Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly

00:01 Is subliminal advertising real? Superman or Batman? Best Canadian city to do a book event? Best ad of the past year? Well, I answer all these cues and more in a recent subscriber-only bonus episode. Apple or Android? Tap the link in the description. 00:21 This is an apostrophe podcast production. 00:45 You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with all things. 00:52 You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. 01:15 When I was a kid growing up in Sudbury, Ontario, I remember a story that always stayed with me. The biblical story of David and Goliath. 01:26 As most people know, Goliath was a giant warrior who struck fear into the armies of his rivals. As a matter of fact, when they see Goliath striding toward them on the battlefield, they would turn and run. 01:41 One day, instead of having a war, Goliath challenged the other army to send one man to face him. Whoever lost, that side would become slaves to the winning side. 01:54 Everyone cowers, except a kid named David. 02:01 Goliath is a gigantic, muscular, intimidating beast of a man, completely covered with armor and loaded with multiple weapons. He is a trained warrior. 02:15 David is a shepherd boy, a slight teenager. He is described as a stripling. 02:22 David steps up and says he will challenge Goliath. The men in the army think he's crazy, but David is adamant. Against the wishes of his side, David chooses to wear no armor. 02:36 He just picks up a few smooth stones from a nearby riverbed and packs his slingshot. 02:45 Here's the part of the story that always stuck with me. 02:49 David runs up to face Goliath. He doesn't walk slowly. He doesn't inch up reluctantly. He doesn't shrink away. He literally runs up to face his giant enemy face to face. 03:03 As a fellow stripling, that always struck me as incredibly brave. 03:09 According to the story, Goliath looks down on David and is insulted that they have sent a kid to fight him. 03:17 Then he laughs and tells David he is going to kill him and cut off his head momentarily. 03:23 Then this happens. 03:30 Bravery won. Giant no score. 03:42 Welcome to our annual bookmarks episode. 03:45 We scour a lot of books to do the research for this show, as you can imagine, and every season we find a lot of great stories that don't quite fit into our episode themes. 03:56 So we save all those good stories and tell them in this episode. 04:01 And this year, we're taking a little inspiration from that kid David. Today's theme is bravery. 04:08 You're under the influence. You're under the influence. 04:28 We all need a dose of bravery in life. 04:32 Whether it's to make tough decisions, or to wade into a new venture, or just getting through life's diabolical obstacle course. 04:42 There is a saying, Lonely are the brave. 04:46 It's hard to find brave people in all walks of life. 04:50 Even in business, it takes bravery to start a company. It takes bravery to stand by your principles, especially when your principles are costing you money. And it takes bravery to sell big ideas in a hostile boardroom. 05:05 I know. I've been there. 05:07 But when you see bravery in motion, it is incredibly inspiring. 05:18 I read a fun and insightful book that just came out titled Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick. 05:26 Zwick was one of the creators of 30-something and has directed movies such as Legends of the Fall, About Last Night, and Glory. 05:35 He talks about his battles with Hollywood studios over budgets and his battles with certain movie stars. 05:42 He talks about battling Matthew Broderick on the script for glory. Then Broderick brought his mother into a meeting, and Zwick then had to battle Matthew Broderick's mother on the script for glory. 05:54 He talks about battling Brad Pitt on Legends of the Fall. But through it all, Zwick doesn't shy away from confrontations. He runs up to the battle. He fights the good fight to save his work or to make his work better. 06:12 There's no doubt Zwick has scar tissue, but he also has a legacy of great work to look back on as a result. And that is key. Doing battle to try and save great work takes its toll, but at the end of the day, you'll be glad you went to battle because you'll achieve great things. 06:32 I remember watching an interview with the late great Lucille Ball. 06:37 The interviewer complimented her by saying she was such a funny performer. 06:42 Lucy's response was interesting. She said, I'm not funny. I was just brave. 06:55 Jerry Weintraub was a producer who worked on films such as Nashville, Diner, and The Karate Kid. He also produced the very funny 1977 movie titled Oh God, starring John Denver as an assistant supermarket manager and George Burns as God. 07:14 In the movie, God appears to a mild-mannered grocery worker and wants him to be his messenger to the world. But Grocery Guy resists. 07:24 The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. 07:28 Before that, I think you have to go back to the Red Sea. 07:32 That was a beauty. 07:34 No offense. 07:35 I don't believe the Red Sea, and I don't believe six days to create the world. You're right. 07:42 I am? 07:43 Tell you the honest truth. I thought about it for five days and did the whole job in one. 07:48 I'm really best under pressure. 07:50 It's a very funny movie. 07:53 In his book titled, When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead, Weintraub tells a very funny story about working with George Burns. 