You heard the story. Now you're those who were involved in vehicle in life,
join us as we built behind the Door. Good evening, roomies,
and welcome back to a special bonus edition of Behind the Door with the Gray
Rooms Podcast. I'm your host and live from my bedroom, Arthur Ruck.
The tables have turned for one special night. I've put down the pen and
picked up the mic with me tonight. It's my dear friend and Thunderbuddy Brooks
Bigley, the host of the interview show on the Gray Rooms Podcast. You
may have heard of it. It's entitled We Hide the Door. How are
you this evening, Brokes? It's weird to be on this other side of
the door, but I'm doing fucking fantastic. Thank you. How are you,
Arthur? Oh, you know, just hanging out, getting rained on
enjoying the wonders that is the inside of my domicile today. Yeah, hanging
out in your bedroom during a thunderstorm sounds like what we all did as kids.
Well, you know, I had to recreate some of that first season
magic. It's nice and sunny over here. It's like eighty five, so
I'm drinking a cold beer to calm my spirits here. Well, of course,
it's always sunny in California. Why do you think I didn't ask you
about the weather. It's always sunny, it's always warm, it's always yeah
California. Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely terrible, isn't it. And people
hate California. Nobody wants to live here. It's ridiculous. It's not like
we have like fourteen million people here. Oh, it's one of the most
beautiful places I've ever visited. I don't think I could ever live there though.
It's all right. Actually that's a very common thing that many people say
they love to visit, but they really wouldn't have The taxes are pretty ridiculous
out here. We have a massive infrastructure, so I gotta pay for it.
Also. Now, I used to drive semis and every time I'd go
into California, I'd always gets stopped and harassed by the California police. What's
in your truck? What's in your truck? Open up your truck? Is
that where you because some of your oh that's why you did. You got
some of your ideas for was it the ride or something? I swear you
had told us before and behind the door about your truck wriving experiences. Influencing
something in one of your writings. That's cool and all, but this isn't
about me. It's about you, Brooks. Man. I'm going into question
mode already, my bad. Let me go into answer mode now. Nope,
nope, nope. I got you, Brooks, I got you.
So I do have some burning questions that I feel that everyone would benefit from.
So I need you to prepare your brain as we dive deep inside Brooks.
Brooks Brooks head, head head, it's so echoly in here. What
are you trying to imply? I don't know that you got a lot of
space to work with. You got a big burke, I don't know,
ask away, my friend. Absolutely. So, as you know, the
Gray Rooms podcast just hit an amazing milestone. We hit our two million downloads
mark. So congrats to everybody, and I just wanted to know your thoughts
on reaching the two million downloads mark. I mean it shows how much we're
loved as a as a podcast, that we're doing something correct, that we're
making a product that has been downloaded two million times. I mean, that's
definitely a feat. I know that. You know, I've had a couple
of family members maybe make up about a couple hundred thousand of that at least.
But I know you've definitely download a couple of year episodes at least three
or four hundred thousand times. So that's why we've made it as far as
we have today. But you know, I just set up my Spotify playlist
when I go to sleep, just to repeat over and over again. Hey,
it's not a play it's not a play account. It's definitely a download
account. But but but yeah, seriously, it shows that we've made something
that really hits in the podcast community. You know, we see it all
the time with all of our fans on discord and in social media, just
how much this podcast does mean to them, how much meaning you know,
they get out of it, you know, and our interactions with authors show
how it important it is even as an outlet for people to write. So
I mean, for us to hit two million, thank you, I'm not
surprised. And I don't mean that in some kind of like pompous way,
but I'm not surprised. We have a good thing going here. Oh yeah,
absolutely, And you could just you could just see that all the pieces
are clicking every day. We always got everything right where it needs to be.
