Episode 1324 - Aaron Blabey
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf i'm broadcasting from i think again somehow or another i've managed to be put in a nice hotel room i'm looking out at the city i'm
Marc:one of the bridges in the distance.
Marc:I can see part of the Brooklyn Bridge over there and whatever the one is further down.
Marc:I don't know what that is.
Marc:Wait, maybe that's the Brooklyn Bridge and right here is the other one.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:All right, doesn't matter.
Marc:So look.
Marc:Today on the show, I'm going to talk to Aaron Blaby.
Marc:Aaron Blaby is the author of the bad guys books.
Marc:He's Australian and he tried his hand at a bunch of other stuff like acting, art, advertising.
Marc:He did okay in a lot of different things.
Marc:The whole writing children's book thing didn't take off until he was in his 40s and now he sold over 30 million books.
Marc:And I don't know, I met him at one of the press events and I thought, well, hell, this would be an interesting conversation, interesting story, the way someone's creativity kind of finds its way.
Marc:If you stick with it, if you can handle your own talent without having it strangle you from the inside, you know, maybe you'll land, maybe you'll land.
Marc:If you don't let your talent kill you, if your talent doesn't turn on you and decide that it needs more than you can give, maybe it'll land somewhere where you can handle it and learn how to work with it and understand its limitations and you'll find some satisfactory or satisfying life for yourself.
Marc:But sadly, if you're very talented, that satisfaction generally is fleeting.
Marc:That's just my experience and I'm not even talking about me.
Marc:So, I'm recording this a couple days earlier than it's going to be posted, and last night I did The Tonight Show, and I'm assuming that today something horrendous didn't happen while I did it that has become clickbait internationally.
Marc:I don't think that happened.
Marc:I don't know how it went.
Marc:I can't address that because I'm recording this today that I'm going to do it.
Marc:I'm excited, though.
Marc:I'm excited to see Jimmy because...
Marc:Jimmy is a good audience.
Marc:Whatever anyone has to say about Jimmy Fallon, when you do that show, I've grown to like it more than all the shows, really, because he's excited for you to make him laugh.
Marc:He'll just look at you and he's like, what do you got?
Marc:Is this going to happen?
Marc:And then you do it.
Marc:It pushes you to be funny.
Marc:So being funny is important.
Marc:uh, to you, I think, uh, Fallon's a pretty, pretty great host.
Marc:Cause he just, he's like, you know, I, I don't even need to talk.
Marc:You just be funny.
Marc:And then I'll throw a couple of funny things in.
Marc:That's what they're supposed to do.
Marc:So I want to thank everybody who's come out for these last few dates.
Marc:There's a string of dates that I've done in, uh, Terry town, Providence, uh,
Marc:um boston portland maine have just been great but i saw a lot of old friends and that also was something i i i don't know i i guess i also believe that the reason i'm out here on my own is that i need to reflect is that all right is that is that possible i think it is i mean anytime i drive long distances it's meditative but driving long distances by yourself which i've done many times back and forth across the country here and there
Marc:at different points in my life, you can really sort of put some things into perspective or spend some fairly focused quality time with yourself.
Marc:Because driving is amazing because you're grounded.
Marc:And I've explored this before as a joke many years ago.
Marc:I'm not sure it really panned out.
Marc:But you're very grounded when you're thinking in a car because...
Marc:Some part of you has to drive the car.
Marc:And obviously, if you've been driving all your life, it's second nature, but it is happening.
Marc:So that's attached.
Marc:So you can sort of go on any kind of flight of reflection or meditative thoughts or even trying to solve some things about yourself or the world.
Marc:And you're tethered to the machinery.
Marc:You're not just lost.
Marc:So I think that there's something to that.
Marc:And something... I also think it's a classic American kind of mode.
Marc:On the road, man.
Marc:All right, so...
Marc:I'm weird.
Marc:I'm still a little bit defensive at the core, I guess.
Marc:I like people.
Marc:I like to engage with people.
Marc:I like to be around people.
Marc:I like to sort of socialize.
Marc:I like all those things.
Marc:But if I'm left to my own devices and I have to think about that or there's a decision to be made about doing that or not, I generally kind of don't.
Marc:And I'm not sure why.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:There's something quiet inside me that is pathologically insecure and peculiar.
Marc:But over the last few days, I've been able to spend time with people.
Marc:One guy who I've known since college, since my freshman year of college, who's remained in my life and we remain friends.
Marc:Even if we don't see each other for a year, we're still just we're very connected.
Marc:And I love the guy.
Marc:Great guy and an important friend, my friend Jimmy.
Marc:And then there was this other guy that I saw in Tarrytown, this guy Cliff, who I also met my friendship in New York college, but I haven't really seen him much, maybe twice or three times since college.
Marc:I mean, since whenever the hell that was.
Marc:When the hell was that when I went to that college?
Marc:It was like, what, 40 years?
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:But the odd thing is,
Marc:I haven't seen this guy that much since our freshman year of college.
Marc:And we were only really connected.
Marc:I saw him a few times right after college.
Marc:We kind of stayed friends, but I hadn't seen him since his wife emailed me for his birthday present.
Marc:He went to the town hall show in New York.
Marc:Cliff,
Marc:And I saw him briefly in New York when he came to the show.
Marc:And then we went and had lunch because he lives up by Tarrytown.
Marc:And there was no distance.
Marc:Like I knew the guy.
Marc:And that's bizarre to me.
Marc:And I don't quite understand that.
Marc:So many people have passed through my life.
Marc:And oddly, because of my strange fantasy brain and my need to connect, I feel very close to people that would never.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It saddens me.
Marc:Just old friends.
Marc:I don't know if it's because I'm emotionally needy or poorly parented or I'm always looking to people to sort of make it okay.
Marc:I can't explain it.
Marc:But there are people in my life that I've spent time with and that I've been friends with in the past that I love and that if I really think about it, I miss having a friendship with them.
Marc:But it's just not in the cards and it's not that important.
Marc:And in comedy, I think...
Marc:I think that's also why I love comedy and comedians is because we're this weird community that we're sort of guarded.
Marc:We're sort of defensive and we're sort of, you know, our own people.
Marc:But when we see each other, it feels to me like a real community, certainly with some of them.
Marc:And we don't need to spend a lot of time with each other.
Marc:And it just feels intrinsically connected emotionally.
Marc:Is my life flashing before my eyes?
Marc:What the fuck is happening?
Yeah.
Marc:But my point is, like, I was trying to understand that because I spent time with Cliff and it was just great.
Marc:You know, we talked a little bit about what happened to people, but we don't know.
Marc:But it was really talking about our own lives where he ended up or I ended up.
Marc:But the core of it, the core of who we were as people was the same.
Yeah.
Marc:And I have to assume that at certain points of your life, your neural pathways or whatever the hell it is, are still sort of being carved out emotionally and experientially.
Marc:I'm just speculating.
Marc:But if you lock in with somebody at a developmental point of your life, which when you're 21, or what were we, 19, I guess it still is really.
Marc:You're still impressionable.
Marc:Your core is set, but in terms of who you are and defining yourself isn't.
Marc:The people you meet along the way during that time, and I guess that's always, but it does get a little more narrow as you get older, they stay with you almost on a genetic level, on an emotionally genetic level.
Marc:There's just people like that that I just feel connected with in a way that I can't quite explain.
Marc:It's almost familial.
Marc:So cut to, I get an email from a woman that I used to work with at a restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts Edibles years ago.
Marc:Her name's Alice.
Marc:So her husband's a big fan.
Marc:I haven't talked to this person since, it's been 35, 37, I don't know, years ago.
Marc:I've not heard or seen this woman.
Marc:So I get this email out of nowhere from her that her husband's a big fan and she's been a big fan and she's, you know, they've kind of, her husband is a seriously big fan.
Marc:And I never met him.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know their life.
Marc:I don't know her.
Marc:And I would never expect to hear it.
