On this episode, I am joined by Kenneth Atchity. He is an American producer, author, book reviewer, brand consultant, and professor of comparative literature.
We discuss his book, My Obit: Daddy Holding Me. This is volume one of his memoir. We discuss why it is important to tell your loved ones the story of your life and how valuable it can be in the grieving process. Volume two, My Obit: My Southern Belle, is now available. We also discuss the art of story-telling and how it can build the connections in your life. It is also an important skill to learn how to read your audience and he tells the tales of a few that have mastered and failed miserably at this.
StoryMerchant – Turning great storytellers into bestselling authors and screenwriters.
Story Merchant (@storymerchant) • Instagram photos and videos
Ashley (@filledupcup_) • Instagram photos and videos
Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women
On this episode, I am joined by Kenneth Atchity. He is an American producer, author, book reviewer, brand consultant, and professor of comparative literature.
We discuss his book, My Obit: Daddy Holding Me. This is volume one of his memoir. We discuss why it is important to tell your loved ones the story of your life and how valuable it can be in the grieving process. Volume two, My Obit: My Southern Belle, is now available. We also discuss the art of story-telling and how it can build the connections in your life. It is also an important skill to learn how to read your audience and he tells the tales of a few that have mastered and failed miserably at this.
StoryMerchant – Turning great storytellers into bestselling authors and screenwriters.
Story Merchant (@storymerchant) • Instagram photos and videos
Ashley (@filledupcup_) • Instagram photos and videos
Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women
Welcome to the filled up cup podcast. We are a different kind of self-care resource one that has nothing to do with bubble baths and face masks and everything to do with rediscovering yourself. We bring you real reviews, honest experiences and unfiltered opinions that will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, leave you with a filled up cup.
Ashley:I am very excited today. I have Ken Atchity joining me. He is the head of the story, merchant books and Atchity productions. He's had more than 40 years experience in the publishing world and over 20 years in the entertainment field. Thank you so much for joining me today,
Ken:Oh thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Ashley:Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book?
Ken:Well, my latest book is called my Obit daddy holding me and it's the first of two volumes on my life to date. I'm excited by the response it's getting. It was even featured in USA today a couple days ago and makes me feel good. I've been a writer, probably all my life since I was 12 years old. And one thing that progressively felt unfair to me, especially as I saw friends and loved ones part was that they couldn't write their own obits because, they just didn't even think about that. And I started focusing on it and I thinking, God damn it, I'm a writer. I'm gonna write my own obit. You know? And that's what led to starting the book.
Ashley:I love that as somebody, both of my parents are gone. And I think writing your own obit would sort of solve a little bit of that feeling of maybe not having the answers or not sort of knowing the whole piece. So I would imagine that once the time comes and you're gone, that would really help all of your loved ones with the grief process.
Ken:I think that that is a kind of a. Prophetic way of looking at it. I didn't really think about that too much, but as I you know, put it out, I of course had my kids read it first, my two children. And they both had that reaction that if you hadn't written this, I would never have known that happened. One of the things I say in the book is that certain things like my mother's. Fish sauce recipe. You know, I will never know what she put in it. I've kind of reconstructed it with my sisters, but I'll never know for sure. And you know, there was time, not too long ago when I could just pick up the phone and ask her mom, what do you put in your fish sauce? And when that's gone, you know, there's certain information about your life and things that happen that you'll never know unless your parents tell you, or unless you ask them and not everybody is proactive enough to ask them the things they'd really like to know. And I found. Sobering to have distant cousins, write to me and thank me for writing it, cuz it tells them stuff about their uncles or their fathers that they didn't even know and always wondered about. So yeah, it's a interesting Corolla area of writing this stories. I used to say that. You know that I became a storyteller when I realized that the universe is not made of Adams, it's made of stories. The universe we live in is about stories and you go to a family reunion and someone, do you remember when, so, and so did this and somebody else will say, well, that's not the way I remember it. And they'll tell you another equally good story. About the same event. And when you think about it, almost everything we do as human beings, it starts with a story. When you meet somebody for the first time, which you wanna know is what's his story, you know, and you walk away going. I'm not really sure I buy his story or you know, that's a hell of a story. I don't know about that. And you say the same thing in politics when you listen to candidates or if you're trying to buy a car, you know, if you're listening to the car salesman, or if you're in court, you're on the jury and you have two storytellers, you know, attorneys telling two different stories and you're trying to figure out which of these stories do I buy? So it's always about stories, you know? I just thought, why should somebody tell the story of me and summarize it the way they want to, when I can still do it? So that's what inspired me to write it.