And that's what I really love about it because it really translates across and
I mean it's amazing. I'm together like Vultron absolutely absolutely. So we've recently
had Gray Con also down in Nashville. We all got together to connect and
meet space. I want to know, have your opinions about us as staff
changed or has it like solidified what you think about us after getting to see
us in person. Well, it's changed and solidified. It's made me feel
more like we're all family because we did get to meet, you know,
in meat space, and it was like it was interesting, like with you
to sit you know and hammer out our season five, you know, figuring
out what stories we needed in all of that and be able to like see
all of the facial expressions and the body expressions that you don't get if you're
just doing like a meeting you know through zoom or something. There's just ways
that you can interact fully in real time that you cannot replicate over the phone
or over over you know, an internet connection. So I felt so comfortable
in that physical space with the whole team that we were just old college buddies
that hadn't seen each other in a while, and we were getting together again
to take care of something. So it definitely solidified to me, like,
yeah, we really do work well together. There was not to me in
my own feeling. There was no weirdness or uncomfortableness, you know, about
anything. It was very intuitive. I felt how we sat together in real
space and dealt with everything together. Oh yeah, I got to introduce you
to the Kroger, our local Midwestern grocery stores. I mean they're all the
same, right, I mean a grocery store as a grocery store. I
couldn't remember a single thing in Nashville that I was like, oh, this
is totally different than where I'm from, other than maybe just the liveliness of
all. Man, there's a ship ton of bars in Nashville. Like every
other building was like a bar. That's what threw me a little bit when
we were walking around downtown. Well, you know, it is the Midwest
Brooks. We don't have anything pretty to look at, so we drink that
makes everything pretty absolutely. Oh yeah, so you've been burning the midnight oil,
doing all this behind the scenes stuff and so much other things. Is
there any particular moment from this current season that sticks out as a favorite moment?
For you. Hell yeah, that's when you joined the team. I
mean, you know, honestly, not to blow smoke up your ass,
but like Zenki was amazing and what he was writing, and he created this
massive, giant world for us, you know, and then due to time
constraints and other obligations, he couldn't work as well with us anymore, and
so he needed to, you know, take a step back from it all
and that feeling of like, oh shit, what are we gonna do here?
Like we're losing like our captain, our co captain of this this boat,
this ship. What's going to happen now? Like I knew for a
while that we kept talking before you joined the team, like oh, you
know, what about Arthur though, Like what about what about bringing him on?
We think you know, he writes this way and he's so interactive.
He knows everything about the characters and the show. He like is already like
a writer without being a writer. He knows too much. Like interacting with
you for the short couple of weeks before you were actually told that you were
brought on, it was hard for me to keep tight lipped because I was
so excited, you know, to know that you were about to become a
part of the team. I've always definitely enjoyed your company and your spirit,
and so knowing that was like a very exciting moment for me. Like I
absolutely felt that, like, even if Zinkie stayed on, there was some
way that we needed to bring you into the fold anyways, because you would
just bring such a bigger, larger body of talents, you know, to
this entire podcast, to the story, to the main characters. So that
was my favorite moment. Well, I appreciate that. I did notice when
we were down in Nashville, which was, by the way, my favorite
moment of the season, getting to meet everybody, so many big personalities under
one roof. I gotta admit I was a little scared to meet you guys,
not because I was afraid of like what I might say or do,
but I was just scared of all of our personalities all being under one roof.
And I was surprised how we all just we just gelled. It's like
we just clicked, like we knew each other forever. Yeah, that's what
I mean about that feeling of it being very intuitive that nobody was like,
well, whoa, whoa, Arthur settled down with your ideas over there.
That's not how we do it here at the Gray Rooms, Like there was
no single possession of the podcast, you know, and this is all Jason's
dream or slash nightmare that has turned into this podcast. This is you know,
by default, this is his podcast. And even Jason isn't like shares
in that, and he's like, what do you have to say about this?
He trusts us as a family to uphold the greater mission of this podcast.
So yeah, even with our big, giant personalities, you know,
interacting with each other, it worked so normally and you fit in immediately.
In my opinion, you are also it seemed very comfortable, I thought,
and you're you know me, you were revealing otherwise, but I thought you
were. You felt pretty comfortable sitting with us and adding you never like stopt
yourself or we're like, oh maybe I shouldn't say this or blah blah blah.
I felt like you were really good at commanding the presence that you needed
to get your new job done with the podcast. So absolutely, we're we're
a big family now. Oh yeah, one big happy family. So I
know that that was the from your favorite moment from the season, But do
you have a favorite story moment from the season, because I know you have
to go through all these stories before you have talked to the authors. You
read them, you really listen to them. Do you have a favorite story
moment? I think one thing that I've learned each Each time, I feel
like I've hit like, WHOA, this story is the best, the story
is my favorite, another story will will you come along? And I'll talk
to that author and then it's like, oh, wait, no, now
this is my favorite. So I think that I've learned, not that I'm
saying that they're all my favorite, but maybe I should stop saying that out
loud because invariably I'm gonna hit upon my next favorite. You know, I
definitely love all of our stories, but to like to pin it down to
a single one, I don't know. I I think what I could say
is this is that in terms of my favorite interview, UM, I would
say that my favorite interview for me was interviewing Matthew Fowler, just because he
was an older gentleman that doesn't necessarily listen to podcasts and doesn't necessarily really partake
in today's you know, type of horror, and yet he was able to
craft a really interesting story that to me brought all this nostalgia back from like
the days of the original Twilight Zone episodes of just like classic horror, and
so talking with him I was I was very excited and happy to share in
this very intelligent and full of wisdom individual who you know, could talk to
me about how he felt about horror and he had decade it's worth of things
to say about horror. So that would have been my favorite interview. Nice.
