proud to call a friend. Buy his books and listen to the podcast! Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Stitcher YouTube Follow this episode's cast on Twitter and Instagram: Mike Sacks - Twitter - @MmichaelBSacks, Instagram - @MikeBSacks Mollie Heckerling - Twitter - @MollieSchmollie, Instagram - @MollieHeckerling John Papageorgiou - Twitter - @PapasBasement, Instagram - @PapasBasement

To find out more about Mike Sacks and get his books check out his website mikesacks.com 

Mike Sacks joined me to talk about his comedy idol, Chris Elliot; his books being autobiographies of characters he's assuming; Andy Kaufman; how his books fooled his father; Tulane; his magazine writing; self publishing "Stinker Lets Loose"; "And Here's the Kicker"; Buck Henry; Jack Handey; Robert Smigel; mean comedy; Jesse Watters; his character, Skippy Battinson; Don Rickles; right wing comedy; Dennis Miller; comedy nerds; co,edy throughout time does not punch down; comedians as comedy writers; "Sex:Our Bodies, Our Junk"; Poking a Dead Frog; Mel Brooks; Jim Downey; talking about writers personal favorite wprk; The New Show; perking up interviewees; cold calling interviews; Peg Lynch; loneliness of writers; his tough time getting women to respond to an interview; Anne Beatts; novelizations; seeing early drafts; Paul Feig; audio version of "Stinker Lets Loose"; being prolific; "method" writing; OCD; Donald Trump; Mel Brook's helping young writers; Alan Spencer; George Meyers; Arthur Meyer; Chris Elliot --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

It's August 13, 1998. Él Farto calls in from Chicago and Super Caller Mike calls in from Clearwater while Machine Bolt watches the fort in Van Nuys because he doesn't believe in the physics of air travel. The morning team experiments with pulling on the emotional heartstrings of each other, their former roommate, and the audience. Also, Él Farto spoke with Crazy Sign Guy again, and got a lot more of the backstory. Mike's menagerie is not doing great, but he has a new employee to take care of them during his billion year contract.

This week, Lisa Lawrie and Rafael Castañeda discuss the @ARIYNBF episodes~”Mike Sacks” & “Renee's New Job, David's Clothing Almanac, Daniel's Dark Sex Cult” They catch up on The Haps in their lives and talk Left Leaning Right Weiners, Bad Parents, Hating Stupid Shit, Fit For Journaling, Cats Rule, Pi Don't Care, Ranking Good n' Evil, Past […]

This week, Lisa Lawrie and Rafael Castañeda discuss the @ARIYNBF episodes~”Mike Sacks” & “Renee's New Job, David's Clothing Almanac, Daniel's Dark Sex Cult” They catch up on The Haps in their lives and talk Left Leaning Right Weiners, Bad Parents, Hating Stupid Shit, Fit For Journaling, Cats Rule, Pi Don't Care, Ranking Good n' Evil, Past […]

This week, Lisa Lawrie and Rafael Castañeda discuss the @ARIYNBF episodes~"Mike Sacks" & "Renee's New Job, David's Clothing Almanac, Daniel's Dark Sex Cult" They catch up on The Haps in their lives and talk Left Leaning Right Weiners, Bad Parents, Hating Stupid Shit, Fit For Journaling, Cats Rule, Pi Don't Care, Ranking Good n' Evil, Past Livin', Doing Fun Shit, Shout Outs AND Unworthy w/ Dr. J n' LK!

Mike Sacks writes about comedy for The New Yorker, The New York Times and Vanity Fair to name a few but he also writes comedy himself. His latest book, Passing on the Right is written from the point of Skippy "Batty" Battison, a fictional right wing comedian, podcaster and satellite radio shock-jock whose takes are too hot for the mainstream, or so he believes, and who is so familiar I was sure he was based on an actual person (Sacks swears he is not). The book, like all of Sacks work, is hilarious. We talked about how his OCD helps him write, his daily routine, whether he has a chip on his shoulder, early aspirations, his unlikely path to interviewing, assholes in comedy, Alex Jones, confident morons, spices with no business in food and so much more. We also did a round of Just Me Or Everyone and HGFY. Products I Use/Recommend/Love: http://amazon.com/shop/alisonrosen Check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/alisonrosen   This show is brought to you by: RING: http://ring.com/bestfriend BETTER HELP: http://BetterHelp.com/BESTFRIEND (use code BESTFRIEND for 10% off) COINBASE: http://Coinbase.com/alison for $10 in free Bitcoin Buy Alison's Book: Tropical Attire Encouraged (and Other Phrases That Scare Me)  https://amzn.to/2JuOqcd You probably need to buy the HGFY ringtone! https://www.alisonrosen.com/store/

Joseph Thomas talks with writer, Mike Sacks, about the South, decency in comedy, remembering you're a person, and more. See all your listening options at mortifiedconversations.com.

