His Eyes Were Black

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Today on the James Altucher Show. Can you imagine being in your twenties, walking into the office of the CEO of DC Comics and saying, you don't have any money. You just love Batman. So you say, I wanna buy the right to make Batman into a movie forever. That's what Michael Uslan did. And even the CEO of DC Comics tried to talk him out of it, but they negotiated the deal. And, again, Michael Euslund, through his passion and perseverance, figured out how to raise the money, and it took him 10 years of rejections by every movie studio. And he has hilarious stories about his rejections until he finally made the first Batman. And now the most recent Batman, which he's still the executive producer of, he owns the rights to Batman forever. The first weekend in the box office did 250,000,000. He writes all these stories and so much more in his book, just came out, Batman's Batman, a memoir from Hollywood, Land of Bilk and Money by Michael Uslan. It just came out and it's a memoir of his Hollywood experiences. He also wrote an earlier book, The Boy Who Loved Batman, which is almost, I feel like, a love letter to the comic book industry. Batman's Batman also just came out in audio on Audible. And he also wrote a novel about Batman called Detective number 27, which is a riveting read, and I'd highly encourage anyone to get it and read it. But anyway, Batman's Batman. Detective number 27, the boy who loved Batman. So first off, Michael, you're, like, part of my childhood practically. Like, there's not that many movies where I remember, like, the day, the movie, and then afterwards, but Batman in 1989 when it came out, I, like, literally remember talking about it with my friends afterwards, you know, in the parking lot outside the theater and then the next day and so on. So thank you for bringing Batman back into my life after I was a huge comic book fan all throughout my childhood. I so appreciate that, James. I have to tell you that one of the most touching, parts of this whole journey for me is and it it's just happened again recently with the opening of the new picture. I get emails from people that said, mister Uslan, in 1989, I was 6 years old, and I went to see Batman with my dad and my grandpa. And, they're not here anymore, But I have that memory that I will never ever lose, and I thank you for it. And it's like, oh my god. You know? It puts everything in perspective. That's so interesting on on a couple different levels. One is it's really great to have that experience of getting that kind of letter, but this touches on your points that you've made in in the past about superheroes being our modern day mythology, our modern day pantheon. And mythology doesn't just last for a generation. It lasts for 100 of years. And, you know, that's that's what's happening now with superheroes. I I totally agree with that. I had, the opportunity to remind Stan Lee before he passed that what he has created going forward here puts him in a class with Walt Disney and with Homer, into and Aesop. Not not Homer Simpson, but Homer Simpson. Not Homer's not the yeah. The other Homer. The other Homer. And, and it really is true. You know, when I originally pitched my college course, when I proposed my what would be the first ever accredited college course on comic books, I said my theory was the ancient gods of Greece, Rome, and Egypt all still exist, except today they wear spandex and capes. And I I said to the dean, the Greeks called him Hermes. The Romans called him Mercury. I call him the flesh. The Greeks called him Poseidon. The Romans called him Neptune. I call him Aquaman, and that sold the course for me. Well, I also like, your story about the the so the d you're pitching the dean on doing this course, and the dean was, you know, you're gonna do a course about the funny papers at my university. And and then you tell asked him to describe the story of Moses, and then you asked him to describe the story of Superman, and it was the same story, basically. It was exactly the same story, and he stopped short. And as I described in my book, he stared at me for an eternity and then said, your course is accredited. And it was the Superman Moses thing that got the thing across the point. Yeah. So what did you teach in the course? And we'll then we'll get you you wrote Batman's Batman. I'll talk all about this in the intro, and we'll we'll talk about everything. But I just I was wondering all along, what did you teach in the course? It was broken up into 5 academic disciplines. 1st, that comic books are an art form as indigenous to this country as jazz. Number 2, that comic books are contemporary folklore. It's the modern day mythology. Number 3, the psychological impact of comic books on its audience. Number 4, comic books as literature. And number 5 was sociologically, comic books have been published every Wednesday since the mid 19 thirties. They reflect the changing American culture. They are a mirror of our society. Whatever our fads, whatever our style of dress, our slang, our racism, our biases, our prejudices are all reflected in the pages of the comic books over the better part of a century now. And the whole fact that they reflect a change in American culture, And that was the basis. That was how the syllabus was broken up. That reminds me of your initial story, the cross generational impact. Like, you know, you have the golden age Batman. You have the silver age Batman. You have the Batman from the movies now. Like, these characters get reinvented with a largely similar origin story, but brought up to modern day. It's really true. Batman is human. And as a result directly of that, all of us who identify so much with Batman and have since the 19 thirties get to project ourselves onto Batman. Our own thoughts, our own philosophies, and even our own politics onto Batman. Like no other character, that happens. So you can have completely different iterations and interpretations of Batman from one extreme to the other, whether it's in a comic book, a movie, a cartoon, whatever. And everyone is valid because he is a reflection of us, and we identify so strongly with that. And we found it transcends not only borders around the world, it transcends cultures. But, you know, what's interesting for me, and maybe it's just a product of my my age and maybe somebody at a different age would have a different feeling. But when Dark Knight Returns came out and Batman year 1 came out, you know, Frank Miller, written, and I forget the the artist now, they were so intense and dark that that really changed Batman for me in some way, which I think many of the movies brought that feeling into those movies as well. It's true, but it was it's also it's also generational because, remember, it started out by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson, very dark, before Robin. And then, editor Julie Schwartz had writer Denny O'Neil and artist Neal Adams return Batman to his darker roots in the 19 seventies, and that stuff could get dark. That was augmented by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers' deeply, darkly romantic version of Batman in the same period. So it's not just about Frank and, David Massicelli. It it it's it goes beyond that, and it is generational. Yeah. So interesting. And, you know, in in some ways, I think Marvel like, take take Daredevil as an example. Daredevil strikes me in even though he has superpowers, he strikes me as, like, almost a a a Marvel version of Batman a little bit. Yeah. Well, explore that comparison because he there was, like, there's a darkness to it. Like, Daredevil lived in Hell's Kitchen. He he wasn't afraid to go over the edge. There was much more kind of, like, low level crime related stuff in his in his comic books. Yeah. You can certainly make that argument. You know, he he lost