The Final Cut
The Final Cut is a bold and insightful podcast exploring the latest in film and television. Hosted by Professor John Cook and filmmaker Charlotte Bjuren, each episode dives into new releases, classic gems, and the stories shaping screen culture today.
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The Final Cut
Indiana Jones meets Doctor Who! Exploring the thrilling fantasy worlds of top US TV producer Neil Laird
Neil Laird steps away from the camera and into the world of creative fiction in this fascinating conversation about his career transition. After producing and directing over a thousand hours of documentary programming for major networks like Discovery, History Channel, and National Geographic, Laird found himself increasingly frustrated by the constraints of factual storytelling.
"I got tired of sticking to the facts. I got tired of footnotes," he explains. "I'd think 'I wish Ramesses could say that, but Discovery Channel won't let me put words in Ramesses' mouth.'" This creative frustration, combined with turning 50 and the death of his hero David Bowie in 2016, pushed Laird to finally write the novel he'd been contemplating for years.
The result is a delightful time-travel fiction series where a documentary crew gets transported to ancient Egypt, Pompeii, and Troy. Online reviewers have described the books as "Indiana Jones meets Doctor Who," blending Laird's encyclopedic knowledge of ancient history with entertaining adventure storytelling. What makes his approach unique is his commitment to immersive research – renting villas near archaeological sites and wandering through ancient ruins to fuel his creative process.
Most fascinating is Laird's perspective on ancient civilizations. "They're not nearly as primitive as we think," he observes, describing how his books highlight forgotten LGBTQ+ histories from the ancient world. "In many ways, it was much freer and more open regarding sexuality and same-sex unions than it is today." This nuanced understanding comes from decades of documentary work, including intimate access to Egyptian tombs that clearly show same-sex relationships were honored in elite ancient society.
Whether you're an aspiring creative, history enthusiast, or simply curious about the transforming media landscape, Laird offers invaluable insights about following your passion, creating your own opportunities, and navigating a rapidly changing industry. Subscribe to our podcast for more conversations with fascinating creators who are redefining storytelling across mediums and genres.
Want to connect with Neil or learn more about his books? Visit www.neillaird.com for updates, contact info, and more about his creative projects.
Don’t miss this inspiring conversation about curiosity, storytelling, and finding new paths in creative life!
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Spotlights fade, the curtains rise, new stories waiting behind our eyes. Charlotte and John with the final say.
Speaker 2:Breaking down the screens in their own way. This is the Final Cut, where the real reviews ignite.
Speaker 3:Hi and welcome to another episode of Final Cut. Today we're delighted to introduce our first guest and John, could you introduce our first guest?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, charlotte. So it's a great pleasure to welcome the first guest on our new podcast series, and his name is Neil Laird and he has done and produced and directed, as well as written, over a thousand hours of nonfiction programming for channels such as Discovery, the History Channel, national Geographic, as well as the BBC and Channel 4. National Geographic as well as the BBC and Channel 4. So, basically, if you've been a viewer of US cable TV documentary channels over the last 20, 25 years, you'll have come across quite a few of his works, including Shark Week, which he was executive producer on, which has quite a cult following, as well as his own passion area, which is ancient history and shows about the ancient world and about ancient Egypt.
Speaker 2:Neil crossed over last year and began to write creative fiction with a fascinating new series of books called Jared Plummer versus the Ancient World, beginning with a novel that was released a year ago called Primetime Travellers, with a follow-up published later last year called Primetime Pompeii, and I believe a third is in the works called Primetime Troy. Now this revolves around the fictional adventures of a fictional documentary crew led by a relatively inexperienced TV director called Jared Plummer, who mysteriously is given by an old lady, an ancient portal which allows him to travel back in time to ancient Egypt, to make quote-unquote, the greatest documentary ever made. Now, online reviewers have been extremely complimentary about Neil's books, describing them as sort of Indiana Jones meets Doctor who. Others have compared them to the Outlander series and to the Percy Jackson series in the ways in which they blend a fascination with ancient history, mixing it up with elements of fantasy and aspects of our contemporary world.
Speaker 2:So, neil, it's a great pleasure to introduce you and to welcome you to our Final Cut podcast. And can I just begin with a very basic first question. You spent so long working in non-fiction television. What induced and inspired you to move over into creative writing?
