Hi, my name is Adam Volleridge. I'm one of the producers of American
Hostage. In today's post show, we're going to have a discussion featuring John
Hamm who plays Fred Heckman, Joe Perino who plays Tony Kuritzis, director Sean
Christensen, and write a CD Carpenter. If you haven't already, make sure
to listen to American Hostage on Amazon Music, Wondering Plus, or anywhere you
get your podcasts. This discussion will be moderated by Gigi Hawkins. Gigi is
a writer, director, and self proclaimed audio file. She co hosts the
No Film School and Distorted by Glamor podcasts and has worked with the likes of
Gimblet Media, iHeart the Gotham and Google on their podcasting. Thank you all
for being here, Thank you Adam, and welcome to the American Hostage post
Show. If you're listening to this right now, I highly recommend you actually
listen to the podcast that we'll be talking about, or you can be coming
in blind and it might be a very different experience for you. And before
we get into it, because we're here talking in the audio for Matt,
if everyone could just say hello and their name, so the audience could hear
who's speaking, Hi guys, y'all. Pryn right here, I play Tony
Chritsis, John Hamm, I play Fred Heckman. I'm Cede Carpenter, I'm
the writer. I am Sean Christensen the director. Awesome, thank you.
The seven second delay for live television was introduced in nineteen seventy five by NBC
so that Richard Pryor could host Saturday Night Live without the network getting fined for
all of his obscenities. The delay would also be useful we discovered if a
man were to be shot point blank in the head live on national television.
So I wanted to start with sort of how this story came to be.
I'd love to hear from CD first on how you came across the story and
how you brought it to Sean and sort of what drew you to the story
of American hostage. Sure, I actually grew up kind of hearing the story
and the peripheral as a kid. I grew up in the Midwest. I
grew up in Kentucky, and I just remember being a kid in hearing stories
about a guy who was so mad one day he tied a shotgun to some
other guy's neck. I didn't really think much of that for years and years
and years, and then when I started working with Sean and Criminal Content,
you know, as a true crime company, I was thinking back on all
the true crime that I had kind of experienced and grown up with, and
that was like the number one story that popped in my head. So I
went back to to our research and found that the story was just really compelling
and interesting and amazing, and so I threw a pitch to Sean and I
guess maybe Sean could take it from there. Yeah, you brought it to
me and you had a kind of a made up show first, and then
I was like, can we have something that's you know, a true story.
You brought this. We did a little research on it because it's very
much about like this hostage taker whose feels you know, and we saw this
Fred Heckman character, and for audio, it sounded great to have you know,
a radio reporter being someone in this audio podcast is giving us a handle
on the situation and going through that person. And that was I think how
we knew we could we could make the show with that kind of device and
just the fascinating story of this guy trying to basically negotiate with this hostage taker
to have a man's life be saved. Somewhere in the middle of the whole
thing, they took a national pull of how many people related to Tony Kuritzis
seventy percent of the country related to him the man with the gun? But
I mean, let's be honest about it. Does anyone really root for the
banker? I think it's interesting that you guys chose to tell this story and
audio, and it really makes sense for it to be an audio first story.
Now, John, having had such success in TV and film, what
was it about the audio format that attracted you to this project? A lot
Like just was said, there's a there's sort of a very tee quality to
it's when it is and was originally broadcast on the radio. This was sort
of going back to how it was originally experienced, and there was something exciting
about that. I had been a consumer of podcasts for quite some time,
longer than they've even been around, really, and I remember my kind of
first introduction to something like this was way back when I was a kid listening
to old BBC broadcasts of things like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and other
various and sundry things that were in those days called radio plays, but realizing
that there was a tremendous amount of storytelling that you could put into those and
you could tell stories that you probably couldn't tell from a motion pictures endpoint or
a televised standpoint because it was too expensive, or you didn't have the ability
to show the man shooting the lasers out of his eyes, or you couldn't
get the location or the period. Stuff was so expensive, And so you
could do it this way and still tell the story and still be very rich
and evocative in the words and the pictures that you're drawing, just with an
audio sensibility. So it was it was an exciting opportunity. And the drama
is sort of built right in. So it's pretty cool to see that and
will not even see it. To hear that I should I suppose I should
say, but also to be a part of it, I need these three
questions asked, because these three questions spill it all out. Okay, Tony,
all right? The question three, I'm ready, Tony, do you
regret having killed Dick? Tony? You get that one down for it?
