announcements

There are 35 posts filed in announcements (this is page 1 of 5).

The Tobolowsky Files returns

[The following post is long, but here’s the TL;DR: The Tobolowsky Files is back! And we have a new YouTube channel too. Subscribe to them both and enjoy some amazing storytelling.]

“Your stories are so good, and I bet you have many more of them just waiting to get out into the world. Let me know if you want me to help you get them out into the world.”

I spoke these words to legendary character actor Stephen Tobolowsky 11 years ago. At the time, I had recently created The Slashfilmcast podcast. Writer/director Kevin Smith had been one of our first guests. Stephen had also appeared on the show to promote his storytelling film Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party. We had just cracked 1,500 listeners per week. I felt like there was nothing the medium of podcasting couldn’t do.

To my great surprise, Stephen took me up on my offer and The Tobolowsky Files was born. Each week, Stephen told a series of stories from his experiences in Hollywood. How he made Groundhog Day. Working with Mel Gibson Bird on a Wire while his son was being born. What it was like to read the script for Memento the very first time.

Early on in the podcast, Stephen asked me what I thought about him doing stories that weren’t strictly showbiz related. Of course, I said yes. That led to our fourth episode, The Alchemist, a devastating story that Stephen tells about his mother’s passing. To this day, it’s one of the most powerful pieces of storytelling I’ve ever heard. That’s when I knew we had something special.

The podcast grew and took on different forms. A man named Jeff Hansen asked if he could put the podcast on Seattle Public Radio. Adam Zacks invited us to Seattle where we performed our very first live show. In 2017, I directed a movie called The Primary Instinct, a concert movie featuring Stephen’s storytelling. Stephen used his stories to get two book deals with Simon and Schuster.

Stephen’s life and my life also changed. I uprooted my life, moved to Seattle, and eventually ended up working at a small tech startup called Amazon. Stephen started getting more high-profile work and becoming more recognizable. He got major roles in The Goldbergs, Californication, and eventually, Silicon Valley. He went from “Hey, it’s that guy that I can kind of vaguely recognize!” to someone who was getting swarmed in public places.  Eventually, he joked, he could no longer go to Ralph’s without being recognized — a major imposition.

The podcast’s release schedule started fluctuating dramatically. Each episode consisted of roughly 5,000 words of Stephen’s original writing. Initially, Stephen and I were cranking these episodes out on a weekly basis. In the early days, it felt like the podcast was a hole in the wall of a dam; Stephen had spent so many years writing down notes and shaping narratives, and the podcast finally allowed his words to flow freely as they’d always desired to do. But as time went on and we both got more busy, the time between episodes eventually grew from one week to several weeks to several months to several years.

In June of 2017, we published episode 83 of the podcast, with a promise to come back the following year. That obviously didn’t happen, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. In the time since then, I’ve felt an even greater responsibility to help get Stephen’s stories out into the world in a way that was as impactful as possible.

Over the past few months, Stephen and I have been painstakingly recording and editing more of his stories. We wanted to bank a bunch of them so we could release them weekly. So people would have something to look forward to.

I’m pleased to announce that beginning today, there will be a brand new season of The Tobolowsky Files, with new episodes every Monday through the rest of 2020. We are also launching a new YouTube channel, featuring Stephen’s stories told in front of a live theater audience (filmed pre-COVID). The latter project came together through the massive effort of many people who loaned us their time and expertise, including Valentina Vee, Jon Berry, and Tyler Schirado. I hope you enjoy this latest version of the podcast – yet another form for Stephen’s stories.

Stephen and I have kept in touch and our friendship continues. It is one of the most unexpected, rewarding friendships of my lifetime. Stephen’s kindness, understanding, and faith in me has helped me through some challenging times. I hope this new season can help you through the rest of the year.

I’ll close by sharing an email (excerpted) that we received from a listener who I’ll refer to as K from India. K shares their love of the podcast in powerful terms.

**

Dear Stephen,

I can’t express in words just how much listening to your stories has changed my life, but I’m going to try.

I began listening to the tobolowsky files podcast when it first came out. I revisited each and every episode this month and I’m quickly making my way through them since you’re such a compelling storyteller.

I have been heartbroken the past year and these wonderful stories have helped me get through this incredibly difficult time. The way I see it, your stories are about being lost and found, and I hope that one day I will also be found just like you were.

