Speaker 1: Oh he is, folks. It showed people say good money
Speaker 1: to see this movie. When they go out to a theater,
Speaker 1: they want clod sodas, hot popcorn in no monsters in
Speaker 1: the projection booth. Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring?
Speaker 2: Got it off?
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, well who did the projection booth? I'm your
Speaker 3: host Mike White on this special episode, I am talking
Speaker 3: with Pat Jenkowitz. He is the author of Just When
Speaker 3: You Thought It was Safe, a Jaws companion. We actually
Speaker 3: talked a little while ago when I was putting together
Speaker 3: the Jaws episode and things just didn't work out for us.
Speaker 3: But he's back and we are now talking about that
Speaker 3: as well as some of the other books that he's
Speaker 3: worked on, as well as his career in Hollywood just
Speaker 3: a little bit. Had a great time talking with Pat,
Speaker 3: and I hope you have a great time listening to
Speaker 3: this interview. Enjoy. Obviously, I want to talk to you
Speaker 3: about your Jaws book, but I would love to talk
Speaker 3: to you a little bit more about your career and
Speaker 3: some of your other books as well.
Speaker 1: If you're up for it, I'd be honored. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much.
Speaker 3: You are a fellow Detroier, I'm calling you from Westlam, Michigan.
Speaker 1: That's fans. How cold is it?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: It's pretty darn cold. It wants the snow, but it's
Speaker 3: still raining right now. And snow I don't imagine.
Speaker 1: You do.
Speaker 3: You don't have to shovel a lot of sunshine, I imagine.
Speaker 1: Thank god, thank god. I went to a Christmas tree
Speaker 1: running the other night and I dropped sprayed with fake snow,
Speaker 1: and I just laughed because I walked to my drawer
Speaker 1: and melted into my head.
Speaker 3: All was, well, so tell me about you. Tell me
Speaker 3: about growing up in Detroit and how you did you
Speaker 3: become a writer first and then an actor or year
Speaker 3: a man of many talents.
Speaker 1: My big brother was a writer, and following in his footsteps,
Speaker 1: he taught my brothers and I the joys of writing.
Speaker 1: And it was always something I did. And when in Michigan,
Speaker 1: are you always doing the best creative stories and all that.
Speaker 1: I was always a film buff and we moved to
Speaker 1: California when I was a teenager, and when we moved here,
Speaker 1: I started crashing sets because being a film buff in Michigan,
Speaker 1: as you probably know, Mike, is a pretty lonely business.
Speaker 1: I just told a friend about this the other day.
Speaker 1: Everybody is like, your dad is a football player. Everybody's
Speaker 1: wearing the car company their dad works for. On that
Speaker 1: you remember. I remember all the Shelby Cobra kids with
Speaker 1: that great snake with the wheels. Oh yeah, why were
Speaker 1: Chrysler kids? So horn jackets were Chrysler and everybody else.
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted whatever their father was working for. And if
Speaker 1: you liked movies, it was down to Scream Theater and
Speaker 1: Sir Graves Ghastly and maybe built Kennedy. It's one thing
Speaker 1: when movies are made three thousand miles away, but when
Speaker 1: we moved to California, movies were like thirty minutes away.
Speaker 1: So my brother, my younger brother, Donald, and I started
Speaker 1: crashing movie sets, you know what I mean. When when
Speaker 1: we were in high school, you would go and it
Speaker 1: was mostly like horror and action, and it was We
Speaker 1: learned a lot of the ropes there. And when I
Speaker 1: was in college, I wrote a commercial with my late
Speaker 1: brother Tom, and we wrote a commercial and David Lynch
Speaker 1: liked it and wanted me to read it to him
Speaker 1: when I yeah, which is cool. I mean again, I
Speaker 1: was too dumb to be a frame basically, so I
Speaker 1: read it for him. He laughed and he booked me
Speaker 1: in the commercial, and after that I got an agent,
Speaker 1: and so it became beside thing. I'll be a viking
Speaker 1: and a commercial and you keep on the copywriting and
Speaker 1: the subbing and all the other stuff. But I found
Speaker 1: what the commercial and then that led the movies six nine.
Speaker 1: So if you can carry the girl, you're automatically a
Speaker 1: bad guy. So I did a lot of thugs, henchmen,
Speaker 1: and of course monsters. When you're a monster, you're picking
Speaker 1: up stunt people and throwing them around. It's a monster.
Speaker 1: Was always as a child watching Sir Graves, I was
Speaker 1: always running for the monster anyway, So it was really cool.
Speaker 1: They're paying you to be a monster, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean to me, there's nothing more joyous to be
Speaker 1: a world, to be a big foot or a henchman.
Speaker 1: If it's a good enough henchmen, you just have a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Bad guys are always a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And commercials you come in as a viking or a
Speaker 1: barbarian for Geico or something. You're always construction They played
Speaker 1: a time, so you're always either construction worker barbarian dog.