Tony, did you kill Dick? You got that down, didn't you for
it? I need you to answer me now, Tony, is Dick Alive's
Tony? Now? Now you know there's a there's a condition here. You
know, we can't do this interview if you kill him. You told me
that you wouldn't hurt him. What's interesting about the audio format is it is
so intimate because the listener is co creating with the story as they're hearing it.
And I think one of the most interesting elements about this story is the
journey that the audience goes on with Tony. And so I'm curious, Joe,
what was the experience going into this character who starts from a place of
being very much the bad guy, but by the end I felt myself questioning
that, rooting for him, feeling for him. Yeah, I'm it's easy
to um to initially think he's a bad guy or crazy, but I couldn't
judge him that way. I mean, he was definitely Tony at that point.
He was definitely a He's a depressed man, but he's desperate man.
He's angry, sad, and you know, it's fairly easy to connect with
him. On an emotional level. I'd be lying if I said it was
hard to get into his head or his emotional state. But as soon as
I brought up the nine one one call, I connected with him immediately.
I resonated with his pain and frustration. You can tell there was a whole
lot of vulnerability under there at that point. He's definitely a dangerous man.
I mean, for there's sixty three hours, the risk of a blood bath
was astronomical. But as far as the humanity, I feel like I connected
with that. I mean, it resonated with me immediately. And John,
your character Fred, he really was such an interesting channel into sympathizing and empathizing
with Tony. And as we know from the story, many people actually sympathies
with Tony at the time of the crisis, despite him being, you know,
a gun wielding hostage taker. Why do you think that was And was
there anything in the process of stepping into the role of Fred Heckman that sort
of helped you arrive to that place? Well, similarly to Joe, the
last thing you want to do is sort of is judge the character you're playing,
and that's what Fred also doesn't do. He has to deal with this
person as a human being. And I think as soon as we start dealing
with people as a collection of their political ideas or their circumstances or their choices,
we get into very dangerous objectification and talking about people as if they're not
people. I think that's part of the big why the story is sort of,
you know, forty some five years old and yet pretty resonant to the
political landscape we have now. I think we're dangerously close to just kind of
writing the whole section of the population off because they think or they think they
think a certain way. In reality, we actually do have a lot more
in common. And and what Joe was saying about how Tony's mental state and
being depressed and being angry has led him to make these choices doesn't necessarily make
him a nonentity or a non person. He deserves the respect of being heard.
And I think, you know, that's that's sort of an interesting buzzword
of our current cultural manipulation in dealing with one another. But being seen and
being heard actually does affect people's ability to communicate, an ability to kind of
let their feelings be known. And as soon as we stop doing that,
that becomes very very dangerous and very counterproductive as a society, we really just
start walling people off and that's not helpful. Like that great line that Fred
says that Tony was yelling into the void, you know, years before Fred
Heckman or society at large heard him. I mean he felt, you know,
he felt like he was invisible, like the Invisible Man, and that
can be you know, that leads people to do desperate things or act out
of anger or sadness or I didn't just make myself a part of the story.
I pulled the whole station into it with me. I never once stopped
to think about what it might do to them, the ramifications. Once I
had my sights on the prize, I put the whole station, the whole
city really in jeopardy. Tony Kurtzis had been screaming into the void for years
before the world noticed him, before I heard him. But that doesn't mean
I should have let him speak. And it's absolutely a relevant story to today,
and I wonder, and I'd love to hear from the wider group as
well. Do you think that there are enough reporters like Fred Heckman today aka
folks who are really leaning into this unbiased, almost Walter Cronkite types, And
who do you think is maybe closest to that for our I think it's hard.
I think it's really hard because the coin of the realm when it comes
to news or journalism has shifted significantly over the past fifty years from informative to
infotainment. And you know, there used to be a time in the world
when the television went off and the message was go to bed. It's we've
done all we can do for today. And we live in a twenty four
seven, three sixty five globally communicated, instant gratification society now, and part
of what you have to do, what you literally have to do in that
situation, is to be attention grabbing. So I mean, I think if
you look at kind of the people that are doing true journalism, whether they're
on the ground in Kiev or Donetsk or what have you, or breaking stories
are that are important and have some kind of real political or cultural significance.