So would he also be your favorite or not your favorite, but your
guest that you'd want to have dinner and a conversation with? Oh? Absolutely,
yes, yes, yes, yes yes, because again he had just
the style of how he would talk that I really much enjoyed and I myself
just can ramble on and on and on. So to meet someone who has
a lot to say as well, I feel like would be my match.
And so yeah, sitting down to dinner with him would have been a very
very interesting experience, especially because, like I said, the level of wisdom
that I felt that he had would just I feel like our conversation would just
continue to unfold because I would continue to find more questions to ask and you
know, more things to talk about Oh yeah, me and him of message
a few times back and forth on discord, and he always I'm not saying
he throws me a curveball every once in a while. But I definitely have
to sit down and I'm like thinking about my response to him because I'm like,
Wow, there's just this could be going any number of ways. I'm
like, I love it. Yeah, he deserves a proper response to what
he's talking about. Yeah, he is a very high intelligence, high intelligence
to his conversation. Yeah, so Matt, if this ever reaches your ears,
we love you very much. So that kind of leads me into some
questions that I've always wondered about. I got a little taste of it beforehand,
but there's a lot of preparation that goes into behind the door. What
sort of is your process like either getting in your headspace or things that you
have to do before you sit down and you talk with I mean, it's
basically once a week, you're talking to a new author every week, So
how do you prepare for these interviews? So I really have to be dialed
in to the story because I don't know what the author is going to say
to me about the story or what they might reference, and I for sure
want to be able to reference all of the things to ask them questions.
So usually right before, like the day of, and then a few hours
prior to the interview that I have with each author, I will listen to
the story twice just to keep it fresh, the audio of it in my
head, so I can reference things that Jason did or if they mentioned something
they liked about you hearing the story. And then I also will listen to
it as I'm reading the script, and then I will just read the script
by itself to the episode at least two or three times that day. So
like that, just every single It's like taking a test and preparing for your
test. So that almost like I'm the one taking the test and I don't
know what the author is going to say or ask or describe, but I
want to be able to say, oh, but then your character this,
Oh, that's just like this other part of the story where this happened.
And I got to keep it all fresh in my brain to accomplish that.
So, like I said, listen to the story multiple times and read the
script several times the day of the interview is what I do. What would
you say? Is the biggest difference between when you're actually listening to the episode
and reading the script, because I know you've approached me and some other people
a couple of times, because sometimes the script don't match what comes out at
the end, right. Well, it's the same as watching like a movie
version. I think of a book when you're reading the book. So when
I'm reading the script, my brain will make what the character looks like for
me, make what the voice might sound like, craft what the scene looks
like in my head, and then when I hear the story, well,
this is now kind of Jason's interpretation of what the scene looks like. And
then it's the interpretation of the voice actor who plays the character, you know,
who might be more jovial with the words, where in my head he
might have been more serious, you know, something like that. There's a
lot of different nuances. So the difference that I see is like reading the
script first hearing the story, or sometimes I've read the script so long ago,
you know, and then the story comes along. I hear the story
first and go back to read the script. I guess it doesn't work exactly
the same, because then the script is just reminding me of what I heard
in the story, But for sure, when I read the script first,
it definitely always differs. And so that's fun because I get from the script
what I you know, interpret, and then hearing the audio kind of fills
in, you know, and then you know, changes and then ultimately solidifies
the entire story for me. Right And I know you've interviewed myself and Zinky
during this season. Is there a difference between like, when you read a
script from one of our Door authors versus something like me or Zinky pushed out
this season. Is there a difference between that? Oh, for sure.
I mean when you hear an author right their their story, you know,
their their door, it's always a wildly different voice from the prior author.
