S2E17 How NOT To Make A SPY Movie

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[MUSIC PLAYING] This podcast, it's a custard and touchstone production. I'm John Curriak. Welcome to Dead Drop, what makes us spy tech.

As always, we thank you for listening

and for liking, rating, reviewing, and commenting on the podcast. This episode is kind of special. As I've mentioned, Dead Drop is produced and published by a podcast and company called Custard

and Touchstone Productions, which makes about a dozen different podcasts about a wide variety of subjects. The guy who started the company, Alan Katz, came out of the movie and TV business originally.

Among Alan's credits, he wrote and produced

“the iconic Tales from the Crypt for HBO.”

Pretty great, right? He also made feature films, some good, some not so good. In his first podcast, the How Not to Make a Movie Podcast, Alan told the story of how he went from working at the top of his craft, making Crypt to Making Crap.

A Tales from the Crypt branded movie called "Bordello of Blood."

Entertainment Weekly called the podcast's first season

about the making of "Bordello of Blood," the best film podcast of 2022. That says a lot. Since then, the podcast has gone on to talk about the whole process of making movies and TV shows.

All of that is by way of introduction to the fact that this episode of "Dead Drop" is a joint episode with the How Not to Make a Movie Podcast, in which Alan and I are going to talk about how not to make a spy movie, a subject near and dear to my heart.

As most of you probably know, I've got a few movie and TV credits of my own to talk about. John. First of all, it is so much fun, just the thought of doing this with you.

After all these podcasts that we created together, can I tell you, before we begin this joint podcast, how proud I am of what we have done, but I'm really proud of you. And I love all the things that are happening to you.

There's a word in Yiddish Kvel. (laughs) - Hey, thanks, man. Two, experienced joy at someone else's success. - Thank you.

- I am spelling, watching the world, see you the way that I see you. - Thank you so much, man. Alan, you and I have been friends for a long time, and we've been through some lean years together.

- Oh, yeah.

“- Yeah, and so, honestly, first of all, thank you.”

And thank you for your friendship, but I am so happy that this is happening to both of us. And we talked for years about doing something together. - As you bring that up, let's bring the audience into the, all right, how it is that we even know each other,

'cause it's kind of a weird... How did this happen exactly? Now, the reason that you and I know each other is because we have... Nick McKanick, the other executive producer of this podcast

was at one time my agent for a time, he was your manager, but you still have projects together, that you're working on. So, you still are involved together

with creative endeavors based on you and stuff you have done. But, Nick is responsible, I will give an absolutely credit, when Nick was Nick as an agent, when he is on his game, there is nobody, he's great.

I can attest to that the fact that I did a couple of seasons on the outer limits, when, man, I wouldn't have hired me, but total testament to Nick's absolute determination, he would not take no for an answer,

he really was a great agent. So, I am from Mendus Loyalty. - Yes. - Well deserved Loyalty to Nick. - Yes, indeed. - I don't know how you met Nick.

- Oh, it's a funny story. I was represented by a firm in LA that no longer exists. Nor should it exist, they're terrible. So, I said I had my idea for a television series that I wanted to pitch to networks.

It was called Bomb Squad, and it was a procedural that was a day in the life

And so, my agent coupled me, partnered me with a writer.

“Now, I looked up this writer's credits on IMDB.”

He had written two episodes of the remake of "Bugs Bunny." Right? So, this was it, and I said, I don't think this is the right guy. So, trust me, I know this guy, I've known him all my life,

I love him, Frank Sinatra's is Godfather, I'm like, okay, LA's not my world, okay, let's go for it. We started HBO, they laughed us out of the building. We pitched it all over the place, but lo and behold, we sold it.

We sold it to the WB. Remember the WB? Oh dear, I wanna go back, why did they, I left you out of the building? That was a different fun.

'Cause they were like, this is kind of a lawn order type of thing. This is not, this is, we pitched it at the height of the sopranos. Oh my, fire.

That is so funny. Yeah, you bumped into a problem that I created for you. Yeah, because of tells from the crypt.

“Tells from the crypt is the show that trends,”

it's not TV at HBO, right? That happened because of tells from the crypt. Yeah, that thing happened. It happened. Tans from the crypt made HBO the premium network,

and then it was followed by Oz, and then after Oz, the sopranos and six feet under, and the wire, please give it to him. Right, it had to be stuff that, yes, and so if HBO saw it as two procedural,

then yes, there was no way that HBO was gonna do it. Okay, so that's why it, so I apologize, my fault, my fault, my fault. We sold it to the WB, and they gave us an advance. And the writer, the advance was not a ton of money.

It was $75,000. It's not that's not that. Boy, they put up, okay, they put up. Yeah, for the writing. Yeah, they did.

And we split it 85, 15, because it was my idea, but he was doing all the work.

“So I took my 15%, which wasn't much, but that's okay.”

And we had very, you're gonna make us all do the math now. We had very specific deadlines. And I was taking this very seriously,

because it was the very first show I had ever sold in Hollywood.

And the writer literally disappeared, literally. So he's not participating in any of the comments calls. He's not answering his door, that is house. He doesn't answer his phone. What happened to the guy?

And so I'm calling the agent saying, Elon, the guy just disappeared. What do we do? He better be like hold up in a cabinet, in a cabinet, and somewhere writing this thing,

writing the pilot. No, he had not received a pile of money like that. In the years. And as soon as the check cleared, he bought a whole bunch of cocaine

and went on a vendor that lasted six weeks. He spent every dollar of the money and didn't write a single word. So I had a friend who was one of the stars of HBO's series six feet under.

