Carl Gottlieb Transcript

Ted: [00:00:00] Welcome to Phil and Ted's sexy Boomer show. I'm Ted Bonnitt. And I'm

Phil: Ted Bonnitt. Oh, no, no. Wait, no. I'm Phil Proctor. I'm Phil Proctor. You're Phil Proctor.

Ted: I'm Phil. Yes. Uh, how are you, Phil?

Phil: I'm, I'm actually feeling pretty good. Yeah. Today, especially since, uh, we have a, a as our guest today, Carl Gottlieb. Who, uh, we go back a long ways together and, and we're gonna talk about a lot of interesting things [00:00:30] today, including the writer's strike.

Yes. Yes. Now I had some, some material written for me about it, but I can't, uh, I can't use it. Why be We're on. Oh,

Ted: cuz you're on strike. Yeah. Well, that's a shame. Well, we, you know, to fill the gaps. We're trying a new thing with the f with the show. A new format. Yeah. We're gonna invite a fan to come in and ask a couple of questions.

Is that where this guy Yeah, that's here. That's where

Phil: this guy is right here. What good they got was his bodyguard. What, what is your, who are you, what's your name? My name is

MC: Mc Ganey. Oh. [00:01:00] Oh, I know you. I'm here Yes. As I'm here as, uh, Mr. Got leaves. B Bodyguard.

Phil: Biggest fan.

Ted: Yeah. And a big bodyguard. Biggest fan.

So, so he'll have a chance to, um, he paid a hundred dollars. He paid a hundred dollars. Holy. Yes. So, So he gets a, he gets three questions. Wow. Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah.

Phil: Anyway. Well,

Carl: let's say Carl, hello all. Hello, hello, hello to you here in the studio. And hello to all the ladies and gentlemen [00:01:30] and all ships at sea.

Phil: What a, what a pleasure. To Seet to see you adrift, I think.

Ted: Yeah. Yeah. Now, Carl, um, you are an actor, a director, a producer, a screenwriter, an author. You wrote bestselling books, the autobiography mm-hmm. Of David Crosby and two of them, uh, two of them, and a book I just read this week and “The Jaws Log”.

Carl: Oh, congratulations.

Ted: Thank you. I read the 30th anniversary edition.

Carl: They're all the same. Yes. And they're all the same after. The 30th anniversary edition and forward, they're all the same. Yeah.

Ted: [00:02:00] And, um, of course, you, you wrote “Jaws” the movie

Carl: I share credit on the screenplay with Peter Benchley.

Phil: And did you know that I went to school with Peter Benchley?

Carl: What a preppy you must

Phil: be. No, no. It was grade school. Allen Stevenson School in New York City. Uh, and Michael Eisner was also

Carl: there. What, where is that? Uh, at East 78th Street. Okay. And Lexington. I'm a, I'm a West side guy. Oh, I,

Phil: I've always known that about you. What grade were you in? Uh, many of them. [00:02:30]

Carl: 1, 1 1 through six, I believe.

Something like that. Yeah. And then you go to junior high school? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then, and then, uh, you go to regular high school. I went, they, they have two plans in New York, uh, K through eight, four year high school. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Or K through six. Three year. Junior, junior, junior, whatever it is, and then last three years at a regular college.

Well,

Phil: you have to be a mathematic genius, just, you know, to be able to

Ted: understand that. Yeah. Are you from, are, where are you from originally? Carl, New [00:03:00] York.

Carl: Oh yeah, you are from the, you from the city? I grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan In the Heights. Oh wow. As a matter of fact, I, I went, uh, I went to four years of high school and two years of college taking public transportation, and I got so tired of that.

I transferred. I said, I want to go out of town. I had read like Dick Stover at Yale and I forget, I want to go to a college that has a dormitory and a football. Yeah, right. A football stadium and a foot. Well, you, C C N Y had a football stadium, Lewison Stadium, great [00:03:30] stadium for concerts. True. But, uh, I wanted a stadium with a football team and fraternities and all that

Phil: stuff.

But you had the a

Ted: train. Yeah.

Carl: Yeah. A train's a great train. Well, you have to take the local down to 72nd Street. The double A.

Phil: Yep. Yeah. I used to have to go up to 253rd Street in the Bronx. Yep. Cuz I went to Riverdale. But, but they had a dormitory. I, I became a a a, they call it a, a five day border, cuz then you could go, you know, back to mom over the weekends.

Yep. You know, plus at

Ted: New Haven, at Yale [00:04:00] you had. Well, Yale's

Phil: another story. What, where

Ted: is that? Where is that? No,

Carl: no. I

Phil: wound up at Syracuse.

Carl: Syracuse.

Phil: Syracuse, okay. Yeah. And that's where you met Larry Hankin? I, I learned, yes. Yep. Holy Macel. I, I saw Larry yesterday.

Carl: Oh, great. Larry's been on the show. Yeah, sure.

He, he, he, uh, I read his book too. His, his book is a very entertaining read. He is a very

Phil: entertaining man.

Ted: Yes. Isn't he? He's still going full, full bore. Yep. Yep. Amazing. Amazing. So you, uh, where do we start? You [00:04:30] started a, again, through, through these relationships, the committee is where you, you first sort of dig.

Yeah. I,

Phil: I'm curious, how did you get connected up with the committee?

Ted: Okay. What is, first let's define the committees for people who don't

Phil: know. All right. It, it's, Probably the most la uh, landmark in, in improvisational after Second City. After Second City. That's true. They were kind of the first to really the ver

Carl: Go national and back in, in, uh, Pre-history.

The day back in the day [00:05:00] there was the second city. There was the premise in New York. That's right. And then there was the committee in San Francisco and the Compass Players also. Yeah, the Compass players didn't, hadn't started yet. Cuz they were an offshoot from the committee, I believe. Oh, they, Larry,

Ted: I think it was Larry told the story about how they picked them up in a car and drove him out to San Francisco.

That was the committee? Yes. Yeah. For

Carl: the committee. Yeah. I, I, I, uh, I was thrilled. I was, uh, stationed in the army at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Oh. Which is a quite attractive spot garden, garden spot of Missouri. [00:05:30] And, uh, I read in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, which we used to get at the post, uh, the, uh, Larry was gonna be in St.

Louis with the Compass Theater. Ah. Uh, which was, uh, an offshoot or, or David Shepherd, who was one of the co-founders of Second City, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, found a place to do the show and, and, uh, Larry was hired to do the show in St. Louis, and I said, wow, here I am at Fort Leonard Wood, Larry's in St. Louis. I can go in on the weekends, which is what I did.

I'd go in every [00:06:00] weekend to St. Louis and. Pretend I was a civilian and hang out with Larry at the coffee theater. Oh, cool. And experienced a scene on Gaslight Square, which I don't know if you remember, Gaslight Square was a big, uh, kind of a Greenwich Village enclave in St. Louis. Mm-hmm. And the doyens of, uh, that neighborhood.