Yeah, I think there are people still doing that. I just think they're
wildly overshadowed by the much louder group of quote unquote journalists that are really opinion
people who are trying to stir the pot, you know, and we all
know who those guys are. And it's on both sides. It's it's Rachel
Maddowan, it's Tucker Carlson, and it's for a lot of people, it's
Don Lemon, and it's you know, Bill O'Reilly or if he him on
the air anymore, I don't even know. But you know, it's if
you're if you're if you're stated objective is entertainment, you're going to start fudging
facts. Yeah, And I think you know that That's the was the interesting
thing John about this, this character I think we had talked about when we
first talked the a political nature of him. He's just kind of trying to
handle the situation. There's nothing about it. But today it would be politicized,
you know, But at the time I think it was, you know,
and U and actually to John's point two about so much of just being
commentary, now, that was actually kind of why Fred ended up retiring and
leaving WBC in nineteen ninety three, is that he felt as though it was
just becoming commentary rather than news. He eventually was inducted into the Hall of
Fame of Indiana Journalists. I think in like two thousand and five. But
yeah, he put his foot down in it and he left for his journalistic
principles, which is something that I've always kind of respected about him. Colo
enrichment. He's been written say Minnesota BA parent company uper Velt. When I
started working at WIBC, America was rapidly changing. I was doing stories on
McCarthyism, the counterculture, the riots, the oil crisis, Vietnam. But
by nineteen seventy seven, if you tuned into WIBC and heard Fred Heckman,
you didn't get the news. You got stories about leaky ceilings or lost kittens,
maybe the occasional corporate misconduct. I don't know if the news lost me
or I lost the news. One of the most interesting themes that's like brought
up in the series is this idea of the public looking to this event happening,
this breaking news moment, but there's something in human nature almost like rubbernecking,
like we can't look away from whether it's true crime or this breaking news
or our Twitter feeds, and the urgency around that. I'd love to hear
your thoughts, Sean, on how you approached it as a director, like
to create that urgency but in the context of you know, the nineteen seventies
and what was it like, how were you thinking about it? Well,
first of all, you know, we had archive footage from the real incident
that we knew we were going to be able to mix in to the podcast.
So we had this really fun, interesting vice we could always go between
when you know John Joe or getting into things, when their characters are getting
any things. We could always float into a real life firsthand witness of the
event and float into real life reporters, and sometimes we go is an easter
egg, we go to Fred Heckman reporting the real Fred Heckman in the podcast.
Sometimes is kind of a little easter egg to do that. And by
the way, I thank big thank you to w IBC for providing that to
us and also wish TV for helping out on all of this stuff. And
so once we knew we had that, we were able to record the podcast
knowing that we could always jump into that and always get that feeling of being
in that era through that archive footage. Well, I've known him on life,
I've been troubled him on life my whole life. All I ever wanted
was the story, the big one, the one that puts you on the
map, the one that takes the country by storm and hits the national zeitgeist,
capturing America's hearts and minds. That was the dream, my dream,
And then one day, like a turbocharged V eight DND five hundred, the
dream finally hit me. And all I can say to that is be careful
what you wish for. So one of the things Sean you mentioned, and
John as well, you both have spoken about your love for the film's network
in Dog Day Afternoon. Are you both Sydney Lumette fans. Yeah, yeah,
I know who the biggest Sydney Lumette fan is on this one as well
in CD, and we made a pitch deck on toos well, we don't
have six hours to talk about Latte, which is no, we don't,
but you do have the poster behind you. You need at least a week
to totally met with with CD. Yeah. Well initially, yeah, initially,
the pitch for the show was it was a sort of a mix for
me if three films of Network, Dogy Afternoon and Fails Safe And I actually
kind of envisioned Fred Heckman mostly as Henry Fonda from as the President and feels
safe, just someone who is extremely calm and rational and just in a horrific
position and tries to seek the humanity in that movie in the Russia than in
this show twenty critzes. So lament was my primary influence. We also looked
at other seventies films that taking a poem into three and things like that.