Speaker 1: There's a shock, but to me. Seattle and Detroit. We're
Speaker 1: always big movie towns, you know what I mean. You
Speaker 1: have the Fox Theater and the America is the Marathon
Speaker 1: it's still around.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. I don't think. I'm pretty sure it has.
Speaker 3: The one out in the Southfield area. Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: I've seen things out there, but it's been a long time.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's there anymore.
Speaker 1: Did you ever go to the Marry Melody?
Speaker 3: No, I remember the name, especially reading the movie listings
Speaker 3: and seeing that.
Speaker 1: When I was like, I think, I'm like the twelth
Speaker 1: or thirteenth birthday, my big brother took me to the
Speaker 1: Merry Melody. You can drive and he took me to
Speaker 1: the Marry Melody and I saw a Sir Grave's ghastly
Speaker 1: favorite the Creature in the Blackly going in three D,
Speaker 1: and it was just it was one of those filmmaking
Speaker 1: experiences where I didn't realize Jaws is my favorite American movie.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize Jaws took so much from Creature until
Speaker 1: I saw it, And it was just so magical to
Speaker 1: have the fish swimming right by your hat. You're right,
Speaker 1: so you have to touch the fish when we went.
Speaker 1: I remember there was a girl from U of M
Speaker 1: or MSU and her boyfriend next to us, and I
Speaker 1: jumped and flinched a creature because I only see on TV.
Speaker 1: So when you're seeing the creature in three and DS
Speaker 1: is a completely different movie. Oh yeah, And it became
Speaker 1: the greatest film watching experience in my life. This college
Speaker 1: girl grabs me and pulls me to and goes, don't
Speaker 1: be afraid, little boy. She goes, I will let the
Speaker 1: monster hunt you. And we laughed. And after the movie,
Speaker 1: my big brother goes, I hope you enjoined yourself because
Speaker 1: her boyfriend wanted to kill you. But it was like
Speaker 1: to me that that was the joy of movies. And
Speaker 1: then when we came to California and I started to
Speaker 1: see movies being made and really excited me. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's one thing to be three thousand
Speaker 1: miles away and everything's in theory, and it's another to
Speaker 1: actually be on the set. One of the things I
Speaker 1: do is the same thing I've done ever since they
Speaker 1: were shooting some Albert. The first one I ever crashed
Speaker 1: was this craptacular Albert Pew and blade Runner knocked off
Speaker 1: of him. Yeah, well he was What was amazing is
Speaker 1: it was the first set I was ever on. I
Speaker 1: met future Child Award winners like the Kyoto brothers were there,
Speaker 1: and the Kyoto brothers remembered me from being a set crasher.
Speaker 1: When I started to work on legitimate sets. They would
Speaker 1: come up to me. One of them hasn't encyclopedic memory
Speaker 1: and could remember every conversation because he was I want
Speaker 1: to say it was Charlie. And one of them came
Speaker 1: up to me and it's three o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: and I'm my high school book bag on. I was
Speaker 1: just so excited to be there, and I think it
Speaker 1: was Charlie Kyoto and he walked up to me and
Speaker 1: he goes, you don't belong here. Yeah, well you know
Speaker 1: what I've been teenager And I go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how did you know? And he goes, it's three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, we're all being paid shit, and you're
Speaker 1: the only one smiling.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: Also, you mentioned playing a lot of Vikings and goons
Speaker 3: and things, and you I think you were in makeup
Speaker 3: at least four out of five times that you were
Speaker 3: on Voyager. How is that being under all oh?
Speaker 2: My god.
Speaker 1: Make The funny thing about that is when I was
Speaker 1: doing Voyager, and I had a commercial agent, and so
Speaker 1: when you see me in the movie, it was credit
Speaker 1: and stuff. That was all through My magic Voyager was
Speaker 1: I knew so many because I would do Fango interviews right,
Speaker 1: and I knew all the makeup. I knew all the
Speaker 1: labster start Tek, the magazine. I knew so many makeup artists,
Speaker 1: the agypts. And they're looking for aliens. They're looking for aliens.
Speaker 1: And so I wound up my brother Donald and I
Speaker 1: wound up spending a week at Loan Pine. I had
Speaker 1: to carry a chest in an episode. But what they
Speaker 1: liked a lot of guys, the Doug Jones and the
Speaker 1: Kevin Peter Halls, they're few and far between. Most guys
Speaker 1: when the creature gigs, they do nothing but bitch and
Speaker 1: mode in the chair. And I was never a bitcher
Speaker 1: and a motor. I again, because I was in the horror,
Speaker 1: I was in the monsters, I was in the movies,
Speaker 1: and because I usually knew a thumb nerd so I
Speaker 1: know if I hear your name, I can name all
Speaker 1: your credits. These guys loved having me in the chair.
Speaker 1: Because I would ask them. There wasn't an interview or anything.
Speaker 1: Somebody think Bart Mixon would be doing your makeup for
Speaker 1: four hours and you're asking Barn about RoboCop. And I
Speaker 1: met and made friends with Bart when it was a
Speaker 1: teenage set crasher on some terrible zombie movie. And he
Speaker 1: was cool. And so when I was doing Voyager or something,
Speaker 1: I knew almost the entire effects. Guys, wow and to me,
Speaker 1: and they put me up in loan Pine. In fact,
Speaker 1: just a great story. So they put me up in
Speaker 1: loan Pine and it was some crazy two part Voyager.