Yes. Were, uh, a couple. Uh, Fran and Jay Landesman. And Jay Landesman was the entrepreneur who [00:06:30] founded the, uh, uh, the Compass, uh, who put the Compass Theater into a theater. Oh, wow. And, and j Fran Landesman was off writing. Song. She was a great songwriter and composer. She wrote girls in their summer dresses and all, all kinds of good books.

Wow. Stuff. Anyway, so that's how I got to St. Louis and I got, and then, um, NARI got picked up to go to San Francisco and my army stint in St. Louis ended. Wow. And I, uh, but I, I was in St. Louis, I was in the army. [00:07:00] For the great, uh, Cuban Missile Crisis. Oh, oh boy. That was an interest. That was your fault. No, no.

I didn't know that. I was part of the deterrent. I all of a sudden, I was, uh, I was at a training company so I didn't have to worry about shipping out. Yeah. Cuz that, that was the regular troops, but the poor regulars. Mm-hmm. Oh boy. Who poor were stationed at Fort Leonard Wood when the Cuban Missile Crisis arose, they were mobilized, issued live ammunition.

They had trucks ready to roll. Wow. They were going to convoy to Miami where they would take a, you know, boat stick. To [00:07:30] attack Cuba.

Phil: Uh, boy, that was close. Double the train duty too, I'm sure.

Carl: Yes. And I was on the streets of St. Louis doing that famous countdown when they were wondering if the boasts would turn back or if the Russians would.

Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. I remember that would break the blockade and it was a pretty edgy time. Uh, but the Russians turned back and, you know, Peace prevailed the .

Ted: So you, so you ended up going out to San Francisco? Yes. And as Larry Hankin tells it, you got some work down in Hollywood. Mm-hmm. And you [00:08:00] went and he ended up coming down and sleeping on your

Carl: couch.

Yep. Well, what, what happened? One of the advantages of being in the committee is occasionally you would get scouted by mm-hmm. Uh, casting agents from, uh, LA Yeah. The big city, most notorious of which was Fred Russ, who later became Oh, Freddy Ro. He became, uh, Francis Coppels partner and Yep. Big producer.

Big big producer. It was kind

Ted: of an event cuz you could fly for next to nothing up to San Francisco and it was a weekend event for people to come up Exactly

Carl: and see the show. The midnight special was like, [00:08:30] uh, $95 or $45. Yeah. It left about. 12:10 AM from San Francisco, got to LA about 1:00 AM and you could go to sleep and then wake up the next day and do your, do a Monday's work.

Cuz we were dark Mondays. Yeah. Yeah. You could do a day's work and then get on the plane and go back to San Francisco, which is what I did. What,

Ted: what did you, cool, what, what brought you down to Los Angeles originally? I mean, what was the, what was the, the job.

Carl: My first important job I got, well, I was cast on the Smothers Brothers show as a [00:09:00] writer, sketch performer.

Yeah.

Phil: Now, how did you get cast as a writer? Uh, well, because you were a

Carl: sketch performer and, uh, Tom and Dick had, had been a huge hit on television for two years. They knocked Bonanza out of number one. Wow. And, uh, Uh, in their contract they had to live with, uh, a network approved producer for two years, and the guy they got was a guy named Stan Harris, who was a, a conventional producer of [00:09:30] schlock.

Yeah. So they got rid of him as soon as they could and took over the reins and produced their own show and started looking around for what I like to think are the best and the brightest. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Among which were myself, Lorenzo Music. Bob Einstein. Wow. Wow. A guy named Paul Lee French. Lee. French Le Lee French.

Uh, Lee French had done the show as talent. You know, they had booked her as talent. That's right. And then the other writers were, uh, Uh, Steve Martin. Steve Martin was on the [00:10:00] show. And, and, uh, Bob Einstein, I said, mentioned Bob Einstein. Yeah. And me. And so, uh, it was a very,

Ted: wow. What was the, what was the, what was the spirit there?

I mean, what were you guys, I mean, you were really, did you feel like

Phil: pushing

Carl: revolutionaries? Yeah. Let's kick ass and take names. You know, we, uh, we, you know, we would, every week was a tussle with. Yeah. Did you get a lot of bit back from the

Ted: network program

Carl: practice?

Ted: Yeah. I mean, I know they took you off eventually, but was it always there from the beginning?

Carl: The pressure was always there. It got so that we would put stuff in the script that we knew would be cut to [00:10:30] distract them from the stuff that we wanted to be in the show you, you type in the script, you cunt. Oh no. They would say, you can't say that. Meanwhile, a page or two later when it said, when we said, you know, the president is a jerk that slipped by.

Yeah, that

Phil: slipped by.

Ted: Yeah. It's amazing what the sensors will miss when you do that. Oh, yeah. It's like, uh, dangling a bright object over here.

Phil: Yeah. It was actually the same in, in the Soviet satellites. Uh, uh, during that time they would do [00:11:00] cabaret in like Poland. Yeah. And they would do jokes that the sensors did not understand.

They were almost speaking in a code and they, and everybody, you know, felt energized by that. Yeah. Fighting against the, the oppression of the Soviet system.

Carl: Well, like that great Russian line, uh, that described the Soviet workers. They, they, uh, pay us to work. And we pay to not where I, [00:11:30] boy, well, it's better in Russian, I think.

Especially Not sure. I'm sure it's, you won an Emmy. Uh, the Smothers Show won an Emmy. We had so many tussles with program practices that when the Ca and Tommy, so Antagonized Robert Wood, who at that time was the president of cbs. That they canceled the show and then we won the Yemen, which was as kind of a rebuke.

But in the meantime, we had all been picked up for the next season. So it was for us individual writers [00:12:00] and the talent, any, any of us who were under contract, it was great. Pay or play, right? It was pay, play, pay or play. So I got paid for doing nothing. Seven episodes of wow, doing nothing. That's show business.

But you

Ted: know the backdrop of that. Period in 1968. Yeah. Political assassinations were going to the moon. Vietnam. It was a, a extremely volatile period,

Carl: much like today. Yeah.

Phil: History repeats itself,

Ted: repeats itself. Interesting point. I mean, how do you see it now with the wisdom of [00:12:30] experiencing the, the late sixties today?

Carl: Uh, To quote one of the popular songs of the period. We have all been here before Dejavu.

Phil: Yeah. And something's happening here. What it is, it's getting clearer and clearer. Yes. Yeah.

Ted: Yeah. We wanna talk about the writer strike eventually, but we wanna talk a little bit about your career, a lot about it. Your career first.

I mean, you eventually then you went to, um, the Bob Newhart

Carl: show. Uh, yes. Yeah. Let's see, I, we got an Emmy on the Smother Show. We were canceled by [00:13:00] next show. Now, Bob New art show is just an episode that I wrote with George Annick. Um, what the hell did I do after Smothers? Uh, well, you, oh, I did music scene.

