EP56: How a Hollywood Couple Made Parenting and Career Work

Interview with Bill Masters / Legendary Sitcom Writer and Creator, Lead Dad

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Bill Masters is a comedy-writing legend. He parlayed stand-up into writing for "Seinfeld". He created "Caroline in the City" and "Raising Dad". His wife Gail Berman is a legend in her own right, having run Paramount Pictures and Fox Broadcasting's entertainment division. More recently she produced the Netflix hit "Wednesday" and the film "Elvis". Yet when it came to their twins, now 30, Bill was the Lead Dad, working his writing around the family's schedule so he could support Gail in her career. Hear him talk about the good, the bad, and the funny of being a Hollywood Lead Dad.

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Transcript

00;00;16;10 - 00;00;38;12
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men who are the go to parents aren't always accepted at work, among their friends, or in their community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Today, my guest is Bill Masters, acclaimed comedy writer, Hollywood husband, and the dad.

00;00;38;15 - 00;01;03;06
Paul Sullivan
He's written and produced shows like Grace Under Fire, Caroline and the city. And for this podcast, the aptly named Raising Dad. Bill also wrote for Seinfeld. His wife is Gail Berman, who was the first woman to run both a film studio, Paramount, and a television network, Fox Entertainment division. She's also the successful producer of such classics as Malcolm in the Middle and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

00;01;03;09 - 00;01;18;07
Paul Sullivan
Her recent productions, which are up for many awards, include the movie Elvis and Wednesday, the Netflix series. Bill and Gail have twins, Alex and Jacob, who recently turned 30. Bill. Welcome to the Commentator's podcast.

00;01;18;09 - 00;01;20;28
Bill Masters
Well thank you, Paul, I appreciate it. Good to see you.

00;01;21;00 - 00;01;42;22
Paul Sullivan
All right. So you've had great success, as a sitcom writer. Here's a chicken and egg question. You know what helped? You know, more, you know, being married, being a father or, you know, being a comedy writer feel, sort of feed your ability to manage the ups and downs of parenting.

00;01;42;25 - 00;02;07;11
Bill Masters
Well, you know, it's interesting, I, I started out as a standup comic. So the first, ten years of, my, married life to Gayle, you know, we didn't have kids, and I was, on the road a lot, and I was just doing stand up, and, we wanted children, but, we just never seemed, you know, we never seem to be in the same building, you know?

00;02;07;14 - 00;02;29;05
Bill Masters
And so, I wrote a, I was working on The Cosby Show, and I wrote a script, that they really liked, and I said, okay, I should do. Maybe I'll try this. And then I wrote a feature that got, set up and another feature that got bored and that sent us out to LA. And Gail was the theater producer in the beginning of, of her career.

00;02;29;05 - 00;02;57;29
Bill Masters
And she came out here and started working in television. And then we decided, you know, now's the time to start the family. And, you know, we were older. I mean, not that old, but, you know, we weren't the, you know, teenagers, but we managed to, Gail, manage to get pregnant. And the interesting thing is that, I had written an episode of Seinfeld.

00;02;58;01 - 00;03;27;06
Bill Masters
And because I knew Larry and I knew Jerry from the stand up world, and they did a freelance script for me, and, I thought, oh, this is great. You know, my, my career is really going to start to move. And, I couldn't get a job anywhere. And Gail, I went to she was working for Sandy Gallen at the time, and, and Dolly Parton and, and Sandy was tough.

00;03;27;06 - 00;03;48;15
Bill Masters
And whenever we went to the, the obstetrician who said that she was pregnant with twins and that there's going to be some, bedrest, and, you know, it's not it's not going to be that easy. And I my first saw was Will. She's. Sandy's going to fire her. You know, he's he's not he's not that family guy.

00;03;48;18 - 00;04;16;07
Bill Masters
And I had just had two meetings with writers who said no, that they didn't want to hire me. So I went to Gail's office on the Fox lot, and, I didn't know what I was going to do because I hadn't done stand up in about a year and that fit to really do anything else. And I called home to get messages, and I got a message from, from Larry David, who was in New York.

00;04;16;09 - 00;04;34;06
Bill Masters
And Gail said, do we have any messages? I said, Larry David called, but I'm not calling him back. She said, why not? I said, because I know he's in New York. He's going to ask me to ask you to get tickets for lameness or something. Yeah, yeah. This just really going to piss me off because I'm struggling here.