Every author is very unique and individualistic, and you get all kinds of different
shades in terms of how the story unfolds, how the characters are created,
how much detail versus pulled back looking, you know, objectively at the whole
thing the story is told. But when it's either reading the narrative script that
Zenkie writes or that you write, it's much more dialed in. It's it's
those same characters, those characters that we love that we come back for every
week, Like Bob is Bob always, and Bob will change as he grows
and learns new things. And that's based upon how you know, you and
Zenki m or you know, even in the first season, how Brian had
written Bob, but it's still Bob. And so you get a certain satisfaction
from hearing the different ways that Bob has been written and how he's evolving.
But that's a separate I think, how would you say this, It's a
separate enjoyment from the anthology style of each unique author telling their story. Well,
for me, it's anthology versus a serial A serialization. Oh my god,
I can't come words today. Serialization. It's like pronouncing the college name
of Loyola. I have to say it really slow. Loyola. Yeah,
I can't say that word real fast. But for me, it's the difference
between a what we call one off, like a standalone story, and something
that you know is going to continue forward. It's like, like you mentioned
with the familiar characters, you know these people are going to be coming back
in some shape or form, well most of them in we'll get to that
a little bit later. Rip Todd, yeah, Rip Todd and a few
others, but that that's really the difference in my mind is you can't really
when you hear a door story, it has a beginning in an end,
and then when you hear the frame story, the narrative story that we got
pushing through, you're like, oh, well, what's going to happen next?
What's going to happen next? You know, there's this there's this expectation.
Yeah, you connect with the narrative characters like they're part of your family,
and you're invested in knowing that they're just going to continue going like whatever
their path is. Whereas with an anthology, like you said, there's a
beginning and there's an end, so you will invest in that, but you
know that you're just invested for the short term. You're just invested to see
what the conclusion is. Nobody is like, damn, I've been listening to
Bob for four years to figure out what the hell is going to happen to
him at the end. Because you don't have a family member where you're just
waiting for them to die, you know, you're just you're just every day
you're like, oh, yeah, that's my family member, and what are
we doing today? What exciting stuff is ahead of us. When you listen
to the anthology stories, yeah, you're more like, Okay, I'm invested
in this to the end to see how it concludes. Now, So,
from talking with four seasons of authors from all different walks of life, what
have you learned about the creative writing process? Like? What did you What's
one of the more exciting things is like maybe you didn't realize or what's something
that you've learned about maybe just writing in general that is that you didn't know
before. Ah. So, what I have seen and witnessed is that there
are some authors who they are good at just coming up with a plot,
fleshing out the plot, making a really fun plot that translates well to audio,
like you know, it's a great horror story. There are other authors
who dump their soul into these characters and they are dealing with something of their
own getting that story out, you know, and then it happens to be
a lot of our newer authors. I feel that there's something in their real
day to day life that they're working through, and them writing the story that
we've turned into an audio drama has helped them kind of either overcome something or
to see something new about themselves versus just the authors who are just kind of,
oh, I'm just writing a blockbuster here, you know, I know
this is going to get turned into an audio drama, so boom, here
you go. I wrote this, Here you go. This a new story.
So I've seen kind of the gamut of how different authors function, you
know, And I don't yet know whether the authors who just know how to
just write blockbuster after blockbuster came from that where their early stories were much more
person And I for sure know that even if you've written a hundred stories,
when you write that one hundred and first story, you can still be personal
about it and put put you know, your own fuelings into it. So
I don't mean to detract and say that, you know, established authors don't
do that anymore. But I definitely feel like our newer authors or the ones
that haven't done too many things yet and are working, they're figuring out what
they are as an author. There's definitely a difference to their stories in terms
of just how they craft that ultimate theme that's running through their door basically nice.