And I was complaining to him. I was like, this is like the worst possible scenario. This guy snorted tens of thousands of dollars of an advance. And they probably, he's under a bridge somewhere.

And so what the heck are we going to do? So the WB told us, get out of here and don't ever come back. So I was so mad, I told my friend from six feet under. I'm walking away from this management company.

They're terrible. They're terrible, but the position that they put me in. And he said, you should talk to my guy. I'm at this little firm and I'll introduce you to my manager Gary Osdahl.

So I call Gary Osdahl. He's like, hey, how are you? Nice to talk to you. And I told him the story is like, oh yeah, you need representation.

I said, I really do. He said, there's a guy working for me, Nick mechanic. He's coming out of something himself and he's reestablishing himself rebuilding himself. He introduced me to Nick, and we've been together ever since.

It was Barry Osdahl connection. OK, so you and Gary, because for a little while, Nick was putting his drum and put his shit back together. Right, for Gary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh.

Yeah, Barry. OK, cool, cool, cool. And Gary is done very well from self. He's the executive producer of Cobra Kai. And he's making all kinds of money.

And like, making shows that actually. Yeah, very. Yeah. Like Gary, oh, a whole lot. OK.

I know when Nick told me that he was working with you.

And he described you to me, having always

been a spy story of Fisionado, I, wow, that was--

Yeah, I remember our first conversation.

Were you and I sat, we were dinner in the valley somewhere. I don't remember exactly where. But we had dinner, and we threw out 20 different ideas. We were trying to mix the spy genre with the horror genre. And we just couldn't think of anything that might work.

We were trying so hard to shit this thing. Yeah, this is something else. Sometimes you just look past all the organic stuff. Rather than look at the two people sitting there in the room. And now, of course, if what had happened now had happened, then we wouldn't be

having this conversation. Godland. That would have taken us.

“I don't know if you remember that conversation.”

There's one thing that I remember. It was one of the terrible ideas that we came up with. We were trying to mix these two genres. And you said, what? It.

I told you a story. I was like, the first question anybody ever asks when they get hired into the CIA is where are the aliens? And I asked my boss where are the aliens? And he laughed.

And he said, that's what we all ask when we first get here. And if there are aliens, they're at the Pentagon, or something controlled by the Pentagon. There are no aliens here. So I mentioned that to you.

And then you said, what if we have a show where there's this new CIA officer? And he's asking these questions. He's looking for the aliens. And he goes down into the bowels, the basement, the sub-basement,

of the agency. It's late one night. And there are vampires down there.

“And I was like, that is a terrible idea.”

That's a terrible idea. But we were trying so hard to come up with something. Oh, my. But of course, these days I would have looked across the table and said, John, tell me about you.

Yeah, the times have changed, haven't they?

And that would always have been where the better story

lay anyway. Yeah, it took us a little while. But we both had to live a lot more life before we could get to such a place where we could do that. Now, the last time that we actually got to speak,

that we saw each other, our friend Nick had found sobriety. Yes. He was in the throes of his various addictions and the terrible self-destructive streak.

And he had-- he was at his apartment. He had gone there, he, oh gosh, oh, it wasn't Nick. And we've tried to quickly get through the next story. Just yeah, we've gone into the gory details because there were lots of them.

Yeah, lots. So I live in the Washington DC area. I live in Arlington, Virginia. But I go to LA with some frequency.

“And I've always treated this hollywood thing”

as a really fun hobby. I'll come up with an idea. I mentioned it to Nick. We'll put it on a one-pager. And then Nick makes appointments at studios

or networks and we go and we pitch it. And over the years, I've sold eight different shows. One of them actually made it to pilot. Nothing's actually made it onto TV, but it's fun for me. And it can be lucrative.

But anyway, I had this idea. And Nick said, why don't you come out to LA and we'll put it together? So I fly out to LA. My brother happens to live in studio city.

So I always stay with him in studio city.

Nick at the time was living in Korea town. And so I called him the night before. And I said, I've arrived. And he said, come on over tomorrow morning at 10. But stop and get me a sausage, McMuffin with egg

before you come. I said, get your own fucking sausage, McMuffin with egg. You live on the same block with the McDonald's. Why am I going to stop at the-- OK, so anyway, because I'm an idiot, I stop.

And I get him the sausage, McMuffin with egg. And then I go to his apartment. He's in this garden apartment. And I go right on the dot at 10 o'clock because our meeting was 10 o'clock.

And I knock on the door, nothing. And I was like, oh, gone, you, Nick. I knew you were going to screw me. So I bang on the door, nothing. And then I sat on the stoop.

And I thought, maybe he went down the block to get a coffee or something. So I'm sitting there. And about 20 minutes past, I got so pissed off that I got up, and I kicked the door, and it opened.

And there's Nick, laying in a pool of blood. He had gotten so drunk. He's laying next to an empty bottle. He had gotten so drunk that he passed out and fell, and hit his head on the corner of a coffee table.

And it's just a giant pool of blood. I was like, oh, gone it. So I call 911 and the ambulance comes. And I said to the ambulance, attendants, I said, guys,

Can I go with you?

“And they said, yeah, we're going to take him to--”

I think it was UCLA, metamorphosis. It's either Sinai. Feeder Sinai. It was Cedar Sinai. So they said, yeah, we're going to Cedar Sinai.

So I rode with him in the back of the ambulance. And we get to Cedar Sinai. They take him into the ER. And I go to the registration window. And the woman there was like actively rude to me.

And I said, and this is really not my nature. But I said, excuse me, I don't the guy I appreciate your attitude. And she says to me, let me tell you how this is going to play out.

This is the third time he's been in here this week.

Now, I didn't know any of this. This is the third time he's been in here this week. He's going to raise his voice. He's going to start swearing at the doctors and nurses. He's going to demand an egg salad sandwich.

And he's going to come out of here screaming and yelling. And as soon as she said it, I hear him screaming, swearing. You, mother fuckers, get your fucking hands off me. I want a fucking egg salad sandwich. I couldn't believe it.

And I said to her, I am really sorry. So finally, I knew at the time to call you. Because I knew he had this other friend, Allen.

“And I don't remember if I had Nick's phone or if I had you in my phone, it was”

before we had actually met, but I called you. And I said, Nick's in the emergency room at Cedar Sinai. He's really screwed up. And then you met us at the emergency room. Right.

And then he comes out. He's got 10 staples in his skull to stop the bleeding. He's got blood all over his face. The funny thing is he doesn't even eat egg salad sandwiches. He has no memory of this.

It's just something floating in his head, something from that just came out of those moments. But I'll tell you, let me add one other thing if I'm over it. I did not know you, but I immediately respected you. Because you said something to him and I was like, oh, amen.

We sat him down there in the emergency room in the waiting room. And you said, Nick, we will.

You will always be our friend.

But you will no longer be our manager unless you clean up your act. And I said, he's right, Nick. I'm not doing this again. And I thought, wow, I like this guy, Alan. Yeah.

This is a good friend. We had been through a lot, and when you have a friend who is in that position, it comes a point where tough love is the only love. Yeah, that's it. It's just that.

What is it?

“But you and I remember we added that was how we met and right off the bat there was just”

a connection. We just liked each other. Yeah, we did. We went on to have a meeting. We tried really hard to create something out of nothing and the nothing one as it does.

And then stuff happened, here's stuff happened there, I ended up, I got during the pandemic. Right. A tells from the crypt, Van Group, three guys from various parts of the country who also happened to be fathers started a podcast called "Dads from the Crypt." And these three guys would review all the episodes of tells from the crypt and they gave

parenting advice. Oh, my goodness. One of the dads Jason reached out to me, he said, "Hey, we're going to be reviewing an episode that you wrote, would you like to sit in with us?" Oh, that sounds like a great idea.

It sounds like fun. Sure. Remember the pandemic? We were happy to talk to anybody. And it was great fun talking about the episode with the guys and a few weeks later Jason

reached out again, he said, "Hey, we're going to be reviewing "Bored Delo of Blood. I can tell you from the crypt feature film, do you want to sit in?" Well, I'm sorry.

The making tells from the crypt was an incredible creative experience.

Yeah. Of all the creative freedom that we had, working with the people that we got to work with feature-grade people on our little TV series and the point was bigger than TV. The incredible freedom cut, over the course of 75 episodes, five seasons that I was in charge of crypt, I got three notes from HBO, total three.

Wow. Not three pages of notes. No. It was three notes, totally. And they were all, the each had a funny little story to them.

So, it wasn't like they went, "You've got to do it." It wasn't. And each time was really nice. Except for one time. One time they said, "You're not going to let Billy Freed can do that, right?"

But that's something else entirely.

HBO was wonderful to work for. The franchise, the crypt franchise, exploded, and something universal. The picture said we wanted to do three feature films.

The first one was a really good movie called "Demonite," and somewhere on the way to making

the second movie, everyone lost their fucking minds. From the top to the bottom from the studio, everybody. And we went from, we turned away from making a movie that we all wanted to make.

“I think called "Dead Easy" to making this thing called "Bordella of Blood" for entirely”

cynical reasons. We literally made a movie, "Bordella of Blood" that nobody making it wanted to make. What a shame. The result. If you do something that cynical do not be surprised when every day is stupider than

the day before, that's exactly what happened making that movie. From the audience's perspective, it's just the mediocre of the law. But from my perspective, I went from, really, the top, the crap, to doing tales on the crypt, it was a dream job, to a fucking nightmare of our own creation who were Delo of Blood.

And so when Jason said, "Hey, you want to talk about making "Bordella of Blood," the story of making that fucking movie is not some little half-hour conversation with you. It's a thing. Delo goes off in my head. It's the podcast onto itself.

“That was the birth of the "How Not to Make a Movie Podcast" and "Tastic."”

The first season of which was called the "Making a Bordella of Blood."

And the mission, when I sat down to make this podcast, half of this episode podcast, my half of the podcast, this is also a dead drop episode. Yep. My mission was to tell the story of the making of that fucking fiasco with balls to the wall on the state.

I wasn't interested in telling the actors story because they were outsiders too. It was really about the crypt group who went from making a product that we loved, tells him a crypt, to a thing that it ultimately, before Bordella of Blood was even out. Man, the relationships ended. I got it.

He was a fiasco and it set me on a road toward really a two decade long, really deepening depression and a writer's blog. Oh, sure. I had that, oh, man, but long story, sure, I had bottom, I bounced. And part of the recovery process was these guys saying, "Hey, you want to do this podcast

and suddenly deciding to make this podcast, they're not to make a movie podcast," which that first season entertainment, weekly called if the best film podcast of 2022, the reason that they gave for such kind words was because of the honesty. That, to me, with my, I found while I was making that podcast, taking the first season of this podcast, they'll not make a movie podcast, what a wonderful story telling medium.

Ironically, I have come to love podcasting as a creative medium far more than I ever loved, movies or TV. And when I first got out of prison, my first real job was at a progressive think tank called

the Institute for Policy Studies and like any left-wing organization, they're always broke.

And so they were looking for ways to try to bring in a couple extra dollars. There was an intern working for the summer and he said, "There's this new thing people are doing called podcasting." And I remember saying, "Yes, I've heard of this podcasting." And the executive director kind of looks around and he looks at me like, "What are you

guys talking about?" And I said, "You just kind of talk into a microphone and do your own radio show, but it's recorded. And then instead of broadcasting it over the radio, you put it online so it's available to anybody who wants to listen to it, no matter where they are in the world."

And he said, "And people are listening to that and they're listening to just random people." And I said, "Yeah, they are." It's actually very popular. That was in the summer of 2015.

“I wish I had heated my own advice because I was like, "You should start that.”

You should do that. You should podcast about public policy or whatever. I wish I had started doing it at the time." Everything in its time, my friend. Yeah, that's right.

Everything in its time, you weren't quite ready for that. Yeah, you were other things you had to do for a while." Oh, yeah. I said, "You want your mobile phone, but you don't have to come from there." "What do you want to do with your X-X-L-streaming app?"

"My name is Zwei Temby." "No, I don't want you to leave me alone."

for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the cost art and touched on family.

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Inside his head, in fact, it's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costartandtouchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, he'll find lots of great story podcasts to costartandtouchstone. Like the donor, a DNA horror story.

The hall closet, sage wellness within and the how not to make a movie podcast, who knows your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to dead drop.

Podcasting, I really discovered this was the thing I always wanted to be when I grew up.

And now a couple of years after you started your podcast, all of a sudden, at the golden globes, they've got a category best podcast. Best of future, it's the intimacy that is so appealing, what I tell people all the time. To take an idea from our heads, if we were to say, hey, John, I got an idea for a TV series, you went, that's a great idea.

It would still be 10 years to get the script ready on that. That's on average, 10 years for the script to be ready for the marketplace. And then we couldn't just take the script out because we're not writing the script for the marketplace, for the audience, we're writing it for a handful of executives. Yes.

Six, six seconds. That's really who we're writing the script for. Now, those executives, we've now written it to TV series season one episode one. Yeah. All right.

We're asking these people to put up a shit ton of money. Yes. Develop it. All right. So, these are one episode one, what happens, episode two and three and four and five?

What happens over the course of season one? And hey, is there a season two, what happens season two and season three and season four? Who are all these characters? What's the feel? What's the feel?

“They're entitled to ask all these questions and that's why creators and TV series, in”

addition to writing that script, they also have to create a Bible.

That is 60 to 70 pages of incredible detail about the universe that you're asking the

money to invest in, and yes, there's very fair of them to want all this information ahead of time. The Bible done right itself. That's a year or so to really to get that right. And as you write that, that's going to inform the script and the script's going to inform

it. So, there's a lot of writing that's going to happen along the way. It's very time consuming. Okay, now you've got everything ready for the marketplace. The whole point, the thing you're trying to do here is you're trying to convey from your

head to a handful of executives heads, what's the franchise, what's the IP, but before we can even get there, we have to get them to read.

“Just to get these people in the executive suite to fucking read, you have to create a pitch”

deck. A PowerPoint presentation that doesn't happen doesn't to a dozen slides, a couple of words, mostly pictures, to give them a sense, and what am I going to be reading? And that doesn't write itself either or conceptualize itself, a decade if you're lucky to get all this stuff ready to appeal to a handful of people just to get them to put you

into the development process. And if they say yes, okay, that's just the opening to the meet grinder, who the fuck knows what kind of sausage is going to come out the aim is end of this thing, right? Once you say yes, when you go, they say yes to you, okay, we'll put this into development. Right.

That means they're going to cut you. That means you have to sign a certificate of authorship, a CIVA, you the writer who have been working on this for this whole fucking decade, the CIVA is an necessity because of the nature of film and TV distribution, but you can't have some writer assholes saying, I hate the politics and country X, you can't distribute there, you can't have that.

So, in essence, it's a buyout and whatever they're going to pay you then, you are giving

But yeah, you're going to get paid, there will be money, but trust me, why you share ain't

“going to you, it is absolutely not going to you, all right?”

Now to take the same idea and turn it into a podcast, we can write, produce, distribute, that's the key. It can't distribute a TV series or a feature film like the big kids, but we can distribute the podcast, same as everybody else, very democratic that way. Distribute, monetize and collect on the monetization, no one in an executive suite has anything

to do with us, and we don't want to do with them, thank goodness, that's right. And so, all right, so we've created the thing, we've monetized, hey, we still own it 100%. It would still make up really great TV series in the old days, we'll give it away our secrets here, but in the old days, we would go and cap in hand as we have trying to impress

“upon these people in the executive suite, what's the IP?”

Well, no, everyone knows what the IP is, it's there in our podcast. The audience knows, the advertisers know, and again, we've monetized and made money. Instead of having to go cap in hand, oh, please buy, they're going to come to us, the

people in the executive suite, because they're always looking for material that they

can relate to, they're going to come saying, hey, that podcast did drop, we'd make an incredible TV series, and we're going to go, hey, you're right, what make a great TV series? And they're going to hand us a check and we're going to look at it and say, yeah, that's really pretty, but you're going to have to add some zeros and move the decimal point over because we don't need your fucking money. The power in any negotiation lies in the word

“no, the ability to kill the deal because you don't need to make it. I honestly believe”

the podcasting is a way to flip the whole power dynamic away from the money and back to the creatives where it truly belongs. And so really the cake in this experience is what we're doing here and now, making the podcast and I feel that way especially with dead drop, I, that is pure care. And the, we're meeting to make some nice money on dead drop. Yeah, that's to me is the cake. The ancillary sale to these guys who want

to make turn it into a TV series, that's the icing. No, that's the, the sprinkles, the pop the icing. And yeah, be nice to have their money in our pockets, but we don't need it to tell the story. We've already told it exactly the way we wanted to tell it without their interference. May I add something to, but I wish you would. There's an a list TV star who told me a story one time along the same lines of what you're talking about. He had

a brother to whom he was very close and his brother died. His brother had a drug problem and he died of an overdose. And so this actor wrote a wrote a show, wrote a pilot about two brothers who were very close, one went in one direction. The other one in the other direction, their lives were completely different. One was making it the other wasn't. He sold the show to a network. And then the executives got involved. Everybody was telling

him, what a beautiful show. It was this was a work of genius. It's so artistic. It's so beautiful. But we have some comments. We have some pages. We have some notes a year later. They had turned it into a comedy. And you don't get that in podcasting. Nobody's coming. I'm going to come and turn our podcast into a comedy and make us look like two idiots. I have said repeatedly on Disney how not to make a movie podcast. I cast a lot of actors

over the course of my career in movies and TV. I never hired any of them to act. God that

was the last thing I ever wanted any of them to do for the camera on stage. Yeah, you've got to act so that people in the back row can see and hear you. But the camera's writing your face. And if you act, camera will see you acting and we'll have to cut all that out to leave it on the floor. What the camera and the microphone does, what they both do, they need to see you be. And the more honestly you can be on camera, really, just you emotionally

raw and emotionally honest, the people who we think of as a passive-grade actor, they're just emotionally honest. At those key moments, using words that aren't theirs, but they're

making. How do I think about this the right way? Think about everything that's going on, but yes, it's looking for truth in a world where it's very tricky to come by. All that's said. Now, what we're actually here to talk about today is a love of how not to make a

“spy movie is what we're calling this. I, when I think about, because we're pretty much the”

same vintage, we're not too far off them. I got a few more miles on you, but in some ways,

you got a few more miles on me. So there's that. When I think of the first spy that I ever

encountered, we're suddenly, I understood as a little kid as a story convention, even. That spies exist. I guess it had to be James Bond. It had to be. It's Bond. And I think Bond opened up spy stories and spies. Super spies to the world. TV, now I didn't, I think the first spy I ever encountered was not actually James Bond. I think it was Maxwell's smart. So I think the first spies that I ever really encountered had to be the TV series from the '60s,

and there were some classic spies. And as I look back, as we put together, how do you tell

us story about spies? Or what are the things that poured into our head that made us, all right,

all right, I'd like to tell a story about spies. I'm interested in spies. And to me, Maxwell, Maxwell, Maxwell, was to live Don Adams. What's he? It's funny. The show was written by among other people, Buck Henry. Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. Yeah, Buck Henry was among the people who wrote that show. And Buck Henry would go on to write as a screenwriter, the graduate. Yeah. He would be in play for Catch 22. Oh, a couple of just some terrific movies. Just one of

best comedic screenwriters of them all. I had the honor of working with Buck on Tales from the Cript. Wow. We hired Buck for an episode where he played the MC at a convention for morticians where they actually gills them, buddy. It's about someone. Well, I'm going to get one. It's about, but Buck played the the MC, I didn't write the episode, but we had to write a song. So I wrote the song, the "Buck Sings" and the "Buck Sings" and the "Buck Sings" and we got to work with some

really cool people on Tales from the Cript. Just the coolest people in Hollywood, everyone from Palm Hanks to Kirk Douglas, but I'm not a star fucker and it was great working with those people. The only person I ever worked with who I got a little star struck was Buck Henry. Wow. Buck wrote the graduate and said to me, "Buck Henry was a god and I got to meet one of the

“gods and he was a lovely person too." Anyway. Yeah, so Guess Mart was, I think, was one of my first,”

did you ever watch Guess Mart when you were a kid? Absolutely. My dad loved it. He just loved it and so we used to watch it every week. The cone of silence. Agent 99. He had so many funny bits that, just as great as great stuff, just to get your ear key to great comedy. There was the prisoner. What would we call that a spy? Yeah, that had a spy. Outside the box approached the telling a spy story. Sure. I think they only made 17 episodes total.

Really, I don't think I realized that. Yeah, it's just, it's a limited series, just 17 episodes. The wild wild west was not spies, the secret service, but they were tapping into the same because James Bond had suddenly got everybody juiced about spies. The man from uncle. The man from uncle was very popular. Did you watch man from uncle? I did indeed. Yeah. These things spies were just so hip at that particular time. The saint.

I remember the saint. Well, yeah. And that was, all right, guy with spying capabilities made to play both sides of the coin. Right. That kind of thing. There was the Avengers. Also popular. Yeah. And another interesting take on the spy. And that was really an

M. Appeal was the first sort of kind of alpha. Right. He was in that territory where she could kick

anybody's ass. That's out. She was so wonderful. And she was so hot. How could you not love

“Diana Rick? And then of course, there was mission impossible. Yeah, mission impossible. I think”

my name's been my dad's favorite with Peter Graves and Leonard Nimoy and just a fantastic cast of serious actors. That show was a real hit. A great set up. Really. It's just, yeah, I'm

the gimmick of this table self-destruct in five seconds. Brilliant. Yes, absolutely positive.

“Now, moving to staying here in the realm of TV. Those I think are the classics of, yeah,”

my spy TV. I'm going to throw out some titles now that I think these are the could be classics. There are a little more recent vintage. And so perhaps they need time to sit or perhaps their classics are ready. Hey, that's where we're here to talk about. Boo. You know, cut the knife. I have your mobile room. Your whole game is already over.