I love how you derive meaning out of everything that happens to you, connecting them to literature, philosophy, science….you transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, Stephen. I don’t know anyone even in my real life who is able to do that…

Your stories are a source of guidance for me. It has been the reason why I want to get out of bed. Being heartbroken can really crush you, as you can imagine. They’ve given me a sense of purpose, and I can’t thank you enough for that. They make me feel like….like life matters.

❤️ Sending you lots of love.

Warmly,
K

**

The beautiful thing about stories is they can bring us together. They can help us find universality in the specific. And maybe, just maybe, they can make the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Stay safe and happy listening.

How you can help me make more stuff

This week, I launched a Patreon page to support my work.

I’ve been creating podcasts and videos on the internet for 13 years. During that time, I’ve been blessed to garner a small fanbase of people who support what I do, both financially and emotionally. While my life has gone through many changes during that time, I’ve continued to crank out content as quickly as humanly possible.

Balancing a full time job and all my extracurricular activities has always been delicate. My approach thus far has been to essentially make things when I feel like it. But I’ve now reached a phase (and let’s be honest, an age) in my life when I need to be as thoughtful as possible about how to use my time.

In the past year, I’ve launched several podcasts (including my pride and joy, Culturally Relevant) on top of my existing commitments. I’ve grown my YouTube channel to 15K subscribers. I’ve also continued to do plenty of live broadcasts on Twitter/Periscope.

I generate zero revenue from these activities, but I’ve enjoyed doing pretty much all of them. I am happy with the communities that have sprung up around them and want to keep investing more time, resources, and energy into them.

I also want to make even more stuff. I want to have more interesting conversations. I want to create more videos. I want to hire a producer and an editor to help me. I want to be able to justify spending hours taking a look back at [insert your favorite TV show/film/soundtrack/etc.] when possible.

The question I’m asking the world with this Patreon is: How much do people out there want to invest in me? It’s a terrifying question to ask the internet. But it’s the answer I seek. I think there’s value in paying for things you want to invest in and that you want to see continue (I support multiple Patreons pages myself and find it to be a very satisfying experience).

Yes, there are some cool rewards, but ultimately it’s about supporting me as an artist, encouraging me to make more things, and giving me resources to do so. If you’ve enjoyed any of my tweets/writings/podcasts/videos, I hope you’ll consider it. Thanks.

Also, if you want to hear me talk about why I’m doing this, check out the latest episode of Culturally Relevant.

TL;DR: I’ve launched a Patreon and I’d be much obliged if you could support me and my passion projects. Thank you.

My quarantine birthday

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Having your birthday in the era of COVID is different. Dinner at a nice restaurant comes to you in a large box. Your friends & colleagues show up, but you all gather on Zoom. Socially distanced cake happens w/ face shields on.

But you know what doesn’t change? The love. I’m so grateful to everyone for taking a few minutes out of their day to stop by and wish me happy birthday via Zoom yesterday, and for my lovely wife for arranging the whole event.

Among a parade of folks from all different parts of my life, my dear friend Matthew Weber showed up in the Zoom chat and was his characteristically amazing self. He wrote three Haikus to celebrate the occasion of my birth, which I shall now reproduce for you in full:

“Renaissance hombre
With a depth of excellence
Parallel to none

A voice and a heart
That is smooth and savory
Foie Gras kind of friend

Mysterious? Yes!
But crack that sweet hardened nut
And your reward? Joy.”

This inspired me to ask us the whole crew to get into a haiku-writing session, and in fact, many great haikus were written impromptu and shared. Here is mine:

“Zoom with all my peeps
Even in mid-pandemic
I’m very lucky”

Even in the middle of everything, there can still be love and kindness. My friends and colleagues are a frequent reminder of this.

Leave

Starting today, I’ll be going on a three-month sabbatical from my full-time job at Amazon. Everything is fine – my overall health is okay and there are no family emergencies. Rather, I’m using the leave to focus on some personal projects, on my home life, and on improving my diet and exercise.

At this point, I’ve been at Amazon for 2.5 years. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, there’s a saying that’s common among employees that Amazon years are like “dog years” in that every year you work there feels much longer than it actually is. In my experience this is true, but only because of the sheer quantity of material you are able to learn, the responsibility that’s vested in you as an individual employee, and the amount of impact you are able to make. Overall, I’ve gotten a lot out of my time at Amazon and I feel extremely fortunate and privileged to work with such talented people who have been very understanding of my need to take this personal leave.

