← Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
E686 - Richard Walter - DEADPAN is a funny novel about an unfunny subject - Hate speech and bigotry
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- [00:02]
Richard Walter
What I said was, and it's the answer to your question, what's this all about? Bigotry, prejudice. It's a part of all of us, we all have that. It's part of. It's one more dreadful aspect of this thing called the human condition. And the answer to it is to be aware of our own prejudice, our own bigotry and stand against against that.
- [00:29]
Podcast Host
Everybody, welcome back to Living the Next Chapter. I get to talk to some of the most amazing people on the show as author guests. They come on, they share their story, their journey, and they're spectacular people. They've got amazing and interesting stories behind what they do as writers, but also some of the things they've done in the past. And Richard's here joining us today to talk about his books and what he's writing and what he's been doing. But this gentleman's got a rich history which we're going to touch on and we're going to try to do justice to all of the things, but there's lots to talk about. Richard, welcome to Living the Next Chapter. Glad to have you here.
- [01:04]
Richard Walter
Thank you. Thank you.
- [01:06]
Podcast Host
Excellent. Now, I already know the answer to this question, but my audience doesn't. Richard, where are you joining me from today? Where do you live?
- [01:13]
Richard Walter
I am in Los Angeles, California.
- [01:16]
Podcast Host
Beautiful.
- [01:17]
Richard Walter
I grew up in New York, and as I told you earlier, I came to California. I was a graduate student, upstate New York. And I just had a few weeks to kill. I drove out here in a VW Beetle in three days. And while I was here, I was studying film. I had applied to USC and ucla. In those days, there was no tradition of moving from the academic community into the professional community. And anybody, they were knocking down people in the street to try to get them to enroll in film school. Quite a different story today. The program where I taught as a tenured professor and I led the program at UCLA in screenwriting for over 40 years. It's actually easier to get into the Harvard Medical School than to get into that program in terms of how many qualified applications there are and how many available slots there are. I like to say that, you know, people, I actually wrote another book. We're here to discuss Deadpan, my latest book. I have another novel I'm working on about a, a guy who is struggling, struggling to, to write. And it's not the not, you know, this, this Deadpan is actually my third published novel. I have also three books on screenwriting, the third of which, and they've been in print for like 35 years. The last one, the most recent one, if 15 years ago can be called recent, is actually quite a success in its Mandarin edition in China. I'm getting, I'm something like a thousand books every month in China and I've just closed the deal with a Russian publisher. They're going to put it out there in hardcover later this year or early, early next. But you know, I never expected to, to be a writer. As I said. I, I suddenly I was studying film and while I was here I visited the USC film school. It was very easy to be admitted in those days, as I say. And it was a magical moment. My, my classmates were the first group really to move from the academic community to take over Hollywood. Except for one. He did not become, he did not come to own Hollywood. I'm talking about George Lucas. He, he came to own Marin county up north. But it was really a magical place back there at USC in the mid-60s and the late 60s, George was just one of, I mean he's the most notable for sure, but there were many, many other artists that went on to substantial success. We call that the Lucas era, except that George calls it the Walter era. I'm just kidding. Then I found myself writing. I had never expected to be a writer. When I look at my early, my college papers and so on. I was a history major. I'm not terribly encouraged by, by the writing that I, that I see. But there I was in a, in a screenwriting class at usc and I wrote, you know, how to write a feature length screenplay. And I did. And I never sold that script. But a lot of people don't understand when a script doesn't sell, it's not the end, it's just the beginning. You can get. Development deals on other projects, you get rewrite assignments and all other kinds of rewards. And then a script can sell way down the line. Unforgiven, which was the best screenplay Oscar and best movie some, you know, maybe a quarter of a century ago, Clint, Clint Eastwood, he had that script in his office for 20 years at Malpasso.
- [05:26]
Podcast Host
Wow.
- [05:27]
Richard Walter
And Deadpan, my, my current novel from Heresy Press. I actually thought it up like 50 years ago. My favorite expression about Hollywood is from Dorothy Parker. She said, hollywood is the one place on earth where you could die of encouragement. I had so much encouragement over the years for Deadpan. What I never had was a nickel, you know, in compensation or contract to sign for its publication. And the, the, I got up during the pandemic during lockdown shelter, you know, in place. I had a call from Somebody who had read deadpan 50, almost 50 years ago, who was wondering what had happened with it, had anything come of it. And it occurred to me that if he's thinking of this thing after all this time, I ought to take another look.
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Podcast Host
Nice.
