Speaker 1: Hello and good morning everybody.
Speaker 2: Good morning. This is Ali Walker.
Speaker 1: Hi Ali Walker. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing okay.
Speaker 1: How are you fantastic? Did you get your writing in
yet for today?
Speaker 2: Did I give her? Oh? Yes, I woke up at
four and got it going. I'm all ready to go
back to death.
Speaker 1: Oh you're a morning writer as well. I've got to
be up you know. I've got to be behind that
pin by seven am. That's my discipline. Oh yeah, seven am.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, I have to wear myself out.
I have to go run or go exercise, get all
my errands done. Then I usually hit writing around noon
and do it till about four or five.
Speaker 1: So when you go out there like that so early
in the morning to get the running in and things,
is that a form of transitioning in the way that
we all go through mindsets, especially creative people. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I find that if I kind of wear my body
out a little bit more so I'm not Otherwise I
get kind of hyper and I want to move around
and I can't sit so and I have.
Speaker 2: So. Yes, that is a transition.
Speaker 1: It's so funny you say that, because people when they
when they zoom wee, they go why don't you turn
on your camera because I am moving all over the place.
I don't want to distract anything that you were saying.
You don't need to see me moving around on that camera.
Speaker 2: No, I know me too, I'm like walking around as
we seek. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, one of the things that I love to talk
about is the idea of a story. You have got
the light Runner, When did it arrive inside of you?
Readers don't understand that it will hit you when you
least expect it.
Speaker 3: Oh man, you're really you're really keyed in. Yeah, I'll
tell you what was weird. I took my boys to
this is like in twenty fourteen. I took my boys
to Guitar Center because they're both the two older ones
are both guitar players.
Speaker 2: And sitting in the parking.
Speaker 3: Lot, waiting and sitting, and I had just written and
put out my first film, and I say first because
I want to do a second narrative. And I started
thinking about sci fi because I love you know, I
love for Lescott's stuff.
Speaker 2: I loved Later Runner, I love all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So I was just sitting there thinking about it, and
it just kind of popped in my head and I
was like.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I just.
Speaker 3: Kept thinking about it and I kept so in twenty fifteen,
I wrote I wrote it as a pilot, and then
the next year I wrote the second and third one,
and then I pitched them in twenty seventeen in Europe
and here to the platforms, all the platforms.
Speaker 2: I sent it to and nobody picked it up.
Speaker 3: And then I don't know, it was just kind of
in me, so I kept going, I just got to
write it.
Speaker 2: I just got to write it. I have to just
get it out, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1: Wow, see the process of being creative and the time
that's required for it to come out. Because I'll talk
with songwriters they say, yeah, I've had this guitar riff
for about fifteen years and I finally played around an
album and saying, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was weird. It was weird.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I kept thinking, somebody's going to pick this up.
Speaker 3: It's great, and everybody could kind of get it, but
not really. And then I was just like, I'm gonna
just do it.
Speaker 2: I'll show you. You know. It was like I could
do it. I got it. So it was really it's
a really weird way.
Speaker 3: I mean, I did that with a red little film
called far More, which is on Apple at all these
platforms now, with Adrian Grenia and selble Blair, and it was.
Speaker 2: The same thing.
Speaker 3: I told myself a story like in the middle of
the night, and I woke up and wrote it.
Speaker 1: Wow. Creating the characters for your stories, did they play
out in the way of you saw a picture of
somebody and say, Okay, I'm gonna write a story about
this one, or how do they come to life inside
your imagination?
Speaker 3: I think they're an amalgamation of various people and myself
and the qualities of those people that I kind of
like wanted to explore or saw in the characters. And
I just was like, oh, it's like that, you know,
it's kind of like acting. And you know, you used
to always ask me, like, how did June install? She
was on Sons of Anarchy? She was this terrible person, right,
She's a psychopath that I played, and I just remember thinking, well.
Speaker 2: I've got a few that I just kind of put
it together.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you guys one like Captain Oliver Haskell here,
I mean, I mean it's one of those things where
you go, why do I feel like I know this.
Speaker 3: Guy because you do, because you probably do, because you
probably do. It's sort of these enigmatic people that you
can't quite put.
Speaker 2: Your finger on, and everybody thinks they're wonderful and they're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was doing some research on who are the
people that we see in our dreams? And what came
up in the research was the fact that it's everybody
you walk beside that comes back to your imagination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, I think so.
Speaker 3: I mean that's why I say it's an amalgamation of
all these people that are in my life, you know,
these little bits and pieces.
Speaker 2: That I string together of various characters.
Speaker 3: That I've known, and they're there to represent something in
the story, aren't they. I mean, whether it's you know,
like in Haskell's case, you know, well, I'm not going
to give that way, but you know what I mean,
if people are there to represent joy or you know,
like for me, doctor Ella Kramer represented innocence in finding it,
you know, and her ultimate journey was to find out
who she was.
Speaker 2: So the representations of you know, of I don't know.
Speaker 3: Archetypes or I don't know what if you'd call it,
of people who need to find this out or to be.