Just a little bit. With mobile functions in real life, no one else. Frank. One more mobile

function for 10 Euro emonat. Inclusive Eurome. Also in the world. No, Frank. No, Frank. The equalizer. Yeah, the equalizer was a good one. Yeah, that was well done. The thing is, most of these spy related TV series are not true to life. Right. And so they's veer into the fantastical. That was one that was good. It was true life. It worked in that same way. There was Magyver. Magyver. It's become a verb. Yeah. In Magyver situation. Right. Okay. So there's the innovative

spy. Right. All right. Then it gets a little less fanciful as we Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. That character. Very well done. You tell you a little snippet about Tom Clancy. Go for it. In 1991, the FBI set up a Tom Clancy task force because they said that somebody must be leaking classified information to him because nobody could know that much about so much in the classified

“world. And the truth is that he just was a veeraceous reader. And there was so much that was out there”

in the public domain. And he was able to retain it and then use it in his own writing. It was all unclassified. He just had such a mastery of it that he made it look classified. And then he disbanded the task force. Crazy. Excellent. Burn notice. Oh, there's a special place in my heart for burn notice. Yeah. Yeah. I was sitting on a plane. In 2009, I don't remember why I got upgraded, but I was flying to LA. And I happened to be next to a guy named Matt Nix in business class.

I'd never Matt Nix before I never heard of them. And I generally don't speak to people on planes.

I'm my own business. They mind their own business. I read my book or watch a movie or listen to a

“podcast or whatever. Matt was very talkative. And finally, one point he asked me, what do you do for”

living? And I said, oh, I'm the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said, that sounds fascinating. I said, now actually, it's not. It's rather boring and bureaucratic. But my old job, you might find more interesting. And I told him about my job at the CIA and I was a beta. So I said, what do you do for living? And he said, oh, I'm the creator of a television series. I said, oh, might it be something I've heard of? And he said, maybe it's the number one rated

show on basic cable was on the USA network. I said, what's it called? He said, burn notice. I said, oh, my God, I love burn notice. In fact, I said, your trade craft is so good. I've actually taped the show so I could watch the credits in slow motion to see who you have advising you. And you don't say. And he said, we don't have anybody. He said, I've been so obsessed with spy, genre films since I was a little kid. I've read every book. And I just do all the writing myself.

By the time the plane landed in Los Angeles, I was the consultant for burn notice. I did six episodes in season six and Matt and I have been friends ever since. He hired me then to be the script consultant on true lies, a spy series based on the film true lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger, that ran on CBS for one season. And this is one of those situations, Alan, where he would send me the scripts.

in the margins, the only big change I ever made was you can't do this operation in London.

“This would never be permitted in London. You got to move it somewhere else. And then they moved”

it to Brussels. And I was like, oh my god, they took my advice. And then there was another one where the bad guy was somebody that just wouldn't be the bad guy. And I said, this just isn't going to work. It's just not real life. And they made the bad guy in Albanian. And that worked. The funny thing is, he would send me the scripts as soon as you would write them. And I would make my changes.

But then the scripts would go to the network executives. And then when they finally aired on TV

three or four weeks later, they were shit. And I was like, wait a minute, that's not what was written. That's not what was called for in the script. Or I didn't say that when I was commenting on this one scene. And unfortunately, the show was canceled after one season, just because it became this, you know, kind of typical broadcast network water down Pavlam for the masses. And it was a failure. They weren't HBO. They were not HBO. Tinker Taylor, soldier spy, and smiley people

have put them both together because they're closest to the greatest. John the Carrey, you and I have had this conversation before. But John the Carrey really was the greatest. He really was. He in Fleming, of course, is in the same kind of category. But John the Carrey, was the trailblazer here. Even as a professional spy, like I was, I can't put his books down. They're that good. It wasn't just the craft, there's the human beings, his characters were so rich,

and so deep. And then you couple these really full-sum characters with a spy story that is genuinely believable. And took place during the Cold War where there were clear good guys and bad guys.

“And it really made for a series of great books and then great movies. How frequent is it, Alan?”

That you read this book and it's amazing. And then they make it into a film and the film is shit.

But not so with his. In the case of the that first version of Tinker Taylor soldier spy with Alignus playing George Smiley, they played it out. They gave it enough breath that they could tell the story as he wrote it. It's the subtlety. The very small moments. And sometimes it takes time to lay the beats out. And it's the you got to see a twice of the the third time. You're seeing it. Wait, that's different. And it's that alteration that really walking it with George.

Yeah, the mendous patience in the storytelling. That's the key right there. Tremendous patience. He doesn't force anything on you. He lets the stories arc play out just the way it's supposed to play out. For the emotions to resonate the way that they need to resonate when you get to the ending. One of the themes that runs through John Kerry is love is the thing you can still betray. Yeah, you can just often really what they're up against. That if what they

they do what's right for their job, they'll destroy the person or the thing that they love. That's right. Or vice versa. Yep.

Switching gears, Alias. I was not crazy about Alias. I never watch you. I don't know.

Yeah, it just was, it was another one of those, you know, big budget broadcast media shows for the masses kind of like 24. But 24 was worse in that that was the next one on the list. Of course, okay, just as well. You took us there yourself. Go for it. You had 24 had a political message

“that I resented. It was like 24 was, and listen, I love key for Southern and I think he's a terrific”

actor. But 24 had a political agenda behind it. And I, I objected to that. I thought that it was meant to, it was meant to get the American people to buy into the so-called war on terror, which is all fine and good. I believed in the war on terror too, but not when it went nuts and started torturing people and started killing American citizens without ever having charged them with a crime. And I remember watching one episode of 24, where Jack Bauer is on the Washington DC Metro.