00;04;34;06 - 00;04;47;13
Bill Masters
And she said, call him, I'll get him, take a somewhere. So I, I called him and he said, look, I, you may not want to do this, but, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about hiring you for the staff next season.

00;04;47;15 - 00;04;51;28
Paul Sullivan
And before he got that out, did you say no, Larry? No. You can't have tickets till I miss.

00;04;52;00 - 00;05;06;20
Bill Masters
Oh, thank God I didn't do that. And, he he so he he gave me that job. And the great thing about Seinfeld was that was a year that arguably the best year of Seinfeld, season for.

00;05;06;23 - 00;05;09;00
Paul Sullivan
So what that that's like 1991 or what are we.

00;05;09;00 - 00;05;27;23
Bill Masters
This was, this was not 92, 93, 1980. So it was a one. You know, it was a year with the, you know, the contest, the implant, the, the Virgin, you know, a lot of great episodes, none of which, I mean, had something to do with, but none of. Yeah. You know, it wasn't because of me.

00;05;27;23 - 00;05;47;25
Bill Masters
But anyway, I just happened to be there. And so, And Larry always had a, he he very rarely kept the writers for more than one year. He ended up changing it once it became the number one show. And that was the year that we, Seinfeld moved to Thursdays and became The Weekend. Anyway, I had that under my belt, the Seinfeld, credit.

00;05;47;25 - 00;05;56;13
Bill Masters
And so I was able to, continue to work and sort of have had some choices as to where I was going to work for about the next ten years.

00;05;56;15 - 00;06;16;14
Paul Sullivan
But that, that that time also sort of coincides. I'm doing some my kids just turned 30. So you kids are born at the end of 1992. So, you know, Grace Under Fire is 93. Carolyn. The city's, you know, 95. How did you and Gail sort of trade off that bout? And then she's obviously working as well.

00;06;16;14 - 00;06;31;14
Paul Sullivan
How did you trade off that, that balance of parenting when the twins were were so young? When you were you both, you know, not just quite busy, but but having, you know, some real success. That type of success. Yeah. Well card for.

00;06;31;17 - 00;06;37;22
Bill Masters
You know, one hand was really good because it was a time where we were both making money. And that was, that was good.

00;06;37;24 - 00;06;39;28
Paul Sullivan
Better to make money than not make money that.

00;06;40;00 - 00;07;05;01
Bill Masters
We we ended up buying a house and, after Seinfeld, it was Grace Under Fire, which was for two years, an unbelievably hard, time consuming job. Where I had to put in sometimes over 100 hours a week, you know, in the writers room and on the set. And during that time, the kids were, one, two.

00;07;05;04 - 00;07;37;24
Bill Masters
Gail did almost all the heavy lifting back then. And even to the point where the mommy and me class had started, I guess when they were 2 or 3. Yeah. She would do that. She would go to the classes with the kids, take them home. We had we did have a nanny. And then she would go to work and every night, and I mean, every night, she had to get home to put the kids to bed because I wasn't going to get home until, you know, 2 or 3 or 4:00 in the morning.

00;07;37;26 - 00;07;57;12
Bill Masters
But I would always get up at six with the kids, just so I could spend time with them. So for the first couple of years, it was a real give and take between the two of us. And Gail had a job where she could at least make sure that she could get home most nights. You know, weekends.

00;07;57;12 - 00;08;34;03
Bill Masters
All we did was just, you know, we played with the kids, and whenever they took a nap or we took a nap, and, so, you know, we spent we spent a lot of time, doing that, you know, raising the kids together. And like I said, in the beginning, it was it was mostly Gail who was, hands on, then, you know, as the years went by, when Gail's career changed from being, working for a company producing for another company, she got the job, at Fox, right?

00;08;34;04 - 00;08;47;10
Paul Sullivan
I les Paul, but I want to get to that, and I want to come back because I want to paint a picture for people who are listening to this particularly, you know, people are in their 30s. They're going to say, well, why couldn't you just do this or do this? I mean, paint the picture of a writers room in the 1990s.

00;08;47;10 - 00;08;59;18
Paul Sullivan
I mean, you know, iPhones, limited computers. You everybody's in there together and, and paint the picture of what was going on and why you had to be there, why there was no such thing as, you know, remote work back then.

00;08;59;20 - 00;09;17;28
Bill Masters
Right? Well, the interesting thing in the beginning, Larry didn't have a writers room, except on occasion when they were in real trouble. And then we would come in. So my first year, I didn't, you know, I wasn't. But soon as I got into Grace, to fire Chuck Laurie, that's how he was raised in television.

00;09;17;28 - 00;09;47;12
Bill Masters
And it's the way most television shows are. And every one after that was, was basically, you get to work, and you get into a room and you start working on something. And usually at any given day, there's a, an episode that's being edited and, and, prepped for being on television. The one that you did before is going to be on television that week.

00;09;47;15 - 00;09;59;03
Bill Masters
The, one that they're rehearsing is the one that's going to be on television in a couple of weeks, and then the one that you're writing is going to be so there's a lot of work that you have to do.

00;09;59;03 - 00;10;02;23
Paul Sullivan
And this conveyor belt, it always keeps on moving on you.

00;10;02;23 - 00;10;29;05
Bill Masters
And you can, you know, a couple of you might have to work on, on this. What's happening exactly. Now, you got to run down to the set and put that fire out then. Right. So it's it's a constant, it's it's constantly working on a bunch of different things. And the showrunner is the it all falls on his or her head, and it's it's an impossible.

00;10;29;07 - 00;11;00;26
Bill Masters
I just did it briefly, for pilots and stuff. It's it's it's amazing how how hard that job is and how time consuming it is. And so, that's why, you know, every time that I leave there, wherever, whatever show it was, I'd have to be back, you know, in six hours or at the most, you know, and, while you're there, but not only do you have this work to do, but you also have to have some kind of creative thing.

00;11;00;28 - 00;11;05;13
Paul Sullivan
You got to be funny. You're there to be funny. You can't come in tired and morose and. Yeah.

00;11;05;15 - 00;11;31;23
Bill Masters
Exactly. And the great thing about, my experience, not only just, being a standup, but also, as I stayed, got different jobs in sitcoms. I need other people to be funny. And that's a that's, you know, if I were stuck in my room and I'm writing a script, it's not going to be as funny as if I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of other people who are funny people.

00;11;31;25 - 00;11;38;09
Bill Masters
Yeah, because funny people make other funny people funny. I mean, it's it's really true.

00;11;38;11 - 00;11;42;17
Paul Sullivan
And it's also I want that on the t shirt. That's good.

00;11;42;19 - 00;12;07;03
Bill Masters
And it's also, you know, there's a certain amount of competition and, but you have to get rid of the fear immediately. And, you know, I worked on, second year race, to fire Alan Ball, who was going to be a big, big, star in the business. That was his first job. And so the first couple of months, he almost said nothing in the room.

00;12;07;03 - 00;12;13;20
Bill Masters
He just sat there and, you know, he was the lowest writer, so it didn't matter to anybody other.

00;12;13;21 - 00;12;16;01
Paul Sullivan
Anybody would listen to him anyway. So it. Yeah. Right.

00;12;16;04 - 00;12;36;18
Bill Masters
And then, you know, about the about six weeks and he just started to just say stuff and almost everything he said helped the script or was put up the script or started to show up. And he, he just spent that first six weeks watching everything and seeing how it was done and saying, I can do this. And then he did it.

00;12;36;20 - 00;12;49;11
Bill Masters
And, you know, I mean, by the end of the season, we were all so excited, that Alan was still there because, he was so good. Yeah, we all know he was going to, you know, he was going to become something. Yeah.

00;12;49;13 - 00;13;06;22
Paul Sullivan
I want to get back to what you're about. You're about to talk about Gale and what I heard. Paramount. Fox. But before that, you know, that was all the early 2000. But before that, you know, you came on the company of dad's podcast and not talk about, you know, raising dad. I mean, how did that, you know, how did it come about?

00;13;06;24 - 00;13;08;11
Paul Sullivan
You talk about the same thing. Yeah.