Speaker 1: This is where they shot Dunat, Did they shot Stage Coach,
Speaker 1: iron Man? All these movies were shot there. So what
Speaker 1: happens is I'm in loan Pine and the stunt tornader
Speaker 1: likes me, and when we start talking and he's telling
Speaker 1: funny stories and he knows I know all the stuff
Speaker 1: he worked on. And so that night when you're in
Speaker 1: loan pine's a tiny little town. And what happens is
Speaker 1: the best hotel rooms are named after the biggest stars.
Speaker 1: You'll have the John Wayne Sweet all this yell that
Speaker 1: I think at whatever hotel, Donald and I had Lash LaRue,
Speaker 1: the lash he's like a b movie star. So at
Speaker 1: the smaller rooms, I had Lash LaRue and Donald was
Speaker 1: next door on Jebby Hayes. But the stunt coinator on
Speaker 1: Voyager was a guy named Dennis Madelone. And Dennis had
Speaker 1: been the stunt double for William cant on The Greatest
Speaker 1: American Hero, and he was telling me stories about that.
Speaker 1: And every time I'd run into Dennis, he kept going,
Speaker 1: you need to do a book on the Greatest American Hero.
Speaker 1: And I thought, he's right, but you engage interest with
Speaker 1: your publishers, and like did they wanted to Buck Rogers
Speaker 1: book first, and then I did one of the Hunk
Speaker 1: and Dennis Dennis. Every time the Hunk threw somebody in
Speaker 1: every third episode, it's Dennis, you know. And they have
Speaker 1: Dennis as well, like kind of a biker I all
Speaker 1: but long hair, so then you usually have Dennis's hair
Speaker 1: canned up to play a soldier or whateverwhere else. So
Speaker 1: I kept seen like Dunnet and je Lebelle over and over,
Speaker 1: and I thought when I started doing these books, I thought,
Speaker 1: we got to hear their stories. I did two pages
Speaker 1: on Donnis for the whole Companion, and then when I
Speaker 1: did Greatest American Hero with donnis Man. He's like one
Speaker 1: of the best connected stunt men you'll ever meet, Can
Speaker 1: you everybody.
Speaker 3: I have your Greatest American Hero book? And I didn't realize, like,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, I was just like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 3: know this author, I know this name, but I didn't
Speaker 3: realize that or so aired you're jealous companion that I
Speaker 3: have the Hulk book like on my wish list, to
Speaker 3: the Buck Rogers book on my wish list. So it's just, oh,
Speaker 3: this guy's something. How did the Jones book come about?
Speaker 1: Draws is my favorite American movie and it's literally I
Speaker 1: found this out when I was doing my due diligence
Speaker 1: before I did the book. I found it's like he
Speaker 1: all as Jurassic Pomp, Star Wars, Top Gun and is
Speaker 1: one of the nine most often run movies on Basic Cable.
Speaker 1: When Jaws was coming up, I started it before I
Speaker 1: did it, and I was going to go with it.
Speaker 1: There was a bad publisher and he violated all the
Speaker 1: terms of the contract that he sent me, and I
Speaker 1: just thought, hold with that. I'm not going to write
Speaker 1: a book for someone who's trying to screw me, and
Speaker 1: I just threw it in a drawer. And then Martha's
Speaker 1: Vineyard was doing something called Jaws first, and my brother Donald,
Speaker 1: Donald's kind of my Jiminy Cricket. So my brother Donald
Speaker 1: comes to me and says, hey, you ought to think
Speaker 1: about doing this thing on Martha's Vineyard and the Jaws
Speaker 1: will get broken my heart because this guy had violated
Speaker 1: everything he was. He was just a bad guy, and
Speaker 1: his publishing companies out of business, and rightfully, I left
Speaker 1: a bad taste in my mouth. And I told Donald
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go to Martha's Vineyard less they advertised,
Speaker 1: and when they added Benchley in somebody else, I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'd better go. This is the last
Speaker 1: round up for a lot of these guys. And I'd
Speaker 1: waited too long. What I did is I screwed up.
Speaker 1: I went it too long, and the Plaine ticket was
Speaker 1: like a thousand bucks, you know, And I thought, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm not going, and my brother Donald goes, I'll
Speaker 1: get a series of driveaways, and so like the Hitcher,
Speaker 1: but you to drive someone's car halfway across country, then
Speaker 1: you pick up someone else's car from there. I think
Speaker 1: we drove the last step from Chicago to New York.
Speaker 1: I drove with Chicago Wolves. I was a sportsman, the
Speaker 1: one that used to sell football games, because that was
Speaker 1: the only place where I could lay in the back
Speaker 1: for all the camera clip it. It was the only
Speaker 1: van I had one couldn't actually sleep on my back
Speaker 1: and send it hunched over like's. It was a satellite trunks.