And the train stops at the Arlington Cemetery station, which is one of the very few above ground stations. And he jumps out of the train and he's got a nine millimeter drawn. And he's like firing at people. And I remember saying, oh my God, how many felonies can you possibly commit in 30 seconds?

and we're going to torture this guy and it's going to save America. So it just wasn't for me.

I'll imagine two more shows, then we'll move this along homeland. And homeland's very good. The season three had a little bit of a hiccup, but homeland is very good. It's very well written.

“The storyline is completely believable. Where it differs from real life is when an officer loses”

their marbles overseas. You bring him home and you get him treatment. You don't tell him, war card or double down. That's just nonsensical. Then they're going to go nuts and become serial killers or mass murders or something like that. But homeland as a series, I think not only was well written, well directed, well produced, well acted. It also came at the right time when the American people were beginning to question the official version of events. I enjoyed it very much.

The Americans. I think the Americans is probably the best spy-related show of the last 20 or 25 years. The Americans was created by and written by Joe Weisberg. And Joe and I used to work together at the in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. Joe is a

“little bit younger than I am, probably 10 years younger than I am. I really liked the guy.”

And I went into the office one day and he said to me, hey, I quit this morning and I was like, what, what do you mean you quit? What are you going to do? He said this job. It's just not for me. I just can't like in my gut. He said, I can't get people to commit espionage. It's just not for me. I said, what are you going to do? And he said, I'm writing a novel, but I'm not married and I don't have any kids and I'm going to Hollywood to find my fortune. His novel came out a couple of years

later. It was really good. Funny thing, it was all fiction, but it was still heavily redacted by the CIA. Like he was so close to real life in this thing that they heavily redacted it. And that wasn't surprised to me. But then just a couple of years later, he came out with the

Americans. One Emmy after Emmy and the guy never has to work again as long as he lives. It's a

wonderful idea. Yeah. It's a wonderful idea. What the Americans is about is it's a group of what are called illegals. During the Cold War years, the Soviet Union, the Soviet KGB had a program called the illegals program, where they would take people usually children or teenagers. They would send them to these camps in the Soviet Union, where they would learn to become Americans or British or Brazilian or French or wherever they were going to go spy. To the point where they're steeped

in American culture, they can talk about baseball or football like you and I can. They speak with

American accents. You would never know that they were Russians born and raised in Russia. And then

they're sent with false documents to the United States. Now back then, in the days before the internet, all he had to do is like, let's say I'm born in 1964. They would go through old newspapers. They would find a baby born in 1964 who died at the age of a few days. Then they would apply for a birth certificate, get the birth certificate, apply for a social security card, get that. Once you have the social security card, you apply for a passport, the next thing you know you're American. And nobody has any

idea that your entire identity is based on a dead baby from 1964. It's harder to do now,

“but that's how they did it then. And then these people arrive in the United States. And as in”

the case in the Americans, they opened up a travel agency at DuPont Circle in Washington. And so to the average neighbor or friend, they're just a husband and wife who in a travel agency. And in fact, they're spying for the KGB. And so the show is about the operations that they carry out meeting with their handler, turning Americans, killing Americans, infiltrating the farm, the CIA's training facility, collecting information on nuclear weapons, development or advanced weapon systems,

it's absolutely fascinating. And then toward the end of the season of the series, rather, they decided to bring in their 16-year-old daughter. And they dropped cover and they tell her who they really are. They tell the sun to the sun's 14. The sun heats it and the daughter is all in.

I have not seen the Americans, it's one of the shows that I've always thought you should watch the

“Americans. And you have to start from the very first episode. Yes, yes, yes, no, it's not a thing”

you can join halfway through. No, they full story from beginning to end, but that's why it works so well, it really took those characters, organic places. It really did. In a future conversation, we can go into greater detail about a lot of terrific series. The Night Manager is fascinating because it's a Licarre, but Tehran and Fauda are fascinating shows. I have recommended Fauda to everybody who would listen. Fauda is a joint Israeli Palestinian production, which of course

couldn't be done today. Pre-October 7th, of course. And it follows both Shinbet as they try to infiltrate Hamas. And it follows Hamas as an organization of national liberation and shows how they try to fight Shinbet. You end up having deep sympathy. And for both sides,

“that's how beautifully written this thing is. As I said, it was incredible when it came out.”

And I think it ran four or five seasons. It was carried on HBO. I don't think they could do that today. No, no, no, no, no. That bridge, not just burned, blown, blown up, up. We would also have a slow horses, which is fascinating. Gary Oldman's very good. Tehran, you mentioned, there's another one called Berlin Station. I haven't seen yet. Yeah, but Berlin Station is a terrific show out of France called the Bureau. I heard about that. Very good in creating.

Really good. I want to check that out. Listen, it was a general rule. Stay away from any show that appears on ABC and BC CBS or Fox, just stay away. It's going to, you'll feel dumber when the show is over. It will actually kill your brain cells. There was an absolutely God-awful show on CBS called the Covert Affairs. Oh my God. Talk about nonsensical, nonsensical to the point of

being offensive, where you've got this CIA analyst. First of all, the President of the United States

is this African-American woman and her son is engaged to a woman at the agency who's an analyst. And this analyst feels free to just walk into the oval office like she owns the place. And there's a one scene that I objected to quite strenuously in which she just walks into the oval office and the President looks up and she says, "Madam President, I need to take a hit out on someone." And I thought, "Oh my God, okay, first, you're under arrest." Because that's a felony.

Secondly, you're under arrest for trespassing because I don't care who you are. Even the director of the CIA doesn't just barge into the oval office like he owns it. What kind of stupid show is this? It lasted a season or two. I'm embarrassed for a former colleague of mine who was the scripted visor. He should have run screaming from the room and steady thought he could make a couple of bucks. But it was just a disastrous show. I hope he bought something nice with the money.

That's seriously. In another conversation, we'll talk about the other James Bond that because there were some other movies, especially in the mids in 1966, there was Mad Helm. Right, Mad Helm. De-Martin played Mad Helm in murders, row, and that was 1966. The same year that James Coburn was playing our man Flint. Oh, he was terrific. Oh, yeah,

“there are a lot of them out there. Remember those movies? I would rather segue into your IMDB page.”

I'd like to finish this conversation going through and you talked about your path to this town. You came to LA. It's kind of a lock. But so as we peruse your pages as writer, script, and continuity department actor, actor, actor. I'm proud to say that I'm a member of the Screen Actors Guild. I am a bona fide Hollywood actor. You just appeared as the fifth locksmith in a thing called below world end. What the fuck is this, John? Because that got you your sad card. That got me my sad card.

So I have a dear friend Tyrell Ventura is the son of Jesse Ventura. And he called me one day and said,

his dad had never been so happy as he was when he was acting. And I said, sure, he made

billion dollar blockbusters in the 80s who hasn't seen predator, right, or running man. He's

And we wrote a character just for you. I said, oh, thank you. No, no. I appreciate it, though.

I said, I have never acted before. I would be stiff and unconvincing and I'll ruin your movie.

And Governor Ventura said, we thought of that. And he said, I'm going to give you the same advice that Jack Nicholson gave me. He said, Jack Nicholson said, there is no such thing as acting. Jack Nicholson told him, look, I play exactly the same character in every movie I'm in, which is just Jack Nicholson. And when you think about it, one flu over the cook is nest is no different from the departed or about Schmidt or any of the other movies that Jack Nicholson has

been in Chinatown. They're all Jack Nicholson. And so as I mentioned earlier, it's Jack being

“Jack is honestly as he can. And it's his emotional honesty. Yes, that's the bottom line, right?”

There is his emotional honesty makes him convincing in every single one of those roles.

So they said, we wrote this specifically for you. And you're going to be in it. So I said, okay, so they said, we're going to shoot in Mexico, Baham, Mexico for the entire month of October, last year. And I flew down to Mexico. It was a wonderful cast of professional actors. I was the only one who was not a professional actor. The star is Jeff Fehi, who has been in almost 400 different TV series and movies. He's a brilliant actor, a very well-known character actor and a

genuinely all-around great guy. And the other actors, absolutely wonderful people. We had such a

“great time. And I saw the final cut of the movie a couple of days ago and it is fantastic. My partner”

and I watched it together. And we're about two thirds the way through it. And I noticed that she's crying.

And I said, are you okay? And she said, this movie is beautiful. And I said, I got to say, it's a good movie. I'm terrible in it. I am stiff. But Sean Penn watched it and he told me I was wonderful. Which made me laugh. It's very kind of you. He called me Mercurial and Convincing. Thank you, Sean. So it's coming out at the end of August. They're talking to distributors right now. The worst case scenario is that it ends up on two B on one of the streaming services and people can

watch it there. The best case scenario is we had to the film festivals, but it's coming out at the end of the month. And then crazy as it sounds. Just a couple of days ago, I got another movie. And I'm playing a traveling independent journalist going from campus to campus. I don't want to spoil it. But we're going to start filming it at the end of September. And where are you shooting? All across America. They've rented a bus. And they told me that they've just wrapped the bus to make it look like a

concert bus or something. And we're just going to go from campus to campus and doing our thing. Crazy as bed. So I embrace it. It's going to be so much fun in my life. Did I ever think that this would happen to me? And yet here it is and here all the stuff. And I would throw in the you in a different to dead drop. You also do daily briefing. Yeah, I do. It's called the John Kerryoccus briefing room. Great. I'm fine. YouTube. And I'll tell you, I've only been doing it for less than three weeks. And I

have almost 225,000 subscribers in less than three weeks. It's turning into something. And that's something I'm very grateful for. People like our podcast Alan, dead drop, and they like briefing room.

“And I think this is my future. And then for fun, I give speeches all around the world. I'm leaving”

for Vietnam tomorrow morning. And all of a sudden, I find myself as some kind of a Hollywood actor. Because you are leaving for a far-flung destination. And I know you got to get some some vaccination stuck in your arm. I'm going to let you run because this is we've been talking far long that I thought we were going to talk, but that's just fun. We have to have more conversations like this. And hey, let's let's promise to do that between us. And that's to you, the audience.

Don't thank you much for so much for sitting on my podcast. Thank you, Alan. This was great. Thank you for being on my podcast. Hey, there you go. And thank you, everyone. We'll both

it's back to spying. I had to reclaim my life and get it into some kind of working order,

“which included finding a job. Since spying was what I knew best, I decided spying in one way or another”

was going to be my way back. Meanwhile, the thing that put me in prison after I blew the whistle on it,

torture was finally getting its day in court and more importantly, the court of public opinion.

“And the public did not like what it was hearing about what the CIA was doing.”

If there's anything worse than torture, it's covering up torture and lying about the fact that

you tortured and then covered it up. There's a lot more story left to tell. Lots more was blowing

“and a lot more spying. Until next time, I'm John Curriyaku. Dead Drop is written by John Curriyaku”

and Alan Katz, cost art and touched on productions produces the podcast and John Curriyaku Alan Katz and Nick McKennaker are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a cost-earned and touched on production.