Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

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About the Host

Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more than 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.

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Show Notes

The Movie, Paradise, A Town of Sinners & Saints
On AmazonPrime, YoutubeMovies, or GooglePlay.
On TubiTV: https://tubitv.com/movies/100021051/paradise-a-town-of-sinners-saints

The Book: Uncle Bill's Animal Tales - Life Lessons for Adults, on Amazon: 
https://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Bills-Animal-Tales-Lessons/dp/1959555375

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Transcript

Our guest today is Bill Robertson.

Bill says following his dreams has been the mainstay of his life.

He's an example of someone who's taken bold steps to follow and live his dream.

After graduating college, he wanted to get involved with theater, so he lived in Boston.

We figured if he worked as the bartender at the public theater on the Charles River, he'd get to meet people.

The next season, he was the assistant director.

He wanted to keep exploring, took a chance and started this sketch comedy troupe that led him to writing for National Lampoon Magazine and a kids show on PBS.

The money wasn't much, he says, but the experience was great.

Then he moved to LA where he wrote a stage show, Paradise, A Town of Sinners & Saints.

He had two long runs and went on to the Austin Playhouse in Texas.

Over the pandemic, the show was turned into a film.

You can watch it on Amazon Prime, Google Play and other services.

It's musical comedy and I'm normally not a big fan of musicals, but trust me, it's good watching.

He sold two more scripts for Lifetime.

One was produced and aired in 2019, and he's written a book, Uncle Bill's Animal Tales, Life Lessons for Adults.

He currently has two more films in pre-production and is still writing full-time his dream.

I like what Bill wrote to me prior to us meeting to record this episode.

Bill wrote, we're not here that long.

What do you want to experience?

There is no right or wrong answer.

What's calling you?

It could be that you live in a quiet life and enjoy the simple.

Things it's about walking through fears.

Welcome to my show, Bill.

Good morning, Daniel.

It's great to meet you.

So the way you are a bartender near the theater and figured you'd meet people.

That reminds me.

It's a good strategy.

It reminds me of hang out with people.

What do you want to be?

Like if you want to be rich and you work in a bank, rich, you know, rich, a rich bank, not a poor bank.

And then the opportunity to drive, you'll be in the right place at the right time, which happened for you.

So tell me how you went from bartender to assistant director at the theater.

Sure.

No, it's funny.

I love that story too.

And I'm going to preface the whole thing by saying, I am 27 years clean and sober.

I wasn't back then.

So and I was a bartender, but I am today, 27 years clean and sober.

Back then, I had taught a bartending class, and I ran a pub in college.

And I thought, you know what?

I saw this ad that they were looking for a bartender, and it's an outside theater.

It was right on the Charles, so it was beautiful at night especially.

And so I went and started doing that, and I just happened to luck out because the director and all of the actors drank a great deal.

So I met a ton of people, as did the audience.

It was Boston.

So in Boston, I'm making a rash generalization, but you're either drinking or you're in program.

So it's one of the two.

It's like LA.

So that's what happened.

And I was at a wrap party at the end of one of the plays that they had done.

And I was talking to someone and they said, have you spoken to the director yet?

Because I don't want to name him right now.

And I said, no, I haven't.

And he's like, he's waiting to speak to you.

And I went, what?

And I went over and he was hammered.

And we started talking.

He goes, yeah, Bill, I want you to be the assistant director with me next year.

And the two plays we did the following year was The Tempest and A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine, which is a forest with the Marx brothers.

So it was interesting.

But I met so many great people there.

They would send me to...

I'm sorry, go ahead.

How does it happen for listeners who are like, man, I want to live my dream too.

I get the idea I'll be a bartender, but more or less, there's this thing you be in the right place at the right time, you can't do more than that.

How did...

No, go ahead.

What I was going to say is, I'm a big believer in...

It's all about the action.

It's not about the results.

It's just about taking action.

When I take action toward a goal, I just feel better.

I mean, so many of us get caught up in, I have to have this to be happy, I have to have that to be happy.

The external things, yeah, they're all fine and great.

But don't we want to experience joy and happiness and fulfillment and feel like we're working towards something?

I think the worst is when someone's like, oh, I really want to write a book and they're talking about it and talking about it, and they never put pen to paper.

It's never too late.

It's never too late.

It just isn't.

I could cite tons of stories of people who.

I think one of the problems people are into, they, like songwriting, for example, I couldn't write a song forever and I was the best piano player so I gave up with the band.

Because I didn't run into the person who could go, Dan, you're already singing songs.

Did you know it's a story?

You tell the first verse where you're at, the second verse where you're going, and the third verse like what you've said.

I never thought.

So I think they just don't have help.