Speaker 1: So I got there, I grabbed a Lucky I hit
Speaker 1: in New York, I hit Times Square. It's radclock in
Speaker 1: the morning. I got out a Lucky Town. There was
Speaker 1: a Gambler's bus, Chinatown Gambler's bus, and I took in
Speaker 1: at the woods Hole and jumped the ferry over. And
Speaker 1: then what I didn't realize is that the place was
Speaker 1: all booked up and it's prohibitally expensively bring a car.
Speaker 1: And what happened is all that was left. Everybody booked them,
Speaker 1: all the Joss fanatics from across the country, including a
Speaker 1: family from Michigan. I remember running into the painted the Jaws,
Speaker 1: shoe water Skier and Shark on the side of their
Speaker 1: van for the job all the way on and because
Speaker 1: everything was booked up, I was staying at the Kent Crowd,
Speaker 1: which is probably the cheapest thing on the island and
Speaker 1: I'd been trying my brother packed at the intent and
Speaker 1: he forgot the ten stakes. So when we get there,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to assemble the tent in the pouring rain,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have the thing in it, and he
Speaker 1: jumped like, we need to move in front there in
Speaker 1: case so nobody rides us over. I didn't realize our
Speaker 1: heads were lying right in the tread of the next
Speaker 1: area campground where he picked up spots. And it gets better, Mike.
Speaker 1: It was skunk season, so they're had a great shower.
Speaker 1: But I remember using my cell phone and show you'd
Speaker 1: see what looked like black and white cats walking towards you,
Speaker 1: and they were all skunks, like an army of skunks.
Speaker 1: And the great thing is what happened is two guys
Speaker 1: from Boston who were Giant Jaws fanatics. Their names are
Speaker 1: in the book mark I think Scott Rummel and somebody else.
Speaker 1: They were like, when we saw that I was getting interviews,
Speaker 1: they saw the Universal took care of me on the
Speaker 1: island to make sure I get all my interviews. They're like,
Speaker 1: can we drive you? And it's s John because otherwise
Speaker 1: on the tram or whateverlse because they'd been there many times.
Speaker 1: They showed me the Jaws tour. There's a reason that's
Speaker 1: not in the book. I mentioned it, but I don't
Speaker 1: showed because it was three o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 1: I didn't want the to think it was a serial killer.
Speaker 1: But the house next to the house from the original
Speaker 1: film had this brass plaque on the side of the
Speaker 1: house you can see in the original Jaws and it
Speaker 1: says Jaws shot here. And I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: so exciting because I'd never been to Martha's Vineyard before,
Speaker 1: but I knew my way around because of the movie.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those Touchstowe movies for me that
Speaker 1: I've seen it and loved it, and it was just
Speaker 1: I could recognize. And for the Jaws Fest, which is
Speaker 1: the event Universal sponsored, MCA had all the stores put
Speaker 1: up all the signs from the first two movies and
Speaker 1: everywhere you're going, and we watched the movie at the
Speaker 1: movie theater where they used to screen the dailies, and
Speaker 1: it was next to see guys I interviewed every when
Speaker 1: I could down on the West Coast, Roy Arbogast, Joe Alves,
Speaker 1: who busted out the original storyboards. Roy Albert Gast busted
Speaker 1: out the tabletop shot that they shopped the original movie.
Speaker 1: That sold them on the original movie. And when I
Speaker 1: got Golli, it was Elves God leaving the arbagaster my
Speaker 1: first three interviews, and the three of them were so
Speaker 1: great and so knowledgeable and so kind. It paved the way,
Speaker 1: and thank God. The weird thing is I don't get
Speaker 1: starstruck about and they signed me Natalie Portman or Christine
Speaker 1: Vale or something like that, who chairs their next people the
Speaker 1: interesting stories. But when Chrissy from Jaws agreed to an interview,
Speaker 1: it was like many royalty from me, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. God rest her soul. We just lost a
Speaker 1: few months ago. But it was so exciting to hear
Speaker 1: her stories. And it's just to me Bill Butler giving
Speaker 1: me a long afternoon and marrying a delay, and he
Speaker 1: just Bill Butler talking to you about Jaws and Godfather
Speaker 1: and Rocky and Greece. My god, he lived to a
Speaker 1: hundred What really made me happy? He lived to one
Speaker 1: hundred and two. And when he passed, Variety quoted book
Speaker 1: and his obituary. That to me, because I'm thinking I
Speaker 1: asked him every question, every conceivable question of Jaws that
Speaker 1: could be asked. I asked, but he's been in documentaries
Speaker 1: and stuff. But when you got him talking and he
Speaker 1: really dug deep, great great stories.
Speaker 3: I love the way that you put the book together,
Speaker 3: this idea of the list of these things, rather than
Speaker 3: it just being straight ahead chapter one, chapter two is no,
Speaker 3: here's all of these kind of smaller chapters, the smaller
Speaker 3: pieces that all add up to that marvelous film.
