S3E16: Blind Ambition

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between costart and Touchstone Productions and the Dads from the Crypt podcast. It's very clear in this book that you use senses that we only know we have, that we do not use in full. [00:00:11] Speaker B: It's fascinating, Eileen. I think that my sensory approach to life is very much like Dinah's sensory approach to life. There's a whole undercurrent of information that Dinah knew and couldn't define to me until I could read her language, and that I know and don't define to people because I tend to take it for granted. I've never met an ugly person unless they wanted to be. I understand the feeling of a handshake when it's well meant. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how not to make a movie podcast. I'm Alan Katz. Gil will join us shortly before we begin, though, you could all probably do this part yourselves. Hit like and subscribe, especially because are you afraid? Flesh eating ghouls for a long time, we humans have been deeply afraid of vampires and zombies, sin or paramedics. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Fair enough. [00:01:18] Speaker A: Vampires and zombies are scary. But neither vampires nor zombies are real. Plush eating ghouls, on the other hand, are real. They've been living in our shadow for thousands of years, hunting us, feasting on us, treating us like food. But some ghouls are tired of living in the shadow of their food. Those ghouls have decided it's time to leave the shadow and put us in our place where we belong, on the menke. It's an eat or be eaten world, flavored by fear, filled with the monster we should have been afraid of all along. Flashy and cool. Are you afraid? Better be coming soon. I very much enjoy writing solo, but I also thoroughly enjoy writing with a partner. Ideally, if it works, it's like adding one in one and getting four or five. The sum is truly greater than the parts. Writing with a partner forces a writer to get out of their head and into a mutual head, a very strange place, entirely imaginary, where two people suddenly experience the same imagined reality, and then they go and tell a story in it. It's truly transcendent when it happens. I've been very lucky to have had several great writing partners. Of course, this podcast celebrates, among other things, my writing and producing partnership with Gil Adler. I also wrote several scripts for the outer limits and sold a couple of tv shows and a feature film with a guy named Scott Nimmerfro. Before his very untimely passing a few years ago, Scott wrote and produced shows like Tales from the Crypt pushing Daisies, Hannibal. And once upon a time, I also had the incredible good fortune to meet and then write with today's guest. He's one of America's best known blind people, in part because he's done so many things. Despite being blind at various parts of his long career, Tom Sullivan has sang, acted, written, and produced tv and movies. He's written a dozen or so books. He plays golf, he skis, he runs marathons. And he's one of America's most sought after motivational speakers. After you meet him, you'll get the last part. Especially. Tom's story is remarkable. Tom is remarkable. Now, one thing that isn't remarkable is the sound quality of a lot of today's episode. And for that, I apologize. We had a few technical difficulties on that end, but the content is just so damn uplifting that it comes and it goes. I apologize. But like I said, it's Tom Sullivan. It's worth it. His story will blow your mind. The people he's met along the way will blow your mind. Spoiler alert. They include doctor Martin Luther King Junior, with whom Tom marched on many occasions. Rights for the disabled and civil rights go hand in hand. His friends, like Betty White and the depth of that relationship will blow your mind. They wrote a couple of best selling books together. Have I made my point? Your mind's about to be blown. Here's Tom. Over the course of your amazing career, you have been an actor, a singer, an entertainer, an author, a producer, a motivational speaker, and an advocate, not just for the blind, but for all people facing disadvantage. One could say that your mission is to turn disadvantage into advantage. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. I'm laughing because you and I wrote that. [00:04:59] Speaker A: It's like, I read your website. The first time that I met Tom, I'm remembering Tom and I first met. We were represented by the same talent agency in Los Angeles. The agency. Tom was represented by the principal there, a guy named Jerry Zeitman. And I was represented by one of the junior agents, a guy named Nick Mechanic. [00:05:35] Speaker B: So let's cut to the appropriate chase. We had one old guy and one drug dog guy representing our lives. [00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was kind of wacky, but probably. [00:05:47] Speaker C: Ten years earlier, I was represented by Larry Becksy, who was at the agency. [00:05:51] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Well, we have all done better than that agency did. [00:05:55] Speaker A: Gil, at the end of the day, when Jerry was about to introduce me to you, I did not know who you were. And he said. Oh, he mentioned introduce. He said that Tom was a well known. And he quickly said, blind person. And I heard the word blonde, and I said, yes, I can see that. And he said, can you also see that he's blind? [00:06:20] Speaker B: It's an interesting thing. [00:06:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then I suddenly saw the dog. Was that Edison at the time? [00:06:27] Speaker B: Yeah, Edison was the dog. And it's interesting that you even brought this up in this context, fellas, because if you said to me, what has been your principal life goal? What has it been? It's very clear to me that my goal is, you may be summed up, when I'm dead, right on the tombstone, here lies Tom. He's a husband, father, actor, athlete, author, humanitarian, who, by the way, happens to be born. If I can, before I leave the planet, if I can move that piece down in terms of public perception, then not only for me, but for anybody with a disability, I'll have a lot to do with changing perception. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Indeed. And, hey, you are very handsome blond guy. I must say. That was my first impression. That's a good looking blonde guy. I wish I looked half as good. Anyway, well, we will come to our pairing and what that produced in good time. First, let's reminisce a bit. You started out in Boston. Your mom was Marie. Your dad, Tom Sullivan, senior, nicknamed Porky. Where did Porky come from? [00:07:48] Speaker B: Really don't know if Porky was about the original Porky pig cartoons, because my father was kind of a short stocking fellow. Whether it had something to do with sexual exploits, I'm not sure why he got quirky, but he clearly lived up to it. He was really a fascinating character. He was born in an area. He was born in Ireland, but when he came to America, he lived in an area called the Leaky roof. It was called a leaky roof because that's where all the Irish literally lived, in leaky roofs. He went on to be a prize fighter. Not very good, but good enough to make enough money to buy a bar. He ended up on the 18 irish pubs all over Boston. He was. When he found that I was blind, when I was born, he. In ten days, he raised $6 million from bookies and bank robbers and jockeys and crash fighters. He had so much to do with making a difference in not just my life, but the lives of so many blind kids. He created beat baseball. Now, that's the game that blind people play with a beeper. In softball. He went to IBM. IBM. And got them to create the ability for blind people to bowl. And then when you knock the pins down, it would come up on a braille board, and you could touch the board and learn what pins you had left. He was really an innovator. And, you know, Alan, from our conversations, that he and my mother were in absolute juxtaposition about who I was supposed to be. She wanted me getting education first in schools for blind kids. He out on the street with sighted kids, and their conflict was pretty severe, you know? And in the end, my marriage didn't work out. But the point of the story was they represented, in many ways the dualism of what it was to be a special needs child back then, because nobody really knew what to do with someone like me. [00:10:14] Speaker A: Sure. And we will come to how special your needs were in time, as we get back to your story, because you were not going to be penned in like they wanted to pen you in. And to that end, you were kind of fenced into your backyard. And that was, that seemed to motivate you beyond it, because in time, okay, well, jump forward a whole lot of years, you became an excellent golfer. You've been quoted as saying, I've never seen a water hazard. I always have an open shot to the green. [00:10:57] Speaker B: That's right. The only time I've ever lost money on the golf course is when guys think I'm really playing well, and then they start telling me about the water, you know, I don't want that. You know, my backyard was. It's fascinating, fellas. It was. They built an eight foot high chain link fence around the yard because the fear was, keep Tom inside and keep the world outside so Tom won't get hurt. Now, all of this really was hard for me because I had gone to school for blind children. Perkinse and I hated it. And now here's the fenced in yard. And down the street from the house, there was a school, grammar school with. [00:11:49] Speaker A: A baseball field where the normal kids played. [00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And I could hear the games from my yard. And I would go to the house and get a transistor radio and bring it out and put it on a. On the steps and turn on WHDH and the Boston Red Sox. And my dad had given me a Louisville slugger bat that had been autographed by Ted Williams, and it was one of my dad's customers. And I would find rocks on the ground and throw them up in the air as the Red Sox played and try to hit the rocks. On this one day, Williams came up in the last of the 7th in a two two game, and he hit one deep into the right field bullpen. And as he hit his home run, I happened to hit the rock and launch it over my fence. And I started to run around the yard, you know, touching the fence, making believe I was running from 1st, 2nd, third. And I sort of slid into what I thought would be home plate. And there was a kid who was on his way home from the game, and kids can be cool. And this little boy came by my fence, and he said, hey, are you blind? And I wanted so much to have a friend. I said, yeah. He said, well, you know, that's kind of a stupid game, and you're kind of a stupid kid. And then he started chanting. He'd chant, and I pick up rocks from the ground and started to throw them at the sound. And obviously, he could just step out of the way. And eventually he got tired of it, and he went away. And I remember thinking, as I remember thinking that I will never let offense of any kind, emotional, physical, no offense at any time, will ever limit my life again. Not Adam. Then you learn that you can't get there alone, that no matter how determined you are, you can't get there alone. And miracles happened. And Alan, two little boys moved into a house right next door to me. And they were playing ball, and very often, and their names were Billy and Michael Hammond. I could hear them playing. And I thought, okay, it's come down to this. I've got to get out of this yard. And I grabbed the chain link and pulled myself up on the chain link fence hand over hand. And I got to the top, and I had no idea how high 8ft was, but I leaped and crashed on the ground, knocked out of me. And the two little boys came running up, and the one little boy, Billy Hannon, who's now been my best pal for 65 years, Billy looked down and said, wow. He said, with his Boston accent, that was a nolly fall. He said, yeah, I said. He said, I'm Billy Hannah. I said, I'm Tom Sullivan, and I'm blind. And this little boy looked at me, and with the wonder of children, he said, want to play? And from that minute on, I had a best friend. And that, that opened everything. When Billy taught me to throw baseball on football, Billy taught me to wrestle. Billy took me ice skating and summers. Billy would come and stay with us in a beach cottage, and we dig clams and fish, and I. I don't know why I'm jumping. And I know you guys have a bunch of. [00:15:38] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. You're actually filling in just fine. So this started Tom, and we will come back to this, because the project that Tom and I worked on when we get to that, part of the story was telling this story, adventures in darkness, we'll come to that. [00:15:55] Speaker B: So I will tell you, though, fellas, there's a great Billy Hammond story that goes in adulthood, and it's worth hearing. [00:16:02] Speaker A: We will, if you want to. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Is it fits this Billy. [00:16:07] Speaker A: Go for it. Go for it. [00:16:08] Speaker B: His daughter got married two years ago and got him on that for the wedding. And we had. The wedding had every irish quality. It had music. It had two fights. Billy had spent I love red breast irish whiskey. And he had a bottle at the bar just for him and me sitting at the bar. When fathers at weddings get emotional, they really do start to cry and stuff. And Billy was all emotional. And he said, you remember when we were little kids? I said, yeah. He said, I was your best friend, right? I said, yeah. He said, I was the only one that ever loved you, right? I said, yeah, I guess so. He said, I have to tell you something. I've never heard the guts to tell you this. I said, what? He said, one of the damn. Went fishing at the time. Pier in situate. I said, yeah. He said, you caught your first flounder. I said, yeah. You put it in my hands, and I learned what a fish was. But I said, billy, do you remember I caught eight more? He said, no, you didn't. He said, yes, I did. I caught eight more farmers. He said, no, you didn't. He said, I just put it back on the hook nine times. Best friend. [00:17:31] Speaker C: Unlike a friend like that. [00:17:33] Speaker A: Oh, boy. You found your way outside that fence, and you stayed outside that fence. And just as a. Not only golf, an avid skiere, in fact, you were even inducted into the wrestling hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The physical world has not been an impediment. At some point, you started playing the piano in summer resorts in New England. So performing was there early on. Yeah. [00:18:12] Speaker B: I had a. I had a music teacher in the blind school again, another one of the humans. A big part of what we're talking about today, fellas, is this tracking of humans changed the lives of humans. And this fellow was named Hank Santos. He had run the van Tribune chemical competition in the soviet union, and he was a great jazz pianist. He played in the air Force band, Glen Miller Air Force bands. And he realized that I didn't want to play Chopin. And he knew I sang. And he said, how would you like to learn about the greats, the american songbook? And he started to teach me stuff by Ella and Toda Bennett and Joe Williams and Saravon. One day he said, so he'd let me sing. He'd accompany me and I'd sing instead of taking my normal piano lesson. One day he said, I've got some friends coming to the house, and I want you to come over. We'll take you out of school, and I want you to sing for them. And I did. And after I'd sung five or six songs, they all seemed to like it. This one fellow came up to me and he said, tommy, said, my friend Hank, my teacher says that you're a really angry blind kid. Said, why is that? And I started my whole litany, the crap, right? All the kids want to play with me, and I. And I'm. I may be great at being blind, but I suck at being sighted. And I'm not sure what my world's gonna be like. And he said, tom, he said, I think you're feeling pretty sorry for yourself. He said, you know what? You're a terrific athlete. You're obviously musical. Oh, he said, I forgot. I haven't introduced myself. He said, I'm Doctor Martin Luther King. Doctor King had gone to Boston University with my teacher, and I stayed involved with Doctor King for the rest of his life. I was there on the march on Washington when I was a sophomore in high school. Through him, I got to know Warren Wilkins and href Brown and Stokely Carmichael and Jesse Jackson. And I became not only an advocate for disability, but for civil rights. [00:20:36] Speaker A: But. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Only because of an accident. Don't you think feral's life's a process of making the most of a series of accidents? [00:20:44] Speaker A: Holy cow. Yes. [00:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it really is. And the wonder of getting older is that you realize how much more important the accidents are. They have to count. I don't know if you guys are going through this, but, boy, days are going too fast for me. I'd love to just sort of slow them down. And yesterday I played golf, and I had maybe the best round I've had in forever. I shot in a very difficult golf course. I shot 84, which for a blind person is doing pretty good. And I thought instead, I wish I had been as positive as I always am. Instead of it, I thought, is this the last great rally? Will I ever play that kind of golf again? And I don't know. But I do know that. Boy, I'll tell you now, fellas, each day for me counts more than it ever did. Now, when I hugged patty good night, that is the single most important thing every day. You lost Edison. And getting a brand new guide that comes in two weeks. His name is Silva. He was a golden retriever. And I'm so excited to have that independence again. The mobility of independence. When I was growing up, everybody said that I would be a dependent. And everything that you know about me, Alan, has been about my passion to express independence. [00:22:15] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:22:17] Speaker B: And how we feel blessed to write together. We're locked in our work as interdependent. That's the magic of life. Indeed, it's the interdependence. And as a blind guy, I was so angry. It took me years to get there, to get to a place where I said, it's okay to be interdependent. So there's a value. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Anything. Yeah. For what the rest of us rely on. Just to get along was an obstacle, in a sense, to your perception of how you needed to just see yourself. [00:22:58] Speaker B: Wow. Thank you for saying it that way. Yeah. To see yourself, that's a really. That's a really interesting thing. I often wonder, not just in terms of seeing myself, but I often wonder where Patty feels. You know, Patty happens to be a really beautiful woman, but I wonder when she dresses up for dinner and comes down the stairs and I'm waiting every husband. I wonder if she thinks, I wish she could sing. There's a melancholy about that. And I tell her all the time about the fact that I'm interested in looking at both people inside out, not outside, in. West looks like in shape, you know? Good God. [00:23:54] Speaker A: You have no idea. [00:23:57] Speaker B: But, you know, the point of making. [00:23:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:23:59] Speaker B: It's part of the labeling. That's the goddamn. Yeah, I guess what you said, it's the goddamn most part of our society is this categorization. [00:24:11] Speaker A: You have to be understanding about how shallow the sighted world is. Tom, we're all about appearances. We want to judge all books by their cover. You know, it's. It takes a little more time to actually crack the book and read what's inside you. You, because of your situation, have always got to read what's inside. [00:24:32] Speaker B: Well, thank you for that perception. Yeah. I think I'm also lucky. Here's an interesting thought. I know we're all over the place here, but that's it. [00:24:41] Speaker A: Hey, whatever. [00:24:45] Speaker B: I haven't said this to people. I have never met an ugly person unless they wanted. Unless they looked at life from that place. [00:24:57] Speaker A: An excellent point. I have never met an ugly person unless they wanted to be that fantastic. Fantastic. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Don't you think? [00:25:06] Speaker A: It's a t shirt. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Well, there it is. [00:25:11] Speaker A: Not that that means anything. Oh, to you. God, that was pointless. That was pointless. It's an audiobook. Oh, geez. [00:25:18] Speaker B: It's true, isn't it? I mean. [00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it is. It's absolutely true. [00:25:22] Speaker B: A quick story. I was working for good movie America, and they sent me an interview, had just done ten, and I got assigned to do a big profile on for BBC. And the guys on the cruise around water cooler saying, jesus Christ, we're sending a goddamn blind guy to interview attempt. This is ridiculous. Well, I thought about it and thought, I've got to find a way to do this interview in a different way. I've got to be able to ask her something that makes it feel special. So the first question I said, people talk about you as a physical ten, but I can't look at you, so why should I like you? [00:26:12] Speaker A: It's perfect. It's a great question. It's perfect. [00:26:16] Speaker B: And she started to cry and she said, that's the problem, isn't it? She said, they don't know how much I love my husband John and how much I love animals. And they don't understand that I need. And I'm not some dummy with, you know, with a good ass. She said, I'm interested in everything about life. When people consider me, they look at the characters. So you start to frame this stuff and think, oil boy. Oh, we really live in a system of labels. Can't we get out of our own way? [00:26:50] Speaker A: The first, you wrote a novel. A book. A book. A book called, if you could see what I hear, an autobiographical piece about. About Perkins, your neighborhood, Providence College, and then Harvard. And that got turned into a feature film with Mark Singer playing you. You kind of got that. If you could see what I hear, that was a perfect summation of how you were experiencing life, I think. [00:27:27] Speaker B: So it also was meant as an invitation. You know, there are five and everybody knows it, but they don't. There are five glorious senses, and sight is the dominant sense. Those of you who can see, it's so dominant. But okay, I'll give you. I'll give you an example. So I'm still, you know, morning run. And yesterday I ran with these four guys. We land on the beach. I was listening on Redondo Beachburg here in Palestine, there are 15 different kinds of waves that you can hear all the way from the ones that at high tide, that where the rush of wave meets the outgoing sand. And it sounds as if Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were exchanging body shots to the ones at low tide where the waves ebb and flow over the sandbars. And that sounds like a cannonade in a war zone. There are eleven different textures of sand on the beach. If you look for it on my beach, there are over 50 cans of birds that you can hear. And up above the beach, at the four mile mark of this room, which now takes me a lot longer than it used to be. But above the beach, there's a restaurant called Millie's. And at 07:00 it's cooking bacon, eggs and sausages and hot coffee and muffins and this stuff. The smells come drifting down and blend fellas with eucalyptus and orange blossom and lilac and ocean help and weed. And it's a sensual joy that anyone could appreciate if they took the time. So this is the difference. This is why I do so much writing for children, children's books, because I'll never be able to see. That's not going to happen. But anyone can turn on the senses. That's. Again, that's one of the legacies. I hope I leave that. That's a gift available to everyone if they limit. So it's a marvelous sensory world, if you're just willing to. To find out about. [00:30:13] Speaker A: You on the subject of books you've written, a few in addition to if you could see what I hear at some point. You hooked up with Betty White, and you began. The first book you wrote with her was leading lady Dinah's story about your dog before Edison. Yeah. [00:30:33] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. Dinah was a golden retriever, and she worked for me for ten years. First, I should tell you that Betty White is the reason Patty and I are married. I was playing in that little ball you talked about in Cape Cod, and Betty and her husband Alan loved me. The great game, chipper summer stock at the Cape Cod playhouse. And they would come into my bar every night and I would play their favorite songs, and sometimes they'd get up and sing. But I was. So I was at the time. Now I'm this young Harvard guy, blind piano player, and I'm chasing every girl in the joint a minute. And so this one night, the bartender leans over the bar and he says to me, tom, holy Christ. He said, there's a girl in here. He said, 510 legs to heaven. He said, you've got to figure out how to talk with her. Well, thank God she moved over the barn. She said, excuse me. She said, can you play by the time I get to Phoenix? I said, yeah, I can play that. She said, so I sang it, and by the end, she had a couple of drinks, and so she's kind of crying and she says, do you mind if I ask you something? She said, do you mind if I ask how you went blind? I said, well, I don't really like to talk about it. She said, oh, come on. I said, well, I was an f four pilot in Vietnam. I got shot down. And you're the first girl I've met since I got out. And Betty white hears it and she's laughing her ass off. And she said, young lady, he is so full of shit. But then she said, there's a girl, Tom, who comes in here every night and sits around a table listening to you sing. And if you could see her eyes, you would never date anyone else. And she grabbed me by the arm, dragged me over, and she said, what's your name? And the girl said, I'm Patty. And Betty said, this is Tom Sullivan. Sit down. And she pushed me into a chair. And Betty made it possible for Betty and I now to be married 55 years. So that's how it started. Is the story of Dinah the guide dog. My life with Dinah. And then when Dinah's eyes foggy enough, went bad, Betty had lost Alan and Dinah went to live with Betty. And so the book is the story, my stories with Dinah, and Betty's stories with Dina. And it was really an amazing success. It went through the roof. It was a time's bestseller and a whole lot of things, largely due to Betty, not me. [00:33:14] Speaker A: But you helped a lot. [00:33:18] Speaker B: Come on, Betty. I had the privilege, Alan, of being Betty's trustee. And when Betty left us two and a half years ago, it was an incredible privilege to give away her quite vast estate to all the causes she cared about. This was a woman who was way past, way past the parts she played. She was brilliant, funny, you know, wonderful, rich, in interests we shared. [00:33:58] Speaker A: She became a cultural icon. She certainly proved f. Scott Fitzgerald wrong. She had at least a second act. A third act. She had remarkable. Even if that was just a second act. Wow. She was like the most popular person. And certainly