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lookbackmachine · 7 years ago

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Episode 1 Transcript

Transcripts w/ Deleted Scenes: Episode 1

__ Opening

Paul: Joe once came into my office. I’ll never forget this did I tell you this story already? And he came into my office one day looking like this, he marched into my office like this, and he had these two framed photographs and he put one on my table like this, and I said what’s that and he said it’s a picture of Ullyses s grant. Didn’t I tell you this? And then he said here’s my picture that going on my desk, and it was a picture of General Sherman.

Joe: And I said, and I went to this thing and I said Paul, I know you’re upset and he was like I’m just so upset and I said but let’s look at this differently, let’s look at this as you’re Grant and I’ll be Sherman, let’s march through Georgia, let’s just go.

Paul: And he said we are going to burn a path through disney, that’s what we’re gonna do. You’re Sherman, You’re Grant and I’m Sherman and we are going to march through Disney.

Joe: And Paul he just had this, he just slowly smiled and he said yeah that could be kinda fun if we think of it, and I said yea.

Paul: And I knew just what he meant… No mercy.

As strange as it may seem, “No Mercy” became one of the guiding principles of a saturday morning cartoon show. Those are the voices Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere and that strategy stems from earlier in their careers when both men had lost battles for creative control and artistic credit, which in turn left major scars. They were jointly determined not to let it happen again.

So in 1996 when they were developing their new show Recess, they implemented the tactics of William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea. Sherman is best remembered for making Georgia Howl during the civil war by burning homes, destroying rail lines, and stealing supplies, a strategic brutality in efforts to end the war with the South as quickly as possible.

In Paul and Joe’s adaptation of this “hard war” policy, this meant contesting every single creative battle with such vigor that the studio would eventually see the futility of arguing with them and simply let them have their way. And so Paul and Joe fought about content, animation style, music, and Jim Neighbors which is to say just about everything.

Joe: It got to the point, where he they would be saying, we’d call BLEEP and say we need something. And they’d say BLEEP’s really busy. He’s in the middle of something. Tell him we’re coming down. And we would get down there and he’d be already gone like he’d be gone for the day like he didn’t want to see us. So we would be like Don’t Tell him. We’d call up and say is Tom down there? ‘Ummm yea I don’t think he’s here right now. And we go now’s the time to go.

And we’d run down there and say BLEEP we need more of this and he was like uuhhh and we would double team him so he couldn’t get out of the office and stuff like that.

Their adversary was a company that historically, had ignored, usurped or minimized creative efforts of anyone other than the figurehead Walt Disney. A practice which continued even after his death.

And yet Paul and Joe’s scorched earth policy worked, Recess has the look and feel of a show that couldn’t be further from the usual Disney fare. Instead it would be more in line with the new Hollywood filmmaking of the 1970s complete with its staunchly liberal politics including episodes about gender identity, peaceful protest and the falsehoods of religion.

Joe: I had a dream, well not a dream but one of those things when you wake up in the middle of the night and write something down. I just wrote the recess gang. And I called paul and I said I got an idea it’s called the recess gang. And Paul said uhh I don’t like gang, let’s just call it Recess and I said ok. But I just, even that night I remember thiking, it’s a group of kids all looking at camera going “fuck this.” And it’s silly to think back on it now in a way, but we saw this as where the 70s filmmaking, where you could still do some of that stuff. We saw these shows as growing out of things like Taxi or Mary Tyler Moore or you know Harold and Maude or something like that those kinda great comedies that we liked that had meaning, and were really funny as character comedies.

Paul: What Joe and I have always said about Recess and he’s going to confirm this right now, is that it’s for better or worse, whatever you like about it whatever you don’t like about it. It’s our show. We did it the way we wanted to. And we feel, it’s one of the few things we can look back on and say, it’s purely us, whatever people, you know there’s nobody to blame and there’s nobody else to take the credit, whatever it is, it was us.

The show was a it was hit. Recess took ABC’s Saturday Morning line-up from last to first, which led to an animated feature release in 2001. The movie took the subtle leftist ideas of the television show and went full-blown hippy. To put it simply: Robert Goulet sings Green Tamborine over the credits.

Paul and Joe had indeed burned a path through Disney, but something else happened when they reached the sea. In the long run, by fighting to put their personal stamp on Recess and making it their way, the show is consistent with Paul and Joe’s aesthetics, but not their patron’s.

It does not look like a Disney show, it does not sound like a Disney show, and although Walt’s name is on it, it is not Disney canon and never could be, it is only Disney in name. It is likewise dismissed from Disney history. In fact, it’s been buried. Even in a time with an abundance of content services and despite its proven track record, the Recess television series is not available on DVD, it is not on iTunes, and it is not available for legal streaming in the US. Instead it is in the Disney Vault and may remain there for the foreseeable future.

That is not to say it is too controversial or too progressive or that this is the show that Disney doesn’t want the public to see. It’s a far greater likelihood that Recess was incompatible with what Disney was then and what Disney is now. The show was not even of its own time period, Paul and Joe created a cartoon steeped in 70s filmmaking in 1996. A style, which was dashed on the blockbuster rocks of Jaws and Star Wars by the end of the 70s. And in the 21st century, Disney would further the doctrine of the big Blockbuster with not only sequels, but linking franchises with crossovers in the massive and the massively profitable Marvel Universe. Recess at the time was a small show and with time it has only gotten smaller in the vast sea of the Disney library.

So how did this little oddity get made in the first place? The asnwer is it was a different time, and time is everything.

Paul: There are these little pockets of time that happen, that you can fall into, that you can jump into if you’re lucky enough or if you’re wise enough to see them, you can find yourself in them and all kinds of amazing things happen.

This is the story of Created by Paul and Joe.

The Early Life

Some people have pictures of their wives on their desk, their kids, a dog perhaps, rarely are those photos next to civil generals, but the more you get to know Paul and Joe, the more Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman desk portraits make sense or were perhaps inevitable.

Paul Germain is bearded and bespectled-- he looks as if he played a pivotal role in developing the first Macintosh. Paul was described in a New Yorker article back in 1993 as “rather intense,” which is a fantastic description if you scratch out the word rather. Take a listen to the ferocity of which he tells stories that are over 20 years old:

Paul: and the first time I did it, Robert Goulet walks in the room and he’s a little tiny short guy. So I went to Vegas and walked in the door and said the joke is you’re going to sing you’re really oging to sing this with heart it’s like you’re singing Mozart, and he goes, I say it’s like an opera, like Mozart, and he goes, “Mozart didn’t do Opera.!” You don’t know what you’re talking about! And it was so scary because you know cause it’s Robert Goulet! But he calmed down after a minute and then we did it. And it was great! It was so much fun!

During his interviews, Paul would ask for a break at about an hour in. During his break, Paul wouldn’t use the restroom or ask for water, instead he’d keep on talking and then eventually ask if I wanted to record what he’d been saying.Did you just want to record this?

The point is Paul Germain does not take breaks. He is John Henry and life is the steam drill.

Paul: When I was on and I was producing… I was, I just I was like a storm like passing through I’d talk really fast and my level of energy is really really high, and I know what I want and sometimes people are just, I just leave the room and they go… “wooo, woah.”

And yet despite his fierceness, he and his stories can take a surprisingly reflective and emotional turn:

Paul: It was a period where I was learning to find my you know, to find myself as a producer and how it worked and what I could fight for. And I was reluctant to take people on, I’m much less reluctant to take people on than I was in those days. And it’s hurt me and the degree to which- it’s hurt me- it hurt me in those days tremendously- that I wasn’t able to- I wasn’t brave enough, I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t sure of myself enough in those days, and one of the ways I wasn’t was in defending him.

And of course, It would be remiss not mention his infectious laugh:

Paul: Hahaha, that’s right I forgot, I thought that was brilliant.

His partner in crime is Joe Ansolabehere. Joe has a white head of hair and is as deepingly engrossed in thought as any of the students in Rapheal’s school of athens . He is a talker and there are signs it has gotten him in trouble now and again:

“And again I don’t know how much of this stuff is important or how much Paul would want to be told, but-”

And Again

Joe: Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, you’re asking me, I’m telling you”

And Again.

Joe:“I’m going to get in a lot of trouble saying this stuff, but that’s what it feels like anyway

And again

Joe: “You know, anyway that’s it, I don’t want to say anything more about it, but I’ve probably said too much”

And again

Joe: “You’re asking me something, that we should probably cut the this whole thing out, but now I’ve said it, I’ve let it out of the bag”

And again

Joe: “You’re asking a question that really gets to some stuff that I almost don’t want to say cause it’s---but I’m going to.”

Joe has the energy of a protestor who maybe lost some of his idealism after one too many bouts with the man. There are times when he is remininscent of one of his own characters in Recess Principal Prickly, who lost the passion he used to have for his field, and is waiting for inspiration to take hold again:

Joe: If I were fighting for something that was-- something that was about characters, who I thoguht were really interesting or a world that I thought was really interesting, or a thematic thing that I thought was really interesting and subtle-- that was an extension of that 70s filmmaking , I’d think I could probably go back there and fight...hopefully. But when you’re fighting about the kid who lives in outer space and rides a surfboard around or whatever it’s like if they want it to be different then I don’t care, which is not necessarily the way to make something in this world. , you know if you really want to like make something good. You have to really be that passionate about something I think.

However, it’s essential to remember that it was Joe, who stormed into Paul’s office with headshots of Grant and Sherman all those years ago, and not the other way around. He once had an intensity that rivaled Paul’s and at times exceeded it:

Joe: I remember getting really angry, and all the writers were in the room and I was getting angry and I was kinda yelling at somebody on the phone and I pulled the phone, and I was like ‘Goddamn it!” And I pulled the phone out and I just threw it across the room. And I was like so mad.

And intensity that even scared Paul Germain:

Paul: I said, ‘Joe, you know you just destroyed your phone.’ And he goes, ‘I know.’

They are a self-admitted married couple. And they do all the cute things that old married couples do:

They interrupt each other:

Paul: That was at the very end of 1995, we thought it was-

Joe: I thought it was the beginning-

Paul: We thought it was going to go-

Joe: Cause there was, we were doing it over Christmas and into January

Paul: Were we?

Joe: So we kinda had a sense that- that it might not happen-

Paul: Yeah, it did, it felt like it wasn’t going to happen-

Joe: but it was like

Paul: You could feel when these things are going south, when like you go the executives aren’t enthusiastic about it, you can just feel that it’s not going to happen

Joe: They were happy, and now they’re not-

Paul: They were happy now they’re not- that happens. Ok so-

They protect each other:

Paul: Yeah, there’s one famous meeting-

Joe: Don’t use names.

Joe: I’ll tell you a secret about Paul, mind if I do?

Paul: I don’t know what it is…

They try to remember names of friends together:

Joe: It was Joe Roth?

Paul: No, no, nah- it was… it was...Joe he was gone- it was uh, what’s his name?You know. You know the guy-

JOe: TOm?

Paul: No. It was before Tom. I can’t think of his name. Anyway doesn’t matter.Um.. it’s that even in the movie it didn’t really affect us that much-

Joe: Peter Schneider?

Paul: Yeah.

Joe: Peter Schneider.

Paul: Don’t you remember? Yeah he saw it and he wasn’t that thrilled with it, he didn’t like the 60s music. Don’t you remember that?

Joe: I don’t know.

And like most older couples they try to remember if someone is still living:

Joe: So one of the things, we got this great guy named um...what was his name again? It was…

Paul: John…?

Joe: John

Paul: I can’t think of his last name, he died,

Joe: I want to say--- no he didn’t, I don’t think so.

And there’s also the occasional moment when their voices become one:

Joe: Joe and Paul

Paul: Joe and Paul

Joe and Paul: Paul and Joe

Joe and Paul: Hahaha.

Together their pace is manic, they feed off each other in a symbiotic relationship, pushing each other to new heights. The best way to think of it is if you put an object between two mirrors, the mirrors bounce the object’s reflection back and forth back and forth until the end of time, that’s what Paul and Joe do with a question. When the partnership is clicking they’re two giddy cops on the verge of solving a 20 year old cold case.

That’s the relationship of Paul and Joe in 2017, but their their journeys to Hollywood and Grant and Sherman began all the way back in the 1950s.

Joe: You know, I don’t know if he told you this, but his parents---he’s raised Communist basically. His parents were communists.

It would be difficult to start anywhere else than that quote by Joe. It’s the best quote. Joe’s words fill the mind with scenes of Paul’s parents singing communist lullabies over his crib with a mobile of hammers and sickles above his infant head and a stuffed Karl Marx doll held close to his chest. Joe’s quote is short, it’s powerful, it’s bold, and it’s funny. If it had been Paul was raised Catholic or Mormon or Republican, it’s not nearly as potent. Not only that, it’s a quote if said in the 1950s would’ve ended Paul’s career. The only problem with the quote is it doesn’t happen to be entirely true:

Paul: HA! You know that’s an exaggeration, I was raised in a pretty left wing family.”

Throughout their story, there will be many competing narratives, misinformation, and misremebering, over-exaggeration as in this case and sometimes flat-out lies. It calls to mind, Pliny the Younger who wrote letters to Cornelius Tacitus detailing Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption which destroyed the city of Pompeii in the year 79. This is the only account of that event from an eyewitness in history. In effect, Pliny’s version is the oral history of Pompeii’s Destruction. One guy, one story. As far as we know, he was first to tell the story, he was the last to tell the story, but had there been another eye witness whose letters had survived to the modern age, rest assured that they would say Pliny the Younger was full of crap.

So enjoy these stories that these people remember to be true, but beware of the great quote because no matter how flashy, it does not tell the whole story, but the danger is it can be the only thing people remember, especially if it has the great fortune of being said first.

And so Paul was raised “Not exactly” communist.His grandfather, Simon Lazarus was a different story entirely.

Paul: My grandfather was a Stalinist. He wasn’t a communist, but he was a Stalinist. And he would get angry when people would criticize Stalin. And this is in the 1980s, when The Soviet Union, itself had condemned him 25 or 30 years before.

To understand paul germain, you must understand simon lazarus, and to do that a little history is required.

Paul’s name comes from his grandfather’s story, which can’t be understood without a brief history of the blacklist, HUAC, and Stalin. (Important because that name Paul is actually a reference to the Blacklist Created by Paul and Joe. The credit here, not on purpose, is a call to the past, a time where names were names were ruined and writers had to work under names that were not their own and they did not receive credit, and somehow I think that makes created by Paul and Joe a little bit more important. And that Credit shares a title card with someone who was in favor of the blacklist)

Communism was birthed by the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Marx, if you will remember was referenced as a stuffed doll in Paul’s crib, he was also one of the most influential political thinkers in modern times as was Engels. In a nutshell, the communist Manifesto is this: the rich exploit the working class and own the means of production (factories,material, wealth), and it was these political philosophers belief that the working class should start a revolution to overthrow the wealthy and create a world in which man works for man, the means of production are publicly owned, and the exploitation of the working class stops, which in theory is a utopian, but when it was put into practice it became distorted.

[Sounds Like I’m yelling this A revolution in the spirit of communism would take place in Russia. And one its first leader had all the inspiration he needed from the gallows. After Alexander Ulyanov as part of the People’s Will was arrested for plotting to kill Alexander III Czar of Russia. He was publicly hanged, his last words were “Long live the People’s Will.” His brother was there to watch him die and from that day forth he set upon vengeance against the Romanovs. His name was Vladimir Illyuch Ullanov, or as he would later be known Vladimir Lenin. There were a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, starting in February, the first forced the Russian Czar to abdicate his thrown, then the revolutionaries then established their own provisional government. Vladimir Lenin was not a key figure in the original revolution, in fact he was in exile, but when he returned he helped overthrow the provisional government with the Bloshevik Red Army. Lenin would stay in power until his death, but in his Last Testament he gave a foreboding warning about one of his potential successors, Josef Stalin “Man of Steel.”

He wrote:

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.

In the Post Script, he added another caveat to Stalin’s rule.

Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a [minor] detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.

Too rude seems like an odd criticism of a potential Soviet Leader to make in one’s last testament, but it emanates from an incident when Stalin cussed out Lenin’s wife, which is an important lesson for everyone: don’t cuss out someone’s wife and grudges will be held.

The letter did not stop Stalin’s rise to power, Stalin positioned himself as the Supreme Ruler, after several political alliances and betrayals, including forcing his chief rival Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929. Trotsky continued to critique Stalin’s government until 1940 when Trotsky was in Mexico, it was there that a soviet agent, Ramon Mercader, murdered Trotsky by using a moutaineering ice axe on his head.

Stalin’s early days with the Bolshevik party included running their newspaper the Pravda and organizing a 4 million dollar bank heist to support the Bolshevik cause in 1907. Once Stalin was in power his rule was characterized by surveillance and a purge known as The Great Terror, which lasted from 1936 to 1938.It is estimated that 13 million lives were taken during Stalin’s Purges.

In light of this, Stalin’s words concerning mass death are especially chilling.

He was once asked how long he would continue killing people? He replied as long as is necessary. This was at a party.

And then there is his most famous quote which in popular culture has overshadowed his actual actions. This was when he said, “ The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” Perhaps Stalin was attempting to be funny, after all he was quoting German Satirist Kurt Tucholsky. However when he made the retort, he was being told about starvation in the Ukraine.

Stalin was the leader of USSR during the beginning of the Cold War a term coined by writer George Orwell. Cold war politics was defined by international clashes as the US tried to stop the spread of communism and the Soviet Union tried to stop the spread of Western and American influence.The Cold War politics would result in the Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Space Race, The Bay of Pigs, and the war at home McCarthyism, and the Nuclear Arms Race.

There was hysteria that the Russians were going to launch a nuclear strike at the US and in turn the US would fire back leading to mutually assured destruction,this wasn’t far from the truth, in fact there were numerous close calls to nuclear war with even the slighest provocation, like the incident of a bear climbing a fence at a base in Duluth Minnesota which set off the wrong alarms during the Cuban Missile Crisis almost resulting in friendly nuclear fire.

The USSR was a legitimate threat, but it’s the American response to that threat at home which included disregarding Constitutional rights of its citizens that made America its own enemy. There was a fear that AMERICAN leftist groups and AMERICAN communists were planning tolead to a revolution like the one seen in Russia, right leaning groups claimed that the New Deal was more than enough evidence.

In 1938, Martin Dies a Republican Senator persuaded Congress to form HUAC, House UnAmerican Activities Comission. Intially, its objective was to ferret out subversives in the country, Communist or otherwise. Over the years, that goal would transform, and committee would turn into a red-baiting witch hunt.

Not only was it anti-communist, but had strong undercurrents of anti-semitism- ten of the first 19 people called before the committee were jewish. If a person had changed their name Actors that a jewish name to a waspier name, the more likely they were to be suspected of communist connections, like Edward G. Robinson and Danny Kaye.

First Amendment rights were spurned by the committee, Communist beliefs and political affiliation were seen as designs to overthrow the government or at the very least espionage. Stalin’s Communism had tainted the political ideology and as tensions with the USSR grew so did the Committee’s reach. PAUSE HUAC re-record took Hollywood by storm in 1947 when 41 people from the industry were called to testify. The committee was welcomed to Tinseltown with forced open arms by Jewish studio heads, who feared being labeled red or even pink.

It was a period of enhanced self preservation in Hollywood, judging by the answers to the question Have you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party? The responses varied from renouncing the party to claiming allegiance to the United States or naming names of people they knew to be communist, whatever their answer because the committee didn’t need the information, they had their suspects, but the groveling and squealing before the committee was a public demonstration of strength in fighting the communist menace.

However, the Hollywood 10 broke from normal proceedings. A group of writers, producers, and directors refused to name names when called before HUAC or dignify the committee by answering its questions and they were sentenced to prison for contempt of congress. After their release from prison they were forced to write underneath false names because Hollywood studios, despite knowing their talent, refused to hire them out of panic that the American people would boycott their movies if they did killing their profits and potentially their lives. The writers were forced to take lesser salaries and get zero credit for their writing, if they didn’t they’d be out of work entirely.The blacklist had begun.

In 1954, with the blacklist still in effect, Director Herbert Bieberman, one of the Hollywood 10, and a crew full of blacklisted or greylist members would make the film Salt of The Earth. The film was funded by IPC, Independent Production Company, whose President invested 5,000 dollars of his own money in the film. His name was Simon Lazarus. The film had to be made outside of Hollywood because many Hollywood elites, newspapers, and studios feared it was Communist Propaganda funded by Moscow Gold. They did everything within their power to stop the film from being released, including the deportation of one of the films leads and firing rifles at a crewman’s automobiles.

Another tactic, was to bring Simon Lazarus before HUAC, but it backfired, Lazarus was of course steadfast in his beliefs and he went on to tell the committee exactly what he thought:

““A Motion picture is a most public document,” he said. “ It is meant for the public and the public has its constitutional rights and its human rights to receive it or reject it. To interfere with this honored American process is not merely unconstitutional, but is an insult to the intelligence and patriotism of the people themselves. Pause too long I will not join in any attack on upon the competence and intelligence and patriotism of the american people.”

The film was released, but had little success stemming from the litany of attacks. On June 27th 1956, when the IPC filed a lawsuit, the headline in Variety read: “Salt of the Earth Owners V Everybody” because a total of 65 film, theater, laboratories and 16 individuals were defendants, sued for anti-trust damages of 7 and a half million dollars.

Even before his testimony, Lazarus was being watched by the FBI beginning in 1951. The Bureau would turn up the pressure by placing neighbors on the payroll to provide information about the man next door, the family gardener was pressed for secrets, the spying resulted in over hundreds of pages of notes until 1973, when it was finally called off and they found nothing.

Simon Lazarus’ connection with the blacklist ran even deeper. One of his best friends was Paul Robeson.

Paul Robeson: (singing) “I get weary and sick of trying, I’m tired of living and scared of dying, but Old Man River, he just keeps rolling along.”

Yes, that Paul Robeson.

Old Man River was the song that made Robeson famous, but eventually he’d be labeled as the “Black Stalin”, which is probably why Lazarus liked him so much. The process by which he fell from fame to American villany began with a quote at the Paris Peace Conference in 1949.

Robeson: “It is unthinkable that American Negros would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.”

This was speech as it was reported by the Associated Press was taken as verbal treason by the American Public.It is the best quote, but it’s not exactly true. The New York Times’ and other publications’ recounted the event differently:

”We in America do not forget that it is on the backs of the poor whites of Europe…and on the backs of millions of black people the wealth of America has been acquired. And we are resolved that it shall be distributed in an equitable manner among all of our children and we don’t want any hysterical stupidity about our participating in a war against anybody, no matter whom. We are determined to fight for peace. We do not wish to fight the Soviet Union. ”

The Times’ version of events has Robeson calling for peace rather than touting the Soviet Union as morally superior to the US. However, Robeson still acknowledges the plight of African Americans in The United States. It would take another 15 years from the time of the quote for segreagtion to be outlawed with the civil rights act of 1964. Robeson was an outspoken African-American with communist tendecies at a time when African Americans were often prevented from expressing their opinions even within the privacy of a voting booth. The AP isn’t directly to blame for his fall, it was an American society that actively sought to disenfranchise a portion of its citizens and was incapable of accepting anything contrary to America being the greatest country on earth. That is to say, Robeson never had a chance, he was an African American, which was one nail in his coffin in the 40s and 50s, the second nail was that Robeson wasn’t shy about his affinity for Russia he did after all record this in 1945:

Robeson: (singing)

We fought for the future, destroyed the invaders,

And brought to our homeland the laurels of fame.

Our glory will live in the memory of nations

And all generations will honour her name.

Long live our Soviet motherland,

Built by the people's mighty hand.

Long live our people, united and free.

Strong in our friendship tried by fire.

Long may our crimson flag inspire,

Shining in glory for all men to see.

When he recorded that tune the United States and the USSR were allies, but in 1949 they were were not and in that year the USSR dedicated a mountain to him outside of Kirghizia aptly named Mount Robeson. So when HUAC was looking for Communists in Hollywood, Robeson was not a bad place to start. When he was called before the committee, he was courageous and stood by his beliefs. In his testimony he stated: “You gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the non-patriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Robeson was of course blacklisted after the impassioned speech. In his fall from grace, His yearly earnings went from $150,000 to less than $3,000. He became a Phariah, a leper abandoned by both black and white culture, it went so far that recordings of his work were erased. And yet He was more than welcomed at the Lazarus’ household and allowed to bring guests.

Paul: My mom told me a story recently that I had never heard before. That Paul Robeson came out to Los Angeles at one point. And he would do this, he would come out to Los Angeles and stay with my grandparents. And I think my Mom told me just recently, that he was with this writer that she had never heard of or something. She was introduced to this writer and his name was Langston Hughes. Ok? (laughs) So it was Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson came out and my grandmother had only that Paul Robeson was coming, but he brought Langston Hughes and maybe other people and my grandmother who was gonna make dinner for everybody wasn’t prepared for that many people, so they had to go out to dinner right? And they decided to go Chasen’s. It was a big fancy, you know Hollywood restaurant that people went to. Chasen’s wouldn’t let Paul Robeson or Langston Hughes in cause they were black. So they wouldn’t let them into the restaurant, so they had to go someplace else to eat.

Their unique friendship continued throughout the tumultous years of the blacklist and on June 6th 1959, Simon Lazarus’ daughter now a Germain, gave birth to a young boy and named him Paul after Mr. Robeson. A little more than a year later, the blacklist would be broken after Dalton Trumbo’s name was officially recognized on the films Exodus and Spartacus.

Musical transition

Paul: I was born here in Los Angeles, in Hollywood as a matter of fact and I grew up in Los Angeles, but then when I was about 10 years old my family moved to San Diego for about 6 years. So from about 5th grade to half way through 11th grade I lived in San Diego. And then we moved back to Los Angeles and I graduated from high school at Taft High in the Valley. My family never stayed in a house longer than about 6 years, that house in San Diego was the longest we ever spent in one house when I was growing up. We were just moving all the time. Sometimes one year, two years, three years we’d stay in a house and then move. It’s kinda nutty. You know like some families move because dad’s in the military or something like that, my family moved because kinda a strange relationship between my parents and my grandparents. And so my parents were always kinda moving because they were angry at my grandparents and they moved away and then they moved back, kinda nutty, but that’s the story. My dad was a high school teacher at Uni High here in Los Angeles and he retired in 1969 and after that he managed property for my grandfather, his father in law. He owned a bunch of theaters in Los Angeles in the 1930s and was pretty well off by the 1950s, he didn’t own any theaters then he sold them all off in the 1950s before I was born and then he invested in property and my father kinda managed the property that he had and they didn’t get along. I was kinda interested in animation when I was younger when I was a teenager and I remember that they used to show Eastern European films on the local PBS station in San Diego and I kinda loved those crazy Eastern European kinda grungy animated movies from that period. I just remember thinking oh, those are kinda cool, they’re not nicey-nice, you know? Like you think of Disney animated movies and they’re all kind of sweet and nice and all the characters have way big eyes and their kinda sentamental, not my thing, right? The Eastern European stuff was ugly and kinda mean and grungy and funny and kinda you know, black humor kinda stuff and that really appealed to me. But animation was never a particular interest of mine, I’m not fond of Disney animated movies they were never my thing, it just wasn’t an interest of mine, animation in general wasn’t that much of an interest of mine, I was more interested in Live-Action stuff.

Yeah I watched all that stuff we watched cartoons on Saturday Morning, everybody did in my generation and I liked them fine, but it wasn’t something I ever had any big ambition to be involved in. I was interested in movies, I wanted to make movies, that’s what interested me. I mean you know live action movies. I love the great films of the 70s you know The Godfather, Chinatown, I could go on and on, there were so many. My favorite film back when I was younger was The Third Man the Orson Welles film. I was into- I loved the Apartment, I loved Billy Wilder, I just loved you know kinda gritty more realistic stuff, and was really interested in storytelling and using movies to tell stories.

His writing partner, Joe Ansolabehere was born 12 days after Paul on June 18, 1959. Joe also comes from a very left place, but still marvels at Paul’s family history. He’s like a childhood friend that thinks your family is so cool because you eat dinner with the television on.

Joe: Paul is named Paul because of Paul Robeson, do you know Paul Robeson? And that was a family friend, so it was like he was really communist. His grandfather was an out and out communist. So anyway Paul was raised in the middle of all that. And I was just raised by a liberal guy, you know liberal parents, so...My dad was from Bakersfield and when he was a kid he kinda ran away, not ran away, but he kinda wanted to get away from Bakersfield and he was raised in the ‘30s, it was like so to him it was like I always call him a Steinbeck liberal, you know, because he was trying to, he saw the books being burned, you know, he saw the Grapes of Wrath being burned on the street. So he was always like a liberal, but and you know it was the 60s and he was interested in the Vietnam War and all this kinda stuff so when I was a kid we used to move around a lot. My dad was a school teacher and then he then he wanted something more I guess. So we came out here in the Summer of 65’ We came down here for the Watts Riots, basically. Then we went to Detroit for the riots, and then we went to Champagne Illinois---just missed the Kent State riots. We were just looking for wherever the politics was happening, he was actually just getting higher educated, getting masters degree and PHD and stuff. So eventually, we ended up going back to Sacramento and moving to Reno Nevada, which is where I was living. It was kinda odd, it was a very liberal time so all of us kinda have that liberal politics.

His family history is not rich with Hollywood tales, spies, or the FBI, so there’s only a couple of things to remember about Joe’s childhood:

I have a bad thing in my family of quitting jobs, you know, I’m the guy, my dad was kinda a bit of a job quitter and I’m a bit of a job quitter too, you know, where I’ll just say “Enough!” Either you do it this way or I’m going to quit! And then eventually people won’t do it your way, and then you’re just like I’m quitting then!

In my family, Paul and I have both have the same thing, we’re very loud, um, Paul and I both the oldest, did he tell you this? We’re both the oldest of all boys so there were 5 boys in my family and 4 boys in his family. And yelling and screaming and hitting is kinda how you say stuff to each other you know?

Joe: I always wrote. I mean that was the other thing that was happening when I was getting my, when I was loving history, I was also doing really well in English and I was writing short stories and stuff. I think I always had it in my head that I was going to be doing something with movies or something. So when I was in high school, I remember saying I wanted to write a screenplay, which I didn’t even know what one was. This is like the 70s, and it wasn’t like the days where everybody was writing a screenplay, but I just how do you do that? And my teacher said well, I’ll get you a screenplay and she got me a screenplay, I had no idea what I was doing, and I tried to write a screenplay and it was really bad. She gave me High Noon, which is not necessarily the best thing to give- well it’s a fine thing to give a kid, but you know, even in the 70s that was written in the 50s. And the writing had changed already at that point so much because of William Goldman and all these guys, they just wrote differently then those old screenplays. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any old screenplays, but they’re really detailed and really long and every shot is described then you get to William Goldman and it’s like dashes, you know. It was really--- so that’s just not how people were writing screenplays by I got down here. It’s a complicated story, so I was always going to be like a high school teacher or something, I always loved history, which I think is just, when you’re in school and you like stories that’s a place to go. So I loved all these histories, Rome and all that kinda stuff. And when I was a kid, when I was in high school, there was a guy named Fred Horrlacker who was a history teacher, he taught Nevada history and he would take us around to the ghost towns and stuff and tell stories around the campfire and my uncle was a big story teller and my grandfather was a big storyteller, so I always knew I wanted to have something to do with storytelling, but I think when I was in highschool I thought you know history, I’ll be a history teacher.

Joe and Paul often see their lives in terms of film. Like their television shows, their personal stories take on a cinematic quality, especially the events that altered the course of their lives. There are two events that shaped Joe, the first positions him as a Benjamin Braddox character drifting in the wind.

Joe: So I was going to the University of Nevada to be a history teacher, but I could never get film out of my mind, you know I just loved films. This one night, there was this film class, I just always remember there was this film class that I took over and over, a guy by the name of Howard Rosenberg, who not the famous critic down here, but there was a critic up there in Reno and he always taught this film class and I took every film class over and over Hitchcock, horror films, whatever. And I kept taking the class over and over, and he finally said ‘You can’t take the class anymore’ I was like ‘Yea, but there’s always new movies, I want to watch movies.’ He was like you can’t, but I would still go to the class, you know and I had a lot of friends in the class so this one night. I guess it was my, between my junior and senior year, well two things happened. I’ll finish this story first, so I went this one night to class, and bunch of friends, my friends were in the class, but they were taking a final and I, so I went outside and I was sitting on the steps and this woman walked up the steps and she was probably about 40, but i thought this is an older woman, but she was really beautiful, you know blonde woman and she went in and she looked in the class and she came out and she was pacing around like she was waiting for somebody from the class.

And I said, ‘Oh, they’re taking a final, it’ll be awhile.”

And she goes, ‘Ohh.’ And she was kinda pacing around and she said, ‘So what are you doing here?’

And I said, ‘I’m waiting for my friend.’

But she said, ‘What are you doing here? In Reno?’

And I said ‘Ummm, well I’m a history major, ‘

So she said, ‘What do you want to be?’ or something like that.

And I said, ‘I want to be a filmmaker.’ And it was the first time I had ever said it out loud.

And she said, ‘Well, what are you doing here then? You should be at USC or UCLA.”

And I thought, ‘I should, shouldn’t I?’ It was the first time it had ever crossed my mind. I just didn’t- it had never, I had never spoken it out loud, I don’t know why I said it to this woman. I don’t know who she was. I just thought ‘ I’m going to apply for film school and I did, it was that or become a, get my masters degree in history from the University of Nevada. I don’t know who she was, you know how people like say things like that and all of a sudden that changes your whole life. Something somebody says or something, just how somebody looks at you or whatever, you know, so yeah.

And then there are other the events that are abrupt and life-changing in a way that is unspeakable that films can never quite capture.

Joe: And then some other things happened, I had a brother who died around that time in a car accident, who I really loved and um- and I think all these things sort of conspired to make me think that I didn’t want to waste my life, you know that everyday is precious and I wanted to do what I want to do. Um- so anyway.

And so Paul and Joe were now at UCLA.

The UCLA film program had the newly acquired distinction of being the alma mater of Francis Ford Coppola. The director had quickly come to fame in the 1970s by directing The Godfather, Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now while having directed Tonight for Sure in 1962 a softcore pornographic film.

He was part of a cinematic revolution called the New Hollywood along with directors like Martin Scorcese, Peter Bogdonavich, Hal Ashby, and Robert Altman. Their films were grittier, darker, and artist driven. Directors were given far greater autonomy than they were accustomed to. In the late 60s, the once tried and true formula of epics with epic stars had seen catastrophic financial failures of grandiose epics and nearly bankrupted the studios that made them like Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. As smaller films became giant successes, the studios increased their independent productions, hoping for another low budget cultural phenomenon like Easy Rider.

The film was directed by drug-crazed Dennis Hopper, the drug use on camera was real, the drug use off camera was real and it was a major hit, but Hopper never repeated the success. On his next film The Last Movie, part of his directorial preparation was to plot out which drug to take during which scene. The result was a disaster. Like Hopper’s directorial success, 70s filmmaking was as iconic as it was ephemeral.

The studios soon realized that the only thing more important than artistic priestige was money, this epiphany came in the form of the box-office juggernaut Jaws directed by New Hollywood Filmmaker Steven Spielberg.Then came Star Wars and Star Wars toys, the studios returned to bigger blockbusters marketed to high school crowds and children rather than adults, a process that would be further expanded upon with Disney’s Marvel universe when several franchises would effectively intertwine. The blockbuster could change a studios’ fortunes in one fowl swoop, and the right franchise could last forever, which left 70s filmmaking out in the cold.

Paul: I had always loved movies my whole life, but I had really loved them, you know. All the great movies of the 70s, Joe and I, one of the ways that we connect is we both loved the films of the 70s, we both really connected with them and felt like, you know if you’ve read Easy Riders and Raging Bulls you know about all these great films of the 70s, well we were living that, it was so vibrant and rich, and exciting, and the politics was just our politics and we would go ‘Yeah, that’s what we want to do.’ But by the time we started film school in 1980, all that was over. We didn’t know it, but it was over. The dying breath of those 70s films was Raging Bull and that bombed, you know at the time and after that we were into the 80s and it was a whole nother ball game. But we didn’t know that we thought that it was just going to keep going.

Unaware of the seismic shift in the industry, Paul and Joe were about to meet. Neither of the two really repair. their first meeting. Based on their current relationship, you’d expect Dreamweaver to have been playing in their initial meeting. There was no-meet cute or anything.

Paul: Joe and I were both in film school and we had a lot of mutual friends, but we hadn’t had any classes together. He was kinda in the writing program and I was in the production program. And we didn’t really know each other and then both of us ended up working at Audio Visual Services at UCLA, which are the guys that came in with the camera, projectors, and laced up this stuff. And we became friends there, and we were buddies, we kinda knew each other, and we had a lot of mutual friends, but we weren’t really that close, we considered ourselves friends, but not important friends, you know. I’m sure Joe will tell you the same story. So we kinda knew each other, casual friends, we had a lot of friends in common.

Joe: He was just a guy I knew from film school, I liked him, you know he was a friend, but we weren’t that close.

Strangely enough, they were both better friends with a guy by the name of Steve Viksten, and Steve Viksten deserves special attention.

There’s a story that best describes him and also gives you an idea of the work that both Paul and Joe appreciated, but it happens all the way in the future when Steve was writing on the Nickelodeon show Hey Arnold! And it has to has to do with Christmas (play christmas music underneath this probably starting with bells at the end of Hey Arnold there).

Helicopter chopper overpowers the song and then quietly goes down to Joe’s voice. Maybe still some music under Joe’s voice. (quick thought what if we added things to the background like if they talk about a gun shot, it goes off, might give the stories some more dynamic feel, but pick and choose which ones).

And Vietnam

(Have Chopper noise from Apocalypse Now cut over the top and eventually drown out the Christmas toons):

Joe tells the story.

Joe: I’ll tell you that story, so that’s Steve. That’s kinda a good description of who Steve is, but it is also kinda an interesting way of how weird things happen. So, the thing with Steve was, and I love Steve, I really loved this guy, but he was a strange guy, you know, he was an odd duck and he considered himself like the highest-- the most important thing was the art, the writing and getting what his world view was across right? There was going to be a Christmas Episode of coming up and Steve was stumped and he said, ‘Would you go to dinner with me and just say- what can we come up with a Christmas episode.’ Well, I was listening to him and he was telling me that he wanted to do this secret Santa thing, and he wanted to do somebody in the apartment building that Arnold was going to give a gift, but he wasn’t sure what the gift was and how that would be a whole half hour and he wasn’t sure what to do. And I don’t know why I had the thought, but he had pitching also for years this story of about Mr. Hyunh, who was the Vietnamese guy in the apartment building finding out that his daughter who he had left on the top of the building in Vietnam as the helicopter were going off that he somehow reconnects with his daughter and Arnold helps him reconnect and it kept getting rejected this story, but Steve kept saying he wanted to do it. This was classic Steve. So I said, ‘You know, why don’t you take that story and make that the Christmas Story.’ And I just remember, and we had worked together so long we kinda knew what the other guy was thinking all the time and I just saw him smile and I could tell he thought- he said to me, ‘Do you think they would let me do that?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, but if you did, that would be the first Christmas show that I’ve ever seen where you cut to Vietnam and for sure the first animated Christmas show I’ve ever seen where you cut to Vietnam. So he wrote it. He went off and wrote it. He gave me credit as story by, which wasn’t what I needed, and he didn’t have to do that, it was nice of him, but I really had nothing to do with it beyond that. So what what happened was he went off and wrote this script, now one of the things Steve used to do is now I don’t know if he did it in this case, but if he got notes from executives, he liked to be sneaky, he thought he was smarter than everybody else, not realizing you do something like this once, it’s like the statue of Liberty Play you get to do it once you know. But he would do this all the time where he would get notes from executvies he would make the changes and give the scripts to the people, and then he would take the first draft to the recording session and get them to record it the other way so that the executives when they would finally see it would go wait a minute, was that the line? And they’d have to look it up, it would be a lot of work for them and then they would have to have it re-recorded and everything. So he was always doing stuff like that and this was kinda one of those things. He just wanted it his own way, he wanted his thing, which is cool. So he, somehow, he got this thing through, I don’t know how he did it, and they kept approving it with notes and he kept changing it, adjusting it and finally, he got a really good version, the way he liked it all the way through animatic, which if you know what an animatic is it’s like a film story board with sound. And then the executives saw it, now let me preface this before I go into the rest of the story here by saying that I remember this story really well partly because I left the show, so those memories are like in amber. If you check with Craig, he’ll say I don’t remember that, and Joe Purdy will say, I asked him the other day and he said, “I don’t remember that.’ Somebody told me they even tracked down Catherine Whites, I think is her name, the name of the executive and she said ‘I don’t really remember that either.’ But I remeber this perfectly and I remember talking about it with Steve multiple times cause it was so classic Steve and it hooks in to who he would be, everything about it makes sense to me. So anyway, so the story Steve told me was that he tricked them, he got this thing there, they had this vhs, and they all went, ‘What the hell is this?’ We didn’t approve this! And Steve said, ‘Oh Yes you did!’ ‘No We didn’t!’ Now they haven’t animated yet they could pull the plug right here. And Steve begged them according to Steve, and maybe Craig did too, to at least give it a chance. So catherine Whites, I think is her last name, Catherine something took the tape home to watch it over the weekend and she popped it in her machine and she was watching it and thinking, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this or not. I’m not sure if this is a good idea and her son who was I guess like 8 or 9 years old was watching it with her, the impression I got, the way it was describe to me is like he’s almost on the floor watching it, and he watched the first 11 minutes, which ends with the Vietnam scene, which is very emotional, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but it’s an amazing piece of filmmaking and the little girl gets separated from her dad and the dad, it’s the crowd, and the dad pushes, holds up his little girl, the baby, and the soldier takes it, and takes the baby, and the helicopter flies off and it ends with Mr. Huyhn saying I wish I could- I know she’s in the United States somewhere, but I don’t know how to find her and then 11 minutes ends with Arnold saying I’m going to find this little girl for Mr. Huyhn, that’s going to be his Christmas present. It’s very emotional and supposedly the little boy, Catherine’s son, watched the end of it and turned to his mom and said, ‘ Is that what Vietnam was all about, Mom?’ Is that how it happened? And what Steve said happened was that Catherine told him, she just thought in that moment, ‘ok, we’re going to let him do it.’ So, and again, I’m the only one telling this story now, but if Steve was alive still, I’m sure he’d say, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that because that was such a big deal to him cause I remember him telling me the story.

Christmas meets Vietnam, that’s Steve Viksten. The fun, sweetness, and laughs of the holidays mixed with the darkness of Captain Kurtz.

Paul: It was getting toward the summer of 1983 and I needed a job and I had a friend who I was ---I’m recutting this part. At a party, I was at a party that a friend of mine through, and I said hey I’m looking for a job for the summer do you know of anything? He said actually I do, do you know the show Taxi? And I said, “Sure.” And he said, ‘well, I work for, I’m a PA on Taxi, the show’s coming to an end right now and the partners are- the executive producers partners on that show are all kinda going in different directions. Two of them are doing a new tv series and the third one is doing a movie, but it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere and all of us have gone over to work on the other tv show, but they need some PAs on the, these guys are all PAs, these guys were all my age and they were PAs, he said that the guy that’s doing the feature he needs some PAs, would you be interested in doing that? I said, “Sure, I’d love to do that.” That’s just the kind of thing I want to do. He said well I’ll get you an interview with these people. So I went in and I interviewed and it was- that other producer was Jim Brooks, right?- And he was doing a feature, I didn’t know what it was so I go in to apply for the job and his secretary looks at my resume and she said, ‘Gee you’ve graduated in economics from Berkeley, and you’re at UCLA film school, you seem a little--you’re kinda overqualified for this PA job. And I looked at her and I said, ‘I will do anything. I will clean toilets, I will do whatever you want, please hire me. And she said, ‘You really want this?’ And I said, ‘Yea, I really want it. I don’t care.’ And she said, ‘Ok.’ and she hired me.

Paul ended up in the perfect place for his predilections. The production company of James L. Brooks. Brooks began as a Page at CBS then became a newswriter, but left as the young and crazy do for Hollywood, he jumped to an unstable job of working on documentaries for David Wolper. The job inevitably fell through and Brooks was out of work-

Later on he reflected back on the period:

I don’t know if this is true for everybody, but I had this image of the job I’d have to get, if I couldn’t have the job I chose. For me it was always selling shoes. Either I got a good job or I sold shoes, there seemed nothing else in between.But I met Allan Burns socially, and I wrote a spec script for the show that he’d created, My Mother the Car. That sold, and I started to pick up a few more. I did That Girl, I did Hey Landlord, and within a year and a half I’d created Room 222. It went very quickly right in there.”

Later on he would develop Mary Tyler Moore with Burns that would put him on the map for life. In the 70s, he would also create Lou Grant, Rhoda, and Taxi. The shows were progressive and character based and they changed television. After his success on the small screen, Brooks attempted to break into movies, but in trying to master his first script he noted it was the hardest thing he wrote in his life, the difficulties would continue and from script to screen, and the film Terms of Endearment would take 4 years to come to life.

The studio it would eventually land at was part advantage part disadvantage. When Brooks couldn’t crack the script before deadline, he asked Paramount Studios to exercise the option on the script so he could finish writing it. They agreed. When Brooks had finally finishedThe reaction wasn’t positive, Brooks found himself explaining that the film was a comedy even though it was about cancer. In fact, Brooks thought if he couldn’t get a laugh on the word cancer the script wouldn’t work.

There were also deeper ideological issues to overcome at Paramount Studios. In 1974, owner Charles Bludorn hired Barry Diller then 32 to be Chairman and Chief Executive of Paramount, who had gained fame at ABC TV for the miniseries Roots and the Movie of the Week. In 1976,Diller hired Michael Eisner as President of Paramount Pictures Eisner was the the writer and practitioner of the Paramount coda, which he released in a company memo in 1981. It read:

“We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history,. We have no obligation to make a statement.But to make money, it it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement. In order to make money we must always make entertaining movies, and if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three. We cannot expect numerous hits, but if every film has an original and imaginative concept, then we can be confident some will break through... We should generally resist making expensive overall deals with box office stars and top directors, because we can attract them later with strong material.”

