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
From Broadway to Children's TV: The Billy Aronson Story
From the bohemian streets of 1980s New York to the colorful world of children's television, Billy Aronson has crafted stories that resonate across generations. In this revealing conversation, the playwright and screenwriter who first conceived the idea for RENT shares the creative spark that would eventually become a Broadway sensation.
"I really felt I wanted to do something with that great Bohème inspiration of what it's like being young and fighting for your life in the city, but with the modern edge," Billy explains, describing how Puccini's opera collided with the stark realities of Reagan-era Manhattan to birth a cultural touchstone. Though Jonathan Larson later developed the musical that would win multiple Tony Awards, Billy's fingerprints remain on its DNA.
What's remarkable about Billy's journey is how seamlessly he navigated between sophisticated theatrical works and beloved children's programming. After establishing himself as a playwright, financial practicality led him to writing for shows like Sesame Street, Beavis and Butt-Head, and eventually co-creating the Emmy-winning PBS series Peg + Cat. Rather than seeing these as separate creative worlds, Billy insists the fundamental artistic impulse remains constant: "I don't think, oh, a kid would like this. I make myself laugh and move myself and thrill myself with what I'm writing."
The conversation takes a poignant turn as Billy discusses the depression that has shadowed his creative life, culminating in a major episode that temporarily robbed his world of meaning and color. This experience, along with his strategies for recovery – from yoga to therapy to medication – forms the emotional core of his memoir "Out of My Head: Learning to Reach People Through the Arts." Far from a typical how-to guide, the book explores the fundamental human desire to connect through creative expression.
For those struggling to establish themselves in the arts, Billy offers hard-won wisdom: "When you knock on a lot of doors and one opens, one will open, and that's your career." His advice to his younger self – "don't worry so much, it's gonna be okay" – serves as a comforting reminder that creative journeys, while challenging, have a way of working out in unexpected ways.
Join us for this enlightening conversation with a true creative polymath whose work has touched countless lives through stage, screen, and page. Whether you're an aspiring artist or simply curious about the creative process, Billy's insights will leave you inspired to pursue your own path of authentic expression.
Hot lights 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.
Speaker 1:Where the real review. Hello there, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Final Cut Podcast. And you can see that this week, unlike previous podcasts when we've used a Hollywood background, we're very much New York today, and that is in honour of a distinguished guest for today who's very much a skian of the New York art scene and actually a real creative powerhouse. So I'm delighted to welcome Billy Aronson to our latest podcast Now. Billy's work has touched everything from Broadway to children's television.
Speaker 1:Billy Aronson's an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who first conceived the idea that would become Rent, the hit musical rock musical for the MTV generation that went on to win numerous awards. But that's only just one chapter of his story. He's also written a whole series of very successful one-act and also full-length plays, many of which have been published and anthologised and quite a few of which have also been nominated for awards. So not only that, he's also a very experienced and successful writer of children's television, and his credits on this are numerous, including iconic shows like Sesame Street, beavis and Butthead, which I fondly remember, but also more recent work in the last 10 years or so the Octonauts for CBeebies, which my son used to watch avidly. And perhaps most importantly, he's co-creator of Peg and Cat for PBS Kids. That ran successfully in the 2010s and won numerous awards and numerous Emmy nominations.
Speaker 1:So this is somebody who has got a varied track record. And, to cap it all, billy is also the author of a powerful memoir that we also want to discuss today, called Out of my Head Learning to Reach People Through the Arts. Billy's holding up the book as we speak. This is a very interesting memoir. It's both a how-to and also, I think, a survival guide for working in the arts, a remarkable book that was published earlier this year by Bear Manor Media and is available at an online bookshop near you or bookstore near you. So I'm delighted to welcome to the latest podcast, billy Aronson. Billy, how are you?
Speaker 3:Great John and Charlotte so glad to be here. That was a wonderful introduction. I hope to prove worthy of it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think you know we're delighted that you've decided to join us, Actually here, the hottest day of the year in Scotland, I don't know what it's like where you are.
Speaker 3:It's one of the hottest days here in Brooklyn, so we can share that.
Speaker 1:We share that. Well, great. Well, look, it's a remarkable career. And I want to take you right back to the very beginning, because digging around in your bio, it looks as if you came originally from Pennsylvania but then were enrolled in the very prestigious Ivy League universities, I think Princeton initially, and then Yale School of Drama. So presumably that's what brought you to the New York area. So I'm just curious how did you get started and how did you establish yourself, first of all in the New York art scene?