Uh, there was a show on ab, a short-lived 17 episode show on a ABC called Music Scene that features sketches and comedy. It, uh, was kind of contemporary. It was ABC's effort to, uh, match or, or, uh, Overwhelm laughing. Mm. [00:13:30] Ah, and it was a very odd format. We was, it was a 45 minute network show. Ooh. That went on the air at seven 30 and the thought was, Laughing went on at eight.

Yeah. So we would be on for a half hour before laughing. Mm-hmm. And in those days where, you know, mechanical clickers were just a, you know, just being people, people rarely got up to change the channel. That's So whatever channel you were on, you tended to stay on it. It's true. Until something came up that defended you.

Yeah. Right, right. Got up and changed the channel, but [00:14:00] the strategy was to be on and bridge the gap. Mm-hmm. At eight. At eight o'clock, and then we were followed by another 45 minute show. Uh, equally doomed, called the the New People, which is a ripoff of, uh, the Desert Island Show and cast away, you know?

Phil: Oh, really?Oh my gosh.

Ted: What was, what was reflect, you know, how was all this volatility reflecting the times? I mean, it seemed from,

Phil: from a comedy perspective?

Ted: [00:14:30] From a comedy perspective, I mean, you were doing. Pretty anti-establishment stuff on very establishment broadcast networks. Yes.

Carl: And, and that was our charm.

Yep. Right. That's, that's why people liked us when we did the, uh, car the committee did the Carson show. Yeah. We, they wanted us to do a sketch called a blind Date, and the. Payoff. The punchline for blind date is you want to screw, oh, and you know, sensors object. You know, we, we did it in rehearsal and you know, program practices came running down and talked to the, [00:15:00] yeah, tonight show producers.

And then they said, you can't say screw, so we compromised that. Do you wanna mess around? I think, which was the. But had none of the, that's really dirty. But had didn't, none of the, had none of the punch of, no, of course not. So Carson came over to us and whispered to us, say, screw I'll. Oh, say screw I'll, I'll cover for you.

Wow. So at the time, the, we. Cue the cue the actors, we did the sketch. We said, screw the audience went, whoa, uh, laughed and, you know, cried. And, [00:15:30] and Johnny at his desk going, oh, I had no idea you were gonna say that. You know? Uh, but it, you know, the, the sketch played well. So, you know, we, everybody wound up a hero except program practices, but who cares about them?

That's right. Well, that still goes on today. Yeah. You know, there's still a, uh, you know, a, uh, barrier to creativity. But you know,

Phil: when I was looking at, at your extraordinary list of the shows that you did that were, were right for, I realized that that, uh, the, um, Amazon [00:16:00] Women on the Moon, I'm in that movie.

Yes. I don't know if you wrote the sketch. The, the sketch that I did was about silly putty. Uh, silly. Pat. Edible. Edible. Silly, funny. No, I didn't. I'm I'm eating, uh, SICs, you know, anyway. No, but you did. Right. But we, we had that in comedy. Yeah.

Carl: And Amazon Women on the Room. I actually directed one of the segments.

Yeah. It was

Phil: a great time, really, that there was like this little opening for satirical

Carl: comedy, satirical comedy, progressive comedy. Uh, you know, [00:16:30] there was, there was, uh,

Ted: what was the thinking because of the, the, the. The youth movement, the hippie movement, they thought they could push it a little.

Carl: Well, yeah.

Everybody was realized that the hippie, uh, that the youth movement was besides being, you know, headline worthy and, you know, Woodstock generation and all that stuff. In addition, it was pushing the political barriers of what was safe speech, what was that's right was free speech. There was a free speech movement in Berkeley, which was a big deal.

Uh, so the I [00:17:00] if I, on KPFK, I can say this word. The zeitgeist was, uh, in favor of progressive comedy. So yeah, we, we, it, it benefited Phil and I

Ted: tremendously, yeah. Oh, and that, that's when the comedy, great comedy albums were coming out from George's. Right. Carlin

Phil: and, and Richard. Well, you know, when he started about the clicking Don't crush, that Dwarf Hammy the pliers, uh, predicted the remote control.

Yeah. And what would happen when you could do that, you know? Yep. Just like, uh, Procter Bergman's album [00:17:30] tv or not TV predicted. Thousands of wealth. We just thought there'd be hundreds instead of thousands of channels available to people. But at, at the time that you were doing your remarkable work, the, it was, it was a nice, dangerous place to be.

Yeah. Do you know what I

Carl: mean? Oh, yeah. I, I, I can remember. Committee did a benefit, uh, for the peace movement in San Francisco, and we were a huge rally in San Francisco's. Oh boy. I'll [00:18:00] bet that, that that party outside of, uh, I guess outside the city hall, is a place where demonstrations gather. And we were there and I'm on the podium.

I'm, and I'm, I thinking to myself, Somewhere out there, there's a guy in a raincoat with a grade and we're all sitting ducks up here. Oh. Gotta go on with the show. And if I see any unusual movement, I'm, you know, I'm outta here. Exit

Phil: laughing. I'm not your first,

Ted: uh, tough

Phil: room. No.

Carl: But we spec often speculated, you know what if, you know [00:18:30] today this show that crazy is out there.

Yeah. Nowadays it's much more of a Yeah. Uh, an issue. You know, in those days it was rare. You didn't have many public serial killers coming out of the

Ted: world. Well, you didn't have, uh, yeah. You didn't have millions and millions of military style weaponry in, in the hands of. Unhinged people. What, um, so how did you make the, the transition from television into the movies, film

Carl: writing?

Well, in those days everybody in television wanted [00:19:00] to be in the movies. That was the hierarchy. Yeah. Though television, you were okay, but you were a second grade artists no movies. Yeah. Were first rate, and that's where everybody aspired. So, uh, I had won the Emmy, I had done a comedy with Richard Novas, I had won the Emmy.

And, uh, Let me see how I wrote. You need somebody

Phil: to write your biography. I just, just turn to page 17.

Carl: Yeah. Where was I then? Uh, but, but, uh, uh, what was the question again? The [00:19:30] question was,

Ted: well, there was this huge division between television and film. Yeah.

Carl: Right? Yes. So, um, Through one way or there's a whole other origin story, but I was asked to collaborate with Steven Spielberg and work on a rewrite of Jaws.

How did that happen? Uh, okay. I'll do the origin. I'll do the origin. Sure, sure. Yeah. Uh uh, Steven and I were, we had the same agent, a guy named Mike Mevo, who you may remember. Oh, sure, sure. Oh sure. And he was present. [00:20:00] On the notion of packaging, and he would put his count town, his clients together mm-hmm. To do stuff.

And he had a client roster included Spielberg, Carol Eastman, John Milius, uh, Dreyfuss. Was he, uh, no, Dreyfus had his own agent. Yes. And there was another guy, uh, uh, was he, uh, just those alone? Yeah. But there was a heat. Pretty sterling client list and he put me together with Steven. And uh,

Ted: now Steven at this point [00:20:30] is pretty young.

He did dual.