his father. Right? I mean, and there's a lot of elements of the story. Murdered. Yeah. Stan loved to murder relatives. That that was always one of the things that was percolating. Uncle Ben over in Spider Man. But I would say you probably, Daredevil, Moon Knight, and little bits of Captain America are probably the closest to, to Batman, over at Marvel. The great thing about Marvel, and its cinematic universe is how much they owe to Tim Burton who opened the door for them. Because if you consider the fact that in 1989, when we did our revolutionary first ever dark and serious comic book superhero movie, It was Tim Burton's big idea that broke through all the barriers. And his big idea was simply, if we're gonna do this seriously, this can't be about Batman. This movie has to be about Bruce Wayne. That was the big idea. And that was very smart. And that goes along a lot with Stan Lee's kind of aesthetic on characters. Like, all of those comics started with with the those heroes being ordinary people who, through interacting with radioactivity, because that was the the meme of the sixties, became accidental superheroes. It's not only true. It is accurate to the nth degree because fantastic 4 kicked off the Marvel age. And in those first two issues, Stan did not have them in costume. He had no intention of them being in a costume. It was only the fan reaction that went crazy that they weren't in costumes, that it gave them costumes in number 3. But but that's not where he wanted to go with it. Same way that Brian Singer with first x men movie got them out of the spandex and put them into leather. That was breakthrough. But my contention coming off of Tim Burton is that Marvel's great Iron Man movies should really be called Tony Stark, and their great Spider Man movies should really be called Peter Parker. And and Tim opened the door to that. Yeah. So it's so interesting. Why do you think, why do you think Marvel captured the imagination a little bit more than DC in the sixties seventies? If you will allow me to put on my comic book historian hat, I think I can answer that. And it goes back to the roots of the comic book companies. The Marvel age of comics was created by one editor who was also the writer. Now it's true, and I don't wanna take anything away from Jack Kirby, my idol, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, or any other of the artists who did plotting who did plotting for all of the books, in the Marvel method. But it was one writer, one editor. It was a unified vision. There was unity of tone. There was unity in terms of what who the audience was he was talking to. The rules were consistent. And we all knew as Marvel readers back then what was in outer space. We knew what was under the ocean. So the translation of the Marvel comic book universe to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was really generally seamless. Now over at DC, historically, it's a completely different story. From early days, there have been 6, 8 different editors at DC Comics. And, traditionally, they had possession of certain characters, which they operated like a fiefdom. They built a castle, and they put up these big walls and moats and and filled it with alligators because Mort Weisinger had Superman. So he had his own artists. He had his own writers, and nobody was gonna touch Superman but him. Julie Schwartz had Batman, and he would Mort was aiming at 8 to 12 year old boys. Julie was aiming at high school, college, and up. Meanwhile, Murray Bolton off down the hall had brave and bold with Batman in it and was doing completely different stuff with it. The best way I can illuminate this is something that happened to me when I was about 10 years old. It was a Wednesday. I go to buy my comics. I buy 2 DCs that day. 1 was either Superman or action, and the other one was showcase Aquaman. And in the Superman story, which I loved at age 10, he goes to Atlantis. It's a place that has a dome underneath the ocean, and everybody's a mermaid or a merman, and he falls in love with a mermaid. Wow. What a great story. And then I pick up my Aquaman comic and go, wait a minute. He's the king of Atlantis, and Atlantis doesn't have a dome, and there is no mermaids or mermen? What the Fill in the blank. This was from the same comic book company the same week. So to translate that sort of a historic DC comic book universe to the screen is at best challenging. I mean, seriously, James, if you're a filmmaker and you go looking at a at a comic book and you see a panel of Batman, and standing behind him with his arm around him is a green guy from Mars. And over his other shoulder is a 1 inch tall superhero in a floating easy chair, and Batman's talking to a guy who's talking to a fish. Alright. This is challenging. So, you know, to me, it's it's always been about a Gotham City universe, a Metropolis universe, a Paradise Island universe, an Atlantis universe, and and it's not it's apples and oranges when you start to compare it to Marvel. Yeah. And particularly when they brought in Wiz Comics, they made Captain Marvel. And yeah. So they they brought in a whole bunch of new superheroes that were all kind of emulating the DC superheroes. So suddenly you have Captain Marvel versus Superman, and, you know, it's hard to know who who to follow. But by the way, Shazam, when is the sequel coming out? I love that movie. Apparently, very soon. Okay. Good. I mean, some of the dates are flipping right now. Are you still involved? Here's the best way I can describe it. I spent approximately 11 years of my life on Shazam. I got the rights to it, and I got permission to be the 1st producer ever to take, a DC comic book character out of Warner Brothers and present it to another Warner company, so I set it up at New Line and, worked on it. So I am the originating producer of Shazam. I was the one who showed, Pete Pete Siegel was on as director, and I showed Pete and his producing partner, Michael Ewing, a couple of comic books with Black Adam. I said, this guy looks exactly like The Rock. And Pete said, I know The Rock. Let me call him. And so Pete pulled The Rock in, and that was the initial plan. And now I'm just as somebody who was mentored by Otto Binder, who created the Marvel family in Black Adam, as somebody who, every week for 2 years had a correspondence with Cece Beck, the cocreator of Captain Marvel, I'm just thrilled to see these characters appearing on screen. Yeah. No. I loved it. And I won't give anything away, but I love the last scene of the of the Shazam movie. So it was great. So, Batman, you've you've you've written the story and a and you've talked about the story, but I wanna introduce my readers to the story. Can you describe how, and and by the way, also, I love the the the breakdown between your two books. Like, there's the, the boy who loved Batman is your your first memoir. Right? I believe that's the title. And Batman's Batman. I, the, the, for your first book is almost like a love story to comic books. Like it was really beautiful. Just your relationship with comic books and how it evolved, through your youth and into adulthood. And then Batman's Batman, which shows how you, you know, as your partner, Ben put it, how you became Batman's Batman. You were the protector of, of the story of the true essence of, of Batman, which, which eventually got told in, in the first movie. So these these books go very well together, and I encourage people to to get both of them. And and your story is amazing. Like, again, people get afraid. Like, if they if they say, oh, I'm gonna go buy the rights to, you know, my fave all time favorite comic book character, everyone is gonna tell you, you can't do that. And somehow you got over that psychology and you did it, and it was still hard and you still did it. And it took you 10 years to make the movie, and you got rejected everywhere, and you