Ashley:I feel like when it comes to death, nobody really wants to think about it and it does become sort of this awkward conversation. So again, I think it's pushing us out of our comfort zone and having those connections of like, do you remember when grandma did blah, blah, blah? Or do you remember that time? That so, and so fell in the lake or all of these things that really. Are what's important. It's like having those memories, having that connection piece is really so valuable. And that's really what we're gonna remember. It's not necessarily, oh, I have a million dollars in my bank account at the end of the line, it really is having that connection and that those memories of the people around you.
Ken:Yeah. I think that's true. And it's, so it's been very satisfying seeing the reaction to the book and. I can't wait to get the second one out because the first one was more weight and, you know, toward my father, the truth is I was going to write one book and by the time it passed a thousand pages, I realized that that was probably not gonna be, you know, feasible. So I decided I just had to write it in two. And figured out how to, you know, cut it in half. The first half is longer than the, second half it's about to come out, but it's, a story part of the rules of a story is it's gotta be modeled on its audience's needs and capabilities. WC Fields once said that a movie should be geared to the size of the audience's bladder. You know, and I sat through a three hour movie yesterday and I thought, boy, this is really coming to the very limit. They could have cut another 10 minutes and it would've been, happier for me. But when you think about it, the most important person in a story is the audience, the reader. Because if you lose the reader, then there's no purpose to the whole story. And one thing I was really happy about is the fact that people said they couldn't put it down, that they, you know, and that's particularly good to hear because I do not write sequentially. I jump all over the place. Well, as a storyteller, I learned long ago, there's only one kind of order. That's important in a story. It's not psychological order. It's not logical order. It's not even chronological order. It's dramatic order.. And as long as you keep the audience on the edge of their seat with drama, they don't care what order things are in. And their brain is capable of putting together chronology in the back of their heads or figuring out the psychology in the back of their heads. But what they want is when you jump from one place to the other, they want a dramatic jump and they want to be sorry that you left this situation but happy to get into this new one. Absolutely. All the great novelists know that they know that chapters should end with cliff hangers and they jump you to another place. And then that one ends with a cliff hanger and maybe goes back to the first place, maybe goes, see at another place. But they don't care as long as they're entertained. So that, is a struggle for years trying to get the structure down until I realized I should just do the structure that I do in everyday life, which is to jump from one thought to the other. One situation or the other as long as it's a dramatic jump.
Ashley:That's so true about a book. I find that once you dive into it and you start reading, if it's something that captures you, it does become one of these. I can't put it down where I feel like movies and our attention spans are starting. To get less and less and less that I know, like personally I have a teenage daughter taking her to the movies. If it's anything over 90 minutes, she's like, I can't even believe that they make them for two hours where I remember growing up movies were generally like two, two and a half hours. Right. And then you get your occasional three hours. So I think even with movies, I think shorter ends up being better nowadays, but yeah, with a book, I think it's one of those things. Once it captures you. Even if it was, you know, 5,000 pages, you've gotta just keep going through because you have to know what happens.
Ken:Yeah, that's exactly right. I call that the immersion point I wrote for the LA times book review all the time. And once I was being interviewed about what makes a book great, you know, what makes a good book, a good book. And, and I said, well, there's an easy symptom. And that is. You start out reading the book quickly to get through it but you reach a point where you suddenly realize that you wanna start reading it slowly instead of quickly, because you suddenly realize that you're destroying this incredible experience that you only have once for the first time. So you wanna slow down and that's what I call the immersion point. I just finished two great novels by people I know. And one of them, the immersion point was around page 215, and the other one was even earlier like page 112 and that's the moment where you don't wanna leave this world, this world that the author has created you, you just don't wanna leave it. So you, start slowing down and savoring it and. knowing how to get the audience to that point is a sign of good storytellers. One of the things I talk about in my book is I used to have these uncles in Louisiana who told stories on the front porch. And one of them was, I swear to God, he had to be the worst storyteller in the world. If you were unfortunate enough to be stuck on the, porch when he launched into a story, which he always did without warning. You know, everybody felt sorry for you. I learned as I got older to start noticing when people started slipping away cause they could feel a story coming on, you know, because he would take. Forever to tell a story. He would spend half an hour describing when he was in the trenches in world war II and someone handed him an orange and how just looking at that orange and, dusting it off and polishing it. And I swear to God, it would kill you to listen to it because it would take him half an hour before he even started peeling the orange. And that would take another half hour. You really had to force yourself to stay there. But I had another uncle who was just the opposite. The minute he opened his mouth, everybody was riveted and people started arriving on the porch not to miss the story. One huge difference between the two is uncle ed, bad storyteller. He never even looked at his audience or seemed to be aware that they were even there. Whereas the other one, uncle Webb, he would be looking right into everybody's eyes as he told the story. And that's always a sign of a good entertainers, like he is playing for his audience and he doesn't ever look away from them because he doesn't wanna see the, a look on their face that shows he is losing them. Minute. He sees that he switches tax immediately so that, you know, he gets them back. But my other uncle, he never even looked at you and he was just talking to himself. He was lost in a coma, you know? Anyway, we all, have that kind of relative. You don't want to get stuck next to at Thanksgiving dinner, you know?