- [06:31]
Richard Walter
And so I did. And I ended up rewriting it and then trying to submit it. I say trying to submit it because I have. This may be of interest, or they may already know this, the authors who might be watching and partaking of our session, that a terrible plague has fallen across publishing. My last novel was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. It earned out its advance in its first printing. It went to multiple printings in cloth and trade paper. And no agents, including my own agents, would even respond to a query about Deadpan because it deals with a very difficult subject, racial and religious identity. It's really a funny story about an unfunny subject, which is hate speech and bigotry, in particular, anti Jewish bigotry. And I'm here to tell you that I made 50 submissions and I only had three responses at all, that is to say, 50 queries about making a submission, and only three responded at all with polite turndowns. I happened to read about Heresy Press, which was a new venture started by my editor and the founder of that publisher, Heresy Press. His name is Bernard Schweitzer, my hero. And only after a few months. And Deadpan is their first novel. After just a few months, Heresy was acquired by. It became an imprint of a very big New York house, Skyhorse Publishing, and it came out again in hardcover there. It's going to come out later this year or early next from an Irish publisher. I read in an article, an interview in the New York Times with Bernard Schweitzer of Heresy Press, the founder, about all that. They were trying to put out books that made people uncomfortable. You know, as a professor at UCLA for many, many years, you know, these days, what I hear is everybody's got to be comfortable in a. In a classroom. I always regarded it as my job to make people uncomfortable, to provoke them, disturb them and upset them and get them to think for themselves. Not just to communicate data, but to. To what? Inspire them into. Into being critical thinkers and. And commentators. And what was I teaching? Screenwriting. The last thing you want in. In the audience watching your movie is for them to feel comfortable. You walk by a movie theater and. And suddenly the doors open and everybody's streaming out. The movie has clearly just ended. And let's say they're all sobbing. They're just weeping, right? Would you Say to yourself, oh boy, everybo. I don't know what that. I got to find out what that picture is. Make sure I don't see. No, you get in line right there to see that. Because that's really what art is about, especially narrative art. It's about making people feel something. And you don't need to make them feel good. Scare them half to death and upset them, make them angry, anything. But we only have one rule at ucla. Three words. You can do anything you want, but don't be boring. Simple as that. Easy to understand, but not easy to achieve. Deadpan. If I was still on campus as a professor, I would say Deadpan is an homage to Franz Kafka. But since I am retired now, I'm going to say that I stole deadpan from Kafka. The Kafka wrote a story, legendary story, 100 years ago called the Metamorphosis, in which a man wakes up one morning to discover that he's an insect or a beetle or a cockroach, some kind of bug, depending on the translation from the German. And I was wondering, gee, what if? What else could somebody wake up as? What if you woke up one morning and discovered you're a fern? Well, that doesn't sound too. How about a rhinoceros? That's a little better than a fern. But even better than that, I thought would be, what if you wake up one morning and you're the world's most famous, most loved stand up comedian. And since so many comedians are Jews, I decided to make it a Jewish, a Jewish comedian. And since I love conflict and I've always preached to my students that it's all about conflict, not people getting along, but not getting along. I made the protagonist, whom I call Dwight Bridges in that life, in his regular life, he's a failing. It's 1973, there is war in the Middle East. Sound familiar? The Yom Kippur war. And gas supplies, you know, oil. Oil supplies have been disrupted and Americans and everybody else are waiting in line at gas stations. And some people were starting to blame the Jews. And it was the first time that I really encountered antisemitism. So I decided to make this guy a failing Buick dealer. Nobody's buying Buicks. It's 1973, it's the gas crisis and he wakes up as a Jew. He spends a life, a day in the life of a Jew. And not just any Jew, but the world's most famous stand up comedian. And that's really how the whole thing got started.
- [12:24]
Podcast Host
It's interesting because When I hear comedians talk about comedy today, getting up on stage in front of an audience, they're having a hard time struggling to pull together a set where back in the day you could get up and your, Your comedian was meant to push your buttons. He's meant to. To have some kind of feeling. The last thing you want in a movie is to have somebody walking around with a stick poking people to tell you the movie's over because you're just so comfortable and you've fallen asleep. Right. You want some kind of feedback, you want some reaction.
- [12:56]
Richard Walter
Yes.
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Podcast Host
So that it's memorable. Right?
- [12:58]
Richard Walter
Yes, I quite agree. I quite agree. It's a. The. The life is driven by two forces. One is. One is intellect and thinking, the brain. The other is emotion, feeling the heart. And not only the heart, but the belly and, and the groin. And we tend to think as humans that everything breaks down 50, 50. But it's. It's not that way. Emotion is like 98% of, of the motivating. Motivating force that. The drive of us. And I think that all of the, the great dramatic narratives, whether they're in literature or in film or stage plays or any storytelling medium, they give, they make us feel passionate about something. The author's passion. And it's used. It's not something good. It's usually something. Something bad. You know, there's a myth among many myths about Hollywood, which is audiences demand films that have happy endings. It's just not true. Successful films have. Have had horribly sad endings again and again and again. It's a way, I think, that we. We rehearse for the, the despair and the disappointment, the frustration that we're going to inevitably experience in life. It's my. My experience to know some of the most successful, the richest, the most highly acclaimed people in the world, but now, and usually vastly happy people, but not one of them has avoided loss and disappointment and heartache and grief in one way or another. I think if we've had that in a simulated situation like a movie, and then we get it again in real life, as inevitably we will. We have the experience of having been through it and survived, maybe we'll, you know, and help us survive it this time too. So I really think it's. It's a biological enterprise. If we don't get our culture, we don't get our narratives. We. We become undernourished in our spirit and our soul in the same way that the body becomes distended and warped if it doesn't get the proper, the proper nutrition. So Movies, Art is important. Years ago, I remember one of the campaigns for president, I think it was Mitt Romney said that the first thing he would do if he was elected would be to close the National Endowment for the Arts. Sound familiar? He said that he loves art as much as the next guy. I'm not sure that, not sure that's true. But when things are tough and there was an economic crisis at that time, you have to save the money for what's important. And my point is that art is important. It's not just an add on like you get an, you know, you get some special option for your car. It's, it's absolutely necessary for the fulfilled integrated human life. Right?
- [16:12]
Podcast Host
Yeah. It's the wheels, it's the steering wheel. It's main major component to that vehicle. And without it, you're not going anywhere. So I, I agree with you on that wholeheartedly. When you look at 20, 25 in the entertainment business and, and people trying to find their way and tell stories, what's changed? What are you seeing that makes you cautious? Maybe excited, but maybe cautious? What do you mean?
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Richard Walter
They're not mutually exclusive enterprises. You can be excited and cautious. I, frankly, I think this is the greatest time ever. The, the studio system is, is changing and I think that's because of the technology. And what I'm talking about is there used to be, when I was growing up, there was six television. I actually was born in the radio era, but, but when I was young, TV came in and they were like. Because I lived in a big city, New York, there were six television stations. Now there's like a, a million stations, so to speak. Every website, you know, is, is kind of like a channel, you know, and so there's much, much more. The two big changes I think that have come is first of all, distribution. Everybody can, has in, in his, her or their pocket a, a device that'll connect you to distribute whatever you have to the whole world, you know.
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Podcast Host
Right.
- [17:41]
Richard Walter
The other big change is the collapse of production costs. That same device in your pocket can, can make a movie. A New Zealand writer sent me a movie that he made entirely on his phone. I'm telling you, he spent $10,000. The feature length movie. This movie looks like there's no movie stars in it. You can't, you know, afford to pay, pay them that. But it looks like a, you know, like a Hollywood movie. So there's the chance for people who want to make movies, there's much more opportunity. Nothing can really stop you, unlike years ago. And for Audiences, there's just more and more alternatives to choose among. What is freedom if not the ability to choose among alternatives? I also think, you know, American film. I'm pro America. I'm so glad to have been born here and I love my nation. American films have really been world films. I have traveled all around the world over the years, consulting, among other things, giving master classes, but also consulting with International Film Development Corporation people in various nations. And they all want to know the same thing. Back when I was doing this kind of thing, which is, how can we get our films distributed internationally? In films made outside the United States, only 1 in 10 was ever distributed outside the country of its origin. Whereas all, all American movies were shown internationally. Some even only internationally. They couldn't get a domestic deal. But because they were American film, everybody wanted them abroad. You know, as an American and as a guy in Hollywood, you know, go, usa but the fact is, my, my bride and I, my bride of, of almost 60 years, we watch something every night pretty much, and we've seen stuff from Korea and, and Indonesia and France. I mean, what's, what's all over the world? What's wrong with that? I think that's a terrific influence. The last thing I'll say about this, because everybody's so pessimistic, is. AI I, I. There's no, first of all, there's no stopping artificial intelligence. You progress. You know, it's funny, I was just talking to somebody who was a member of the Teamsters Union. Why are they called the Teamsters? These are the truck drivers. Well, because they used to be, when the union was formed, they were driving wagons that had teams of horses in front of them.
- [20:33]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [20:33]
Richard Walter
Along comes the internal combustion engine, and it puts out at work all of those blacksmiths, you know, who used to do the shoes and, and, and, and so on, you know, the driverless cars. Come on. My grandchildren are not going to be driving cars. They're going to get into their car, hit this button, the bunch of locations will come up where they've been before, they'll hit the button and it'll take them there. People say that will put out of work cab drivers, Uber drivers, truck drivers, and so on. Well, you know, should we have stopped the internal combustion engine? Because buggy whip manufacturers got right, you know, you can't stop that. I think artificial intelligence is actually a terrific tool. Kind of like a super sophisticated spell check, you know, or grammarian. There are various sites that will, will give you help with your, your grammar.
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Richard Walter
And so.
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Podcast Host
Right.
- [21:43]
Richard Walter
I tell you, as A professor at a university. Among the, the things I had to write were many, many reports, the progress of the department at this time or another evaluations of colleagues who were up for promotion. AI is the perfect tool to, to write a first draft of that that I subsequently edit. So get out of your own way and stay open to the surprises and the changes and instead of, of shunning them and fearing them, embrace them, welcome them.
- [22:17]
Podcast Host
Right? Yeah. Do you have any concern that AI is going to have an impact on actors and writers and, and movie houses and all of that creative process? Because there's, I've heard of an AI person. It's not an actual human that does content online. And there are people wanting this AI to then be an actor in a movie. And when they, when they, they show this, they ask the AI to, to show me a. Like do a blood curdling scream like you're afraid in a horror movie. And they can't, they can't do passionate weeping as a human. Right. Because they don't have every piece of it currently. But I would think that AI is the, the dumbest version of AI currently. It's only going to get more and more in depth and it's going to learn more and more over time. But are you just concerned that maybe actors are a little bit worried that
- [23:18]
Richard Walter
actors and writers fetching worrying is our favorite thing to do? The, as I say, you, you, you. You can't get the law to compel people to, to not use technology. I've seen a friend of mine, a director, another classmate of mine from USC film school, classmated of, of George Lucas as well, Randall Kleiser. He directed Greece and a bunch of, bunch of other very, very movies. Randall sent me a clip of a. And it's a. It. It's two pilots, military pilots in a, in a fighter jet. They're talking to each other, you know, technical talk, you know, Vector 9 63, you know, stuff like that. And it shows visions outside the plane. You know, the sky and the ocean that they're flying over and the plane swooping and diving and doing this and the other thing. There's no, there's no dialogue. There's no camera. There's. There's. It was all done, you know, on, at a keyboard described, you know, and Randall was saying he's really afraid of that. I understand being afraid of that. But, but you, you, you don't have control over what you don't have. Have control over. It's funny what you say about emotion. I think emotion. People are worried About. I'll tell you that years ago I read a. I mean, like 50, 55 years ago, I read a story in a magazine, a short story, and it was about what are now very primitive computers. They had built up a tremendous network of. During the Cold War, they had to build up a substantial network of computers that are all connected to each other in the Western Hemisphere, the, The American bloc and then the Soviet bloc has a similar but separate enterprise. And somebody organizes the combining of the two things. If they could connect these things up, they will be smarter than anybody on the planet, which is, of course, what's going on now, right? And so they have a big ceremony where they actually have a peace treaty, a piece of conference, and they come to agree to. To combine to connect these things. And they have a ceremony where the engineer who, who designed this connection has a switch to pull which will make that connection. And so he does, indeed. He pulls. And there's a lot of people around, you know, it's an international event that's being celebrated. And the thing lights up, it starts to hum and buzz and purr. And because he is the guy who led the connection, the campaign to make this connection, he's allowed to ask it the first question. And he types in the question that everybody has been asking from the beginning of time, which is, is there a God? And the thing purrs and hums and clicks and then it spits out an answer on a piece of paper and it's. The answer is there is now. And the guy looks at the thing and he reaches for the lever to disconnect it. But before he can get his hand to that, a bolt of lightning comes from the sky and welds the thing shut. The computer's taking over the world now. People are afraid that that's going to happen with AI I have a feeling that if that happens, that might be the greatest thing that ever happened in all of history, is to get rid of emotion. Look, you know what's going on right now in the Middle east that hasn't broken out. That's what it's been for thousands of years, and not only in the Middle east, but all across. What's broken out from time to time is a few years of peace and tranquility. Pax Romanov, for example. But it is the nature of humanity to make war against each other, to treat. Treat each other so cruelly. And I believe that that comes out of emotion. We were afraid, you know, the human, human species. We go back, anthropologists and biologists tell us to a particular time in a particular place. And that particular time is 300,000 years ago. And the place is, is the, the Great Rift Valley of West Africa. And the, the greatest danger that people have faced is to be attacked, annihilated by some group of people from the same species. There are 500 species of animals, of mammals, but there are only two that make war, that form groups within the species that make war upon other such groups, annihilate them, enslave them, and you know, just try to destroy them. Just human beings and chimpanzees do that. Humans and chimpanzees share 98% of the same DNA. So there's a fear, the greatest danger beyond, you know, since the beginning of time, the big dangers were starvation, you know, famine, disease, and being annihilated by some members of some other group. And the only defense against that was to be yourself, a member of a group. And this is where families and tribes and nations all, all occur. And when we get afraid of some other group, the fear takes over and intellect and reason go, go to, you know, go somewhere else. So I'm sure that if AI takes over the world, it won't be the, the kingdom of paradise. I just don't know. What I do know is that there's no way to know. The only thing you know for sure is that you don't know anything for sure.
- [29:29]
Podcast Host
Right. Yeah. And I guess my whole stack of encyclopedias don't really hold much value anymore because there's the Internet and there's all of that. Right. So there's change. Change happens.
- [29:39]
Richard Walter
Yes.
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Podcast Host
And something we hold dear and something we hold true can change over time. So you need to understand that.
- [29:45]
Richard Walter
Yes, yes. And you can't stand against it because your self interest holds. I mean it's a self defeating enterprise if to do that, it seems to me.
- [29:57]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So beyond teaching and having your students in class and helping them find their way to do what you know how to do, what other things have you worked on in your past that bring you joy and make you smile when you think back on these things, projects you've been a part of, other things that you've been part of your background. Can you share a little bit?
- [30:18]
Richard Walter
Sure. You know, I am. There's no. The Wall Street Journal profiled me like 40 years ago and they called me then. What did they say about me? A writer of substantial professional experience throughout the industry. I mean I've written screenplays and there's no kind of literary laundry that I haven't seen taken in, in My early days I was, was in the freelance screenwriting market and I did very well most of the mov. I was hired to write a lot of movies at Writers Guild. You know, scale, you know, plus writers are not allowed. We're not supposed to say this, but even just scale is pretty generous. And I was better. Better than scale. At that time the studios were changing hands and in the middle of all of my productions, not all of my productions, but no small number of them, there would suddenly be a change in management and my producer would in effect be fired. I would be paid off and I would have to finish the script. But they're not going to develop. They're not going to spend millions of dollars developing, making a movie based on, presented to them by a producer that they just got rid of. And so it's very, that's the experience. A lot, a lot of writers, very, very successful writers, far more successful than I nevertheless have all kinds of movies that they wrote that they got paid for that never got made into movies. They're just screenplays. I did. George hired me to write the first drafts of American Graffiti. I'm not credited. A lot of people. There's nothing unusual about a lot of writers being paid to work on a picture and not all of them getting credit. Credit belong. The, the authority for credit belongs to the Writers Guild. And there were many drafts after my own and, and three other writers and, and if it were written today, if it were produced today, it would say at the end, additional literary material provided by, you know, and then. And that's not my name. But I, I'm not complaining. I was well paid for what I did. I became sort of the. My first novel came out around that same time. It was an adolescent coming of age story set in New York City. Kids singing doo wop in the, in the streets in the late 50s and making a demo and not being able to find a label, but they. Singing in harmony they learned to live in harmony. With that and the first draft of Graffiti, I became the go to guy for adolescent coming of age stories. And I was really, really quite busy. Of course it's herky jerky. Writing is not a screenwriting in particular. It's not a 9 to 5, you know, 52 week thing. And what writers have to understand is that every writer is an independent entrepreneur, a businessman, a businesswoman who. And every business has what, inventory. We're the only business that can create our own inventory. And that's what we need to be doing. When things got quiet from time, I'd Be working and working. First of all, don't spend the money. I always tell my students at ucla, if you make any money, don't spend it. Always assume it's the last money you'll see, because the one thing you need to buy is time so that you can, on your own, without distraction, without disruption to your schedule, you can create inventory, you can keep writing. And it was time that I sat down and wrote my first book, a novel. I had actually tried to talk George out of American Graffiti. Who, you know, who cares about your. Your Modesto, cornflake, white bread life. Let's do New York doo wop Jews. You know, there's. There's a joke. I hope it's okay to say it. Oh, yeah. Which is. How do you say fuck you in Hollywood? And the traditional answer is, trust me. But in fact, there's another way, which is you say, we'll make that our next project after this. And I'm not fooling George. He wanted to tell his story. I totally respect that. Not my own. But writing it out as a novel wasn't really very smart, because the novel, the fiction market, is even crueler than the screenplay market. But it did. It sold right away to a major New York publisher. And the lesson there is, don't be smart. You know, be stupid. Was the film rights were sold to a major studio. I got the adaptation assignment. As I said before, all kinds of. Of benefits can. Can derive from the script that gets written. But. But, but doesn't. Then. I was not looking for. I'm a graduate school dropout. I never finished my degree, and I was not looking for work. I was very, very busy in the late 70s working at the studios. But when the first novel came out, it led to quite a lot of assignments. And I was at a party in Malibu where I got invited to. To join the faculty at ucla. I, again, I was not looking for work. I didn't need it. But I think that people, the successful people I know and that I know of, they generally answer every question with yes. It starts with yes. So I thought I would try it out. And I remember the chairman, I said to the chairman when I came on board there that I'm afraid, you know, that it'll interfere with my. My writing. I won't be, you know, am I going to. Is the university going to tolerate me having a career on the outside as a writer? And he said, no, the university won't tolerate that. That is to say, they won't merely tolerate it at a research institution like the University of California. They require that you have an outside life. Teaching is very important. That's your second priority. But your first important is your, your first task. Your highest priority is your science if you're a scientist, your scholarship if you're a scholar in the humanities and in my corner, the arts. It's your creative activity. And I found that I was actually busier. You know, I was writing better, I was writing more. Once I was at ucla, it caught me to schedule my time more efficiently. And then I learned something. I've taught so much over the years, but I've learned much more than I've taught. And my teachers were my own students. And when I am writing, I'm often. And I come to some issue. I want to include something, but I'm not sure it belongs. I imagine that I'm a student and the other me is talking to me. I would be telling myself, no, you don't need that. Save it for your novel. Lose that. You know, it's been, been a, a great, great blessing for me. I got to work with, with the fantastic writers. You know, if you're working with writers, if you're a teacher and the people you're teaching are not that talented, it's still very fulfilling. The people who think that creativity is important and, and they're reaching and stretching and taking risks, you gotta welcome that. But even better than that is having, you know, if you're. My father's a musician and he was primarily a performing player, but he also taught at Juilliard, the world's most famous movie music conservatory. And he said, if you're gonna teach artists the better, best to have the, the best artists. And that's what we got at Juilliard, and that's what we have at UCLA. Third or 14 or 15 students who studied writers, who studied screenwriting. You say they wrote pictures for Steven Spielberg just for Stephen. It's really quite astonishing how successful they are. And what a privilege for me to work with writers of that who, as I challenged them, they challenged me. So it's a win, win situation. And, and now I'm really in. I've retired now from the university. It's almost, it's getting on like eight years. And I really am more in the literary world than in, than in the movie world. And I'm hearing about changes that I don't really know about. I would need to learn about if I were going to do that, about pitch decks, series proposals. Things have changed. If the showrunner is now really the, the head of, of tv and TV isn't really tv. It's streaming, it's cable really is a whole, a whole new universe. But it's nothing to be afraid of except in the sense that anything that's new is a little scary because it's. Well, because it's new. It by definition it's unfamiliar and, and we, we're afraid of the, the unfamiliar. I saw your sweet little dog there a moment ago.
- [40:18]
Podcast Host
I walked by. Yeah.
- [40:20]
Richard Walter
Dog, you know, might. Once he knows somebody, you know, it treats you nicely. But if a stranger comes up, maybe she barks, you know. Oh yeah. Again, familiarity is important and we shouldn't. It's comforting, but we shouldn't be looking for comfort as artists. Art is about the discomfort, right?
- [40:41]
Podcast Host
Yeah. And that brings us back to your book again, like that's, that's an interesting premise for your book for, for a reader picking up deadpan for the first time. Any, any like love letter to a reader from the author to the reader before they read the book. They have it in their hand. They're going to read it for the first time. If they had a few moments with you at a coffee shop to talk about this book. Any special message you have for them apart from what we've already discussed together?
- [41:06]
Richard Walter
Yeah. You know, in Denpin, what happens is this guy discovers his bigotry. He's a gentile who's suddenly living as a Jew. He got involved in. At the time of the oil crisis there was this outbreak of antisemitism that I mentioned. And it wasn't arson and burning and murder and so on, but it was like spray painting the epithets and so on. I remember reading about. I mean I'd never heard about. About such a thing. I grew up in New York. I didn't realize there were people who aren't Jews. Not exactly, but. But certainly I. I was. Was in a. A Jewish community, my own personal group actually. New York is really a Catholic city. The many more Catholics than there is any. The only Protestants are black people. The most of the white people in New York City are Italians and you know, Polish and Eastern European Irish and so on. In any event, this guy so suddenly here is anti Semitism that I read about. They had spray painted on some oil tankers. Burned Jews, not oil dump Kissinger, Henry Kissinger, the Jewish Secretary of State at that, at that time. And this guy gets involved. He has a. Our protagonist, the Buick dealer is an amateur musician and he gets together every week to rehearse some Dixieland with. With some pals of his. And this particular night they Take him, he doesn't know what they're doing. But when he gets together with them, they're all involved in a mission. And that mission turns out to be desecrating a synagogue, the local synagogue in, in rural West Virginia with spray paint cans. You know, they don't burn it down, they don't hurt anybody, but they, they, they do spray painted the, the structure with, with, you know, with, with epithets. And, and he, he just kind of goes along with it. He didn't invent it later on. And by the way, we, we, there's a lot of talk now about stereotypes, groups, identity. The, the, the, the, the identity of, of this guy is again changed. He, he realizes that bigotry is part of being alive. And when the friends, people like me, advantaged, privileged, highly educated, cultured, intellectual people, I mean, I'm a writer and a retired college professor, we don't realize, many of us don't, that we have our own stereotypes that we're prejudiced against. For example, rural white sheriffs. So I wanted to write, I wanted to have a rural white sheriff who's a champion for justice and democracy and a fair minded, decent man. And when he investigates the desecration of the synagogue, the rabbi tells them, leave it alone. Don't stir up a lot of trouble. This should be the worst thing that ever happened to our people, you know, over 4,000 years of history. But the sheriff says, no, no, no, no, no, this is America. This is wrong. We have to, there have to be consequences. So it's a reverse. You'd think the rabbi would be beating up on the cops to do something. And the cops say, I'll leave it alone. So it's a reverse and I think reversals, things that you don as a writer in your work, whether it's a screenplay or a movie. Now later on at the end, it switches suddenly to 1979, where the Iranian revolution, the ouster of the Shah and the installation of the ayatollahs that caused another international crisis in oil supplies and again gas lines in, in, in, in the States and all across, all, all across the world. When our guy gets the, the, the sheriff is chasing this comedian, this oil dealer around, trying to find him because he knows that he was involved in the desecration of the, of the synagogue. And he finally doesn't catch him. And when he's on trial, his friends who planned the whole thing, they lie and they say he planned it, it was all his idea, we don't want to do it and he made us do it. The reader knows that's not true. When it comes his turn to testify, he lies and says, yes, those boys told it right. It was all my idea. They didn't know any better. You know, I shouldn't have done it. It's all my fault. So what has happened to him is he's really become a Jew. He's become the most powerful Jew in all of history. Who's that? Jesus isn't Jesus. Don't Christians tell us that Jesus took upon himself everybody else's sin, everybody else's fault, everybody else's mistakes and allow them to be saved? So it's kind of, there's a kind of a circularity to it. And then at the very end, he's left, he's given up his Buick business, he's running a laundromat, he's got a chain of, small chain of laundromats somewhere in New Mexico. And suddenly there's this oil prices again in gas lines. And he's furious at, at the indigenous people in New Mexico, impoverished Native Americans and Latino Americans who are, you know, mistreating his laundromats and so on. And he ends up suddenly wake, you know, creating, getting involved in. He actually spray paints a Chicano La Raza center or something like that and suddenly wakes up in a Latino shop dressing room, a green room in some kind of a Latino showroom where Latino music, norteno music is being played in the background. And he's suddenly being introduced as the world's most famous Latino comedian. And I think what I was trying to say there, although I'm never trying to do anything, I'm, I don't think you should ever try. You just do what you do. Then you see what you did. When I see what I did, I, I, I, what I said was, and it's the answer to your question, what's this all about? Bigotry, prejudice. It's a part of all of us, we all have that. It's, it's part of the, it's one more dreadful aspect of this thing called the human condition. And the answer to it is to be aware of our own prejudice, our own, our own bigotry and stand against, against that. You know, the, the problem with, with Hitler, for example, you know, there's always lunatics and crazy psychotics like that around. The real scary thing to me about a Hitler is not Hitler, but the fact that tens of millions, scores of millions of sophisticated, intellectual, cultured, educated, advantaged people go along with that. We need to be. When I look back at my own Life. I see all kinds of things that I went along with that I should not have gone along with. I saw people removed from the university without any word from, you know, by the, by administrators because they had, they were adjudged to have said disturbing things. As I said before, this is what, what we're supposed to be doing is saying disturbing things as indicators. So I think that's what, what really, what deadpan is really all, all about. It's about our own particular biases. And instead of worrying about everybody else's, first of all, we should worry about our own, pay attention to our own and, and, and try to avoid acting on them.
- [50:16]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [50:19]
Richard Walter
That's, that's what I'm really saying. We, we just kind of go along with it, with everything.
- [50:25]
Podcast Host
Right. It's a great. Richard, I love, I love the premise for the book. I love the, the message behind it as well. I love a story that makes you think. Right. I, I like that. That makes, that means a lot as a reader, to connect with a book like that and to put that out in the world especially. Well, it's something that doesn't go away. We're seeing it today. It's. There's a lot of unrest and a lot of people who don't understand each other right now. And it's playing out right now on the news when we're watching every day. Right. So a book like this, I think, is. Is timely at any point. I think there's a lot of relevance for the audience.
- [51:04]
Richard Walter
Thank you. Thank you. I really, I, I do do appreciate that. I do. I also hope that reading the book, you had a couple of laughs because I was, you know, people have said to me, there's a question, you know, is it fair to treat the Holocaust, racial and religious bigotry with humor? And the answer is yes. It's a terrific way. I think mocking and scorning evil is an effective tool against, against the dark things in our experience. I still remember a discussion years and years ago on a talk show with Truman Capote and, and all the other guy was a bigot, Lester Maddox, who was the governor of some Southern state, and, and just, just ranting racial hatred. And when they turned to Capote to respond, he just laughed. He just laughed. There was. What could you say to this? And the laughter I still remember all these years later, totally disarmed the. The opponent. And, And I do think laughter is really a useful tool also. It's a lot of fun.
- [52:23]
Podcast Host
Right. In true, deadpan fashion. Do you have a joke for us? Something to make us smile as we head towards the exit here, Richard, anything that we can comes to mind.
- [52:33]
Richard Walter
Well, I'll give you a quick one. Okay. The doctor says to the patient. I'm sorry? The patient says to the doctor, how much time have I got? The doctor says, 10. The patient says, 10, what? Doctor says, 9.
- [52:52]
Podcast Host
Oh, no.
- [52:55]
Richard Walter
I can't resist the door. Original joke. I just was talking to some friends about this. People my age, we. We spend a lot of time at medical facilities. The two differences between being young and being old. The first is that when you're young, you go to the doctor, and when you're old, you go to the doctors. The other difference is between being young being old is when you're young, you get sick, and then you heal, you get better, you recover.
- [53:26]
Podcast Host
There you go, everyone. There's a little deadpan for you as well.
- [53:29]
Richard Walter
You get.
- [53:29]
Podcast Host
You get a bonus for that. I like that, Richard.
- [53:31]
Richard Walter
Thank you. I got one, Richard, because I want to. I want to make a point of it. It's a very quick joke. The doctor says, I got bad news, and I got worse news. Patient says, well, give me the worst news first. She says, well, it's cancer. It's metastatic. You don't have, you know, six weeks to live. And the guy says, oh, my God. And what's. What's the news? That's just bad. That's not as bad as that. Well, you're. You've been diagnosed with dementia. You have Alzheimer's disease. So the guy says, oh, wow. And then he says, well, at least I don't have cancer. See, now you're laughing. And I've never told that joke to anybody who didn't laugh. What's funny about cancer and, you know, dementia? We know people who really struggle with this. And the answer is that it's all jokes. And I think writing is all like this. There's text and some text. The text is what you write or what you say, and the subject is what you mean. And every single joke is at it. It's. It's a. I'm kind of confused, but. Oh, now I get it. And there's a release of. Of stress and tension that comes out as. As laughter. So, once again, we're not evil, dreadful, satanic people to laugh at. At subjects that are unfunny in. In the context of funny jokes.
- [55:00]
Podcast Host
Excellent. It's great. Richard. Thank you for making us feel again. I like it. It's a great. It's a great project. I love it.
- [55:06]
Richard Walter
Thank you for having me. I really, really Enjoy chatting with you.
- [55:09]
Podcast Host
It's amazing. Let's talk about your website, Richard, before we go, because all is great information on there. A lot about you, about the book, and about so much more. Talk about your website before we head out the door.
- [55:20]
Richard Walter
Yeah, you know, you can find the book, you go to richardwalter.com or you can go to the usual suspects, Amazon and everybody else. You might even find it in a bookstore, if you can find a bookstore. Or you can go directly to Heresy Press. Just punch in my name or punch in the title of the book, Deadpan, and it'll come out, I promise. I guarantee you everybody will get a giggle out of it.
- [55:47]
Podcast Host
There you go. Excellent. That's a. That's a promise. Well, well kept, Richard. It's a great book and it's a great to talk to you. So great to have you on the show.
- [55:56]
Richard Walter
Thank you.
- [55:56]
Podcast Host
As you work on new projects down the road, I'd love to have you back, my friend. Great conversation.
- [56:01]
Richard Walter
I'd love to come back and visit with you again. You know where to reach me.
- [56:05]
Podcast Host
Excellent. Everyone, all information, as always, in the show, notes for Richard. Go grab a copy of Deadpan. It'll make you smile, it'll make you think, it'll make you laugh, and you might even get angry. But that's fine because that's what we want. We want you to feel something. Richard, thank you so much for doing this.
- [56:19]
Richard Walter
Thank you. Thank you. Take care now. Bye bye.
- [56:24]
Podcast Host
Hey, thank you so much again for pressing play. As you've heard, great guests on the show, and one thing you didn't hear in this conversation is what? What did you not hear? Think about it for a second. That's right. Not a single solitary commercial for a mattress or a supplement or whatever you call it. No. Why? Because we don't want to break up the conversation with commercials. So the fact that you're still here means that you are a fan of the show, I'm assuming. So if you want to help to keep the podcast going and to make me feel really happy, all I really care about is coffee. Okay. I just got to be honest. I love coffee. I'm drinking one right now. Starting to get cold. I need to warm it up. Helping us with our buy me a coffee link over@livingthenextchapter.com and also in the show notes, helps kind of keep the lights on around here. Remember, I'm doing this for free. I. I'm paying for everything, so I would love to have a little coffee donation. You know, even five bucks. Kind of fills up my cup, and I would love to enjoy a coffee from you. So if you're interested. Again, thank you for listening, but you can use our buy me a coffee link and fill up the cup. Thanks for being here.