Gary Janetti, START WITHOUT ME: (I'll Be There in a Minute)
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:05]Moms don't have time to read books, and speaking of books, I have two of my own books
[0:10]coming out this spring and summer.
[0:12]Princess Charming is a picture book which debuts on April 19th, and bookends.
[0:17]A memoir of love, loss, and literature comes out on July 1st, and it is truly a labor of love.
[0:24]I hope you'll pre-order, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country.
[0:28]You can find out more at ziviowens.com or bookendsmemoir.com, and you can follow me on
[0:35]Instagram at ziviowens because I always post about everything.
[0:38]Enjoy the show!
[0:41]Gary Janetti is the author of Start Without Me.
[0:44]I'll be there in a minute.
[0:45]Gary is a four-time Emmy-nominated writer and producer who is the showrunner and creator
[0:50]of HBO Max's The Prince.
[0:53]He got his start writing on several network series before joining Fox's Family Guy, where
[0:57]he was on the original writing staff, and went on to pen many memorable episodes featuring
[1:02]Brian and Stewie.
[1:04]He then wrote on NBC's Will and Grace, where he rose to executive producer and showrunner.
[1:09]Janetti also created executive produced and wrote all episodes for the ITV PBS British
[1:15]sitcom, Vicious starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi.
[1:21]His popular Instagram account of over 900,000 followers has been featured and praised
[1:26]in such publications as The New York Times, People and Vanity Fair.
[1:30]Janetti's first book, Do You Mind If I Cancel, became an instant New York Times bestseller?
[1:35]He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, TV personality and fashion expert Brad Gerezki.
[1:41]You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at Gary Janetti.
[1:45]Welcome, Gary.
[1:46]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:47]Don't have time to read books.
[1:49]Thanks, Yibby.
[1:50]I'm really happy to be here.
[1:51]Oh, as I was just saying to you, I literally just recommended your book on good day LA as
[1:57]a book to laugh out loud.
[1:59]So I am a huge fan of the book and you're writing in general.
[2:02]Thank you.
[2:03]I really appreciate that.
[2:04]Yeah.
[2:05]Thanks for the shout out.
[2:06]Also, so I had the PDF of your book on my phone, and we were stuck in traffic last night
[2:12]going into this book launch event in Brooklyn with a lot of people on my team, and everybody
[2:15]was like getting tired of being like, and I was like, you guys, I'm going to read Gary
[2:19]Janetti's books.
[2:20]You out loud.
[2:21]How did it go?
[2:22]It was so great.
[2:23]So there were like two cars of us, and the other car that got there, everybody was nauseous
[2:29]and in the worst mood.
[2:30]And we all like, fell out of the car laughing and having fun.
[2:33]Oh, okay.
[2:34]Good.
[2:35]Yeah.
[2:36]All right.
[2:37]If I can help a car ride.
[2:38]Yeah, you helped a car ride.
[2:39]So mission accomplished.
[2:40]Yes.
[2:41]Definitely.
[2:42]Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about this book?
[2:43]And you know, even about both books, why you've started compiling these memories, which ones
[2:48]do you pick?
[2:49]How you do it and all of that?
[2:50]You know, I never, it kind of happens just by happenstance.
[2:55]I met with James Mille, who is my editor now, and he asked it off of my Instagram
[3:01]as popularity.
[3:02]It was like, would you ever be interested in doing a book?
[3:04]And I had actually been thinking about doing a book.
[3:07]I had always wanted to do it, as you could tell, when you read them, I talk about how
[3:10]I see myself as a writer.
[3:12]I'm making air quotes.
[3:13]And I quit just listening.
[3:14]But I don't actually, you know, write.
[3:16]So I had this romantic idea that existed not based in any kind of reality.
[3:22]But that was something that I felt like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I don't know what
[3:27]it's going to be.
[3:28]But this is something I've been wanting to do.
[3:31]I started off wanting to do it.
[3:32]And now, you know, I'm assuming the universe is telling me now, I'll use Instagram
[3:39]as the universe is telling me that now is the is the time.
[3:44]So I just, you know, Zibi, I didn't know what I was going to do when I started.
[3:48]I had an idea.
[3:49]I just knew I wanted to do short essays.
[3:51]And because I've written in sitcoms for so many years, you know, I kind of like to do
[3:56]things economically.
[3:57]So the essays are kind of, you know, I've compacted my life into very tight, tidy little,
[4:03]you know, chapters.
[4:04]But I just thought of what are the things that I still remember?
[4:09]And at this point in my life, you know, when you're kind of 50, I'll call myself 50
[4:14]generously, and you, you can, you have enough to look back on.
[4:18]You know, if I wrote it in 35, I would be more self conscious about what I was talking
[4:23]about, how, because you know, you're, you're almost too close to it.
[4:27]But at this point, you think, I'm still remembering these things.
[4:31]I wonder why that that was like, these are the things that stuck in my head, the things
[4:35]I've kind of written about, these moments from my life, they just are things that
[4:40]I still kind of think about.
[4:42]So I figured I'll write about those.
[4:45]So I would just like write one kind of sentence, you know, or even a word down, you know,
[4:50]write about in this book, Write About Irene, my next story neighbor that I grew up with.
[4:54]Write about Europe's session with the Carol Burnett show, you all used to kind of think
[4:58]about that.
[4:59]And it just started from that.
[5:00]So I just kind of, and then as I wrote them, I felt there was a naturally,
[5:05]they connected together and some kind of almost not to sound too pretentious,
[5:10]but in almost like a dreamy kind of way, you know, because it's not like a real straightforward
[5:16]narrative thread by any stretch.
[5:17]But that's fine.
[5:18]It's kind of all over the place.
[5:20]No, it's kind of all over the place.
[5:22]It's how we think about like, really, I think, I think so.
[5:26]I don't think things are as tidy, you know, as we would like them to be, you know, we kind
[5:31]of don't know, you know, we jump from one thought to the next and one thing connects
[5:36]us to the other.
[5:37]And then we forget our original thought and then we go all the way back to it, Navy or,
[5:39]you know, I just, I love how, so I'm 45.
[5:43]So I got like all the references to all good.
[5:46]All right.
[5:47]Yeah.
[5:48]But I like how you're constantly like telling the younger reader, you know, you're like,
[5:52]even things like when you talk about like the pen pals, like I totally made pen pal friendships.
[5:57]I had a pen pal from Paris who I met in Jamaica.
[6:00]We were pen pals for like two years and every time that like airmail paper came in,
[6:04]I was like, oh my gosh, now of course, I didn't visit her like you and you were
[6:09]story.
[6:10]Yeah, I know.
[6:11]I did.
[6:12]And it was actually probably in real life a little bit even more painful than it was
[6:16]been writing about.
[6:17]But yeah, another thing that I, yeah, because my dad worked for a cruise line.
[6:21]So I talked about, you know, how much that impacted my life and how many cruises we went
[6:25]on.
[6:26]Yes.
[6:27]And this older woman wants to be became 10 pounds.
[6:29]And the excitement of that relationship of getting letters and passing letters in the
[6:33]mail, but that are just, you know, really, I don't know, you know what we were writing
[6:38]about actually.
[6:39]Because I was a kid and she was a married woman.
[6:43]But it was all very, yeah, you said at one point, it was like just one conversation
[6:48]painfully drawn out, six months over a five, like 10 years, like it was like that, you
[6:55]know, was, yes, those slowest conversations, rips coming through the mail, you know,
[7:00]we.
[7:01]And even now you point out in so many instances, like, but wait, you know, why were they
[7:06]hanging out with me?
[7:07]You know, you don't think about it until you're older, like what was the 25 year old
[7:11]couple?
[7:12]It was like a 15 year old girl here, whatever.
[7:14]Yeah.
[7:15]I think part of it too was I always kind of was more comfortable around older people.
[7:19]You know, it wasn't like they sought me out.
[7:21]I sought out, you know, people that were older.
[7:25]So I think there should be like a whole, I don't know, social network of old souls.
[7:32]You know, like you, I identify as an old soul, like you're an old soul, there are old
[7:37]souls out there where I was like, you know, I think it's like seventh grade sleepovers.
[7:41]And I was like literally reading my book with the mom in the other room, you know, just
[7:44]being like, okay.
[7:45]Yeah.
[7:46]I was always reading.
[7:47]I read mommy dearest when I was a kid, like I read everything.
[7:49]I read books.
[7:50]My mother read too.
[7:51]They were around whatever.
[7:52]Yeah.
[7:53]I just like, come up, nobody ever, the Avenueville horror, I think I was like 10.
[7:58]I don't know.
[7:59]Nobody ever said that's not appropriate for you.
[8:02]They might have rolled their eyes.
[8:04]Nobody was paying that much attention.
[8:05]You know, my mother wasn't looking like what you were reading.
[8:08]I had a book, you know, it was like, it didn't really, whatever the book was.
[8:12]But yeah, it was always, there also, there wasn't anything called young adult fiction
[8:16]at the time, you know, there was like little kids and then there was, you know, full on
[8:20]adults.
[8:21]Yeah.
[8:22]Yeah.
[8:23]Which was kind of nice.
[8:24]I just skipped.
[8:25]I just skipped ahead.
[8:26]Totally.
[8:27]I went straight to Judith Grant's from like, did he go to Judith Grant?
[8:29]Judy Blue.
[8:30]Yeah.
[8:31]Judy Blue may pass that that book around, was it forever or something?
[8:35]Yeah.
[8:36]Yeah.
[8:37]And you also do talk, by the way, your sister was like the most hilarious character.
[8:40]How are you talking about her?
[8:42]Like, and you were like, you know, it's not so easy being like a gay boy, Queens, Maria,
[8:48]you know.
[8:49]Anyway, I don't know.
[8:50]This probably is making no sense to anyone listening.
[8:51]I'm just like talking about the funny parts, but it was just so funny how you developed
[8:56]that.
[8:57]And your family and how you felt feel even now like going back and all of that.
[9:01]Anyway, how do people in your life tend to feel being written about?
[9:06]You know, we haven't talked that much, you know, about it, you know, they've just recently
[9:10]read this book.
[9:12]But I think they all like it, you know, everybody understands for me, you know, it's different
[9:19]for everybody, obviously, but I'm looking for a way for the most part to celebrate
[9:25]the people that have been in my life in it, not to kind of bring anybody to task about
[9:30]any past grievances that I'm now going to settle in this with certainly with my family.
[9:35]There are other people who those people I changed their names and they're not usually,
[9:39]you know, in my life anymore.
[9:41]But for the most part, yeah, it's like I want to be able to celebrate the things that
[9:46]I have found in them that I love about them and stuff and it's kind of, so I'm hoping
[9:55]that people sense that.
[9:57]Love it.
[9:58]That's so great.
[10:00]How did you go from Queens, like feeling so frustrated,
[10:04]Wizard of Oz boy, roaming the streets in Venice
[10:09]to the sitcom part of your life?
[10:12]You know, in my first book,
[10:14]for the first book, do you mind if I cancel now?
[10:16]I did paper back.
[10:17]But I talk about, I work at the Paramount Hotel
[10:19]as a Bellman in it for two chapters.
[10:22]And I'm my 28 years old and I'm in terrible debt.
[10:26]And, you know, I kept living,
[10:28]I just couldn't make enough to pay for what, you know,
[10:32]I look at young people going to restaurants now.
[10:34]And I all, only think, how do they afford this?
[10:37]Like, I'm looking at the prices.
[10:39]I'm like, they were cheap restaurants.
[10:41]When I was in my 20s now,
[10:42]everybody wants to go to all the restaurants
[10:44]they see in the infatuation and eater on an Instagram.
[10:46]And it's expensive.
[10:48]Like, it's $100 a person.
[10:50]I'm like, I would be mentally like,
[10:53]I would have a $20 bill in my pocket
[10:55]and I'm thinking like, if I spend this whole $20 on dinner,
[10:58]I'm like, I'm not gonna be eating much tomorrow,
[11:01]you know, like that.
[11:02]And I would have to, it was always in my head.
[11:05]So yeah, I'd gotten myself in like, bad trouble
[11:08]of being in debt and working in the hotel.
[11:11]And I'm like, at 28, you're like, you can see 30.
[11:14]And I felt like, what am I doing?
[11:16]Like, I'm waiting for something to happen to me.
[11:19]And like, it doesn't work like that.
[11:20]I would work at this hotel thinking I was gonna be,
[11:23]you know, discovered I made air quotes again.
[11:25]Like, a Lana Turner and the drug store
[11:27]for those of us, you know, who can remember,
[11:29]I'm too young for you to Lana Turner, but Google it.
[11:32]Anyway, yeah, somebody just be plucked out of obscurity.
[11:35]I thought that, you know, I'd be discovered
[11:37]working in this hotel and somebody would say,
[11:38]I see something inside you.
[11:40]You'd be a terrific actor on all my children
[11:42]or you'd be a wonderful writer for, you know,
[11:45]Vanity Fair.
[11:46]Like, I had, would you have a short story?
[11:48]I worked for the New Yorker, you know,
[11:49]it was like, and then my job was to just be like,
[11:53]oh, like have humility and be like,
[11:54]I actually do, you know, and that's how it was gonna happen.
[11:58]And I had this kind of epiphany at one, you know,
[12:01]day working there where I checked in actually somebody
[12:04]who I went to school with and I had carried his bags
[12:06]up to the room and he tried to give me a tip.
[12:08]And it was just like, so I was just like,
[12:11]what's happened, you know, like I don't wanna be here.
[12:16]Like, I need to fix this and I moved to LA,
[12:20]I quit and I moved to LA a couple of months.
[12:24]I was already living in LA a few months later
[12:27]and I was teaching myself how to write for TV.
[12:30]I have been talking about writing,
[12:31]but I was gonna write for so long.
[12:33]And I was like, you have to do it now.
[12:36]And, you know, nobody's coming to you idiot.
[12:39]Nobody's finding you here, you know,
[12:42]nobody's looking for you, who nobody should care
[12:44]about your career and your future more than you do.
[12:48]You know, like why would a stranger care more than I care
[12:52]that made like, it all kind of, you know,
[12:54]clicked into place.
[12:55]So I just moved to LA shortly thereafter
[12:58]and I started writing and teaching myself.
[13:00]There was no internet sadly.
[13:02]He says, has so strange to say that.
[13:04]But I mean, I'm sure it was, you know, like in,
[13:06]like huge, you know, bigger kind of,
[13:09]internet-y kind of thing, but there was no Google.
[13:11]And I went to the Writers Guild Library
[13:13]and I read scripts from sitcoms.
[13:15]Like at the time, it was like friends
[13:17]and mad about you and Seinfeld and Fraser and Rosanne.
[13:20]And I read these scripts and they were so well
[13:22]crafted and I thought I could, I could do this.
[13:25]You know, it was by years of watching TV
[13:28]and kind of, you know, unknowingly,
[13:29]I was training my mind kind of think like that.
[13:32]Like it made, it made sense.
[13:34]It was a language that I already spoke.
[13:36]I talk about in the book often I repeat, especially
[13:39]in this book, the language of boys,
[13:42]the language of sports and all the things
[13:44]that they were interested in, it always felt to me
[13:46]like a language I didn't speak.
[13:48]You know, I could pretend, like I'd pick up phrases,
[13:51]like I go to France and I could order, you know,
[13:53]that's what it was like.
[13:54]I was in France, you know, like all the time,
[13:57]we're not speaking to language.