“Writing with other people makes the solitary writing life a lot more fun, especially when it's the same sensibility which is a rare thing.” - Mike Sacks Today I interviewed Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, Mike Sacks & Ted Travelstead. Authors of Sex: Our Bodies Our Junk and humor articles for The New Yorker. In this episode we speak about their ongoing writing collaboration.  [EP212] To catch up with our guests: Scott Jacobson: twitter.com/straintest Todd Levin: twitter.com/toddlevin Jason Roeder: twitter.com/jasonroeder Mike Sacks: twitter.com/mikebsacks Ted Travelstead: twitter.com/trumpetcake

“It just comes down to a few things and that is: have a good attitude and get into it because you're interested not for the money, and keep moving forward. Just keep moving and good things tend to happen. ” - Mike Sacks Today I interviewed Mike Sacks Mike Sacks works for Vanity Fair and contributes humor to The New Yorker, Time, Esquire, GQ, Believer, Vice, Salon, McSweeney's, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. He is the author of eight books and three audio projects. In this episode we speak about: His decision to self publish and stick to his creative vision. The precariousness of success How he came up with his two books Stinker Let's Loose! and Randy: The Full and Complete Unedited Biography and Memoir of the Amazing Life and Times of Randy S.! To catch up with our guest: www.mikesacks.com Twitter.com/mikebsacks Instagram.com/mikebsacks

This week we are joined by comedy writer Mike Sacks to talk about his books Passable in Pink and Stinker Lets Loose!, based on the 80's and 70's films of the same name (which are definitely not available on Netflix). Come join us for a great discussion of the allure of film novelizations, parody, and how movies age through the decades. Afterwards (or even beforehand if you like), we deeply encourage you to check out Mike's books, they are well worth your while. Buy the physical books and check out the fully-cast, fully-produced audiobooks here: Passable in Pink (physical) (Audible production) Stinker Lets Loose! (physical) (Audible production) The physical books are chock full of bonus details, and the Audible productions include the likes of Gillian Jacobs, Adam Scott, Bobby Moynihan, Bob Odenkirk, Jon Hamm, Eric Martin, Andy Richter, Paul F. Thompkins, and many many more! Go to mikesacks.com, where you can check out the rest of Mike's books and projects! Follow Mike on Twitter at @michaelbsacks! We have a website! Find the cast and more at thefilmroom.org You can contact us at our Contact Page on the site!   We are available on     Please subscribe, rate, and review!   Come help us grow and gain access to exclusive content!   Up next: North American Adult Animation!

It all started with coupons -- and it's become a multi-million dollar, multi-platform media empire. It's The Onion: A worldwide source for witty news satire. The Onion was started by a few college kids at the University of Wisconsin in the late ‘80s. Now it's so engrained in our culture that we point out when the real news “looks like an Onion headline.”  The Onion has both observed the world, and changed it -- and become a must-read for millions of people every day. The Onion has had a profound influence on the business of comedy, and survived and thrived in a chaotic media landscape.  This is a story about a company that is unafraid to challenge convention, and is adamant about honoring its vision above everything else. The Venture is hosted by Ashley Milne-Tyte. This episode features: Mike Sacks, contributor, Vanity Fair, and author of Stinker Lets Loose! and Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy WritersBaratunde Thurston, former Onion director of digital, author of How to Be BlackSarah Pappalardo & Beth Newell, co-founders and editors of Reductress, and authors of How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having it All - And Then Some!Scott Dikkers, former Onion editor-in-chief, and author of Trump's America: Buy This Book And Mexico Will Pay For It, and How to Write FunnyMarnie Shure, managing editor of The OnionMike McAvoy, president and CEO of The Onion To learn more about The Venture, go to virginatlantic.com/theventure Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices