Speaker 1: Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time to
heal up and put that jersey back on.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to talk as much, but we'll pipe
in from time to time.
Speaker 1: I want to start it off with this, right here,
are we living in a time of history where being
famous means you're probably going to end up in a
court case.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, something about celebrity and criminality and the.
Speaker 2: System does go together.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's more public scrutiny now because
of social media and everything's recorded and things like that.
Speaker 2: So maybe what's.
Speaker 1: Great about this book is the fact that you give
us the opportunity to create our own pace. And it's
not like a documentary where it's one picture after another
after another after another and we're following them along. I
get to digest this one at a time, one page.
And the way that you guys do it, it's like
you're sitting in the room going, let me tell you
what I heard and what I resea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, I love that description of it. That's what
we wanted.
Speaker 1: You had to do some digging in, though, and you
had to get into areas that the average person can't
get into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: I mean I think this project took a while, you know,
like the US trial was three years ago, but we
wanted to be very careful and take the time to
talk to everybody we could and gather as much context,
background info as we could on this story because it's
just it produced so many quick takes, and we just
wanted to give it the space in the room to
tell the full story.
Speaker 1: We live in this age that is filled with clickbait,
and I think that's another reason why I'm so attracted
to this is that I can sit here and hold
on to this book and not have to go to
a website that's just is clickbait and you sit there
and you go, do I believe it? Do I not
believe it? But at least in your book, you're giving
us fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a huge thing for us because this
started as yeah, as you said, documentary film. But after
we spent so much time at the trials, you know,
sitting in the courtroom taking notes, digesting, we didn't have
any phone, we weren't allowed to use our phones in
the courtroom, that we realized that a book was really
the right format for this and we needed to have
the room to tell the story from the beginning to
the end.
Speaker 2: Well, if you think it's ended yet, but yeah.
Speaker 1: I would love to see your handwritten notes.
Speaker 2: Only.
Speaker 1: The reason why is because I do daily write with
the writing instrument. And the thing is, though, is that
there are times I can't read what I've written because
I've been writing so fast. Did you guys bump into that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we definitely did.
Speaker 3: We both had our kind of trial notebooks and they
were just filled with scrawlings. And then when we went
back to write this book, Yeah, that that happened a lot.
It was like did you have this day? What did
you write for this day? And we still have it all.
It's amazing we have it all. We have a bunch
of photos, you know, we have our footage. So we
we covered this, yes, very very much. So we have
a lot of physical media to show it, which is
nice in this age.
Speaker 1: Wow, were people easy to talk with? Were they Were
they open to it or did you have to convince them?
Speaker 3: I mean, when it depends on who you're who you're
talking about, I think, uh, there were some people that
were harder than others. I mean in terms of being
at the trial and on the ground and speaking with
spectators that was that was pretty you know, people were
open and ready to talk to us for the most
part because a lot of them had driven pretty far
to be there and wanted to explain and explain that.
Speaker 1: So, wow, I would love to know how how viewers
of that trial and readers of your book are going
to get along with each other because we all had
our own perspective of what was taking place, and we all,
you know, we were all the judge and the jury
when it was on. Now you give us that chance
to really break stuff down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's this case is so inflammatory, and
we knew from the beginning, whatever we produce on this
is going to have haters, It's going to have people
loving it. It might inspire conspiracies, you know, because that's
just what this case attracted, and that's kind of what
big cases, what happens with big cases anyways. So we
were ready for this kind of multitude of different opinions
on it. But our aim was to put something down
on paper in a book that just stands for itself
and shows the rigorous reporting and time we took with this.
And I don't I don't think anything else is I
know that nothing else has done this yet with a
specific trial.
Speaker 1: My wife and I were so addicted to this trial
to the point where we actually, you know, we were
watching it on our smartphones while driving to a Bruger's
ice cream in a different town. But we were not
going to let go of any of that testimony.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was that was us too, but
I mean we were covering it. But a lot of
people we talked to were pretty pretty addicted to just
hearing these stories of these crazy celebrity kind of stories
and anecdotes, and I think being able to hear these
tidbits about someone like Johnny Depp who's lived in relative
privacy for most of his life and suddenly we know,
you know what brand toilet paper he uses or whatever.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I think you know.
Speaker 3: It is that level of granular detail that was revealed
in the trial that I think just captivated everybody.
Speaker 1: Well, be honest with me here, since you were in
that courtroom and you got to physically see all of
those pictures that we also saw intelligience, what was the
feeling in the room when we would see Johnny passed out?
Because I would say there and the whoa, whoa, that's
not the Johnny I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was that.
Speaker 3: Being in the courtroom was a really kind of special
experience because there was no I mean, there were many
cameras in there, but we couldn't have our phones, and
so it was a lot of just pure observation of
what was going on in the gallery and the photo
moments and the moments where they played the audiotapes or video.
Those were moments where everybody was just totally wrapped and
I think with those photos, you know, Johnny passed out
or various photos of injuries, like, it's definitely a moment
where everybody's looking at each other in the courtroom or
having some kind of silent reaction because if you made
noise you usually got kicked out.
Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah, I'm shocked, but that they wouldn't let
you have phones. But yet all I hear about in
the p Diddy trial is that there are people in
there with their phones tapping things into it as it's happening.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah, this was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was kind of amazed at how strict
they were there. There was a cop going up and
down the aisle the entire time that testimony was happening,
just looking for phones and ejecting people as soon as
their phone was even out on the bench. So it
was pretty hardcore in there.
Speaker 1: The way that you guys have raised the bar on
telling this story. To me, it's beyond journalism because first
of all, I like books like this, and I like
podcasts in the way that we're getting journalism where it's
not like a hum in a bit, but what we're
getting is the full story. Are we in a new
age of storytelling when it comes to books like this.
Speaker 2: I hope so.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think this is the type of book that
Kelly and I like and respect and like to read,
and we just wanted to do this story justice because
it felt like before, during, and after the trial there
was just a lot of kind of black and white
coverage or black and white takes, and I think a
lot of trepidation around tackling some of the more challenging
questions at the heart of the case.
Speaker 2: And also I think there was a lot of.
Speaker 3: Maybe women telling women how to feel or think or
you know, come up with an opinion about this case
just based on kind of principles me too, principles and
that was fascinating to us as women and as journalists.
Speaker 2: Because I just we always emphasize.
Speaker 3: You know, the raw rerecord, the transcripts, the evidence, Like
you really need to immerse yourself in a case like
this to be able to form a real opinion on it.
Speaker 1: I think, please do not move. We've got more with
Makiko Holy and Kelly Laudenberg coming up next the name
of the book Hollywood Vampires. We're back with Makiko and Kelly.
Didn't it also in a very how do I want
to put this in a way of it took a
subject that so many families do not talk about, but
yet it was and could be still happening behind their
closed doors. But Johnny and Amber's story brought things out
and created special groups where they got together and talked
about what they're facing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really inspired a lot of debate and conversation,
and I think it that was interesting, Like when we
were on the ground in Fairfax and staying at the
hotel where a lot of Johnny's legal team was staying,
but also a lot of I think fans and dictators
were saying. We heard overheard a lot of conversations in
the lobby and at the hotel restaurant of people talking
about this, families talking about this, you know, it was
it was a chance to talk about these kinds of things.
And I think sadly the coverage, you know, could have
been more nuanced. But we hope our book people can
can take our book and really take something away from it.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about the armchair quarterback? And what
I mean by that is is that you know, the
court of public opinion in a digital age is so
you know, it's like it can go in any direction.
But then you've got those armchair quarterbacks who think they've
got it down.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's funny. I haven't heard that that phrase before.
I've heard like armchair sleuth or armchair detective. And you're
saying this is this is somebody who's getting themselves kind
of into the game. Oh yeah, yeah, themselves. And I
think that that's that's kind of what social media facilitates,
is this kind of new form of power that we
have just by by having a social media account and
being able to go into the public forum and say
say what you think or spam what you think over
and over again so that you're the loudest voice.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a new new phenomenon with.
Speaker 1: All of your research, could we put this back on
the stand and and without anybody saying objection your honor
this way? Would it? Would it change the end of
the story?
Speaker 3: I mean, I I'm hesitant to say, because I'm not
a Looyer or anything like that, but we definitely in
our book, uh, give a lot more context, background info,
and just we just wanted to present what we thought,
you know, was the most interesting tidbits of this story
that weren't fully covered by the media, like it just
and what we learned after the fact, after watching the trial,
what we thought was important to know. So it's up
to the reader, you know, I think we want to
leave it up to the reader.
Speaker 1: You bring up something that I'm not familiar with, but
it was in oh Wow moment, Celebrity industrial complex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 3: Was That was a kind of idea that came out
when we realized, you know, this is a bigger thing
in Hollywood. That is a bit of a playbook that
we see where for instance, in the in the book,
we have a whole chapter dedicated to dissecting the op
ed at the heart of the US trial. And I
think it's surprising to some people to learn like Amber
didn't even draft the you know, the first draft of that.
It was the ACLU And there were just many forces
that came together to write that one piece that she
was sued for. And I think it's it's it's kind
of a fascinating thing to look deeper into.
Speaker 1: When you sat down with those that you feature inside
the story, did you record it to where maybe you're
going to grow in the way of a documentary of
your own or a podcast, because in side my head,
I hear the voices that I'm picking up while I'm
reading it, but I would love to hear their own
vocal tones.