Speaker 3:Well, it would be hard for me to remember how I actually got started, because I always had this feeling that talking wasn't enough, that the thoughts in my head, that the feelings that I had, I wanted to share them so badly and I had no idea how. So I would pick up a recorder, a musical instrument and try to do it through that, and sometimes that felt great, and I would act in plays, and sometimes that seemed to work. But by college, after a particularly thrilling and heartbreaking romance, the world seemed to crack open for me and I had so many new feelings about whatever this adulthood thing was and connecting with another human being. It seemed so impossible and glorious. I just had to do something bigger about that, and so playwriting kind of found me.
Speaker 3:I didn't think of myself as a writer at that point, but I became one and I would make plays and I would force my friends to be in them during exam period, most talented kids on campus to join me and watch them succeed and fail more often, failing in the beginning, and sit there and deal with that and then try, try again harder the next year and then the next year, and then the next year, and then, yeah, I started out. We grew up in a little Marion in the suburbs of Philadelphia mostly, but then I went to Princeton for college and then right, after what did you study at Princeton?
Speaker 1:Princeton, billy. What was your? What did you major on at Princeton?
Speaker 3:Well, I tried majoring in everything philosophy, religion, anthropology my first couple of years and I realized I have to be an English major because I can't do anything else. I just love English and I particularly love drama, but they didn't have a drama major.
Speaker 3:So I took the English and I studied a lot of Shakespeare and I did. There was a program, but most of the writing, the work I did in theater, was on my own, without getting course credit for it. It was just like somehow, with all those other courses and needing to pass all these other courses and needing to work to pay for your bills thing, these huge projects that consumed my soul for four years. And then I didn't know what I wanted to do after college. I only applied to one graduate school, which Yale Drama School, which just sounded so cool that I had to try for it. And I got in and I worked at that for three years.
Speaker 3:I think the main thing I learned at drama school is you can't depend on other people to tell you what to do with your work. You have to figure it out for yourself. Did that have to take me three years of other people telling me what to do and listening to them and bowing down to them and saying thank you, thank you, I'll go as far as you want in that direction? I don't know, but it is an important lesson to learn. Then I came to New York, kind of because that's where you go for theater.
Speaker 3:I was told, and I have also always sort of liked the pace of New York, which most people I think is which isn't right for most people, but I always like that in New York, when you come to a corner, if the light is red and there are no cars, everybody just walks. You know, there's this unspoken thing that the point of the rules is to serve us. They're not serving us. Why are we? You know, if these rules aren't going to keep me from getting killed, why do I care about the rule? That's sort of everybody in new york, whatever they're doing. It seems there's a sort of desperation, might not determination, a drive, a passion behind it anyway. So new york has always sort of worked for me. So that's how I I ended up here and I've stayed ever since.
Speaker 2:Can I ask a bit about Rent? As I said, I love the musical Amazing absolutely. But why did you really conceive this idea? Where did you get the idea from linking the opera to East Village? I mean to move it from Blobberham to New York East Village and I mean to move it from Laboham to New York East Village. And I mean Puccini is wonderful. I mean we just visited Italy the other day to see Puccini's fixes and you know it's quite an interesting topic. You also talk about homelessness, aids crisis, et cetera. So what brought this on and why did you want to write about that?
Speaker 3:Well, I was always looking for more ideas for plays. When I came to New York I just started from scratch kind of, and I went to see everything because there was so much exciting theatre in New York I can say there was then and all kinds of avant-garde, crazy experimental in every direction dance theatre, art theatre, all kinds of music theater and circus and contortion and I just loved it. I learned so much from it. And one of the things that I stumbled into was the opera which I lived in Hell's Kitchen, which is right near the Lincoln Center actually actually. So, even though it was a very cheap apartment, you walk 10 minutes and you're at this glorious the Metropolitan Opera where I could, for maybe three or four or five dollars, go in and get standing room and have five hours of great music and drama. So I kind of fell in love with that.
Speaker 3:I just sort of got opera after having. I mean, I heard it when I was growing up. My father loved it, but I didn't get it. You know it seems what's all that vibrato about, but anyway, I got it and all of a sudden all of it seems really amazing to me. So I saw a lot of it, but Bohème was one of the first that I fell in love with.
Speaker 3:It's just a gorgeous opera and I related to the situation, of course, because there are these poor artists One of them's a playwright and they're all no, I. One of them's a playwright and they're all no, I made one of them a playwright in my mind, but they're all there. They seem like us, like me and my friends, except that it was all so luscious, it was all so wonderful and beautiful, and you know the tenor could sing welcome to my life, my true love. You know I have no money, but I've got a great life.