Speaker 2: This so that the story can be held forward. Does
that makes sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, it does because when it comes to emotions,
I mean, you being the writer, you being the original
seed planter. You've got a book here that physically haunts
the readers. You had to feel it before I feel it.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, that is exactly right.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because it always goes back to
acting because I took from a very good teacher named
Harry mastro George in Los Angeles, and he would always say,
you know, what.
Speaker 2: Was it Beethoven said?
Speaker 3: They asked Beethoven something about, you know, how he wrote
his symphonies the fields or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the symphony.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, But he said, I don't write what
I see. I expressed what it felt like for me
to see it. So you have to feel it and
then you convey that. So yeah, I think that's writing too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what do you do with those people that say,
quit being a drama queen? My god? Because so many
people just go, you're too emotional, you're too attached. Stop it.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, you know, I'm just you're you're you know.
It's like Jessica Rabbit. I'm just drawn that way.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Ali Walker coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
with actor and author Ali Walker. Is there a sighte
of you that you would like to turn the light
Runner into a binge watch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean that's what it was intended to be in
the beginning, you know. And I have the second one.
I'm writing the second one. There's three in the series,
and I'm kind of figuring out, you know, I haven't
really got it all, but I'm kind of figuring out
where that arcs to. But yeah, definitely, I mean, you know,
my well, I have to say my first love is literature.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I grew up reading, like being a bookworm and reading
and reading everything, you know, as a child, and I
love to read, and I think I write more. Well,
I'm kind of a combo writer because these, as you
can see, my chapters are fairly short and very visual
like a film would be.
Speaker 2: But I also like scenes in a script.
Speaker 3: But I also love to use my words to go
on and describe and describe and describe, so.
Speaker 2: Everybody gets down to the iddy bitty bitty bitty biddy right,
And I like that. And the only place that you
can really do that is in books.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that you talked about how short
your chapters are, and the reason why is because on
this side of the page. I like that because once
I finish a chapter, I feel like I've accomplished something
and that really does get inside my head.
Speaker 4: You did it, That's how I felt writing it. I
was like five pages, yes, take a victory lap.
Speaker 1: Are you like me? Then when it's time for that chapter,
it's a voice you hear in your head and heart
that says you're done, You're done, put it away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. I'm like, okay,
you have You know, That's why books are hard for
me at.
Speaker 2: Night, because I'll be like, I holy have thirty pages.
It's one in the morning. But I can do.
Speaker 3: Like reading and reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I feel like, okay, stop here, You've done it,
your missionished complete tonight.
Speaker 1: What do you pull from from other creative people around you?
Do do you learn new lessons of the trade, Because
I mean, that's one thing about for writers. We are sponges.
We take in so much and then we go play
with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think you know, the editors that I had
really helped me.
Speaker 3: I mean, they really helped me see things differently and
take a different you know, sort of have a new
perspective on how to tell the story and what was
important and what wasn't.
Speaker 2: I mean, each and every one of them.
Speaker 3: You know, you learn from a lot of people, and
I learned from you know when I would would read
a passage to my girlfriend or something and they'd be like,
I don't get this.
Speaker 2: What does this mean? And I realized, oh.
Speaker 3: Okay, they don't get that. You know, I need to
make that clear. I just think it's about perspective. I
think other people who have been doing this, you know,
like yourself or somebody who's been doing it a lot
longer than I have, really brings you know, a wealth
of information to say, hey, this is my way of
doing this. Or like I was at a conference and
the two of the writers there on the panel we're
talking about how they don't do stream of consciousness anymore.
Speaker 2: They do outlines so they you know exactly where it's going.
And I was kind of fascinated. I was like, do
you outline?
Speaker 1: No, I'm a stream thinker. In fact, I even have
a podcast based on trying to train people how to
become better stream thinkers.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a stream thinker. I mean, it never occurred
to me to write. You know, I didn't know where
it was going. I just knew that I would know
as I got there, and I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it was weird.
Speaker 1: Wow, Well I guess I am because I mean being
a radio guy, I mean I have to have me
when I used to talk over fourteen second intros of songs,
I couldn't write the entire thing. I had to do
an outline.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah that's going to be hard, right,
It can be.
Speaker 1: It can be. And you know, if you you know,
when when your program director or consultant is sitting there
telling you that you need to write stuff down, do
not go in there and just wing it, because I mean,
you're gonna have a better show with you if you
practice things and bring out those lines. And that's when
I realized, Wait a second, in radio, I'm just another actor.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, Wow, that's cool. That's cool.
Speaker 1: Now being a writer this and this, this was one
I had to swallow as well. Is that was I
really a radio person?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I believe that the radio the writer in me found radio,
so it had a voice. But I'm really a writer,
are you the same way?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: I have wanted to write since I was a child.
I wrote a short series as a child, and I
went to college and thought I would go into creative
writing and I did not like.
Speaker 2: I did not like it. In college, I was.
Speaker 3: I really didn't and I knew I could do science,
so I did that instead, and I did some acting afterwards,
and I loved that. But I you know, wrote a
lot on the set too, when people would let me
or if people needed fixing things.
Speaker 2: You know, I wrote a lot. I learned a lot
on set.