Well, I think that's one way to look at it.

The other is, and it's an exploration, it's an experiment.

All of the answers are within us.

We don't need to get it from anybody else.

It's a matter of doing the work.

It's a matter of sitting down and meditating, and being quiet, and listening a great deal.

I didn't know how to write a screenplay.

So I started taking some classes here and there.

I read tons of books on it, and I became a reader.

So I would read scripts, and that's the key for anyone who wants to be a screenwriter, read as many scripts as you can, because in my experience is 90 percent of them are terrible.

They're just awful.

I learned a lot from that because people, maybe they didn't do the work, or they just submitted it too quickly.

I've realized there's no such thing as writing.

There's only rewriting.

So once again, it goes back to action.

Yeah.

People who they think they're going to put the pen to the paper and write their book in one sitting.

That's why I quit with songwriting.

I thought, oh, people go, Lenny McCartney and John Lennon, they just sit down at the piano, write a song, it's done.

That's either a myth or it happened once, like you just said.

Most of the time, it's rewriting, reworking.

When you were looking at those bad scripts, you probably realized, I could do that, right?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I think part of it is to, and this, I'm just sharing stuff of what I've experienced, what I've read, what I've had others tell me, is that in order to reach a certain goal, you have to create a lot, and that people that are successful creators, they have a lot of failures.

And I just want to share, before I forget, and this is real, I think this might help your listeners regarding overcoming fear.

I heard someone say one time, and I forgot who it was, he was speaking at like at the Agape International Spiritual Center, where I go, but he was saying he looked forward to having things in his life that would generate fear, because he knew once he stepped through the fear, there was more self-love on the other side.

So anytime he had fear, he kind of programmed himself to realize, to experience, every time I step through the fear, I just feel better, because it is self-love.

There's more self-love on the other side of fear.

You know, it's just a matter of taking the step through it, and not being afraid of embarrassment, of being vulnerable, because we all go through it.

You know, Thomas Edison, what was it, like 500 experiments or something before he discovered the light bulb?

I mean-

Yeah, which actually he did not discover it.

The other half of the equation is, because what you just said is a good point, it took him a lot of experiment, he did not give up.

He took an idea that was already invented, and somebody else had given up on it.

Very, very good point.

Somebody else had given up on it.

I do believe everything happens for a reason, because even though Edison had that, and I don't know all of this is factual, but I heard he was not a happy person.

So with great success and fame, the ego needs to take a vacation.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing you pointed out.

This doesn't automatically mean you'll be happy.

Maybe it's the journey, not the destination.

So just be happy you get to go for the walk.

And that's it.

It's about trying, like Facebook.

A great example, when we see a Facebook post and we're like, well, why am I not in Italy right now?

Why am I not doing this?

It's a split second of someone's experience.

I had a partner years ago, and he had started dating someone else, and there was a picture of him and this guy, and I said, because we're still friends, and I said, looks like you had a great time with Anthony last night.

And he goes, it was a horrible evening.

And I'm like, but there's a picture of you on Facebook.

He goes, they put a camera in my face, I smiled.

And I will never forget that I went, because even the person in Italy, we don't see that they spent four hours in baggage claim and had dysentery for a week.

You know what I mean?

It's like-

Also, I like to tell people, do you want to go to Italy?

Yeah.

You can, if you want to.

It's nothing stopping you.

And then they go, I don't really know.

Maybe Mexico.

I mean, I don't like to travel.

Well, there you go.

Yeah.

They make up excuses.

Be happy for other people's happiness.

Yes.

Be happy for other people's happiness.

Because gratitude only knows itself.

So the more things that we're grateful for and happy for other people, we attract that to our lives.

So then we'll have more things to be grateful for.

It really, excuse me, it really works.

Which, so back to your story, working it.

From there, you want to do this movie, Paradise, Town of Sinners & Saints, which I watched.

Did you like it?

It was really good.

And I don't even like musicals normally.

The description on Amazon Prime says it's a modern day rocky horror picture show.

A comedy that pits good against evil as they fight over the souls of a dried up coal mining town.

The Rocky Horror Mountain Picture Show caught my attention.

That's a good, good, I mean, category to be in like association because that's a classic.

Classic.

And then, and then the music, I was amazed at how well it was produced.

Because I think you said in your bio, low budget film.

It was a low budget film.

So, okay, I wondered if you were being kind to yourself or humble because, yeah, there weren't that many actors, but the music's great.

Tell me about that, the process.

I'd love to.

First off, it's funny that you said you don't like musicals, because a couple of the audience reviews were like, I don't like musicals, but I like this.