Carl: Uh, Steven has just gotten his universal contract as a result of, uh, no, he did a short called Amlin. Oh, that's right. Which is the source of. Hamlin Productions, but, ah, sugar layer. So he, he was doing, yeah, he was doing television. He was a television director. Mm-hmm. And he directed the pilot for Colombo, which very few people know.

Oh, I didn't know that. He directed

MC: the Joan Crawford thing on uh, yes. On Mike Gallery. Yeah. Where she goes blind and can and can see for 12 hours and [00:21:00] there's the blackout in New York. Ah,

Ted: wow. And then I remember duel very well.

Carl: Sure. Yeah. So, so I, so, uh, and I acted in a couple of his television movies, he did a TV movie called, um, uh, something.

It's, it's on that list. There's a tv, it's on the list. Something something, something or other. Something wild, something strange, something, whatever. Anyway, I did that TV movie as an actor and then, [00:21:30] uh, He sent me the script of Jaws that he had picked up off the desk at the Xanax Brown office. Huh. And sent me a copy with a note on the cover that said Eviscerate it.

Ooh. So in, in, in those days, if I, wow. If, if I was approached with a, If I was approached with a rewrite job, yeah. I would type out, cuz that was the technology at the time, I would type out a long memo or short memo saying, you know, uh, interesting material. This is what I would [00:22:00] change. This is what I would keep right.

And it was good to have it in writing because when the sh, when you start doing the rewrite, They go, oh, we didn't ask for this. And I said, no, no. I said, I'm not gonna do this. It was a way of covering my ass. So I wrote the memo, which I still have to this day. I exhumed it for a Spielberg documentary. But in the memo, I, I made one mistake and one prescient comment, the mistake first I said.

Does the girl have to die because she has sex? That's such a teen movie. Cliche, you know, oh, [00:22:30] teenager has sex, dies, dies. You know, that's I, I didn't know Steven would shoot it the way he did. Those are most of my dates, actually. Yes, that's the opening scene. But at least you had sex. Yeah. Right. What happens to them after is not our, who Cares?

Uh

Ted: uh.

Carl: That's the opening scene of Jaws. Yeah. And it turned out to be the opening scene of Jaws, and he shot. He shot us. So that it, boy, was it nau a cliche when it had, oh, and the other comment I made, I said, if we do our jobs right, me and Steven. Yeah. [00:23:00] People will feel about going in the water the way they felt about taking a shower after.

Psycho.

Phil: Psycho. Exactly. And it

Ted: sure did work because I was at Martha's Vineyard, not a year after that movie came out. Yeah. And I was with a buddy. We were, you know, in our twenties, he would

Carl: not go in the water. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We, we were sued by some beach in Florida for destroying their business. And, and, uh, it was, it

Phil: was, uh, well they, they spotted a 10 foot long white shark, uh, great white off of the [00:23:30] North Carolina coast or something like that.

Just, just yesterday. Yesterday. Yeah.

Carl: I thought, oh, how prescient is that? It still fascinates the memo that you

Ted: wrote. I don't know if this was part of the memo, but in Jaw's log you write about how, and this was the prescient thing for me, was that you wrote to him saying, you know, you go either way in this and this could be another Poseidon adventure.

Yeah. You know, it could really go cheesy. Yeah. Or you could not. And so in a way, you really pushed it.

Carl: Yeah. We, that, uh, that it turned out to be a, you know, a, a happy circumstance and a [00:24:00] beneficial situation for everybody. Completely redefined the business. Yeah. I'd

Phil: like to weigh in here a little bit. Yeah. I was just gonna say our guest guest.

Our guest fan. Our guest fan. Empty game.

MC: Yeah, exactly. Uh, I was fascinated. I read this book several times and fascinated, it's an amazing. An amazing book. The situation of being able to write a major motion picture while you're acting in it and while it's being shot is so to me, so bizarre that I can't, unique.

Most writers today would just, would [00:24:30] freak out. I think

Carl: in, well there, well there's a couple. I think Casablanca was written that way. Yes, that's

MC: right. Well, Julius and, and Philips, so, yeah. Yeah.

Carl: So, and there's a couple of films and then, you know, there's unspoken number of films with. They wouldn't admit that they were, you know, making it up as they went along.

Right. Yeah. But, uh, it, it was not a common practice, I can tell you. No. And you were working with a

Ted: typewriter? Yes. I mean, to think that you, you didn't have a computer to do this, is, is kind of,

Carl: Now I a typewriter paper and scotch tape to put things together

MC: as [00:25:00] I, as I was thinking and salivating at the possibility of, of meeting you, I, I was trying to resist scene 180 8 and the Indianapolis speech.

And then the more I thought about it, the more I thought that, uh, maybe in a sh brief period you could, uh, tell that story a a about what it actually is and who wrote it.

Carl: How, uh, Peter Benchley in his contract Got it, that he could write a screenplay for Jaws of his own novel. Sure. That was part of his deal.

So they let him write, you know, they had to get, let him take a crack at it. Right. His, his [00:25:30] screenplay was just, you know, kind of a transcription of his novel. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So they got another writer guy named Howard Sackler. Well known writer wrote, great Lady down in the Great White Hope. He's a real, a real writer.

Great

MC: White Hope. Yeah,

Carl: great white shark. Yeah. So he, simple step, so he, he wrote a draft of Jaws, which is the draft that Steven sent me that said Eviscerated and he. In the, in the novel, the character of Quint has no backstory. He just exists. He's just an existential guy. Sackler [00:26:00] invented, uh, the backstory for Quint.

He, cuz he was a Navy guy, he was aware of the Indianapolis incident, the Court Marshall. So he put that in the, in the, in the, in the screenplay. Uh, and everybody who read the screenplay from that point forward, Balked at that script because it's like three pages of just dialogue and if you ever looked at a movie script Yeah.

You've never seen three pages of dialogue. Uh,

Phil: and for those of you who, who may not remember, that was the scene where he spoke about the [00:26:30] smorgasboard for, for his sharks. Yeah. The sailors smorgasboard for sharks. Yes. Yeah.

Ted: It's, it is his

Carl: backstory. Yeah. How he basically put in quid's backstory. So, uh, when, when I got it and Steven got it, They were very nervous about that speech.

Oh, really? And Steven asked all his friends, Paul Schrader, George Lucas, John Milius, uh, Carol Eastman, the whole Mevo client

Ted: list. Wow. Paul Schrader, writer

Carl: of Taxi Driver. Yes. He, he asked him, they, he asked them, he [00:27:00] sent them all that speech and said, what do I do with this? Huh? And they all. You know, craft is some sort of response except Milius.

I mean, Milius takes credit for it and Spielberg gives him credit for it. In an unfortunate documentary choice slip of the lip, that's incorrect. Yeah. Uh, as I say in my book, the only lines credited correctly, DiUS is I'll find him for five, I'll kill him for 10. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's the only bit of milius that's in the speech.

And I know cuz I kept [00:27:30] all the versions of the script and. Uh, cause I anticipated a credit scout arbitration,

Phil: so I

MC: went, aha. And that line doesn't appear in the scene, it appears in the, the town meeting.