Eisner wanted High Concept films which could be pitch quickly in an elevator. He preferred low-budget films that could be singles and doubles, but he wasn’t immune to the glitz and glamour of the home-run the studio after all did pick up Indiana Jones from Lucas and Spielberg. Eisner loved the low-budget hit, but the content had changed in the 80s, the films were now easier to digest: Flashdance, Footloose, Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hrs!. There were still challenging films, but even David Lynch made a straightforward narrative for Paramount with the Elephant Man.To put it more succintly, Rosemary’s Baby was now Friday the 13th.

The budgetary policy would directly affect Terms of Endearment and almost stop it from being made: In an interview with Film Comment Brooks said:

Then after 6 or 7 months after the script was done, Michael Eisner wrote this note. He said “Okay, we’re going to make your picture.” And I said Put it in writing. So he puts Terms of Endearment. Go picture at 7 ½ million. Delivery Xmas of ‘82. And he signed it. I perma-plaqued it. The movie would not budget out at 7.5. Even with closing your eyes here and there, it would not budget out. Paramount felt that you had to draw the line someplace. So 7.5 million he said, 7.5 million he meant, 7.5 milion I couldn’t do it for unless I was willing to not make a location picture, which I was unwilling to do. So the picture went into turnaround.

Everybody turned it down. Nobody even took a meeting with me. Nobody called me in and said well we might be interested if you could get so and so. Just absolute cold turn downs. One exception: Paula Weisntein and Willie Hunt, who were at MGM/UA under David Begelman, said they’d like to do it, but there was a certain amount of turmoil going on at their company. I could never quite get people on the phone, I could never quite get a drive on to the lot. Then nobody was there and I was dead. But I still had my office here at Paramount, and I was speaking to Michael Eisner and he said “I still like it. I still like it for 7.5” and then my agent thought of MTM ( the Production Company of Mary Tyler Moore) for the money that I needed and Arthur Price agreed. He said to me later that his associates told him he was crazy to make the investment said, and he said, “ I don’t expect to make money but I think it will do well enough to where we will break even.”

By fighting to make the film he wanted to make and not compromising, Brooks fighting to make the film the way he wanted to make it, Brooks delivered a hit to Paramount, Terms grossed over 100 million dollars and won 5 oscars including best picture and best director.

A small portion of the 8 million dollar budget was to pay for post- production assistant Paul Germain, who came on the film after it was already done shooting.

Paul: So this is the summer of 1983, well it turns out that the film was Terms of Endearment, which was destined to win like 5 academy awards, but they didn’t know that, nobody knew that it was going to be this big thing. So I came in and it was already finished, the film had already gone through production, it was just in post, so I was a PA on post on that movie, I was never on set or anything for it. So I just did PA work you know that kinda work you’re just getting people coffee, or delivering things or running around from place to place, it was on the Paramount lot here, it was really fun, I was 24 years old I had a blast. One day, it was that same summer 1983 when I started working for him. He was doing post production on that show, I was a PA I was doing whatever I was told and stayed out of the way. My idea was do what you’re told do what you can, be quiet, be a little mouse in the background, don’t be noticeable. And one day- one of the things that Brooks used to do is, he used to ask me to drive him to and from his house right? He had a house way, way, way north in Malibu, right? Way up the coast of Malibu, at the time, I’m sure he doesn’t live there anymore, but he did. We were at Paramount, so to get from his house to Paramount or the other way could be as much as an hour and a half. It was a long way. So I would drive him back and forth, one day, he asked me to drive him home, he said, ‘Listen I’m having a screening of the movie and I’d like you to come to it.’ I went ‘WOW, this major motion picture- I’m being invited, I was so blown away. So I went to see the movie and it was an early cut of the movie, and it didn’t work for me. I’m sitting there watching it and I kinda snuck out in the screening, cause I thought I don’t want to tell my boss that it doesn’t work for me. Cause I didn’t think it worked yet, it was an early screening, early cut, so the next day, his secreetary calls me and says Jim wants you to pick him up at his house in Malibu and drive him back to the studio and I thought, “Oh shit.” So I go to pick him so I prepare some banal things to say cause I don’t want to tell him, I don’t want to---WHO AM I TO CRITICIZE, HE’S HE’S JIM BROOKS AND I’M like some little putz out of film school, you know. So I have these little niceties and I pick him up and we are talking a little bit as I drive him, it was just him and me in the car.I think that was my car. And we are driving to the studio. And he started asking me questions about what I thought about the screening and I was just kinda saying, I remember just trying to say kinda banal lies because I just didn’t want to say what- I didn’t want to WHO WAS I to criticize him. And he just kept asking me questions rapid fire until I could not come up with little nicieties quickly enough, so finally I just started saying what I thought, but you know politely, but I started saying what I thought, I don’t- this is the summer of 83, so it’s 33 years ago. I don’t remember what it was that I said, but he asked me questions and I started telling the truth in as polite of way as I could. He would just listen, he didn’t get angry, he just listened to what I had to say. And then Low and behold he implemented some of the things I said in his movie, I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it. He was always like that, he was always really open to hearing what people had to say, and allowing the possibility that they might have something to contribute. It’s kinda a valuable lesson, nobody’s is an idiot that doesn’t have anything to say, no one is an ignorant little putz that doesn’t have anything to say. Everyone has value. It’s kinda a way he operates and I think it shows in his movies.

The world of Hollywood was beginning to enchant Paul Germain.

And I remember I got a burger for Jack Nickelson once, and he said to me, “Thanks, kid.” And I still remember that it was a big deal for me in 1983. One time I was, so he had a secretary, who worked with him a woman by the name of Barbara Duncan, who worked for him for years and years and years and she became a friend. She was the woman who hired me, that story I told was about Barbara. She would be at the desk, and someetimes she would go to lunch and i would take over while she was at lunch and be at the desk and answer phones and do whatever Jim needed. One time I was, and he was always busy, and during the first few months that i worked there I had very little connection with him, I was just a very lowly person there, his secretary would tell me what she wanted me to do and I would just do it. But I remember one time, I was at his desk and I was sitting there and this woman walked in and it’s Carol King. He comes out and he greets her, and they go into his back office, where he had a piano and she starts playing Carol King songs and singing. And the door is half open, and I’m hearing Carol King sing the songs of the 70s, that I remember from being a kid, and hearing Jim every once in awhile go “Great! That’s Great!’ Like that and I thought this is the weirdest experience ever, so I had a lot of experiences like that, I don’t remember the first time I ever met Brooks, but he was kinda an amazing figure and kinda an exciting guy. Just kinda this person who could do anything and was revered by everyone who worked with him. He was just an amazing writer and thinker and famous for being able to solve script problems instantly, people would come to him some script problem and he would think for a second and go what if you did this and solve the problem. He was just an amazing guy. So I stayed at Brooks company, which became Gracie films, it didn’t have a name at that point, after Terms of Endearment he formed a company and called it Gracie films and I was there for 6 years and in fact I never graduated from film school. I kept taking a leave of absence and it eventually ran out, I never went back. So that’s how I got into the film business.