Speaker 1: What really excited me about is we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Jaws and the Jaws franchise. You've got to talk
Speaker 1: about the elements that work. And I remember some critic
Speaker 1: attacked by book and they go, who cares about all
Speaker 1: the victims of the original Shark? Who cares what Missus
Speaker 1: Kentner has a saying? And I thought, you don't get it,
Speaker 1: Missus Kittener, Alex Jenner. They're pawning the experience, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean mean all the little moments. And because
Speaker 1: I came from an Ardit background, I like sideboss. I
Speaker 1: like the interesting. I want to know what Missus Kittener
Speaker 1: is thinking. I want to know what Alex Kittener is thinking.
Speaker 1: I want to hear from Teddy Grossman, everybody in Jaws
Speaker 1: has a store, and it's such a big franchise. What
Speaker 1: shocked me is there's Jaws two and Jaws the Revenge books,
Speaker 1: out Bound Chunks and all the stories that I uncovered
Speaker 1: in my book. They went there and I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: John Hancock talked to me, the original Jaws two director.
Speaker 1: And the great thing about that is when I got
Speaker 1: John and his wonderful wife who's now gone now and
Speaker 1: she got completely cheated. She's the one who came over
Speaker 1: the water scale. And if you look at the original
Speaker 1: nineteen eight Jaws two paperbacks by Hank Cyles, they mentioned
Speaker 1: her by name. And the great thing about her is
Speaker 1: when John and Hancock called me, I got her in
Speaker 1: there as well. And because the second poud for the
Speaker 1: incredible Hunk, I doubled because when am I going to
Speaker 1: talk to her again, I got her telling the amazing
Speaker 1: Josh Hues store during her amazing Joss two stories. She
Speaker 1: told me the incredible stories about the Hullck where they
Speaker 1: basically blackballed the couple after he got replaced on Joss two.
Speaker 1: Universal MCA was actively trying to blackball them and cancel them.
Speaker 1: And what happened is Kenneth Johnson the creator of the
Speaker 1: Hog TV series. He's a champion of the underdogs and
Speaker 1: he hired her immediately for the incredible haulk Returns the
Speaker 1: second pilot and Dorothy Tristan's her name, by the way,
Speaker 1: I just realized they haven't been saying her name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Northy was an actress and a runner and the
Speaker 1: water Skier, which they made the whole campaign for Josh two.
Speaker 1: That was the whole campaign and she got no krintin
Speaker 1: on the She gets credited on the gip her back,
Speaker 1: but they denied her all credit on the movie and
Speaker 1: that was that's not right. And her draft of Josh
Speaker 1: two and the one Handhot was doing. It's more interesting.
Speaker 1: When they fired the Hancocks, they just sit. Shinberg just
Speaker 1: had them do a beat for beating Jaws two. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's Jaws. I mean if you look at jos Hugh
Speaker 1: next to Jaws. They keep all in the scare. And
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna blame Dolly be HEA's run in the
Speaker 1: last minute. Instead of the kids karate chopping the fences,
Speaker 1: you have this the kid with the CB radio, all
Speaker 1: this all this stuff without and he finds the burned woman.
Speaker 1: Jean Culture's burned body at the exact moment Ben Gardner's
Speaker 1: had in the original film, and it just it's beneath
Speaker 1: Jaws two to I like the stories, but it was
Speaker 1: beneath and I was annoyed by the Joss wo and
Speaker 1: four books because they literally took every story from my
Speaker 1: book and I don't think one of them got Hancock
Speaker 1: or the other guy. And it's okay. I like my
Speaker 1: book standing alone. Covering all four. There's good stories to
Speaker 1: be found. But to me, Jaws two is amazing how
Speaker 1: it came together. So Spielberg basically told them, if you
Speaker 1: wait for me, I'll do it after post Encounters, and
Speaker 1: they didn't want to wait.
Speaker 3: Other than Indiana Jones, I don't see Spielberg doing a
Speaker 3: lot of sequels, you know.
Speaker 1: What, not in his call presally because he didn't want
Speaker 1: to do Jaws too. He would have do Clinton Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: which is a different movie altogether. It's a war movie.
Speaker 1: Spielberg likes war movies, and yeah, he'll happily produced Gremlins
Speaker 1: and Gumlin's two and all that, but he wasn't really
Speaker 1: interested in doing sequels himself. Like you said, Indiana Jones,
Speaker 1: he dedly lost World thank you. There was too much
Speaker 1: money on the table. But Juno Schwark, who directed jows too.
Speaker 1: He goes, he always throws insults, and sure enough Spielberg
Speaker 1: said when somebody said, why are you doing the Lost
Speaker 1: World because you've never done a sequel outside indeed, and
Speaker 1: he literally Spielberg literally told them I didn't want another
Speaker 1: Joss to in my own that just personal.
Speaker 3: Guess did you find stuff that still surprised you even
Speaker 3: if all that time?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this stuff the Hancocks losingly. Jig is heroin.