Carl: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, so, uh, having, you know, de determined that, you know, that there was all these writers, uh, We're wondering now, by now we're on the vineyard in the day of shooting that scene as approaching shot shot and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Shot Martha's Vineyard where we, and as the date approaches, [00:28:00] everybody's getting real nervous, but we used to have dinner. Spielberg and I shared a house in the vineyard. He, he'd like brought along his writer actor to, to, to help him because we were good collaborative

MC: partners. This time. I encourage more of that for what directors who

were

Carl: listening to.

Yeah, bringing the writers. It wouldn't height. Uh, and, and, and, uh, one, and we had, uh, we had a housekeeper and every, it was very civilized. Yeah. Uh, And one night at a collective dinner, you know, me and Steven Verna [00:28:30] Fields and zec and Brown, everybody. Viner

Ted: Fields was the producers, was the mother Cutter, yes.

The editor.

Carl: Yeah. Well, academy Award. Yeah. So Haw, uh, comes in with this handful of paper and says, I think I've licked that pesky speech. And then he reads us his version Uhoh, and we are. Dumbstruck. Holy crap. This is, you know, wow. That's it. So he finishes reading. And Steven said, that's it. That's going, wow.

It's going [00:29:00] in the movie. So the next day or so, whatever it was scheduled to shoot, we shot it with Shaw's version. Oh. Of the script. Now, keep in mind, Shaw had already won a Pulitzer Prize for the man in the Gland glass booth. Yes. He had written five published novels in England. Wow. He was a real writer.

Yeah. Robert Shaw. Yeah. In addition to being a gifted actor. A member, yes, indeed. You know, the Royal Shakespeare Company and all that stuff. Uh, he, you know, amazing man, really knew his onions when it came to writing. He did. Yeah.

Ted: You, you're listening to Phil and [00:29:30] Ted's Sexy Boomer show on K p fk, and our special guest is Carl Gottlieb and our special fan is Mc Gainy special.

We're talking, uh, we're talking about the movie Jaws, which I hadn't seen. Since it came out. Oh. So I watched it on, you can rent it on Amazon for less than $4. Yep. And it's really something to see because first of all, it takes you back to that time in the mid seventies. It, because I've, I had spent some time on the vineyard.

It was really nice to see the, the time capsule, but [00:30:00] it was also. Remarkable to see this movie because it did revolutionize the film business before the computer, but it was all revolution. All analog. Yeah. And, and some the, the, the, the, it was a real shooting. And, uh, one of the fascinating things is how do you make that giant shark realistic, which was a huge job that was put off until the very end and very frustrating job.

The thing that just blew me away was the rig in. Cal Bay. Yeah. Off of Edgartown [00:30:30] where you had, um, three fathoms down, 24 feet down. There was a rail installed where divers had to go down underwater and grease the rails. And this was the mechanism that pulled the shark cuz you couldn't have a boat do it cuz you'd see the wake and the rope.

Yep. And this thing was being pulled mechanically, underneath 24 feet underwater on the ground of the real ocean. I mean, no special driving,

Phil: driving that. Wonderful big barrel

Ted: behind him, right? No, no digital effects. This was the real deal.

Carl: It [00:31:00] was long before CGI had there been cgi, jaws would never have gone over budget because a lot of the, the last third of the movie is at sea.

Yeah, that's right. And uh, You'd need a clear horizon. It was only, you know, 40 feet offshore. Yeah. Looking out across Nantucket Bay. But the, the illusion was you were way out to sea. Far

Ted: along. Yeah. But the locals were shaking you down and, and

Carl: Oh, locals were, were ripping us off on every opportunity. But, but,

MC: uh, yeah, no, I would say, I'd like to [00:31:30] return just for a moment Sure.

Too, to thank you for just abusing the myth. The, that goes around about who wrote that and, and Exactly. And I love your line that who you're gonna believe the guy who was there and know who. Wrote it or the guy who wasn't there and said he did. Yeah. I think we know who you're talking about. Right? I I,

Carl: and, and to just, just to paraphrase what you said, what I, what I actually said, who are you gonna trust when you, you know, the guy who, who was there and tells you he didn't write it, or, or the guy who was not there and tells you He did.

MC: He did. Yeah, exactly. I was wondering if, or would you be, uh, would [00:32:00] you have any interest in just abusing another myth or two that you've heard caught, tossed around by people who weren't there? Of, of

Carl: course. Please. Oh, do, I mean, tell me what myth, what?

MC: Oh, I, I, I, oh, I just, I thought maybe you might have, have a thought of some.

I mean, when you hear people say, oh, this happened this way and this happened that way, and you were there all the time for everything, it must make you chuckle up your sleeve. Well,

Carl: on the internet, you know, this is probably 2010 or 20 or 30,000. [00:32:30] People who are members of various JAWS groups mm-hmm. That I, I'm a member of also.

And the same question arises like every, maybe every year or two uhhuh and they all turn to me and they say, Carl, what about that? Uh, one of the most, uh, popular ones is there's a, a lovely nighttime shot of the boat at sea and there's a shooting star that comes twice across the street twice. And the de the debate, although there shouldn't be a debate, is that an optical effect or did Steven just get lucky with [00:33:00] that shot?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That is, Joe s is fond of pointing out, that was a day for night shot, so there was no way of putting comment in the thing. Right. You just had to scratch the negative and put in, you know, put in the, it was nice.

Phil: It was a really nice embedded scratching the negative for

Ted: gunshots and the, and the whole decapitated head scene, which I, I played back a couple of times to see how.

The shock effect work. And it was primarily audio. Yeah. And, uh, that, that was shot in, uh, a swimming pool with some milk in the water. In the, [00:33:30]

Carl: in, in. Yeah. Feels like months later in post-production that we made that Steven, we had seen the film in previews and Steven said, I need one more big scream, man. Wow.

Yeah. And that was the, the o the obvious moment. And that's where they went to Universal and scrounged up whatever they could from the boat. No, I

MC: have to tell you that your book, uh, particularly the Jaws log, uh, it captures so many characters that just seeing the movie, you might, you might go, oh, that's an interesting guy.

Who is [00:34:00] that guy? Hello? Young fellow. Oh, yeah. And all these different things, and you go through and flesh 'em out and tell who they are. Yep. Which in. Increases the enjoyment, the local characters. Oh my God. They, because you know, I've spent some time in New England and you can scratch any place you want.

You'll find some characters

Carl: now. Oh yeah. Well, there's a, a line that, uh, uh, Hooper has in the movie, he said, you know, there's comparing scars. Yeah. And he showed, you know, this is where, where Mary Ellen Moffitt broke my heart. Not broken. Yeah. On the vineyard. [00:34:30] That gets a laugh that stops the show because there was a real Mary Ellen Moffitt who was what?

You know, the, the, the available girl in high school that everybody went with. Oh wow. Whoa.