But yeah, hopefully the limit influence comes through in some way, or I
feel like I may have failed in my job as a writer. And I
do think part of it is, you know, there's something even though Sidney
Lumette was making movies well into the century, that part of him is sort
of inextricably linked to the seventies, and a lot of what his movies and
the tension that they create draws upon is that kind of analog technology and analog
flow of information where so much of the pickups in films that have been mentioned
are because information travels in meaning real seventies time, Meaning if somebody calls somebody
in the phone rings and Nobe picks it up, it just keeps ringing,
and there's something super quaint about that. But there's also something, if you're
old enough to remember that super frustrating and super tension building about that too,
So you know you can extrapolate that. You know, the dog days obviously
one of those things where just stuff is happening and no one seems to know
what's going on. I think that our our podcast, our story here has
a lot of that too, where you had mentioned the sort of rubbernecking sense
of what's happening because you're you're listening to this on the radio, thinking this
can't be real, this is really happening. Oh my god, what do
I do. I can't quote unquote look away turn off the radio. I
like to have to know what how this ends. And I think there is
something really, you know, kind of old school, which is a terrible
term. I hate using it, but I just did. But but sort
of familiar yet yet distant, about that separation of the time we have now,
which is if you want an answer to a question, your three clicks
away from it, and if you needed, you know, a resolution to
anything, you can you can you can get it and it can be delivered
tomorrow. And it's it's that's just not possible. It's just not in the
realm of possibility back then. Yeah, I get nostalgic for it. You
know, right. And even by the way, Rees, I was listening
to some Blink one A two song and they were like the lyric you know,
Star sixty nine, What the hell is that? You know, and
it's just kind of like that was kind of fun stuff, you know,
Yeah, to figure out all those things on those phones and now that's all
gone, you know, getting lost in the car where you're going. We're
just bar bets, you know, like the idea of yeah, I bet
you couldn't name the last five Academy Award winners like I can. I just
look at it right now. Yeah, we have to force ourselves to not
use Google and do those bar bets and find our way to our destination.
I think that'll be good for the brain. Yeah. The show actually,
I think forces the listener to almost live in this world of the seventies,
of this delayed gratification and delayed information and then understand the tension there. And
well, definitely as a listener, I was piecing together what was going on
and almost figuring out this puzzle. I never became overwhelmed to the point that
I like checked out because and I think that all the credit goes to UCD
for Bill being out a world in a story that had clear worlds within it,
stakes within each different world. Though. I'm sure you had to kill
so many darlings when writing this script, especially knowing what actually went on in
real life. So I'm curious, So, what were some of the most
painful things that you had to cut out when creating this script? To be
honest? Well, thank you for the compliment, but also we didn't.
I feel like we didn't really have to cut out that much. I mean,
the biggest challenge I think of the show was just trying to figure out
how we were going to do eight episodes of essentially two people talking on a
telephone. Some of the conversations that are in the show are taken directly from
almost transcripts from the actual dialogue, but I would say maybe eighty five percent
of them or not. But there are some differences between reality and kind of
what we did with the show. You know, we lovingly exaggerated the truth
at points, but I think that we did kind of keep to the spirit
of what actually was happening. The relationship between Fred and Tony is real.
I mean, you can listen to the actual tapes of those two and I
was lucky to since that Sean didn't really feel like we had to cut a
lot of bit Like Sean and Garbone, Adam and the producers were all very
kind of cool with what was on the page and just fleshing it out from
there. And then again the performances in the sound design, I think really
just kind of kick it up. You know, the writing is what it
is. But you know, without Joe and John and Carla and Dylan and
Becky and James and our incredible casts, I don't know if it would really
work. I want to get to the sound design in a moment too,
but I am curious, and I'm sure the listeners are curious as well.
What ended up happening to Tony and Fred in terms of their actual relationship,
we don't really know. So at the end of the show, obviously Tony
is found not guilty. He did end up being institutionalized for a few years
and then was released in nineteen eighty eight, and as far as we know,
lived a very quiet life afterwards in Indianapolis. He didn't cause any problems,
there were no more incidents. He died in two thousand and five,
and I believe Fred died in two thousand and one. We don't know if
they ever met up. We don't know if they had a real relationship afterwards,
but we do know that Tony always held Fred in high regard and definitely
credited Fred as the person who really kind of got him through that that specific
crisis. Can I just say something here, We didn't really cut any almost
anything out of the phone conversations between Tony, Criticis and Fred, which is
like fifty percent of the podcast. And I have to just want to contell
that the listeners here that John and Joe I don't believe you guys met each
other before we did this, right, so he did not, So we
do this. We taped this in a couple of days, and they're our
trusty producer here made it so that John and Joe were together, I think
for that final day, just kind of by themselves. He kind of like
that. We stripped everyone else out and it became just you guys, and
I remember watching you guys on the zoom. We recorded this virtually and just
because also I don't remember this John, but Joe was like in a closet,
do you remember, he was like a deep pandemic. So we were
very we were very isolated. I remember, like none of us could see
Joe, Like we literally couldn't see him, and he was like this reflection
face off the iPad, and John's kind of sometimes responding like as Fred and
I feel like we were all afraid of Joe a little bit. And and
but just the way that the walking on eggshells the John you're doing, and
also the fact that Joe's just like in this dark, weird closet, like
underlit by an iPad, looks like a horrible digital campfire thing all by choice.