[13:58]And when I finally went to the Writers Guild Library
[14:00]and I read these sitcom scripts,
[14:03]I was like, this is a language I speak and I didn't know it,
[14:06]you know, in a way.
[14:08]I mean, even then, I couldn't really articulate it
[14:10]like I can now looking back.
[14:12]So I just started doing it.
[14:13]I just started writing it and I was focused.
[14:15]I was a laser focused on like,
[14:17]I am going to make this happen.
[14:19]It was a switch went off and it never,
[14:22]once I started writing, I haven't stopped, you know,
[14:24]since, you know, it was a big, yeah, like kind of wake up
[14:28]all and I was fortunate that a few months after I moved to LA,
[14:31]I got a job writing on a sitcom, you know,
[14:33]I had written, you know, I was like literally like,
[14:36]I went from waiting for everything to happen
[14:39]to making everything happen, you know, overnight,
[14:42]which also is my advice to young people.
[14:46]And I think I write about that in my first book a lot
[14:48]and you say, you know, Zibia that I was writing,
[14:50]you know, write about like young people compared to now
[14:53]and then, but that's a thing that people who were in their
[14:56]twenties now were like, I needed to hear that, you know,
[14:59]said, oh my God, I had felt the same way, you know,
[15:02]like I did, you know, I had felt like this was, you know,
[15:06]something was just going to magically happen kind of fault,
[15:09]you know, to me as well as opposed to,
[15:12]or I needed to hear that kind of thing.
[15:14]So yeah, anyway, did that answer your question?
[15:17]And I kind of went all over the place.
[15:18]I just loved listening.
[15:20]It's great.
[15:20]Yes. And that did answer my question.
[15:22]And I stopped a few other answers in there too.
[15:24]Yeah, great.
[15:25]You just asked questions.
[15:29]You know, you're funny in this book about Instagram
[15:32]and how he said something about like,
[15:34]it's like having milk in the fridge,
[15:36]like just because you see it a few times a day
[15:38]doesn't mean you're friends.
[15:39]Yeah, it's like you're people you know on Instagram,
[15:41]right?
[15:42]You said it instead of like, yeah.
[15:44]But here you are with this like massive following
[15:46]and you're so, I mean, clever in the way
[15:49]you use the platform.
[15:51]Like just tell me about that.
[15:52]Like how, because sometimes,
[15:55]because your captions are often very short.
[15:57]The picture is it could have just been Twitter.
[15:59]You know, it's also Instagram.
[16:01]Like how did you decide like I'm going to master
[16:03]these mediums and like tap into this whole thing
[16:06]and like all this stuff with the royal family.
[16:08]And like you've just like sort of hit it a spot on.
[16:11]Was it just luck or just, I don't know, tell me about that?
[16:14]You know, it wasn't like a decision.
[16:16]It wasn't like I made a decision.
[16:17]Like I'm going to become a thing on Instagram.
[16:19]I mean, you can't kind of, you know, make that decision
[16:23]because it doesn't quite work out the way
[16:25]you kind of think it is.
[16:27]I just wanted to, what I like about social media,
[16:31]you know, we all know the negative things about it.
[16:33]There are lots of, you know, negative things, you know,
[16:36]and but there's also a lot of positives
[16:39]and it's a way to kind of connect with people.
[16:42]And for me, I wanted to do something different on it.
[16:45]I was like, well, I like to, you know,
[16:47]zig when everybody's acting, you know,
[16:49]I like to do the thing that people aren't doing.
[16:51]So I'm not interested in sharing my personal life.
[16:54]Although there are bits, I guess,
[16:56]up and through my husband Brad and mostly on his,
[16:59]but it's not about my personal life.
[17:01]It's about, you know, kind of just,
[17:05]I thought of it as a little TV show.
[17:08]I'm like, I wonder if I can use Instagram
[17:09]to make it kind of my own, you know, show
[17:12]and just do my, it's like the anti Instagram homos,
[17:17]you know, people are posting inspirational posts and quotes.
[17:21]I'll turn that kind of inside out
[17:22]because, you know, I find that like it's so trite
[17:24]and meaningless.
[17:25]And the, you know, it's like what's a, you know,
[17:28]what's a way to kind of that I can contribute to this
[17:31]and I have something to say and I can use it for that.
[17:34]And I wonder if people will respond to that.
[17:37]And then when I started doing memes with Prince George,
[17:40]I think, and then I started developing a personality for him
[17:42]and started pushing how far you can go on the platform
[17:47]to kind of create like, that was like,
[17:49]cheating on like it was a TV show, you know,
[17:51]a whole little kind of universe.
[17:53]And gradually, yeah, I think people started coming aboard.
[17:58]It was like also, it's like you find people
[17:59]who have a shared sensibility to know what I mean.
[18:02]So for the most part, you know,
[18:04]you gather people who kind of share your outlook
[18:08]as it were a bit.
[18:09]But it happened totally organically,
[18:11]but I did intend to do my own thing.
[18:15]I was like, I want to do my own thing also.
[18:16]You know, when you write for television and for so long
[18:18]and when I started Instagram, it was before the books,
[18:20]you know, for something to go from my head
[18:23]for you to see it on TV is a lot of steps.
[18:26]It's painstaking.
[18:28]It's a lot and oftentimes it does not make it there
[18:30]along the way.
[18:31]There are no, and there's feedback.
[18:33]And there are rewrites and there are so many things.
[18:35]And there are months that go by.
[18:37]And then you kind of watch it.
[18:39]You're like, oh, but this was an opportunity
[18:42]to have something in my head.
[18:43]And now I put it out and it's right in the audience
[18:45]in a second and it gets a response, you know.
[18:48]And yeah, it's kind of, it's satisfying.
[18:51]Also, it can be satisfying in that way creatively.
[18:54]Yes, there's nothing like the immediacy.
[18:56]Like, yeah, yeah, just out this thing.
[18:58]Exactly.
[18:59]Yeah, you know, it's great.
[19:01]Totally.
[19:02]No, yeah.
[19:04]Like, I can't all be gems.
[19:06]Yeah.
[19:08]So what are you working on now?
[19:10]Now just for the most part, I'm working on the book, you know,
[19:14]taking the book out into the world.
[19:16]And after having spent so much time, you know,
[19:19]writing it, even though it's short,
[19:21]it's so short yet it took so long.
[19:26]People like, I finished it in a night.
[19:28]I'm like, oh, like at night, like,
[19:34]I wish I could have written it in a night.
[19:36]So I'll be going on, going on book tour,
[19:39]so I'll be taking that around.
[19:40]And then kind of seeing what it is that I want to do next.
[19:43]That's awesome.
[19:44]Wait till how long did it take to write?
[19:46]You know, wait for eight months.
[19:49]Yeah, that's not bad for a book, by the way.
[19:52]Yeah, okay.
[19:53]Thanks.
[19:53]Yeah, so it's not that, you know, it's not that long.
[19:57]So, you know, it's like, it's my attend, everything is my attend.
[20:00]I like a book either to be this line or 3,000 pages, like it needs to be one or the other.
[20:06]If it's something, if something is like 380 pages, I'm like, 400 pages, like, but if you
[20:12]tell me it's like 1,500 pages, I'm like, let me see, it's like one extreme or the other.
[20:19]I totally get it.
[20:20]It's like I'd rather watch a movie that's 90 minutes or 10 episodes, one hour episodes
[20:25]of the Crown.
[20:26]But if it's the movies two and a half hours, I'm like, I don't know.
[20:29]It's so crazy.
[20:30]None of it none of our inception patterns make any sense anymore.
[20:34]No sense.
[20:35]No sense.
[20:36]Well, okay.
[20:37]So seriously, if somebody is trying to write about their life and they want, let's say
[20:42]somebody thinks they're funny, but who knows if they are not, what do they do next?
[20:46]Like, is it worth trying?
[20:47]Do you like what medium do you like best, like what advice do you have for them?
[20:51]First of all, you should never think you're funny.
[20:53]So I don't think I'm, I mean, like, I'm like, final, I can be funny is what I have
[20:59]my moments, you know, when I'm funny.
[21:02]And then I have many moments when I'm not, I always, you know, feel like I never tell
[21:06]anybody.
[21:07]Like, yeah, it's like comedy, you know, like I'm a comedy writer.
[21:10]It's like, you can decide what's comedy.
[21:12]I'll just leave off the adjective and say writer because it's so subjective, right?
[21:17]But I would say if they were interested in writing or you saying if they're interested,
[21:21]they think, okay.
[21:22]So I think I have something, yeah, I think I think I'm funny.
[21:26]And I would like to write is that the general kind of thing?
[21:29]But I would, okay, I would say what is it you're drawn to?
[21:32]What do you watch?
[21:33]Do you watch a lot of TV comedy, do you watch a lot of animation?
[21:36]Do you read a lot?
[21:38]What is it?
[21:39]How do you absorb comedy?
[21:42]Like what is it that you gravitate towards?
[21:45]That's what you should be writing.
[21:47]That's what it is.
[21:48]If it's like, I don't watch a lot of TV, but I think I would like to write, you know,
[21:52]a sitcom.
[21:53]It's like, no, like what it's like, because I think I could do it.
[21:57]Like it's hard, like you have to be passionate.
[22:01]So what's the thing if it's, if it's, I like comic essays or like this kind of thing
[22:05]of like, yeah, then start doing that, then then then do it.
[22:09]And don't be afraid.
[22:10]The thing I've had to learn too is, you know, don't, don't force, don't force the funny.
[22:16]Like don't, don't, don't try too hard.
[22:18]We can see when somebody's working too hard, you know, it's like when something, I can
[22:23]notice it, when you write like multi-camps it comes like when you, a will and grace is
[22:27]a multi-camps it, con versus, you know, modern family, single camera versus, you know,
[22:32]animation, obviously.
[22:33]But they're all kind of a bit different the way you, the way I approach them.
[22:37]Something that's multi-cam for will and grace, the writing I feel is better when it has
[22:42]more of a tossed off quality, where it's not, doesn't feel tortured.
[22:46]Every joke is in so, you know, so written.
[22:49]It's an audience, oftentimes laughs just at the things that are more human and smaller
[22:54]as opposed to the finally constructed joke, you know, it's like, it's, if, if something
[23:00]is too overthought, sometimes that kind of comes through, you know.
[23:06]So that's why the thing that you're passionate about, the area that you love, if whatever
[23:12]it is, there's no shame in anything, whatever it is, I have very high low tastes, you
[23:17]know, that's what you should go towards because that's kind of how you, you know, that
[23:24]the thing that you love, don't go, don't go to the thing that you don't.
[23:28]It's like, you know, I want to just stand up, eat the milk, I think that's the hardest
[23:31]thing in the world to do.
[23:32]It's like, when you're talking about, don't make people are like, I'll just stand
[23:37]up.
[23:38]My husband and I, where were we, I think we were maybe going to one of the million of
[23:42]open houses we do just for fun, even though we have no intention of buying anything.
[23:46]But anyway, we, I think we were with this woman, she was showing around a house and
[23:49]she was very serious the whole time.
[23:51]And then she happens to mention she's like, you know, on the weekends, you know, that,
[23:55]and that's where I perform my stand up routines and we kind of laughed like, ha, ha, and
[24:00]she was serious, you do stand up comedy, like, come on, no, there's no way, baby, she's
[24:08]good.
[24:10]No, it's, baby, she's amazing, I just probably like has her own, but it's hard, yeah,
[24:16]to me, it's like saying, I think I want to do someone to perform surgery, it's like,
[24:20]yeah, you don't just get up and do stand up, it's like, crazily difficult, like, your
[24:28]whole career has just defined the 12 hours a day, he's been watching TV, it has, I didn't
[24:34]know, yeah, it's completely, yeah, it's completely, it was, it was training for it, I didn't
[24:39]even know when I was in my 20s and I wanted to be a writer and I was doing all of
[24:43]this stuff, like, you know, I wanted to be a novelist to air quotes again, and I never
[24:48]even thought, well, why don't you be, why don't you want to write for TV, you know,
[24:52]because I didn't think, I didn't connect those dots, there was nobody, by the way,
[24:57]to help me connect the dots, nobody just said, hey, you want to be a writer, you have
[25:01]a good year, because I did write in school and I did well with it and teachers told me
[25:05]I had a good year, but, you know, for dialogue, but nobody was telling me perhaps, you
[25:11]know, writing for television or this, because it wasn't anything that anybody thought
[25:15]out, so it was just, I guess it was there in the back of my mind and it was just like,
[25:20]I'll just try this, you know, to do this. So yeah, and I had no idea that I was,
[25:29]you know, as a, as a pair, much preparation for it.
[25:32]So I have four kids and I used to have these very stringent time restrictions on everything,
[25:36]but like, I keep interviewing people like you or like, I read about Simone Biles who's like,
[25:40]I sat and watched gymnastics for videos for like four hours a day and I'm like, maybe
[25:44]she wouldn't have been Simone Biles if her mom would have been like, you can only watch
[25:47]30 minutes a day, you know, you write, by the way, sit on a writer, if you only watch
[25:51]how you know.
[25:52]I'm telling you, no, I definitely, I mean, I'm not, this is not to advocate for parents
[25:58]leaving their children front TV for, you know, 12 hours, which is about how much I, yeah,
[26:03]I watched it like it was my job. I mean, it was like I had, you know, but it was, I, you
[26:10]know, I also was engaging with it in a weird way. You know, I was a lonely kid and it was,
[26:15]it was more than a lifeline. It was, you know, it activated kind of something in me,
[26:20]my imagination in a way. So yeah, and it is, I do believe that Simone Biles, of course
[26:27]that help, I mean, she's extraordinary, obviously, but I think that also is a form of training,
[26:34]you know, men to certainly mentally. And yeah, I know it's ironic that it ended up this
[26:39]way. I mean, my mom so pleased to like, because we watched because Tuesday complained about how
[26:43]much TV I walked obviously, but there was nothing to be done about it. So I was watching it,
[26:48]it was like, oh my God, look at it, it is a bigger good thing.
[26:53]You never know. You never know. Go on with your kids or anything else. Totally.
[27:00]Just last question, but are you reading anything good now or have you read anything amazing lately?
[27:04]Yeah, you know, I just read my God, I read so much that everything kind of blends together,
[27:10]but I just read Edith Wharton for the first time, the novel with Lily Bart,
[27:16]not the age of innocence, the house of Murth. I just read the house of Murth because the
[27:21]the golden age was on and I was watching the golden age. And I was like, I want to read an Edith
[27:24]Wharton novel and I had never read the house of Murth. And it's so good. Oh my God. You cannot.
[27:30]There's nobody. I'm like, God, I was like, yeah, it's barreally. Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah. So I
[27:36]yeah, the house of Murth. And I read Lina Fronte's new, the line life of adults as well.
[27:42]Just like, yeah, I love her too. And Sally Rooney. Yeah, I love Sally Rooney.
[27:48]Everybody loves Sally Rooney. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's great. Okay. Gary, thank you so much.
[27:54]This is so fun. And thank you for making me laugh. And I feel like we all need a good laugh
[27:58]right about now in the world. And thank you. Coming in the perfect time. So good luck with your tour
[28:03]and have fun. Thank you. Thanks so much, Zippy. It was a pleasure. Okay, you too. Bye. Bye.
[28:09]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[28:13]forget to follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:18]Also sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[28:23]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the
[28:28]sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and