When it was a live stage show, because it ran twice in LA and once in Austin, Texas, it was always guys that would come up to me, straight guys, and I'm gay, and straight guys would come up to me and they'd say, my girlfriend's always dragging me to musicals and I absolutely hate them.

I like this though.

I think because the music is, Cliff Wagner wrote the 19 songs, and Tom Sage, my writing partner, myself, we did contribute to some of the lyrics.

I don't know who Cliff is, but it reminded me of being at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville.

It's like pop country.

It's considered to be a bluegrass musical, is what it is, and pop and country definitely filters into that.

Cliff, it's been around a long time.

He's right out of Mississippi via Boston, via LA, and back to Boston again.

When we were putting it together, we wanted to have a song for all eight of the actors, that somebody was featured in everything.

Okay.

I can swear on this, right?

Minimum, yeah.

I've done a lot of podcasts where I've swore on them.

Well, as you know, one of the songs is called Light a Bag of Sh** and Fire.

There was one or two words in the movie, yeah.

Yeah.

Amazon rated us 16, which means pretty much R.

But anyway, so I was walking my dogs, and we needed a song for that character, Sindai, that crazy woman.

I'm walking the dogs and I'm picking up poop, and just for some reason, it triggered of lighting a bag of shit on fire.

I told this to Cliff Wagner, our composer.

I said, listen, I need a song for Sindai, and she's this, this, and here's just one idea.

Within a week, he constructed that song.

So that was one of my questions for you is, as a writer, how do you make it into a song?

You would give ideas to the songwriter?

Yeah.

Cliff is the composer.

So he would do, he did all the songs for it.

But like I said, we actually have credit.

I have credit as one of the songwriters, because I gave him the scenario and we'd give him lines.

But he just, for lack of a better word, he's a genius.

He just is.

He's like your typical, very stereotyped bluegrass artist from Mississippi, where he'd be wearing overalls, he had a beard, got a-

The song made for the old guy with the sunglasses, who just sits outside the store.

The ballad of Poor Old Rod.

Oh, and Hillbillies, the song Hillbillies that he does.

Because he's got a gun and is like, we don't like strangers.

It's just a classic Hillbillies song.

It's funny.

It's so hilarious.

We had people come up to us in the live show and say, that's my hometown.

That's my anthem.

Yeah.

Can I just get that single mp3?

And the other one that-

You can actually.

You can get everything now on iTunes and Spotify.

And then the other one, you know, we're walking the thin edge here from PG to R, whatever.

There's the stripper who hangs out with the preacher, like his-

I have a good story around that.

You mean the song, I've got Jesus deep inside me?

That's the line I was going to say, Jesus and he ain't pulling out.

And he ain't pulling out.

So when we did this, I have to share this because I think your listeners are going to kick out of it.

It's a play on words, right?

And when we first opened, I was worried that the religious right were going to have a hard time with it.

And we don't want to give away the end of the film because you know, that's why they loved it.

I had people come up to me and say to me, Bill, I got to tell you, I almost left after the first act, but I'm so glad I didn't because I understood what you did.

I had a guy come up to me and say, I'm an evangelical.

I love this play because they got it.

One woman opening night, I was worried about that song because the poster was a minister holding a Bible looking over a town.

This woman showed up.

She didn't know what it was about.

She was in her late 70s.

She had five other women with her and they were from a Baptist group, like a Baptist Bible group.

After the show, I'm in the parking lot and I see them coming at me.

They loved it.

She came back two more times, brought her minister and her choir director.

Because they got it.

Because we're not making fun of anyone.

We're poking fun at all different types of people, and all different types of situations and idiosyncrasies.

So they got it.

In the production in terms of relating it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

There's something about this setting.

It's like quiet.

It's intimate.

It's hard to describe.

It's like stage meets film meets reality TV.

My director decided to shoot it this way.

One, because of the budget.

I can't say what we brought it in for, but I can tell you it was way under a million dollars.

Then that's where you fall.

I think we're actually considered ultra low budget.

And for what you saw, for what we did it, it was a miracle.

And we made that over COVID.

And we had to hire COVID compliance officers, the whole thing.

And two weeks later, ton of people got COVID.

During the shooting, nobody got COVID.

It's like the film's blessed.

And the Rocky Horror thing came to us.

A couple of critics had said it was like a modern day Rocky Horror.

Our distributor called it that.

We didn't call it that.

And then some of the reviews called it that.

And I think the reason being is, it's just very different.

And Rocky Horror was very different, you know?

And it's fun.

And you can tell the actors are having a good time.

And about the budget, you can't say how much.

The music was so good.

I googled some of the recording studios.

And yeah, this isn't high, high budget.

This is not the Bluebird and Nashville in terms of the recording studio.

It's amazing how you got Cliff and that talent to record it.

The rea-

where I'm going with this is-

I can tell you.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

It does come down to, and I think this is part of the journey, make friends.

Anything you want to get involved in, like a friend of mine, when I was in Boston, I had a manager who said, Bill, either you or Tom have to be out here in LA.

I didn't move to LA till I was 40.

I made that film at the age of 61.

Never too late.

Never too late.

I've had to create a whole new career for myself, and I'm 63 years old.

If you don't look that old.

Thank you.

See, it keeps you healthy.

Following your dream will keep you your health good.

It's, this is going to sound airy-fairy in a way, but it's true.

Through meditation and prayer, it's remembering the promise that you made before you came here.

Promise that you made to yourself of the gifts that you were going to share.

And then that helps you to develop a purpose.

And I think without purpose, we're all in trouble.

You know, Victor Frankl's book is all about purpose.

And I forgot the title of it, and it'll come to me as we're talking.

He suffered through the Holocaust, and he wrote an incredible book.

And why is it not in my head right now?

But Victor Frankl...

His purpose, I think he said, was someone has to live to tell this story.

That's a big, yeah, and that was his purpose at the time.

But it really is.

And then it's from there.

It's looking at progress, not perfection.

And that's why taking action.

I'm not in the results business, although I can have a goal, but I have to be in the business of taking the action and surround myself with people.

So when we...

The making of that film, I had never raised capital for a film before.

I had been laid off from corporate America because I had worked two careers for a long time.

I wrote and I worked in corporate America because I could work from home.

And I lost that job during COVID, and I had to raise several hundred thousands of dollars, which I ended up doing.

Just...

I can't even explain it.

And then people would call me out of the blue and say, Bill, are you still looking for investors for your film?

And they weren't like large money.

This is kind of like when you were the bartender, and all of a sudden one day, hey, you want to talk to the director.

Because...

and this is because you set your intention to know what it was you were supposed to do before you came into this life.

Speak your truth.

Speak your truth.

Well, you got to know your truth first.

And you're going to have days where you're going to doubt it.

But it's just...

you know what it is?

It's like I feel like I'm on a path, and then sometimes I veer off into the woods.

And what am I going to do to get me back onto the path?

And then I keep going.

And no shame, no guilt.

And it's a practice.

It really is a practice.

I think life just in general, you know, writing songs is a practice.

So just to finish this part of the story.

So what we did is we had two weeks of rehearsal with my actors.

And one of those weeks, they went to a studio in Venice, Venice Beach.

And it was a friend of Cliff's who gave us a great deal.

And we asked for a great deal.

And that's the key.

You have to ask.

And we laid down all the music there in a week.

And then we shot that film in six days.

Now, if you notice, there's only two sets.

And we built that coal mine on the other side of that stage that you saw.

The coal mine cave is the other thing that looks really...

It's amazing, isn't it?

Yeah.

And it's made of like mesh.

And our production designer was incredible.

When we saw that, we were like...

And you know what it is, for low budget...

And this is the thing, I think everybody should be supporting independent film.

I don't plan on going...

Oh, that's where I was going with this, too.

I'm sure there's people out there who that's also their dream, make a movie.

And they're kind of stuck because they think, oh, I need to raise $10 million and I need to...

No.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, you can make a...

I mean, nowadays, I mean, people can make a feature.

I was more than this, but you can make it for 50 to 100 grand.

I mean, the film Tangerine, if someone hasn't seen Tangerine, they shot that whole thing on an iPhone and it looks good.

And it got distribution.

You know, actually, that when you said that just now, reminded of the documentary on Sylvester Stallone, Rocky, and how when he started out one of his first films, there was no sound.

And he's like, well, we couldn't afford sound.

It's like, why make a movie then, man?

Well, Rocky.

Yeah, with us pre-Rocky, one of his.

No, but even Rocky, nobody wanted to make Rocky in this town.

That's a famous story.

He pitched to like 40 different places.

Yeah.

And they all didn't want him to star in it.

He makes that movie.

Yeah.

And he made his whole career.

Made his whole career.

But he had the, he had such passion for it.

And I think one of his earlier movies, too, this is maybe the one without sound, it was his brother and his dad that were actors.

This is how much he wanted to make movies.

He's like, like, what you're saying, Bill, is you'll find a way if you speak your truth.

It came to you, but you spoke your truth first.

And it didn't happen overnight.

You know, that was a stage show first.

The first run of that show was 2013.

And then it was, and then Broadway got involved.

And they were, we did a big 10 day read, all these Broadway people, all these Tony winners, and they ruined it.

They just, they have a whole thing that they do.