Ashley:Yeah. We definitely do. And it is, like you said, essentially, he was telling the story for himself. Cause you think that he would learn from the other one and be like, Hey, he's surrounded by people. And I have people slowly disappearing.
Ken:Yeah. Uncle Ed always walked away the minute anybody else started telling you a story. Cuz he didn't care. He only cared about his so that's how I learned about storytelling. Some people could keep the porch full and others emptied it out. I had professors like that, in college and I determinated did not wanna be, you know, that kind of professor, I was a professor for almost 20 years and I wanted to keep him there. Storytelling is an amazing thing. And the ultimate story is trying to tell the story of your own life. And that's when you realize it's not really a journalistic thing. It's which story do you wanna tell? I mean, how do you wanna tell this story? What is the story of your life or why you gonna leave that to have somebody else determine. It's your chance to tell it your way.
Ashley:What a gift for you growing up saying that your passion sort of started for writing around 12, being able to have these examples around you, but also having the ability to notice, Hey, ed, isn't really how I wanna be a storyteller, but I'm noticing my other uncle. I can mirror that behavior and pivot it into my own style and put it into my own work.
Ken:Yeah, exactly. That's what I did. I looked for every opportunity to spend time with the good storyteller we would go fishing. And one time we left at 3:00 AM to get on the water by five, we gonna go fishing and near the Gulf. About seven o'clock. He realized. We should have been there a long time ago. We were just talking so much the whole way that we missed turnoff and that's a sign that good stories are going on, where you lose track of everything else. And when you think about the theater experience, being in a dark theater is kind of a primal human moment because it's a moment when all of life is shut off except the story. it was kind of invented by the ancient Greeks. They had a very strange method of telling stories. They had actors come out on high shoes like clogs. So they were bigger than life and they are all wearing masks and the masks were megaphonic. They were built to project the voice and make it sound larger than life. And the theater didn't start until it was pitch dark out. So the whole arena was dark. And so here once or twice a year, the whole town was in a state that was unlike life itself. They were all together in a closed place, listening to the same thing that was coming. You know, exaggerated sounds and I never forgot the impression that made, especially when I finally got to go to Greece and go to an ancient Greek theater and listen to some of the plays that I had been teaching as a professor. Human beings are always considered stories, powerful, and you know, you're always waiting and candidate is running for office. You're always waiting for that day that he or she. Lets their hair down and tells you a story that makes you suddenly decide you're gonna vote for them. If you don't get it, you remain uncertain all the way into the polls. You don't wanna make up your logical mind. You wanna make up your mythological mind, do I really believe this guy? Do I buy his story basically?
Ashley:I definitely agree with that. We're craving authenticity. We just really want to have that human to human connection where I find most days it's like we're connected via zoom or we're connected via social media that I think that storytelling aspect of just person to person or having the experience of sitting in a movie theater, like you could watch. Say Jurassic park, for example, you could watch it at home on Netflix and you know, you might be on your phone or you might be doing something else and you're gonna watch it and it's gonna be good. But if you're sitting in a dark movie theater and there's that smell of popcorn and there's jump scares and it's larger to life, that's something that's gonna create a core memory or that experience is really gonna connect with you in a way that something sort of in the background. It just doesn't the same way. So I think nothing beats sitting in a movie theater or sitting in a live theater, experiencing performances that way. That'll be sad when that doesn't exist in the same format anymore.
Ken:Yeah. I mean that, that's exactly why, you know, TV has evolved into larger and larger screens because the idea in the need is to have something larger than life. And when the screens got to the size, you know, they are in Allen households. It almost, comes close to reproducing that experience. Especially if you augment it atmospherically with low lights and everything and it just shows our need for it. Our need to be cut off from the constant blubber of life and, be focused on something. Big, like even I was watching a documentary from CNN Patagonia, when you're with these images of these strange animals in incredibly beautiful locations and you're mesmerized and you're taken out of yourself that the ancient Greek word ecstasy meant to stand outside something. A great story would make you literally ecstatic. You were standing outside yourself, experiencing something larger than life. And it changed you. So I remember just recently watching the top gun movie and just feeling pure joy at the end of the movie, because it's kind of a perfectly done Hollywood movie. There's, you know, two types of movies, independence, and Hollywood movies. This is a perfectly done Hollywood movie. And it's purpose is to instill joy in the audience. You know, the impossible mission that succeeds. In the world we live in that that really makes you joyful to see it succeed. And then I just, yesterday watched Elvis in the theater, you know, the new Baz Luhrmann Elvis yeah. And how you feel at the end of that is in a state of kind of tragic. Awe you feel like this is an amazing human beings died at the age of 42 virtually in the middle of a song and he paid a huge price. To do the one thing that he loved beyond everything else, which was to sing and sing his heart out basically. That's what he did sing his heart out in the movie when you're in a theater and you hear it loud and you see it big, you feel that you, feel things you can't feel in a casual story, told over a cocktail, in a bar. But you do have feelings that come from every kind of story. Ever since I came to the realization that stories were the way we live, which was early in my life, I've just been admiring and studying the impact of stories. And how important they were to humans. Another example is when I was a professor, one time I was in Italy and I was a Fulbright professor to the university of bologna and I made some good Italian friends, and one of them invited me to his country house. He had just gotten married to a Puerto Rican woman. And I got to know her over that weekend. And you'd think that Puerto Rican and an Italian had a lot in common, but by the end of the weekend, I realized complete opposite was true. They were both Latino, but they were opposites when every other count and she. Went to take an afternoon nap and Luigi and I were sitting on the porch and he said, let me tell you the problems I'm having. And I don't know what to do about it. And I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, let me explain to you what she is doing. And then he interrupted himself again and said, let me just give you an example. and then he said isn't because life is just an example, isn't it?!. And I never forgot those words because he did give me an example of something that she did the other day. And it instantly emblazened an image in my mind that I totally got her, you know, and his problem with her. Right. But what I never forgot is that life is just an example because when I was growing up. Anything that was not an example, I couldn't remember. So at one time, my algebra teacher in high school, I was getting a D or a C in algebra. And Mr. Peterson made me come to his office and he said, look, I don't understand why you just don't ask me questions. And I said, Mr. Peterson, with all due respect, if I could ask a question. I wouldn't need to. I have no idea what I would ask you cuz I don't get it. I don't get anything. yeah. Then one day, 10 years later, I was sailing on clear lake in Texas, outside of Houston and my friend, Michael from Georgetown. My classmate started explaining to me that, the wind was one vector and the prowl under the water was another vector and the sails. Pushed another vector in that direction. And it suddenly dawned on me if Mr. Peterson had talked about sails, crossing the lake with the pro and a sailboat in sales. Instead of just vectors, pure vectors, which meant nothing to me. And, you know, all abstract, if you just given that example, that concrete example. So, every book I've written since then, and advise people how to write their books, I talk about, examples. Don't. Tell people stuff, show it to them. That's what mark Twain always said. You know, he says, don't tell us that the fat lady was screaming, bring her out on the stage and make her scream. Yeah. And, that's what, showing not telling that's examples. That's storytelling. Tell us a story. Don't explain a theory to us. Don't you know, logically go through the steps. We just don't follow it. You know, we follow it for about two minutes, but then we lose it.
Ashley:Well, we almost need to get out of our own way and really notice when everybody's eyes are glazing over or whether they aren't connecting and, get out of our comfort zone and look for a different way to show so that it isn't like, Hey, this math thing is one plus one equals two. It's really getting people to meet you on the level that they're at to experience what you're trying to share with them and builds that connection and that memory and that thing that they can say, oh, Hey, I learned blah, blah, blah, let me pass it on to you and have it. So that connection and that storytelling piece just really spreads.
Ken:Yeah. And it's gotta be from the gut. You know, it's really gotta be a felt thing when you're telling a story that people will be moved by. I'll never forget. After a professor, I became a literary manager and producer, and one day I had acquired a great novel by a famous novelist. I got Warner brothers to agree to finance it. So the head of Warner brothers and I, and the novelist were gonna meet with the head of HBO and pitch it to him. We got all the way to the head, you know, to do this pitch, this invaluable pitch and the novelist you know, had notes in front of him during our rehearsals. I always thought the rehearsals were a waste of time, but corporations like Warner brothers had to have meetings and they rehearsed the pitch and all of that stuff because nothing is like the actual pitch to a guy who's got the money to say, I'm gonna green light this and make your movie, you know, there's just nothing like that. Any rehearsal doesn't compare, this is the guy with the power of life and death. Right? You pitch it to him and your pitch will be different than you ever rehearsed. But one thing I noticed and I told a novelist don't take notes in there. That's not gonna work. And sure enough, we went to. HBO few niceities were said by all. And then suddenly said, well, let's hear the story. And a guy named Dan pulled out a three by five stack of three by five cards. The head of HBO said, what is that? And he said, oh, they're just little reminder cards. Just, because I'm nervous about pitching, he goes, wait a minute, you wrote this story right? Yes, sir. You published this novel? Yes, sir. And how many years did you work on the novel? Maybe five years. He said, get out of my office. He said, if you have to have three by five cards to tell me a story that you have been living with for five years and you published yourself and created yourself, it will not work on HBO. I need stories that come from people's hearts and that move people with passion, not with memory and whatever. He didn't say much more. He just kicked him out, kicked us all out. I actually dread as a literary manager, I dread sometimes taking a writer to a pitch of his story because one thing I notice about most writers, not all of them that maybe 60% is that they don't look at the audience, they don't care. They go into some kind of a coma, which I call it when they're pitching the story and they don't know how the receiver and the buyer is reacting. They're not looking in his eyes or her eyes and especially horrible is that they can sell a story in the first two minutes of their pitch. But they're so oblivious to the buyer's expression. You can see in a buyer's eyes when she's ready to buy. For sure. But to keep talking for 20 more minutes, you know, I just watch it happen. I see her incredible interest turn to annoyance that he's not even looking at her eyes, you know, to dismay, to fear, to a solid decision. No, we're not gonna buy this story cuz I don't know how to, I don't wanna take this guy into my boss.. You know what I mean? It's really important when I'm trying to get a writer to move to the next stage of his writing career, I say, now let's talk about the one thing that you haven't been thinking about in all these previous drafts that is the audience you know, your relationship with the audience and that usually surprises people. They can't get to the next stage of being novelist until they start building the book around the audience. It's just like life, you're not gonna persuade, you know, you wreck the car, you come home, you know, your father's gonna kill you, but you tell your father, look, I've got some good news and bad news. you've heard that, right. Nothing is more creative than a teenager, who tells he has to come home and tell his father a story that involves the wreck car. We learn that the hard way, but then we forget to apply it to. When we really need it in the professional setting.
Ashley:I would imagine it would be really challenging, especially because. Like a book in a movie you end up losing so many pieces of the book. I would imagine it would be challenging to kind of picture that it was this in this medium and it's this in that medium and sort of being able to let go of the control to say I'm flexible either way. I'm totally willing to adapt it into this. And like you said, to picture the audience and to know how to read the room.
Ken:Yeah, exactly. Anne rice, who wrote interview with the vampire? She was happy to get a huge option from the studio that created her movie. She was happy to get the money, but then she immediately had, you know, seller's remorse and suddenly became more and more terrified that they were gonna destroy her story to the point where she took out a full page ad in the New York times with all the things she thought they were gonna do to her. It was really an example of crazy paranoia, cuz all of it was based on hearsay none of it was based on fact. So when, the movie was finished, the director invited her to come to Hollywood and screen it in a private screening with just him and her. And she was so bold over, you know, by the movie. That she took out a full page ad in the New York times, a few days later apologizing for her first ad because she simply didn't trust them to get her story, to get it. And they got it and they changed it because they had to change it to fit a different medium. One of my favorite examples is the prince of tides. I don't know if you ever saw that movie, that Barbara Streen directed. I think so. You know, it's a hundred and you know, 10 minute movie it's normal sized movie based on a 635 page novel by pat Conroy, one of the best novels in history of American novels. But she had to cut it. She had to cut what 70, 80%. To make it into a movie and to give one example, there's 135 pages in the middle of his book. That is basically the main guy's sister's children's story. That the entire book is laid out entirely in the novel. And she and her screen writer reduced that to a single shot. They just show the front of a bookstore. With the novel displayed inside of it and recite the first, you know, once upon a time there was something as we walk into the store and when you see the movie after reading the novel, you totally feel like it's the same story you get it. So she profoundly understood the story and understood how to translate it to a different medium. So when starting to realize things like that, when I was a professor, even I decided I wasn't really interested in books or screenplays, I was just interested in stories. So I founded my story, merchant companies around finding great stories and trying to turn them into books and movies. Because I felt the great story teller deserves to have, her story told in as many media as possible. And I didn't focus on, you know, I'm just looking for a certain kind of novel or a certain kind of screenplay so it's stories that are behind everything. And now stories are playing on telephones and you. Who knows what it'll be next. These are I call delivery systems and the delivery systems go and come. And I, they go out of business. They come, you know, overnight. We never see another DVD, you know, overnight. We never see another cassette, but the music, the song goes on. I always thought I want to be in the creative side of the business, not the distribution side. It's a creative side for which there is insatiable demand for stories and distribution side is much riskier. Yeah. It gets more money, but it's just about, you know, today's delivery system, which will change tomorrow because one thing we'll always need is more stories. It doesn't matter how they're delivered to us and the people will find a way. Imagine what television did to storytelling. You know, imagine what radio did to story storytelling, because storytelling used to be the only way to do it was through letters. You know, send a letter, it takes two months to get to wherever it's going. And now with radio, you could send a message, a story instantaneously changed the entire human race. The history of the human race is the history of, how stories were delivered, from that first story in a cave where a cave man came back to explain why he had no luck at all to you know, the same guy coming back and telling the same story about the enormous fish that he had on the hook, but got away. He could save himself with a story or he could, relegate himself to the dungeon with the story. the more we got together, the more we found ways to tell stories that lasted through time. It's stories are been my whole life and I've been thrilled to be part of that world.
Ashley:I love that you have such a passion for it. I think so many times we get stuck in this. I'm just gonna work this nine to five, or I'm just gonna do this because it has a decent paycheck, but when you really find something that feeds your soul and has a passion in it, you are able to present it in a world or be able to find those stories and those, projects that would basically go from a movie to a TV show or to a book or to a novel and all of those things and be able to share them with the world in a different way, if you didn't have that passion for it. And I think now more than ever we're craving content, just even like you said, in the medium that we consume it, whether it's streaming, whether it's on our phone, whether it is still on, cable, it's like, we just can't get enough. We go through it so fast that. I find Hollywood just can't pump it out fast enough. Right. So from a selfish point of view, my daughter's an actress. So I also kind of like the fact that it keeps her busy and feeding her passion for it. But yeah, I think there's so many amazing books and so many amazing novels that I think are getting a chance to be made into a movie. Now that maybe 10, 15 years ago wouldn't have gotten a second look.
Ken:Yeah, that's true. You mentioned nine to five and it reminds me years ago, I used to give a course at UCLA for artists called keeping your spirits up. Because one of the things that artists as you know, from your daughter, they have to keep their spirits up because nobody's gonna do it for them. It's a tough life where you, where you basically hear no for a living mm-hmm I always say, you know, there. Huge Blackboard in the sky that has listed every no you're ever going to receive. And that final. Yes. And the only problem is we can't see it. So given that that's true. What do we do? Well, you need to just get through the no as fast as you can. So I gave this course because I realized that pumping up your spirits was one of the things every artist needed. And I remember one class was all actresses. Just by happens to answer about 20 of them. And I said, let's get to know each other by going around the room in a semi circle. And tell me your name, where you're from. And what is the one question you hate the most in Los Angeles and how do you answer it? And the first one said, I mean, they were girls, you know, they're 18 to 30 and the first one said, my name is Mary. I'm from Detroit. And the question that I hate to hear the most is when are you gonna go back to Detroit and work for the post office and I said, oh my God, that's terrible. And how do you answer that? She goes usually by bursting into tears and leaving the room. And I go, well, I hope this course will help you come up with a better response. And then the next girl said My name is Vicky. And the question I hate the most is what have you been in big lately that I've seen? I said, oh, that that's another one. That's horrible. And what are you saying? She goes, I just say the Pacific ocean and of course everybody in the class bursting laughter and you realize the difference between them was here's a girl who figured out in advance that life was not built around her, that it was a tough jungle. And if she didn't know how to protect herself, it was her own problem. But she figured it out. She came up with a way of doing it because of course, when people ask you questions, they're not sitting there all day thinking how insensitive can I be? You know, they're just being their usual dumb selves asking random questions. And they're not really that interested, but the minute she said, Pacific ocean, They started liking her and they usually dropped the subject anyway, cuz it kind of in a happy way, made them realize how stupid their question is because it's an insulting way to ask, what kind of work have you done? That was a great example about somebody used a story, an instant story, you know, to control her environment and to get her way and. Stories can be very short on the shortest short story in the American literature is by Richard Brogan and it's called the Scarlatti tilt and it goes like this. Have you ever lived in a one room apartment with a guy who's just learning to play the tuba? That's what she asked the police as she handed them the empty revolver. so two sentences. Whole story is told, you know, doesn't care. And some people tell short stories like Kurt Vonagan and, Brogan others like Faulkner tell enormous or Phil con right. Tell enormous long stories. The trick is you tell a story that works for your audience. And so that's why when you're listening to jokes at a party, You know, to stay away from people who don't know how to tell a joke or whose jokes go on and on my father was like that. And I always felt so sorry for him because he heard jokes all around. Cuz we were all jokesters, but he really couldn't tell him to save his life. We kind of suffered painfully through his jokes. Finally years ago got older, started learning to just listen. Cuz he loved jokes. He just never figured out that you gotta figure out the timing for it. And you gotta know how long the audience, has to listen to this. If people are really drunk, you better tell a fast joke. you know what I mean? I always loved the story of Einstein was a great speaker and he never prepare his speeches or even thought about them until he arrived at wherever he was supposed to give a speech. And then he asked his handler, whoever was bringing him, okay. What am I talking about? And who is the audience and how long do I have? That's all I need to know. So if he was talking about nuclear vision and it was a high school and he had 20 minutes, he would give a brilliant 20 minute speech about nuclear vision. To a high school level. He never gave a speech that went over anybody's head. You know, if he was talking to a bunch of Nobel prize winners about nuclear vision and he had two hours, he knew what to do, but it was it's really about communication, just about pure communication, which to me, the basis of human life is that if we got anywhere better than previous versions of, Microorganisms it's because we learn to communicate in more sophisticated ways. Therefore we're able to do a bunch of things that we couldn't do. May not all have been for the better, but in general, We've had a pretty amazing run on earth. And now our job is to save the earth and go back to the old stories, told by the native Americans and so on and others who value the earth. We hear more and more of these stories today, which is a good.
Ashley:The really beautiful part about growing up in this era is that we do have the ability to connect with more people and to share our stories and to share with people that we would never have met otherwise. It really is just meeting people where they are and having the spontaneity of, not necessarily worrying about if you're gonna say the wrong thing. And just knowing that in that moment, To just be present there. and whether you're talking to a bunch of high schoolers or whether you're talking to, your colleagues at work, it's just really being on your toes and reading the room and just being authentic.
Ken:Yeah. And really connecting with people because that's what it's all about. The relative you wanna avoid at Thanksgiving is the one who's not really connecting. Maybe they're insecure. And so they just start talking and they can't stop talking, but they're not talking to anybody. They're just talking to themselves. And that's why we all know, you know who to avoid. But when you're sitting next to somebody who you haven't seen since like Thanksgiving and you connect, with them instantly, you go, that's why I love her. Cuz I always connect with her immediately. It's like no time has passed between last time I saw her. That's how you can tell a good friend over the years, I just lost a dear friend from high school a few weeks ago. I saw him fortunately, a couple of weeks before he passed away and sat down with him. We didn't have any warm up time. We were immediately in exactly the same space that we were last time we saw each other and we were always that way. And because he listened to me, I listened to him and we were both, Actually connected to each other and connection has nothing to do with nothing to do with time. It's something created between two beings that just happens. It's kind of chemistry, you know, really is a kind of chemistry.
Ashley:It definitely is. And I'm so sorry for your loss. It's never easy losing loved ones, but it is all one of those beautiful things where the things that we always hold dear to us, that we can just like jump into it and it doesn't have to be that forced. How's the weather kind of thing. It really can be just having that heart to heart connection of being able to be together in that moment.
Ken:Yeah, it really is. I was talking to a client yesterday and I hadn't talked to her for two years and. Half of our allotted half hour was just talking about what's going on in the world today. Cuz we were always on the same key, but we didn't even remember that. It's just, we immediately got right back on that key and It's comforting to know that people can get on that key, especially when you see a world that's so filled with false stories or, completely made up stories. There's a kind of malice in false stories that is. Truly inhuman, like where people just make up untrue things because they are so cynical about other humans that they know they can convince somebody of this especially, if they keep saying it over and over again, that is actually a strategy straight out of the pages of mein kampf you know, Hitler wrote a book about how you change it. The whole country's mind you just repeat. Little things to them over and over until you hear them coming back to you from all parts of the country and whether they're true or not, doesn't matter. And stories, you know, are as powerful as they are in a positive way. They're equally powerful in a negative way. And we're living through a world like that right now that's why somebody like Liz Chaney is just to me, unbelievably courageous, cuz she's got her own story that she thinks is the truth and has some evidence for that. And she is not gonna let anything keep her from just being true to her story. We just love her for it, even though we might hate every single thing about her politics, you suddenly focus on her. She's a great human.
Ashley:I feel like we get so caught up on what will divide us instead of what will connect us. And I guess it is also the downside of having, you know, the digital age, where there is like 80 different. News outlets. And we have access to all of them that there is so much noise that it's like, you don't know where to believe, and you end up finding people that, get their news potentially from YouTube. But don't think about where's this source coming in and, do they fact check or is this just somebody repeating the same story over and over again so that we believe, you know, everything is fake news.
Ken:Yeah. Or just making something up. Yeah. Because of what you just said, the proliferation of, channels means that every one of them has got to find a way of catching your attention. In the last 10 years, one popular way is simply to make stuff up. Yeah. Because it instantly spreads from television to the internet and visa versa, and nobody's there to fact check.. And to say, believe this one, don't believe this one, we're stuck. Each individual is stuck doing that. Each audience member. And a lot of people are just, you know, too exhausted, do anything other than crack open a beer they don't have the time or the inclination or maybe the equipment. To figure out all these things to figure out which ones are true. So you start hearing them repeat it. Do you know crazy stories? Do you hear them repeated like. This political party eats babies for breakfast and, then a religion Springs up around it. That people who don't like people who eat babies for breakfast are convinced that all these people do it. Like what is going on? Well, part of it is humans love stories. They don't care. Whether they're crazy stories or good stories, they just love stories. It's dangerous. The more media we have, the more dangerous it is because of power of stories. When people believe stories, if they're dangerous, untrue stories, then it endangers all of us. You know, like recently somebody tried to shoot the FBI office up because they thought somebody told them that. The FBI were arbitrarily raiding, you know, Trump's home. And so somebody out there who loved the other side of that story decided to get a gun and March into the FBI office and shoot. I mean, that's the power of stories and it's troubling, but maybe this is what we need to go through to get to the next level of sophistication. And deal in controlling stories. I hope we never control stories. So what is the ultimate answer? It's becoming more sophisticated about stories, you know, making sure that our children are taught about how to identify a true story, how to check for their story is true or not. Before accepting what you hear. I remember when. In college, we're all forced to read a book called how to lie with statistics. It's a brilliant little hundred page book in which it shows you a bunch of news stories and shows you that reading through them quickly and blah, blah, blah, you think a hundred percent of. So, and so does this or that. And you have to realize, first of all, who wrote this, you know, what was the bottom line of the article? And, look at that statistics. Sometimes they don't tell you how many people were tested. There's always an angle to these numbers. We were trained, to take things apart with our brains and figure them out. Now in today's world, it's even better. Cuz once you've taken it apart with your brain, you can check it on Google, but you have to learn not to trust Google completely. You have to learn how to do that but are people being trained to do that. They need to be, you know, I don't know if they are or not.