Phil: Everyone knew her as Nancy

Ted: Fire. Was there tension between Robert Shaw and Richard

Carl: Dreyfuss? Um, there was a natural tension that was built into the script. There was an actor's tension because Shaw was a trained actor from London with a real [00:35:00] background.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And Dreyfus was a relative newcomer. He had one film. Mm-hmm.

MC: Dirty Krevi. Great

Carl: film. Brilliant. Uh, American Graffiti hadn't come out yet. Yeah. He was, you know, he was a. You know, a good kid actor. He played, I did a, I

Phil: did a play reading with him at that point. Yeah. He was just starting

MC: out. He had one line in, uh, in, uh, uh, valley of the Dolls.

Oh. Oh, maybe. But I'm, I'm thinking of, uh, uh, the, uh, oh,

Phil: the Alzheimer's story.

MC: Yeah, that's it. No, he is, it's a calling fraternity house in, uh, Berkeley. And [00:35:30] he steps in. You want me to call the cops? I'll call the cops. It's, uh,

Carl: oh, no, no. That, that, that was not, not, not a Berkeley, that's the hotel where, um, And Bancroft is having an affair with Dustin Hospital, the graduate judge.

So Dreyfus can be seen at the lobby of the hotel saying that that line, yeah, I'll

MC: be done. But also with Norman, what is it? Norman fell Phil. He's the, he's got the rent boarding house. Yeah. And the she, she screams. She screams and everybody comes to the door and Dreyfus leans in and says, LA, you want me to call the cops?

I'll call the cops. Oh, [00:36:00] yes. I'm thinking, oh my God, that's true. Drives can't

Carl: remember the name of the movie. So

Phil: Josh,

Ted: Josh. Kind of broke some conventions. You, you call it a two act structure, not a three

Phil: ACT

Carl: structure. That's right. I have, I have arguments with screenwriting professors about that.

Ted: Ah. Can you explain what the difference

Carl: is to somebody?

Well, you know, the standard western dramatic structure has evolved since Mollier and Shakespeare. It started out as a five. Classical drama has a five x structure, right? Yep. And you know, that, that suited actors and [00:36:30] writers for a couple hundred years. And then, uh, somewhere along the line, probably in the 19th century to simplify storytelling, it, uh, evolved into the three act structure, you know, summed up as act one, uh, and, you know, introduced the actor, get up into a tree, act two, throw things at him, complicate his life act, act two, act three, get him down.

Right, right. Mm-hmm. Well, if you look at Jaws. Act one is everything until the time they go to sea [00:37:00] Curtain, rise the curtain, and then you're at sea for Act three where they killed a shark eventually. I'm sorry, I'm spoiling. Spoiler

Phil: alert,

Carl: Lord. Too bad, too bad, too late. But it's a two act structure and I, I was teaching screenwriting at Columbia.

And, you know, in New York, and I was having an argument with the chairman of the department and the other guys who taught film, and they say, we're teaching three ACT structure. I said, well, you know, it's two act structure. The guy says, no, it's a three act structure. I'll show you how don't, I said, don't bother, [00:37:30] don't bother you.

You're wrong. But it, you know, that, that, uh,

Ted: so it just broke a lot of norms and Oh, yeah. And, and this was the first. Summer blockbuster, which that's how it did change the industry. Yeah. It went immediately out on like 500 screens, which, which was unheard of at the

Carl: time. Right. The origin of that was after the second preview in Lakewood, California, which was picked for a similarity statistically to middle America.

They did a lot of product testing there. Mm-hmm. Because a real white bread, orange County community in those [00:38:00] days. Yeah. Uh, Uh, the, you know, the, the head got the, the, the big scream and everything after the preview where the head was in the sh in the show and everybody screamed. There was a, you know, a.

Just a buzz. You couldn't hear yourself thinking the buzz in the lobby was so great. Wow. So the only place you could talk was in the men's room. So in the men's room of Lakewood Theater, our Sid Scheinberg, Lou Wasserman, oh, the head of Per [00:38:30] of the Publicity and and marketing for Universal and one other person standing with their expensive shoes.

In the water cuz everybody had held it in until the final, final credit. So there's, everybody had been flushing the toilets like crazy. You were in this room too clearly. Yeah. So there's

Phil: two inches of, it was the room where it

Carl: happened and the Wasserman says, you know, the best word of mouth is a line around the block, you know, mate, where people can't get in.

Yeah, yeah. And they said, well, you know, we don't want. We need to recoup a lot of money on this thing, you know, so [00:39:00] maybe we don't wait for, so the compromise was we'll open it as wide as we can. Mm-hmm. In those days were like 480 screens. When it first opened. You opened

Phil: Jaws wide? Yes. Wonderful.

Carl: So, and, and, and, uh, so it came to pass.

They, they, but

Phil: that, what did that feel like to know that you had that great a

Carl: success? Well, we didn't know at the time. Yeah, okay. So everybody figured it was gonna be a summer blockbuster movie. We got everybody go, you know, popcorn movie. Yep, yep. And you [00:39:30] know, come September everybody go home and then still rolling.

And the reason it opened on 400 screen, we get our money back no matter what happens. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, it opened on 400 something screens. And then, you know, the word of mouth and, and the reviews every, everything conspired that the movie started to gross and gross. Mm-hmm. And

Ted: gross. And what would did it finally gross approximately?

Carl: Um, I don't know, couple of enough to qualify it on an inflation [00:40:00] adjusted average for one of the top 10 grossing films of all time, with a budget of

Ted: originally 3.5 million, 5 million, but went up to five or so, went

Carl: up to about 7 million or 8 billion million. But, uh, by opening that was just your salary though.

Yes. It's just the writer. So, so they, they made all, all this tremendous amount of money and then they j it just kept grossing, you know, July, yeah. August, September. Or just how exciting. You know, every week we were the top grossing film, and then they, they [00:40:30] started taking ads of the trades, showing the shark devouring.

Uh, competition, sound of music, godfather, you know, all, all appre. And until the release of Godfather two, uh, J Jaws two was the most successful sequel of all time. Wow. And Jaws, uh, 3d.

Ted: Yeah. You did. Now your credits include The Jerk. Yes. Jaws two. Dr. Detroit Jaws 3d. Yep. Which way is up And Caveman, which you directed.

Yep. Wow. So you went [00:41:00] on a,

Phil: the Jaws 3D was subtitled. Which way is up?

Ted: Wow. That, that's, um,

MC: remarkable. I, I'd like to ask you another question, if I may. Sure. A few years ago on npr, you were having a conversation about, uh, I believe about s Spielberg. Was was your, what was in your mind, if I may. But you said that there were two or three things that abilities that if you were going to be successful as a film director, you should have these abilities.

Right. And I remember that one of [00:41:30] them was, you would be really handy if you had great talent. And, uh, I wonder, do you remember

Carl: that discussion? Well, yes. The, the three things, you know, the three tent pole, legs of the tripod of success Yes. Uh, is a speed, um, and accuracy and involvement. Mm-hmm. Wow. And almost everything.