Speaker 1: Don't you love that energy being on set? Because my
past two books were written inside a radio station production room,
because I just love the creative energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is so good for you, isn't it. I
love being on set. I really did. I actually really
missing on set. I talked to my agent recently because
I retired like five years ago and just focused on
this and focused on different things in my family and
you know, my life, and I was just I called
and I was like, you know, maybe we should I
could get a small job. I kind of miss it,
so I may go try to get a job because
it's just fun, because I love being I miss the actors,
I missed the director, I missed the grips, I missed
the lighting guy. Everybody's so cool and they all are
pulling together. It's just such a collaborative, you know, effort.
And I really do miss that.
Speaker 2: I actually really do.
Speaker 1: Well, you got to do what I did. I went
and got a job at a grocery store. And the
reason why, I just wanted to be with real people.
And my god, real people have stories if you just
listen to them because they want to be heard.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, I know.
Speaker 3: You know it's funny because I did a film called
Singles way back in the day with Cameron Crow. Yeah,
and Cameron would evesdrop unreal people.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wow, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: He was just listen to people's conversations, and that's kind
of you know, I'm a real people person that people
watch or I used to like just sit like little restaurants.
Speaker 2: And bits and pieces of this and that. But I
get it. I get what you were doing.
Speaker 1: Wow. So how do you make your stories so captivating?
I mean, because I mean you take us into a
very vivid world is it because you see it first
and then and then say, okay, now I've got to
use my words.
Speaker 2: I don't really know, you know, it's really weird.
Speaker 3: I don't think of it in terms of I want
this to be like this or something. I just go
it's you know, it's kind of weird. I kind of
channel it to myself. It's like I'm telling my self
a story and I'm like.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and I start writing, you know, but I
just like.
Speaker 3: To be I like to be inspired, Like I just like,
what could I you know, what.
Speaker 2: Is she doing? What is she doing? You know?
Speaker 3: And I would just constantly be like cliffhangers are big
for me.
Speaker 2: I'm almost like, what is this? Where's she gonna go? Yeah,
because I think life is like that. You know, you
kind of don't know.
Speaker 3: And I mean even when you're bored or when you're
doing simple tasks, so you kind of you know, every
single second is a chance to turn everything around, and
it changes so quickly, and that's what That's what why
life kind of always inspires but also terrifies me, because
every single second is a chance to change into something
completely different.
Speaker 2: So I kind of write that way.
Speaker 1: I think speaking of terrifying things over the weekend, all
over the news, the the TikTok and tick and what
is a book talk? Also, they were busted for a
plagiarized book that was read by AI. How are you
protecting yourself because it's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, I don't really know how
we can protect ourselves. I mean, they did something, screwed
the copyright laws. They really need to fix the copyright
laws in this country because I mean, just you know,
I've seen plagiarism all over the place.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: People just I mean movies, books, People just take it
and it's you know, I'm in Hollywood, okay, and it's
now that AI.
Speaker 2: It's just going to be. I don't know that there
will be much people can do.
Speaker 3: You know, in order to mount cases against big entities,
you need a lot of money, you know, and you
need a lot of time. And I just I don't
really know how you fight that unless we as a society.
Speaker 2: Demand better.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you said something a little bit earlier that
I've got to bring up because I keep telling myself,
don't do it, don't do it, And that is is
that you share your story with your with your girlfriend,
and I'm going wait a second, that breaks one of
the rules of Julia Cameron and the artist way, getting
somebody so close to you to read your material. And
so I know, how how did you prepare your heart?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 2: I was waited till the book was finished.
Speaker 1: Well, good for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, finished and edited, and then I read what do
you think. They're like, oh, wow, that sounds cool.
Speaker 1: Only because I had a friend tell me one time.
He says this, this character reminds me of me, and
I said, yeah, yeah, you were like the inspiration for it.
He says, I hate your guts because and that was
the end of the friendship. It really was.
Speaker 3: No, I uh, well, I did tell one friend that
one of the characters with her, but she was really
thrilled about it.
Speaker 2: She said, oh, that's so sweet, thank you. And she's
reading the book and loves it. So I'm really happy
about that. Wow.
Speaker 1: So are you on audible? And if the book is there,
who's reading it?
Speaker 3: No, I'm not on Audible yet. I have to do
that next. Just remember I'm just doing this myself. So
I am going to do that within the next month.
I'm going to go read for audible and I'm going
to do it so it should be up fairly shortly.
Speaker 1: And the only thing that's bad about reading the book
like that is that I did this for one read
and that was I got on page six and I
realized I still had two hundred and ten to go,
and it was like, no.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, it's kind of daunting, right, it's
really daunting. I know.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you, Ali,
so they can fall in love with all that you're doing.
Speaker 2: Oh you're so sweet. Ali.
Speaker 3: Walkerofficial dot com is my website. You can go there
and find out about the movies I did a documentary
and narrative, and my book and updates I'm on the
second book or appearances I'll be making can be found
there as well.
Speaker 1: I love it. Please come back to the show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 2: Oh you're so sweet. Thank you so much. I had
a great time. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, I will, all right, Thanks so much.