Speaker 1:That's a very good question. It certainly wasn't something that I ever planned to say. After a quarter century, I'm going to move over and be a novelist, mostly because novelists don't make a bloody dime, you know. So it's. It's hardly a second Don't. Don't make it your first career. Make it your second career when you have some money in the bank.
Speaker 1:It was passion and it came largely out of doing television for again 25 years. I made my first film in 1996 about the Great Sphinx, which has always been my passion place, egypt, as you said. And after a thousand hours of television and over a hundred series, I kind of got tired of sticking to the facts. I kind of got tired of footnotes. I kind of got tired of you know. Well, I wish Ramsey could say that, but I can't put words in Ramsey's mouth because Discovery Channel won't let me, you know, or BBC won't let me. So it's funny. It was.
Speaker 1:It was I decided to write my first book in 2016. And by that point I'd already been thinking a bit about I want to create fiction. I want to take what I know about television, my love of the ancient world, and combine them. But of course, getting off the seat and doing it is much more difficult than thinking about it. Writing a book is not easy, but again, 2016, two things happened that really kind of like pushed me forward. One is I turned 50 and I realized, oh bloody hell, there's a lot more time behind me than ahead of me. So stop thinking about it, neil.
Speaker 1:And the other one is in January of that year, my great creative hero died, david Bowie. And even though he was a musician and not a writer, I have been a Bowie freak since the late 70s. I bought every album that came out and I knew everything he was doing, forward and back. And it was only after I read his obituary which, again, I knew so well that I was reminded of what made Bowie so brilliant was he was fearless.
Speaker 1:With every album, he recreated himself. With every album, he took you to a new world. He was not afraid to fail. He was not afraid to try something and then move on if it didn't work. And I remember thinking there like well, clearly I can't be Bowie, but maybe Neil Laird has one Bowie album in him, one, one, one trick up his sleeve. So let's find out and do it. So, in a way, it was the inspiration of those two things that said, okay, I've started writing. And then I just dived into taking my two things that I love so well my day job and my passion of ancient Egypt and ancient Rome and ancient Greece and I combined them into a very satirical, fun time travel novel something I could never do for television.
Speaker 3:Interesting. So what inspired this latest novel? Why did you want to write a third book in the series?
Speaker 1:It's all about. The books are self-published and the way you gain an audience in self-publishing is to have books on the shelf. So then you go back and you have two or three books you can sell and you can get out there. It's about building a name and so, unlike traditional publishing, which takes years and years and years between books because the agent has to do this, and that you can publish and write anytime you want. So I have found that by having two books out already and the third one being promised and being sent up, that it builds the anticipation, it builds the audience. I have a newsletter I send out and it's really a way for the independent publishing market to kind of get a name for themselves by simply because people don't. People don't want to wait two years for a book. They like the book, they want to read the next chapter tomorrow. I'm not that fast of a writer, but I could probably crank it out in less than a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'm always fascinated with, anytime I've spoken to creative writers, how they actually write. Now, the interesting thing with you, of course, is that you're dealing with historical material, so it must involve a certain amount of research. A good few years ago, charlotte and I encountered Diana Gabaldon, the author of the Outlander novels, who was visiting Scotland, and she said that in fact, she just read a whole load of books about Scotland and never visited Scotland, and yet wrote it all out from that. But in your case, you've visited some of these places, most of them, or all of them. So why, how do you blend research and fiction?
Speaker 1:It is, for it's a lot of travel. But again, starting with Egypt was a known brain. The first book is Egypt. Second book is Pompeii and Egypt. I know so well. I've been there a dozen times, I've shot a dozen documentaries. I've been there so many times. I know the. I just read books on Egyptology for fun. You know so, I know so. It was easy. For me.
Speaker 1:The research only came up when I had to figure out exact time period or things like that. And there are always little stories about ancient Egypt that would love to fictionalize. The world's first court case, the world's first strike, the world's first tomb robbers, all these things were fascinating, so I brought them into my book and fictionalized them. And then with the last two books, with Pompeii and with Troy, which is being written now, I rented a villa near the sites. So for Pompeii I rented a villa near Sorrento and I would hop the train every other day or so and I'd wander around Pompeii which I'd been to but never as a documentary filmmaker and just jotted things down.
Speaker 1:And then I would go back and say, oh, I love that, the villa of Julia Felix, I should make her a character. And then, over a glass of wine back in my villa. Julia Felix became part of my book and then last summer I went to Turkey, uh, near the ruins of Troy, and did the same thing, wandered over Troy and and try to follow the uh where uh Achilles and Agamemnon went and where they did all the raids. So it just inspired me to live in their world, even though very little was left of Troy, very little was left of it. That muse being along the Mediterranean, imagining seeing those ships sail up the Aegean, that stuff just fuels my creativity and I wrote the book very quickly that way.
Speaker 2:Well, it certainly sounds as if you enjoy writing creative fiction. You know, it's not a chore.
Speaker 1:Oh no, it can't be. I don't think if you're going into any kind of creative fiction or creative filmmaking, whatever, you better bloody well love it. A, because you won't get rich on it. But also, two, it's a lot of work and you have to kind of let go. I on it. But also too, it's a lot of work and you have to kind of let go. I mean, you have to not be afraid to fail.
Speaker 1:This first couple drafts are going to be really, really crappy and you need your beta readers. You need people to say, neil, this doesn't work or you're repeating yourself, and you have to have a thick skin. But also too, I find, once I dive into it, it's so much fun to be lost in that world. You know, be lost in that world, you know. I, I, my husband, hates it when I started off and he loves and he hates it. But he loves it because he knows I'm happy, but he hates it because he doesn't see me. I get up at 5 am and then you know he'll come back in the afternoon. I have an empty pizza box on the floor and I'm still typing away. It's like. It's like I'm a wall, I'm no longer there, and then I come up for the evening, so it is a very solitary experience, unlike filmmaking, unlike television, which is very much collaborative, but it's also very much your own. Every line in those books, for better or worse, comes from your layer.
Speaker 3:Can I move you back a bit in time and look at your career? So what really inspired you to focus your career on historical documentaries.
Speaker 1:It's a good question. And when I've talked about another podcast people were like how the hell did you become such an Egypt geek or whatever? And when I was a kid I really thought I would do feature films. I always loved the great historical epics growing up, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the Seven Samurai, lawrence of Arabia, these were my friends. You know I could watch them over and over and over again. I friends, you know I could watch them over and over and over again. I just love historical sweep. That goes away.
Speaker 1:So I always thought that I would go to film school and, you know, come out and become david lean overnight. And then, you know, be that easy. So I went to film school and did not become david lean overnight. I was a poor schlub hoarding a walkie talkie on some crappy horror film in queens at four in the morning. So they didn't steal the grip truck. You know the lowest of the low and make and working for my, you know, twenty dollars a day, what the hell was in the late 80s. So after a couple years I became I mean that dissolution. I just got very antsy. I realized, well, you know I better, something's got to break. Um, but partially the way I found history, which I didn't get.
Speaker 1:Growing with a small catholic. I was out of Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, a very small town, middle America, so except for Catholic education and the apostles I didn't get too much ancient history, and that's questionable. So I had a lot of free time in New York waiting for the phone not to ring between horror films, and I started hanging out at the New York Public Library because it was free and air conditioned, I can get a book out and not pay for it and for whatever. One day I picked up a book off the shelf about Neolithic man, about the rise of Neolithic civilization, which is something I knew nothing about, nothing. And so I picked it up and I read it there, went back to my you know crappy little Manhattan hovel and a penny dropped and I just became absolutely enamored of this.
Speaker 1:I couldn't believe the rise of civilization and I resolved to teach myself history through free books at the library, certainly at the time, and so I gobbled up book after book after book and then I got to Egypt and Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent and I kind of got stuck. I became so fascinated by those cultures that I almost didn't want to go any further. So I just sort of said, well, screw it, I'm going to go backpack. So I backpacked through those worlds for about eight or nine months, seeing Syria, iran, turkey, egypt, israel and if it's considered a map, I saw it, you know, didn't go to Iraq because I think it was a bit dodgy then, as it is now. But then it came back with my head in the clouds and I said how can I do this for a living? Documentary filmmaking, documentary filmmaking. So I went and got my master's degree in documentary, made my thesis about the great Sphinx of Egypt and I've been doing it ever since, and that's 30 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was from Columbia University. I think you got the MFA Master's in Fine Arts, Is that right? Columbia College, chicago, it was a smaller arts school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then how did you make that leap? It's one thing you know wanting to make documentary films. It's quite another to end up making them for Discovery, national Geographic and History. How did you get that? It was a bit of luck and it was a bit of passion certainly both.
Speaker 1:But when I was at Columbia I became close friends with another student named Hasham, who's from Cairo Still good friends and his father was on the antiquities board in Egypt. So he was over at my house one day at an archaeology magazine about who built the Sphinx and why, and he looked at it and says, oh, my dad's involved in that. Holy shit, you know, another penny dropping. So I scrambled together what little money I had and my thesis film, which you know I don't know how it is in the UK or elsewhere, but your thesis is like what you know in the MFA you have to make something. So mine was on the Great Sphinx of Egypt and Hisham's father was able to get us into the antiquities board without the fees.
Speaker 1:So we flew to the Sphinx. We're climbing over the Sphinx, climbing the pyramids, all for free. Today it costs you like 10,000 pounds to put a tripod down. It's ridiculous. It's so freaking expensive. I was a poor student doing it for free and I used the film school equipment which wasn't allowed to be taken out of the city of Chicago. I took it to the Giza Plateau and shot a film there. I remember returning it the tripod and it rattled with sand inside the tripod. The woman behind the cage, the film cage, says you didn't take this to lake michigan, did you?
Speaker 2:I said yes, man but you still haven't answered my question how did you get the break into institutional tv?
Speaker 1:well, no, I. Luckily I was able to sell that film to the Learning Channel, my thesis film. I was working at a production company called Cartemquin. And again more luck, there's a documentary that came out that year called Hoop Dreams. It's one of the best documentaries. Oh yes, I was an assistant editor on Hoop Dreams and so of course, those guys were flaming hot. They were so popular.
Speaker 1:After then I got one of them to put their name on as an exec, so that got me in the door at discovery and a learning channel. So I probably would. I would just been some poor kid trying to sell a film if it wasn't for the fact that I worked on hoop dreams and the exec of hoop dreams slapped their name on it and went to egypt with me and got a free trip out of it and was a sound guy. So it all worked out well. So ever since then, so it was all you know, a lot of it's a lot, a lot of it's trying. Um, you know, I would say don't wait around for either alone. You got to find both and jump on it, and so because of that I skipped right into directing and producing rather than work my way up like the poor schlub with the walkie-talkie, I went right to the uh, the creative stuff in tv, and I've been doing ever since wow.
Speaker 3:So which, which one I probably told you found was challenging, what was the most? Did you have any not scary story about?
Speaker 1:you know I've given, you know, lectures on just you know the things that have gone wrong. You know I've gotten dysentery three times in india and egypt and where else? Guam, I think. Um, I got chased by a grizzly bear in alaska no, it was wyoming. Um, I got shaken down by the mafia in sicily because they didn't like what we're shooting. I mean, it's an endless, isn't it's you know? It's you should?
Speaker 3:do a biography maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it really is Indiana Jones with you, isn't it it?
Speaker 1:can happen. You've got to fly by the seat of your pants, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. One interesting question that occurred to me is there's a lot of ignorance about the ancient world amongst the public. From all your travels and all your research, what do you think is the one or two most important things that you feel people should know about the ancient world that they tend not to know?
Speaker 1:It's a good question, I would say. One is they're not nearly as primitive as we think we like to think. A lot of people like to think that history is. You know, it's always going up, up, up and you compare us to a Roman or Egyptian. They're just a bunch of Neanderthals, not true? I mean, they were building aqueducts and pyramids and you know we can't figure out how to turn a computer on sometimes. So I'm not saying we're any dumber, but we're not any smarter. It's just that the cultures have changed.
Speaker 1:One thing that has become a real passion for me, and I've done. My books reflect this. In fact, my books one of the theses of my books, jared Plummer and Kara the director and Cameron respectively are gay, and so after the first book where it deals with Jared's, coming out, they make a mission to tell stories of forgotten gays and LGBTQ people from the ancient past. And I did that because one thing I learned, particularly in Egypt and Greece and those places, is, in many ways it was much freer and more open sexuality, same sex unions than it is today. It didn't have the negative connotations, it was just another part of life. So when people say that we're more open and more free today than we were. You know, it's all a. It depends what you're talking about. Yes, you know the Romans had slavery, but also you could be whoever you wanted and love whoever you wanted. So clearly it's not like one wins and one loses, but particularly when it comes to sexuality and individual preference, they were much more enlightened than we are individual preference.