So what is it exactly that got you either excited or interested in podcasting
in general? Like, what what started this whole journey for you? Where
did it begin for Brooks big Lee? So I mean I briefly touched on
this, I think, either the last or the second to last behind the
door. But when I was growing up, I listened to a man named
Joe Frank and he was from the eighties and the nineties, and I don't
know if he was AM or FM. I think I heard his stuff on
FM when I was a little kid at night. But he would basically write
stories and then narrate them and then just have just very simple, snut spooky,
but just very dark ambiance in the background. And his stories were just
very fantastical. Like one story was just about a guy who would look out
his window all the time at some woman that he saw on the window of
the apartment building across the street, and then he was just forming in his
mind what the story was behind this woman that he would see every day he
would get glimpses of her through her window, and then ultimately wanting to meet
her and bring flowers to her, but he had to figure out what her
apartment was, and then suddenly he wasn't seeing her in the window anymore,
and so he was afraid that she must have moved. So he was creating
this whole narrative of this person. And I just found stories like that to
be fascinating because he had this Joe Frank had this very steady, deep voice
that he would narrate it as what he wouldn't you know, He wouldn't act
differently for different characters. It was a very steady voice, and he would
just set the mood, you know, with this ambie of this dark ambiance
sound. And so I don't know, maybe it must have been early twenty
tens when I was like, oh, podcasts, that's where they just talk
about shit, right and someone Maybe it wasn't even a person. It might
have just been because I've always loved horror, So I think, I mean,
for sure, No Sleep was one of the very first podcasts I listened
to, and so it might have been like twenty twelve or thirteen. They
were only a maybe a couple of seasons in like three or four, so
they were new, and I was like, what is this these there there's
music and they're acting, but it's scary. It's it's but it's not just
silly monster horror. There's like it's speculative fictions. So it seems like shit
that could happen to me. Starting to get yeah, I'm starting to get
Disney vibes from you. What's this? What's wait? That was? That
was a nightmare before Christmas? Right right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah
yeah, They're like, oh my god, what's this. I was very
tantalized by this new medium of podcasting, and then I realized, wait a
minute, I can download this to my phone and I can listen to it
in the car, on my commute. I can listen to it, you
know, in an earbud while I work. You know, it's very passive.
I can do it while doing other things, but still, you know,
mostly focus on it. And so it suddenly wasn't just that podcasting was
just a bunch of sports guys talking about sports, or a bunch of you
know, people talking about the news and their own version. You know.
I realized what audio drama was, uh, And it was rekindling that love
that I had for Joe Frank And also I listened to Abbott and Costello.
Um Laurel and Hardy were more visual. I used to watch Laurel and Hardy
stuff on TV, but I used to love listening to Abbott and Costello.
My grandma introduced me to them, and she had a bunch of old tapes
of Abbott and Costello, so that I wouldn't call that audio drama. But
listening to people put together entertainment versus watching it has always been a part of
my life and so once podcasting came along and I was ultimately exposed to it
through Horror, I was like, Fuck, I'm all in, let's do
this. Hell yeah, So what would you say is the biggest inspiration behind
the way you interview your guests? Now? Like what did you take from
those podcasts and how do you incorporate it into the way you interview people from
behind the door? I mean, I don't know if I don't know if
I've ever like married the two because with me interviewing authors, you know,
and I didn't just come into the gray rooms like I know how to interview
authors, Give me a job, let me do this, Like this was
an evolution of me just clowning around with the team so that we could just
discuss the story that we made in season one, and ultimately it was season
three where it turned into just me being the solo host and just having just
the author on sometimes the actor. What I have learned from that process,
I think is is how it will. It's that authors have a story to
tell. And I mean that in the way that like, every person has
a story to tell, but our authors have figured out how to put it
down on paper per se what that story is, and I want to hear
that story. But I don't just mean that. Let's just talk about your
horror story itself and then you know, hang up the phone, per se.
It's like, well, why did you write this horror story? What
happened to you that made you think to write this horror story? And so
I've learned how there are so many other things that go into why a person
writes a thing that they write, And I've think I've kind of learned how
to maybe you know, pluck at those strings a little bit to kind of
get more, you know, sound out of that m versus just like I
said, the very generic just like ha ha ha. That was funny how
you made that sound effect, Jason. I love that music jam that we
used to do UM in the first season. We were so happy, we
were so happy. We're like that, that's awesome. I'm doing right you
you um you were part of that season one too. There was an interview.
I wasn't in that particular interview, but yeah, when you did Ice
Station Bravo, you know, I remember just there was no no one knew
what the hell they were doing interviewing you, and I think it wasn't David
o'steele. Also, yeah, interview, it was me, Brian Black,
David o'steele, and Michael Riggs was the host. That's right, that's right.
Michael Riggs is an awesome, awesome person. And oh yeah, I
think he did. He did the writer, Yeah, he did the Copperhart
and a couple other things that are slipping my brain at the moment. But
Michael Riggs was an awesome person. I remember that day and it was just
like hanging out with your best friends, and it was you know, I'll
be honest with you, I kind of wanted to impress people because I was
like, this is my first interview ever, So I might have been a
little bit extra. I don't know. It's a Michael Rigg by the way,
there's no s Oh my god, he's gonna find me now and kill
me. Yeah, Mike, you can forgive me, Please forgive me.