Speaker 3: We have, I mean, because we worked on this for
so many years, and we started as a documentary, but
then when it became a book, we also so we
have audio recordings, we have our notes, we have video
and all that kind of thing. But because of the
way the story went, we were just kind of like
holding on to it and working on other projects. You know,
other projects came and went over the years. But when
the US trial came and we learned that it was
going to be televised, we were like, we got we
got to get there, we got to be there, and
so then it just kind of went from there and
it hasn't stopped. So I don't know if we've really
thought about what we're going to do with our other
our other material.
Speaker 1: So how did you get inside? I mean, it wasn't
a backstage pass, I mean, was it just you had
to make sure that you were there at the right place,
at the right time and basically shake hands with the
right people.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, it wasn't anything like The Godfather or
anything like that. It was it was more along the
lines of we were covering this, uh, you know, way
before the US trial even happened. So once we knew
it was happening, I just started writing to the courthouse
and the judge, and we just wanted to make sure
that we were able to be there and show that
there was media interest in this. And then when it
came time for the trial, it's we had earned our spot, essentially,
is the way that I see it as just by
persistence and.
Speaker 2: Doing it ahead of time.
Speaker 1: I'm such a people watcher. I'm just so jealous that
you guys got to see the jury. We did not,
and so therefore, I mean I would have been sitting
there just watching their facial expressions, their body language and everything.
And but then again that then that probably would have
created judgment of me going, they're not in the game,
They're they're checking out what's going on here?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, okay, Well so I actually we had a
limited kind of view of the jury to be honest.
There there were certain sections of the courtroom that were
very prominently on on TV, and we didn't want to
be on TV, so we were in the very back
row like kind of where like the court TV people were,
so we couldn't really see the jury either. We were
more just observing the legal teams and the people in
the in the gallery and whoever was testifying.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, how do you guys feel knowing that people
are comparing your book to Ronan Paraoh's book Catch and Kill.
I mean I was addicted to that and the podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I don't think we've heard that yet. Who's
comparing it?
Speaker 1: It's just doing my research that you know. It's it's
like getting on there and and doing and finding out
what people are saying, and so you pick up on it.
And and so when someone says Ronan Pharaoh, I don't
believe that it's clickbait. I believe that someone is saying it,
because what you're doing is you're taking us into the
physical one percent picture and experience, whereas you're not the
reporter on the outside saying well, this is what we
experienced today, Johnny, and that's ba blah blah. No, you
take us into that story, just like Ronan did.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We love that kind of inside the room feeling. And
I think that's also kind of the old school thing
with us, where we want to be there in person.
We want to be looking and observing everything. Like we
went to London so we could knock on doors and
try to get interviews, but also so we could go
to the hotel where they were engaged, go to the
hotel where Amber stage during the UK trial. Like these
are things that, like I just feel very important when
you're telling a story like this to bring people in.
Speaker 1: Is there a side of your personality that would like
to take a short little journey over to Spain just
to see if you can catch her on her life
living a new life.
Speaker 3: I well, I just I would want to respect her
privacy and all of that. And I think for both
of us, we're really proud of the book and we
think it stands for itself. But you know, we're ready
to start some new projects too.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that because I
was gonna say, so, what's next? Because this is a
story that's going to always grow. We're always gonna have
our own opinion. Do you drop it and move on
or what do you do?
Speaker 2: I think we'll never drop it, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, we worked on this for so long, and
I think both of us learned a lot throughout the
process about something we didn't think we're interested in. You know,
neither of us were really into Hollywood or celebrity culture,
but this took us on a journey through that world.
So I mean, I think both of us are you know,
artist writer types and are working on different projects and
new new writing pieces and new research.
Speaker 1: I think two positive things came out of this for
Johnny Depp. Number One, we get we finally get to
see his artwork he has not been afraid to show
it off. And number two, he's a rock star. Now
he looks like a rock star. He's playing with the
big guys, and I swear to god, we didn't get
to see that side of him until this court case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was something we we gathered spending
time with with him and his team is that music
had become very important to him and and really a
way for him to escape from the sad doul drums
of the trial case. So yeah, when we were in Fairfax,
he had all his guitars, like he was sitting in
the shower every night and and and that's his passion,
that's his love. So yeah, he really he really went
back to that.
Speaker 1: Wow, where can people go to find out more about
the two of you? Because I mean, you're you're once
again you're all about storytelling and story sharing and that
is so valuable in this clickbait world.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, we have a website for the book. It's
Hwood Vampires dot Com and there's some fun stuff on
there and you can, you know.
Speaker 2: Buy the book through the website.
Speaker 3: But just for Kelly and I, you know, just stay
tuned because we'll have some other projects coming out soon
that we're excited about.
Speaker 1: Wow, please come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: Thanks Sarah. We appreciate so much.
Speaker 1: Hero Kelly, you feel better okay?
Speaker 2: Oh, thanks Sarah.
Speaker 1: Thank you