Speaker 3:And then I would walk home to Hell's Kitchen after that, and the world was so caustic in the mid 80s that I walked through on my way to my Hell's Kitchen home, where there was, there were different drugs sold on every floor and people dying everywhere, and money was in fashion all of a sudden and being an artist was not in fashion at that time, it was material girl days, you know, and I was not a material boy, I had no material. So I really felt I wanted to do something with that great bohem inspiration of what it's like being young and fighting for your life in the city, but with the modern edge, with that sharp edge to it that I saw in the world around me. So it was an idea I had.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I was writing plays, of course, at the time, and I hadn't written a musical. I was writing plays, of course, at the time, and I hadn't written a musical. But at one point I had a new play I really liked that theaters were considering and I didn't want to start writing another play while all the theaters were considering this one play. So I thought maybe that poem idea would work with music, and so I went to a theater called Playwrights Horizons that did readings of my plays. They recommended two composers. One of them was Jonathan Larson and he was very excited about it. So we were excited about each other's work. I heard some of his and some of mine, so we got down to business with that. So that's where that idea came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I think you obviously conceived the original idea. You also co-composed, I think, three tunes, two, three numbers with Jonathan Larson, and then there's a remarkable sort of behind the scenes story with Rent, because Jonathan Larson then takes this forward, I think with your blessing, and it would be quite interesting to sort of go into the politics of how that relationship worked out. But then of course you know Jonathan Larson. Just as that show was starting to really establish itself, I think when it just got launched on Broadway, he suddenly died so it's actually the night before her first off-right Broadway preview.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so to take us through all of that, that's kind of quite weird to you know, I would imagine for you to process that whole history so how first of? All, why did Larson take it forward with your blessing? Where were you in this, Well?
Speaker 3:I tell you, john, I could tell that it was going nowhere. No, we were working on it for a couple of years. We didn't really know how to collaborate. So he wanted things his way, I wanted things my way. That's what we were used to. That's the joy of making art is, you know, you have some control over the units. So we did come up with three songs together. I don't write music, but I wrote the words to three songs and we had an outline for the script and none of the theaters that we took it to bit, you know, wanted to start giving us money to take it further and we both had had plenty of readings and didn't want to write something else that would just get readings. So he went on to do his one character version of his, his artistic life. Uh, that was then called boho days but became tick-tack, tick, tick, boom, um. And I went on to write some more plays and get married and have children. That was then called Boho Days, but became Tick, tick, tick, tick, boom, and I went on to write some more plays and get married and have children. So we were quite happy going our separate ways with it.
Speaker 3:And after a year or two he got back to me and said he wanted to go ahead on his own with it. Would that be OK? And we agreed that he could, as long as I got credit and compensation okay. And we agreed that he could as long as I got credit and compensation. So which I thought then I just thought that I would get like a few hundred dollars maybe if we're done off broadway so that to pay back for the demo tape we've made. I was going to get my few hundred dollars back, right? So, um, uh.
Speaker 3:And then there was that time where, yeah, it was just his. He was working on it by himself. Taking it to this theater in that theater was never easy. People were interested in it but nobody wanted to go ahead and produce this whole musical about people all wearing black and dying. Um, and it's hard to make money with an off-broadway musical that and it had so many characters it would be expensive for an off-broadway theater. So what are you going to do with it?
Speaker 3:But he kept at it. He would pass me tapes and scripts and I could see that he was really inspired. But I thought he kept getting better all the time. He got more focused and he was about he was writing about something that was from his heart. So, um, before it opened off broadway, we were going back and forth about what my, what my bio would say and all this. And then I got the news that he died, which, yeah, it was absolutely bizarre, because then I went to see it with my wife an early preview of it and we could tell it was really special. He wasn't there Terribly sad. But I realized this is going to be huge. I didn't even think Broadway had such a really great, and so I felt bad that I wasn't involved with it. I felt stupid, I felt angry at myself, I felt embarrassed. I also felt scared that what if the words that I wrote ruined the whole thing? So it was that too. I felt. Yeah, a lot of mixed feelings.
Speaker 2:I mean because at that time I mean these sort of topics were quite, people were quite sensitive about this. I mean, even here in the UK it was quite difficult to, I think, release that kind of material, but I don't know if they had the same sort of resistance.
Speaker 3:But very important, oh yeah, on Broadway at that time there was nothing like that on broadway. I mean, we always. That's why I didn't think it would ever be on broadway, because I thought of broadway as a place that's more like disneyland. It's happy, people come to pay a lot of money from out of town. It's mostly who is gonna? Young people. Sure, jonathan always felt it should bring young people back to the theater, but I didn't know young people who could afford to go to broadway that time. So you know, I thought, great, let's go for it. I didn't think that was going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But he always did yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's a very interesting story and, you know, absolutely fascinating to find out about your early role in Rent. But of course, as Rent was sort of gestating um, you were also establishing yourself as a playwright. But interestingly as well, um kids tv seems to feature very early on um because looking back at your, your bio guy I'm actually on imdb. I noticed you were, I think, production assistant on something called defenders of of the Earth from 1986. Unless that's a mistake, it can be IMDb can get things wrong. That's not you, is it?
Speaker 3:I don't remember that. I'm only saying I don't remember because I did so much stuff for money along the way. Anything is possible, but I don't remember that one.
Speaker 1:Right, that's interesting, so how?
Speaker 2:did you start in children's television?
Speaker 3:Well, it began with money. I just wanted to make money while I was playwriting. I first started by doing late night paralegal work, which was okay for a while, but it was slow and it took lots of hours late at night and I wanted to do. I found that if you do something that uses your talent a little bit, you can make much more money. You can make much more money. You can make money more quickly.
Speaker 3:I think I first did a few audition scripts for Sesame Street. That was like the five minute script was $750. I couldn't believe that they paid me $750. I could get new stereos and speakers and a VCR. I felt rich.
Speaker 3:So then I started applying to every television show, every magazine, everything and I found that the things that I was good at were things that I enjoyed. So I tried to write. I tried very hard to write for a soap opera. I did the whole audition process for that, but I just wasn't good at it. It was hard work. I didn't really enjoy it and the people who do that kind of writing really enjoy it. They've got a flair for it. They love those conversations. So you can't fake it.
Speaker 3:I somehow worked out well, often in children's television and other goofy comedy, weird goofy plays with language. Educational is fine. I don't mind education because to me every time you write a play you're learning, you're discovering the world for the first time, kind of that's what the arts is for me. So the more I got into children's television, the more it became like making art to me. Um, phoebus and butthead courage the cowardly dog were two of the shows I wrote the best for. I think they weren't somebody else's shows, but I was able. I think we intersected well. And then, as you said, peg plus cat, I got to do my own show with an artist named Jennifer Oxley, where we created our own universe. What fun that was.
Speaker 1:Yes, so yeah, to take you through that. So when did you start on kids' TV then, if it wasn't with Defenders of the Earth? Was it in the 90s that you were doing this? So you had established yourself as a playwright by then. But it was it in the 90s, um, that you were doing this, so you had established yourself as a playwright right by then. It was the mid-80s.
Speaker 3:It was actually when I started working with jonathan. It was about the same time because I was looking for other things to do than playwriting, particularly to make money. I didn't expect the musical to make money but I wanted you know my, my fiancee was going to come move from cambridge to be with me. I wanted to, I wanted her to be sure that she made the right choice and I wanted to afford so that we could have kids together and things like that.
Speaker 2:Could I ask you about your writing style? So how do you find writing for children? Is that different from writing for adults, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Ultimately, charlotte, it's the same thing. I know that sounds insane. Ultimately, I mean you the same thing. I know that sounds insane, ultimately you're. I mean you don't use certain words. But actually I find with kids, more than adults, if you use a word they might not understand. As long as it's clear in context, they can enjoy discovering things, they enjoy discovering new words, grownups might get restless. What, what does that? You know? But it's very much alike I have. I mean, there are certain things about my personality that make that true. It's not true for everyone.
Speaker 3:Most people would have to say, gee, if I'm going to write for kids, what does a kid want? How does a kid think? I don't think that way because I think that's. I don't think ever that writing for a hypothetical audience is ever good. It's got to write for real people like yourself. You've got to make yourself laugh and move yourself and thrill yourself with what you're writing. I don't think, oh, a kid would like this. Anyway, just for me, because I am naturally juvenile, I'm naturally kooky, I love playing with language and that doesn't make me any less serious. So I think it's worked well for that and not so well for soap operas or writing for news which I would have done. I wouldn't have done anything for money at that point, but this is what I was better at.
Speaker 1:So obviously, your premier work in kids TV, the thing that you had absolute control over or more control over, was Peg and Cat, which, interestingly, is about trying to teach children about math and about trying to get them to, you know, understand the world in a mathematical way. So take us through the genesis of that and what inspired you and, I think, your co-creator, jennifer Oxley, to to try and develop kids math skills.
Speaker 3:Well, again looking for money, PBS was looking for a math show. It's very hard to get a new show made, but they were looking for something that taught math to the very young three to five, I think, was the target. They invited Jennifer because they were fond of her work. She'd done the visuals, the look of the Wonder Pets, which was a very successful Nickelodeon show that I wrote for, and so she was one of three dozen producers I invited to. She didn't realize that there were that many competitors going for this gig. Neither did I, but anyway she invited me to team up with her and we put our heads together, sort of. She had a couple characters she liked and I had a kind of a concept, a loose concept, for a world of math word problems. Like it's like you wake up and you're in the middle of a math word problem and we we made a couple characters who are like me and like her at the same time.
Speaker 3:The peg is sort of crazy, you know, freaks out like I do. Um needs to calm herself down to solve a problem. She wants to quit and she freaks out, which I think a lot of people do in the face of math. And Kat is goofy. She had a cat that looked like Kat, the titular Kat in our show.
Speaker 3:So we put our heads together and came up with a world in which they could go anywhere. And what fun that was. They could be helping Romeo and Juliet get from one balcony to another and helping Kat get out of a world in which they could go anywhere. And what fun that was. They could be helping Romeo and Juliet get from one balcony to another and helping Kat get out of a tree in Peg's backyard, in another, helping Beethoven somewhere, and then in space, in outer space, chasing a hundred chickens. It was so much fun. It was like getting to do hundreds of plays and because we had to come up with stories for gosh, 130 different 11-minute episodes, maybe Something like that. That was the first season alone, in fact, anyway. So it was a lot of fun and a lot of work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of success as well. It went on to win Emmys, wow.
Speaker 3:You know I got to tell you about Emmy Awards. That was fun. It's just, you know, when I sit here watching people win awards on TV the Oscars and the Tonys I say this is all kind of ridiculous. They're all talented. What's the big deal? It's all their friends voting for each other and it just makes other everybody else feel bad that most of them are going to lose. What's the point? And then you give it to one person in a show and not to the other person. That's bad for morale.
Speaker 3:You know, I hated all that stuff and when you win one you love that stuff. It is so much fun. We won an Emmy Award for the best show in our category our first year and I got one for writing a couple of times and the show won lots of the music and the visuals and direction, all that stuff. So I have to say that was fun, and I do. Everybody with their kid shows. You point to what supports your success this poll or this statistic or this. Luckily the Emmys was ours because it was one that people oh, the Emmy they've heard of the Emmys.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Can I take you back to talk about Sesame Street? Because when I was a child I was a big fan of Sesame Street and it was a very refreshing compared to the rather more slightly propaganda Swedish programs. That was, our children's programs. So and so how was it working with Sesame Street to the work, or writing for Sesame Street and working with the puppets?
Speaker 3:I loved it. I loved it. No, I didn't do a lot of writing for Sesame Street. I wrote these Bert and Ernie claymation sketches they did and I wrote one of their home videos that taught about reading. I think it was. But I love Sesame Street and I think we all, all of us. It was like the mother of us all writing for children's television.
Speaker 3:We all can say, well, this justified it, because we love Sesame Street so much. It was refreshing, like you said. It puts kids at the center, like you said, and it's a place. It was just a fun place to be and it taught so much stuff and in the beginning I thought it was a really great one of the great shows period.
Speaker 3:Aside from for kids, because it worked before there was lots of children's television it really worked for just about all ages. I mean a teenager could laugh at it, it was funny and grownups could enjoy it. It was one of the funniest shows on TV and there was plenty for very young kids. Like all of the children's television and television, it's become more niche. I mean they eventually said, okay, it's just for two to four year olds now, and I liked it a little bit less then, but that was something we all had to struggle with to make something that's really good for everybody, so the family can sit and watch it and the babysitters don't have to run screaming from the room. You know that kind of thing, while still pleasing a demographic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, one show that maybe is not for the very young, but you were involved, is Beavis and Butthead, which I remember as sort of the early 90s slacker culture. So take us through your work with that. You wrote a few episodes. Leave Us a Butt Head.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was the first show I'd ever written for that. I was already a fan when they called me to write for it. That was pretty exciting. My wife and I noticed this thing. That was like nothing else on television. It was like these, you know, adolescent losers. As a boy, I can tell you adolescent losers like all. As an. As a boy, I can tell you I felt like them all the time. I felt like me and my friends. I'm sure there were some kids who were really felt great and when they were 13, some boys who were great at sports maybe in popular that wasn't me so and my wife and I was just so funny that that they were such losers, but they were happy losers.