I'm sorry. Duly noted. Yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah, so
the concept back then, I'm just having six people chatting about the story.
I mean it worked, I guess. I don't know. We got a
lot of funny stuff on social media, like it's so boring to listen to
behind the Door and all they do is self congratulate each other and pat each
other on the back. You know, this is not fun. What I
think the big thing was too, is, let's admit it, some authors
are weirdos. So you always had another person there in case the author was
just you know, too far above and beyond what was needed for the moment.
So, well, what does that say about when I interview you though
you're a weirdo, we don't have anyone as a contingency plan. Yeah,
but I'm special that I'm I fall into that special group. I probably need
a helmet too. You're the best weirdo. I love you. It's okay,
Yeah, I know we're thunderbuddies. I get it. There, you
get So what do you What do you tell your friends and family about the
work that you do for the Gray Rooms? Are you just like, oh,
I'm the interview guy or you know, how do they what a synergy
think about what you do. She definitely supports what I do. I commonly
tell people that, you know, all I all I do is interview authors
that write audio dramas for my podcast, and and I help them discuss why
they wrote what they wrote, who they are as a writer, you know.
I mean, I I don't feel like there's anything special I do they.
I mean, I if I just sat and talked myself into a microphone,
that would be very boring, very quickly. I'm not the main center
of entertainment. It's not about me. It's about the person that I'm talking
to, you know. So I commonly tell people that I just happen to
help be I guess like a mouthpiece, you know, for people who are
authors, for people who write that we give a chance for these authors to
talk, you know, like it'd be amazing if you know, the No
Sleep even had the time to do that. I mean, they usually have
five six seven stories per episode a week for them, so that would be
a lot of authors to interview. But just in general, I know the
Wicked Library either does or used to do something similar where they would have their
main story of the week and then they would interview kind of with the author
the author afterwards, but it was very formal feeling and they were very professional.
And I have no idea how professional I sound or not. It's just
I just do what I do. But anyways, I just do tell people
that, hey, I work with this horror podcast. We do a lot
of suspense thrillers stories, not just horror, and my fun job is to
get them to talk about what they did and what they do, and that's
all that it is. I get other people to talk, is what I
tell people. I'm dying to know who is your favorite Gray Rooms character.
I mean, everyone says Bob, so that's like, you got to take
that off the table, because that's not fair. I think I liked Raymond
just because knowing Jason and then knowing how he acted Raymond, it blew my
mind that he was. He played Raymond so well that I, you know,
coming from where Jason had only done like regular radio and other things in
the past. He was never an actor per se. He just blew my
mind with this character Raymond, because listening to Raymond, I felt the sadness,
I felt the confusion, I felt the anguish that he was going through
the entire arc of season one, nobody would say that Jason phoned it in.
And I keep talking about Jason because he made Raymond so real and it
didn't feel like there was an actor playing Raymond. I felt like I was
stuck listening to this guy named Raymond go through what he was going through.
So it's a testament to what Jason accomplished. But because of that, I
think that I connected and it's not for any other reason. You know,
I didn't go through anything that Raymond went through, but I connected so much
with that character just based on the acting alone, and just feel that's that
sadness and connecting to that, like, man, what, what the fuck
is happening to him? He's he's he's desperately trying to hang on to his
sanity throughout all of this torture and all of this shit happening to him.
And you know, he could be a bit of a pussy about certain things,
but he's not. He's just giving into all of the human emotions.
And so to me, it will always be the classic character that really went
through the ringer in the Gray Rooms. You know, like Samantha's arc,
she she survived what she was going through. It made her better. It
made her stronger. She know, she became an equal to Bob, if
not even higher than Bob. You know, Beckett is now a part of
the Gray Rooms projects, so like he overcame that. You know, so
everyone is going through what they need to go through. But to me,
Raymond was still that quintessential human that just got fucked with and experienced, you
know a lot of shit that maybe we feel in real life when we're frustrated
by not understanding what's happening to us in our actual daily lives. And so
that's what I connected to so forever, I think Raymond will be my favorite
character of the Great Rooms exactly. So you mentioned about change. You've mentioned
Bob has changed, You've mentioned the Rooms of change, You've mentioned that Behind
the Door keeps evolving. What sort of changes or implementations are you thinking about
doing for season five of Behind the Door or is that a secret both?