Beyond all the things I plan to do, it has been a challenge to maintain my job and all of my extracurricular activities. I’m hoping to use the next few months to take a step back and re-prioritize everything I’m working on so that I can return to work with renewed focus. But I’m also hoping it to use it to reconnect with old friends and meet new prospective collaborators (on that note: if we haven’t spoken in awhile, and/or you have a creative project to pitch me, now is the time to get in touch!)

There’s an old blog post I’ve been thinking a lot about recently over at Tim Urban’s Wait But Why, about visually dividing your life up into years/months/weeks.

Seeing life divided up like this can be both invigorating and terrifying. It’s scary because you realize how limited our time is and how each week is an inevitable step towards the bottom of that chart. But it can also be exciting, as Urban writes:

Both the week chart above and the life calendar are a reminder to me that this grid of empty boxes staring me in the face is mine. We tend to feel locked into whatever life we’re living, but this pallet of empty boxes can be absolutely whatever we want it to be. Everyone you know, everyone you admire, every hero in history—they did it all with that same grid of empty boxes.

The boxes can also be a reminder that life is forgiving. No matter what happens each week, you get a new fresh box to work with the next week. It makes me want to skip the New Year’s Resolutions—they never work anyway—and focus on making New Week’s Resolutions every Sunday night. Each blank box is an opportunity to crush the week—a good thing to remember.

“Every blank box is an opportunity to crush the week.” Let’s make the most of them. I’m going to try my best to do so during this leave and beyond.

If you want to follow my adventures over the next 11 weeks, I’d recommend:

A few other links from recent days:

Giving Thanks

“I think I kind of lost the thread of what you were doing with your life.”

Three years ago, I was catching up with a friend over lunch when she spoke these words to me. And reader, I agreed with her. I had recently left a lucrative job at Microsoft to try my hand at the world of startups, but things hadn’t exactly worked out like I’d hoped. So for awhile, I was adrift as I applied to jobs, trying to figure out what direction my life was heading in. At one point, I even created a “dream board” where I wrote all the different paths I could pursue onto index cards, tacked them onto a bulletin board, and ranked them based on their likelihood of success and the emotional satisfaction/financial benefits they might bring me (it’s an illuminating exercise that I’d recommend to anyone).

After much consideration, I’d decided that I wanted to give the corporate world at least one more shot. I felt like I still had much to learn, and I enjoy solving business problems and making an impact as part of a team.

When you live in Seattle, one of the most obvious places to work is Amazon, whose corporate headquarters is based in the South Lake Union neighborhood. I knew very little of what it was like to work there — only that their business prowess was formidable, their scope was sprawling, and their standards were incredibly high.

Over the course of several months, I applied for several jobs at Amazon. At most companies, when you are deemed worthy of an in-person interview, they bring you in for a full day’s of conversations with employees. Amazon is no different. I remember sitting in the lobby of one of Amazon’s buildings, waiting for a day of interviews to begin. I watched as hundreds of employees passed by, pressing their badges against the security turnstiles and stepped onto elevators that would whisk them up to their offices. It was a normal day for them, but for me, all I wanted was to see what was past those turnstiles, to understand what it was like to work at this company that had captured the loyalty of tens of millions of Americans.

I’d dedicated many days of preparation to every interview I participated in, and I was turned down more than once. But eventually, after a great deal of perseverance, I was hired.

I know that lots of people have different opinions about Amazon and certainly working there can have its ups and downs. But as I reflect on the past 2+ years of my life, I have so much gratitude for all the hyper-intelligent people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve been able to have, and all that I’ve been able to learn. Regardless of how things play out from this point, I have a much deeper understanding of my capabilities and what I want out of my life, as well as more resources to make those things happen. I have started to find the thread of my life again.

But what comes to mind today, on Thanksgiving Day 2019, is all the people that helped me to get to where I am.

As I was going through the process of getting hired, I realized that the one thing that was most important to my success was to find a group of people who believed in me. I was so lucky to have found them: people who dedicated time and resources to helping me prepare for my interviews; people who made connections with others that would prove invaluable in the future; people who helped me talk through all the different options and possibilities (Notably, my wife falls into all these categories and more. She’s  never stopped believing in me, even in my darkest hours). Everyone gave freely without expecting anything in return. In doing so, they earned a friend in me for life.

So as you reflect on the state of your life, as many do during this contemplative holiday period, I hope you’ll remember the people who’ve believed in you. Those who have cleared the way for you, supported you, and made sacrifices to get you where you are right now, even when you could give them absolutely nothing in return. And if you have a chance, maybe give them a call or a text and let them know how much they mean to you.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

The Sweet Smell of Succession

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HBO’s Succession is one of the most compelling shows on television and it’s returning for a second season on August 11th. And I’m launching a new podcast to recap it with Tara Ariano! You can find the podcast at successionpodcast.com, where we’ve already recapped season 1, and you can support the show at successionkickstarter.com.