08:01 Burns was 81 at the time and famously wore a hairpiece, a bad hairpiece, and he refused to take it off for the movie. 08:11 Jerry Weintraub threw his hands up in the air and said, "'Why would God wear a bad wig?' Valid question. But Burns wouldn't budge. 08:21 So Weintraub had Burns wear a hat. 08:24 Actually, God wears a different hat in almost every scene, which becomes a very funny running gag in the film. 08:36 Before Weintraub was a movie producer, he was a talent manager and concert promoter for musical acts. One of his clients was the Moody Blues. 08:45 He employed a very brave strategy when marketing the band. He positioned them as second best. 08:53 Weintraub would create posters and print ads that said, So you like the Beatles the most? Well, you're going to like the Moody's second best. Or he would say, So the Stones are your thing. Check out the Moody Blues. You'll like them almost as much. 09:10 Not many bands would have loved that marketing approach, telling the world they were second best. But it was a strategy that worked, because it allowed Weintraub to harvest two fields at once. 09:22 By positioning the band up against the Beatles and the Stones, he was not only placing them in excellent company, he was able to siphon off big chunks of their audiences. 09:36 When the Moody Blues eventually broke up, two members, Justin Hayward and John Lodge, formed a new band called the Blue Jays. But Weintraub knew it was going to be a tough sell to rock journalists and critics. This new band was going to need a major rebranding. 09:54 So Weintraub booked the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York and sent out beautiful invitations to journalists and music critics by courier. 10:04 The invitation said the event was one night only, admittance was by invitation only, and if you weren't on the list, it would be impossible to get in. 10:15 The night of the performance, there was tremendous buzz. Carnegie Hall was packed. Then the lights went down, the curtain went up, and all there was on the stage was a record player with two huge speakers. 10:31 No band. 10:33 Just the record played. 10:36 The crowd was furious. But when they finally settled down, they listened to the record. 10:43 At the press conference after the event, the press was still furious, but Weintraub told them he did it because he needed the journalists to really, really listen to the record. Which they did. And many of the grumpy critics actually ended up giving the record a good review. But what a brave gamble. 11:14 Speaking of music, I've just read a fantastic book titled Fashioning the Beatles, The Looks That Shook the World by Deirdre Kelly. 11:23 I've read just about every book ever written on the Beatles, but I learned quite a few new bits of information in Kelly's book. Her research is fantastic. 11:33 She writes about an aspect of the Beatles that is usually just casually mentioned by other writers, namely that their fashion sense greatly influenced the world. 11:43 One of the first insights she makes is that Elvis Presley's style and his hit Blue Suede Shoes made it cool for guys to obsess over things they wanted to wear. That's a key point, because in the 1950s, men didn't fuss over fashion, and any man who did was considered unmanly. 12:05 The Beatles met a 22-year-old woman named Astrid Kircher in Germany when the band was playing in Hamburg in 1960. Astrid was a photographer who took some iconic photos of the Beatles in their formative years. 12:20 She also had a great sense of style. 12:23 I met Astrid when she was in her 60s, and she still had great style. 12:29 Back in those early days, she exerted a powerful feminine influence over what the Beatles wore and took them to shops to show them what they should be wearing on stage. 12:40 Astrid also gave the Beatles their signature hairstyle. It was modeled after the hairstyle she wore herself. Short at the back, hair combed down over her forehead. 12:51 As George Harrison would later say, Astrid was totally responsible for our whole image. 12:58 Fashioning the Beatles is a fantastic book, and I'll be doing an interview with author Deirdre Kelly in a subscriber-only episode very soon. 13:10 Not only was the Beatles' unique look an important element of their success, and not only did it influence generations of bands to come, it was also brave. 13:21 When the band came back to the tough streets of Liverpool, the Beatles were wearing fashion and a hairstyle that was not deemed as acceptable for young men to wear in public at the time. 13:33 It could also lead to getting the tar beat out of them by the rough teddy boys that roamed the streets of Liverpool. As a matter of fact, there was a moment when the Beatles considered going back to their old hairstyle and fashion because of the sideways looks they were starting to get. 13:48 But the Beatles also knew that Astrid's influence gave them a rule-breaking look that set them apart. 13:55 So they bravely stuck with it. 13:57 And the rest, as they say, is Beatlemania history. 14:10 In a book titled Inside Comedy by David Steinberg, he tells a story about Seinfeld. When Jerry and Larry David pitched what was then called the Seinfeld Chronicles to NBC, they finally got the green light. 14:25 As the show was getting off the ground, studio executives kept giving Jerry and Larry notes. They insisted on changes to the scripts and to the casting over and over again. 