I honestly, because we just finished the season and I just did the last
interview with the episode nineteen author like a week ago from US recording. Now,
I do have ideas for not changing the format but just updating the format,
but nothing that I think is concrete that I can discuss. I you
know, I'm I'm very happy with the format of getting the author on and
asking the author all the things. Um. Sometimes I miss the group session
where we had the author and the actor, so that that could always be
a possibility. Um. Definitely. In general, just having the actors on
doesn't happen very often. You know, we do focus mostly on the author,
and that's that wasn't like anything that anyone sat down and said we should
only talk to authors. That's all we were interested in. It just has
evolved that way because of course, without the authors we would not have the
stories. And yes, without the actors we wouldn't have a story either,
but we would just get other actors. So anyways, I don't know,
I'm saying nothing specific here. I have some ideas and a spiral pull him
out to keep talking if he doesn't want to tell he doesn't want to say
things, he's dancing. I'm tight lip, but still speaking. Yeah,
shut me up now. Oh yeah, I remember a few things that we've
discussed where you dance beautifully around the subject because it hits a little too close
to home. Excellent, you understand my process then, yes, yes,
yes, absolutely, so let's go a little bit deeper. What's your worst
memory at Craig bought from this season, all of them. So, Craig
Bot is a bot we use on Discord to record that are behind the Door
episodes. It we go, we all go into a voice channel and then
this bot will record that interview and then at the end it will give me
separate audio files for east person so I can then produce the show. And
for whatever reason, and especially this season, Craig Bot's like, no,
I'm just not gonna play fair. You know what. Oh, you're deep
in a really good conversation. Fuck you, I'm going to disconnect. So
this bot keeps leaving our server in the middle of an interview, and it
doesn't make sense. There's no one that we can reach out to and complain
about this service. I mean, it is free, so what the hell
are you going to do? So I will say this the interview I did
with you and Cassie, it was one of our narrative wrap up interviews.
We probably talked for a good and this has happened prior to but we talk
for a good twenty minutes, I think, until I ultimately realized, wait
a minute, Craig is not even craig Bot is not even in the voice
channel. We've been talking to nothing. Nothing has been recorded. And we
had a fantastic exchange about a couple of things, and so then we had
to bring craig Bot back into record and then try and backtrack and figure out
what we had been talking about when he left. I keep saying he it
the thing, the stupid fucking bot, and I don't know. It was
like we were like rushing through trying to you know, you can never get
back that organic talk that was missed. Yeah, you had me running through
it. You had me running through a field chasing after a goose. So
I mean badly, that's lost forever. And the audio was there, it
just wasn't recorded. And so we really missed out on an opportune situation because
Craig Bott was like, oh, yeah, whatever, I'm just gonna leave
this conversation. And I don't know why I've googled it. There's no definitive
answer as to why these mishaps happen. Sometimes the Internet is just a fucking
asshole. So hashtag fuck you, Craig. Yeah to season five, we
will do it some other way, all right, now that I got you
all angry and out of sorts. We're gonna play a game. Do you
want to game with me? Brooks? Yes, but a question mark.
So this is a fun game we would like to call would you rather so?
Would you rather, Brooks Bigley, have Todd be the entertainment at your
kid's birthday party? Or would you rather have the warden cater it? So
the warden would be in charge of like the food, food, drinks,
anything that people consume. Okay, so for sure I would rather have Todd
be the entertainment because he's just gonna make stupid sexual innuendo jokes and mostly just
act like a really silly, obnoxious clown, whereas the warden would probably try
to make the kids eat eyeballs and other gross dead body parts, and that's
just not a fun thing I think kids need to deal with. Well.
I mean, the warden could bring a certain form of entertainment to cut and
the cake with the chainsaw. I just feel like he'll do more damage to
the psyche of kids. They will hold on, they will need more therapy
as they get older by interacting with the warden versus just having Todd be Todd
to entertain them. I'm just imagining it, it's hilarious, So you're sadistic.
Yeah, if we stick with our Todd and Warden theme for one more
question, would you rather let the warden choose where you get a new piercing
or let Todd choose a tattoo for you? Okay, Well this is a
dilemma because I mean, clearly the warden is gonna, well, I'm to
get a piercing on some kind of genital area or somewhere very painful. But
you know, I mean that's a once in a lifetime thing that happens and
you just live with it. Odd for sure might pick some asinine reason for
some asinine tattoo that's very visible that just makes me look like an ass for
the rest of my life. So I'm trying to think of what what he
would pick for a tattoo is something sexually? Well, absolutely, I'd dick
on your face a tattoo of Hello Kitty eating a pot of chili. Oh,
I mean, I would rather do that than get certain things pierced.
So if that's well, you know, the Warden's going to be like,
you know, I'm gonna pierce you with this chair through your mid section.
So that's what I'm saying. That's exactly he'd be like, ha ha,
you said piercing, Well, surprise, this is what I'm gonna use to
pierce you. It would be a thing that you wouldn't ultimately think about.
So then yeah, maybe again, I'd pick Todd just because Todd is not
inherently evil, so he's not going to do the worst thing. The warden
is for sure going to figure out just how to absolutely fuck you up in
the worst way possible for the longest time possible. So fuck the warden.
I guess I'd pick the tattoo by Todd. Absolutely fair. So, Brooks
Bigley, would you rather be the next guest in the Gray Rooms or would
you rather be the architects in turn? Ooh, I mean I really love
a strong woman that tells me what to do. I'm just surrounded by them
in life. I feel like so, m that almost might be pleasurable to
have the architect tell he'll be my boss. Well, you remember, remember
right now, you do have cries as one of the people in the Gray
Room. She could tell you what to do. I mean, that's not
a bad thing, especially the way you've been writing her lately. M Oh,
what I pick this is this is a quand D. I think I
would rather be the architect's bitch. Absolutely, bring it on. There you
go. You're going to be the next Steve. All right, we got
we got one more and then we'll wind it down. Would you rather have
to tell Cassie that you have to push back a release deadline? Or would
you rather tell Jason that the audio for his story sucked? Oh? Man,
oh I mean tell telling Jason his audio sucked as a lie. So
I could never do that, So I would rather tell I would rather she's
listening, Fuck you, Arthur. I would rather tell, oh, damn
it, um um, she's listening, she will listen, She's not currently
listening. Somehow I feel in edit about ready to happen. No, all
of this will stay, including you saying that somehow this question didn't make it.
I don't know what happened. We ran out of time. The interview
was only twenty minutes. I'm sorry, I don't know what to say.
I would I mean a man, if I ever said anything to Jason,
it would be like, oh, hey, you forgot to clip this portion
of this or so or that. I've never felt like, why the hell
did you choose to do this sound Why did you choose to do it that
way? I've never felt that way, so by default I would probably just
be like, Ah, Cassie, I can't produce this thing according to the
calendar, please forgive me blah blah blah blah blah. So yeah, I'd
rather tell Cassie something has to be pushed out or some shit. All right,
Well, as we're winding down, I guess do you have any social
media or where can we find you outside the Gray Rooms? Brokes. Oh,
I've never been asked this before. Um, I mean, my Instagram
and Facebook very private. I mean I post family pictures and whatnot, so
you have to like pretty much know me in real life to find me there.
But I can be found on Twitter how do the kids say it?
At author on tweets dot com. I don't have my own website yet at
Brookes dot com. You can find me at Brooks dot Bigley on Twitter,
and I mean I'm not active there because I don't know. I don't really
have much to say publicly other than sharing all of the Gray Room stuff.
I don't like feel like I have anything relevant to add into the pool of
actual funny things that most people have to say. Maybe I should do that.
Maybe I should just start saying whatever the fuck I feel like saying on
my Twitter. I don't know. We'll see, depends on how many of
you at me. Everybody at Brooks Bigley on Twitter, or come join the
Discord. He's on there too, Yes, yes, there you You can
find me on the discord. We were active on the discord for sure.
All right, Well, it was great of you for joining us tonight,
Brooks. I appreciate you taking the time to sit and chat, and I
thank you for sharing your world with us here in the Gray Rooms. Well,
you know, thank you for having me, Arthur. I'm a big
fan of your show and I was really excited that you asked me to be
here tonight. You're always always welcome in my bedroom, and as usual,
the biggest thank you goes out to our fans and followers who listened daily and
spread the good word a Bob, may you languish, lament and love,
but always with love hashtag stay Gray, Take care and enjoy your evening,
bros. Thanks Arthur, and good night folks. By join us each week
after every episode for another interestship of Behind the Door