Joe: I don’t know if Paul told you this story, Paul went off and got basically an internship working with James L. Brooks and we were all like ‘See you later Paul!’ see you in September. ‘Ok, bye!’ and he just never came back, so he was gone and one of his really close friends was Steve Viksten. He and I started hanging out all the time and talking about movies and he lived in Beverly Glen, he lived in a garage next to John Lee Mahan, do you know who that is? He’s an old screenwriter from the 30s, he’s an old old man and he would say that’s John Lee Mahan right next door. And I would go ‘No Way’ cause we had watch his movies, these old Clark Gable movies Red Dust and all these movies, but anyway I would stop, I lived in Sherman Oaks, and I would stop on the hill cause I had this old Volkswaggen and I had to put oil in it, like I could only get it over the hill. I had to put as much oil as gas basically, so the oil would just run right through. So I had to like put in the can of oil then I could get up to Steve’s house and I’d put another can of oil, cause I couldn’t get my car fixed, but I would stop at Steve’s house---really bad for the environment, but I would stop at Steve’s House and we would just talk about movies. I had all these theories, we both had all these theories, and we liked Robert Altman movies and Truffuat, and Goddard and stuff like that. And we would talk about all these crazy things. We wrote a bunch of screenplays, we wrote one called Surfing CIA that was really succesfful, did well got us a lot of meetings, then we wrote one called The Exterminators about some pest control guys who accidently were mistaken for killers by the mob, anyway we wrote a bunch of these screenplays and around 1987 or 88 around that time things were coming to an end and we weren’t able to sell, we had been doing it for like 4 years, and we thought we should’ve sold a script by now, well got something made, so the writer’s strike hit in 87 88. I was like Oh my god, I had a baby on the way, my wife was pregnant, oh my god I can’t, keep this going, you know what am I going to do? It was actually an interesting way of getting into animation kinda from the side because what happened was I had never really thought animation was something I was going to do, but I had always loved animation, I loved Warner Bros especially when I was a kid. But when I was in film school, it seemed like everybody I knew was involved in animation my roommate was an animator, David Silverman was there from the Simpsons, there was a really great animation school going on. Because my roommate a guy named Neil Richman was an animator I had great respect for it, people were bring in this artwork and I was seeing, I was going hanging out at the animation dept and seeing kids drawing this stuff, they’d draw right on the film, I was like ‘Wow’ who else was actually dealing with the actual physical film...animators. Anyway so around that time I was working for, I wasn’t sure what to do wasn’t sure how to get a job, was just working at UCLA with some other friends in the medical department thinking I’ll do something else this isn’t going to work. Around that time, this friend of mine and that roommate said ‘Hey, there’s going to be a movie playing this weekend, why don’t we all go down to the Westwood and go to the movie, and it was Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And I didn’t really know that this was going to be the beginning of something, which I kinda think is the point you never know when something’s going to change. So we all went to go see Roger Rabbit and it was this guy Charlie Gibson, guy I knew from film school, but mostly knew him as a friend of Neil’s and we watched Roger Rabbit, and we were all talking afterward and he said what did you think of that movie? We just kinda hit it off talking about the movie. And then Charlie said, I started a company called Rythm and Hues, with these other firend of mine, would you be interested in being a producer? And I said, well what does a producer do? And he said, can you type? And I said yea. And he said you can be a producer. ANd I was like ok. And I started being a producer at Rythm and Hues and it was a real eye opening experience, it was a whole different thing and it was really exciting times, things were changing things were breaking, I remember John Lasseter coming down talking to them and pitching things, I remember Krisfalusci showing up and pitching, wildly pitching all over the place, but we were making commercials and they were just starting to get into film.

Paul was being groomed for an executive role at Brooks, and at times he didn’t see all the opportunities laid out before him. On one particular occasion:

Paul: I mean there was a little bit of a disconnect there because that’s not really what I was interested in. I was interested in the creative side of things. I couldn’t get my act together to try writing a sample which would’ve been the smart thing to do. Somehow for all kinds of different reasons I just never got my act together to do that and so I was on track to be a young executive or a line producer or a non writing track, if you were to get anywhere at that company you really wanted to be a writer. Now I ended up doing that later but not at that time so I had the oppurtunities but was too much of a dumbass to take advantage of them back then. I remember one time so one of the jobs that i had there starting in 1984 through my time there from the start of my work there to end of my work there in 1989 I spent allot of time as a script reader reading scripts for Brooks and writing coverage, which if anyone has ever had that job, it’s an awful job, you just read, someone comes in with a mountain of feature scripts and one is worse than the next. There just so bad and you have to write a summary of them and then you have to critique them, so it gave me an opportunity to sharpen my wit about criticitizing stuff and saying how much I hated everything, which they appreicated because they liked my taste, Brooks liked my taste. And one day a book came through called confederacy of dunces, are you familiar with that book? I read that book and I loved it. I just loved it. And I went to my immediate boss a guy by the name of Richard Sakai, who still works for Brooks, who was my boss there, and I told him how much I loved this book which had been submitted, I can’t remember if they just submitted the script or they just submitted the book as a project and Brooks read the book or he heard that I was really interested in it and that I was pushing for how great I thought this book was. And so he asked me to come in to his office and I walked in to his office, and he said ‘Heard you think this is a really great book.’ And I said, ‘Yea, I really think it’s wonderful.’ And he said ‘Well, I have, well I read a little bit of it, and I have some issues with it. And I said, ‘Oh, ok, yea, what are they?’ and he said ‘well,’ I can’t remember what he said specifically, but he said this doesn’t make sense to me and I kinda think this would make it very difficult to write a feature, what do you think of that?’ And I said, ‘Well… I think you made some good points, maybe that would be a problem’ and he said, ‘Ok, well what do you think,’ and I said, ‘Yeah those seem like legitimate issues. And so he said ok thanks. And I left. And as I came out, my immediate boss Richard said, so what happened? And I said I told him why I thought it was a great book and he said, but he had some problems with it-you know where this is going don’t you?- Well, what did you, when he presented those problems what did you say, I said, ‘Well I told him I thought he had some good points, some of those things are real problems. And he said, ‘Did you propose any solutions?’ And I said, ‘Well nobody asked me to propose any solutions.’ And he said, ‘OHHH, you really screwed that up and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘He was going to figure out if you would be the guy to write that script. And I said, ‘Oh my god.’ I was being tested and I didn’t know it. That’s an example of how I blew an oppurtunity, I was just too dumb and naive to see that’s what that was about and to say, ‘Let me think about that or I’ll come back with a solution.’ I just didn’t do it. I had, I was a young guy, I was even though I had been bold in many ways as a student at UCLA working for him I was in awe of him and all the other people there and I knda didn’t understand that what was expected of me was to like take the bull by the horns and come up with creative stuff and make it work and show what I could do and prove it and demand it which I think is what you need to do in Hollywood. I think Hollywood is about there is no room for insecurity there’s no room for modesty, it’s a place where you have to be aggressive, you have decide what you want, you have to go after it, you have to let nothing get in your way, I really wasn’t in that space at that time, that’s not where my head was at, and I didn’t do that. It was a tremendous mistake I wasted 6 years not taking advantage of opportunites that at the time, I was too naive to see.

In our next episode: From Rabbits: A brief history of television animation and the rise of the Disney Afternoon

From Rabbits to Ducks: From Crusader Rabbit to The Disney Afternoon

The sources for today’s show can be found on wabacmachinepodcast.tumblr.com. That’s Wabac, W-A-B-A-C.

The Thank Yous:

This episode was edited by Matt Brousseau. You can listen to his podcast with comedian Kevin ANderson called Bleak in Review on Itunes.

A special thanks to Greg Gonzalez for his helping me at the Brand library in Glendale you can listen to his podcast LA Meekly on ITunes, which provides a dazzling history of LA with Greg and Daniel Zafran.

Cesar Rossal for helping me master Skype interviews.

A special thanks to Fidel Browne for playing Paul Robeson. And everyone who listened to the original cut of the episode and gave copious notes: Jesse Reffsin, Pat Barker, Rishi Arya, Onely Flores, and Nick Taravella.

And my undying gratitude goes to the people interviewed for this episode Bill Kopp, check out his new show Dumb Bunny and Jackass, which is coming soon. David Silverman for putting up with constant facebook messages, and Wes Archer for taking the time to speak with me. And of course Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere for giving me the opportunity to tell their story.

And to my family for always pushing me to better and indulging me as I told stories about 90s animation during Mother and Father’s Day.

And to Donut for emotional support, love, and cheerleading, typing out a lenghty interviews, keeping me sane and everything else like doing donut things.

#recess #hey arnold #rugrats #history #podcast #paulgermain #joeansolabehere oralhistory nick disney onesaturdaymorning robertgoulet

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