Speaker 3:It was a really funny and wonderful conceit, I thought, and the animation was great because it was so simple and refreshing and so I loved writing for it. I wrote three cartoons for it that they used. I was hired to write seven of them, but I guess they involved a lot of boobs, which was, yeah, I thought was in keeping with the show, but at some point they decided, well, we want to go more in this direction or that direction. But I loved writing for it and I loved meeting Mike Judge, who I think is brilliant, and the other writers were really funny. There was one point where we were in a writer's room. We were all sitting in the room and Mike would say an idea and we'd all kind of we'd all kind of sort of laugh and we realized, looking around the table, I thought you know 10 years, all of us could have been Beavis and Butthead. We were all a little too thin or too big or too tall or too something. So anyway, that was fun.
Speaker 1:And we would be remiss without mentioning a show that my son grew up. He's more Beavis and Butthead age now, but our son watched Octonauts when he was much younger. Now that, of course, I think, was for the British side of things. Cbeebies, which is, for those that don't know, is an infant channel, a children's channel run by the BBC for the, for for the under fives. So, um, how did you get involved? I think you've written something like 75 episodes of optinauts.
Speaker 3:Well, a few, but yeah, that was when I was doing lots of stuff, I guess in the early 2000s. I got the call. The show was brand new, so we were helping to develop it, but it was based on the fact that most of the animals in the world are in the sea, I think was the premise, and getting to discover those creatures was a joy. To discover those creatures was a joy, and there were certain great characters I think they'd been in a book before and this head writer, stephanie Simpson, brought us all from all over the world. There were people from London, as I recall, from England, and people from Los Angeles and people from New York, and you would come up with an idea and draw it on a big board for everybody. And although I didn't write lots for that, it was a blast to write for and I'm glad your son enjoyed it so much. It was a great show. I thought so. I thought it was fun.
Speaker 2:Can I talk a bit about? So you went on to write this memoir? What inspired you to write this memoir? And also, of course, as a psychologist, I'm very interested in you. You talk about depression, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So how did you? I mean, how did you cope under depression? I mean, sometimes they talk about the black dog. I don't know how did you find? And how did you find the writing? I mean, it can be quite painful as well to write memoirs and things like that. How do you?
Speaker 3:well to write the book. Let me start with that. Um, yeah, I, I find myself often, particularly with young people coming to town they graduate from college or that I know them somehow from yoga or something they want to talk to me about how, how to make a life in the arts, and I found myself as I talked about it, I didn't realize how, what strong opinions I had, how much I had to say, and so I eventually put it all in a book so I could get it all together and make it tell a whole story and learn for myself what this story had been of my life, figuring out basically how to get from inside my head where this world existed and exists to even to one other person. How do I make you feel what I'm feeling? That's the story, and it's hard and it's big and in my case, yes, it involved lots of anxiety, I think depression probably. I had low grade depression all my life that I was kind of running from.
Speaker 3:But you know, I think a lot of people in the arts have those things, are dealing with them in a higher percentage than in other fields. I'm told maybe you, you have ideas about that. But, um, so there's the question of. So then, what to do about it? And, uh, over the years I just had to figure that out step by step, because there was a time, you know, it fed my I mean the angst kind of fed my playwriting.
Speaker 3:In the beginning it gave me energy. I've got to get this stuff out and I'm sort of running from, or I'm trying to report on, what it's like to have this feeling of something chasing after you all the time, that fear that there's a darkness in the world that other people don't see. That can be a great thing to write about and I think it made my stuff a little unique and different, but it just became hard to live like that. I mean one thing I have to say to artists you have to enjoy your life. For me, you don't need to suffer, you shouldn't suffer to be an artist, you should enjoy your life.
Speaker 2:Did you manage to get any mindfulness or any other therapy?
Speaker 3:Everything, charlotte. I've done everything and I continue to do everything. But there was one period where it just hit me so hard I just had to stop and I had this major depression that I write about, where the world just lost all meaning. I mean, it's as though all the color was gone and I just couldn't write. I looked at the laptop and I didn't think why would I want to touch the keys? Why would I want to listen to music? What's the point of it, you know? So the CD goes around in circles. It was really weird and horrifying, but it's. It had kind of been with me all along, but I'd been running from it or coping with it, you know, and being nervous at parties or faking a smile when people took pictures, and I just finally couldn't. It was, I guess, after a couple years of Peg Plus Cat, when I'd written the last episode. I kind of just stopped and I didn't know what to do. So I write about it in the book. But, as you can tell, I made it through.
Speaker 3:The great news about depression is you make it through and the other side is so great. But yes, I did a lot of mindfulness. Yoga was huge, medication was huge for me, not for everybody, but for me. Therapy, talk, therapy was great. Exercise, I think, is important all your life. Uh, especially if you're a writer or an artist or you know, in the arts where you don't move around a lot, thinking all the time is is dangerous if you're sitting still, um, but yeah, mindfulness is great. I'm still working on the meditation. I'm not great at that, but the yoga is good. And also, just as you get better at feeling more comfortable that you don't have to be depressed, you get happy when you're really wow, I'm not there anymore. You become more comfortable with it. The ground isn't going to open up underneath you anymore.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Interesting thing is that you know writing itself is a very good therapist. You get that. You know writing itself is a very good therapist you, you get that like you know, if you're depressed or anxious. We often recommend to people that they start writing.
Speaker 3:I agree, whenever I was focused on writing something I felt better, always when I've got something to write. So, like in drama school, I was facing that. I woke up one day why am I living? But I then I wrote a play about two two friends on the telephone, one's depressed. Wow, this is it. And then all of a sudden, you know I've got that to focus on. I just couldn't do it. This one time, in my late 50s I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's a remarkable memoir and you've been remarkably honest about your own creative struggles and, in that sense, inspiring. So I was just wondering you know, part of this book is not just a recollection but it's also about advice to the new generation and people that are coming on. You know about it's. You know the subtitle of the book is learning to reach people through the arts. So it's how to do that. Now it's an interesting subtitle. New to reach people through the arts. So how to do that. Now, it's an interesting subtitle, you know, to reach people through the arts. It suggests that perhaps maybe I'm reading too much into it, but maybe your sense that people are tremendously atomized today and that one of the ways that the arts can bridge that and you know, I think EM Forster once said only connect Is that really. Is that what's driving that subtitle?
Speaker 3:Yes, but that's what it's about at the end. It's this anthropological thing I just want. I'm alone here on earth with my feelings and thoughts that are unique and big, and I need some creative way to get that to you. I need to. I can't just say it. I have to do something. I have to move in a certain way or make certain sounds, or maybe invent a new form or twist something around, twist a guitar and play it behind my back. What am I going to do If you have that need? That's what an artist is, I think. If you don't need that, I don't know why you do it. It's hard to make money and it's not like there's a pot of gold waiting for you. So, anyway, that is what it's about for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But if it's a guy, then what advice would you give young writers or performers now that want to break into TV and scriptwriting and children's TV? I mean, because it's so difficult now, because there's so much? I mean I remember when I started it was only about two or three channels. Now it's like two, three hundred plus three minutes plus.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right, it is really hard. So what should I do? Well, it depends what you like. I've talked to a lot of young people when they don't know what they want to do. I think it's hard. If you have a sense what you want to do, even if it's the hardest thing, the most in, most in demand thing, and you're willing to fight for it and to adjust your focus and to try different approaches, that's great. I think you're going to make it somehow and I write about that. But specifically, if you're talking about TV, you want to be in TV.
Speaker 3:I would watch everything that you. Look for what you love. Find the stuff that you love. If it's a children's cartoon, whatever it is, figure out who's producing it, which usually isn't too hard and reach them Honestly, tell them, even if they're somewhat famous. If you can honestly say I love what you're doing because of A, b and C, you know, and they get that. Wow, this is not someone who's just going through every TV channel and pushing the same letter and putting send. If they think, wow, you get me, then at least they want to read what you're saying and I think they would give you. They're more likely to look at what you've got to show.
Speaker 3:It's always hard to break in and it takes a lot of knocking on doors. That's the metaphor I use, because they've I mean shows that are already running have writers, you know so it's tricky. You have to prove that you're almost better than what they've got and then to get your own show made you know you have to. It is also tricky. But um, when you knock on a lot of doors and one opens, one will open, and that's your career, you know so that it doesn't matter all the doors that were closed. No-transcript slam the door in his face. All you need is that one door and then it opens yeah, um.
Speaker 1:Now, recently we've had quite a few people from hollywood um who've worked in hollywood um on the podcast and they've been talking about. You know, to bring things bang up to date, you know that things are not that great in Hollywood. I thought it would be interesting to ask you you know what. You've had decades of experience in the New York art scene what are things like in?
Speaker 3:New York In New.
Speaker 1:York, yeah, and where do you see the future in terms of the New York art scene?
Speaker 3:Well, I can't tell where things are going. I don't understand AI. I know it's huge. I've seen characters create. I mean, I know someone who was trying to make a show where the animation would be done by AI. I imagine people are doing that right now, where you just so your script just says describe something, and you give that description to AI and it creates this girl with a hat, whatever you ask for.