Devolves to two. You can usually, and the, and the, and the problem to most people is you [00:42:00] can have two out of three. You can have it cheap and fast, but it won't be good. Right. You can have it good and cheap, but it won't be fast. Yeah. You can have it fast and cheap, but it won't be good, you know? So, uh, jaws, you know, Steven.

Did all things. He could do it fast, he could do it cheap, and he could do it good. Mm-hmm. Which is very unusual. That's, are you, are you still in, uh, uh, connected to Steve? You No, I, I, I we're cordial to each other. Cordial. But nowadays, as I say in the book, Steven is like a volcano. [00:42:30] He's best describe, best observed from a distance.

MC: I, yeah, I I remember you also saying that, uh, at some point that the ability to negotiate the politics. Is a big advantage too. Yes. And that comes through in your book. The politics shouts at you from many pages.

Carl: Stephen was a superb politician. Most, most directors ignore the politics and concentrate on the art.

Yeah. A lot of people do. Will do the art and the politics and not. Pay attention to the [00:43:00] quality. Yeah. Steven was mastered everything, politics, quality and, you know.

MC: Can I ask what you thought, uh, your briefly about David Brown and Mr. Zika? I mean, as the two, as men,

Carl: the two producers? Yeah. You were, uh, number one is they were stingy bastards.

Uh, uh, there William Gilmore, who was executive producer and saved the production literally, I mean, he. Bent all his skills of 20 years [00:43:30] as production manager to, you know, making sure that we got the movie finished no matter what. Wow. And as a reward, Santa and Brown bought him a big screen tv. Wow. At which point he quit and went out on his own.

Oh, I bet he did. Meanwhile, across the hill where five easy pieces was a hit. Mm. Everybody involved that picture, including my friend who paid the sound engineer. Got a check for $20,000 or a Mik. [00:44:00] Wow. Wow, wow. With a note from the producer saying, we wanna share our success with you. Ah, now

Phil: speaking of that, yes.

Let's talk about the writer's strike.

Ted: You are very involved or were very involved. I was very involved in, in the union, the Writer's Guild. You were a vice president here on the West Coast. Um, and a long history. It's interesting in, in your book, 38, Your anniversary edition of the Jaws log, which I highly recommend to anyone curious about the business second, that in particular Jaws?

Yeah. Um, you, you kind of [00:44:30] pressing it because you were talking about. Now it's 2001 and the commercial actors are on strike. I remember that strike. And you know who's the, who knows what's going to happen in 2025, which was a quarter century into the future. And now here we are almost, and we're now at the crossroads of a strike.

And one of the thing to set it up is, is that, you know, the LA Times today had an interesting article about the pay compensation for the CEOs of these companies that are being struck. And, uh, David [00:45:00] Zaslav, I. I guess you pronounce his name, Warner Brothers. Discovery, uh, you know, we're talking about a total compensation of a half a billion and, uh, you know, Ted Sarandos, because this is really kind of ally called the Netflix strike.

You know, these people are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Now, some of it, a lot of it's equity and they may not see it because of the stock price. But even so,

Carl: Carl Barks had the answer from each, according to his ability, to each, to each, according to his need. [00:45:30]

Ted: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, sort of like, uh, the Native American philosophy of wealth.

Yeah. You just take what you need. Yeah. So what's, what, what is your take on it? I mean, the, uh, the simple encapsulated question. You may not have the answer to this, but. In, in strike busting in the, in the grocery strike, for example, years ago, uh, Kel told the union heads, cuz I, my landlord was one, said, you know, I'll spend more money than I, you want to break the strike because I don't want [00:46:00] California to set the tone for the rest of the supermarkets across the country.

So these billionaires have bottomless pockets, right? And, and, and so it's, it's really almost cruelty. It's not inability, uh, how much. Would you think that the WGA is asking for in dollar amount? If they got what they asked for. And how does that compare to one of these people's annual salary?

Carl: You'd have to go on the internet and look at the, uh, what, what the unions are saying cuz they've done those calculations.

I haven't. [00:46:30] Okay. I don't, I

Ted: didn't. But tell us about what, what is your take on what's going on? Same old, same

Carl: old. Uh, pretty much so the greed heads want to keep it all. And the workers, in this case, the writers mm-hmm. But also the directors and the actors. Yeah. Only one. What is a fair share of the pie.

Right. That's right. You know, just, you know, share the wealth. There's plenty to go around. You guys can still have, you know, seven, almost eight figure salaries. Yeah. Yep. But you know what we're asking for? Adds up to a total over the three years of the contract. I [00:47:00] mean, I, I, I'm just giving you hypotheticals.

Over the three years of the contract you give us everything we're asking for. It's still, you know, a fragment of what's available, what the pool is. I mean, Netflix has what, 230 subscribers worldwide? Million. 200, 3 million subscribers, multiply that by $40 a month, which is what most of them are paying.

Mm-hmm. That's a hell of a piece of change. And you can make a show like Game of Thrones with, you know, horses and period and all that. Mm-hmm. And then, you [00:47:30] know, Per episode, episode cost of a million, eight or 3 million. That's right. Uh, and, you know, just, you know, that even affects your bottom

Ted: line. Netflix is a little tone deaf too because they're, they've chosen this week to clamp down on subscription, uh, usage.

Uh, for, that's true. Isn't it? Parents that have kids at college or people who are in a separate location for more than a month. Yep. Have to get a second account. Yep. It's, uh,

Carl: the greet heads never stop being great heads.

MC: Yeah. And the studio heads never stopped. [00:48:00] I used to romanticize them 50 years ago when I came into this business, but I heard the other day that 1942, uh, uh, the head of Warner Brothers, uh, had, uh, heard that the, uh, he's seen what the Japanese did and had heard they were gonna bomb Warner Brothers because it was right next to Lockheed.

It looked a lot like it from the air. So he sent a team up to paint a big arrow. On the roof of stage one with literally sing Lockheed with that era. Oh, no, no, no. I mean, that's the kind of American that, oh boy, that, uh, Jack Warner was [00:48:30] and cause the, the, the Defense Department made him take it off, but hey, that's right.

I appreciate the gesture, Jack. They're sort of saying the same thing now,

Carl: you know,

Phil: you know the, the, in the voiceover industry, we have been fighting for years. To try to get a piece, a residual piece of the games, the, the profit that the, the video games are making, which is the billions and billions of dollars of course's.

No piece of, there's

MC: no piece in that. Oh, oh, oh. I have no idea.

Phil: That's terrible. We, they, they raised the salary for, you know, screaming for [00:49:00] three hours. Yeah.

Carl: To little bit. Yeah. And to, and to make up for it. They abruptly cut. The health benefits of the senior performers like Phil and myself. Yep. Who accumulated our pension.

True credits. That's true. You know, during better times. That's right. And they just arbitrarily said, oh, fuck you. You don't have any health coverage yet. Part, yeah,

MC: that's right. Uh, the three of us are, we're, we're all

Phil: out. Yeah. Yeah. Very. It's very disturbing. We're,

Ted: you know, we're still licensed by the fcc, just so, oh, I'm, oh, the fcc.