in this country she was. She loved her. [00:34:19] Speaker B: She recreated herself all the way along. She was the queen of the double entendre. She would say, gil, did you ever have a chance to direct her? [00:34:33] Speaker C: No. No, I never did. I always wanted to meet her. And I loved Alan Ludden. I used to watch password as a kid. I was addicted to password and I was addicted to him. [00:34:42] Speaker B: He was one of them. They do password now. Is it Jimmy Fallon that does it now? But it's not. Alan did it as if. Don't you think, fellas? It was as if we were in the living room, and we were all sitting around the coffee table, and he made the game so personal, and he did Gil. They fell in love on password. They met on password. And Alan, I wasn't there, obviously, but Alan went backstage and Bob Stewart, who was the most famous game producer in the world, Bob created Price is right. He created password. He created Jeopardy. That was a genius. But he. Bob Stewart. Alan came back stage and said, bob, I'm going to marry that girl. It was just a true love story between her. I never actually come across a couple any more in love than they would. So it was a privilege for Patty and I. They became, because I came from such a beat up, broken home, they became our role model. As Alan, you noted that writing the books with Betty and then serving, Betty and I were both president of the Morris Animal foundation, which is the largest research foundation for dog, cats, horses and wildlife in the world. We had the common experience with Dinah that he became going through to my children, Blythe and Tom, in the honor of life's four shows and Tom's little League games. It was a. It's been an amazing thing that Betty became part of our family. My professional life got changed by Michael Landon. You know, Michael, we did the highway to heavens, and that was how I first started to write. Thank God I had you, because I was a horrible tv writer. I'm a good novelist and a good storyteller, but when it comes to the camera, I'm nothing anyway. [00:36:52] Speaker A: You know, there's a special dispensation for a person who doesn't fully appreciate what a camera does, per se. [00:37:00] Speaker B: I love knowing if jewish guys use the word dispensation. [00:37:06] Speaker A: Yes, I have a special dispensation to use that word. Actually. [00:37:12] Speaker B: The key there was. But he taught me most of all. So when I was doing highway to heaven, both as writing and acting on it, I was at the height of my career. I was doing Carson every two weeks. I was on every talk show there was. I was part of. Daddy and I were raising money a lot for blind kids. I had just sung the national anthem. [00:37:37] Speaker A: For the Super bowl in 1976. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Orange bowl in Miami. [00:37:42] Speaker A: To honor America, we proudly present our. [00:37:44] Speaker B: National anthem as sung by Mister Tom Sullivan and the cast of up with people. What so proudly we have. I was flying really high, and we went. I was doing an episode of highway to Heaven, and at the end of the episode, michael said, we're going to cut the day short because the Red Sox are playing. We're all going to go out. We took everybody to the bar down the street, and we're all having fun. And, I mean, smoking cigars and playing pool and drinking beer, and it's a wonderful thing. And this guy came up to me and said, can you tell himself? And I said, yeah. He said, you know, I said, I have a three year old blind child. And he said, I thought you were really a hero. He said, you're a jerk. But I wasn't. I was just with a bunch of guys having fun. The next day, Michael Landon came to work, and he said to me, you really had a rough time with that guy, didn't you? I said, yeah. He said, tom, you better learn something. I said, what's that? He said, whatever you do in the privacy of your own home is up to you. Whatever you share with your friends, that's up to you. Unless you step out that door, you belong to them. And for the rest of my professional life, I never forgot it. And that's what performers have lost today. There's no. I don't hear. Young performers today express themselves with gratitude. Everything that we get when I was really in this, everything we get comes from the gratitude we should feel toward those who made it happen. And it's not part of show business model. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Social media has created a strange dynamic between performer and fan base. It's a very strange relationship. [00:40:06] Speaker B: I think so. You know, when Patty finished now, Pat and selling my. Patty has a best selling book out right now. That's a wonderful story. She has written a book called Eddie White, Pearls of Wisdom, life lessons from beloved american treasure. And it's Patty's story of a 50 year period with Betty. And what has been amazing is that we hired social media people to do the. The job that used to be done by PR companies. [00:40:46] Speaker A: Right? [00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah, fellas, and this is a new one. This is Gil. If you and Alan go back into television together, it's a bizarre world now, Alan. In fact, we're doing a podcast. Fellas, think about that. It started with AM radio, then AM FM radio, talk show radio, and look who we are. [00:41:11] Speaker A: Gil and I are taking a project out into the marketplace. In the, like, near future? Yes, in the very near future. And it's funny. Part of how we're rolling it out, of course, will involve social media. But part of our creative team are two people who are part of the creative team because of their social media presence. They have created a. A website and a podcast and a YouTube channel called Dead Meat, which does body counts in all horror movies. Every single death. They. [00:41:46] Speaker B: Yes, I know about it. [00:41:47] Speaker A: Well, Dead Meat has 6 million subscribers. 6 million. So we got involved with one of them, with Chelsea, Rebecca, one of them on a reading we did for a script. And they're both incredibly talented people, and they've created this thing, as they would tell you, they're fans. They were horror movie fans who have created a niche for themselves in the very business that they grew up loving. [00:42:21] Speaker B: That's astounding. [00:42:22] Speaker A: But that is what the technology and social media suddenly allows, a transference of people from one point. It's like the old game, chutes and ladders. It's weird. It's suddenly you can get from one point to another with unexpected speed. But podcasting can have the same effect. [00:42:43] Speaker B: So this is wonderful that I'm hearing it, Gill and Ellen, because, Jesus, for all the 15 books I've written and all the stuff out the bus could be, I feel like a dinosaur. You know, it. I do know now, though, that if we go forward as a group with our guests, all the things I did for Good Morning America, the against all odd stories, the whole good news kind of story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This stuff. And if podcast is the vehicle, boy, I'm happy to get on that train. [00:43:21] Speaker A: You are. As we said the other day when we were talking, and we'll do this talk at greater length when we're finished this interview. No, you were made for podcasting, Tom, because it's radio. You are the perfect person. Your perceptions of this world were made for podcasting. [00:43:43] Speaker B: But we'll come to that, say that I'm so comfortable in the verbal world. [00:43:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And a world of sound. And. And that's what it is. [00:43:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:59] Speaker A: So among the other books you did, we'll just go through them because I'm going to get to the good part. Let me get to the good part. So, yeah, you did. There's a book called Common Sense, special parents, special child. You are special. And seeing lessons 14 life Secrets, which was recognized by the New York City chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's books for one of their books for a better life. [00:44:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. That book did extremely well. And, you know, it's wonderful to be this age and still love to write. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Here, here. [00:44:41] Speaker B: I've just finished a novel that I feel so excited about because it fulfilled all of my irish past. It's very audience, but it's called the South east. And the theory is it tells the story of three fellas who represent all of what is South Boston, the Irish. This is a perfect vehicle for a nine part kind of series for Affleck and Damon, you know, it's. I love this particular book. And it's interesting, isn't it? As writers, you guys know this. We come to places in our lives that fit the time we write. You know what I mean? I couldn't. This particular novel, I could not have written this 20 years ago. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Oh, sure. [00:45:29] Speaker B: I wouldn't have had the particular gift. And it's wonderful to think that even at this age, you can still continue to see your skillset, your craft, mature. You guys know this as much as anybody, that it's been a horrible thing that mature writers, senior writers in show business, in our business, have been so abused by. What is the system now? [00:45:57] Speaker A: It's very ageist. Yeah. Very, very intensely ageist. Yeah. [00:46:01] Speaker B: One of my best pals. I know, Alan, you did. Bill Blinna, who wrote fame and did eight is enough, and a whole television over the bonanza for the last five or six years, Bill kept writing scripts and couldn't even get them seen and died last year. And it broke my heart because this talent didn't change. He still had the gift. [00:46:32] Speaker A: In fact, it deepens. We do get better at what we do with age because we know more, and it just finds its way into the work. No, I'm a far better writer today than I could possibly have been back when you and I were first writing, Gil, or when you and I were writing together. Tom, the vicissitudes of my own travels have scars, but. But I think they made me, at the end of the day, far better at telling the story of life than previous institutes. [00:47:11] Speaker B: It's because you've lived one. We're storytellers because of the experiences we've had. [00:47:17] Speaker A: And we're a storyteller is a prism. We simply hold our prism inside our head, up to the light and whatever refracts. That's our art. [00:47:28] Speaker B: You know, it's an interesting thing that the greatest. I was kidding about writing in television or for movies and struggling about setting scenes and camera and the stuff that is visual that I don't. And yet I've gotten pretty good at being able to almost see a visual picture of things again. [00:47:54] Speaker A: Well, let's. Let's. Let's get at that. Because when you and I were put together by Jerry Zeitman once, I said, oh, I see, he's blind in addition to blonde. Okay, he's. He's. He's both. He's. He's a. He's a twin threat. He's a double threat. The book that they wanted me to help you adapt into a screenplay was adventures in darkness. [00:48:19] Speaker B: Yeah. The three of us should still make that. [00:48:24] Speaker A: Oh, it's a fantastic story. That was a. Hey, look, you know, just we. At the end of the day, we set it up. We set it up. Crusader Films, Phil Anschutz's company. We had Martha Coolidge, a really good director, attached. We even went out to her horse ranch out north of LA one day to talk about all kinds of production issues. The only thing that got in, in the way of that, that movie getting made was the casting of the boy. And we were. We were all banking on Freddie Highmore, do or die, and just getting onto his schedule before he went through puberty was our problem. [00:49:04] Speaker B: And then ancients bought the link. Charles story. [00:49:09] Speaker A: Yeah, then that happened. So another blind guy beat us. [00:49:16] Speaker C: You know, whatever happened to that project? And what happened to the. Where do the Wrights live right now? [00:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. They must. They must be back with you at this point, after all this time. Certainly the rights of the book, you could start all over. No one owns the rights to your story. [00:49:34] Speaker B: They don't. [00:49:35] Speaker A: That screenplay is all that they owned. [00:49:37] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but remember, the good part of this was we took it back, wrote another draft. They didn't buy the draft, so we. It's ours. [00:49:46] Speaker A: Right, right. It was. It was a fascinating project to work on because part of my assignment was to get as best I could inside your head and to try to understand your. How you, for want of a better word, saw the world. [00:50:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that was, I think, one of, and this is not guys stroking you guys here, but one of your brilliance pieces was, you asked me at the beginning of the show here about my backyard, and we were. Alan wrote the most beautiful scene of the way. Tom would understand the world from inside there. And the theory was going to be shooting it from Tom's point of view. The camera would shoot from Tom's point of view and allow sound to be what you really learned. So you'd be Cameron, Ray Allen. The camera would be showing Tom what you'd be really involved in was the sound of the kids down the street, the sound of the neighborhood, the sound, whatever it was. And that was how Tom saw the world. And that's all. Alan Katzenhe. It was a beautiful piece of work. [00:51:03] Speaker A: Well, thank you. Thank you. Like I said, the challenge was wonderful, but it was a collaboration, such an interesting collaboration because of what it was asking the various collaborators to do. [00:51:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you'd feel this way would have been a great director's challenge, don't you think? To try to do this from the point of view of a blind child. [00:51:31] Speaker A: Actually, I'm now remembering at one point, I got it into my head at some point after Phil Anschutz put it down, I thought, hey, let's see if we can't get it made independently. And I thought, what if Tom directed it? And we had a. We arranged a meeting with John Leonetti. Gil, I got in touch with John Leonetti to talk to us, maybe about co directing it, being the DP, but in essence co directing it with Tom. And we had a conversation. It never went any place beyond that. But that was kind of our. I think that was the radical notion of how to maybe get it done. I would still approach it that way. [00:52:16] Speaker B: And I had the privilege. When I was working for Landon, again, Michael Lyndon, on two of the episodes that I wrote for him, he would come to me at different points in a week and say, I'm leaving. We were buzzy, the old camera cinematographer, he said, write him direct. I said, michael, are you kidding? He said, tom, buzzy will keep you safe. He said, and nobody hears dialogue the way you do. So just directly. So when Alan brought this up, I thought, wouldn't that be something? Well, we're not done yet. [00:52:53] Speaker A: You know, Gil, and I can tell you from personal experience, when we were doing tales from the crypt, it was used as the directing laboratory, the directing academy, for executive producers. And they would put a couple of first timers, writers who they had deals with. Can the guy direct, too? Sometimes just straight favors that. People who, I don't think they'd even seen a movie, let alone been on a film set. And. And let me tell you, I can think of a few of them. You could direct the crap out of it. You could beat the shit out of them in a directing contest just. Just by sitting in your chair and not saying anything. [00:53:31] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you know, I'm so excited that there is still Gil and alan so many cripsters around, huh? I mean, it's a marvelous. It's a marvelous, wonderful fact that. What's the Shakespeare thing? The evil that men do live after them, the good is often turned with their bones. [00:53:52] Speaker A: There you go. Fortunately, our bones are still standing. And thank goodness for nostalgia. Thank goodness. Now, you and I, in time, we went on to work on another script together, which one of the things that I thought was most delightful about you was the world perceives you as the nicest guy on the planet. And, hey, I wouldn't take that away from you. You are the nicest guy on the planet. But there's an evil Tom, too. What Tom really wanted to create was a blind character who everyone took for granted as being. Yeah, they're nice. And really was a rat bastard. [00:54:37] Speaker B: Oh, that's wonderful. We had the greatest time. That was fun. [00:54:43] Speaker A: That was fun. That was fun. And again, we, you know, God, we got a really good director attached. We had Alan Rudolph, and we had an actual good producer, Mary Alo, who, you know, the. The one. Because it was all independent, of course. It was all casting dependent. And if we could just get the lead. The woman playing the blind. The blind woman. [00:55:11] Speaker B: It's a great script. It basically, it's the story for the audience quickly, of a blind cop, San Francisco cop. And the cop, he gets in all kinds of trouble because he takes down the russian mob in ways that are totally aggressive and outside the department, and he's been suspended. And he meets a woman in a health club who happens to be beautiful and blind. And she basically brings him into her role specifically because she has the desire to get. To attach herself to her dead husband's money. We find out in the end that she not only killed her husband, but she wants the cop to create crime for her. It's basically body heat with blindness attached. [00:56:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty much it. It was, yeah. [00:56:10] Speaker B: And it was so much fun. We thought. We thought we had Charlie Stallone. [00:56:17] Speaker A: Yeah, we were. We nibbled it, and then. And then the. The previous writers strike happened, and everything just died. [00:56:27] Speaker B: Here's an interesting thought. Remember, we're talking about the need for. [00:56:35] Speaker A: The need for fellows. [00:56:39] Speaker B: I wouldn't trade our experience together every day for anything. Did it made or not get it made? [00:56:47] Speaker A: Oh, well. Well. [00:56:54] Speaker B: My favorite Alan thing is, when you go. [00:56:59] Speaker A: Sometimes words elude me, and that's one. [00:57:02] Speaker B: I love it. [00:57:03] Speaker A: So it was a lovely experience among the people who you introduced me to. It was one more project that we got involved with, which. Oh, man. Roger Harrison. How did you know Roger? [00:57:21] Speaker B: Roger was a. He was a one of a kind entrepreneur. [00:57:26] Speaker A: Yeah, he really was. [00:57:27] Speaker B: He was a southern redneck entrepreneur who somehow got his hands on the rights to the most marvelous story. You tell it because you wrote the script, and I think it's a magnificent specimen. [00:57:47] Speaker A: Well, what Roger wanted to tell was the story of the true story of three cousins. The project was called cousins who were born, really, within the same year of each other around 1935 in Faraday, Louisiana. And these three first cousins grew up in this swirling gumbo of music that was coming. Oh, God. It was gospel and there was blues, and there was stuff from the Ozarks. And there was, of course, the religion. It was assemblies of God, intense religion. And then, of course, to top it all off, there was the family relations, because in that part of the world, first cousins marry each other. One of them grew up to be the country singer Mickey Gilly, whose Gillies was an urban cowboy. Was that all the girls look better near quitting time than one of his big hits. One was Mickey Gilly. One became the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who. [00:58:50] Speaker B: Fell from slammer, the dead of slammer, I don't know. [00:58:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Who fell from grace not once, but twice. And the third cousin was the killer, Jerry Lee Lewis. And Jerry Lee and Jimmy Swaggart are first cousins on their mothers, their father's side, because it's Faraday, Louisiana. [00:59:07] Speaker B: And. [00:59:10] Speaker A: What Roger's idea was to tell this incredible story of these three cousins and their relationship and with all the music. The cool thing about the relationship is