00;13;08;14 - 00;13;28;13
Bill Masters
Interesting about raising dad was, I, I had stopped working full time. I was just going to write some pilots. We didn't really need the money. Plus, as I was getting into it before, Gail was in a position where she. She didn't have the flexibility. Yeah, she was when she was running Fox, she would get a,

00;13;28;15 - 00;13;49;02
Bill Masters
She called me up and say, you know, I've got, I've got, Peter Chernin wants me to come to his house to do, and I she has to do it. That's more important than me being on a TV show in a writers room. So, we agreed that I wouldn't work for that. At least that one year or two years.

00;13;49;05 - 00;13;52;22
Bill Masters
And about the second year,

00;13;52;24 - 00;13;55;22
Paul Sullivan
I mean, what were you doing that 1 or 2 years? You were you.

00;13;55;22 - 00;14;13;24
Bill Masters
All. I had a deal one year. I was lucky I had a deal at Warner Brothers. So I got paid, and I was writing, a pilot. I was, I was spending one one night a week on a show. So I was still in it. And then the next year, my friend Peter had a show and I co-executive executive produced that.

00;14;14;01 - 00;14;17;28
Bill Masters
Yeah. But it didn't go, after the the first 13.

00;14;17;28 - 00;14;21;25
Paul Sullivan
But it wasn't the intensity of being on a series in the writers.

00;14;21;25 - 00;14;37;07
Bill Masters
Room. It was just. It was just easier. And then, then I just, you know, because I had a good agent and I, I would get meetings, I'd go to meetings at pitch ideas. People would buy the pilot, I'd stay at home and write the pilot. But I was on. I had my own. I was on my own clock, you know?

00;14;37;12 - 00;14;55;26
Bill Masters
Yeah. I put down my pen and go, you know, pick up the kids after school and that kind of stuff. And, and then racing. Dad, the reason, Jonathan Katz, it was his show, and we were friends from, from doing stand up. And so he called me up and he said, they just cast Bob Saget.

00;14;55;28 - 00;15;14;23
Bill Masters
Yeah. Now, Saget daughter was in school with my kids. So I would see Bob. I also did stand up with Bob. So we knew each other from from the back in the day. Yeah. So when I got the job for racing, dad, you know, I was really happy to go back to work. I said the galley.

00;15;14;23 - 00;15;37;08
Bill Masters
I it's it's going to be good, you know, to get to get back and and do this again, full time. And, I met Norman Steinberg, who's a legend, you know, about Blazing Saddles. Yeah. We got along great. And so, we started working on raising dad, and I think I'm looking around the room in my mind.

00;15;37;11 - 00;15;45;03
Bill Masters
Besides, Norman and I. I don't think there were any other dads in there, you know? Because,

00;15;45;05 - 00;15;50;07
Paul Sullivan
So does that give you guys veto power if you said, like, hey, we're we're dads, we've got some credit. You guys don't.

00;15;50;09 - 00;16;12;18
Bill Masters
Know. I don't think, you know, that's the one thing about the writers room is, funny rules. Yeah. Whoever or whoever's, whoever's the funniest doesn't make any difference. So anyway, that's how I got that job. And, you know, we did a season, and then they didn't pick it up for the next year. And I, we were all disappointed because we thought it was it was good enough.

00;16;12;20 - 00;16;40;06
Bill Masters
It was the WB. And they needed hits and, you know, the show to get picked up. And so that was my only real experience, being on a show, you know, but I, that I really thought, you know, this, this, this the show, the show should have about a 5 or 6 year, you know, run, and it didn't, and then obviously, the tragedy of Bob, dying last year.

00;16;40;08 - 00;17;05;07
Bill Masters
Yeah. But, you know, he was a dad, and he had this. He has he has three daughters. And when he come in the room, we would all talk about, you know, raising, raising our kids. And, and he had a similar life, except he obviously was, a lot more successful. But, you know, he he didn't have a working wife, but he, he had these three kids earlier, was on the road as a comic.

00;17;05;07 - 00;17;27;26
Bill Masters
Then he was doing, a bunch of he had two shows on the air at the same time back in the 90s or the 2000. And so, you know, his, his whole idea of, of, raising dad was he was almost like, you know, he'd get together with the kids on Saturday and all they would do is eat ice cream and go to the, all that kind of stuff.

00;17;27;26 - 00;17;35;24
Bill Masters
So, you know, so I think and my kids at that time were about, I guess, about 10 or 11. Yeah.

00;17;35;24 - 00;17;36;11
Paul Sullivan
9 or 10.

00;17;36;13 - 00;18;04;27
Bill Masters
Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was a good experience. And I was really, at that time, full time dad, the, the number one, parent as far as dealing with the kids issues, we had a, this is kind of funny. During that year, the kids were going to the La Brea Tar Pits for a class, you know, outing, field trip.

00;18;04;29 - 00;18;28;27
Bill Masters
And so the parents that volunteered, so they were like, I don't know, let's say them for moms and me. And as we were going to the, on the bus, the teacher is assigning, kids. Yeah. And we'll say to the woman, okay, you know, these are these are the four kids you're going to watch. And then when she got to me, she said, I want you to watch Timmy.

00;18;29;00 - 00;18;46;17
Bill Masters
And then she went to the next person. And then after it was over, like I said, you know, discuss. I'm not a mom. I can handle more than one kid. Yeah. She said, no, no, you don't understand. You know what I mean? When we get there and then we get off the bus, Timmy immediately runs under the velvet rope.

00;18;46;17 - 00;18;58;02
Bill Masters
He's jumping on top of the the the dinosaurs. I spent my whole day wrangling Timmy, and then afterwards she said, see that? That's why you could only do Timmy. I said, okay, that's what you get.

00;18;58;02 - 00;19;19;13
Paul Sullivan
You get Timmy. I love it. You know, when you think about the arc of your career and the arc, it seems like it kind of overlaps. Like early on when you had kids, you had superstructure, you had to be there. And she had a little more flexibility. And then it sort of tilt. And we talk about this a lot at the company dad's that the person who's the lead apparently deadly mom it's not always forever.

00;19;19;13 - 00;19;36;18
Paul Sullivan
You know circumstances intervene and it and it and it changes. When she started getting that you know Paramount Fox those jobs you know studio jobs where you know you're the big boss. Not that producing Buffy the Vampire Slayer is easy in any way, but you surely own your own time a little bit better, as opposed to when you're the big boss.

00;19;36;19 - 00;19;52;27
Paul Sullivan
You don't. What was the conversation like, and how did you decide? Like, okay, you know, I can still do this stuff that fulfills me. Let's have this switch. And who's going to be the lead parent or the switch and who's career is going to, you know, take take priority.

00;19;52;29 - 00;20;15;10
Bill Masters
One of the one of the things is, we both really love being parents. So it wasn't, sort of the, you know, the consolation prize to be the parent to not and to give up the career. It was sort of like, especially in my case, like, I, I didn't love being in the writers room after ten years of it, but I still wanted to write, which I did.

00;20;15;13 - 00;20;37;27
Bill Masters
Yeah. And so I was able to, to still do that. And, you know, Gale wood would, you know, would come home and she would bemoan her fate because she missed, you know, she missed the soccer game. She she wasn't able to see the, the, the performance that they were doing at school because she had work to do.

00;20;37;27 - 00;21;01;18
Bill Masters
So, that we we would always try to make sure that the that when I was the lead parent and. Yes. And that's a misnomer too, but that we that she got her time when she could as best as she could and you know, it was a give and take, you know, I would let her do stuff with the kids, and, you know, and she would do the same for me.

00;21;01;18 - 00;21;05;00
Bill Masters
So,

00;21;05;03 - 00;21;26;05
Bill Masters
And, you know, being a parent, it it's even though you don't necessarily know it at the time, it's. Man, it's a fleeting amount of time when you have these kids and, you know, every time there's a birthday, you go, gee, what were the year ago? Yeah. And, so I think we both, you know, we relish the time to be with the kids.

00;21;26;05 - 00;21;36;03
Bill Masters
And even though our careers were, it's important to us. We, you know, we kind of. We had the priorities straight.

00;21;36;06 - 00;21;56;20
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Let me ask you this. You and you talked about you joked about going to the red carpet with Timmy, but, you know, I have this vision of LA, you know, the times I've been there, some friends who've, you know, had great success out there, some friends have had, you know, okay, success out there. But even if you're the most successful, A-list actor, in the world, you're really only working a couple of months a year.

00;21;56;20 - 00;22;25;26
Paul Sullivan
You know, nobody is going to a job every single day, and and the series get canceled. Given that sort of flexibility around, you know, work in LA or the acknowledgment that you're not always going to be working 9 to 5 job like you might be in New York City, was it a more accepting you know, town to be the primary parent, to be that go to dad who was taking the kids around, or is it still very much a place where, you know, the caregivers were moms or nannies?

00;22;25;27 - 00;23;01;22
Bill Masters
Well, I think not only is it more typical of of other places, but, you know, gal, in the beginning when she was doing the mommy and me class, most of the moms were stay at home moms, and there was a little bit of prejudice between them and working moms, and there was only Gayle and between one other one, who would you know, with just the traditional mom being at home was where these people were, and some of them were in, I guess, in show business of their maybe their husbands were they were taking some time off or something.

00;23;01;22 - 00;23;27;00
Bill Masters
But the one thing about show business is it's it's really hard work and, and it is time consuming. And with the exception of actors who you can see, oh, they only worked, you know, six weeks last year, you know, the other 46 weeks they were working on trying to get work. And, same with writers, same with producers, same with the executives.

00;23;27;02 - 00;23;49;25
Bill Masters
You don't you there's a lot of there's just a lot of time where you're thinking about your job when you're. And that's another thing about raising kids is that, you have to pay attention to the kids because as a writer, I could easily miss out on whatever they're I'm in my own head thinking about an idea that I want to develop and blah, blah, blah, you know?

00;23;49;25 - 00;23;57;17
Bill Masters
So, it it's it's a it is really a time consuming job. As far as the way you use your head.

00;23;57;17 - 00;24;06;24
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, I can see that. Like, your kids are on the playground and you're thinking about this script that you're working on. You know, next thing you know, one of the kids is falling off the jungle gym. Yeah, yeah.

00;24;06;26 - 00;24;31;10
Bill Masters
I, I met some dads who were. You know, I'll tell you another funny thing. When the kids were small, they were, they one of their classmates was, Tom cruise and Nicole Kidman's daughter. Bella. And, you know, it was. I had to talk to the teacher. It was, kindergarten. I think I had to talk to the teacher and get to work.

00;24;31;13 - 00;24;51;04
Bill Masters
And I got there, and I'm looking at her and she's talking to Tom cruise, and I'm like, what kind of act? And she doesn't want to talk to me. It's. He's talking about Tom cruise, you know, and, but during that year I saw Tom as much as I saw. And not that, you know, not that he has a clue who I am.

00;24;51;04 - 00;25;22;24
Bill Masters
Even then. Yeah. I don't think he ever knew my name, but, you know, Thanksgiving, I, I came in there to do the thing, and Tom walked in with the big thing of sweet potatoes, you know, for the for the thing. So, having a parent be a, the go to parent, being a male, is is something that and, I don't know, maybe it's better in a world of show business or in banana, I mean, but, you know, we saw, like I said, in SAG it two, we, you know, we just we were a lot of things together.

00;25;22;27 - 00;25;26;20
Bill Masters
Yeah. And and your wives were elsewhere. Yeah.

00;25;26;20 - 00;25;42;09
Paul Sullivan
I just say sag it. And I remember, you know, so some of his stand up routines from back in the day, they weren't always sort of, appropriate for kids. I mean, they're they're wildly funny, but not appropriate because, I can't imagine he was testing out any bits in, like, kindergarten. No.

00;25;42;12 - 00;26;07;11
Bill Masters
Well, what he would do is while the kids are playing kindergarten, he and the rest of, the dads standing around, he would say disgusting things that you were embarrassed to laugh at. Because that's just where his his humor was, you know? But, Yeah, that that's, that that was, that was bottom. I mean.

00;26;07;14 - 00;26;28;05
Paul Sullivan
So I didn't ask this question. So last year I spoke, on a podcast with, this great guy named JR haben. He was an Emmy Award winning writer for The Daily Show, and Jon Stewart was the host. And, you know, I joke with him of being a comedy writer made being a parent and easier because of parts of parenting that curse incredibly tedious.

00;26;28;05 - 00;26;45;26
Paul Sullivan
And he snapped right back and he said, you know, yeah, it might have helped me if my kids were smart enough to get the jokes. Of course, a perfect, you know, comeback. I mean, did you ever, you know, take parenting lessons, you know, did being, you know, a comedic stand up comedian for being, you know, a sitcom writer?