still did it. So what what happened? What's wrong with you? You know, when people hear today that I was a kid in my twenties when I bought the rights to Batman from DC Comics, and the response is what you would expect. Well, okay. That's impossible. That is inconceivable. And the story makes absolutely no sense, James, unless we put it in the context of its times. Back then, and I'm talking now the seventies, I can tell you this kinda straight from the horse's mouth at the highest levels of Warner Communications. I was told they bought DC Comics to get their hands on Superman because they believed that Superman was the one and only comic book property capable of being made into a blockbuster film, that there was nothing else in the DC library and certainly nothing at Marvel that had any value whatsoever. That was the consensus. Why? Because back then, the executives and the agents, the people in the industry were people who were adults in the Fredric Wertham Seduction of the Innocent Era in the 19 fifties where comic books were called the sole cause of the post World War 2 rise of juvenile delinquency in America. Everybody in society looked down their nose of comic books and comic book creators. And, Warner Communications back then was virtually embarrassed at the end of the comic book company, which is why Can I ask and I'm I'm sorry to interrupt, but at this time, this was also the peak of comic book sales really? Like, Action Comics was selling millions of copies a week, and so they must have seen those numbers. They saw numbers regarding Superman. Numbers regarding Batman fell off a cliff when the TV show went off the air. In fact, Detective Comics was slated to be canceled. That is the namesake title that DC Comics was slated to be canceled if Julie Schwartz couldn't resuscitate it. It it it's incredible. The whole story, you can't begin to understand it unless you set it back in its time. Well, then let me ask you one more question about the time. So in the in the I feel like the seventies, they used Saturday morning cartoons to basically sanitize culture for kids. And you had Batman and hanging out with Scooby Doo and the Harlem Globetrotters. So Batman was around during this time post the TV series. Absolutely. And, at the same time, we were watching the Marvel cartoon shows like The Thing Meets the Shmoo or the Fantastic 4 where they replaced the human torch because they didn't want to inspire kids to set themselves on fire with matches, and it was Yeah. Mister fantastic, the thing, the invisible girl, and Herbie the robot. Yeah. I you know what? I didn't remember that until you just said that. Those were the days, my friend. That's what it was like. So to try to sell a dark and serious version of Batman to these people, what that's why I got turned down by every studio and every mini major in Hollywood. They told me I was crazy. Okay. But wait. How did you buy the rights? Okay. How do I do the short version of the story? I know. I'm I'm sorry you have to tell it again, but, you know, my readers are hearing I mean, listeners are hearing it. Okay. So I was teaching the world's 1st college accredited course on comic books at Indiana University, and it got tons of publicity. I get a call from Saul Harrison, vice president at DC Comics. He said, mister Uslan, we're watching you on TV on all these talk shows. We're reading about you in newspapers. We think you're a very innovative young man. We'd like to fly to New York and discuss ways we might be able to work together. Duh. You know, geek dream come true. I'm now working for DC Comics. I'm working there summers, and then they put me on retainer when I go back to school because I'm an undergrad. And, I was lucky enough when I was working there to gain the respect and appreciation of a lot of people who were working there who realized I was a comic book geek. I loved Batman to death, that I was a comic book professor on a college level, a comic book historian. I was always asking everybody questions about the history of of DC and the industry and the characters. And so when the time came, I went back to Saul Harrison who had mentored me into the business and was wonderful to me. He was now the president of DC Comics. I said, Saul, I wanna buy the rights to Batman and make dark and serious Batman movies and show the world the true Batman, not the one they saw on TV who was a joke that the world was laughing at. I wanna show them the way Bob and Bill created this character in 39 as a creature of the night stalking disturbed villains. Saul Harrison at that moment looked exactly like the poster for Home Alone. It was like, Michael, for god's sake, don't do this. And he was very fatherly to me. He says, son, don't you understand that when Batman went off the air on television? This is a quote, James. The brand is as dead as a dodo. He says, Michael, nobody's interested in Batman anymore. I don't wanna see you lose all your money. I said, yeah. But, Saum, nobody's ever seen a dark and serious comic book superhero movie before. This is gonna be like a new form of entertainment. He said, is there any way I can talk you out of this? And I said, no. And here's another quote. He said, okay, Schmoozle. Come on in. And that began a 6 month negotiation, which I quickly realized I could not do on my own because I was prepared to say yes to anything. So I found myself a Batman partner. Benjamin Melneker was my dad's age. Ben was a legend in the movie business. He had started at MGM in 1939, not a bad year for MGM, became the executive vice president of MGM. All divisions reported to Ben, and he had put together 2001 A Space Odyssey and Gigi and Doctor Zhivago. And, after 6 months, we formed BatFilm Productions. We raised the money privately. And on October 3, 1979, bought the rights to Batman, and I put it in my back pocket, quit my job, went out to LA, saying, this could be a piece of cake. Every studio is gonna line up at my doorstep and see the potential here for sequels and animation and toys and games. And then I was blown away that I was coldly turned down by every body in Hollywood, told it was the worst idea they ever heard, and that I was crazy. But some of those reasons were so stupid. Like and I know you you kind of tell these stories, and it's almost, like, comically stupid. But, like, tell the Columbia guy. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm like, it's not like you're telling stories on demand here, but I I you know, other than reading the book, this is how the listeners are gonna hear the story. Yeah. Yeah. No. This is fine. This was this was the last major studio we had. Everybody else had chased me out of their office, and, I'm pitching my heart out for the dark and serious Batman. And the guy I'm pitching to is a silver haired, dapper guy. Been new him for decades. And I get them pitching, and he shakes his head. He gives me a tsk tsk. He goes, Michael, you're crazy. Batman will never be successful as a movie because our movie, Annie, didn't do well. I said, wait a minute. Are you talking about that little redheaded girl from Broadway, the one who sings that song tomorrow? He said, yes. I said, well, what does that have to do with Batman? And he said, oh, come on. They're both out of the funny pages. That was my rejection at Columbia. Okay. That's so ridiculous, though, because at that time, I guess, in the seventies, Flash Gordon had come out, and that was a story that originated in the so called funny pages. And, and and in terms of the darkness, Empire Strikes Back was a pretty dark movie for for little kids. Yeah. Well, this And our hero got his hand cut off. Which is true. They had in their minds really a a difference, I think, between comic strips and comic books. Comic strips like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, I think, had respectability that comic books never had in their