That, that's a, that'll be [00:49:30] a $10 fine.

Carl: Well, send me a bill.

MC: I'll pay

Phil: it now. Cash.

Carl: Okay. Um, I'll give you 50 right now. If I can say some more.

MC: I got a

Phil: hundred. Tell 'em everything.

Ted: So are they. You know, it, it's, it's almost seeming like with the residual system being, um, uh, torn up because of the new, the new distribution methodology.

Writers are losing ground. It's not even a matter of staying abreast of cost of living. Well, everybody is, the actors are [00:50:00] too. No, that's what I'm saying. It's like, I wonder with, with SAG after coming up and the directors coming up, if the, if there's a teeth out attitude by the studios now to just say, You know, we have there, you know, there are eight major owners of 90% of the media in America, and that includes all the TV studios, Comcast, for example.

So you really have this small cabal of power brokers

Carl: who, a cabal of cannibals. It [00:50:30] is right.

Ted: You know, I mean, so they, I mean, it's, it's a new world. It's, it's different from the strike 20 years ago because of this. I mean, it seems more bleak for the worker.

Carl: Well, for the, all those, all the wage scales and everything were developed based on 26 show, 26 episodes season.

Yes, that's right. Nowadays the season is eight episodes. Yeah. And they want to keep you off the market as a writer for those eight episodes in another 20 weeks while you prepare, you know? Your, your [00:51:00] work. So it, it's, uh, it's a complete dilution of everything we've ever won in the past. So, can, can I wait,

MC: wait in, I'm, I'm gonna try if I don't ask you this question.

Yes. So what are you doing now? What's going on next week? What are you, are you writing anything now? What's what

Carl: Personally, car Gottle himself. You personally, sir. I'm just staying under the radar. I mean, I, I, I, uh, I'm. Frailer than I've ever been. I kind of enjoy staying home. Yes. I went out this past weekend [00:51:30] and did an autograph show in, uh, Baltimore, Maryland somewhere.

Oh, wow. And, you know, I signed a lot of gra autographs. I made a couple thousand dollars in, in, uh, fees. Mm-hmm. Uh, and met a lot of fans. Met well, all fans. Yeah. That must have been fun. And, and, uh, but I'm, I got home. I was exhausted. I, I'm here. Having slept for 14 hours. Oh wow. Was that right or was that fresh?

Yeah, I came, I came back. I had an 8:00 AM flight from Baltimore, which is like 5:00 AM here. Yeah. So by every time we got to [00:52:00] LA and I got, by the time I got to my bed, I had been awake for six hours and it was only 10:00 AM. Whoa. And I was, I was, you know. So you just came back? Yeah, I came back yesterday.

Do mind, are you still writing? Um, only if somebody asks and pays me. Mm-hmm. I, mm-hmm. I don't seek out writing work. I'm not, I haven't started, I did come up with a title, or at least a, a concept from my own autobiographical book, which everybody has been saying, you ought to write a book. Yes, sure. The [00:52:30] title is an imperfect journal.

And it's based on something I said years ago, which is, here's the cold quote. Memory is an imperfect journal of experience. Oh, that's lovely. It's so true. Very true for mine. Yeah, I think I heard

MC: that once before. Your memory is, is amazing. It may be imperfect, but it is amazing. Hey, Carl? Yeah.

Phil: Does this, does this ring a bell with you?

I'm

Carl: giving him a piece of paper. I'm handing a piece of paper that says, greetings of the Season. Fourth Annual Carl Gotley, belated Greetings in Jane Letter [00:53:00] in which I attempt to serve both social and postal obligations.

Phil: I found that when I was going through some of my stuff, and it just

Carl: blew my mind that I, I've saved this.

Phil: That's very interesting. And, and what it is, Carl, you wrote this really, really funny piece about don't resend this chain letter. Yes. Where

you

Carl: will die. You know, the, the first I'll, I'll read the first paragraph, please. The letter says, dear friend, this letter has never been around the world. Not once, [00:53:30] nobody has ever sent a copy to anyone else.

Bring luck and contortion to yourself by neither duplicating it nor forwarding it to anyone. That's the message of the letter.

Ted: All right. I suppose in the moment we have left, what would you tell somebody young, getting started looking at the, the landscape? What would, what would their, what's, what's the best in

Carl: as a writer? The same, the same, uh, advice I give to myself and everybody else. Keep [00:54:00] writing. Yes. Write, write, write. Get up in the morning and write.

Stephen King gets up, doesn't go to lunch until he is written 500 words. You know, it's, yeah. Mm-hmm. If you write every day, uh, you wind up with a body of work, you know, for better or worse, but you have to write every day. And if you, if you're blocked, if there's nothing to write, yeah. If you're sitting there staring at a blank screen or a blank piece of paper back in the day.

Write anything. Write a letter to a friend, write a laundry list. Write [00:54:30] a a memo to yourself about how you've got a, a plunge of the toilet tomorrow, but, but just keep writing. Right? Right. Write, keep putting words on paper any way you can, and then eventually the block will go away and then you'll proceed with whatever it is.

You really want to write, which is your story or screenplay or like that. And,

Phil: and before we wrap up, I do wanna also mention, uh, that your cousin, Paul Gottlieb was a friend of our family, the Proctor family, cuz my mom was [00:55:00] his secretary and Paul was a very well known editor in New York and created the Horizon magazine.

Yeah. Which is still a wonderfully

Carl: unique Oh yeah. No, Paul, Paul piece of art. Paul, my cousin Paul is the guy who. Convinced me to recapture the copyright for the jaws log and reissue it. There you go. And he hooked me up with Esther. Uh, Margolis from New Market Press. And I remember Paul calling me from a theater lobby in New York saying, I just talked to Esther Margolis.

Call her. She's gonna print your book Hot. Oh wow.

Phil: It's great. Thanks [00:55:30] Carl. Also want, I also came to pass. I want to pay a tribute to Milt Larson. Oh, yes. You know, the, the co-founder of the Magic Castle? Yeah. And a, a remarkable man of many, many talents, uh, who was as kind as he was prolific. And so, God bless you.

Ted: Our guest next week is Phoebe.

Phil: Phoebe Dorin. Yeah, that's right. And, uh, And maybe a mystery guest, uh, will be showing up to you. Well,

MC: I can't thank you guys enough for letting

Carl: me be here.

Ted: Oh, you're a great fan, [00:56:00] Carl Gottlieb. Thank you so much. What a, what a wonderfully interesting hour this has been. Thank you.

Have, and

Phil: thank you for Jaws regards from Maryanne, by the way. Really, if, if you're listening Maryanne, we, we send our regards back to you. This is Phil and

Ted: Ted Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

Phil: I'm Phil Proctor, and we'll be hearing you again soon, next week.

Ted: Yes.

Carl: Bye-bye.