that Swaggart and Jerry Lee Lewis are flip sides of a really twisted coin. And as much as they love each other, because family, they cannot bear each other, because they each have what the other one wants in some way. [00:59:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And what's amazing is that all three of them were magnificent, wonderful rock and roll players. I mean, it wasn't just. [00:59:42] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah, they were all very talented musicians. You know, Jimmy Swaggart can play some piano when he wants to. The thing that Roger really wanted at the end of the movie was to have was to reunite them once a charity event at the Superdome in New Orleans, where they'd all three be up on stage playing boogie woogie piano together for the first time in a thousand years. That was the dream. [01:00:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And no, it didn't happen. It didn't happen. But I love the fact that we have chosen, the three of us have chosen lives that allow us to have this, whether it's in books or in scripts or in music, to have this ongoing relationship with true exploration and adventure. It's a, you know, this little guy, Tom, who is stuck in his backyard. It was. It's the creative arts that have allowed me to have, wanting to have this wonderful life living very well in our thirties, but to have this creative adventure that allows us, the three of us and others, to wake up every morning with the thought that the thought can translate into something wonderful if we wanted to. [01:01:08] Speaker A: Oh, indeed it is. It's funny that the three of us are talking together, is Gil has to step away for a second, just as I'm pointing out, the three of us. But still, the point is valid. Nonetheless, Gil and I are reunited creatively because the technology was there that made personal storytelling like this possible, and that allowed us to not only reconnect to personally, but to reconnect creatively and to begin to explore things that we, we've never even thought about exploring before. The same thing is happening right here because it's because of the podcast. The bizarre thing is that this podcast has led to everything. [01:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's so exciting. As you did when we wrote, this is an outlet I just didn't know much about. And secondly, didn't ever think I'd be involved in. And yet, had you not said to me, Tom, this is your media. This is what you're meant to be. [01:02:18] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, holy cow. Now, first of all, because of stories, but also because of people that, you know, you're so much untapped potential in this universe, it's rather exciting to contemplate all the different places that, and again, it's, the cool thing about podcasting is once you start telling one story in this medium, doors open to all kinds of other stories, and the next thing you know, you don't know which one to tell. [01:02:52] Speaker B: First, wonderful thing about this hour today is that this is sort of the, it's the beginning of making a cake. We've shared a whole lot of different stories related to Tom's life, but it also frames the idea that through all those experiences, molding podcasts that are meaningful to people we talk about, I'm against all odds kind of podcast we talk about, I have this whole feeling that I'm just the right person to do something that's related to telling good news. We don't have enough of it. [01:03:38] Speaker A: Indeed. [01:03:39] Speaker B: Why wouldn't we do the Paul Harvey kind of the day circumstance where we look for stories around the world that are truly positive because the world needs to have them. I just. I think that that's as much as anything. I would love to also take all the advocacy of my life around disability and tell parents stories that there's so many. The struggle of parents with special needs kids is an ongoing, forever story. And there are, what have you and I used to say on there special needs kids in this country. And each one of them has a story to tell. [01:04:22] Speaker A: Indeed. Indeed they do. And for the advocacy alone, it's worth taking the shot. Tom, we could go on. We could start a whole second hour right now and launch into the thousand things that I wanted to talk about. I never got to, for instance, when we would sit and talk about Lakers. [01:04:48] Speaker B: Games oh, I love that conversations. [01:04:52] Speaker A: Your understanding of the game absolutely convinced me on multiple occasions that the whole blind thing is bullshit. You see? Just fine. Dude. [01:05:10] Speaker B: That was half the. Listen, right now, when LeBron is doing remarkable things, it's almost 30. It's just mind boggling. [01:05:20] Speaker A: Mind boggling. The Lakers, they're not the elite team. They were, but they're not going to get there. [01:05:30] Speaker B: But it's still fun to watch. [01:05:32] Speaker A: Good God. Just. He's such a magnificent physical specimen of. And speaking of physical specimens, shohai otani. [01:05:42] Speaker B: I just hope, Lisa Shoahtani, that there is nothing other than the fact that he got ripped off for $4 million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when you think about it, that's, again, the analogy of sports. What this fellow did, coming to America and doing something that hadn't been done since, it's hard to comprehend. [01:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:10] Speaker B: 15 games as a start, and with a non run average of 2.31, that's overwhelming. 307. I mean, you can't. It's impossible to comprehend it. It really is. Well, hey, we just saw it last night. Caitlin Clark, change it. Women's basketball forever and ever. 41 points. The average drink pointer from outside of 27ft, that's beyond the wall barrel. [01:06:41] Speaker A: I told you, this guy, he sees the court better than the rest of us do. [01:06:47] Speaker C: Well, I tell you, as a motivational speaker, Tom, I gotta admit, I found this conversation with you very, very uplifting, and I really appreciate that for doing that. [01:06:57] Speaker B: Well, listen, I just. Now that our paths have connected through this work, let's see if we can find something else fun for the three of us to do. [01:07:04] Speaker A: Hey, hey, hey. [01:07:05] Speaker C: Love to. [01:07:05] Speaker B: Thank you. [01:07:06] Speaker A: Let's make that a point, Tom. Thank you, as always. It is so wonderful to be back in each other's lives. And thank you, everybody, for joining us, as always, and we'll see you next time. The how not to make a movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, by Gil Adler, and by Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason. Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crypt podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the crypt keeper would have called terrific crypt content.