00;26;46;01 - 00;27;02;02
Paul Sullivan
Did you ever take did any of that ever sort of infuse your ability to take a step back with, you know, your kids fighting the teenage years, the tedium of parody, real the joke about it in a way that perhaps, you know, less funny parents, might, might struggle with.

00;27;02;05 - 00;27;27;22
Bill Masters
I think, I think I certainly entertained my kids with jokes in order to, compensate for the other shortcomings I had. I have a I tell you a story. I, I don't even know if it's good for the podcast, so you might have to at it. But anyway, it was, my daughter who was now a doctor, when she, started to have her period.

00;27;27;24 - 00;27;47;16
Bill Masters
So she started. She didn't tell me anything. She told Gayle, and she's. Gayle said, don't say anything to her because I know she wants to tell you, but she wants to tell you whenever the time is right for her. I said, okay, and then my son Jacob, who again is, you know, it's like 12 or something. He mentioned it to me.

00;27;47;16 - 00;28;10;28
Bill Masters
I'm going, wait a minute, everybody. Everybody in the country knows except me. So one Saturday I could see them talking at the table. And then they called me over and and I knew that she was. She says, daddy, guess what? I, I started having my period. So, I have no idea what what what a father is supposed to do at this point.

00;28;10;28 - 00;28;32;06
Bill Masters
I know that when the Gayle knows what to do because she went through it, you know? Yeah, yeah. So the first the first thing I thought it was a joke that I know. So, And it was about a woman in the South who was having trouble. Female trouble. So she goes to the doctor and she says, doctor, I'm, again with the southern accent.

00;28;32;13 - 00;29;06;19
Bill Masters
I'm having some trouble down there. And he says, well, what kind of flow do you have? And she said, linoleum. What's that got to do with it? So Gayle, of course, rolls her eyes. Yeah. And Alex looks at me real serious, and she goes, what's linoleum? So not only didn't the joke work, but it was so funny bit that I had to then explain to her the what will no room for in years to be, and how it has absolutely nothing to do with you.

00;29;06;21 - 00;29;07;27
Paul Sullivan
Well, I talked about it here, you know.

00;29;08;01 - 00;29;10;14
Bill Masters
Words and flow and floor and.

00;29;10;16 - 00;29;14;04
Paul Sullivan
And that was funny. She had walked away for you can tell she had had. No,

00;29;14;07 - 00;29;19;20
Bill Masters
Because soon as you start explaining a joke, it's it's just you just admitting defeat. Anyway. So.

00;29;19;22 - 00;29;23;21
Paul Sullivan
Bill, this has been great. Bill, thank you for being my guest today on the.

00;29;23;25 - 00;29;24;22
Bill Masters
Well, thank you. This is.

00;29;24;22 - 00;29;36;25
Paul Sullivan
Great. Just, any last thoughts? Any last tips? You know, you've seen the whole movie up to age 30. Any any last tips? As a comedy writer, as a dad, to help other, you know, lead dads out there?

00;29;36;27 - 00;30;01;27
Bill Masters
Well, I got to say. I mean, I really do think that that that humor is, is as important as anything else. You know, we talk about safety with your kids and obviously that's a that's the number one thing for so long is to make sure they're safe. But, you know, make sure they're smiling and laughing. And if you can do that not only makes it better for them and for you, but then when you get to be my age, they'll still want to hang out with you, you know.

00;30;02;03 - 00;30;04;09
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, occasionally bring up linoleum.

00;30;04;09 - 00;30;07;07
Bill Masters
Right? That's exactly.

00;30;07;09 - 00;30;08;13
Paul Sullivan
Thanks again for this, Bill.

00;30;08;14 - 00;30;11;20
Bill Masters
Thank you. This is great. I can't wait to hear.

00;30;11;22 - 00;30;37;25
Paul Sullivan
Hey, thanks for listening to Company of Dads podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. But I'm here to tell you is is one of the many offerings we have at the Company of Dads. We've got another podcast, we have a weekly newsletter, we have various features. We have events that we put on both online and in person. If you want to know about all of those, the best place to learn about them is to go to the company of dads.com backslash.

00;30;37;26 - 00;30;52;04
Paul Sullivan
The dad. There's a company of dads.com backslash the dad. What do you get if you do that? That's how you sign up for our weekly newsletter, The Dad, which is a one stop shop for all things the dad. Thank you again for listening.