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Let_s square up with Hollywood Squares participant Bruce Vilanch
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Electric Loops Comics is working on stories about an elven warrior on Earth and friends at a magical school. You can buy their comics at elpmerch.com. Life is a constant learning experience and every day offers an opportunity to grow. Bruce DeLange, a guest on a show, talks about his career as a writer and actor, including working on Hollywood Squares. He also shares his experience with Tim Curry after the release of Rocky Horror Picture Show. An elven warrior trapped on modern day earth, two friends with different destinies meet at a magical school. These are some of the stories we at Electric Loops Comics are working on. You can get your copies of both the Manna Chronicles and Tales of Ithiel at elpmerch.com. Support independent creators, explore the merch featuring exciting ELP comics art with a wide range of designs. Electric Loops Comics, imagination electrified. Ever stop learning, because life never stops teaching. Every experience, whether good or bad, holds a lesson. In every challenge, there's growth. Every failure offers wisdom. Life is constantly evolving, and so should we. The moment we think we know it all, we close the door to possibility. Stay curious, stay open, and remember that every day is an opportunity to become a little wiser, a little stronger, and a little better than before. Well, well, well, welcome oil runners, how are you guys doing today? We have a very special guest. We have somebody who has been on the Hollywood Squares, also, we also have someone who's an author and he's written for the Academy Awards, as far as I've known, and all kinds of other stuff. We're going to learn about his life and his journey in this life. So we're going to bring in Bruce DeLange here in a second, but I also want to bring in this new thing where we have like this little joke. So you know you're in Alaska when you need a jumper cable to jumpstart the driver. So just that Alaska joke that we can just go for. So we're going to bring in Bruce in two seconds. Welcome in. Welcome in. I'm being jumpstarted as we speak. Hey, look, I've got the jumper cable. You look great. Absolutely. I notice that you're Travis Keltz's mother. I am. The resemblance is startling. I mean, ever since she showed up at the Super Bowl with Taylor Swift, I started getting calls during the game from people saying, dude, what are you doing at the Super Bowl with Taylor? Nice. I have these red glasses, blonde hair, and I think she has probably less chin than this. I mean, I hope so for her sake because she doesn't have to shave it, so it's all right. And did you ever do the meter yet? No, I haven't. I'm working on that. I just hope the joke, I hope this couple stays together because I'm going to run with this joke for a while. Absolutely. That would be a kick in the ass. I met Taylor Swift years ago through one of her many boyfriends she's written songs about. Boyfriend number what? One through? You know, I've lost track. I'm not like Swifty. They come across now and again. I run into them at one thing or another, and oh, God, you were a Swifty for a minute. Right? Yeah. Oh, man. So did you run into them at the award shows and all that stuff? No, actually, it was at a dinner because she was going with a friend of mine for a minute, and it was at a dinner, and it was a long time ago. I mean, she was about 19 or 20. I don't know how old she is now, but she was, so it feels like a long time ago because she's been like in the front of everybody's consciousness since she's hit, but it was a while back. She was charming. Lovely. I mean, nothing consequential happened. I'm sorry to report. I didn't do anything that you could write a song about, I don't think. Right. Tag, nabbit. I may have spilled something, but not on her, so it didn't count. Right. No. Yeah, so how did you get into all of this? Like, where would you start at? Well, I was a child actor in New Jersey, and I was never a child star, or we'd be having this conversation in rehab because they don't do well, by and large. No. Okay. So my parents were enabling, they really were, they knew I was having fun doing that. So I was doing that a lot in New York, and local television in New York, and stage, and then I kind of outgrew myself, and I had a big voice, and I was kind of heavy, and I would be going up against actors who were older, who were much more authentic than I, and so I started writing, and I was writing about all of that when I was in high school, and I developed a talent for that, and took that with me to college and was a journalist, and also was acting on the side of the Chicago Tribune for five years, and that's where I met Bette Midler, who was just starting out, and I began, she was playing a club there, and I started writing for her, and five years later, I was writing for a whole bunch of people, and the people of the Chicago Tribune said, you know, you do have a job here, so I thought, yeah, but at just that point, a group that Bette had helped start called the Manhattan Transfer got a television series out here in Hollywood, and I came on here, and as Bette says, he had his bags packed. He never looked back, so I was out here, and I've been still working with her, actually, but 50 years later, excuse me, let me get the stimulant there. Thank you very much. Don't start. So that, and that's how I got into it, and I was writing for a lot of performers, and with the advent of cable, the variety show format kind of died, and so I began writing a lot of award shows and things like that, and after 20 years of that, they brought back Hollywood Squares the last time with Whoopi, and in the square to the left of Whoopi, if that's possible. I remember. I was the head writer, and we had six glorious years doing that, and it's back now with Drew Barrymore and the Center Square. Oh, I didn't know that. I wish them well, because it would be fun to be on it again. Oh, man, yeah. So what was that experience like on the Hollywood Squares? Well, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I mean, we would shoot five of them. Well, I started working in the original, at the tail end. The original one was on for 14 years before you were born, and I was, toward the end of it, Paul Lins, who was at Center Square, was also on Donny and Marie, which was a show that I was writing, and they would shoot squares at night in those days, and so after we would finish rehearsing, he would grab me, and he would say, come with me to the squares. I haven't got shit. Give me. So we would write jokes in the car, and so that was my first experience doing it, and then it came back later on with Joan Rivers, and I did some work then, but the last one was we did five shows a day. We would do weekends. We would do two weeks on a weekend, Saturday and Sunday, so we only worked 36 days a year. How about that? Kind of like a plumber that I work with. But it was intense getting that all together for those shows and being a head writer and being a square, but it was great fun when we were shooting it. Everybody was pretty much on good behavior because there were always eight other people. If you were acting up, there'd be eight other people looking at you going, girl, pull it together. We'll be here all night. So people were discouraged from diva activity. There were people, you know, every now and again, but basically it was a party atmosphere, and we would have lunch between shows three and four, and there would be wine. So shows four and five were always a lot looser, Thursday and Friday shows. That makes more sense. Yes, but we discovered that from the marketing people that the audiences liked that because they were, by the end of the week, people who were watching it were also exhausted and ready, you know, and kind of having a glass of wine themselves. Right. That's many things you learn from marketing people. Right, and those were the days where we can go home from school being sick and watch all those shows with the prices right and with the chicken noodle soup and, you know. When I was a kid, you know, daytime shows, yeah, exactly. I mean, we were what they call prime time access. We were like 7.30. It would be 6.30 in Alaska before the big network shows kicked in. Yeah. The good part about that is that we could gear more of it to real double entendre sexy stuff. Right. Because it was an audience, it wasn't, you know, people watching at 11 o'clock in the morning. Right. Where theoretically, back then, theoretically you had to be a little, now it doesn't matter. Now Whoopi's on 10 o'clock in the morning here on The View and, you know, she likes fire with whatever and so do all of those ladies. So, you know, it was just a little bit different. Now it's a prime time extravaganza. It's only once a week. We drew very more in the center. Cheers. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, yeah. I got you. Bourbon masquerading as Dive Snapple. Yeah. Kidding. Simple coffee. Just kidding. Oh, man. I heard you did one of my favorite movies and me and my dad always loved it. You worked with Tim Curry on the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well, I didn't work on that. I worked with Tim. After the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tim became a star and he had, he got an album deal with Lou Adler on old records at A&M and so he recorded an album but he was not a rock singer. He was sort of weird, sort of kind of cabaret, somewhere in the middle of all of it. And we put together an act. That's what I did with Tim. We put together an act that he played all the rock loves and he had things to say because he's brilliantly funny. And, you know, people came thinking it was going to be a frankenfurter, the whole show. And, of course, some of it was but that's not who he was or is, any of the above. Right, man. Yeah, that movie was definitely… But we went, I was in New York with him and this was early in the Rocky when the movie was released and it became, it had become a cult movie and there was a little theater in the village called the Waverly and on Friday nights and Saturday nights at midnight they showed it and the audience would show up in costumes and what they now call cosplay and talk back to the screen, you know, throw things and all that stuff. So we wanted to go see it. So we went down to the village and there was a line around the block filled with a lot of people who looked like Tim Curry as frankenfurters and so we just went up to the box office and he said, I'm Tim Curry. And she said, yeah, sure. She turned, she was an old box office lady. She turned to the man and said, Morris, another one says he's Tim Curry. And Morris kind of went, hmm. And she turned back and she went like this, you know, and Tim said, no, I really am Tim Curry. And he pulled out his passport and showed it to her. Morris, this one's got a passport. And Morris had to come over. And Morris came up and said, oh, my God, you're Tim Curry. What am I going to be telling this nice lady? Oh, my God. So she took it in to the back and we could watch the whole thing. We could watch it unfold before us. I don't think I've ever been to one of those Rocky Horror late nights. Not the shows. Oh, my God. No. In its day, I mean, I don't know what they do now, but they still do them. We do them in L.A. There's one every weekend at the New Art. But, I mean, you know, we are now two generations away from the original movie. Right. I mean, it's kids who grew up watching it maybe on VHS or even on DVD or streaming it, but they're still doing it, apparently. They're still doing the time warp in the aisle and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think that one's like a classic, like, what's the one, Back to the Future, kind of it's going to be staying in all the generations somehow. I think, well, you know, it's about outliers, you know. Yeah. It's about this straight couple that stumbles upon a castle full of outliers and how they react to it. And that's like a perennial idea, you know, fish out of water. And you can go identifying as the fish or you can go identifying as the other things in the water. So, in this new water. And I think any kid who feels like they're not exactly standard issue kids feels better when they go to see Rocky Horror. Right. Yeah. You were saying earlier that you were in rehab. I can identify with that. No, I was joking. I said, if I had been a child star, I would be in rehab. Oh, okay. I misunderstood. My bad. Have you been in any drinking or drugs or anything like that? Oh, I did everything, yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm very old. So, I remember, anybody who tells me they remember the 60s or the 70s wasn't there. But I do remember the 70s. I was active in that period. But I elaborate on it a lot. I embroider. And when I, in this book that I've written, I talk about writing the Star Wars holiday special. And, in fact, I address this because I used to, I always tell a story about me and Carrie Fisher, that we were snorting the sweet and low in the commissary. But, and so then I began getting reviews saying, Valance, who admits to copious drug abuse. And I thought, wait a minute. You know, I mean, I am a victim of my own height. I embroidered. I mean, I did everything. I did all the things that you, we were all doing. Except I never did heroin because I didn't want to shoot up anything. And that was what you had to do. Or Freebase. I never did that. But I did all, you know, all the initial drugs and smoked all the kind of stuff you're supposed to smoke. But I was not a heavy drinker. And, but, you know, it gets, things get embroidered as you get older and are describing stuff. So, and I hung around. I was living with somebody who was an Al-Anon, which is a program of people who sleep with alcoholics, basically. And so I was around that a lot and became friends with tons of AA people and did a lot of AA benefit roundup shows, things like that. So somewhere along the line, people said, oh, he must really have a problem. But, you know, I did everything that I never did. And they were with me. Anybody who knew me knew that that was all, you know, hype. Wow. Okay. Yeah, because I can identify with the drugs and the alcohol. I didn't, you know. Most people in Alaska, again, in my experience, when I was in Alaska and people I know who've gone to Alaska, is that there are a lot of them who are there because they just want to get away. And they're looking for a place where nobody will bother them, where, you know, they won't be judged. They'll get paid for living there by the government. Yep. And they can just do what they want to do, provided they have enough warm clothing. Yeah, because when I first moved up here years ago, that actually is a true saying. They told me the first time, you're either born here in Alaska or you're running away from something coming to Alaska. That's the only two types of people. And I was like, that's weird to say. But then I thought about it. I was like, wait, I ran away. So I guess it is a true saying. Right, yeah. But it is a nice getaway, you know. And I tell people, like, look, I can hide in plain sight. Y'all don't know. I could be on Facebook or TikTok or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I'm right here, you know, and everything. And you guys still won't come up because, you know, like, oh, I've always wanted to go to Alaska. I know you ain't coming. That's like, we all laugh about that. You know what I mean? It's like one of those, uh-huh. They wind up going on an Alaska cruise. Yeah. Did you like your cruise? I loved it. I was performing as a gay cruise, and I performed on it. It was great. But we had unseasonably good weather. I mean, when we got to Juneau, it was May, and it was about 70 degrees. And people were canceling left and right so they could run around the deck in Speedos, which is why they really do gay cruises. And what I was going to do, I mean, I took the helicopter to Mendenhall Glacier, and I took the dog ride, the dog sled. I did the full value because I wanted to see it. You know, I wanted to see it. And on the glacier, it was, you know, it was nice and snowy. Absolutely. And so it was in the Hubbard Glacier. It was spectacular. And, you know, all of those things are great. You know, it's a magnificent part of the country. Yeah. That helicopter ride, I did that last year. Oh, that's fabulous. I loved it. I called my mother. I was on top of the Mendenhall Glacier, and I got cell service going up. I called her in Florida, and I said, I'm standing on a glacier in Alaska. She said, I'm playing Canasta. Can I call you back? Uh-uh. Like, why can't you support me? I knew. I knew better than to call at that hour. But how often am I going to be on the top of a glacier in Alaska? Exactly. I mean, it is such an experience to experience. It is so worth the money to pay the company to do that. You know, and then when they're going, I found out that the helicopters, they do have, like, they work with the movie directors and all kinds of stuff. You know, they have all different things so that you can get the shot. They'll do the shot. They'll come close to whatever. And, you know, and I was like, wow, I didn't know that. I'll pay the money. When I'm doing a movie, you know, I'll definitely pay it. That's worth it. Right, yeah. It's just 18 minutes of, like, at the state fair. Yeah. You've got to experience the state fair. It's kind of cool. The state fair, they have a helicopter ride, and it's like an 18-minute ride. It's not the full hour, but it is still worth the, you still get that experience. It's incredible. I thought when I went for the dog sled, I said, I'm not going to be too big for this ride because I was too big for the Harry Potter ride at Universal. Oh, no. And that's because you have to put a bar next to your thing, and I couldn't breathe when I put the bar down. So I thought, well, I'm going to be too big for these dogs. And the guy looked at me and said, this is Alaska. Are you kidding? Get on. There's nothing. You're slim. Get on. Yeah, my favorite time of year is the Iditarod. I help with that, and I do photography for that. But, yeah, they'll put you on the, what was it, the, I have never seen this in my life, and I think we're the only people that can get away with this, is a person. I was doing security for the Iditarod in the middle of the woods, okay? So you've got those long sleds, and then the person had a black trash bag full of stuff in there, but it looked like a body. Then he had a hatchet, right? And he's just pulling it, and I was just like, okay, we all knew. You know, we're not that stupid. But still, I was like, you know, only in Alaska would we all think, go ahead. Go down the, you know, we're good. Just don't let the dogs, you know, we'll call out when the dogs come by. And I was like, that is so weird that you can get away with that kind of stuff. But, you know, just pulling it on, and then they'll have a snowmobile doing that, and the kids will be on the sleds on the back of the snowmobiles, you know, with all their stuff. And I said, you've got to be kidding me. This is crazy. You know, and the experience with the dogs, that is an experience to see on that sled itself. You know, those dogs have some power to them. Just don't want to be hooked on while I'm in that little spot, you know. That's the only problem. They don't stop for nothing. Yep. But, yeah. Oh, man. Oh, I can't wait for this year. But are you going to come back up here? I would love to. You know, I haven't been in a while, but I haven't had occasion. I had a gig in Anchorage some years ago, a big birthday party a guy brought me up for, and then the cruising stuff. But you said before that everybody is people who were born in Alaska. I remember the guy, the line in Juneau, the guy said, people come here, the only way you can get here is to fly in or through the Juneau Canal or through the Birth Canal. Yep. That's like the Birth Canal. Yeah, pretty much. Right. Because you can't drive there. You can't drive there from anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's the coolest thing, but the weirdest thing, you know, it's like an adjusted thing. And then the timing, say, like, I mean, I haven't been to California, but like just going from town to town or city to city, you know, it would be like a 30-minute, you know, like, oh, well, we distance it. I distance it, like, from my house to Seward's like two and a half hours, right? Yeah. My house to Seward equaled from, like, Pennsylvania, Middletown, to somewhere in New Jersey or New York. Right, yeah. That's the distance from my house to Seward. They have a TV show, Alaska Highways, which I actually watch about truckers driving to Nome and Barrow and Dutch Harbor and places like that. You can even drive to Dutch Harbor. I don't know. It's not connected, right? No, I think my friend, when she did security, she had to fly in. I think. It's not like the Florida Keys where there's a road that links all of them. It's not like that, the Aleutians. And that's where you really can see Russia from your house. Yep, yeah, yep. I don't know. I'm sure there's nothing there once I get there. I mean, there will be something interesting. There always is. Nothing that might warrant that kind of a schlep. I love that Jodie Foster had to go to Iceland to shoot that series about people in, I guess, Nome or Barrow, wherever that town is supposed to be. And I think that's because they just didn't have the facilities to shoot in those places. And Iceland had been developed by Game of Thrones, and they had a whole film industry set up you could walk into with your project. And that doesn't exist that far north in Alaska. From what I understand. Sarah Phelan might correct me, but I don't know. Yeah, we need to figure something out on that. I can attest to that a little bit. Yeah, because it's a little different on that end. Yeah. A series about Ted Stephens Airport. Yeah. That's on Smithsonian or something like that. But just like, this is how we run this airport in the most ridiculous weather possible. Yeah, pretty much. And then, yeah, they have heated streets, you know. Parking meters are actually heaters. Like speakers that drive in movies back in the day. Yeah, yep, yep. But even flying into Dalbease on the jet, it was quite interesting to be in a circle in the mountains, in the circle of the mountains. I was like, wow, like literally right in the middle, just landed. Oh, okay. And then all these eagles were around me, and I was like, this is new. And then a bear can be right at the plane, like on the thing. I said, you've got to be kidding me. What is going on here? And you're just, you know what I mean? But it is like that experience. Yeah. If you're not an outside person, don't come. You wouldn't know. Yeah, you can't treat Alaska like the cities out in the States kind of thing. I mean, you've got Wales downtown and all that. Like you just don't know what's going to happen, honestly. But, yeah. I heard you were working with Dolly Parton, too, at one point in life. Yes, I worked with her over the years on a TV show that was a spectacular failure. And then on her act. And then I wrote a musical with her, which is currently in the U.K. It's in Glasgow, Scotland, right now, if you happen to be going over to Glasgow. It was an idea that we had during COVID. It's about a 40-year-old gay comic who's never happened, and he's working at a comedy club in New York as a waiter. And COVID hits, and the club closes, and he has to quarantine in the attic of his parents' home in Longview, Texas, where he has an intimate relationship with his imaginary friend, Dolly Parton. She steps down off of a poster, and in the course of one long night, she kind of cures him of what ails him. Oh, so she's going to be playing herself then? No, no, no. We did six regional productions in the lower 48. And I wanted to go to the Anchorage Rep, but we couldn't get it together with them. And now we're doing six months in the U.K. We just did London, and I think we may go back to London. And if not, we start in Australia in June for six months, winding up in Sydney at Christmas this year. And then we're talking about bringing it over, doing a bigger production. It's a small show. It's two characters and five musicians. So it's a small show, but we're thinking about options to bring it back to America. Okay. Wow. It's called Here You Come Again, by the way, if you run into it. Here You Come Again, How Dolly Saved My Life in 12 Easy Songs. Nice. Okay. Wow. So that's her new project, your new project. You've got that book coming out. The book is about how I wrote the worst TV shows in history and lived. And it stemmed from podcasts like this, where people like you would ask me about the Star Wars holiday special, the Paul Lynn Halloween special, the Brady Bunch Variety Hour, all things I wrote in the 70s, and I thought were dead and buried, and the Internet brought back. And now two whole new generations have been watching these shows on the Internet. And whenever I do a podcast, they would say, how did this show happen? Who said yes to doing it? And have they paid their debt to society? So I thought there's a book in this. So it's called It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time. How I Wrote the Worst TV Shows in History and some other things, Broadway and one thing or another, movies, I have a few of them in there. And it's on Amazon pre-order. And it drops officially March 4th, which is right after the Oscars, which I've written 25 of officially. So only one of them is in that book, the first one, because it was a scandalous one back in 1989 with Rob Lowe dancing in Snow White. But it's a great story, and it's all in the book. Oh, man. We'll definitely have to get that. I'm going to want to autograph copies. This can be arranged. Okay. Yeah. I'm definitely going to have to get that. And Ash from the Flames. Ash from the Flames. Okay. The air quality here is so weird because there's still smoke and ash in the air from the fires. So every now and again. How far are you from the fire? I was evacuated because there was a fire up in the Hollywood Hills. It was a small one. It was about the first one, and it was put out before the winds got so harsh that they couldn't put anything in the air. And the reason the fires were so devastating was the winds were insane, and they couldn't put up choppers with fire retardant, and so they were fighting it from the ground with water. And, of course, they never had to just do it solely with water, a big fire. They always had air support. And so, of course, they were pumping so much water. I mean, how do you put out 1,000 house fires? So they ran out of water because they're not designed for that because we've never had winds like this. So that was why the conflagration. And there are still pop-ups, but now it's fire bugs and homeless encampments. Unfortunately, a lot of people live in the hills who are homeless, and they don't set fires, but they cook and whatnot, and ember can catch the brush. And then there are other people who are fire bugs who enjoy getting off on watching the fire and watching the firemen, I have a theory. You know, I'm going to go with that theory, too, because that's, yeah, that kind of makes sense to me. Yeah, I mean, you know, very macho stereotype, except for women, too, you know. Yeah, yeah, they want to be rescued. Well, there's that, yeah. But rescue in this case means arrested. Yeah, pretty much, but it's still a rescue. They want that, too. Like, as long as you come here, we're good. I'll take the five seconds of the, you know. No, no, that was how Australia started. They would say to criminals, you can do time in jail, or we can ship you to Australia, and you can have a new life there. And that's why, you know, nobody in Australia came over on the Mayflower. They traced their ancestry back to horse thieves, pickpockets, you know. I mean, the first wave, that was what the colony was. And if you were very wealthy and didn't want to go there, you see, they would send you to Kenya, where you become a planter. And, yeah, like out of Africa, those were all high-level miscreants who had been sent to a foreign country to get out of their native land. Oh, wow. That's crazy. Man. Do you have any idea? Alaska has a certain something to do with it. I mean, but people aren't sent to Alaska, they choose to go. There's a small but subtle difference. Significant difference. Yeah, you know what? We had at one point, I'm not sure if it's still going. They're trying to send the homeless out to your guys' areas, to California. Probably, yeah. I was like, so if you have all the money, you don't want to pay for the homeless here, you know, to help out or even have the ideas. A lot of people have great ideas to help this whole situation, but it's not being supported, right? But I was like, my question is, why would you send them out if you don't want to fund it? You have enough funds to send all these people out, but you don't want to help support the community to be able to build whatever needs to be built for the homeless people. I'm not understanding. And then, you know, you guys already have enough homeless people at your place, you know. And our people are like literally, they are frozen to death, literally. I would think it's not a very harsh environment to be homeless in. You know, Hawaii would be better. Yeah, right. Hawaii has a serious problem, too, because of that. But you have to get to Hawaii first, which is always. A fun deal, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I just never understood that logic of you don't want to help your own community. You say no, no, no, but yet you want to give them off to somebody else, you know. Yeah. And expect that and they already have an issue and then we can help. And we're having, yay, let's go into Congress or whatever we've got to go into. We have this idea. We would need help with the funding. Right. But it's a mess. But, yeah, we've had people. I've watched bears come up into the camps, literal black bears just walking up the hill. And I said, this is really serious, man. I mean, it's just literal camping. I mean, I've had it done to me, too. But still, in the summer, it's a little different. And the snooze coming up next to you to your tent and all that. And then you're frozen to death. You don't have the heaters, you know, the warmers in the hands and all that stuff. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. Imagine being in the negative 20s. So now you see North Carolina now going into all around the world. Like, there's just different temperatures. It's just crazy to see that people have to go through that. It's not a fun deal. The climate change is real. Yeah, absolutely. And we just need to connect and help each other, you know, and whatnot. But it's crazy. Do you have any nuggets that you could give to, like, kids or adults that are, like, in the writing or trying to do something, you know, inspirational? Well, if you want to be in comedy, it's very important that you be funny. And you'd be amazed at how many people think they're funny, but in reality, they're not funny. But that aside, I mean, that's not for me to judge. I used to say it used to be much, much harder to get into the business. And now with the Internet, you can create your own thing. Look at Randy Rainbow. Look at some of these people who have gigantic careers as influencers, and they translate that into money and into access to other things, mainly by doing funny stuff, doing funny videos, whatever, and putting it on the Internet. And you will be discovered if you do that. It won't take long. You can start with Instagram or TikTok while it's around or Threads, Blue Sky. I mean, there are all these places you can post things, and people will see you. YouTube, of course, is the number one place to post stuff because there are people trolling YouTube looking for new talent. So if that's what you're looking to be, a performer or a writer who writes for a performer or can put some stuff together himself to perform, you don't even ever have to perform again once you've established yourself. But that's a great way to do it. The old way of writing a spec script and hoping you can find an agent and all that, this turns it upside down. They come to you once you've made the effort. You usually could never get people to read anything or look at anything, and now they're desperate to look at things and read things. But they have to see some evidence first. Okay. So, like, when you're writing a script and everything and you have something good and you want to sell it, right, how do you put a price on that? Well, the Writers Guild is helpful in that area. They have established what they call scale, which is the minimum amount that a studio, a network, a streaming platform, anybody who's a signatory to the Writers Guild contracts, the least they can pay you. And, you know, at the beginning you start with that and you negotiate your way up. And also you're a fool if you do it yourself. You should have some professional guidance. You should have an agent or a manager or a lawyer, someone like that on your team, who can deal with the other side of the table. Okay. And it's not hard to establish what a price for something is after a while because there are certain commonly accepted parameters that people will throw out at you, and you negotiate with that. Okay. Yeah. I always wondered how that would work because that's a lot of, you know, you'll sell it and then they make millions of dollars, you know, and stuff like that. And then it's like, well, man, I could have. For a writer, books and theater are, the joke was it's a great place to make a killing and it's a lousy place to make a living because you don't get paid much for developing the material. But if it's successful, you get residuals, royalty. Okay. It keeps coming in. In the movie and television business, they will give you a lot of money up front in exchange for none of the, no back end it's called, where you just don't get the residuals anyway. The writer's guild was built on the residual model, and so that's why you really could make money writing movies. You get paid a lot up front, plus you would have a piece of the back end. And now the streamers like Netflix and Apple and Amazon are not in the movie business or the TV business. Amazon's in the delivery business, Apple's in the computer business, and Netflix is in the Netflix business. The Netflix will pay you a lot of money and then you go away. They're, I think, tempering that a little bit now, and that was what The Last Strike was all about, but I haven't seen evidence of it too much. But when you see people doing deals with Netflix, you think, gee, I wonder why he would do that. Why would he go there as opposed to a movie that will be in a theater? It's because there's a huge buyout up front. Now some people, like Margot Robbie, just is doing a new version of Wuthering Heights, a classic novel that's been made into a movie a couple of times. And she took the Warner Brothers deal because they, it involved a theatrical release, because she wanted to make a movie to be seen in theaters. Netflix offered her a more lucrative deal, but it would, it would, they might put it in a theater for a week to qualify for the Oscars, which is what you have to, you have to be in the theater for a week to qualify. So, they might have, but she didn't want that. She didn't want to do the movie for Netflix. She wanted to do it for theatergoers. Call her crazy. It seemed to work with Barbie, so. Yeah. But, I mean, I guess it's her vision, so, I mean. Yeah. As long as that deal, the money goes where the vision, yeah. That makes more sense, and that was her passion on that end. Yeah. So, if you were to leave a legacy on this earth, what would it be in your life? Like, your personal legacy. Oh, I think that I was kind. That would be my legacy. I mean, I was kind and funny, and that would kind of be enough. I mean, it's not like I've left some significant work of art that is a legacy, but as my manager keeps saying to me, you are a work of art. So, excuse me, I'm very flattering, but it's performance art, I guess. So, I don't think about that too much because, you know, when you're gone, you're gone, and they're going to say whatever they're going to say, but I think that if they're going to say anything, it would be, well, he wasn't a bastard. He was really nice. He was a kind guy. Okay. Okay. Well, I want to conclude this. Thank you. We're pretty much at the mark. And I definitely would love to have you on again. I mean, because there's so much there. After the book is out and people have had a chance to read it. Absolutely. Or we can have a call-in show. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely after that. I'm buying that book for sure. But, no, I thank you for coming on, and hopefully even when Dolly comes out with the movie, you and Dolly and everything, we can all kind of get together and put it out there as well, if that's okay. I mean, I'm just saying. Sure, it's not a movie. It's a stage musical. I mean, it's out there, you know what I mean, to support it and put it everywhere, like you said. Good. You know, and just to be there. But you've got me now. I may just be a little, but, you know, but definitely willing to help you in all that you do and whoever you have that you'd like to help out. But we definitely thank you for being on the show. My pleasure. Have fun. Stay warm. And so in Alaska, you're going to learn a word. It's called Chinon, which is thank you in the Dene language. So we thank Chinon for watching, guys, and Chinon for coming on, and welcome back to Alaska. So we love you guys. And look for the book. Buy the book. Go to WeGotBruce.com. You can connect with all that and everything, and look him up. He's got a lot of great stuff, and we're going to dig more into him, his life, his journey. And, by the way, Steve Joyner says hello, big hugs, and a big kiss. That's right. He started a lot of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's definitely a good connection on that end. So definitely. So shout out to you, Steve. So we love you all.