Speaker 3:They were much more enlightened than we are. So, yeah, so was it. Was it sort of a choice by you to put it out as a talk about it in relation to the ancient world rather than speak about in a modern setting? Or is it because of your love anyway for the classics, and so there was natural step from there to them that I think you know I'm much more interested in the ancient world than I am sort of modern history, it's like.
Speaker 1:Not that I'm not interested in 20th century history, but I just love that part of the world and I love to entertain and educate people about these forgotten cultures, because we only know so little, people know so so little about their world that that's kind of my bailiwick and that's my passion. So it's a very natural thing for me to talk about these places because I have been in in tombs. It's a great place in Saqqara in Egypt called the Tomb of the Brothers and it clearly is two gay guys who were married, who were buried together and it's the most lovely, wonderful tomb and their arm and arm the entire time. Their sarcophagus are next to each other and the mere fact that they are buried in the shadow of the ziggurat or the step pyramid means that the pharaoh approved of it, because this is the most elite necropolis in egypt. You know it was only called tomb of the brothers because in 1964, whenever when they found it, homophobia was much stronger than it was in 3000 bc and they couldn't possibly possibly be two gay guys.
Speaker 1:It had to be two brothers, someone even posited because they're so close together. They were siamese twins and that's why they're. That's why they're looking up face to face, not because they're kissing close together. They were Siamese twins and that's why they're looking up face to face, not because they're kissing which they are, it's because they literally can't get away from one another. So those kind of stories makes me want to disseminate and reveal how the ancient world really thought. But whatever, and it's coupled with the adventure, as you say, indiana Jones, it's much more exciting to go back into the temples of the pharaohs than it is going back like a shopping mall in Queens in 1980 or whatever. You know, it's more exciting.
Speaker 3:It might be a different type of excitement Definitely, yeah, I know Definitely.
Speaker 2:Now, of course, in your novels, it's not just the ancient world, you also, um have the scrapes of your tv crew, um which, uh, it could be thinly disguised in terms of the relationship to the real world there's a noxious tv host um called derrick dees, I think in the in the novels. So can you comment about the way in which you've brought in the world of contemporary TV and how it's reflected in the novel?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Look, I love TV and I'm still working in it, but definitely like any kind of behind the scenes, people love to know all that stuff is made. So I'm skewering television, I'm skewering how we make shows and I'm skewering how we tell stories and create fantasies and how we pretend we're adventurous when we're not, how we pretend we discover things when they're already, you know, discovered by archaeologists 30 years ago. We just like them better. So I kind of want to have a little satire on my business as well. And again, I think there's some great stuff on television that's done. But you know, people love behind the scenes and I've had some great stories to tell about the people that I met. All the names have been changed and there's no one person that's here. It's just a. It's just a hodgepodge of all the things that I have done and, you know, created little archetypes and it's fun because I can dip in.
Speaker 3:Is there any story you care to share with our viewers? With the anonymized or or not.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, probably because I'm in the business, I shouldn't share that, but you know, let's just say that if you read the book you know it might be over the top a bit, but it's not too far from what some you know studio heads and things like that are like and how we're expected to act. You know one of the places that one of the the kind of people I wanted to go after was there's a series over here called Ancient Aliens and I haven't worked on. I don't know if you get in the UK and it's just a load of rubbish.
Speaker 1:We do yeah, then you know they know it's junk and and it's been on, but it's also one of the most successful shows on whatever network. It is more part of the people that are working on it. But I hate the paranormal. I hate people saying the pyramids were built by you. You know lost civilizations and all this rubbish, you know. We call them pyramidiots in my line of work, you know, and so the crew is kind of working on one of those silly shows. So it was their eye opening experience to go from kind of like being sort of craven hacks to having to get the hell out of ancient Egypt before Ramsey the Great kills them, you know. So in a way it's kind of parodying those people who think they have all the answers and they don't know anything and they get back and say, holy shit, okay, this is more serious than I thought so, yeah, it really focuses the mind when you're chased by Ramesses the Great, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:so in that sense, I have noticed this as well on those shows, because we get them in the UK as well. We get the channels National Geographic, discovery, the History Channel in particular, and it's all full of these titles. You know Mysteries, you know mysteries, you know ancient aliens, as you say, there seems to be a lot of trying to sell documentaries on mystery, and it's not too far to leap to the paranormal, as you say. So do you feel that this is a real negative trend? Now? In trying to get good documentaries onto these US channels, you've got to kind of wrap it up in some kind of mystery nowadays.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a trend because it's been around so long. I mean, they're doing that stuff in the 70s, with TV shows called like In Search of, about Bigfoot and, you know, chariots of the Gods, so it's nothing new. I think it's frustrating when I talk to people and I'll meet somebody somewhere and they say, oh, you work in TV. Is it true the pyramids were built by levitation or is it true that the Sphinx was built by aliens or whatever? I have to roll my eyes because these are the things that they see and these are the things that they glob on.
Speaker 1:Now there's other documentaries out there and the BBC and PBS and Discovery sometimes do some great stuff. So it's not like everything has to be the paranormal, but those things. Whatever reason. People like a conspiracy, people like mystery. Even my shows, even if I do one about looking for ancient Troy, it'll still be the mysteries or secrets of Troy. We'll still slap a title like that on it, because that's how you get eyeballs. And even as you write a show, it can't just be a question of let's talk about an archaeological site. It has to be what happened here, how did they die? People love questions and that's okay. That's a framing device, but I do think they can often spill into just kind of creating something that's not true and we call it false jeopardy or you know where. You just kind of create some idea that isn't there but allows people to keep watching, particularly in American TV where you have five commercial breaks. You got to make sure people don't skip out over the commercial. You have to tease at the end when you return. You know actually, your mom.
Speaker 3:Can I just ask you for our young audience, what advice would you give to an aspiring filmmaker, particularly a documentary filmmaker, Because I'm thinking maybe many young people you know they aren't interested to get into the area. What sort of advice would you?
Speaker 1:I mean it's a new world, and when I was coming up in the 90s and the 00s, I mean those don't exist anymore because streaming has changed everything. Even as I mentioned commercial breaks, most people are watching stuff on streaming and they're made for streaming and they don't exist anymore because it's all subscription based. So don't follow the path I did in 1996 and it won't get you anywhere. I think to anybody who wants to write a book or make a documentary produce something, don't wait for someone to give you the gift of hiring you. If you've got a short film in you, shoot it. If you've got a novel, start writing it.
Speaker 1:The first couple of drafts will be dodgy and you'll fall on your face, but people want to see results. I know someone came to me and said oh, you know, I want to be your assistant and no assistant is going to have any credits If someone has, like, I've been working as an assistant editor in like a shoe store for six years and someone said I made four films. You know, at home I pick that kid Because that person is excited about the business. That person is already trying stories out. Your resume is your work. Yeah, even at that early level Produce.
Speaker 2:Produce, do something. Yeah, two sort of related questions here. The future, first of all. What's the future for Neil Laird in terms of what you want to do next? But also, what's the future do you think of TV and the kind of world that you've worked in, given, as you say, the rise of streaming and the way in which?
Speaker 3:And AI and AI, which is a topic, yeah, that you've worked in.
Speaker 1:Given, as you say, the rise of streaming and the way in which and AI and AI, which is a topic, yeah, for me it's like I have a few more years writing television. I don't think I need to do the big, you know, deep dives. I'm happy to write and do smaller projects because I've done so many, but I want to continue to write novels too and I'll finish Troy and have a few other ideas. My husband and I want to retire somewhere with a Mediterranean sunset view, maybe over a ruin, somewhere, you know, in the Eastern Mediterranean, and that's our goal and our plan. Now. He's much younger than me, he's 10 years younger, so I won't be anytime soon, but I love to write and if I can keep doing some smaller project to keep that going, then I'll do that and part of it and that kind of dovetails with.
Speaker 1:The second question is television is very dying. Uh, certainly for people in the in my age, in the 50s, with ageism, it's like it's a different world than when I did it and less because there's less show, entire network. I lost my job at discovery because my entire network science channel went away. Like 40 of us got laid off in one day 800 people that got laid off Other networks, entire networks went away. So that simply means not only just the exec jobs the network that I had but also that means less product, less production and therefore less people needed. So I all things on LinkedIn about people who you know, who are sound guys or graphics guys in Hollywood for 20 years and now they're bagging groceries at Trader Joe's because it's the only thing they can get. So it is a very, very tough time, a time of transition. I don't know where it's going to shake out. It's not going to go back to the way it was, the halcyon days, where it was so much, so much production going on in la new york and london three cities I will work in um that people are gonna have to reinvent themselves.