Ashley:I think that critical piece is sort of missing a little bit with the younger generation. I feel like they'll read the headline and think that they have the whole entire story and then repeat it without necessarily knowing the full scope of what they're saying. So it's like, it's so important for our media. To actually, you know, be held accountable to fact checked and make sure that we're not spreading all of this propaganda, but it's also reminding people, like, make sure that you read the story doesn't make sense to you. Is it logical and not some like crazy conspiracy I think that part is definitely missing or just maybe don't repeat something that you heard a small snippet of. Right. Because I think we really. Love to have that human connection and that gossip of, I saw a, B and C and then that person's like, well, I saw this part of it. And then you meld the two stories together and somehow decide their fact moving forward. I think in so many. Different states or in different parts of the world. We're trying to change the course of history, whether it's critical race theory, whether it's what we think about the environment and make it so that it's, you know, what we want the history to be now, instead of everybody learning it all and then being able to make a decision for themselves moving forward.
Ken:Right? Yeah. I just hope that every parent out there takes the time to sit down with their kids when they're watching something and tell'em don't just believe what you watch for 20 minutes. If it's interesting you to you check it out thoroughly, you know, and perform your own opinions, don't just take an opinion that's been offered to you. So much, like you said, is just being repeated. And each time it's repeated, of course it's distorted. It gets worse and worse, but you know, I'm glad to see my grandkids, they're trying to. Put it together. I just hope everybody gets to do that. And just learning, for example, not to trust Google, it kind of was a shocking moment for me, you know, 10 years ago to realize that Google listed things by the popularity of the listing. So I learned that when I'm trying to find a fact or verify a factor to go to the end of the 33 pages, instead of just settle for the first two pages. The farther back means the less popular, you know, that part of it is, and the most popular ones are in front. And on top of that, advertising influences, sponsors influence what placement facts have on Google and that we have to be very, very careful to, judge stories. That's why we have juries and trials because it's not just enough to have one attorney tell the story the plaintiff wants to tell. And the other one that the, defendant wants to tell there has to be a bunch of human beings sitting there and being critical and then going to a closed room and arguing it out and saying, what did you hear? Because that's words that I hear in the jury room. What did you hear from. What I heard was blah, blah, blah. Well, that's not the way I heard it. And that just shows you how powerful stories are. They're like explosive plastic or something. They can be molded to do damage, or they can be molded to do something, positive, but you have to be critical about them. That's my biggest hope for the future is that more education goes into how to be critical about stories. Unless they're for sheer entertainment, even then, you know, they can be sheer entertainment and they can be terrible influences. If you're not careful. And if you're not vigilant about the power of stories,
Ashley:Well, and I hope our listeners really take that in and understand that you can't believe everything on TikTok and Google that we can't take it as fact, we really do have to be critical with it and really appreciate the people that you have around as your greatest asset. Talk to your family members, talk to people on the street and have those like real conversations try to get to know them, try to get different perspectives and. Get that benefit of having these, you know, legacy stories that you can now inherit and share with others.
Ken:Absolutely. That's it. I hope you continue spreading that message
Ashley:If anybody is looking for you online, do you have a website or a website for your book?
Ken:Yeah, my main website is just story merchant.com and the book My Obit Dadd y holding me is available on Amazon and they appreciate anyone who reads it, to leave a review because that's how writers, get their voices heard is by interaction with readers. And that's one of the most gratifying things about it. That's the communication part. When you tell me how you feel about what I wrote, I feel like what I wrote was worthwhile, even if you completely disagree with me. I want to hear that too. I want to hear what kind of impact I have and I appreciate it when people do that. But thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure
Ashley:thank you so much. And it was very nice meeting you today,
Ken:Thank you and take care of yourself.
Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the filled up cup podcast, don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. If you like what you hear, you can also connect with us@filledupcup.com. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.