Speaker 3:I've seen that animation and what I've seen looks like beautiful but doesn't have a soul. So maybe that's because I'm old or I expect other things. So my hunch is that there's still humanity that needs to express itself, but I can't tell exactly where. Will it be a new form? Will there be be a stage? I think that we always need something. I mean, right now there's exciting stuff seems to be happening in new york and musicals, ever since rent and and um, spring awakening and shows like that. There seems to be a lot of cool stuff new musicals that are feel very contemporary. Music is hip and um, with themes that people can relate to young people.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you feel it's a safe format so that they use Harry Potter or they use something that's been going on in London.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of that. I will not say that that's taken over in New York. There's a lot of things that are like they used to be.
Speaker 2:Well, can I just ask which are you working most proud of of all your writing? What is it to you?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I mean, I would say in general, maybe Peg Plus Cat, certain episodes of that, but also the show I'm writing a show now. I'm making a musical with a Korean Brooklyn composer named Ji Hae Lee, based on Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, of all things, this weird, violent love story. I think we found something in there that's worth getting to the young people of today, about a generation struggling with this world that we're in now, with lying everywhere and wars that no one understands. So anyway, I'm excited about that. At least it's going to be done in Prague and Cincinnati next year if all goes as planned, but anyway. So maybe that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you actually anticipated what was going to be my next question, which is what you're doing in the future. So you've got that and we've obviously written many plays for the New York Theatre, both full-length plays, and and one act plays, um, and are you continuing to, to do that, to, to, to continue to write plays, whether short form or long form, because you know, obviously you're working on musicals there that you mentioned, but are you going to continue the, the, the, the pure drama?
Speaker 3:yeah, I would love to. So I'm hoping the two of you will have an idea for me to write my next play. Oh, I see.
Speaker 3:You know, it's just gotten to be. I know so often now when I start something it just takes me a long time to get started on a play Because I'm just very critical. I know that's not going to work. Why am I starting it if it's not going to work and no one's kids doesn't have a chance, because I usually think that when I'm done and then it's a fight to get someone to read it. So why start something I'm not madly in love with? And I'm looking I read a lot. Now I am busy with our twirlers in press at a love war, it's called, and I'm promoting my, my book, out of my head right now but I do have time and always.
Speaker 3:I'm looking to start something new but I don't know why.
Speaker 2:If you have something like succession, great show, yeah, we very missed.
Speaker 3:I love succession. Do you guys watch? Watch succession. That's so cool, Isn't it? Oh, he's so good, but he's me I love that show.
Speaker 2:That's a good idea. I'm gonna write that show something on that something that's successful would be nice, that's for me missing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree could I just?
Speaker 2:we always ask people um, what would you said to your 21st year old self? What were your young self?
Speaker 3:well, I wouldn't have listened but I wish I'd said don't worry so much, it's gonna be okay, you're. You're gonna be a grown-up. You're gonna pay your bills. Okay, don't be ashamed of yourself everywhere you go, because you're an artist, you'll. It'll work out. Because I really doubted that for years. Deep down, I thought I just felt like a failure. I'm hiding the fact that I don't know who I am. I'm a failure. I have to hide this fact. Everything worked out. It does work out In different ways. We find our way with some adjustments here and there, but it's just very hard With my own kids when they were in their early 20s. You get out of school and all of a sudden you think okay, now, what's my life? Where is it? That's a lot of pressure, which makes it hard to enjoy this wonderful body you have on your twenties, although they still find a way to party a lot.
Speaker 2:If you can tear them away from the screen.
Speaker 3:Right, oh yeah. That's hard for me even just checking this, the things on YouTube, they know what I like now All my favorite shows. They know that, so it is hard to get away from the screen.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, look, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, Billy, and you know I'm slightly trepidatious when you say you're looking for inspiration, so I suspect I'll find that you've written a play about a Scotsman in a suite.
Speaker 2:I like it. So, um, how can people get in touch with you and they say that our viewers want to find out more about you?
Speaker 3:yeah, which I would love it I'd love to hear from your viewers. Uh, billy aronsoncom is my website and you can contact me through that, and I would love to hear from your viewers. Billyarensoncom is my website and you can contact me through that and I would love to hear from them and all the details. It's even more accurate there than IMDb. I appreciate IMDb because people read that, but you know they make a mistake here and there and it attributes me to 70 episodes of something that I unfortunately didn't write.
Speaker 1:That you didn't write.
Speaker 3:Better than the opposite, something that I unfortunately didn't write.
Speaker 1:You didn't write Better than the opposite. Yeah, I would definitely check your IMDB, because he's got you down as 70 episodes of this and production manager for this. That looks as if you didn't even do so. Anyway, thank you very much, billy, and it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 3:Thank you both. I can't wait to hear this. Yeah, it's a good conversation.
Speaker 1:So thank you very much indeed, okay.