They come in, they break your script all the way down.

So then my producers had to pay them more because they'd have to be there longer.

So it either works or it doesn't.

And for us, it didn't feel right.

And even my producers were like, oh my God.

So we let it sit for a while.

2018, we rewrote the script.

It went up again in LA.

Austin, a guy who runs the Austin Playhouse saw it and said, we want to bring it to Austin, which is a regional theater.

We went there and then we were thinking about Broadway, but it's so expensive.

And I mean, it's a minimum.

You can buy 10 million just to open on Broadway.

And I don't have that kind of money and my producers didn't.

So one of the guys, he was a friend, an independent film producer who's done 44 films.

Brad Wilson used to run Robert Duvall's company for 11 years.

He saw the stage show and said, Bill, what about turning it into a low-budget feature?

And I was like, what?

I didn't, that wasn't my intention.

I had thought about it, but it was a matter of Brad and myself talking.

And then we just started pulling people in and he had a director.

We had another director to start with, very dear friend, and he was just so busy getting his masters in directing, and he was more of a choreographer.

Now he actually graduated from Northwestern, and he's got a great career ahead of him in the theater.

But we brought in Justin Ward.

Nobody else could have shot this film the way he did.

And I mean, the crew, we had a crew of about 35 people.

And Brad, you know, being a long time producer, he knew how to cut deals.

And that's all it was, you know?

I mean, I've produced stage shows and you do the same thing.

It's like somebody quotes you a price and you, you talk to them and you negotiate and you get it down.

So it's didn't happen overnight by any stretch.

So tell me about writing with other people because as a writer, you were one of three writers on this movie?

Yes and no.

To me, Cliff wrote the music.

We contributed with lyrics.

Tom Sage and myself wrote the book.

It's called The Book.

So writing with Tom, what's it like to write with someone else where it's not just your own thing?

Because a lot of people put in pen to paper, they're in their bedroom or their couch.

They haven't worked with someone else before.

Well, it's funny because now I'm shifting.

I enjoy writing more by myself now.

I'll write a comedy with Tom, but I'm writing other things on my own.

It was a process.

Now, keep in mind, I came out of sketch comedy.

So when I ran that show in Boston and in New York, I had like writers.

I had like seven writers at one point.

We'd all be in the room together.

Everyone was smoking back then.

So you got used to it.

Then writing with Tom, we already knew each other and then we figured out where are our strengths and our egos.

Our egos bumped up against each other several times, but then we got into a rhythm and he's very good at certain parts of dialogue and jokes, and I'm very good at structure and jokes or comedy, whatever you want to call it.

So and I'm very good at story, and that's where my strength has been.

And so I usually drive a script.

That's my role.

I drive it.

I'll write a first draft.

I'll bring Tom in and we'll start punching it up.

Okay, good.

I get it as a professional.

I think some people who haven't done this before, and I've run into some writing songs with other people, we'll hang up the phone.

I'll go, okay, we're going to meet next week this time.

When we get back on the phone, they've got the whole song written, their idea of it.

I'm like, I thought we were supposed to work on this again together.

Well, I finished it.

Listen to this.

It's great.

I thought we're going to work on it.

You get this.

You don't want to work on it by yourself.

You're anxious to work on it, but it's going to come out better if you have your strength and someone else does.

You work on it together.

Well, the thing is, now I've sat in a room with someone, I get more done when I write the draft, and then I have to check my ego at the door, and then go into a collaboration mode.

It sounds like your writing partner didn't do that.

He was like, it's perfect, it's done.

When it's never, it's not done.

If you're writing with someone else, it should have been, hey, I did a draft of this.

What do you think about this?

What do you think about this line?

What do you think about that line?

Let's play with it.

Then if you would said, oh my God, it's perfect, then you're dumb.

But if you had ideas and he didn't agree with them, you have to find that happy medium because that'll even make it better.

You definitely have to come prepared.

Bring ideas, don't show up like, but I'm speaking to the people, they think they're working on it by themselves, is to make the final copy and then you're.

Well, I mean, I also have a suggestion.

You have to be open to criticism and you don't defend your work.

I would give a script to someone and I would pick like five people who I know are going to be honest with me, not just say, oh, it's cute or Bill, you're so good.

I don't want to hit, that doesn't help me.

So what I did is I would also have a list of questions that they couldn't answer yes or no to.

So it would be like, let's say it was Paradise.

What did you like about Paradise and why?

What was your favorite moment or favorite character and why?

What part of the script did you not like and why?

So it's like giving them an assignment, but not too much because then they'll be like, I don't have time for this.

So I'd give them like five questions.

Then if it's somebody who said they have more time, I'd give them seven.

Then I would gather all the information and just nod my head because in the beginning, I'd fight people and it was like, no, that's not what I meant.

No, I learned early on.

So I just go, thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'll definitely, I'm going to think about all of that.

Then I can look at it and go, four out of these five people don't like this.

Right.

So it's not you, just one person's opinion changing your ideas.

It's then looking at it and going, okay, how does that feel if I get rid of that?

Because you have to go back to, you have to understand the craft.

If anyone wants to write a screenplay and he's still alive, believe it or not, and still doing this, is I took Robert McKee's story class at Harvard, and it was three days, but it was nine in the morning till 10 at night.

So it was equivalent to taking a full semester of a screenwriting class.

And he has a huge book called Story that you can purchase.

And it's funny, the first thing he said, we're all in this big lecture hall and he goes, all right, I just want to let you know, you could have all just read the book.

And we're all sitting there like, what the fuck are we doing here?

And then he, but you learned so much from him and you're in a group setting with everyone.

And I did that and then I became a student of Sid Field's screenwriting.

And then I became a reader.

And then I did some development work.

So I just kept reading.

And at the same time, I had a job in corporate America.

You know, I was just going to go back to that.

I was going to ask you, how long have you known this is your dream writing and whatever you would call it?

There, I wrote my first play in the third grade.

Okay.

But I was also raised by a dad from Glasgow, Scotland, who was all about, Bill, you making any money?

You making any money?

You making any money?

So I didn't get involved with the public theater until I had already graduated college, and I had become a headhunter.

So I was in sales basically, and then Fidelity Investments recruited me after being a headhunter for a while.

But see, at the same time, I ran a sketch comedy show on the side.

As long as I was-

And how did you do that on your LinkedIn?

How did I do that what?

How did you use LinkedIn?

Oh, LinkedIn.

I didn't use LinkedIn until years later.

But at that time, it was just I had a love for doing it.

And the people that hired me, as long as I was producing, they would all come to my shows.

I had like a built-in audience.

So even though I was corporate.

Some people use the term Renaissance man to describe what you're doing with yourself.

You have the finance, the corporate world hat, and then you have the creative hat.

They're both equally successful talents in both.

If you go to LinkedIn nowadays, people like, your resume has to be one thing, who are you?

And then I would have to have two profiles.

You can't have two profiles on LinkedIn.

It's not supposed to, but how do you integrate that?

I don't do anything in corporate America anymore.

It's on there.

Someone can look at it, but I've been aged out of corporate America.

I'm 63 years old.

So what happened was when I was doing it, my LinkedIn page was not as geared towards the writing, because I did that on my own in lifetime.

You didn't need it to do that.

You didn't need it.

But then when I started working on the film, I needed it.

Oh, to get money, to get people, capital, investors, and whatnot?

I raised, I brought in three of our investors.

We had 10 investors.

I brought in three of them from LinkedIn and did not know them.

To which I'm going to bet you use so many professional finance on that LinkedIn resume as well as you're making a movie on the resume, to show you did know what, you did have responsibility and some experience.

Oh, oh, oh, I get it.

Yeah.

No, that wasn't, I don't think that made any difference to these investors.

What I did is, I started networking on LinkedIn because I had used it a lot as a corporate recruiter.

And, and I would ask people for, who do you know?

You know, I'd say, listen, I'm making this movie.

And keep in mind too, we had a track record because it had been a successful play and we had all the music.

And I remember this one guy said, Bill, I'm not interested in investing.

But you know what?

I have, I know if I can give you a name of someone who's in the Nashville area.

And I went, okay.

And then I learned a long time ago, thank you so much.

Is there anyone else you can think of?

He gave me two more names.

That led me to those three people.

Out of those three people, only one person was interested.

One person got sick and the other one was like, if Bill's just not ready right now to do it.

The third person brought in two more people.

Nice.

Those three people helped me to raise a portion of the capital for the film.

And then I had two friends call me out of the blue, who wanted to invest.

Now you're not talking, you know, they would invest like 12,500 or 25,000, you know, smaller amounts, which can add up, you know, over time.

And then others were referrals.

One person saw that we had done an Indiegogo, a crowdfunding thing.

It's an Indiegogo, I think it was Indiegogo.

Called my other producer, because the name was on there, I think, and said, I don't want to be involved in a crowdfunding, I'd like to invest in your film.

We had no idea who the guy was.

So it was a matter of, once again, just taking the action and then in visualizing it as well, but I'm not saying like you can just sit and visualize all day, you've got to take the action, you have to kind of check your ego, ask questions and become a student of it.