Marc:It was a total surprise to see her name pop up.
Marc:And she just wanted to tell me that they wanted to meet me and say hi after the show.
Marc:And it would be he would love it.
Marc:And I'm like, oh, my God.
Marc:Great.
Marc:But then I realized, like, I was in love with this person.
Marc:I had a huge crush on this person.
Marc:I worked at a restaurant with her.
Marc:Again, I was like, what, 20, 19, 20?
Marc:developmental period.
Marc:And I'm sitting there, I'm working behind the counter.
Marc:She's working the front encounter and we're, you know, there's a cast of characters there, but I was, I, I, I guess I could say obsessed, but, uh, I don't know.
Marc:She, the way she framed the email was like, I don't know if she remembered.
Marc:She was just sort of like, if you don't remember me, how could I not remember you?
Marc:But my point being is that it's that vibration.
Marc:It's that frequency.
Marc:It's either the developmental part of your life or just feelings, even though the time was fleeting and it wasn't that long of a time.
Marc:I did not feel like there's any distance.
Marc:I met her and her husband, Charlie.
Marc:Great people.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:But I didn't feel like right when I saw her, I was sort of like, oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and it was all kind of still there.
Marc:It just stays there.
Marc:This sort of frequency.
Marc:It's tempered, and obviously we've had whole lives and tragedies and whatever the hell our life is, but you reach back into that core group of feelings, that vibration.
Marc:It's not even like time travel.
Marc:It's almost like an eternal frequency.
Marc:I don't know how else to say it.
Marc:It's something that's sort of always there.
Marc:You're on this same...
Marc:this wavelength with these people that you've met in your life and even though the wavelength dulls or or seems to be disconnected for many years like when you get back in it if it's there it's there and those are the people that you know have made a profound impact on your life and i'm just noticing it more and i'm just taking advantage of spending the time with these people and my buddy jim he's the best and uh you know we've stayed in touch and he's had a very big life much bigger than mine you know he was
Marc:involved in politics, international politics.
Marc:He worked for the government.
Marc:He bought a boat and boated around the world.
Marc:He made a movie in Bulgaria.
Marc:But when it comes back around to it,
Marc:You know, he came to the show, he hung out, but when we sit down and we do the thing and spend a day together, it's just Mark and Jim and all that stuff.
Marc:Yeah, it's there, but it's just reengaging that wavelength.
Marc:And it's very, I think it's important for your heart and your soul and your mind.
Marc:If you have those people, you know, spend time with those people because I think that's a beautiful part of life.
Right?
Marc:listen to the old man realize that friends are good so the bad guys opens tomorrow tomorrow in the states at theaters that's exciting i really wonder what people are going to think or if it's going to catch on or if it's going to be an exciting big animation film for the family to enjoy i have no idea
Marc:And I didn't, you know, I don't have children, so I'm not engaged with the books on a day-to-day basis, but I did look at them in preparation to play Mr. Snake.
Marc:And it's exciting.
Marc:I mean, obviously the push for this thing, the press push has been monumental, but more than any other film I've ever been in.
Marc:But I mean, if people enjoy it, it'll be very satisfying.
Marc:And, you know, talking to Aaron Blaby,
Marc:uh he's he's one of the producers on the movie obviously but he's he's the guy that created the book and it was a long journey to get there and i i met him at a press event and i said you should we should do the show and this is this this is this this is me talking to the creator of the bad guys books aaron blaby
Marc:The weird thing is, like, what do I want to do, man?
Marc:Do I want to just keep plugging away?
Marc:Or do I want to try to enjoy something?
Marc:What about you?
Marc:It seems like, you know, if you wanted to, you could be like,
Marc:All right.
Marc:Let's call it a fucking day.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know.
Guest:It's, it's, well, it's, it's, what is it?
Guest:It's two years away from me.
Guest:I've got this.
Guest:Got a plan?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I do.
Guest:There's the books, the bad guys books.
Guest:There's going to be 20 of them.
Guest:I've just finished 16.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Two a year, which two years left.
Guest:I've got a new series and then there'll be, that's only three parts.
Guest:That'll be finished the same year.
Guest:And then I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think I'll be doing any more of that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because that will be... It's 48 books in not long.
Guest:It's 40 books in 10 years.
Marc:There's 48 bad guys books?
Guest:No, because I got three series that are... Children's books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Three series that are doing well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a thing about it.
Guest:There's a thing called Pig the Pug.
Guest:There's a thing called Thumb of the Unicorn.
Guest:And then there's the bad guys.
Guest:They all have a life of their own.
Guest:But Pig's finished now.
Guest:Thelma's finished now.
Guest:Bad Guys is the last one that is yet to be complete.
Guest:And then I'm sort of out the other side.
Guest:And yeah, I don't know either.
Guest:I have no idea what I'm going to do.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:I don't even know.
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:I'm 48.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So it seems that children's books, as a business, it's just going to go on and on.
Guest:yeah I mean and like if you stop working you're just gonna you're gonna make money in your sleep because there's there's kids being born every day that need to read the bad guys books or the pig book or the other book right yeah I well that's that I like the idea of that I'm I'm I'm too I get frightened that that is is not a not a real thing but and you know and like 10 years ago or something books were dead I was told you know you need a new line of work no one's gonna buy books anymore
Guest:Children's books?
Guest:Yeah, well, that was the thing.
Guest:Suddenly, it was all going to be digital.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that just never happened.
Guest:No, people like to hold things.
Guest:They do.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They do.
Marc:So, I don't know.
Marc:But I guess my point, and this is just a general question that I have about age myself and my peers or people slightly older than me, and maybe relative to creative people in general, wasn't the idea to stop working eventually?
Marc:Well, I mean, maybe I'm wrong.
Marc:I mean, wasn't it sort of like, I'm going to make enough money so I can not do this anymore?
Guest:You know, I think what it was for me, because you've done what you do for such a long time now.
Guest:This is something I found late.
Guest:I had done so many other things until I wrote my first book.
Guest:I was 32, but I couldn't give it away, and I couldn't give away the first...
Guest:eight, really.
Guest:They were not particularly successful, so I just... Not bad guys.
Guest:No, this is pre-bad guys.
Guest:So what is this?
Guest:How do you... Where'd you grow up?
Guest:I grew up in the same... Around the same area with one of the other people who's been on your show, Nick Cave.
Guest:We grew up in the same region.
Guest:We briefly lived in the same town, but not at the same time.
Guest:You know him?
Guest:No, he read one of my books once.
Guest:He recorded one of my books, oddly enough.
Guest:But...
Guest:Did you see him around?
Guest:Was he the weird kid on the bike?
Guest:No, because I'm a little younger than him, so I missed him.
Guest:He was always loomed large in my youthful psyche as evidence that you could come from there and do something interesting.
Guest:Get out and do something good?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So what town was this?
Guest:Well, that was Wangaratta.
Guest:Wangaretta?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what area is that?
Guest:What's that near?
Guest:That is not near a great deal.
Guest:It's in regional Victoria, which is down the south of Australia on the east coast.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:So it's not like way over where Perth is?
Guest:No, the opposite side.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I wasn't born there.
Guest:I was born in a town called Bendigo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where's that?
Guest:About two hours from Wangaretta.
Guest:And all of these are like two hours up for something from Melbourne.
Guest:Oh, they're up?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So was it desolate?
Marc:I have a hard time picturing Australia.
Marc:I've been to Sydney.
Marc:I've been to Melbourne for a couple weeks.
Marc:I was in Brisbane.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:Is it desolate?
Guest:I don't know if it's desolate.
Guest:What I always really admired about Nick is he seemed to be able to romanticize it.
Guest:He kind of turned it into a...
Guest:He's sort of dark Johnny Cash-esque landscape in his mind.
Guest:It was something that I just had to... I escaped into movies.
Guest:That was my thing.
Guest:And that's why I do what I do is because of movies.
