Glen Merzer Meets World

00:00:20
Speaker 1: So I turned a corner with Indy's It's very specific.

00:00:26
Speaker 2: For the first time, he introduced me to something that I think is culturally so freaking cool.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: And sophisticated, and because you know, like you're always introducing stuff to your kid, and Indy's always introducing stuff to me.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: And most of the time I'm like, yeah, that's cool.

00:00:45
Speaker 1: For a kid, Like whatever he's into, I'm like, yeah, whatever, or I freaking hate it because it's my numbing and it's meme culture, which is mostly what he introduces me to, and I can't stand it. But this last week he was like, will you watched this YouTube show with me? And I'm like, no, I freaking hate Youtuo. Like we've had a no YouTube rule in our house. I just don't let him go down those rabbit holes. But you can't avoid it. There's just too much of it. So he was like, trust me, I figure.

00:01:11
Speaker 3: You know.

00:01:11
Speaker 2: He kept fighting for this. Alex was out of town.

00:01:13
Speaker 1: It was just the two us, so I finally was like, Okay, fine, let's watch this thing he puts on, this show called The Amazing Digital Circus. It starts off, it's all CGI animation, it's insanity, it's visually chaotic. It's very hard to keep up with. There's a lot of like eyeball stuff, like characters messing with their eyeballs. That makes me very uncomfortable with skin starts crawling just looking at it. It's super fast, like like a lot of the YouTube meme culture stuff where it's like, you know, like characters, and there's like fifteen characters introduced right away.

00:01:51
Speaker 2: I don't know what's happening.

00:01:52
Speaker 1: It makes me uncomfortable in ways that like Ran and Stimpy used to make me uncomfortable.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: I have come to this show so much.

00:02:02
Speaker 1: By the end of the season, there's only been eight episodes. They are now getting a theatrical release.

00:02:06
Speaker 4: Because it is it's all animated. Dude, it is.

00:02:09
Speaker 2: You have to watch the show.

00:02:10
Speaker 1: This is the most sophisticated, incredible writing I've encountered in so long. And it took like by episode three, I was like, actually, India, I think this is like awesome, and I'm and he's like see, and I'm so proud of him for like love it because it's actually very adult. It's not a kid's show. It looks like a kid's show. It's very but it is super dramatic it is very heavy and psychologically dark.

00:02:34
Speaker 5: What is it about?

00:02:35
Speaker 1: So it's basically and this is this goes back to like, you know, when I try to show Indie the Matrix, he was like, this is the most boring thing in the world because the idea of like being an avatar, like the idea of like being inside of a virtual world is so basic for kids. Now, like that's free guy, that's avatar. That's like the Matrix is like that, like the idea of you're living in a simulation. This takes that to the next level. So it's a character of a human presumable you never see them because you're in the oh it's first person. No, she just shows up as a character with a body that she did not choose, and she is trapped inside a virtual circus where anything's possible, and she's being held captive by an AI. And this AI is this scary looking, crazy character named Cain who is somehow capturing people. The only thing you know is that at one point these people who you very drips and drabs get their backstory. At some point they put on a virtual headset and they can't take it off, so you know, AI but against their will, right and they're being held captive by an ai and I am not by the By the third or fourth episode, you will start going like, oh my god, they have planted seats. It's written by somebody who has remaining anonymous. It's a woman who goes by Gooseworks. It's an Australian show. It is genius. So wait, you didn't have it. It's all animation, Yeah, okay, yeah, and it's it's like it's like, basically, I haven't like Rick and Morty is like the closest to the sort of self conscious, incredible storytelling that you get from this thing.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: But it's dark and like, like.

00:04:16
Speaker 1: I said, like it still doesn't make me super comfortable with some of the animation choices, but it's all in the service of like, I'm just so happy that now Indy's introducing me to stuff and like I totally trust his taste out because he was like insistent. He's like, Dad, you're gonna like this, and I was so happy that I'm.

00:04:31
Speaker 5: Like, dude, you're right, I.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: Love this, Like I am so yeah.

00:04:35
Speaker 1: So I feel like we're at that age now where he's going to just be introducing me to stuff and I'm gonna like trust him because it's worth it.

00:04:40
Speaker 2: Like yeah, but anyway, check out the show.

00:04:42
Speaker 5: It's incredible Digital Animal Circus, No.

00:04:45
Speaker 2: The Amazing Digital Circus.

00:04:47
Speaker 5: The amazing Digital service.

00:04:49
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:04:50
Speaker 2: The humor is there, like it is. It's so funny.

00:04:53
Speaker 5: It's inappropriate for my six year old.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty much inappropriate for eleven year olds. It's really like it looks and feels like, you know, like like some of the best adult cartoons, right, it looks and feels like a kid's show, and there's elements of it. Like basically, Cain the AI is saying he's trying to keep them entertained by by giving them adventures every week, and each adventure is like some crazy, out there thing that he's come up with to like keep them occupied.

00:05:20
Speaker 2: And they're just trying to escape the whole time.

00:05:22
Speaker 5: Right, But man, it is so he's the one who's entertained.

00:05:24
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, you guys got to check it out. That's incredible.

00:05:27
Speaker 4: All right, I'm down for that.

00:05:29
Speaker 5: Welcome to Pod Meets World. I'm Daniel Fishal, I'm writer Strong, and I'm wil Fredell.

00:05:46
Speaker 7: Over the past three years of the podcast, when booking from Boy Meets World past we will take guests however they come. There were obviously writers, producers and guest stars that we've kept in touch with, the Blutman's, the mccrackens, the Matt Lawrence's, the Deities. There were those that were just an email away, the David Trainers, the Danny McNulty's, the Lee Norrises.

00:06:09
Speaker 5: There were people we personally.

00:06:10
Speaker 7: Hunted down, the Dusties, the Julie Yang Silvers, the cow Pens. We had people pitch themselves, We hounded publicists, We signed up for LinkedIn for Christ's sakes. But this week we have a new way through the praise of Jeff Mannel. When we asked him the writer he was saddesst to see leave through the show's always revolving door, he answered with a name we had never focused on before, even though we had obviously recapped his episodes by that point.

00:06:39
Speaker 5: The name just didn't ring a bell.

00:06:41
Speaker 7: Jeff explained, this guy just never really got a chance to shine on staff. But more importantly, the staunch vegetarian once dressed as a chicken to protest the crew's incessant desire to order cuckaroo for lunch every day, And well, then we knew we had to bring him on to Podmeats World. He's a playwright, screenwriter, director, and author who has written or co written more than a dozen books advocating a diet of whole plant foods, books like Food Is Climate.

00:07:10
Speaker 5: And America Goes.

00:07:11
Speaker 7: Vegan started with just an online guide to vegan restaurants in the late nineties and a website, HappyCow dot com. But in Hollywood, he began his career on Saint Elsewhere, China Beach, and the TV adaptation of Parenthood, before landing on Blossom, where he wrote nine episodes and functioned as a supervising producer for seasons two through four.

00:07:32
Speaker 5: And he recently wrote and directed a movie, Buddhist Blues, which we will hear all about.

00:07:38
Speaker 7: But today we are forcing him to focus on the one year he worked on Boy Meets World, penning a few bangers, pairing off Wake Up Little Corey and Danger Boy for season two, and yes, also the time he dressed as a chicken to make sure everyone knew how he felt about the constantly devoured rotisserie Coombo from Cuckaroo. Welcome to Pod Meets World, write producer and activist Glenn Mercer.

00:08:04
Speaker 6: Hi, Oh, how are you good? Do any of you actually remember me?

00:08:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do. Yes.

00:08:11
Speaker 8: Of course you were kids, Yeah, so were you.

00:08:19
Speaker 6: I was in my thirties, you were kids.

00:08:23
Speaker 7: Glenn, thank you so much for joining us. As you know, our pal Jeff Manel name dropped you as the writer he missed the most through the seven seasons we worked on the show, and we became instantly intrigued. So we're not going to bury the lead here. We want to see what you remember from the infamous Kukoroo incident where you dressed as a chicken. My first question is did you own the chicken outfit or was it a rental?

00:08:52
Speaker 6: I asked somebody in the costume department to help me outs.

00:09:00
Speaker 5: What did you say? I want to know. I want to know what set this off?

00:09:04
Speaker 7: What was what was what sparked the kernel of an idea in your mind?

00:09:07
Speaker 6: Well? I am a vegan, yes, and in fact, in the thirty two years I think since I worked on Boy Meets World, I have turned the world vegan. I don't know if you ever wondered who turned the world vegan?

00:09:23
Speaker 8: That was me?

00:09:24
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, congratulation.

00:09:27
Speaker 6: And so the staff seemed to love the fried chicken from this place called Cuckaroo.

00:09:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, we remember it well.

00:09:36
Speaker 6: I was appalled. So when they said they're going to have the CEO of Cuckaroo come visit and watch the show, I you know, I snuck down to the costume department and asked them to help me out give me a chicken outfit, and I made a sign at home that said chickens are people too. And I wore the chicken costume and I held that sign. And I have not been on the Christmas list of the CEO of Cuckaroo ever since.

00:10:09
Speaker 5: Was that on a tape night or did he come for a rehearsal? We didn't. I don't think we knew the information about the CEO.

00:10:15
Speaker 6: I'm guessing he came on a tape night he wanted to see the show.

00:10:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, how did we not get to know that the CEO of Cuckaroo?

00:10:23
Speaker 5: I don't.

00:10:23
Speaker 6: I know. When you when you're when you got a top show in show business, you just meet all kinds of people.

00:10:31
Speaker 5: I love that. That.

00:10:32
Speaker 7: That is the Our writers were like, which ceo can we get down here?

00:10:38
Speaker 4: That's important? We walk the guy from Cuckaro. Oh he was gettable. Let's be honest. Cuckaroo was gettable.

00:10:45
Speaker 5: Did any of the other writers know you were going to do this. Was it a secret you kept?

00:10:50
Speaker 6: Oh? Sure? Yeah?

00:10:54
Speaker 2: How did it go over?

00:10:55
Speaker 1: Did it upset anybody or was it just well, I think the cuckaroo guy was upset, but that I don't know about anyone else.

00:11:02
Speaker 6: All I know is I wasn't writing for boy Meates World the next few years.

00:11:06
Speaker 1: Wow.

00:11:08
Speaker 7: They were like, I can't believe he pissed off the CEO of our favorite lunch place.

00:11:13
Speaker 4: And then it chucked him out and Cooker and then Cooker.

00:11:15
Speaker 1: But this gets to my big question, like what was your relationship like with the writers?

00:11:21
Speaker 6: Like what? Oh? Yeah, I mean because I was very fond of the two Jeffs. Sure, I was very fond of a guy named Howard bust Gang.

00:11:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, Howard is great, you know, and I.

00:11:33
Speaker 6: Thought I got along okay, But you know, I was only there for a half year, so really was currently not with everybody?

00:11:43
Speaker 4: Wait, so you were only there for half a season?

00:11:45
Speaker 6: Only there for half I wrote three episodes in a half.

00:11:47
Speaker 2: Season, wow, which is actually.

00:11:50
Speaker 1: A lot for there for half a Yeah.

00:11:53
Speaker 5: I mean obviously everyone thought you were funny.

00:11:55
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:11:55
Speaker 4: Were you originally hired for the full season and then they just came to you and well.

00:11:58
Speaker 6: Know, when you get hired and television, you get a deal that says you will you know, this will be your pay and the company has the option to pick you up or not at a certain point.

00:12:12
Speaker 5: Wow, did you so? How soon after the Kuckaroo incident were you let go?

00:12:18
Speaker 6: Oh? That I don't remember, but I do remember this. There was when I had written my first couple of episodes, which was during the summer, you know, before you guys came in with the staff. Was writing and my agent did what agents do. He called up one of the one of my bosses and I had a few and said, how's Glenn doing? And the person apparently said, Glenn's writing is very good, but he's not doing as much as we would expect on the production side for a supervising producer. So I said to my agent, well, thanks for letting me know. And I went to that guy's office, no names, and I said, I understand that you told my agent that I'm not doing as much on the production side as expected. And he said yeah, and I said, we're not in production.

00:13:20
Speaker 5: What do you want from me?

00:13:25
Speaker 6: So I had a feeling that something was in for me at that point, and so I wasn't too shocked when they let me go at mid season.

00:13:34
Speaker 4: Wow.

00:13:35
Speaker 6: And even when we went into production, was I supposed to hang the lights? I don't know what I was supposed to So the costumes, I don't know. You know, they they give writers titles executive producer, supervising producer, producer, co producer, And I'm sure the public wonders, what are all these titles? What does it mean? So let me finally explain it for the listening public so they know. Very often, surprisingly enough, writers are fairly intelligent people. They could have gone out into the real world and gotten real jobs. So to keep their parents happy, their parents don't want to say my son, my daughter is a writer on a TV show, My son is supervising producing, right, right, So that's what the titles are for. It's for the parents.

00:14:35
Speaker 5: That makes sense. That makes sense. And doesn't it also have something to do with the guilds.

00:14:42
Speaker 6: Maybe, but you know there are parents in the guilds.

00:14:45
Speaker 5: That makes sense, the parents in the guilds. Yeah, you're right.

00:14:49
Speaker 4: So you came on in season two, had you were you familiar with boy Me's world when when you got the job, or.

00:14:55
Speaker 8: Had you No, you didn't didn't know the show at all.

00:14:58
Speaker 6: No, I had written for Block Awesome, Okay, And I guess somebody figured it's a natural segue from Blossom to boy meets World.

00:15:08
Speaker 4: Yeah that makes sense, that makes sense.

00:15:10
Speaker 8: They're they're the same, They're in the same kind of vein young family sitcom teenage or young teenage protagonist.

00:15:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.

00:15:18
Speaker 7: But I want to get in a little bit to your origin story, because you actually started in stand up right, right, Yeah, okay, So your first television credits are then Saint Elsewhere and China Beach, right, which hardly funny material, Right, How did that come about? How did you go from stand up to Saint Elsewhere?

00:15:39
Speaker 6: I went from stand up to writing stage plays. I did stand up in San Francisco in the heyday of San Francisco. It was Dana Carvey and Robin Williams had just left town and gotten discovered, and it was a Whitney Brown and a lot of great comics. So there were actually three levels of comedians in San Francisco when I was there in the early eighties. There were the headliners like Dana Carvey. There were the open and that was the top level. The third level. The bottom level was the open micers, and the middle level consisted of me. I amc the open mics.

00:16:26
Speaker 4: Okay, that was the.

00:16:28
Speaker 6: Middle level, and once in a while I would open for somebody like Dana. So it did stand up for about two years in San Francisco, and I could not take the cigarette smoke. You know, in those days they smoked in the clubs, and I just couldn't take it. So I thought, I'll write plays. And I got a fellowship to Indiana University to be a playwright. And there was something called the American College Theater Festival. I don't know if it probably still exists, where they would send judges around the country to see productions and then the winning play would go to. In those days it was called the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It still didn't have any other presidents. So I wrote a play called The Cashier and it won and it went to the Kennedy Center. And I said to myself, what if I switched schools and I go to another school and I do another play and I win again, then maybe somebody will notice. So I went to the University of Alabama. I wrote a play called A Morphous George and I entered it in the festival and I won again, Oh my god, and it went to the Kennedy Center, and I was wrong. Nobody noticed. But this time the prize was not for the best play. It was for the best comedy. And the prize was to go to Hollywood and write the stupidest sitcom. So that's what brought me to Hollywood. I wrote an episode of something called The Facts of Life Are Kidding.

00:18:18
Speaker 4: We take the good, we take the bad, we take them all and then we have come on.

00:18:22
Speaker 5: Did you meet David Kendall there? He worked on that show, right, I.

00:18:25
Speaker 6: Did not meet him. I don't know if George Clooney was. He was in the cast at one point. He was in the cast when I was there. I didn't know to meet him. You know, I should have been paying attention. So so I tried to pitch an episode. Because I was the prize winning writer, they had to give me an episode, but they didn't necessarily have to air it. H just had to pay me for it and get me into the writer's guild. So the problem was the show had been on the air for seven years and they couldn't do sex, drugs or rock and roll, and they had done everything else. So I would pitch ideas and they'd say, no, we did that, No, we did that. I mean, it was much much easier for Shakespeare to write a Hamlet then seas an episode past the staff of Oh my god, it was just it was impossible. So finally I came up with an idea and they said yes. And it was around Christmas time of that year. This is sometime in like the mid eighties, and they all had lives, the staff, they had families, and they had their job. And I was this prize winning writer who came in and I had nothing to do. So they said, okay, go home during the Christmas break and write an outline and come back. Now I didn't know that in the under the rules of the Writers Guild, you get paid in three stages. You get paid for the outline, which they called the story, then you get paid for the first draft, and then the second draft. Nobody had explained this to me, So they tell me to write the outline. I'd never written an outline before, but I figured how long could it take to write an outline? A half hour? Right, Yeah, So I decided I'll impress them. I'll write the whole episode. I got two weeks off with nothing to do. I'm in LA. I don't know anyone. I'll write the episode. So I wrote the fifty page episode very proudly typed it up. It was probably typewriter days. Yeah, typed it up, handed it in, you know, the first day back, proudly handed into one of the producers of what was the show called again Acts of Life? Yeah, And the producer looks at it and scowls at me and says, what's this? And I said, it's my episode? And he says, where's the story?

00:21:14
Speaker 9: Now?

00:21:14
Speaker 6: This was the stupidest question I'd ever heard in my life. I said, it's in there. Where else is it gonna be? And they just paid me off and sent me home.

00:21:25
Speaker 4: What did they ever shoot your episode?

00:21:27
Speaker 8: Oh?

00:21:27
Speaker 6: They were annoyed that I had written the episode instead of the outline.

00:21:31
Speaker 4: Oh my god.

00:21:34
Speaker 6: So when I then I got an agent, I don't know within a year after that, and I showed him what I wrote, and throughout my ten year writing career in Hollywood, he said, you know, I could end your career any time I want by distributing your Facts of Life episode.

00:21:53
Speaker 2: Because it was actually bad. Is what he was saying.

00:21:55
Speaker 6: It was terrible, I'm sure, but I thought terrible was the eye. It was the Facts of Life. What did I know?

00:22:06
Speaker 5: So how do you end up on Saint Elsewhere?

00:22:09
Speaker 6: Well, I wasn't on the staff of Saint Elsewhere. I got an episode, and I think, just my my agent had sent in one of my plays. Yes, I remember, now, yes, there's a story there. Okay, okay, there one of you.

00:22:24
Speaker 4: Just write the story, don't write the whole episode, Glens.

00:22:27
Speaker 6: Yeah. One of one of the producers of Saint Elsewhere was a wonderful guy named Tom Fontana. Now, I had written my play A Morphus George that had won me the prize that got me the Facts of Life, right, and there was a theater in Buffalo, the Buffalo Stage Theater or something Arena stage in Buffalo or something. They had. They had called me up. They were interested in doing my play, A Morphus George, and they said, we want to do a reading of it. Will you come to Buffalo. And this was right before my move to La to write for television because of the Facts of Life. And I said, well, I'm about to do a trip to LA so just do the reading. And I hope you like it, produce the play. And they said, now we're not going to do the reading unless you come. You have to be there. And I said, well when are you going to do this? And they I had just a narrow window of time to go to Buffalo, come back, and then fly to LA's. I said, okay, I'll be there and I said just for a day or two and they said, no for a week. For how long are you going to rehearse for a reading? A week? We'd want to get this reading right. So I go to Buffalo and they had the worst actors I've ever dealt with. These were not professional actors. They I don't know why. It's a professional equity theater, but they had community stage actors ruining my play for a week listening to these terrible rehearsals and I just want to go home. But everyone I meet in Buffalo says, oh, you're you're moving to La. Call Tom Fontana. I don't know. I don't know why they all knew this guy, but everyone says, you got to call Tom Fontana. He's a great guy. So he's in La. Call Tom Fontana. I took a bus from Buffalo back to New York as I recall, and on the bus, I'm sitting next to a middle aged woman and she starts talking to me, and I say, yea, I'm moving to La. She says, call Tom Fontana. Everybody said, So I'm in La. You know I had screwed up on the facts of life. You know, I didn't know anyone. The phone wasn't ringing, and I thought, I'll call Tom Fontana.

00:24:51
Speaker 5: What else do I have to do?

00:24:52
Speaker 6: So I had a phone number everyone had given me, and I get say't elsewhere Tom Fontana's office. So I said, okay, well, please tell Tom that Glenn called everybody in Buffalo wants me to speak with him. And he calls me back like on a Sunday morning, and talks with me for an hour and says, send in a play. Well, Tom Fontana was a playwright working in television, and he respected the fact that I was a playwright. When I sent in a play, he read it and he gave me an episode wow, saying elsewhere, bless his heart.

00:25:28
Speaker 4: Did you actually go to the set or did you just write it and send it in?

00:25:31
Speaker 6: I wrote it. I met in. It was Bruce Paltrow's office. He was not there but the Gwyneth's father's office, and there were two wonderful guys there named John Tinker and Channing Gibson, and they gave me the story. They said, just write these four stories. It's like they gave me the outline. Write these four stories. Don't integrate them. Just write them one after the other and will integrate them for you.

00:26:03
Speaker 3: Oh.

00:26:03
Speaker 2: Interesting.

00:26:04
Speaker 6: So I wrote those four stories and handed it in and I came back and they gave me notes, and I did it again, and they were apparently very happy with what I wrote, and they went on to recommend me to other you know, I did a show for David Milch and other people. They recommended me. So that was nice. But then when I tune in the episode that I wrote, I'm going to see now my episode on television. And I was supposed to like write a love story between a nurse and a doctor and write about a guy with a heart attack. Is I'm going to tune in to see my episode and there's a transplant of a heart from a sheep. And I call up Tinker. I said, you didn't tell me to write sheep. I can write sheep. You didn't want to. Why didn't you tell me to write the sheep. I can write sheep and he said, you know, I'm sorry, but you know, when we do the whole arc of the storyline for the year, we changed everything and that was that. So they recommended me, but they changed everything and they put in a sheep wow.

00:27:16
Speaker 3: Just add sheep wow. So how long after that?

00:27:33
Speaker 7: How long do you because then you end up on Blossom and that's like, you know, you're kind of living the comedy writer's dream at that point. I would imagine when do you join Blossom.

00:27:43
Speaker 6: What happened was after I did, I freelanced for a couple of years. I had one year when I freelanced like eight or ten scripts. Probably probably now there's nobody in Hollywood's freelancing. It's because in those days they use freelancers. They don't now, And it was it was a lot of scripts. But after that I got Parenthood with my friend Ed Begley Jr.

00:28:14
Speaker 4: Also with Alison Gibson.

00:28:16
Speaker 8: We just talked her about this, so Alison was what wrote on Parenthood as well.

00:28:19
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, so I got and Josh Josh Sweden who went on to do a few other things one or two Josh was there, so yeah. I worked with jos and Allison and a guy named Ty King. So I did Parenthood for a year and then and Parenthood actually they let go after a half year. So then my agent said, oh, you're You're hot. Everybody wants to work with you. We should have no problem. I got so many show runners interested in hiring you. You'll get a job this year, no problem. And he gets me like eight interviews with showrunners who were apparently all interested in hiring And with every showrunner, I went into the interview and I did my best, you know, but I'm not like a natural high energy guy. And I would come back and call my agent and say, did you speak to the showrunner? And my agent would say yeah, he said he liked you very much and he likes your writing, but you're too low energy. And my agent told me that eight times in a row. The eighth time he suggested coffee, and he kept telling me I'm too low energy. He said, now the eight of them have turned you down for being too low energy. I got one more for you now. Oh, I hope I could remember her name. I don't think I can remember her name. But there was a woman who had a pilot I think it was going to be for CBS. You're going to think I'm making this up. I am not making this up. It was a pilot that had been ordered I guess, not picked up yet for the season. But it was a pilot that had been ordered about a woman in a coma, I swear, and we were going to somehow see her thoughts and then the we would hear the dialogue of the people in the house who were not in a coma.

00:30:41
Speaker 5: You have the perfect energy for.

00:30:42
Speaker 6: That for the Janice Hirsch Janice Okay, sure, yeah, of course, good writer.

00:30:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, great writer.

00:30:53
Speaker 6: So I go in for this meeting with Janice Hirsh and I had coffee that morning, Oh my gosh, and I never had coffee before. And I did everything I could, and I went back and I called my agent and I said, what did Jennie say? And he said, she says, you're too low energy. Oh my god, I was too low energy for a coma.

00:31:23
Speaker 8: Thank god they didn't ask you to do cokey.

00:31:27
Speaker 6: I was ready to give it up. And then my agent calls and says, all right, I got you one more. Don Rio, who runs Blossom, He's willing to meet you. He hasn't heard yet about your energy? Do what you can.

00:31:41
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:31:42
Speaker 6: So I meet with Don and I was very tired that morning. I didn't sleep well knowing that I'd just blown nine interviews in a row. And I'm trying to keep my eyes open asking questions about Blossom and answering Don's questions. Don's a great guy, by the way, and uh, I'm just I know I'm blowing it. This was my worst interview of all time. And finally I said Don, I'm going to stop the interview right here. I'm stopping it. I've just blown eight interviews, and I tell him my low energy problem. And I told him I was too low energy for a coma show, and he hired me.

00:32:27
Speaker 2: Amazing.

00:32:28
Speaker 6: The other eight shows were all off the air within six weeks, and Blossom was three years.

00:32:33
Speaker 5: So there you go.

00:32:35
Speaker 4: Awesome, Wow, low energy for a coma show.

00:32:41
Speaker 7: And so how does Boy Meets World enter your life? Did you meet with Bob Tishler, Did you meet with Michael? What was that first intro to Boy Meets World?

00:32:51
Speaker 6: You know, I don't remember. I don't remember if I had a meeting with Michael or they just hired me.

00:32:56
Speaker 5: Okay, I don't remember.

00:32:59
Speaker 7: What memory do you have from that that writer's room. You're half a season in the writer's room that don't involve a chicken suit.

00:33:08
Speaker 6: I remember Howard bust Gang, who now apparently has a deli.

00:33:13
Speaker 5: He does does he does Canada?

00:33:15
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:33:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, we want to go.

00:33:17
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, I'm going to have to talk with him for the first time in thirty years because there's nothing vegan on the menu.

00:33:25
Speaker 4: So there's water.

00:33:31
Speaker 6: I think it has some cornby flavoring.

00:33:33
Speaker 9: Yeah.