Speaker 3:A lot of people are we said, we suddenly saw that and when we visited la that there appeared to be a lot of. We visited first 15 years ago and then this year last year and it seems to be that almost a lot of productions have actually left Hollywood and a lot of films were actually shot overseas yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean everything's changing and it's like it's a question of where they go and what they make and I don't even view a taster changing, not just streamers.
Speaker 1:But you know I do these four part big series on Pompeii or whatever, and now people were happy to watch a 10-minute youtube or a four-minute tiktok or whatever and get their information. So the younger generations aren't going towards those classic blue chip david attenborough like documentaries, like they used to um, and I'm not sure they're going to come back. So again, even the art form that I have spent three decades in maybe on the way out, with a rare exception and we haven't mentioned what charlotte touched on, given her own passions, for it is ai.
Speaker 2:Could we have a future? It's all produced by ai and yeah, I mean the.
Speaker 1:You know hosts don't go on location anymore, they'll just get a backdrop of the pyramids. You know you don't need copy editors. You don't eventually probably want to script writers. There's so much of that stuff. The knock on effect is only beginning to be seen with my books. It's very interesting because all my books, of course, written by Hank, by my human, you know my computer, you know my computer. But when you go online and stuff, they make sure that the AI there's no AI in your book cover. You haven't done any of this stuff and it was hard to police.
Speaker 1:You can see people are really sort of circling the wagons and making sure we try to take care of our own because, particularly with self publishing, if you you can crank that stuff out and people don't care about quality, you can, you know, write six books a week and get it out, and that stuff starts to take on. Write six books a week and get it out, and that stuff starts to take on again. The knock-on effect is less and less jobs and less and less opportunities for creative writers. So that world is. It obviously makes our life easier, but in terms of how we create and how we gather information and all that stuff we're only beginning to see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so with your comic book, do you think there will be more? Okay, so you're on. The third one is it can you foresee a whole series of of?
Speaker 1:this?
Speaker 3:I don't know I mean, I think, or do you have any other projects in?
Speaker 1:I mean, by the way I had two other books that I didn't that I try to get traditional agent for and couldn't I might go back to one of those and so, uh, self-publish those or write something else a series. It's hard to know. We'll see how well troy does and we'll also see if I'm still interested in it and I kill off one of the main characters in the next book. So you know, maybe that's the end. I won't tell you who. You have to wait till it comes out maybe that's my mind telling you.
Speaker 1:Okay, I I'm getting sick of these characters. I don't know.
Speaker 2:So we should mention this third book. When is it due out, Neil Good question.
Speaker 1:I'm taking off to Italy tomorrow for a few weeks and do some writing even though it's on Troy and then I hop on a project back here in the States, a TV job. So I think when that wraps in August I'll probably head back out to the mediterranean somewhere and finish it so hopefully early next year brilliant and uh yes, yes, a lot for that, thank you, thank you and the
Speaker 3:final question here. So what is this? Something you would have? What would you have told your 21st year old self, or when you were young? Is there something you would have told or something you would have done differently, or?
Speaker 1:good question. I, you know, I think I mean I leap before, I look even then, like with the Sphinx, and then you know, maybe I would have written that book, you know, when Bowie was still alive, you know, rather than afterwards. But again, I think I've already said I think don't wait. I mean don't be afraid to fail. We're all so terrified, particularly in this age where we can get shamed so easily on social media. People can jump on you. It's not easy, you have to have a thick skin, and so I think you know, if I told myself that I said you know, don't wait, don't wait, just do it and is there anything else you want to leave with our viewers?
Speaker 3:and also, how can they get in contact with you if they would or they can be, of course, buy your books, but is there any other?
Speaker 1:way they can. I have a newsletter. Yeah, my website neolairdcom. You can sign up for my newsletter there. Every couple of months I send out links and conversations about both television and my books. And then Amazon has both of my books, both the US and UK. Just type in Neil Laird or Primetime Travelers or Primetime Pompeii and they come up.
Speaker 2:And let me know what you think if you read the book. Well, great stuff, let me know.
Speaker 1:Absolutely well, thanks ever so much, neil, and the best of luck for the future thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much and thank you for enjoying another episode of the final cut. And you know we can fight. You can follow us here on youtube or on your podcast host. Thanks again for tuning in. Thank you.