14:37 Larry David outright refused to make any of those changes. 14:41 Every week, more notes would shower down... and every week, Larry would ignore them. 14:46 Eventually, NBC gave up... and let Seinfeld and Larry David do whatever they wanted. 14:53 But it took bravery for a brand new show... helmed by TV newbies... landing 21st in the ratings... to refuse to make any changes... 15:04 It was the right decision, but back then, when the ratings were that terrible, it was also a very brave decision. 15:14 Speaking of TV sitcoms, Danny DeVito made an incredibly brave choice when he was auditioning for a role on Taxi. 15:32 James Patterson is a very successful author. Writing mostly thrillers, he has sold over 425 million books so far. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most number one bestsellers on the New York Times bestseller list. He has 67 and counting. His income is estimated to be $95 million per year. 15:57 But long before Patterson was a successful author, he was a top creative director at advertising agency J. Walter Thompson in New York and eventually rose to be the CEO of J. Walter Thompson North America. 16:12 Not long ago, Patterson wrote a memoir called James Patterson by James Patterson. In that book, he talks about his time in advertising and tells a funny story. 16:24 Besides running the creative department, Patterson also ran the ad agency's professional development program. Patterson would give a series of lectures to trainees, teaching them to be better ad writers. Hmm. 16:41 On one particular afternoon, Patterson said to the class, I'm going to teach you how to make a million dollars a year writing advertising. 16:49 Everybody leaned in. 16:52 Just as Patterson said, the secret is, the door burst open. Someone came charging into the boardroom with a banana cream pie and slammed it into Patterson's face. 17:04 Whipped cream and graham cracker crumbs oozed down Patterson's face and beard. Then the pie thrower ran out of the room. 17:12 The class sat there horrified. 17:16 Patterson wiped away some of the whipped cream from his eyes, grabbed both sides of the lectern, and said, Okay, I just showed you how to make a million dollars a year writing advertising. Throw a pie in their face, and once you have their attention, say something smart. 17:34 It was a big lesson to those young writers. Essentially, Patterson was saying to use the element of surprise in writing ads. Do something unexpected, something memorable. In other words, don't be boring and start with a bang. 17:50 I think that was a very brave way to teach that lesson. 17:55 Most creative directors and CEOs wouldn't embarrass themselves that way, wouldn't allow a cream pie in the face to make a point. 18:03 But all those young writers learned a very memorable lesson that day, and they loved Patterson for it. 18:17 Another terrific read is a book titled, Directed by James Burroughs. 18:22 If his name sounds familiar, it should. Burroughs has directed some of the most awarded sitcoms of all time, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Cheers, The Bob Newhart Show, Fraser, Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory, and Friends. 18:39 Quite the list. 18:41 Burroughs tells a very funny story about Taxi. 18:45 When they were looking to cast the role of Louis de Palma, the mean but very funny Taxi Dispatcher, Danny DeVito made a very brave choice at the audition. 18:55 He burst into the room, threw the script down on the table and yelled, Who wrote this crap? 19:02 Burroughs instantly knew they had found their Louis. 19:08 When Burroughs was developing Fraser as a spinoff from Cheers, he envisioned the erudite Fraser Crane living with his blue-collar father, Martin Crane. 19:19 There was only one problem. Fraser's father had been killed off in Season 9 of Cheers. 19:26 So Burroughs and the writers had to figure out a way to get past that little problem. 19:31 So in one episode of Fraser, Sam Malone from Cheers comes to visit Fraser Crane in Seattle and meets Fraser's father. He pulls Fraser aside and says, ''You told me your dad was dead.'' To which Fraser replies, ''I lied.'' A brave yet bold choice. Problem solved. 19:53 Side note. On the very first dress rehearsal of the first episode of Fraser, they rehearsed all day, then broke for dinner. 20:02 The actor who was cast as Fraser's dad got into his car, drove off, and never came back. 20:09 So Burroughs had to quickly recast the part and gave it to John Mahoney. 20:22 I love my hockey books and read a very good one titled Jacques Plante, The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey by Todd Deneau. 20:32 I've always been fascinated by Jacques Plante because he was a brave innovator. 20:37 When I was about nine years old, I got a chance to ask Plante for his autograph. He was playing in an NHL old-timers game in my hometown, and after the game, I snuck around to the dressing room and waited outside the door. I was very nervous. Then out came Plante with Rocket Richard. My heart almost jumped out of my chest. 21:01 I gulped hard and asked them both for an autograph. They were both very kind to that nervous nine-year-old kid. 21:11 Plante was asthmatic as a child, so he couldn't do any hard skating. That steered him to be a goalie. Plante says that if he wasn't asthmatic, he would have been a mediocre defenseman and would have never made the NHL. 21:26 When he was about 10, he went to the arena in his hometown of Chewinigan, Quebec, and asked the trainer of the local hockey team if they needed a practice goalie. 21:36 Pretty brave for a 10-year-old. The trainer said, get lost, you're still in a diaper. 21:42 That didn't faze Plante at all. 21:48 When he turned 12, Plante boldly asked a high school hockey coach if he could play goal after the regular teenage goalie quit. Plante was in grade 7 then. 22:00 The coach desperately looked for another goalie, but there was nobody else around. So he reluctantly let Plante in as a practice goaltender. 22:09 The coach was stunned at how good Plante was. And he was playing against kids who were 17 and 18 years old. 22:17 Plante ended up playing all season. 22:20 It was with that team that Plante first started to wander outside his crease to control the puck, which no goalie had ever done up until that point. 22:29 When he was asked about it years later, Plante said he started leaving his crease out of necessity. 22:35 One of the defensemen on his team could only turn left, not right, and the other one couldn't skate backwards. So Plante had to take it upon himself to handle the puck when it came loose behind the net. 22:47 It was a brave move for a goalie, and he would take that skill with him to the NHL and influence goaltenders for all time. 22:59 Jacques Plante's hero was Bill Dernan. Dernan was the goalie for the Canadians from 1943 to 1950. In those seven years, he won the Vezina Trophy six times. A remarkable record. 23:14 Side note, Bill Dernan Jr. was an award-winning creative director in the Toronto advertising business for many years. 23:23 Plante loved the way Dernan played goal and observed him closely. 23:28 Four years after Dernan retired, Plante got the top job tending goal for the Canadians. 23:34 Plante wanted to wear a face mask, but Canadians coach Toe Blake was completely against it, fearing it would block his vision. Then one night, Plante got hit in the face by an Andy Bathgate slap shot. His nose was shattered. 23:50 Toe Blake took one look at the blood and reluctantly told Plante to put the face mask on. 23:56 So Plante returned to the ice with his homemade mask, which looked just like the mask Hannibal Lecter would later wear in Silence of the Lambs, and the crowd audibly gasped at the sight of it. 24:09 Blake wasn't happy, but Plante refused to play without the mask. 24:13 And in the days of no backup goaltender, Blake had no choice but to let him play. 24:23 After the game, the press questioned Plante's manhood, said he was weak. Plante didn't care what people thought of the mask. He already had four broken noses, a broken jaw, two broken cheekbones, and 200 stitches. 24:37 He simply said he wasn't hired to block shots with his face. 24:42 But injuries aside, it took a lot of courage to defy his coach and NHL management who were also against the mask. But Plante was stubborn and stood his ground. He was branded both a rebel and a coward. But by 31 years of age, Plante had won six Stanley Cups and five Vezina trophies. He would eventually win seven Vezinas. 25:07 It took a goaltender of Plante's stature to make the mask acceptable in the NHL. 25:16 One more amusing story about Jacques Plante. 25:20 When Hollywood was filming the 1971 movie Face Off, a lot of NHL players had small roles to make the hockey scenes look authentic. In one scene, Mike Walton of the Toronto Maple Leafs was filling in for one of the stars and was asked to score on Jacques Plante. 25:38 The script called for Walton to skate towards Plante on a breakaway, deke Plante out of his crease, and score. 25:45 The cameras were all set up and the director called action. 25:50 Five different times, Plante stopped the goal. He couldn't help himself. 25:56 It drove the director crazy. 26:09 As all of these books tell us, bravery comes in different shapes and sizes. 26:15 David stood up to Goliath when he was just a scrawny teenager. 26:19 Lucille Ball's bravery made her a star in the pioneering days of television. 26:24 In 1962, she would eventually purchase her husband's shares in her TV studio, Desi Lu, making her the first woman to head a major Hollywood studio. 26:36 Jerry Weintraub had the guts to just put a record player on the stage at Carnegie Hall. The Beatles were brave enough to wear a radical hairstyle back to the rough streets of Liverpool. 26:48 And Jacques Plante in his revolutionary mask still holds the record for the most Vezina Trophy wins in NHL history, one more than his hero, Bill Dernan. 26:59 In each case, they all took big risks. They had to reach deep to be brave. They all broke the rules, suffered the slings and arrows from detractors, and still won. Because fortune favors the brave when you're under the influence. 27:19 I'm Terry O'Reilly. 27:26 This episode was recorded in the Terestream Airstream mobile recording studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound engineer, Jeff Devine. Under the Influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O. Influence. This podcast is powered by Acast. Want to hear this episode ad-free? Just search Under the Influence on Amazon Music. It's included with Amazon Prime. 27:56 And if you'd like to read next week's fun fact, just go to apostrophepodcasts.ca and follow the prompts. 28:04 See you next week. 28:06 Hi, this is Janet Pacey from Yellowknife. Fun fact! As president of Hollywood studio Desolute Productions, Lucille Ball gave the green light to both Star Trek and Mission Impossible.