Guest:The invention of the VHS tape changed my life.
Marc:You ever come from a big family?
Marc:Just me.
Guest:Your only child?
Guest:Only child.
Guest:We moved all the time.
Guest:So I was always the new kid, the weird kid in my own head.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Always.
Marc:And in your own head, but not in reality?
Marc:Were you treated like the weird kid?
Marc:I think only kids get a weird thing.
Marc:Yeah, I agree.
Guest:But I think... You're the only ones who agreed with me.
Guest:No, I can't deny it.
Guest:I don't think it was ever anywhere long enough to kind of... I never got bullied, but I think it was because I developed the skill really early on to be invisible.
Guest:oh yeah yeah yeah and then but then it cut to however many years later when i was in my like 19 i became an actor and what business was your dad on the run but it well it kind of it kind of seems that way he he uh
Guest:There's not a good explanation for why they moved so much.
Guest:He worked in... Do you have building societies here?
Marc:What do they do?
Guest:It's like a building society.
Guest:It's like a little regional bank.
Guest:And he worked in those... Oh, small banks?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He moved around and did that, but that doesn't explain the number of moves.
Guest:But they stayed together, your folks?
Guest:Yeah, they're still together.
Guest:They've been together for 100 years.
Guest:But they're... Where are they?
Guest:Are they in a regular city now?
Guest:They still live in Bendigo.
Guest:They moved around and ended up back...
Guest:there eventually.
Marc:But you wouldn't think they didn't want to live in a city?
Marc:They're just comfortable there?
Guest:They tried it.
Guest:They followed me around a few times.
Guest:They followed me to Melbourne.
Guest:They followed me to Sydney.
Guest:And then they always kind of just gravitated back there.
Marc:Well, they must like it then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's comfortable.
Marc:So when you were a kid, are you drawing pictures or you're not drawing pictures?
Guest:I'm drawing pictures, but it was really- Reading comics?
Guest:Yeah, but it was movies.
Guest:Oh, movies.
Guest:But it wasn't just, it was Spielberg and that kind of thing, but it was also, it was other stuff.
Guest:The day I got my hands on a copy of The Road Warrior was a big deal, a really big deal.
Marc:Well, that's your country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah well yeah um it was it was just so so cool but you know and i i i uh somebody mentioned um american werewolf in london to me this morning and that was like a that was a big and i remember i was nine years old and i got asked because i was the kid who loved movies i got asked by some kid's mother to select a movie for this kid's nine-year-old birthday party and i turned up with american werewolf in london and terrified the entire room that's a little rough for nine yeah it is it is a little rough
Marc:When he's sitting there with his- It didn't go well.
Marc:With his veins hanging out of his neck.
Marc:It was not a successful- Was that Griffin Dunn with his veins hanging out of his neck?
Marc:Yeah, it sure was.
Marc:But yeah, but like Road Warrior, what was the first one?
Marc:Mad Max?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's always what I assumed most of Australia looked like.
Marc:Even though it was supposed to be post-apocalyptic.
Guest:It kind of does.
Guest:And if you, okay, if you do want to picture Wangaretta-
Guest:You can picture the first Mad Max.
Guest:You can kind of picture that.
Marc:Yeah, so that seems desolate to me.
Marc:Yeah, okay.
Marc:Do you ever go out to the middle, to the big mound?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I've never been.
Guest:What is it called?
Guest:It's called Air's Rock, or it's called Uluru.
Guest:It's actually the proper, the indigenous name.
Guest:You never went out there?
Guest:No, I've never made it that far.
Guest:That seems like a college, or like a trip you'd make with your friends.
Guest:It does, but that would have required me to have had friends.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:What about bugs?
Marc:Were there a lot of big bugs in your past?
Guest:Well, I now live in the mountains outside of Sydney.
Guest:It's incredible to me that Americans are always talking about how scary the things that live in the countryside in Australia are spiders and snakes.
Guest:But there's nothing in our countryside that will literally eat you.
Guest:Like you have, though.
Guest:You've got bears and cougars.
Guest:Your cats are in a little zoo because you can't let them out.
Marc:You don't got any coyotes?
Marc:No, we don't have coyotes.
Marc:Well, that's lucky because they're spreading everywhere.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, there's coyotes everywhere.
Marc:They're in malls.
Marc:They're all over the country.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:Just packs of coyotes.
Marc:You don't got no wild dogs?
Marc:You got wild dogs.
Guest:We've got wild dogs.
Guest:Well, that's not nothing.
Guest:But they're not.
Guest:What are they, dingoes?
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:But don't quiz me too much on dingoes.
Guest:My very limited knowledge of the comings and goings of dingoes.
Marc:I expect all Australians I talk to to know everything about the fauna and the wildlife of Australia.
Marc:No.
Marc:You're talking to the wrong guy.
Guest:Although I do like the scary ones.
Guest:The scary plants or bugs?
Guest:The bugs.
Guest:One of my sons is a terrible arachnophobe, but I kind of like them.
Guest:I've got my technique down of getting a spider off a wall.
Guest:I'm good at that.
Marc:But I mean, are they bigger?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't have any sense.
Marc:I just know that people talk about this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we have a couple that are really unpleasantly deadly.
Guest:There's a couple that will kill you stone dead fast.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:In the house?
Guest:They can be.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:They can be.
Guest:Are they easy to identify?
Guest:Do they look like killers?
Guest:They do.
Guest:They do.
Guest:It's not up for debate.
Marc:You can tell straight away.
Marc:All right, so now the character I'm getting that is you is like, you know, you don't have any friends in high school?
Marc:You have another, is there a couple other?
Guest:Well, we stopped moving by high school.
Guest:That's right, it was the moving thing.
Guest:Yeah, so I settled in a bit and I started to kind of... You asked about drawing earlier.
Guest:I did draw pictures, but I always found it really unsatisfying because I was trying to kind of recreate what I was seeing in movies but on a page.
Guest:That was something you did consciously?
Guest:Yeah, I did, yeah.
Guest:And it always felt like there was a big hole...
Guest:I would see something, I would want to try and recapture it somehow.
Guest:I'd draw it really badly and just felt like... And that kind of gaping hole was there from... I saw Empire Strikes Back when I was six years old and it's been there ever since.
Guest:I remember the day I saw that film.
Guest:That's when the hole started?
Guest:It did.
Guest:I actually... I recall that feeling of a sort of...
Guest:hard to define dissatisfaction from that it's it's it sounds like bullshit but it's true with the world or with everything just with with with everything i did and you know one of the other problems there was the beatles because i'm i'm all music has been the other i'm not i'm not but i'm not talented musically yeah but i love it and i i'm obsessed with it and i as a kid uh
Guest:It's funny, the Beatles, the breadth of their achievement kind of loomed almost too large.
Guest:It discouraged me from trying to do anything for a long time.
Guest:Creatively, you were just sort of like, the Beatles did it, it's over.
Marc:It's done.
Guest:Between the Empire Strikes Back and the Beatles, there's no reason.
Guest:There's nothing left to do.
Guest:Yeah, that's how it felt.
Guest:It did.
Guest:It really did.
Guest:Did you watch the documentary?
Guest:Peter Jackson stuff?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was brilliant.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:The get back moment was extraordinary when he just whips it up.
Marc:But what's interesting is that you really see that it's a magic that you can't explain because it's not like they're doing anything that complicated.
Marc:It's just four dudes and then Billy Preston.
Marc:hanging around, dicking around, but there's something about the alchemy of them together that is unexplainable.
Guest:It's the thing that haunted me, always did, is the odds against Paul and... This is the thing.
Guest:Paul and John meeting each other is astronomical, but the fact that someone as good as George as well happened to also be a local and went, hey, let's do this.
Guest:And then...
Marc:But were they good at the beginning?
Marc:I mean, when they met, were they good?
Marc:I mean, they all grew together.
Marc:I know.
Guest:And look, who knows what impact the presence of Ringo, because Ringo was beautiful in that documentary too.
Guest:He seemed a little wasted, but he seemed great.
Guest:I don't know, his energy was kind of... It was, it was grounding.
Guest:And that's what he's supposed to be doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's very special.
Guest:So, yeah, they haunted me a long time.
Marc:In the shadow of Spielberg's empire, or of Lucas and the Beatles.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you weren't aspiring to do music, nor were you aspiring to be a filmmaker.
Guest:Well, the only reason I didn't is because of where I- Because they did it.
Guest:No, well, also because of where I was from.
Guest:So it felt like I mentioned Nick, and that was later on I became aware of Nick.
Guest:But I-
Guest:It didn't seem possible because there was no evidence that could be done from where I was from.
Guest:When you were a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I lived on the moon.
Guest:I lived on the moon.
Guest:I guess why I love Mad Max, because it was like this cool thing that had been shot nearby.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it made sense.
Guest:And to this day, I can't look at an anamorphic frame without thinking of those crazy guys stuck on the, like literally sitting on a little rig on the front of a car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going 110 up a highway with the camera on the ground.
Guest:I mean, it's the most beautiful thing ever.
Guest:And that was so exciting because it felt like something really just world class.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And from Australia.
Guest:From Australia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But cutting a whole new path through something.
Guest:I mean, I know that especially the sequel, the Road Warrior, had such a big impact on Spielberg.
Guest:All kinds of people went, wow.
Yeah.
Marc:yeah all of them are kind of exciting yeah really the third one's not so great the one with all the kids was that the one with tina turner yeah yeah i don't remember someone had the idea to take cars out of the equation and that wasn't oh it's a cage match thing yeah that bit was all right but then they're suddenly on a train and yeah i don't i don't remember it all but i remember the one there's a reason for that yeah with uh i'm not even sure i saw it thunderdome yeah that's right
Marc:But I saw the one with, what's her name?
Marc:Charlize.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fun.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah, really good fun.
Marc:Well, that guy Hardy's kind of like from another planet.
Marc:He's Australian?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, he's English.
Marc:No, he's English.
Marc:All right, so no music, no movie making, and you're beaten.
Marc:You're like, what, 15 and it's over?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the next significant moment, it's another movie, it was Silence of the Lambs.
Guest:I saw Silence of the Lambs.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:It was in year 11, which is what, your junior year at high school.
Guest:And I got it in my head that I could fill that hole by becoming...
Guest:I was so deeply impressed by what those two were doing in that film that I thought that's what I'm going to do.
Guest:And I moved to Melbourne when I was 17 and kind of willed myself into doing that.
Guest:And I just, at the outset, I'm a terrible, terrible actor.
Guest:On a really core level, I'm not good at it.
Guest:Because I think I'm never properly inside it.
Guest:I did it for a long time.
Guest:I did it for over a decade.
Guest:But I...
Guest:I think I was always kind of levitating over myself watching a scene trying to... Interesting, but not good.
Guest:Not good at all.
Marc:But it's odd that you watch two of the great actors, and that's undaunting to you.
Marc:The Beatles in Empire Strikes Back just took the wind out of your sails, but you watch Anthony Hopkins, they're like, I can do this.
Guest:I know, isn't that interesting?
Guest:I don't know what the hell I was thinking, because I really couldn't.
Guest:That's the thing I discovered in no uncertain terms.
Guest:But it looks like he worked.
Guest:Well, yeah, I did.
Marc:Is it just because in Australia, if you hang around long enough, everyone gets a turn?
Guest:I feel like, because there's two beautiful actors from Australia, Ben Mendelsohn and- He's great.
Guest:He would have seen a bunch of things, and Noah Taylor is wonderful as well, and I felt like- I've worked with Noah Taylor.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:You did in it in all my sense, yeah.
Marc:So this is your generation?
Guest:My generation, and I felt like because I had a passing resemblance to those two guys when I was younger, I felt like it was simply a case in Australia that if you couldn't get Ben and you couldn't get Noah, you could get that guy maybe.
Marc:Well, it's weird that you bring it up because when you think about it, a lot of great actors have come out of Australia.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:So many.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:It is ridiculous.
Marc:Per capita, it's insane how many great actors have come out of Canada.
Marc:It's sort of like the comedic talent out of Canada.
Marc:There are serious actors out of Australia, and there's unexplainable comedic talent coming out of Canada.
Marc:I don't know what it is, but like what?
Marc:Heath was from there.
Marc:Russell Crowe.
Marc:Eric Boehner.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's so many great, great Australian actors.
Marc:Madison something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ben's always been my favorite, I have to say.
Guest:Friend of yours?
Guest:I haven't seen Ben in 20 years, but he was always very kind to me.
Guest:He was a bit older than me, and he was always lovely.
Marc:So you didn't train as an actor?
Guest:No, I fell into it.
Guest:I was seen in a high school play and cast in a TV show.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I won an award for being in the TV show.
Guest:And that was the worst thing that could ever happen to me because it gave me false sense of confidence that I could do it.
Guest:How many seasons?
Guest:Just the one.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, just one little low-budget Australian thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think the award was just because I was a fresh face, I think.
Guest:I think it couldn't have been anything else.
Marc:And then what goes on?
Marc:So now you're an actor and you're living that life.
Marc:Can you go on auditions?
Marc:Yeah, all that stuff.
Marc:The worst.
Marc:Yeah, endless humiliation.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Endless kicks in the balls over and over again.
Marc:By this time, you're into Nick Cave and your music case have shifted.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Are you into art?
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:That crept up on me in my 20s, and then I eventually became all about that by the end of my 20s and spent years just painting and thinking about.
Guest:Again, it was formless and pointless and didn't lead anywhere, but I didn't realize at the time I was actually laying pipe to do what I do now.
Marc:So how does the acting end?
Guest:The acting ends just with a really slow, sad decline of just... Opportunity?
Guest:Well, I got a couple of things that in Australia were kind of a big deal, but they didn't do well, and I take full responsibility for them not doing particularly well, because if someone else had been cast in a couple of these things that was a little more accomplished with what they were doing, then maybe it would have landed.
Guest:You think?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:From the bottom of my heart.
Guest:You just take it all on, don't you?
Guest:It's true.
Guest:And I've often got the feeling in the last few years that, because again, I spend a lot of my time in isolation doing what I do.
Guest:I've got hints, a sense that some people in the industry in Australia...
Guest:I might be even offended that I'm bagging the actual projects.
Guest:I'm really not.
Guest:It's me.
Guest:Entirely what I was contributing.
Guest:Because I just had no sense of self at the time.
Guest:None.
Guest:And it was because I think I'd formed my version of myself by watching movies and kind of deciding in my head that I was going to be in that somehow.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But did your parents just walk in a room or what?
Marc:Because I had problems with sense of self too.
Marc:But it was because...
Marc:I felt that my parents had no boundaries and they were selfish and something didn't get finished.
Marc:I'm not sure what it was.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a difficult thing because when you're old enough to realize that that's a problem, what are you going to do about that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you can always look at yourself and go like, no, I'm not quite there, am I?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the thing of woodshedding it, that's entirely what I did.
Guest:I convinced my wife to bail on Sydney and we moved into the countryside and I started painting.
Guest:This is after the acting thing?
Marc:This is after the acting thing.
Marc:You were just sort of like, did you have a crisis?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:It felt like a really bright and positive crisis at the time because, again, I'm really, really good, I think, at...
Guest:deluding myself that I can just conjure things out of nothing, which I did as a kid.
Guest:You know, a kid coming from Wangaretto and Bendigo, coming to Melbourne, deciding I'm gonna be an actor.
Guest:It's, like, ridiculous.
Guest:But I somehow kind of made that happen.
Marc:But through the whole acting thing, you never took any lessons?
Guest:No.
Guest:no i know i see this is the thing that makes all kinds of sense when you think about it now but no i didn't high school were you in a class yeah i was yeah that well that was i kind of felt like i had all the tools which is just so stupid no oh man it's a lot of now is most of acting honestly and i'd say this from talking to a lot of actors a good percentage of it is just natural
Marc:For sure.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:When you see good ones, like, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm, you know, and all, you know, bullshit aside, I mean, when I watch somebody like you who has come to acting quite late, it's astonishing to me how, you know, good you are.
Marc:Well, I mean, I thought about it.
Marc:You know, I mean, I don't know that I have that.
Marc:I talk to people.
Marc:I get free lessons from famous actors when I talk to them.
Marc:If you listen to any of my actor interviews, there's at least 10 minutes where I'm like, how do you do it?
Marc:And most of it is just sort of, you gotta just listen.
Marc:I'm like, all right, I'm good at that, kinda, for the most part.
Marc:Well, anyway, so what...
Marc:How did the crisis manifest?
Marc:Was it dark?
Marc:You said it was good.
Guest:I had a creeping interest in painting and art, and there was a book about Picasso I saw, and I kind of- That was your art school?
Guest:Yeah, it was, a single book.
Guest:Again, I did it again.
Guest:I didn't do any classes.
Guest:And I have a kind of resistance to that.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:And we moved away.
Guest:I started to paint.
Guest:And I painted some exhibitions.
Guest:And the first ones went quite well.
Guest:But again, I didn't really know.
Guest:There was no narrative in it.
Guest:And I think that was the bit that I... Abstract?
Guest:No, they were figurative.
Guest:They were paintings of women.
Guest:I was painting boobs, mostly.
Guest:They were kind of nice, I guess, but they were sort of a bit... It was just learning how to use paint.
Guest:I was just painting form more than anything else.
Marc:But you had a sense for it.
Marc:You had a feel for it.
Marc:I did.
Guest:I did for the first time.
Guest:I felt like I was sort of onto something, but I missed narrative.
Guest:What do you mean narrative?
Guest:Well, the fact, the reason that I got into acting was because I love movies.
Guest:I loved the idea of story being told.
Guest:And in painting, I mean, and people can do, you know, paint narratively, but I wasn't.
Guest:And I just, again, it felt like a dead end, a roadblock.
Guest:And then...
Guest:Out of nowhere, I wrote my first book.
Guest:And again, it was the one that didn't do particularly well.
Guest:But how many paintings you saw?
Guest:You did good?
Guest:Pretty good.
Guest:Over a couple of years.
Guest:And again, I was doing exhibitions.
Guest:There was only like six of them or something.
Guest:But yeah, the first few completely sold out.
Marc:So you had a gallery?
Guest:Yeah, a couple of them.
Guest:Actually, I had a gallery in Melbourne, one in Sydney, and one in Adelaide.
Marc:So you did the acting, you got on TV, and you did what, a couple movies?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But then you decide on painting and then you sell some paintings.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you got some talent.
Marc:This is a creative life.
Guest:Well, that's why I kept at it.
Guest:But then when I started making books and nobody was buying them, I thought there was a period where then I had went off and started working in advertising for a couple of years, which I just, because again, I was thinking, well, how can I put words and pictures together and kind of make a living?
Guest:Because I had two kids now all of a sudden.
Guest:When did you get married?
Guest:We were young.
Guest:In the middle of the acting?
Guest:Yeah, in the middle of the acting.
Guest:We met in a play.
Guest:Kirstie was an actress as well.
Guest:She's not now.
Marc:What'd she end up doing?
Guest:She's a speech pathologist.
Guest:Oh, that's helpful.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a very, very worthy thing to do.
Marc:It's a lot more helpful than acting.
Marc:It is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we were babies.
Guest:We were in a play.
Guest:We were 25, I think.
Guest:And we got married the next year.
Guest:We've been married ever since.
Marc:So she stuck with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I guess your crises weren't too damaging.
Guest:Well, it wasn't a picnic.
Guest:That's...
Guest:That's for sure.
Marc:I'm wondering how the decision to go into advertising, that must have been a good bit of wrestling.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Look, it's... I thought I could do it, and I thought I'd find a way to... And I tried to enthuse myself about it.
Guest:How am I gonna make this?
Guest:You gotta be really smart to do this.
Guest:This is gonna be great.
Guest:And I was so... There's the Botanical Gardens in Sydney.
Guest:There's a place I call the Sobbing Tree.
Guest:Every lunchtime, I would just go and lie under this tree and weep.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I just, like, so deeply depressed for the two years that I did that.
Guest:Because you couldn't see where past it?
Guest:All the stuff that I'd... That impulse from when I was young to, you know, somehow create something cool.
Guest:Out of nothing.
Guest:out of nothing um felt like it had just died and i had to give it all up and then i when i bailed from that i found a little sort of loophole by going and teaching at a design college because of i'd sort of blagged my way into that by having worked briefly in advertising and and painted so i kind of got myself a job teaching
Guest:design and that was it was kind of all right but then that was when i convinced my wife again to move to another part of the countryside which is when well you're just like your dad i guess yeah it's a little bit isn't it a little bit maybe now you understand like i gotta run away from this there's no way we can make a new go of it until i change everything that could be it
Marc:But tell me about when you did the first book.
Marc:So this is after your painting, and you decided, well, you got tired of painting boobs.
Marc:You didn't see any future in it, or you weren't enjoying it?
Guest:Well, again, it was selling really well, but it didn't feel like it was going anywhere particularly interesting.
Marc:oh yeah so so there's no your your life story was boring to you not just the fact that there was no narrative to the artwork it was just sort of like i i guess i can just go on doing this or but it would get boring well it had nothing to do with what i really love so my my biggest all those movies all my heroes are movies and songwriters they're my heroes yeah but you weren't it didn't sound like you were heading in either of those but what's really it but this is the thing
Guest:I think the reason that the books ultimately became as popular as they have is because once again, it was driven in no way by an interest in what my peers were doing on any level.
Guest:I started making books that were entirely driven by somebody who...
Guest:had songwriters and movie makers in their mind.
Guest:Well, what was the first book?
Guest:Well, it took me 10 years to find what I'm talking about now.
Guest:The first ones were more personal.
Guest:They were really, there was no trace of metaphor in them really at all.
Guest:Well, what was it?
Guest:Well, the first one was about me and my wife, but in children book form.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was kind of nice.
Guest:But it was warmly received, but it was just, I don't know.
Marc:I got to move to Australia.
Marc:It sounds like you can get away with murder.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:The guy paints boobs for a few years.
Marc:He's got six shows.
Marc:Decides to act.
Marc:He's on television.
Marc:Writes one book about him and his wife this night.
Marc:Boy, it was Steve Nicely.
Marc:It was.
Marc:But nobody bought it.
Marc:Nobody bought it.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:But so, again, with the children's books, did you do any sort of research?
Marc:None.
Marc:No.
Marc:None.
Marc:So how do you decide how to talk to kids?
Marc:No.
Guest:You had some.
Guest:Well, this is the thing.
Guest:We just had our first... And it sounds like it was a conscious decision, but it wasn't.
Guest:I wrote the first one not long after our first son was born.
Guest:But at the time, because he didn't have a... This is the other pivotal.
Guest:There was a few things, but...
Guest:The books didn't get good until my kids were old enough to have a sense of humor.
Guest:And then once they had a defined sense of humor that I knew I could make them laugh, that's when I found my voice.
Guest:For want of a better word, my voice.
Marc:What was the first book that sold?
Marc:Pig the Pug.
Guest:It's a picture book that has been wildly popular but is at odds with the entire picture book market because it has an edge to it that you don't expect to see in picture books.
Guest:It's a dog who is mean and selfish.
Guest:He takes all the toys.
Guest:Another little dog wants to share them.
Guest:He won't do it.
Guest:He gets up on the pile of toys, falls out the window, and ends up in an all-body cast.
Guest:And it was an immediate hit.
Guest:People just found it really funny.
Guest:Well, I guess karma's a bitch.
Marc:Yeah, that's it.
Marc:They're books about karma.
Guest:And there's a whole series of big books, and they're all about karma.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He doesn't get taught a lesson in the regular way?
Marc:No, he doesn't.
Guest:It's questionable whether he even learns a lesson at the end.
Guest:But he takes a hit.
Guest:Yeah, he does.
Guest:He does.
Guest:And then all of a sudden he opened the door because that was coming from a place that was, I don't know, it just, it made me happy.
Guest:It was the first thing I'd ever done that made me happy.
Guest:I went, that's really funny.
Guest:And you did the art and the... And suddenly, yeah, I was putting words with pictures and I wasn't selling my soul.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was doing something that made me laugh and made... And then I started touring around schools because I needed the money at the time and because I wanted to road test the material.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:In a funny way, it was a bit like being a...
Guest:It was my equivalent of being a comic because I would go to schools.
Guest:They would invite me as an author.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would put the books on kind of a big screen, the artwork, and I would read or perform what was in them.
Guest:And if I didn't get a laugh in certain sections, if a book wasn't finished, I'd adjust and shift and then apply to the school.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Sedaris does it that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went around doing that and I went to a couple of hundred schools over a couple of years.
Guest:You get paid for the gig.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And that was how you wrote some of the-
Marc:The pug books.
Guest:That's where I found the way to pitch them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So the pig, the pug.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the first series.
Guest:That was the first one.
Guest:But it happened almost simultaneously because, and this sounds like a lie, but it's not.
Guest:When we moved to where we live now and nothing had worked, I was 40, but I felt like the kids were young and it felt like my last chance, otherwise I was just going to do advertising or something forever.
Guest:And I went for a walk and I came up with Pig, the bad guys, and Thelma, my other character that's found an audience, all in like a 48 hour period.
Guest:What is she?
Guest:She's a plain little horse that wants to be special.
Guest:She sticks a carrot on her head.
Guest:There's a truck accident where she gets covered in pink paint.
Guest:suddenly she's a unicorn, but it doesn't work out quite the way she thinks.
Guest:And that's being turned into a movie too.
Guest:Jared Hess is making a movie.
Marc:Is that a series of books?
Marc:Yeah, true.
Guest:It's a little, like, a book in two parts.
Marc:Can't keep the horse painted for 10, can you?
Guest:Well, yeah, no, I couldn't.
Guest:I couldn't.
Guest:I couldn't do it.
Guest:But, well, it's a Netflix movie, but it might be a TV show too.
Guest:So I'm curious to see how they're going to keep her painted for a series.
Guest:But, yeah.
Marc:She's got to be onto it and she's got to figure out how to keep getting painted.
Marc:So wait, once you sell it, you're out of the writing game with that?
Guest:No, because not directly, like with the bad guys, I worked with them because I came on as an EP.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And every draft and every cut, I was just- You were on it?
Guest:I was on it and did my notes and
Marc:So what was this?
Marc:Where did you take this walk that changed your life?
Marc:What do you attribute that to?
Marc:Had you quit your job at the advertising?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was still teaching.
Guest:I was still in that last little window.
Guest:Oh, teaching the design?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It sounds like a train wreck.
Guest:As I'm describing this to you in detail, I realize how- It's definitely not a train wreck.
Marc:It's not like you ended up in rehab or something.
Marc:It was just sort of like, it sounds like you frame it as sort of a sad life, as a soul death.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Well, it felt like that for a while.
Marc:I'm sure it was.
Marc:How dramatic was the quitting of the advertising?
Guest:It was great, but I just found an escape hatch.
Guest:It was just a string of escape hatches, really.
Guest:Where did you take this walk?
Guest:It's around the town where I live.
Guest:I live in a town called Lura in the Blue Mountains.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:I just walked around.
Guest:Maybe you should have named that street after you.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:This is where it happened.
Guest:But it was desperation.
Guest:That's all it was.
Guest:It was.
Guest:Yeah, it just came from that.
Guest:And a little door opened up in the universe, and they tumbled out.
Guest:Because the bad guys, this also sounds like bullshit, but it's not.
Guest:I texted a friend.
Guest:I had the idea for the bad guys, and I wrote it down, a single line, 25-word sort of elevator pitch description of what the bad guys was.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Texted it to a friend, and she texted back, that sounds like a DreamWorks movie.
Marc:Come on, before you even wrote a book?
Marc:It's true.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:It is crazy.
Marc:It's really crazy.
Marc:Did that happen on the same street?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It kind of did.
Marc:Kind of special street, man.
Guest:It's a magic street, that street.
Guest:It is a magic street.
Guest:We've been thinking about leaving it, and I don't really want to.
Marc:I wouldn't.
Marc:You don't know what happened.
Guest:Don't mess with the magic.
Guest:Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
Guest:Wait until you finished all the books.
Guest:That's what I'm thinking.
Guest:You're reading my mind.
Marc:That's what I'm thinking.
Marc:So the bad guys, what was the pitch for the book in your mind?
Guest:From the book in my mind, at the time it was just the, it was, you know, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark, Mr. Piranha doing good deeds whether you want them to or not.
Guest:That was the original idea.
Guest:And then once there was interest from over here, because the bad guy, the first bad guy's book,
Guest:Immediately did well in Australia, but in the U.S.
Guest:schools, it exploded instantly.
Guest:We sold like half a million copies in a couple of weeks.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And that was more- Here?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's Scholastic.
Guest:Like the book fairs.
Guest:You know the book fairs in schools?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the publishing, Thelma and Pig the Pug, those two, who publish them there?
Marc:Are they Scholastic?
Marc:Scholastic as well, yeah.
Marc:That's a global thing.
Marc:It is.
Marc:And then they pick up the bad guys.
Marc:So the other two, Thelma and the Pug book, they're big in Australia but also big here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, what happened was because there's an edge to Pig that I was describing earlier, the US publisher was a little standoffish about it because picture books in America especially are very wholesome.
Guest:The messaging is very clear and they're very warm and fuzzy.
Guest:and pigs not that yeah so they didn't we weren't really interested and then when the bad guys just sort of exploded they jumped on board and went well let's try the let's try the dog book and how did it do amazingly well um really yeah yeah instantaneously um and and each one of them has like there's been there's been nearly so i've just finished the 10th pig book which is the final one and all of them have sold over a million copies
Marc:So when you say book fair, that's when schools come to buy books?
Guest:Yeah, no, no.
Guest:You know when kids take money to school in an envelope and the little truck arrives and the... Oh, right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's kids, generally speaking, it's a kid's first experience of going and purchasing something that they want themselves.
Guest:And it's a book at school.
Guest:They get to choose.
Guest:There's no conversation about it.
Guest:They get to choose what they wanted to buy that day.
Guest:And there was something about the cover of the first bad guy's book, I guess, that just captured.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that's, it just, it took off.
Guest:And you've got to remember by this point.
Guest:How old did he get?
Guest:What are the ages?
Guest:Like six to 12.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my first eight books or something, none of them had sold over like 5,000 copies, you know, like tiny little print runs.
Guest:In Australia.
Guest:In Australia, nowhere else.
Guest:So to suddenly have sold half a million in America was so far beyond my wildest dreams.
Guest:What were the eight books?
Guest:The one with you and your wife?
Guest:Then there was one kind of about... It was a thinly veiled version of me moving around when I was a kid.
Guest:They were a bit too literal, the earlier ones.
Guest:And then there was one that was actually pretty funny about a kid who complained so much that his head fell off.
Guest:And that...
Guest:But again, didn't find an audience.
Guest:It was too weird, I think.
Guest:No animals, though.
Guest:No, this is the thing.
Guest:I changed publisher.
Guest:I kind of got poached by a new publisher, Scholastic, in Australia, and the publisher made one suggestion.
Guest:He said, which is just so obvious, but he said, can you do what you do but do it with animals?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there it was.
Marc:You're being a little too honest, a little too forthright.
Marc:Give the animals the human problem.
Marc:Showing your hand too much.
Guest:Yeah, I think that's what happened.
Marc:Well, then that's a great story.
Marc:So then you do the first Bad Guys book and now you're off and running?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at the time, because again, there hadn't been a hint of commercial success to that point.
Guest:So I wrote it with such kind of abandon because I thought, well, who cares?
Guest:No one's going to buy it anyway.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and I read exactly what I wanted to do, and The Bad Guys, without any kind of melodrama of any kind, is precisely the thing I'd been looking for since I was a little boy.
Guest:That was the thing.
Guest:It filled that hole.
Guest:The movie hole.
Guest:I suddenly had a vehicle
Guest:where I could pour all the stuff that I love, because it's such a weird idea to take the scary animals and a car from Mad Max and a Tarantino movie and mash them all together.
Guest:The other movie that changed my life in not a great way at the time
Guest:was Reservoir Dogs because I saw Reservoir Dogs and it haunted me for years.
Guest:I saw it one night before because I didn't realize Reservoir Dogs wasn't popular or really successful commercially until after Pulp Fiction.
Guest:People found it retrospectively.
Guest:It was just a little movie.
Guest:But I saw it the week it came out just accidentally.
Guest:I saw the poster, thought it looked cool, went in and had my mind blown and went five times that week.
Guest:And was obsessed with it.
Guest:Obsessed.
Guest:What was it about it?
Guest:It just, it spoke to me in a way that very few movies had.
Guest:I just thought it was so funny.
Guest:And so just the way he'd taken cinema history and just mashed it up in his own.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:It's just, I think it's part of, I love, again, musically, I love the way the Beastie Boys would always, the Bowerbird thing where they'd take elements and mash them together and create something new.
Guest:And I love about Tarantino and the Beasties and that kind of beautiful,
Guest:playful appropriation of other people's work.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:But again, without... I felt that sort of impotent feeling of not being able to do that myself until the bad guys.
Guest:And suddenly, when I had these animals in suits in that car...
Guest:Bam, everything suddenly overnight became possible.
Guest:So that single book, which I never thought it'd be more than one book, turned into a 20-story arc, which just, I've known how the story would end from the beginning, really.
Guest:I had this whole thing.
Guest:It just flooded out of me.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's been the most beautiful experience.
Guest:It's been nine years now that I've been working on it, and it is everything.
Guest:It's fulfilled every... And the best way I can describe it is that me as a kid, and me as a 13-year-old,
Guest:would be so happy with what I'm doing now.
Guest:That's the coolest thing about it.
Marc:And that was 20 books.
Marc:Now it's 40, right?
Guest:Well, all together, my books.
Guest:So there's been 10 pig.
Guest:There'll be 20 bad guys.
Guest:There's three of this other new thing I'm doing.
Guest:But added together, it'll be 48 by the time I'm sort of done.
Guest:Whether it's a comma or a full stop, I don't know.
Marc:From the beginning, you saw the arc of bad guys?
Marc:I mean, you kind of knew it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had the first... In my head of the 20 books, there were kind of like two seasons or 10.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:But yeah, I did figure it out in advance, and it just sort of fell together.
Guest:In a funny way, they kind of write themselves.
Guest:It's been really clear to me.
Guest:I don't wrestle with them.
Guest:I know the turns really, really instinctively with those books.
Guest:They're just fun to write.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because when I saw you here, when we did the press a few weeks ago, you said you had to finish a book or write a book.
Guest:And then when I arrived, I got COVID almost immediately and was trapped in my hotel room for two weeks.
Guest:And I wasn't sick.
Guest:I was fine.
Guest:But I wrote the next two books.
Guest:Since I saw you last, I've written the next two.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're good.
Guest:I'm really excited about them.
Guest:They're not the last two.
Guest:They're the second last two.
Guest:So the episodes 17 and 18.
Guest:Do you do the art too?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:So what I'll do is I've got the story.
Guest:It's like a screenplay.
Guest:I've written the scenes, the 10 chapters, the scenes, the dialogue.
Guest:I'll go home and I'll paginate, which is come up with all the little thumbnails of where the panels are going to be, which is kind of a big job.
Guest:And then I'll do the rough drawings of all of that, which takes about a month.
Guest:And then when that's all done for those two books, then we'll do some editing and then I start the finished art, which takes forever.
Guest:That's the most of my years doing the finished drawing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is the bit that I'm kind of looking forward to completing, I have to say.
Guest:It's also where I'm most limited.
Guest:I find I'm...
Guest:I slip into a place of relaxation, happiness, and kind of acuity with the storytelling and coming up with things.
Guest:The drawings, I feel like I'm always pushing right at the limit of whatever talent I have.
Guest:I always feel like it's constantly a feeling of icy road, bald tires.
Marc:Always.
Guest:Always.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:Well, it's good that you keep doing it.
Marc:It would have seemed like you could have just...
Marc:hired a guy to do it after a certain point.
Guest:Yeah, I know, no, no way.
Guest:But I think it's also why they've been successful, because I think there's a scrappiness and a, frankly, occasionally incompetent look to the artwork that I think is really appealing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because it's just, it doesn't feel... Precious.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So...
Marc:When we were talking in the kitchen, though, you said that you really have to kind of mentally have mental boundaries around what you take into your head so you can have the right disposition to write a book.
Marc:So, like, no news, no bad news.
Guest:I limit it as much as I can, which can be really embarrassing.
Guest:There was a period there where I wasn't entirely sure who the prime minister of our country was for a little while then.
Guest:My wife said, it's him.
Guest:Not a happy day?
Guest:I have to tune out.
Guest:And I'm sure that would appall a lot of people, but I find it hard to do the gig, to get in the headspace, because there's a silliness about them.
Guest:There's a sense of fun that I find hard to fake.
Guest:So I have to get into a space where I just feel...
Guest:feel good and it's also it's getting harder because they were written the initially they were written for my boys when they were six and eight it was really easy to write because i knew what would make them yeah now they're 14 and 16 i have to time travel in my head and go what would he have liked he would like that yeah so oh really yeah you still think that way i do it helps yeah well now i'm playing a character that you created yes you are very well too well thank you buddy uh have you seen the movie with people
Guest:I have once.
Marc:How'd it go?
Guest:Twice, actually.
Guest:And it was pretty good.
Guest:It was pretty cool.
Guest:Get the laps?
Guest:It did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was very, very satisfying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a couple of kids, actually, on the last time I saw it in front of us.
Guest:They were young.
Guest:They were like a target age group.
Guest:They were eight.
Guest:And they kept throwing their arms in the air during the sequences like they were on a ride.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And that was really exciting.
Guest:I loved seeing that.
Marc:Did you like the amplification of your art?
Guest:Oh, it's just... See, that is such a beautiful thing to experience.
Guest:I mean, when the first time I saw the finished art move, I burst into tears because it's just...
Guest:What I've been trying to do in my black and white scribbly drawings is I've been approximating what I would like it to be.
Guest:And that's my, because the books are my version of making a movie, but just on a page because I thought, how am I going to make a film?
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:Um, what they've done is they've taken that and then blown it up into this 3D magical thing.
Marc:Yeah, I had no idea when I first had meetings with them.
Marc:I wasn't familiar with the books, and the snake character seemed great, but I'm like, how are you going to make that move?
Marc:Because they've got to answer questions like that.
Guest:Yeah, they do.
Guest:And it was interesting.
Guest:The snake movement came up in one of the first meetings with them.
Guest:They were a little nervous about it, because there hadn't been a snake as your central heroic character.
Guest:ever really yeah there's maybe one or two examples where there's a prominently featured snake but it's usually just the the they're just meant to look insidious and right slithery so we needed this guy to be sort of charming you know and and that they've accomplished that beautifully that was great yeah
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how does it unfold?
Marc:Where does it start with the movie negotiations?
Marc:I mean, was that going on a long time?
Marc:It was.
Marc:Did you have other offers?
Marc:Yeah, we did.
Guest:It was so surreal because I'd never been to America.
Guest:This was in 2016.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And again, with all that love of movies, I came across to Hollywood and we knew people were interested.
Guest:I had an agent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, then we went, you know, single week, we went to all the studios.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I met the heads of most of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, it just, the, the DreamWorks just like Damon, the producer, just, just, just had a feel for it.
Guest:Just got it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just got the tone.
Guest:And they, they kept assuring me that they would preserve that tone.
Guest:That was the most important.
Guest:He seems like a good guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, and I, that's what it came down to for me.
Guest:I, I figured, and I, and I,
Guest:i was weirdly arrogant about it too i knew i had something that they wanted and i knew it was the only i'd been looking for it my whole life so i was holding onto it really tight actually but that you'd been looking like if this finally you're going to be a movie maker
Guest:Well, yeah, I guess.
Guest:And I felt like if I don't trust them, I'm not going to do it.
Guest:I just hold on until I find someone who I do trust.
Guest:And the only people I met that week were the DreamWorks team.
Guest:But then, other than Damon and then Pierre, who directed it, there was a number of regime changes at DreamWorks during the development period, which was really hair-raising.
Guest:But the bad guys just kept surviving it.
Guest:They just kept...
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it happened a couple of times.
Guest:And I guess it speaks to where that sort of confidence in it came from.
Guest:I just felt like the idea was just how... I just kept saying to myself, why wouldn't they make this?
Guest:And how's it doing?
Guest:The movie.
Guest:I think I've been, I've had my head in the sand a little bit.
Guest:I think it's doing good.
Guest:Um, but it's, it's all going to be about when it comes out here a little bit, you know, but I know like, and it's, it's like in Australia, I think it did really well, but the school holidays actually don't start until today.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So that's when we'll really see how it goes in Australia.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and then in other places, I think it's, I think it's doing good.
Guest:I think it's, it's, it's been the... Did they open in China and stuff yet?
Guest:Not yet, not yet.
Guest:I think it's the, it's done the best, it's had the best opening for animation during the pandemic in most places, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is really cool.
Guest:But yeah, I'm kind of ignoring all of that as much as I can until, because it's staggered.
Guest:It's staggered over a whole month, which is kind of excruciating.
Guest:So you can't get the whole picture until we're sort of at the other side.
Marc:Yeah, I don't get a sense.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:No.
Marc:I don't follow it.
Guest:But it's, I don't know, you guys, that's been... It was really interesting.
Guest:I was across everybody's work during the process, because when the conversations about casting came up, I knew everybody's work...
Guest:Most people's work in detail.
Guest:Other than yours, really, you were surprised to me.
Guest:They said, what about Mark Brown?
Guest:And I didn't know your name, and they sent me one of your stand-ups, the... End Times?
Guest:No, the Brain Cancer.
Guest:It could be nothing, that one.
Guest:And just in 10 seconds in, I started writing an email, please, please cast him, please.
Guest:So, you know, it's one of those things where it's just...
Guest:It's, it's, this cast is exactly who I want to play.
Guest:Which is, which is, which is, you know, so many authors watch their work turned into
Guest:You know, it happens all the time.
Guest:Train wreck adaptations are a weekly occurrence.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's nothing you can do about it.
Guest:Nothing at all.
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:You just have to watch your thing die.
Guest:So no matter how the movie does, actually, I love the movie so much and I love what you all did in it so much that...
Guest:i'm i'm you're good i'm kind of cool with with with whatever happens come on they're talking about a sequel yeah yeah there they are but i mean you know that's the thing i i can't let myself indulge the thought of it just in case i think i can get on it if they're going to do it because now that they've got everything all the movements and stuff yeah
Marc:But how much of this, because I don't know the books specifically, how much of this is from the book, the story?
Marc:Do you get story credit?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:Only it's- Created by.
Guest:Based on books by.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is loosely based on the first four books.
Guest:With added Soderbergh.
Guest:It added sort of Ocean's Eleven.
Guest:Oh, right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But a number of the sequences from the film, the cat in the tray, the you eating all the guinea pigs, they're all straight from the books.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:I gave your books, I told you, I gave your books to Sean Marshall, Cat Power.
Marc:Melted my brain.
Marc:Whose son loves him.
Marc:Because I had the box, and I'm like, I get this.
Marc:I get the script.
Marc:Do I need to read all the books?
Marc:Or can I give this to somebody that's got kids?
Marc:All my brother's kids are too old.
Marc:And then I went to Florida, and I met Sean for the first time.
Marc:We had lunch.
Marc:He had this kid.
Marc:And I said, I think this is the kid the right age.
Marc:I think I have the books.
Marc:And I sent him, and he loved them.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:That's what's so weird now.
Guest:He's like, I love Chan's music.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it's just like...
Guest:knowing now because the books are so far like it's it's 30 million copies now i think oh my god and it's like you just just don't know whose house these books are in now you know that's most it's such a strange feeling you know and it's it's it's a it's a thrill and it also just does my head in too sometimes but that you're putting good things into the kids brains
Guest:I like that idea.
Guest:I like that idea.
Marc:Did it feel like weird though?
Marc:I mean, did you feel there was a responsibility to it?
Marc:I guess you got an editor, but I mean.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Look, this is the thing.
Guest:I wanted to do books because the whole idea to do the other impulse that drove the bad guys is some of the books that kids get sent home from school with are so boring that the initial impulse was I saw my youngest kid losing interest in
Guest:ever wanting to learn to read he'd bring this stuff home and go this just sucks can i just can i just play the xbox please right and the idea the impulse came from that's what changed everything was the idea of all could you write a book that is much as much fun for a kid as a as a video game yeah or a movie or a tv show
Guest:That was what drove the first installment.
Marc:And so the movie sort of captures that as well.
Marc:It's good pace to it.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:It's exciting, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, are you a revered child's book writer now?
Marc:Are you up there with some of the other ones?
Marc:Are you like...
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Do you go to special events?
Marc:Have you got awards for writing children's books?
Guest:No.
Guest:I got awards early up, and then they got popular, and then the awards dried up.
Guest:I can live with that.
Guest:I can live with the awards.
Guest:None of the little gold stickers on the books?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Look, that happened.
Guest:The gold stickers happened in Australia initially.
Guest:But I kind of got reticent about it because I know that, I don't know, it just felt like somehow there's cases where that can make a book seem like less fun to a kid.
Guest:And I always wanted books to, again, like the video game thing, wanting kids to associate books with fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It seems really counterintuitive in this era, but that's what I wanted to do.
Guest:So, I don't know.
Marc:Do you like the music they pick for the movie?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Is it good?
Guest:So good.
Guest:So good.
Guest:That opening, the opening sequence, the opening chase sequence is one of the best things ever in an animated film, I reckon.
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:So exciting.
Marc:So now you're going to go back to acting for a bit, or...?
Marc:No.
Guest:They asked me during the production, so would you want to do a little cameo?
Guest:And it made me want to, I vomited in my own mouth.
Guest:It was just such a terrible thought.
Guest:Oh, God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it seems like you landed on your feet.
Marc:Done all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it does.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Good talking to you, man.
Marc:You good?
Marc:Yeah, I'm good.
Marc:All right.
All right.
Marc:That was Aaron Blaby, the creator of the Bad Guys books and also producer on the film that I'm in.
Marc:I play Mr. Snake.
Marc:It opens tomorrow, April 22nd.
Marc:New York City, man.
Marc:Had this Elko last night.
Marc:The full fucking ride.
Marc:Borscht, pierogies, the beet horseradish salad, some kasha with gravy.
Marc:Ooh, man.
Yeah.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Monkey La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere, that's for sure.
Marc:Angels in general.
Marc:No music.
Marc:Roding it.