How did your LinkedIn profile look, more or less, when you're asking, hey, do you know anybody who wants to-

Oh, I had to because I had been laid off and I knew, I knew I was going to be aged out because when I was a recruiter, my hiring managers saw a gap in a resume, it always worried them.

Yeah.

So I'm like, okay.

It still does.

It still does.

Yeah.

That's why I don't even go down that path anymore.

So I put in Paradise the Movie, LLC, a writer, producer, and I made sure that I also mentioned, because this is true, I handled the budget, I was in charge of hiring, was all things I did as a corporate recruiter.

I just adjusted it to this and then I'm a bit of a hybrid.

I know corporate and I'm a creative.

Yeah.

And I think that's helped me because, and even in this film, when, you know.

To summarize, if I get the picture, your LinkedIn profile is about the LLC company.

It's about me being a producer and a screenwriter.

And when you mention your expertise and the other things from your old job, you're not mentioning your old job at all, you're framing that in a sentence with the current description as the movie maker.

Yes, in my top part.

But then as you scroll down my LinkedIn, you'll see my past jobs.

Okay.

Yeah, I left them on there because I have really good stability, believe it or not.

I mean, my last job, I was with the company for about two and a half years.

The company before that, before I got laid off.

And then I was with the other company for 15 years.

And I had a client that everybody thought I just worked for the client for seven years.

So, you know, I was a recruiter for Russell Investments because I had run staffing for Fidelity Investments out of Boston while I was running the sketch show out of Catch a Rising Star and also out of the duplex in the village in New York.

So even though there's a gap, you're not worried about it because you're not needing it for a job.

No, I'm screwed.

I mean, I can't.

Corporate America, I never had to look for a job.

I was recruited to every single job I had had.

And then I applied for jobs during COVID and stuff.

Couldn't even get an interview.

And I think part of it was because there is that gap.

And it also said Paradise, the movie LLC.

Who do you want to be now?

Yeah, I'm making a movie.

Yeah.

So, what I've had to do, I picked up an agent.

I have three other scripts out there right now.

I had saved some money.

I thought I could go back in and get like a contract recruiter job or something.

You don't want to, Bill.

You're doing great.

No.

You're good at what you do.

Let's talk about your book, Uncle Bill's Animal Tales, Life Lessons for Adults, short storybook about you and animals that helped you learn about what we're talking about.

You say animals are some of our best healers.

Your dog was there for you, tough times, you had a cat who helped you through sobriety, which sounds serious, but it's actually supposed to make you laugh and smile.

Tell me about Uncle Bill's Animal Tales, your favorite story in it.

God, there's so many.

I'm going to tell the story about Casey helping me get sober.

Casey lived to be 20, was a cat, and God, I have so many stories.

You have to pick between your dog and your cat.

No, I know.

Well, just tell me about your book.

Tell me about your book, if they're not in the book.

Yeah, no.

Well, first off, the Casey story is real simple.

It was a matter, I was living in Boston.

I was drinking, drugging, the whole thing.

I had the big job.

I never was drunk at work, never high at work, none of that.

Nobody even knew I had a problem.

I had a bad hangover.

I was in the kitchen, I was making breakfast, and Casey was meowing, meowing, meowing, and going in between my legs, wanting to be fed.

I said, Case, just give me a minute.

I took my foot and I just went to push him out of the kitchen.

Well, he slipped on the linoleum and landed on his hip, and got up and started limping.

I'm like, Oh my God, I've hurt my cat.

But he was limping bad and I thought, Oh my God.

Later on, I saw him and he was walking fine.

I literally said to him, So you're okay.

He looked at me and started limping.

I swear to God.

But the thing that hit me was, it was just like that little small wake up call that my drinking was affecting others.

And I had been through, I had a partner die of AIDS in 92.

I had this big ass job that was killing me.

The hole in my chest was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger that I kept trying to fill with more drugs and alcohol.

So Casey was one example.

The book, somebody said to me, Bill, why aren't you writing a book about all of the stories?

Because I have so many of them, of where animals have profoundly healed me in certain ways or taught me lessons.

Like right now, I have a 16-year-old dog, and she's having a rough time and then she is good in bad days.

She has taught me patience, incredible patience.

I just feel the reason why dogs don't live as long as we do is that they come here already understanding unconditional love, and their job is to teach it to us and then move on.

So then we can share that love with another dog or a cat.

But I really do believe that's why, I mean, dogs will put up with, I mean, we've seen where people are cruel to these animals, and the dog will still be there loving them.

I have such a hard time with anyone who abuses an animal in any way.

They should be put in a cage themselves.

Yeah, I agree.

Something that does.

Yeah.

So what are you working on now?

What's next for you?

Got it.

Couple of things.

I am working on another book.

I am doing an Uncle Bill series.

The next one is Uncle Bill doesn't drink anymore.

Thank God.

And then there will be one.

Uncle Bill is gay?

Who knew?

I didn't know until you told me in this show.

Yeah.

So are some of the characters like, is the mayor in Town Paradise, is he based on you at all or?

Well, yes and no.

I mean, the mayor, Eddie Singletary, who did the role, is also, you know, he's gay.

But he, and I wouldn't assume that either, although I thought it was a little strange the way he was, you know, wearing the gloves.

I guess I'm naive or I'm just.

Well, the gloves, the gloves were a metaphor for once he took them off, like he was using the germaphobe thing as a way of not having, the way we interpreted it when we wrote it was that he didn't have to touch anyone because he wasn't sure on who he was, was the original way we did it.

And then we figured we would make people believe that.

But then his one line when he says, do you think it would have been any better if I told him I was gay?

So he knows who he is and that's the satire of it.

That was the joke on it, which ties that whole thing together when you're watching it.

But yes, so am I coming out?

I mean, I know more about sports, professional sports than most of my straight friends.

And I came out in 84, 85, right in there.

A rough time to do that.

It was a rough time.

I mean, I dated women.

You know, I had girlfriends, the whole thing.

And then I came out then.

And yeah, it was a rough time.

But back to now.

Okay.

So what am I working on now?

I'm working on a couple of things.

I have a drama with Dan Florek from Law and Order called Roses, and that's being pitched around town.

And then there's a book that I adapted called 29 Gifts, which is a wonderful book.

The author has since passed away and I have the rights to the book.

And it was about a woman with MS who was given kind of guidance through this spiritualist, who had said, giving 29 gifts in 29 days will bring you more peace of mind.

So it's about her journey.

And that one I'm hoping is going to be set up fairly soon.

So you tie in some of your life calling, your talent in terms of writing and creativity.

You also tie that in with a higher purpose.

These are kind of serious topics.

Yeah, no, I like to either make people laugh and at the same time, there has to be some type of a message.

29 gifts is not a comedy, neither is roses.

But my third project, Ruben Brown, is.

And it's about making amends, and it's about we can change who we are if we choose to.

If we're finding that our lives, if we have choices.

We have choice.

Sometimes people that are surrounded by other negative people can go down that same path.

And Ruben Brown is about how to break that cycle.

And that's a big part of it.

I've had to eliminate certain people from my life where I've lovingly detached.

I can detach with love.

Kind of like you're going back to your bartender days to get the director position, assistant director, and not everybody can come and you don't want to stay.

You know it's your life, do your thing, leave it behind.

If people aren't supporting you or helping you or bringing you down, if they're negative, check them off the list, delete them from your phone, move, whatever, right?

If somebody's sucking the energy out of you, you've got to stand up for yourself and understand self-care.

I think we're only here for two reasons.

I really do.

The first is getting to know who we are.

Who are we?

What is our incarnation about?

Of why we're here?

Who we are?

And I'm going to use the word pros and cons, but it's really not even that.

It's about really learning who we are.

We're going to make mistakes.

We should be patting ourselves on the back more and more.

Not from an egoic state, but being proud of who we are, of what we accomplish.

And if we're not, then find other things that one can do.

It takes us back to gratitude.

And the second reason why we're here is to be of service to others.

So if we're involved in self care and taking care of ourselves, and then we look at, how can I share my gifts?

How can I be a blessing on the planet?

How can I be of service?

And you have to walk that fine line of not losing yourself in service.

Because that happens quite often, you know, the co-dependent issues.

Getting paid what you need and giving away too much where you can't support yourself anymore.

It really is finding that middle ground of being able to do that.

But I just see so many people that beat themselves up all the time.

Just wait, and too much of, you know, compare and despair.

You know, Facebook doesn't make it easier.

Back to you, I see them in France.

I wish I was there now, or comparing yourself to, why is it fair they're there and I'm not?

And taken out of context, because you don't even know the whole story is.

No, you don't.

I appreciate you being on my show, Bill.

Is there anything else you want to add we haven't talked about?

No, God, I got to tell you, Daniel, we talked about so much stuff that you really covered it.

It was great.

Thanks.

And it'll all be in the show notes, links to your movie where actually you can buy it for three bucks on Amazon, but you can also watch it for free and other.

On Tubi.

Tubi, yeah.

I'm like, wow, I can watch this whole thing.

That's why I watched it because they don't have Amazon Prime.

So details to all this will be in the show notes on all Bill's stuff.

That's great.

Bill, thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

You have a great day.

Daniel, you're an inspiration.

Keep living your dream.

Thanks, man.

Take care.