00:33:36
Speaker 6: So the staff, when you know, the writer writing staff went out for launch, or a group of us did, and we're walking back in and you know, people may not realize this, but when you're doing a show at Disney and you're walking back to your office, you're making a left turn at Mickey mass Mouse Avenue and a right turn on Donald Duck Lane, and it's very hard to feel like an adult. But we go into the office, and let's say it was a group of five of us, and four of us walk in the door and start walking up the stairs to our office, and Howard bust Gang just stays in the lobby and he's staring at a photograph and I said, Howard, come on, we gotta work and he's just staring at a photograph saying this is wrong, this is wrong. So I go over to him. It's a photograph of Walt Disney, and I say, what's wrong. He says, oh, this is wrong. What what's wrong? He says, somebody drew a Hitler mustache on him. And I say, Howard, that's Walt Disney's mustache. No, that's Adolph's mustache. No, Howard, that's Walt Disney.

00:35:05
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

00:35:09
Speaker 5: All right, are you the first person to compare Walt Disney and you know.

00:35:20
Speaker 6: The story?

00:35:22
Speaker 4: Did you so? Question?

00:35:24
Speaker 8: Did you like working on Boy Mets World? Did you like the show when you were there? Or was this kind of like, oh my god, it's like Facts of Life again?

00:35:31
Speaker 6: Yeah, well it was better than Facts of Life. I look, I was lucky. I was getting overpaid to write a sitcom.

00:35:41
Speaker 9: Right.

00:35:42
Speaker 6: Would I have stayed home and watched the show? Honestly, No, I didn't watch a lot of television, and you know, it was a show for teenagers, you know, so, but it was you know, it was a pleasant enough environment. And I like some people on the staff, and you know, I didn't hang out with the actors, so I didn't know any of you guys.

00:36:05
Speaker 7: Now, we can use your quote boy meets World better than Facts of Life in our upcoming book.

00:36:14
Speaker 4: And I'm also like I liked some people on the staff. Yeah, this is a glowing review.

00:36:26
Speaker 3: Thank you.

00:36:27
Speaker 2: It's that infamous low energy. It is Glenrser energy that we're gonn. Guys.

00:36:35
Speaker 7: Your first episode is Pairing Off, which is in investigation of sorts into young hormones, and it includes our own Wilfred Ell here getting to second base with Marguerite Moreau in the Matthew's parents' bedroom.

00:36:49
Speaker 9: You're kidding, I wrote that you did, wow, or maybe you were told to write that.

00:37:00
Speaker 4: You wrote, that's what it was.

00:37:02
Speaker 6: Yeah, I thought I wrote episodes about humanity's search for meaning in the existential void.

00:37:10
Speaker 7: No, no, that was later when you got the world to be vegan.

00:37:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was Facts of Life. That was maybe.

00:37:16
Speaker 8: Yeah, girls, girls, girls, that's what it was exactly.

00:37:23
Speaker 7: Do you remember that story coming together at all or any memories from set that week?

00:37:29
Speaker 8: I remember Cuckaroo, right, okay, yeah, that's what everybody.

00:37:32
Speaker 6: Right after that. I haven't remembered anything. Wow.

00:37:35
Speaker 7: Man, So that episode was written alongside apparently your biggest fan, Jeff Manel. Had you known him before? You guys were paired up on scripts?

00:37:46
Speaker 8: No, okay, now, curiously so we the show had a big shift between season one and season two, so for us, because they were, we've been told, trying to age up the show. We got rid of one of the characters who they thought was too young, and they're, you know, clearly in pairing off, trying to show that Eric is more of an adult. Were you privy to any of those conversations or were they like, don't even let's pretend season one never happened for you, Glenn, and we're just moving on from here.

00:38:14
Speaker 6: Well, I remember being told that they were doing that. I remember being told that they were, you know, trying to make the show less of a little kids show.

00:38:23
Speaker 4: Right, okay, So.

00:38:30
Speaker 7: Then your next script is Wake Up Little Corey, an episode we love where Corey and Tabanga fall asleep while working on a project, so the entire school thinks that they slept together. Again, you did this episode with Minel, and this one is nuanced and funny and a larger establishment for what the show thinks of love. Do you have any memory of writing that script?

00:38:52
Speaker 6: I remember Kookaroo.

00:38:57
Speaker 8: Well, it seems like you know, if there's anything that has to involve sex, you're the guy.

00:39:02
Speaker 6: Appurrently they went to me as the sex guy.

00:39:05
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:39:06
Speaker 6: You know, when you're in Hollywood, you get a reputation.

00:39:09
Speaker 10: Right right, exactly, break out.

00:39:11
Speaker 8: It exactly, as long as it's not one of your lovers saying, you know, very low energy, Glenn, very.

00:39:20
Speaker 4: Have you drink coffee? Coffee?

00:39:25
Speaker 6: You know? Actually? Can I tell you about coffee please? I had never I never drank coffee as a kid because I was a kid.

00:39:34
Speaker 5: Right, okay, Yeah.

00:39:36
Speaker 6: So I go to visit my college where I was going to go to college, school called New College in Sarasota, Florida. So I visit there when I was seventeen to check it out to see if I want to go there, and they tell me there's going to be a coffee clatch at the home of Professor Bates. You could meet the students and the professor. So I thought, I'll go. I'll be with the adults. So I go there and Professor Bates says across the room, Glenn, would you like do you like coffee? And I say I don't know. So she says, would you like to try a cup? So I say sure, I'm going to be a grown up now. So they give me a cup of coffee and it would taste it like mud. It was the worst thing I ever tasted in I couldn't get through the cup right. So I just never drank coffee again until my agent made me do it one.

00:40:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:40:36
Speaker 6: So twenty years later, I go back to New College to talk at the retirement of my lit professor, and I'm walking around campus and I meet a young woman. I say, what do you study here? And she says, I study International relations with Professor Bates. And I say, she's still here, how's she doing? She says great, She is great. She's just the best professor. But she makes the worst friggin coffee.

00:41:07
Speaker 4: She turns you off.

00:41:09
Speaker 6: But I'm grateful You've.

00:41:11
Speaker 7: Never had to deal with it, never had to deal with waking up, and the first thing you think about is coffee.

00:41:17
Speaker 5: That's my life.

00:41:18
Speaker 6: So now I'm gonna make a prediction. I think Danielle is going to ask me about the third episode that I don't remember.

00:41:25
Speaker 4: Do you remember Cuckaroo?

00:41:26
Speaker 6: I remember, what's the third episode?

00:41:29
Speaker 5: It's a classic. It's a classic danger boy.

00:41:32
Speaker 4: Oh huge.

00:41:33
Speaker 7: This has Corey and mister Feenie writing a dangerous roller coaster after being.

00:41:39
Speaker 5: Seen as safe and boring, and we have seen.

00:41:42
Speaker 7: Dozens of people dress up as the danger boy Corey and Feenie at our live shows.

00:41:47
Speaker 5: It is a beloved episode.

00:41:50
Speaker 7: Was it as fun to write as it was?

00:41:55
Speaker 6: Was? I'm gonna go with yes?

00:41:59
Speaker 5: Okay?

00:42:00
Speaker 4: Good? Do you remember it?

00:42:01
Speaker 6: So?

00:42:02
Speaker 8: This was also a big week for us on the show because we had the roller coaster built. Ben actually got hurt the first day in the usual everbody got hurt. Yeah, he was the He wasn't strapped in properly, and the thing came to an abrupt stop and there was a board right between his legs and he slid right into the board. It was.

00:42:21
Speaker 4: It was not pleasurable. So I no memory of that.

00:42:27
Speaker 6: No, But you know I didn't do it as much on the production side as I was.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: If you had only been there, yesies.

00:42:41
Speaker 8: Have no Okay, So let's talk about something else other than Boy Mets World.

00:42:47
Speaker 4: Have you always been a vegan or well?

00:42:51
Speaker 6: No. I grew up like a normal American eating hamburgers, okay, and uh in my family, everybody was starting to get heart attacks. So at seventeen I became a vegetarian.

00:43:05
Speaker 5: Okay.

00:43:08
Speaker 6: I had decided to do it first day of summer vacation when I was seventeen, And so I got up that morning, I had an English muffin with jam for breakfast, and my old buddy Dave called.

00:43:20
Speaker 5: Remember that?

00:43:20
Speaker 6: Huh, yeah, I remember that. And my old buddy Dave called and said, and I said, hey, congratulate me. I became a vegetarian. And he said, hey, great, Since when And I said, well, yeah, you know, since breakfast and he laughed at me. And I haven't had meat for the fifty plus years since. So it was a good thing.

00:43:42
Speaker 8: I've never never once slipped and woke up just covered in cheese sauce with a bread next to you.

00:43:47
Speaker 3: It never happened.

00:43:48
Speaker 6: No, wow, No, But at that point I was just a vegetarian. While I was writing Blossom, I went vegan, and I've been vegan ever since. I forget what year it was that I turned the whole world vegan.

00:44:03
Speaker 5: I forget too.

00:44:04
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I have that.

00:44:05
Speaker 4: So then you just hunt for sport.

00:44:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I don't don't get me in trouble. Don't get me in trouble with my people.

00:44:16
Speaker 4: What was the favorite show that you ever worked on.

00:44:20
Speaker 6: Well, the best gig was Blossom. It was three years. Don Rio was a wonderful boss. The show was so well run that one year we had all twenty two episodes written before the actors showed up.

00:44:33
Speaker 2: That's incredible. Wow.

00:44:35
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you could imagine how easy that gig was when then week after week you just have to do some rewrites and oh you're not under the pressure to create the episodes.

00:44:47
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:44:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, did that producer and showrunner kind of ruin it for you?

00:44:52
Speaker 8: Because sometimes, I know, we talk about how much we enjoyed being on the set of Boy Meets World to where we when we went off to other shows after it was kind of like you have that expectation, you think everything's going to be like that, and then it's not.

00:45:03
Speaker 4: I mean, was that the same kind of experience you had?

00:45:06
Speaker 6: Well, you know, like I said, Don Rio was probably the most efficient showrunner in Hollywood, and it's a great guy to work for. And you know, so I was very lucky to have that gig. And that was three years, and you know, it was kind of hard to top a show running that well.

00:45:27
Speaker 8: Right man, twenty two episodes written before the actors ever show up.

00:45:31
Speaker 4: That's insane.

00:45:33
Speaker 7: I want to talk to you about Buddhist Blues. This is a movie you wrote and directed. Please tell us all about it.

00:45:40
Speaker 6: Okay, Well, Buddhist Blues. The website is Buddhist Blues dot com. It's an indie film, low budget, and it is the story of two Jewish cousins in Saint Louis in nineteen ninety three, and one of them has been a strange from the family and the other one is trying to get him back into the family. So it's a drama. It's a family drama, but somehow there's a little bit of comedy that comes in here and there.

00:46:14
Speaker 7: Great writing and directing a movie is obviously a big undertaking. Did you enjoy being in charge of everything, handling your own work.

00:46:24
Speaker 6: Yeah. And I did a lot of the producing of it too, So you know, my wife was the production designer and she painted oil paintings for the background. You could see that at the website of Buddhist Blues dot com. And you know, I did the casting and the staging of it. But you know, it was a lot of work, and it was but that's the kind of work that I'm happy to do. And you know, I'm pretty proud of it. We don't have any stars in it.

00:47:02
Speaker 3: All.

00:47:02
Speaker 6: You guys turned me down.

00:47:04
Speaker 4: I don't know what exactly.

00:47:05
Speaker 8: We didn't get calls. Glenn, you used the entire cast of the Buffalo Playhouse. You just put them all in it.

00:47:15
Speaker 5: So how will be able to see it?

00:47:18
Speaker 6: Well, we're going to probably release it one way or another this summer, so depending on you know, people are going to be listening to this podcast for decades and maybe centuries to come.

00:47:30
Speaker 4: They are, that's when.

00:47:32
Speaker 6: So depending upon when they listen to it, it will either have already been released or if it's if this podcast airs soon and the movie has not yet been released, you could just leave your email address at the website and we will let you know when the movie is released.

00:47:51
Speaker 5: Perfect Buddhist Blues dot Com. Is there a vegan in the movie?

00:47:57
Speaker 6: There is? The protagonist is a vegan. Thank you for using it.

00:48:01
Speaker 5: I love it.

00:48:03
Speaker 6: And you know there's a point. There's a point to that, actually, Danielle. And the point is this, we didn't have gay marriage in the country till twenty fifteen. And when Barack Obama first round for president, he didn't he didn't announce that he was supporting gay marriage. So what happened in the interim. What happened in the interim was we had TV shows like Ellen and Will and Grace, and the episodes weren't about being gay, but the episodes had gay characters. Gay people are like everybody else. And so when was the last time you saw a movie and there was a character who was a vegan and the vegan was just like everybody else. So that's a little is not the main point of the movie, but it's a little bit of what I'm trying to do here. Why can't we have a movie with the protagonist who's a vegan?

00:48:55
Speaker 4: So that's great? And when I go see it in the theater, I'll just stick to popcorn. I won't have a hot dog. How about that?

00:49:00
Speaker 6: Please?

00:49:01
Speaker 2: Please? No, no butter on the butter.

00:49:05
Speaker 4: It's not real butter.

00:49:06
Speaker 5: Anyway, Glenn, we have one more question for you.

00:49:13
Speaker 7: Where can we get the best vegan food in l A?

00:49:18
Speaker 6: The Sun Cafe? I think the Sun Cafe is still there. Okay, that was a really good restaurant.

00:49:26
Speaker 5: The Sun Cafe. What do you like to get there?

00:49:29
Speaker 2: Oh?

00:49:32
Speaker 5: Coffee?

00:49:33
Speaker 6: And I don't you know, I don't remember they had some raw dishes. That cafe Gratitude is very gratitude.

00:49:46
Speaker 8: Were a good one in in our town too, Daniel Apparently the vegan, the vegan joint Vegan is very good.

00:49:52
Speaker 3: It is.

00:49:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, my neighborhood in LA has become all vegan Highland.

00:49:56
Speaker 6: Well that's because I turned the world.

00:49:58
Speaker 4: You turned out, so you're the one to blame.

00:50:01
Speaker 7: Hey, Glenn, thank you so much for joining us. We see why you are so beloved by especially Jeff Manel. But thank you. You have really given us a good a good laugh this morning.

00:50:15
Speaker 6: Well I'm going to use that blurb. If I can beloved by Jeff Manel, I can go through life.

00:50:22
Speaker 4: With that, if we can use yours. I got along with some people, I liked some people.

00:50:28
Speaker 6: At least it wasn't facts of life.

00:50:31
Speaker 5: Boys World better than facts of life. Thank you, Glenn, this was such a joy. We love you.

00:50:40
Speaker 6: Thank you, Thank you, Danielle writer and.

00:50:43
Speaker 10: Bye, Oh my gosh, he's sterical, hilarious, Yeah stercle Oh my.

00:50:55
Speaker 7: Jensen is hiding me off chain going do you think he'd be my second dad?

00:50:59
Speaker 4: Is so funny that guy and I can understate it.

00:51:03
Speaker 8: It's absolutely see why the boy meets world writer's room in the sitcom world wasn't for him.

00:51:09
Speaker 4: I can see that a thousand percent.

00:51:11
Speaker 2: Because all you have to do is pitch yourself like that.

00:51:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the job is like you're having to sell your jokes and you're and if you don't have that aggressive energy, a lot of people just might not notice.

00:51:23
Speaker 6: You know.

00:51:24
Speaker 8: Where he reminded me so much of story Wise and the way he's talking and just himself is Larry David, where it's like he's gonna be fired from every show that he's on until he goes, I'm the smartest person in the room.

00:51:35
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go do my own thing and then it'll blow up.

00:51:37
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly, because he's so I would kill to see his stand up because I bet you I would be laughing hysterically and no one else would get it.

00:51:46
Speaker 4: And that's like my favorite kind of stand up in the world. God, that guy was fun.

00:51:50
Speaker 2: He's funny.

00:51:51
Speaker 5: Funny.

00:51:53
Speaker 7: Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your emails podmeets Worldshow at gmail dot com, and we've got merch.

00:52:04
Speaker 8: I'm just gonna straight up say it because we have to do a shirt. Boy Meets World better than Facts of Life merch.

00:52:12
Speaker 7: Podmeetsworldshow dot com writer send us out.

00:52:16
Speaker 2: We love you all, poddismissed.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfridell and Ryder Strong executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Tarasubasch producer, Maddie Moore engineer and Boy Meets World Superman Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at podmets World Show or email us at Podmeets World Show at gmail dot com