Yeah, yeah it was. I didn't want to. I want it
to be in the shadows. And I want you to open up the phone
lines. I'm going to show you what I'm talking about. I want people
to call in and to tell you that they see what I'm doing, that
they see what I understand. Well, Tony, we're not set up to
take calls at the Swear to god, Fred, you are hitching to hear
that gunshot, aren't you. Aren't you You want them to just as much
as I do. You have to to tell me no, Look, I
don't want him dead, Tony. That's not the number. Motherfucker's brains all
over the receiver so Argul Harris got damn talks Tony. Do you think I'm
gonna ask again if you would like to call into the station. Our number
is five five zero six three nine. What was it like recording in the
pandemic? So you were in closets? Was everybody in a closet? I
was? I recorded in my hallway closet. And um, I mean for
me, it was such a gift to have this, this juicy project with
loved ones and working with you know, the cream of the crop, mister
Hamm and everyone, Sean CD and just to kind of channel see a lot
of the things I think Tony was going through. You know, I resonated.
It resonated so quickly with me because it's a lot of things I was
going through in the pandemic. Confusion, fear, frustration, anger, There
was social unrests. Everyone felt like shit, you know, and so I
just channeled all of that. It was the great opportunity to channel all of
that through this project. And it was a great catharsis. I mean truly,
it's truly a gem of a highlight of the entire pandemic. Was I
always a part of your plan here? Yes, sir, You're the best
in the business, fright, just like I'm the best in the business.
And I tell you what, I've been here and all these reports all day,
and every one of them calls me crazy, every one of them calls
me mentally ill. And that's the biggest live or hear in my life.
I have every single one of my faculties, and I have each one sharp
as attack. I am not insane. I do not need psychological probing and
I do not need to be counseled for my course of action. I am
a man and man iss hale who had everything taken away from me. And
I'm fighting you saying don't know when to fight. I know how to fight.
I know how to rig up a shotgun, and I know how to
rig up a bomb. And I'll say it right now, this was a
premeditated act. I'll say that because I know, I know. I got
cops right outside who keep telling me I can get out of this about pleading
sanity, and I am not inside. All right, Tony, all right,
I believe you, John. You did something before. Love is a
crime. That's a different kind of thing, though, um yeah, that
was different. Love as a crime was a little more of a reenactment kind
of base still based on true story. H and I had done another one
called The Big Lie after this that was another just scripted story, but this
was the I think this was the first that I had done, and it
was it was nice to just to sort of bring it all full circle too,
Like it was really nice to have Carl look at Gino, who I've
known for years and worked with before, and Dylan and Becky Baker who have
known for years and haven't had a chance to work with before. But like
it was I think a testament to how good the material was that it happened
to draw all these people. I mean, that was the exciting part of
it. And having to also get to tell the story of what was actually
going on in this guy's life while he was having to deal with this extraordinary
situation. You know, that's kind of all of that is really value added
in the sense of even if you look at Walter Cronkite was mentioned before.
You know, I'm sure Walter Cronkite, I don't know, drank too much
or had you know, a bummer of a home life, or kicked his
dog once or something. You know, like we set these people up as
these perfect individuals and no one can live up to that, and you know,
and that's and that's kind of an important thing to remember. Again,
if we're talking about personalizing human beings instead of holding them up as objects or
holding them up as paradigms of behavior, then you know, again we're really
missing something about being human. In terms of Fred's character, John, was
there anything that you think you would have done differently in this situation or was
there anything specifically that surprised you about how he handled it? Um that I
would have done differently? Not chicking a call? Probably I would have been
you know, yeah, I don't know, you know, and ring and
ring, and nobody will as I don't. I honestly have no concept of
what that existence even is. You know. It's it's so bizarrely out of
any kind of experience that I've ever had, you know. I mean,
we all like to think, like, oh, if there was a bank
robbery and I was there, I'd take the gun, and but most mostly
human beings freeze and they get freaked out and they're terrified, and then probably
I would probably be in that world as well, they freaked out, terrified
world. So I honestly don't know. You know, that's part of the
fun of getting to do what we do on a daily basis is I don't
have to talk to anybody off the ledge. I can just read what it
says on the paper and then they read what they say back, and I
know how it's going to end, thanks to CD. So. Actually,
one thing that I think is always interesting when thinking about specifically scripted audio is
in the performance. And this is a question for Sean. In the performance
of talent, like, you can't rely on the gravitas of these good looking
faces, but rather, you know, it has to be a performance that
comes from the voice. And again we're co creating with the listener who's building
these images in their mind, which is why I think the power of audio
is so why it is so powerful as a storytelling method. So, you
know, having worked in both film and audio, Sean, how do you
approach directing from this perspective and also as a follow up in such a high
stakes scene after scene, how did you let there also be some like breath
in the story? Well, I don't know if it was a breath and
there wasn't a breath in the recording, I'll tell you that I think we
just kind of went from one scene to the next in a pretty quick fashion.
But yeah, the cadence of someone's voice is important, and and you
know, I kind of know I've known Joe for a very long time,
and of course we all know John's voice. I know that they have their
voices are just very different and very compatible in that way. So you know,
that was something we could just kind of build around. Then when you
get into other characters, you do actually have to find certain voices that,
as they say, cut through like a knife, you know, or you
do have to find boy, for example, James O'Connor also, which is
the opposite of that. He sounds like Orson Welles Dick Hall, and he
has a very baritone voice. And so I try to mix and match the
most different voices possible around the star, you know, in order to make
them be separated, because if someone listening to this in a car or on
their headphones or something, they need to know where they are a little bit
more than in a TV show, you know, geographically and in the situation.
So having those kinds of different voices is important. I'm not sure that
I answered your question completely. No, Well, that's one very important aspect.
Yeah, that's a perfect segue because I hope we can geek out about
audio. Now. You know, Sean, you also have a background in
music. And one of the things that I felt this podcast in particular stood
out in terms of scripted audio is the layers of sound design, specifically moving
from scene to scene, moving from media to being in the room with people
in a way that like, again, I never felt lost. I was
always with you in terms of where you probably wanted me the listener to be.
So the way you even talked about casting voices sounded very musical to me,
and I'm curious, like, can you talk a little bit about the
sound design process, how you built these scenes through sound. Well, the
first thing I did was I brought on Brandon Jones, who I had done
Blackout with UM and he did a phenomenal job with Blackout, which is a
fiction podcast a couple of years ago with Rommy Malick. He came in to
do this and he built out the newsrooms and all the different spaces. And
when you know you have him someone who kind of his sound sounds, you
know, very three dimensional, then that's a wonderful thing to have. And
then again with the archive footage. Being able to blend that in was really
fun. And then when we heard it, we didn't have John does these
voiceovers to kind of also situate us. We didn't have that when we first
recorded. John came back and thankfully came back and did a few little of
these voiceover bits to kind of help us know where the where Fred's head was
at and where we were at, you know, sort of began geographically or
in the story time wise. You know, you can kind of jump ahead
in time through this these little tiny voiceover handles. You just don't want to
overuse them, So that was something that we implemented a little later on.
Actually that felt like the breath in the story, like the time where the
listener, the audience could rest on us. Those voiceovers are also, I
think, sort of an extension of the epistolary nature of the piece, you
know. I think we approached all of this very much as sort of like
a an audio version of a film or a TV show, you know,
really making it as immersive as possible to make up for the fact that there
is no visual But something you mentioned earlier, Gigi, was this idea that
the audience creates the story along with you, which I think is also similar
to the novel, and especially those early novels which are themselves epistolary, They
often take the forms of collected journals or collected letters. And so by setting
this story in an audio medium with this radio element built into it, and
then also giving the audience that breath and these moments where Fred is going to
directly addressed them in chase thoughts with them, it is all sort of just
of a piece and an extension of that original idea. And then, in
terms of how you guys were recording, because this was in audio, did
it end up feeling more like a stage performance? And this is a question
for John and Joe specifically, how did that feel? Wasn't nice to switch
it up from the stop and go of television and movies. It was absolutely
I felt it was a stage performance. I mean it was. I was
sweating, and I mean it was everything in that little little closet of mind,
but so satisfying and working with John and just being there in the moment,
giving and taking feeding off of each other. I mean it was incredible.
Yeah, I mean I would say it's had It certainly had a lot
in common. It was it was very live for one of a better word,
you know, but it was it was like doing a lot of live
performance as I did at the beginning of my career, and that there was
not an audience. Uh so, uh it was it was a little different
to not have an audience to feed off of sort of feel that energy.
But yeah, you know, there was very much a sense of immediacy with
it. And I've had a lot of friends that have done these sort of
zoom productions of plays and I always think that sounds so weird, and then
having done this, going I don't know, I guess, I guess I
can see how that's a that's a thing. Was there anything that surprised either
of you guys about the performance itself or you know, because you were acting
this way surprising? I mean, at the end of the day, it
was. I would say that when I was done, I was exhausted.
So yeah, there was a lot of there was a lot of mental and
sort of emotional energy that went into it. That was a little surprising given
the fact that you don't have the sort of ramp up that you have when
you're doing a live performance. You don't have to put your costume on and
makeup and thirty minute call and fifteen and ten and five and places and all
of the ramp up that's there is not there. You're just sort of like,
oh, I'm sitting in this weird booth and or closet or what have
you, and staring at a tiny box that I can't see because I don't
know my contacts and you and you go, all right, I guess I'm
just gonna do this. But part of, you know, being in that
world, you are very kind of enclosed in particular, and it's it's certainly
an interesting experience, that's that's for sure, I guess. You know,
but you guys don't have to do like the marks and the blocking and the
company moves and the three hours or three days between you know, scenes and
stuff. So is that part of what makes it, I guess super exhausting,
you know, because there's no I mean, it's nice to not have
that stuff. But then also if you when you guys were doing it all
in a row, I remember thinking, you know, it's it's a lot,
you know they were doing they were doing the full scene every time.
Wow. Yeah, I mean for me, it was exhausting, like I
said, But in the best in the best way, because yeah, we're
doing the entire scenes and letting it all rip, and it's there's no break
in the setups. So it felt that much more like just as live performance,
stage performance. A lot of freedom there. Yeah, for sure.
What has surprised everyone about audience's reactions because the show is out in the world.
The show was advertising Times Square, which was so cool to see.
How how are people receiving and reacting to the show. My experience, people
are loving the show or absolutely loving it. I mean, I'm grateful that
I have some you know, friends and family close confidence who give it to
me straight and they're absolutely blown away by the quality and the performances. Just
overall. They were lost in the world and along for the ride, and
they absolutely loved it. Yeah, I was. I was pleasantly surprised as
well. You know, you you nobody, nobody sets out to make a
bad movie, so you know you think, Okay, well, I don't
know, I like it. I hope someone else will like it. I'm
going to put it out in this ocean of content and see if anybody finds
it. Even but we have had an incredible We had incredible support from Amazon
first of all, who immediately sparked to it, which was which was telling
in some way, shape or form you and you think, okay, well
now this is this is meaningful in a real way. And yeah, so
that that helped it rise above the noise. And then it was yeah,
you know, I got an email from my agents saying like, this is
number one in America. Cool. And then I kept scrolling down the email
and it was like and the UK and the Netherlands and Australia and Spain and
this and all these tear I was like, whoa, Okay, I guess
somebody's listening somewhere. So yeah, and it is a testament to Amazon,
who backed us Amazon Music and Wondering backed us all the way and done a
wonderful job. And it's still we're still, you know, seeing what the
response is. I know, I don't ever read really much when something goes
out there in the world. I'm always kind of terrified. But then I
get these text exchanges from these guys, you know about where this and that
and the other time, I go, god, I just I can't even
you know. So I'm a little bit bashful that way, but um,
well, it'll hopefully it'll keep growing and we'll keep keep finding finding its audience
as well. I think one of my favorite things is I'm a psychopath,
so I'm the opposite and look up everything about it online. But there have
been responses from people who knew Tony charts As personally or who had interactions with
him, and they're very um. They seem to like the show a lot,
and you know, to hear their stories about how Tony acted with them
and who he was as a person as always interesting. I've read so many
about how, you know, there was a young woman who when she was
nineteen it didn't have a car. Tony would just drive her to work every
day just because he could, and he would, and he was just such
an interesting, i think, fascinating personality. And basically all these people who
had known Tony before the incident unquote the incident were essentially shocked that he did
it, and it seemed to them as though it was very out of character.
Well, it's very human. We all go to that place. He
just went there, let himself go there. We just saw somebody to go
to that place at the oscars. I mean, you know, it's like
it's it's we're in a very strange and elevated time of people feeling very disoriented,
and I think without a paradigm to fall back on, I think when
you start removing all of those guardrails, people tend to go off off piece
a little quicker. And I think that that's that's a symptom of where we
are. And it's a real bomber, you know. I think it's it's
a it's a hallmark of a society that's that's lost its way in a in
a major way. Yeah, I hope that this story can help people from
all sides of the I'll find comfort and in the frustration, and I hope
there's like a cathartic element to it. Um Now, as we're wrapping up
here, every time I finish working on a project or finish writing a script,
all of a sudden a new idea floods in, And so I'm curious
what's next for everyone who's on this call, and what types of stories are
you itching to tell as you move forward? Well, I have Top Gun
two coming out, and may count awesome counsel a little bit. It's a
little bit, you know, I don't know. We shot that movie in
twenty eighteen. So it's uh, it's finally Uh yeah, talking about the
lead grab. It's very true. Um yeah, you know, I mean
it's it's I was just asked this question last night by a producer friend of
mine who's looking to do a project. I don't know. Is the short
answer. It's it's I'll know it when I see it is hopefully how you
you can really answer that question. So that's basically what I'll say. I'll
know when I see it, and hopefully you will all see or hear it
when I see it here I don't know. And in the meantime, we'll
go watch Top Gun two. You'll be able to find that, how about
you, Joe? Uh yeah, Well right now, I'm I'm on Nantucket,
the Beautiful Island. I'm Nantucket doing a period film, Revolutionary War,
a film about the founding fathers of Vermont, Ethan Allen and Seth Warner and
such, and uh yeah, this place is just amazing Nantucket. I've never
been here and it's just phenomenal. I'm enamored with it, and I mean,
telling the stories just anything that, Like John said, you know,
I know it when when I feel it. I mean, American House is
just definitely up there. I mean, I don't think I've had something as
as just you know, dense and uh and just meaty, something that truly
resonated in a long time. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to to collaborate
with these guys and look forward to doing more in the future. This is
the thing, gig, when you ask that question, it's like someone works
really hard on a project and then the first question is, what's next.
Oh, you just poured years and years of your life into this. People
put it in and yeah, and they do all these things and you really
sit and it's like, so, what's next. Yeah, We're doing a
couple more of these scripted podcasts, So that's what's next for us. I
don't know how much I can divulge other than that, but we want to.
We're doing more of them, and uh, you know, I don't
know. Well. The fun thing about, you know, kind of where
we are in this world of endless content is that it feels overwhelming in a
lot of ways, but it also feels kind of freeing in other ways,
in the sense of there's so many different ways to tell a story that have
really been explored over the course of this pandemic, Like you know, we
briefly touched on it earlier, but the idea of like, well, I
don't know, we'll see how this comes out, and I guess we'll all
go into our relative closets and spaces that we won't breathe on each other,
and who knows what's going to happen. And then of course what happened was
that something great happened, and that's you know, that's kind of that's affirming
in some way, I think, And it feels like we're coming out of
the mist a little bit and hopefully we've learned a little something, but also
hopefully we've taken that thing away with us too. Of like you know,
you don't necessarily need all of the all of the trappings and all of the
this is and that, So you can tell a pretty effective story if you
just are you know, committed to it and really put the work in.
Yeah, and talk about somebody who's put the work in CD. You know,
this has been something that you've been thinking about since you were a kid,
and to have it come to life, I guess maybe I won't put
the pressure on you to answer what's next unless you want to I'm kidding,
but if you're looking, we've got a guy. Yeah, yeah, I
mean I don't know I as a writer. You know, I've got a
bunch of scripts lying around, and so it's kind of just said the whims
of which producers and financers say yes and and the ones that I'll say no.
So m hopefully someone will say, but I you know, I'm going
to work with Sean and criminal content, with some more stevend development which I
won't talk about. You just have to stay tuned on this feed and someday
something will pop on your And one last question for you, CD having this,
you know, I think we can call it your baby, this idea
that came from a long time ago. Was there anything that you got to
take home to like your family, your parents and say, like look what
I made, mom and dad? Like remember when I was obsessed with this
hostage crisis and like now I'm a screenwriter. Now it's all off. What
was that moment I got to explain to my parents what podcasts were, which
is that should be another podcast? Right? Yeah? I actually long form.
Yes, I actually had to burn the podcast on to send like blank
CDs for some of my relatives. Oh, gosh, but really yeah,
but wow, I don't know, I mean just the entire experience, I
mean, Sean and Crima, content, everybody involved where they were just like
terrific. I feel like I didn't get hardly any pushback on ideas or if
people had notes, and the collaborations that came out of that I think just
improved the show in a pretty amazing way. So um, I don't know.
I guess the Dobe answer is the experience was the best part, but
yeah, it really was. Yeah. These guys are the hardest, like
the hardest working guys creators that I've really ever experienced, and they're They're amazing.
So well, congratulations everyone, and thank you for taking the time to
geek out with me about audio and dissect this story. And I know that
the listeners will be thankful for you guys taking the time to like help digest
this. You know, if this was a constant binge, this was probably
a much needed decompression from what they just heard. So so thank you,
thank you, thank you, thanks very much, thank you all for listening.
Make sure to listen to American Hostage on Amazon Music, Wondering Plus,
or wherever you get your podcasts.