Speaker 1: One of the things he did when he fired a
Speaker 1: Juble actor when one bad actress and what never turned
Speaker 1: out was a Universal Execs mistress, I'll tell you who
Speaker 1: off the air. Yeah, And he didn't know that. So
Speaker 1: that's the type of bear trap. This poor guy been
Speaker 1: doing the Indians and good stuff, like banging the drums slowly,
Speaker 1: so he had no idea that he stepped into a
Speaker 1: bear trap. He and his wife literally came in. He
Speaker 1: didn't less scared of Jessica to death. He wanted to
Speaker 1: make the scariest Jaws too possible and bowing the town
Speaker 1: going into bankruptcy, which was the big fear in the
Speaker 1: first movie. In the first book. He was literally trying
Speaker 1: to give you a Joss to remember, and you got it.
Speaker 1: I hate that they got smashed so hard. Just they
Speaker 1: were really trying to give you a good movie. But
Speaker 1: I hate when Joss three D grows on me. The
Speaker 1: Richard Matheson original draft. It was so much better. It was.
Speaker 1: His original draft was more along the lines of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen Metagline Creek Shark attacks before they put it
Speaker 1: in the Sea World, and when they put it in
Speaker 1: the Sea World, it basically became Gorgol Meat's Revenge of
Speaker 1: the Creature. And if you see Jaws three D, see
Speaker 1: jaw Us three D in a theater in three D,
Speaker 1: and it's like the greatest movie you've never seen from
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. It's it's almost a period piece except
Speaker 1: for the modern haircuts of her modern eighties haircuts and
Speaker 1: the giant dollars, of course, being the eighties. It's literally
Speaker 1: a fifties horror movie and it's very stolid, and I
Speaker 1: actually dig it in three D. The version they run
Speaker 1: on AMC and the Cybi channel looks like it's covered
Speaker 1: in milk. They didn't fix the print, they didn't adjust
Speaker 1: the three D for TV and it looks like crap,
Speaker 1: But if you see it in a theater in three
Speaker 1: D like I did the studio, the Egyptian dug out
Speaker 1: a mint front of it to run with the meg
Speaker 1: and it was just fantastic just to see it again.
Speaker 3: You tell me a little bit about the Greatest American
Speaker 3: Hero book, But what was your inspiration for that one?
Speaker 3: I mean a huge fan of the show.
Speaker 1: I love the show, but the thing is it was
Speaker 1: one of those cult shows you forget existed. Canell had
Speaker 1: so much success in the anties that don't do between
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. He is known to Rodford Files
Speaker 1: and the anti people completely forget about Greatest American Hero.
Speaker 1: And during COVID, when COVID was dominating everything, I remember
Speaker 1: they were announcing the lockdown. My brother Donald hadn't made
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee and if he wanted to get
Speaker 1: away from the death holes and all that. On a
Speaker 1: Saturday morning, he put on a channel called Heroes and
Speaker 1: Icons H and I and they were shling the best
Speaker 1: best scenario and I started watching it and literally it
Speaker 1: was a first season episode. Nothing big on the mythos
Speaker 1: happens in the episode is the last episode of the
Speaker 1: first season. But you know what, it's nge show. And
Speaker 1: I was watching it, drinking this coffee, trying not to
Speaker 1: think about COVID and the shutdown, what's going to mean?
Speaker 1: And it was perfect Escape us Fair and it was
Speaker 1: really charming. It was well written, it was character driven.
Speaker 1: William Katt, Connie Silica, and Robert Culp were utterly fantastic,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, and I'm picture great.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: What I liked about my books is I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do something that had been covered by their people.
Speaker 1: It's like saying, I'm gonna do a book on driving
Speaker 1: on James Bond or Star Wars. That's all well trodden crowd.
Speaker 1: And it blew me away that Hero had never ever
Speaker 1: had a book, nobody had written about it. That's what
Speaker 1: appealed to me. I print bullying anything incredible. Hulk had
Speaker 1: never gotten a book, and The Hulk became my biggest book.
Speaker 1: It was two pounds. But I was so beaten down
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm never going to do another show
Speaker 1: that went five seasons and just keeped the hell out
Speaker 1: of me. I was just and I interviewed over one
Speaker 1: hundred people at a certain point it's not even for
Speaker 1: the gig. I'm a completist. And if I'm gonna chump
Speaker 1: down that tree, I'm not gonna knock off a branch.
Speaker 1: I'm chomping everything. I need to know everything. And with
Speaker 1: that book, I couldn't stop writing it. I remember feeling
Speaker 1: like I was having a nervous breakdown because I was
Speaker 1: halfway to the third season and there was like a
Speaker 1: hundred things ahead of me, and a hundred things. It
Speaker 1: was too big to quit, and it was too big
Speaker 1: to it felt too big to continue. Who the hell
Speaker 1: is this book for? And my brother is my brother Thomas.
Speaker 1: You can't do the TV movies And I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: but somebody out there is gonna buy this book for
Speaker 1: one god knows how much it's gonna cost, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna want the TV movies. And literally, if you look,
Speaker 1: I think I do like a hundred pages on the
Speaker 1: TV movies alone and the botch She hugged piet So
Speaker 1: when Hero came along, when I saw him that morning,
Speaker 1: I pitched it and they passed on Hero for buck
Speaker 1: Rong for whatever reason, it had a future film. You know,
Speaker 1: I've done Hero, but it really shocked me how quickly
Speaker 1: forgotten it was, you know what I mean? It was
Speaker 1: one of those shows when they re run it. Everybody
Speaker 1: loves it, everybody watches it, but people forget that it exists.
Speaker 1: I remember Robert Coup's obituar are they use a publicity
Speaker 1: still f in the show? But they never mentioned greatest
Speaker 1: American Hero in its little bit? I thought that stinks
Speaker 1: when Canel's a bit, they never mentioned greatest American Hero?
Speaker 1: And if the show really deserve respect? And what I
Speaker 1: didn't cone on because again after I did Let's see
Speaker 1: Honk was five seasons, buck Rogers with two seasons, but
Speaker 1: that was a lot of work too because there was
Speaker 1: a feature film and I had to cover all that.
Speaker 1: So when I got and with the Hunk, I couldn't
Speaker 1: stop writing. I think when I did the book, I
Speaker 1: covered the Angling movie because I interviewed Angling for Starlog
Speaker 1: and a couple other magazines and for Hank Choo. I'd
Speaker 1: interviewed the Fetch Guy and a few and notes to
Speaker 1: Hamily and all that, and then they announced the Avengers
Speaker 1: movie and I was stuck. It was literally stuck because
Speaker 1: I thought, if I don't get this book out and no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to cover Avengers and that the book's
Speaker 1: gonna be I literally had to peel the book from
Speaker 1: my own fingers and get out of my own way
Speaker 1: and an assent never going to write a two pound
Speaker 1: book again. So when I did hear it, yeah, I
Speaker 1: see no more. And the Hero was three seasons, but
Speaker 1: it's an abbreviated It was a mid season replacement, so
Speaker 1: it's a half season in the beginning and a half
Speaker 1: season at the end. The third season was canceled hel
Speaker 1: way through, so it's roughly two seasons. And oh my god,
Speaker 1: piece of cake. And you sent me of the book.
Speaker 1: You can look. It's twenty eight pages longer than Hunk
Speaker 1: and it's the shortest show I've ever covered. And what
Speaker 1: happened is it was a rabbit hole. Every time I
Speaker 1: got in, things led to other things led that, and
Speaker 1: I was I'm lucky that I got everybody before they died.
Speaker 1: Frank Lupo died when the book was just about to
Speaker 1: come out, and I thought, thank god, I went to
Speaker 1: this event and got Loopo and I grabbed canal here on.
Speaker 1: So everybody who died I had. And I think that
Speaker 1: is the most complete book where you have everybody. When
Speaker 1: I started Hulk. Colvin had died like three years earlier,
Speaker 1: and I'd found I knew people who older actors I
Speaker 1: interviewed for Starleam the bird Woman Barbara Luna, the Beautiful
Speaker 1: bird Woman from Buck Rogers. Turns out she was dear
Speaker 1: friends with Jack Colvin and I interviewed. When I interviewed
Speaker 1: the girlfriend the Last Extorcism, Ashley Bell. Her mom had
Speaker 1: done two episodes of The Incredible Hulk and was the
Speaker 1: first Victoria Carroll Bell. She was the first girl to play.
Speaker 1: She hulkeed, she voiced, she hulked on the cartoon, and
Speaker 1: she married the cartoons Bruce Banner, which is Michael Bell,
Speaker 1: who was like the King voiceovers. I knew Mike because
Speaker 1: I did a ginormous if you look at the old starlog,
Speaker 1: I had a ten page thing where I tracked down
Speaker 1: every living member of the Superfrince. It was an insane
Speaker 1: amount of work, especially for an auticle. You interview one guy,
Speaker 1: you get paid. When you stupidly masochistically do an article
Speaker 1: like this, You're interating fifteen people for the same price
Speaker 1: you would get for one. I have an auditle on
Speaker 1: the New Dark Side. If you got you go to
Speaker 1: Bonds and Noble. I cover a horror movie called Bad Moon,
Speaker 1: and I mean I got Michael. I did a table
Speaker 1: read for a great forty style film nor where I'm
Speaker 1: murdering people and Mike is a Mike Perey is a
Speaker 1: detective trying to get me. And really I play a
Speaker 1: sewikiller called the bed Bug, and he's trying to catch me.
Speaker 1: And I remember I met Mike there and then I
Speaker 1: interviewed him for a Bad Mood uticle. And when I
Speaker 1: interview him for Bad Moon, I thought I might as
Speaker 1: well get all my greatest America and Yard questions on him.
Speaker 1: And so I did another movie called It's On to Me,
Speaker 1: I Think, and it's on Amazon. It's called Out of
Speaker 1: the Shadows. And I'm a serial killer with a value
Speaker 1: over I had in a small town and he, Robert
Speaker 1: Romantis from Fast Times at Ridgemond High are trying to
Speaker 1: catch me. And I'm thinking, the hilarious thing is I'm
Speaker 1: working out with these guys. I saw not to mention
Speaker 1: to Michael. I'm working on this book because I don't
Speaker 1: distract from the work. And the hilarious thing is the
Speaker 1: picture of Michael in the book is a picture I
Speaker 1: took of him on when we're shooting this serial killer
Speaker 1: movie in Ohio. I knew like this, and the director
Speaker 1: and everybody were giving me cramp I'd been out of
Speaker 1: Michigan in the Midwest so long. I didn't have any
Speaker 1: down coats. I didn't have any furry coats to work,
Speaker 1: so I threw in my Michigan hooty and the director,
Speaker 1: God bless him, great guy picked me up at the
Speaker 1: airport and he goes, mister, that shirt is not going
Speaker 1: to fly around here. And I forgot about the Michigan
Speaker 1: Ohio rivalry. See, my sister Diane is married to my
Speaker 1: brother in law Jim. My brother in law Jim went
Speaker 1: to Ohio State and my parents went to the U
Speaker 1: of M. So when Diane brought Jim home, Mom jokes,
Speaker 1: I guess it's gonna be a mixed marriage. Everybody Ohio
Speaker 1: made sure to cramp up in my Michigan hoodie every
Speaker 1: time they saw.
Speaker 3: So it sounds like you're still very busy with the
Speaker 3: pieces that you're rating and everything. Are you working on
Speaker 3: another book anytime soon?
Speaker 1: My next book gent on the publishing and that'll be
Speaker 1: a surprise when it runs some preview. But I have
Speaker 1: a comic book coming out next year called Cosplayer Versus Shark.
Speaker 1: It's actually it's it's the long line is it's basically
Speaker 1: a bunch of cosplayers go on in a ricketty boat.
Speaker 1: There's an unscrupulous Sci Fi channel type producer who sends
Speaker 1: them out to catch the shot that ain't a comic
Speaker 1: book legend. And what they don't know is it's a
Speaker 1: secret reality show where all the guns on board are fact.
Speaker 1: They have no professionals with them, and they're being set
Speaker 1: up by the captain of the ship to be by
Speaker 1: a shock on camera. What do you want? So it's
Speaker 1: an action comedy. Sean Spaky Piela does the amazing artwork
Speaker 1: and I would show it to you. Unfortunately, the only
Speaker 1: artwork I can show you is on my phone since
Speaker 1: we're talking on it. I promise you, Mike, it'll be
Speaker 1: worth seeing. It'll be in comic shops across the country
Speaker 1: next year. The amazing thing about it is it was
Speaker 1: one of those things that I was so happy to
Speaker 1: put it together with one of those COVID projects I
Speaker 1: was thinking about. I was doing it. I had a
Speaker 1: script that had been optioned like three times, and it
Speaker 1: was going to turn into the comic book. My artist
Speaker 1: injured his hand, and so I grabbed another artist and
Speaker 1: I had this weird idea, and you know what idea
Speaker 1: is good when you keep coming up with ancillary. I
Speaker 1: came up with a great tagline for it, which I
Speaker 1: won't reveal. It'll be on the comic book. You'll dig it.
Speaker 1: The comera will be very from if you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's an homage or something. But Mike, that
Speaker 1: will be out next year and I think it'll be
Speaker 1: well worth checking out.
Speaker 3: Is there a good place for people to keep up
Speaker 3: with all your projects online?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on Instagram. I'm Jenkie twenty ninety nine, Jay
Speaker 1: and Ki two zero ninety nine. Pat Jagubin's on Facebook
Speaker 1: if you want to surf and see what I'm working on.
Speaker 1: I have a movie called GPS where I lure a
Speaker 1: bunch of influencers to my mansion and start picking them
Speaker 1: off one by one. That's my b Harrison Smith. You
Speaker 1: like this because he's a develop Midwesterner. He is very smart,
Speaker 1: he's very cool. I think we're going to collaborate on
Speaker 1: a book. I can't tell you what yet, but it's
Speaker 1: really cool. He wrote a great script called Eyes Behind
Speaker 1: the Trees, but update on Doctor Moreau that Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 1: loved and agreed to do, so that's coming. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: Harrison's somebody to watch more. He's just he's an interesting tat.
Speaker 1: It was fun to do. Gosh, what else am I
Speaker 1: work on? It's the comic book really sites man, because
Speaker 1: it's after Greatest America Hero. I'm like, when you get
Speaker 1: a good story, to hear the rest of the story,
Speaker 1: you'd have to find someone else from the oh knew
Speaker 1: what was going on. And I remember thinking when I
Speaker 1: was finishing Hero, which was like two and a half pounds,
Speaker 1: it was my biggest book, and I remond thinking, I
Speaker 1: just want to make up all the facts next time.
Speaker 1: And if you write it, it's yours, it's Mike. I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing what you think about it. I
Speaker 1: think you'll dig it. Your artwork is fantastic, and I
Speaker 1: just I'm really happy with it. I think you will
Speaker 1: be too.
Speaker 3: Patt, thank you so much for your time. This is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you, good sir.
Speaker 2: Same Ma