eyes. Thanks again to doctor Wortham in Seduction of the Innocent. So I think there was a difference there. I see. So so you, you know, finally, 10 years later, the movie comes out, and you've been involved in every Batman ever since, and you've you've tried many other projects. I forget. Did you produce, Darkman? No. No. That was a Sam Raimi's project. Okay. I didn't know if you were involved at all or not in that. No. I was not. Because that was a very pretty dark superhero movie. I thought that was a very good, superhero movie at the time. That was Sam's version of The Shadow because he wasn't able to get hold of the rights to The Shadow. Yeah. And, and you had worked on The Shadow when you were at DC? I did. My first professional comics, scripts were the shadow number 9 and number 11, which I was very proud of. And it was, shadow number 9, that script that got me the gig to write detective comics. I mean, if somebody right now wanted to buy the rights to some character or some story that they that they loved, what would they do? I feel like it's now just big industry. Even even, like, there's no real indie scene even. No. I I think it's pretty much impossible now. I think the value of all of these IP, the value of a library, the the fact that content is king no matter how much the technology, no matter how much the delivery systems change, it's put new valuations on these things that were considered worthless. You know, when I went back to DC and said I wanna buy the rights to Swamp Thing, it I almost got laughed at at the, office. It was DC Comics publishes something stupid sounding like Swamp Thing. Are you kidding me? This is worthless. I said, you're right. It is worthless. Give it to me for free, and I'll I promise to spend my own money to develop it. So they gave it to me for free. That's amazing. And, you know, it it was a a genius choice by you because Swamp Thing was kinda like the training grounds for Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, all all of these great comic book, writers from England who sort of got introduced into the US through Swamp Thing. And as a result of my Swamp Thing contract, whereby I owned the rights to any characters and stories in the pages of Swamp Thing Comics, I became the owner of Constantine. Yeah. Right. With, Johnny Depp was played constant, you know I would say it was probably Keanu Reeves. Oh, Keanu Reeves. Sorry. I'm ashamed of myself since I saw the movie. So I'm getting older. I'm I'm go having early onset dementia. That's why I'm saying That's what happens. So, but that was a did you ever play around I know you played around with American Freak on from Vertigo. Did you ever think about Sandman? Sandman was not in my purview, and DC was always there were a couple of properties they always were saving. One was Blackhawk because, you know, one day, a zillion years ago, Steven Spielberg mentioned he was a fan of it, was interested in Blackhawk. So that was off the market perpetually just interested in Blackhawk. So that was off the market perpetually just in case the day might ever come again when Steven Spielberg might say, I'm, yeah, I'm still interested in Blackhawk. I believe he's now developing Blackhawk. But Sandman was another one that was off the grid and being kept for something special some point in time, and, but I was very, very pleased with Constantine. I would say since the late eighties, early nineties, comic books themselves also have evolved. You see things like, you know, mouse winning the Pulitzer prize, the first graphic novel to win the the Pulitzer prize. You have companies like FantaGraphics with all their adult, themed comic book stories. Not like porn comic book stories, but, like, more like, oh, somebody in their twenties dealing with problems and relationships. Let's make a comic book about it. How would that fit into your let's say, if you were to make a comic book course now, it seems like these are very strong themes in comic books now. Well, they definitely are. You know? And and there were a couple of, clear breakpoints that made a big difference. For example, on my personal journey, let's call it 7th grade. I was beginning to lose interest in comic books. I thought I was outgrowing them. But so I was discovering girls, and comic books were beginning to wane in my eyes. And then I read x men 1. And that just pulled me back into the whole thing because I felt comic books were now growing up with me. The the characterizations, the stories, the graphic storytelling was becoming more sophisticated. And then graphic novels began. I credit Will Eisner in A Contract with God. And all of a sudden, you would see people make the mistake. They think that comic books are synonymous with superheroes, and they're not at all. And you walk into a Barnes and Noble, if there still are, and anything you find in there, you can find in comic books and graphic novels today. Humor, adventure, science fiction, horror, romance, whatever it might be. People don't realize Road to Perdition, The 300, A History of Violence, American Splendor, all based on comics. Yeah. It it it was a seismic shift. So, yes, you know, if you're talking about where we are today, that's an integral part of what it's all about. I started out comic books were simply aimed at 8 to 12 year old boys. End of story. And to to be now to see the evolution of it and to see adults reading it worldwide, that's in that's incredible to see. I mean, are you still picking up issues of your favorite comics and reading them for fun? Yeah. I am. I I have to say, lately, I've been more heavy on reprints, but I do pick up the stuff today. I'm of a I'm old school. Okay? I admit I'm old school. As a result, there's a couple of differences between me, fanboy Michael, and fanboys of today. Number 1, I grew up. I loved comic books. I read and collected everything. I loved Marvel. I loved DC. I loved Archie and ACG and Dell and Charlton Comics. I got everything. And it's alien to me now to hear factions where people are going, oh, I love DC and I hate Marvel. I love Marvel and I hate DC. It just it it doesn't make any sense to me. The other thing that I have a problem with, James, is that in my era of growing up, in my era of writing comics, it was called comic books. It was 50% comic, 50% books. It was a true partnership between a writer and an artist. Now today, it seems in many cases many cases that the writing has been abdicated to the artist. And when I spend $4 or $5 for a comic book and there's only 20 words on a page and I'm done with it in 63 seconds, I'm frustrated. I prefer a little bit more meat with my potatoes. Do you think that started with, like, Todd McFarlane spinning off with Spawn and and and and the emphasis because he was an artist, so the emphasis became a lot more on the art and the kind of action of the art and so on without really the character development. That's a real viable theory. I have not spent the time to kind of pinpoint when the shift began, but it's it's certainly in play now. And, and I understand that the attention span of audiences today, it does not equate to the attention span when I was a kid. It was different times, and we had far fewer options for entertainment, at the same time. And reading was a big part of our lives. So I understand there's been a shift. I understand, and I recognize and accept the fact that I'm an old fart now, and that's okay. I can live with that. But there there is that shift, and that's one of the things so I I kinda search for comic books that have a few more words and depth of story in them. And hap happily got guys like Snyder and King, you know, who really deliver exceptional work. I mean, there's a lot of writers who are doing that. I'm just a little bit more picky these days. You know, you say you're an old guy, but at the same time, when you do, as a career, the things that you've loved as a child, I think it keeps a certain playfulness in in the person. It keeps a certain youth in the person. So my god. Yes. I agree. You get to you get to look back at all these things. Like, I mean, did you ever ever imagine when you were a kid, you would be hanging out with Bob Kane, the, you know, original Batman guy, or or you would, I don't know, be writing stories for the the shadow and so on and and then making a Batman movie? Of course not. So it's fun. It is fun. About passion in your book. People people ask me today. They said, well, what exactly is your job? And I said, oh, okay. Every morning, I get to report to a sandbox, and I play with my favorite toys. That's what I do for a living. Yeah. And and you you talk about passion a lot in the book, and I think you even thinking that it was a viable concept that you could go and buy the rights to Batman for movies. First off, the seventies weren't a time where everybody was thinking in terms of business and how could I put this deal together. Like, that by itself, a comic book guy from Indiana university working at DC wouldn't automatically think, oh, I need to buy the rights to the Batman movie and make a valuable franchise out of this. And by the way, also everyone is telling me I shouldn't do it. I should go back to law school or whatever. And but, like, how did you even figure out how to put together, like, oh, I need this guy, Ben, and I need to ignore all the naysayers, including the CEO of DC who are trying to talk me out of this. Like, what I don't know if you could define it, but what kept you going? Because I think that's inspiring. Okay. It comes down to my parents, my real life superheroes. My parents sacrificed everything for my brother and me. I did not come from money. My father was a stonemason, and my mom was a bookkeeper in New Jersey. I couldn't buy my way into Hollywood. I didn't know anyone in Hollywood. I had no relatives in Hollywood. So what do you do when you're dreaming big and you've got this passion coursing through your veins that's burning, and you can feel the burn? I realized the first thing I needed to do was get up off the damn couch and that if I wasn't proactive on my own, nothing was gonna happen. I realized early on, in many cases, I had nothing to lose, so I was willing to take calculated risks and roll the dice and be daring about what I wanted to do. My father loved what he did. He was an old world artist. He was a craftsman. The fireplaces and homes he built with brick and stone were amazing. He worked 6 days a week from the time he was 16 till he was 80 and got up every morning with a big smile on his face looking forward to getting to work. When you grow up in a house like that, how can you not want that for yourself? I just had to figure out what my bricks and stones were. And early on, I discovered my passion. It was comic books. It was superheroes, and I loved movies, TV, and cartoons. So that was that was that. It was about being taught to follow your passions. And my mother taught us, yes. Do that, but understand it comes with a price, and it could be a high price to pay. So what you need is perseverance and commitment. And my mom brought my brother Paul and I up that once you make a commitment, you must honor it. And that might cause you pain, but you have an obligation. It's a matter of integrity where you honor your commitments. And, it was my mother's training that allowed me to find the ways to endure for that 10 year human endurance contest from the time I bought the rights to Batman till we finally got the first movie made in 89 and live with nothing but rejection for year after year after year, not knowing where my next dollar was coming from, how I was gonna pay my bills the next week. So you could have been like this homeless guy, but who owned the the Batman movie rights? Yeah. I mean, look look at Bill Finger. I mean, if you look at Bill Finger, Bill, nobody nobody knew he was a cocreator of Batman. He was a nonentity virtually. Bob Kane took all the glory, all the credit, and all the money. And Bill died an alcoholic, penniless, in 1974. And, so I I saw it happen. I mean, I know what you're talking about here. And that's why I went to law school because I promised my parents, my wife, and my wife's parents that I would have something to fall back on if everything fell apart and my dreams died. You had a plan b? I had a plan b. And my god in life, you need a plan b, a c, and a d if you can, because the twists and turns of life on this journey are unbelievable, and you have to be prepared for it. How would you measure like, I I understand the point about commitment, and I understand the point about, of course, about passion. But what if it just wasn't meant to be? Like, how would you know with anything when to give up? The day came when, I was gonna do to to get me to Batman, I was looking to do any other production I could mount. And I sold CBS and Lorimar on a 100% historically accurate miniseries based on the story of the Alamo. And we were getting close to production. We had a great script, great director, and simultaneously on the same day, the head of Laura Moore left the company and the head of programming at CBS was gone. And then they said, we're freezing everything for the next couple of weeks till the new management comes in. The new management comes in. They kill all the projects of the old management. I had already cleared my schedule for the next year to go down to Brackettville, Texas to produce this thing. I had no prospects left. I was told my producer fee at that moment was in a stamped envelope in an outbox. I never got it, and I had already started to spend it. My back was completely against the wall. No money. The wisest man I ever met, my father-in-law, doctor Morris Osher, who founded the Cincinnati Eye Institute, flew out to New Jersey. He sat me down with my dad and said and they both said, listen. The measure of a person's success is not by what he has achieved, but by how hard he has tried. They said, you have tried your hardest. You've put everything into it. But now this is why you went to law school. You need to be the lawyer and support your family. And I said, I understand that. I accept that. It's just so frustrating because I know I'm so close. I have this animated series and this other thing that could get me to Batman, and and my father-in-law said, Michael. How long before you have he says, and I I think about it because I want this to be accurate. How long before you have in your hands, not a deal, not a contract, a check for 6 figures on one of these projects? I thought about it. I said, 5 months. And my father-in-law said, okay. I'm gonna pay all your bills for the next 5 months. At 6 PM, 5 months from today, if you don't have that check-in your hand, you say, okay. I gave it my all, and you go be a lawyer. I said, thank you very much. I accept. I I I was so happy. So, look, I was already working 16 hours a a day, so now I'm working 20 hours a day. And my first animated series that I created, which was called Dinasaucers, dinosaurs from outer space, It had been progressing. What I didn't realize is that Andy Hayward, the head of Deac, the animation studio, and some of my other friends who were involved in this, they knew of my predicament. And as we were coming down the stretch, they actually held up delivery of the con final contracts and my check for a couple of days. And on the last day of the 5 months, sometime between noon and 3 PM, FedEx truck pulls up, sign contracts, check for 6 figures. I paid my father-in-law back, and that gave me the money I needed to get to Batman. So sometimes, James, you just need a guardian angel. Otherwise, I would have been toast. Right. But there's also the saying, you know, you create your own luck, and you did that. It's a combination of of the passion and there's that cliche saying you're you're the average of the 5 people you spend your time with. So your parents, your father-in-law, you know, these Andy Hayward, by the way, is that Andy Hayward? It sounds funny. Does he do genius brands? Those are con okay. Yeah. I've I've met with him. I had breakfast with him couple years ago. I'm now working with Andy on a big, big, Stan Lee project. We'll be telling you about pretty soon. Is he still doing the Warren Buffett cartoon? He was doing a Warren Buffett cartoon back then. That's one of the things. Yeah. He's got a lot of great stuff in the works. Okay. Great. Good for him. So, so, yeah, I think this idea that pursuing your passion, I feel like there's 2 times to do it. There's every time to do it, but you're either in your twenties when you have, you don't have anything to risk or you're like in your fifties or you're kind of on the other side of that, or hopefully, and, and then thirties, forties become bogged down with, with mortgage and responsibilities and kid raising and all that kind of stuff. But what if someone is in their thirties or forties and wants to pursue a dream that they loved as a child? What would you suggest? Number 1, this is the hard part, Get out of your comfort zone. The hardest damn thing to do. And then you gotta be like Batman. Then you gotta reinvent yourself. And whether you reinvent yourself as a pow zap wham guy with a potbelly or as a dark maniacal guy or as a Lego guy or as, any of the iterations that you've seen in movies, TV, and animation, you've got to periodically reinvent yourself. Everything changes. Tech changes. Employment situations change. My god. You know, if if there's anything COVID has has proven in the last 2 years is that the only thing constant in our lives is change. So you've gotta be prepared to change also. And that means making calculated risks from time to time when the dice are 5149 in your favor, And you gotta be a little bit bold to do that, and it's very, very hard. I've met I've done business conferences with execs 40 and up who just lost their jobs. Mhmm. And it's like, how the hell am I gonna find another great job when I'm 50 years old? Who's gonna hire me at at this point? And it becomes reinvention because the world is changing and they need people like you maybe in different capacities, in different ways you hadn't thought of before. But, again, it comes down to getting up off the couch and and being proactive. You you can't just raise a white flag. If there's anything I learned, James, I I thought delusionally that the movie industry was gonna be such that I it was gonna be a war. Every day, I was gonna go out and fight a battle for my projects, and it isn't. It's a siege. And we've all gotta dig a foxhole and put a helmet on and hunker down for the siege. And as I always say, the most important decision you make is who you allow in that foxhole with you to watch your back. But that's what it is. Life is a siege. Embrace it. Don't fear it. Embrace it. And, let me ask you, like, in terms of, I agree about the getting out of the comfort zone. But let's say someone's just been working at a company for 20 years, and like you said, then they're laid off. How do they even start to practice or think about getting out of their comfort zone? Like, what is there some way they can even safely practice that? Well, I think it's a matter of, you you've gotta make it your age of exploration. There's a whole world out there that we all quickly lose touch with because it's changing so fast. When my kids moved out, it was goodbye to my nexus to music, to fashion, to to to to, like, everything around me. I mean, it was like it was all evaporating. To this day, I can't turn on or change the channel of my television set unless my 5 year old granddaughter's nearby. That's that's how everything goes. So you've gotta explore. You gotta find out from the podcast, from the websites, from speaking to younger people, what the hell is going on, and how do I hitch my wagon to it and stay in touch and stay in tune? That's your obligation. Your job is to get a new job. Your job is to figure this out. And if you're in between jobs, then you spend your 8 or 10 hours a day doing this kind of exploration so you can figure figure it out. And in doing the exploration, you will find your own Obi Wan Kenobi's and your own Yotas who will point the way and help you get the right training or outlook that you need. It's there, but you gotta you've it's up to you to find it. And and, you know, I guess when someone's, let's say, 45 years old, just lost their job, they're really pessimistic. In addition to all that, is there a how how would you recommend they kind of move from pessimism to at least a little bit more optimism so they can get off that couch? Wow. I know I'm putting a lot on you. Yeah. Yeah. That's a tough thing. So I'm gonna share with you something Ben Melniker taught me. Ben said, when you're depressed, when you're down, when something traumatically bad has happened in your life, whether it's the loss of a job or an opportunity or a person, when when things are going bad, you have to say, this is the greatest thing that could have happened to me because and then fill in the blank. I love that. And he said, I guarantee it will work every single time. Now he first sprung this on me after we had our last rejection from the studios on Batman. And I'm sitting on this bench on the studio lot, my head between my legs. I I was in a funk, and Ben said, now say it. Now say it. I said, alright. This is the greatest thing that could have happened to me because now we're free of that old fashioned studio thinking, and we're gonna find younger people who understand comic books more. And we're gonna find foreign companies that are gonna get this more, and we're gonna get the kind of Batman that we really want. Ben said, you got it. So now let's redouble our efforts. Forget about the studios, and we're gonna blaze a new path. Let's go. And we got up off that park he got me up off that park bench, and we and we journeyed into movie history from there. When's the last time you had to use that phrase? This is the best thing that ever happened to me because. The last time I remember using it was when Batman and Robin and Catwoman came out. And I was at the lowest point of my career. I was despondent and upset, and Ben sat me down. He goes, okay. It's time. And I looked at him. I said, I can't do it this time. He says, yes. You can. Okay. This is the greatest thing that could have happened to me because people are gonna get bit on the butt as a result of this. And as a result, the next time we're gonna get the Batman that we want, the dark and serious Batman again. Yeah. Because right after that, if I'm remembering correctly, it's like Christopher Nolan movies. Absolutely. And now I look back in retrospect, and I said it was worth going through those experiences in order to get to Chris Nolan. That really reinvigorated that that whole your whole franchise. Absolutely. And he came at it a 180 degrees differently than Tim did with the same intent, about the darkness and dignity to Batman. But he wasn't gonna build Gotham City on 5 square city blocks of Pinewood Studios. He was gonna try to convince the world that Gotham City was real and needed to do it with a real city. And by Chris picking Chicago, which you take 2 iconic buildings out of the skyline and most people around the world don't know that it's Chicago. He made people believe in Gotham City as a real city. With Christian Bale, he made them believe that Bruce Wayne could be a real young man today with post traumatic stress syndrome on this lost horizon journey of life. He made them believe that Joker in in what now post 911 had become a a gray world of order versus chaos. He he made us believe the Joker could be real today, could be a modern day terrorist. And through a perform the performance of a lifetime by Heath Ledger, with Chris, he pulled it off. And then he had to try to convince the whole world that all this crazy tech was real. And how did he do it? He hired Morgan Freeman to tell us it was real. And if Morgan Freeman says it's true, by God, it's true. I mean Literally by God. Just amazing. You walk out of a Christopher Nolan Batman movie and for the first time, you could sincerely say, not just this is a great comic book movie, you could say this is a great film. And it just elevated the whole thing. Yeah. And that and I think that really led to then the movie, the Joker, which was an unbelievable movie. Like, that was just so beautiful to me. I I I saw it, like, 3 or 4 times. Todd Phillips is another genius. And that was Todd's vision. And to me, cinema is at its best when it performs as a mirror of our society and forcibly holds a mirror up, warts and all. And when you see reflected in the Joker, the commentary on our times where we've turned our backs as a society on mental health issues, which are tied to gun violence, where we have lost our civility and people talk at each other instead of with each other, and there are consequences for all of this. That was absolutely brilliant. And the fact that it's comic book superhero, comic book villain movies that have such dramatic and important thematic heft to them, is amazing. It's just amazing. And Matt Reeves has done it again in the Batman. You know, a lot of people tell me, thinking back on the Dark Knight trilogy, the most impactful scene they ever saw was the scene where people are on 2 different ships, and they have a device. And if they press a button, they could blow up the other ship and save themselves, or they can choose not to do that. And poses the moral dilemma. You know, what happens when you have a moral choice to make and it's between bad and worse? And I can't tell you how many people tell me that in the darkness of the theaters, they sat there and came to terms with what they would do in that situation. My god. For a comic book movie to deliver on that level is is incredible, and that shows you how far we've come. And now, you know, we're we're in this world with, you know, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple. Like, there's nonstop streaming services as well as the usual networks. Are things easier now to get made, harder to get made? I mean, there's more time slots open. There's more, opportunities I would see. Sure. There's more opportunities and plenty more opportunities than ever before. But, again, everything good comes with a price. So, recently, I got you know, they always send me the DVDs or the digital downloads for the Emmy Awards. And I used to get a stack like this and a and I put it in a shelf in my kitchen, and we would watch them 1 at a time. Now it's that shelf, this shelf, this shelf, this shelf, and I call it my kids. And among the 4 of us, we still don't know over 50% of any of these titles. There is so much clutter in the marketplace today. Clutter. Because this it's it's an appetite that's 247 and is not going away for programming, for entertainment, for content. So what separates that out? There's really 2 things. 1 is a branded franchise, a brand name, and the other is star power. And, you know, typically, those are the qualities that make something stand out. Occasionally, you get something that is just so incredible high quality like Queen's Gambit that word just spreads around as fast as could be. But but that's hard to do. So, yeah, the times are changing. Everything is changing. But I tell you, it doesn't matter how the tech changes. Content is king and always will be. Right. Because you could easily predict that, oh, with the rise of YouTube, shorter form content's gonna roll the day. And to some extent, it has, but then you see, you know, the Batman do 250,000,000 this this past weekend, and it that's here to stay. So it's not going anywhere. Yeah. So isn't it amazing that you can't just generally stereotypically categorize people saying, oh, you like 2, 3 minutes stuff because you're young. Oh, you like 3 hour stuff because you're old. If it's a great story with great characters, it crosses all lines and people love that. I don't care where you're from, what god you worship, or how old you are. It works across the board, and it's really true. You know what? Every year I go back to Indiana University's media school and I teach 2 intensive courses for 3 weeks, experiential learning from Hollywood. And I open up my class every single year the same way. I say there are 10 rules to making a successful motion picture, and all my students take out their devices. You know? I go, number 1, story. Number 2, story. Number 3, story. Number 4, story. 5, story. 6, story. 7, character. 8, character. 9, character, and 10, story. And that's the bottom line for me. And for you, what's a story? Because the the great thing always about superhero characters in comic books is that they're so classically the Joseph Campbell arc of the hero. I mean, he claims he looked at all the classic literature, blah blah blah. I really just think he looked at Superman and came up with the arc of the hero. But, but for you, what's what's the story? What's what does it look like? It looks like a beginning, a middle, and an end. It looks like a character who you can become vested in, who you care about, and want to follow on his or her journey. It's a story in which a character transforms in some way, shape, or form, in an in in what we call an arc. It's a story that is thematically important or reflects, our life, which can still be told in a comedy, doesn't have to be a drama in order to achieve that. And then this is a visual medium, so it needs to be presented clearly and styled and stylishly. And that to me, in a nutshell, is what it's about. And, you know, you've mentioned you gotta find your Obi Wan, Kudobis, your Yodas. Have you ever gotten involved with the or tried to get involved with the Star Wars franchise? It seemed like that would be perfect for you. Well, I here's a story I recount in my book. Many, many, many, many years ago, I was approached by, one of my mentors, Stan Weston. Stan Yeah. I was gonna ask you about Stan Weston. He's great. His story is amazing. He he he's he was incredible. He was my mentor in the field of animation. Helped me a lot to understand it, get my get my footing in it. Stan was the architect of the Star Wars merchandising program. He was the guy, and, he also owned GI Joe. He That was his original thing, was GI Joe. Right? And he sold it to Hasbro for $50,000. Yeah. When it was the dolls. Yeah. Yeah. He did, Thundercats and Silverhawks. He has 2 boys who have done great for themselves in the industry, Brad and Steve. Stan was amazing. He came to me one day with 2 other guys. One guy was a 100 years old. His name was George Abbott, a legend of Broadway. One of the great all time directors of hit Broadway shows that you've you've heard about your whole life long and another guy who is a financial businessman. And they said, Michael, you know, we love what you've done with Batman and your understanding of, pop culture and these things. We just concluded a deal. We've acquired the rights to the Broadway play of Star Wars. And we kinda don't know exactly what to do with it, and we were hoping maybe you could come aboard and write the book for the play. I said, yes. Yes. I wound up writing 2 drafts of the book of the play, and we sat down. They were very pleased with the second draft. And I said, okay. Now here's the blueprint for what you need to do to make this work. I said, number 1, we gotta rip out all the seats of the biggest Broadway theater, and we gotta put in seats that move and shake. We have to install lasers in the theater, and here's how we're gonna do the opening where you see the bottom of the giant spaceship passing overhead and how we're gonna project holographically the and they go, stop. I go, and and by the way, guys, why don't you instead of doing it on Broadway, you should get, like, a 3,000 seat, stadium, theater in Las Vegas. I said, hold on. They said, you don't understand Broadway, son. And whenever anyone calls me son, I always know I'm in trouble. They said, this is about white haired people from the suburbs and in the city who are gonna come to this musical. And I said, no. You guys don't understand. You've got something new and different here. You're gonna have fans coming to this. You're gonna have people flying in from other countries to go to see this thing, this is a whole new ballgame for you guys. They did not accept that. And they said, now the music, I said, only 2 people can do the music. It's either gotta be Elton John or Paul McCartney. And they said, well, no. We already have somebody we want to do the music, Jimmy Webb. I said, well, I love his work up, up, and away. By the time I get to Phoenix, you know, fabulous. I said, but not for Star Wars, not now. You gotta go big and you got and they told me I was nuts, and that was the end of my association with the Star Wars Broadway musical, which didn't get made. Well, that's that's too bad. So so, look, I wanna just geek out a little bit and ask you about my favorite DC and Marvel characters and why no one's ever done anything with them, if that's okay. Legion of Superheroes. I always loved that comic book. Always loved that comic book. There's no reason that I can possibly give you as to why that hasn't happened yet. Yeah. And even, like, even the Legion of Substitute Heroes who were not as good, they were not good enough to be in the Legion of Superheroes. So That's the movie I would rather make. Like, I remember there's one psycho kid where he could move use psychic powers to do just about anything, but every time he did so, he lost a year of his life. So he couldn't be in the full group. He had to be in the substitute group. Yeah. I like stone boy. He could turn to stone. Well, there's a guy you wanna have in a fight with you. Right? Yeah. Chlorophyll kid who could turn green. I mean, give me 3 pizzas, and I'll do the same thing. It it it it it was very funny stuff. And then in in DC also, I loved, the creeper. Remember the creeper? I'm a Steve Ditko fanatic. I have saved all my Spider Man and doctor Strange Ditko runs. Love the man's art and everything he did. As a matter of fact, his history, I was the first writer after Steve Ditko of the question. I wrote the first thing after Ditko left the strip, and Alex Toth was the artist, and he's legend in the business. Alex taught me more about graphic storytelling than anyone has ever taught me, and that that was a magnificent experience. So I'm total totally a Ditko guy, creeper I get. He's turned up in animation here and there. Oh, really? Okay. I don't know. I don't know. The little little spots that turned up. I'm I'm thinking maybe Batman, Brave and Bold. I'm trying to remember which ones it was. But, you know, he's certainly I mean, if the Joker could have his own movie, there's no reason the creeper can't make his mark somewhere. Yeah. And on the Marvel side, doctor Strange was always my favorite. Of course, they've made after after a 20 year wait, they finally started making movies, with him in it. But I was always curious about I thought this was the real Guardians of the Universe where you had, like, the Collector and the Grandmaster, like, these kind of universe sized characters that had lived forever that were kind of playing games with the whole whole universe. And I don't know whatever happened to them. I will say this. I hate cookie cutter movies. I think if there's anything that's gonna undermine what we've all built here on the Marvel side, the DC side, the independent side, it's if too many cookie cutter movies oversaturate the marketplace. That's why I love Deadpool, and I loved Guardians of the Galaxy because it was nontraditional. It was out of the box. It was creative, and I love what they did with it. You know, it it it kinda brings me back to a conversation I had with Stan Lee over lunch one day at Nate Now's in Beverly Hills. And Stan was shaking his head. He goes, Michael, he goes, you're not gonna believe this. Disney is gonna spend, like, $200,000,000 and make a movie out of Ant Man. And Stan sits back. He goes, it's the one superhero I could never make a success of no matter what I did. He said, Michael, Jack and I did the man in the anthill. Didn't sell particularly well, but we got a bunch of letters. So we said, alright. Let's see if we can make this work. So I put him in a costume called the mant man. Didn't sell. So we introduced a partner, the wasp. Ant man and the wasp didn't sell. Then I thought, okay. Maybe fans don't like, heroes who shrink. I'll make them grow. He said, I changed him to giant man, didn't sell. We tried the new giant man, Didn't sell. I turned him into Goliath. It didn't sell. We did black goliath. It didn't sell. Then I said, okay. I got the wrong insect. I turned him into yellow jacket. It didn't sell. He goes, so now they're gonna spend $200,000,000. Maybe they'll figure out a way to make it work, and they did. Yeah. Paul Rudd was great. Paul Paul Rudd stole my heart in that movie. I went in wanting to hate that movie because of everything Stan said, and it just absolutely won my heart. Yeah. That's that's so interesting. But, yeah, there was back in the in the seventies marbles, there was all these characters that were not based on Earth, but they were like the watchers sort of from older civilizations and, somehow spanned the whole universe, and they just sort of, like I guess the Watchers sort of survived a bit, but these other ones didn't. Yeah. But, look, if they could do the Eternals, there there there's hope springs Eternals. Right? Yeah. Did they ever do the Inhumans? They did for TV, and it didn't work. Yeah. The Marvel Netflix relationship somehow. I don't know what happened, but I thought I thought the Daredevil show was pretty good. Of Daredevil. Jessica Jones, they were all, like, pretty good. So Daredevil. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Love I've loved everything you've done in the business and all the Batmans and everything else. And, of course, we've talked about Shazam. I can't wait for the sequel for that. And your book, Batman's Batman. And I just wanna make sure I'm getting it. I always forget titles. There's Batman's Batman, which just came out, and it's your memoir of your experiences in Hollywood, plus your experiences growing up and what really motivated you in life. And then there's this other book, your earlier book, the boy who loved Batman Correct. Who that I again, I like I said, that was, like, a love story to the comic book industry, the the the literature, the art, and and so on, and your experiences growing up around comic books. And it's just both very beautiful books and inspiring. And thank you again so much for coming on the podcast. I so appreciate it, James. And as Stan Lee used to tell me, Michael, make sure you get the full plugs in whenever you have an opportunity. So I'll just add that the audiobook version of Batman's Batman is available now, and the one for The Boy Who Loved Batman will be available in May, both narrated by yours truly so I can lull you to sleep with my stories. Are they is it exactly word for word, or you'd add some stories to the to the audiobook? They're exactly word for word, and my inspiration was my hero from when I was a kid, a guy named Gene Shepherd, who had a radio show nightly in New York City. And, also, his, his memoir was made into a movie called A Christmas Story, which he narrated, which was, quite wonderful. Thanks again, Michael, and I really appreciate it. Thanks, James. Talk to you again soon.