For those who aren’t aware, Succession chronicles the power moves of the Roy family and their patriarch, Logan Roy. Logan is the founder of a a gigantic media conglomerate called Waystar Royco which has generated obscene wealth not just for himself, but for his four children. While they each defend against outsiders that would threaten to infiltrate their circle, they must also contend with their biggest obstacle: each other.
Succession’s portrait of the Roy family is funny, biting, tragic, and heartbreaking. It offers so much fodder for discussion and we’re looking forward to breaking it all down with you.

On a personal note, this marks my first real collaboration with Tara Ariano. I first encountered Tara’s work over a decade ago, when I became a huge fan of her website, Television Without Pity, one of the first TV recap sites ever. TWoP managed to combine snark and insight into an irresistible package. It was essential reading for show watchers and showrunners alike (Famously, the site was referred to obliquely in an early West Wing subplot). It’s not an exaggeration to say that sites like Television Without Pity paved the way for some of the work I’ve done with my own TV recap podcasts.

Tara and the founders of TWoP also went on to create the Extra Hot Great podcast, a weekly general interest TV podcast which is a exceptionally well produced. Extra Hot Great manages to capture what makes television wonderful and transcendent but also, occasionally, truly terrible. Still, the podcast itself is always a delight and continues to this day.

In any case, I couldn’t be more excited to work with her on this new venture. I hope you have a chance to check out our first episode at successionpodcast.com. You can also support the show via Kickstarter at successionkickstarter.com.

Some other interesting links from the week:

Announcing Culturally Relevant, a new culture podcast

When I first started podcasting 12 years ago, it came out of a desire to preserve interesting conversations that I had with other people and to put them out into the world. On a fundamental level, I believed that when people can have access to meaningful dialogue about topics they’re passionate about, it makes them feel less alone.

In addition to creating an intangible camaraderie, podcasts also open people up to new perspectives and interesting arguments. If I started podcasting from the position of wanting to find people who affirmed my opinions, I’ve tried to get to the point where I seek out those that challenge my own. Only in the crucible of a blistering, incisive argument can your own point of view be truly tested and validated, I’ve come to conclude. And podcasts are an amazing vector for all of these interactions.

In the intervening years, I’ve been fortunate to meet dozens of fascinating and talented individuals, including filmmakers and writers and authors and artists from all walks of life. But despite all the podcasts I’ve created, there still hasn’t really been a vehicle for the full breadth of these conversations. That’s what I’m hoping Culturally Relevant will be.

Every weekly episode will feature an in-depth conversation about an interesting topic, whether we are discussing a creator’s own work or reviewing something else. I hope it’ll be a mix of the casual and the formal, deliberate and off-the-cuff. I have absolutely no idea if it’ll work but I’m hoping you’ll join me for the journey.

An intense time

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You may have noticed it’s been a little quiet recently on the blog/newsletter. That’s because I’ve been busy gearing up for an intense time of my life: Hosting three weekly podcasts at once (Write Along, the Slashfilmcast, and now with the premiere of Game of Thrones, A Cast of Kings). A surprisingly large amount of prep has gone into this season of A Cast of Kings and I’m both nervous and excited to go through this final step of the journey with all of our listeners.

Given this schedule, for the next few weeks I’m going to take take steps to maintain my mental health and likely slim the blog/letter down, perhaps keeping it mostly to a list of recommended links.

We are about to enter a consequential time in pop culture history. In April and May, we’ll see the conclusion of Game of Thrones and the end of the first few phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These are both epic stories — breathtaking in scope, sprawling in ambition, and unequaled in their respective mediums.

I find myself experiencing a lot of emotions as I contemplate these stories wrapping up. While I’m obviously a fan that has considered both of these works worthy of analysis and debate, I’m also a commentator with a modest following that has been podcasting/blogging/vlogging since they began.

I’ve looked back on the past decade and considered all the things I’ve devoted my time to. And I’ve started to turn my eye towards the next decade, and begun thinking about how I will take what I’ve learned to create valuable work that can stand on its own. Hopefully, I’ll have more to share with you soon. Hopefully.

In the meantime, here are a few things I’ve been working on recently:

Some more interesting links from the past week or two: