“I was the least powerful man in Hollywood. I was about to walk in unprepared to pitch my idea for a comedy channel, and that’s what we did. But I sat down, did the pitch as best as I could. And Michael liked it because he was a big comedy guy. He loved comedy. He put comedy on hbo, uh, before he became chairman. So he set me up. As you know, he says, okay, let’s see if this thing can work. And the rest is kind of history.”~Art Bell
Art Bell is a writer and former television executive. While at HBO, Art became known for developing and launching the Comedy Channel, which later became Comedy Central. As President of Court TV, he oversaw daily live courtroom coverage and the production of hundreds of hours of original true-crime TV series, documentaries, and movies.
Art’s memoir, Constant Comedy: “How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor”, was a finalist in the 2020 Best Book Awards in both the memoir and business categories.
Art has had short stories, nonfiction, and satire published in several journals, including The Lowestoft Chronicle, Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature, The Ocotillo Review, Fiction Southeast, Castabout Arts and Literature, High Shelf Press, and Writers Read.
Art recently published his first novel, “What She’s Hiding”, which I’ve read and found to be an action-packed legal-noir-thriller with some terrific surprises and twists. If you like John Grisham, then you’ll enjoy “What She’s Hiding”.
WEBSITES:
https://www.artbellwriter.com/
IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE, YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY:
-
Steve Skrovan, Standup Comedian-Actor-TV Comedy Writer—Episode #313
-
Paul Chitlik, Writer-Producer-Director-Teacher (Session 3)—Episode #312
-
Chris Moore, Producer (Good Will Hunting, American Pie)—Episode #94
-
David Richardson, Writer-Producer (F is for Family)—Episode #87
Steve Cuden: On today's Story Beat.
Art Bell: I was the least powerful man in Hollywood. I was about to walk in unprepared to pitch my idea for a comedy channel, and that's what we did. But I sat down, did the pitch as best as I could. And Michael liked it because he was a big comedy guy. He loved comedy. He put comedy on hbo, uh, before he became chairman. So he set me up. As you know, he says, okay, let's see if this thing can work. And the rest is kind of history.
Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden A podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.
Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We're coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Art Bell is a writer and former television executive. While at hbo, Art became known for developing and launching the Comedy Channel, which later became Comedy Central. As president of Court tv, he oversaw daily live courtroom coverage and the production of hundreds of hours of original true crime TV series, documentaries and movies. Art's memoir, Constant Comedy How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor, was a finalist in the 2020 Best Book Awards in both the memoir and business categories. Art has had short stories, nonfiction and satire published in several journals including the Lowestoft Chronicle, the Journal of Sports Literature, the Ocotillo Review, Fiction Southeast Cast about arts and literature, High shelf press and writers read. Art recently published his first novel, what She's Hiding, which I've read and found to be an action packed legal noir thriller with some terrific surprises and twists. If you like John Grisham, then you'll enjoy what She's Hiding. So for all those reasons and many more, it's a true honor for me to welcome the outstanding author Art Bell to Story Beat today. Art, thanks so much for joining me.
Art Bell: Steve, thanks for having me. It's really fun to be here.
Steve Cuden: Well, it's a great pleasure to have you. So let's go back in time just a little bit. At what age did you first recognize words and writing and entertainment and movies? When did you start into this process that you've been in for most of your life?
Art Bell: Well, I have to say that comedy was a big part of my life from a very early age and I think that's what started it. I did, um, my earliest writing. I don't know if it was my earliest, but my writing in around seventh and eighth grade, when I started to say this is fun was satire and, you know, kind of short comic pieces, I was really drawn to that whole thing. And then I continued through high school, actually, and I was particularly fascinated with satire. I remember reading Swift, Jonathan Swift, and just thinking, man, this guy was good. He's talking about stuff in a very funny way, but. But changing the world at the same time.
Steve Cuden: And early on, he was one of the earliest pioneers of that sort of style of writing.
Art Bell: Yep, that's for sure.
Steve Cuden: Um, did you also admire the satirists of your era? So MAD magazine and so on? Was that something for you?
Art Bell: Someone, I don't know who it was, said mad magazine is the source of all humor. And I sort of subscribe to that view. Yes, Mad magazine was, uh, was always on my desk. National Lampoon. Those were the great days, the early days of National Lampoon.
Steve Cuden: And do you think that people could get away with that today if they were starting it today?
Art Bell: That's an interesting question. I. You know, again, National Lampoon. Well, MAD magazine, for sure, that was considered real underground stuff for a long time, you know, as in, uh, you know, you're not supposed to show it in school because they take it away. Uh, I had somebody approach me once and said, say, uh, does your mother know you're reading that? I think it was MAD Magazine. I said, uh, I think so. But anyway, this was real, almost contraband. So could they get away with it today? I think they could get away with it today if it remained contraband. But by the time National Lampoon, they kind of gave it up. I, uh, mean, it persisted through the movies and everything else, but in the glory days, you know, I think that they had become kind of nationally known and nationally noticed, and that may have been the reason it folded when it did.
Steve Cuden: Who were you looking at in movies and TV for comedy, who were your heroes?
Art Bell: Oh, well, you know, it goes way back to the Ed Sullivan Show. Now, I know you were. We're not exactly the same age, but we're close. So you probably remember the Ed Sullivan show.
Steve Cuden: Oh, extremely well.
Art Bell: And, uh, I. One of my early memories is sitting in front of the television with my father and my brother watching the Ed Sullivan Show. And one of the Bush Belt comics came out. You know, I think it was Alan King. And my father was hysterical laughing. The audience was laughing. And I realized that there were. I didn't know the number, but, you know, 30 million people watching this guy and laughing. And I thought, wow, how powerful is this comedy thing? I. I really did And I wanted to learn more about it. And I was very young. I was, yeah, 6 or 7. And then I watched all the great comics. I, I watched Richard Pryor's first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Steve Cuden: Oh, is that right?
Art Bell: Oh, it was Orion. He was like 20 years old and he was so funny. Uh, and he was talking about getting beat up on the playground, which was a concept I knew pretty well by then. And, uh, so it really kind of, it really kind of touched me. And he looked so nervous while he was delivering, which was part of his act. He wasn't nervous, but he was just like, you know, looking around and just, you know, like somebody's gonna come at him at any second. And I realized that was a really great way to deliver comedy.
Steve Cuden: Well, it seemed harmless. He seemed harmless. But yet what he was delivering was actually, in a way, subversive.
Art Bell: That's true. Even on the Ed Sullivan show, it was a little subversive. But, you know, thinking back to the stuff on the Ed Sullivan Show Jackie Mason was on, he got into big trouble on the Ed Sullivan Show. Uh, and, um, Flip.
Steve Cuden: Flip the bird.
Art Bell: Yeah, flip the bird. That's true. Um, and a lot of the stuff that was on it was, you know, a lot of the comedy in those days would not be comedy today. I mean, Alan King talking about his mother in law constantly, you know, in kind of a derogatory ways. But, you know, I thought that was fascinating stuff.
Steve Cuden: You said something interesting just now, which I rarely explore on this show, but I'd love to talk about. What do you think happens? Is it culture? Is it society? Is it history? What causes something like comedy which continues to evolve over a long period of time and goes from one sort of sensibility to a completely different sensibility and abandons the old sensibility in a way where it's almost verboten anymore. How does that happen?
Art Bell: Well, I think people are looking for breakthroughs, um, in entertainment all the time. You know, what, what can we see that's different? Now? The, the comedy that I grew up on originally was, was pretty much Bush bell comedy. You know, Alan King and those guys. And the older stuff, Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello. I mean, that was, that stuff came out of, I guess, more of a vaudeville, uh, mentality. The Marx Brothers, you know, listen, and I say, I say that with all kinds of love for these things. I mean, I read all that stuff. I read about them. I read the scripts. I performed the who's on first, uh, routine in college with a friend of mine, which is a Funny story, just a small aggression. We got up there to do it and we had practiced like forever, and the audience moaned because they figured they knew it, right? And then we did it. And it's so good that everybody went nuts. Everybody really loved it. And it is a perfect routine. Uh, so the breakthrough that we kind of know in comedy as the big breakthrough was when people stopped talking about their mother in laws and their bosses and everything else and started talking about themselves. Richard Pryor talking about his life as an African American and America and what was going on. Um, you know, the Carlin for sure, the political comedians Mort saw was, you know, certainly talking about stuff that nobody else. I mean, Lenny Bruce, who kind of took it to its limit. I mean, he ended up not being funny at the end because he was talking so personally. But, you know, those things, um, really kind of punched a hole in the old comedy and became the new comedy. I don't think we've deviated too much from that, uh, in, in recent years. I don't. I think it's been, I think it's been a pretty good through line from, uh, you know, the 60s through now.
Steve Cuden: So we're talking about comedy here. I want to get us to how you became an executive at HBO and then obviously created the Comedy Channel. What did you do in your life? Did you go to school to learn to be, uh, in business or were you a lawyer? What did, how, what did you do in school?
Art Bell: I think this is going to surprise you. I was an economics major in, uh, undergraduate, uh, that doesn't surprise me. I was fascinated by it. And my first job out of school was, uh, as an economist at a consulting firm in Washington. And I worked with the smartest people there. I mean, it was just a great experience. And one day I'm sitting there reading Coal Weekly because I was working on coal transportation problems, as one does, as one does when you're an economist in Washington. And I had my feet up, uh, on the desk and I'm reading Cold Weekly and I threw the thing down and said, I can't do this for the rest of my life. I just can't get interested in Cold Weekly. So I thought about what I wanted to do and I said, you know what? I'd really like to go into the entertainment business. Which I guess has been said millions of times by millions of people.
Steve Cuden: But you had not given that a, uh, real thought prior to then.
Art Bell: Well, that's not entirely true. When I was an undergraduate, I hung around with the other kids in undergraduate school who wanted to go into the entertainment business. And I kept saying, hey, you know, you're going to, you're going to LA to be a writer. You're never going to get work, you're going to starve to death. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to get a real job. I'm going to be an economist. But, you know, I was still, you know, I was hanging out with these guys who were doing, you know, comedy and writing comedy and performing comedy. As I said, I did those on first thing. But, you know, a lot of these guys and one, um, of my best friends, who's still a best friend, went to la, became, started, uh, out as something other than comedy, uh, writers, but ended up comedy writers and ended up very successful. So it's not like I had no experience thinking about whether I should go into the entertainment industry. I just always thought about what my parents would say, uh, which is, you'll never make a living. Which is what I told my friends. You'll never make a living. My parents said, so.
Steve Cuden: Well, you know better than most that 99% of everyone doesn't make a living at it.
Art Bell: Yes, I do know that better than most.
Steve Cuden: You know, it's a tiny percentage that a very small number of people actually are able to make a living at. Many people will have a job or two or six, but can't make a living at it. It's almost impossible sometimes. And so though, those that do, that's a really big deal. So now how did you then get into being an executive? How did that happen?
Art Bell: Okay, so here it is. I, um, I went to business school. I wish somebody had told me, you don't have to go to business school to get into the entertainment business.
Steve Cuden: You don't have to go to any school to get.
Art Bell: As a matter of fact, school works against you if you're trying to get into the entertainment business. But I thought, okay, I'm going to, you know, I want to learn about business and I want to get into the entertainment business. So I'm going to go to go to business school. So I went to business school and on my first day there, I said, hey, you, I'm kind of interested in the entertainment business. Um, you know, a little artsier. Uh, where do people like me in this? Uh, I went to Wharton grad school. Where do people hang out? You know, people like me. And the woman I was talking to said, uh, well, there's this thing called the Wharton Follies. And all the people who come out of, like, theater and music and are trying to get to Wall street and figure they have to learn something about business. They come here, but they, they put on a show every year, you know, and it's obviously a rotating group of people, but why don't you go see what they're up to? So I did, and, man, it was really interesting because these people were, in fact, very talented people who'd been in the entertainment industry and wanted to get out of it. And so we were kind of passing each other in the night. I. I did the Follies for two years. The second year I did. I was a head writer. I did a lot of the writing. I wrote a lot of really funny stuff. And at the end of that experience, when people were saying, you know, that was really kind of very well done, you know, very professional, I said, you know, maybe I do know something about writing and comedy. Anyway, I took that concept, um, with me when I started looking for a job. I graduated from Wharton and I started looking for a job. And I, I. First thing I noticed was there was a music channel, there was a news channel, there was a sports channel, there was no comedy channel. And this was in the early 80s, right? So I ended up getting a job at CBS, which unfortunately at that time was like working at the post office. I mean, it was just a horrible experience for me, you know, layers and layers of stuff. I was working as I got hired as a financial analyst because, you know, that was my strength sort of at that point. And I was doing reports, and I went into my boss one day and I said, you know, I do this report, it takes me six weeks to do or a month to do it. And I went around and asked people if they ever use it, and they say no, they throw it out. I say, well, you know, why don't we do something useful? And she said, look, we've been doing this for this way for like, the last eight years. We're not going to change now. And I knew at that point I wasn't going to stay there. Luckily, a friend of mine called me and said, hey, come on over to hbo. They're looking for somebody with your kind of background, you know, who knows something about economics and econometrics. And, man, that was the last thing I wanted to do. But HBO was like Netflix in those days. It was the cool place to work in the entertainment business.
Steve Cuden: That was still fairly early on in the HBO years.
Art Bell: Yeah, we're talking 1983, 1984, and it went up on the satellite and I believe 1977 or something. So it was fairly new. And the concept of bringing this kind of television into people's homes, uncut, uh, movies and all that kind of stuff, it hadn't been duplicated, you know, so they had the place to themselves for the moment. And my friend called me up and he said, you know, the people walk around here and they say, we are going to change television. It's a very exciting place to work. So naturally I went, I applied for the job, I got it. And they said, okay, all you have to do is build a model to forecast subscribers, uh, over the next 10 years. Because the last guy who did it messed it up terribly and ended up getting fired. So I said, okay, no pressure, right? And that was my first job there. That was my first job there.
Steve Cuden: And so how did you then move up into the ranks? This is a valuable lesson for listeners.
Art Bell: I made myself visible in the organization by doing this forecasting. I knew it was going to be a high profile thing. And when I gave, uh, kind of like a final presentation, there were a lot of executives in the room. And one of the executives came up to me and said, hey, I'm, um, in. You know, I'm the head of new business development. Uh, why don't you come work for me? And previously I was in something, you know, some financial area, and I said, yeah, great, I'll come work for you. What are you doing? She said, well, we're working on a new channel idea. I said, really? What is it? She said, it's called Festival, and Festival is going to be a channel for people who don't buy HBO because they don't like the sex, violence and language on television. So it's kind of a clean hbo. I said, okay, that sounds great. And I got the job and I took the job and I started working. And on the second day of my job, I said, you know, I've been thinking about this television with no sex, violence and bad language. I said, that's. Is that pretty much why people watch television? Because they want that kind of excitement? And she said, sh. Don't say that again. Okay, so Festival, after about eight months, bombed. As you can imagine, it was just like, uh, not a great idea. And, uh, we tried our hardest. So I was left without a job in new business development. And I thought they would fire me, but they said, no, no, no, no, we don't fire people here. We want you to stay. We'll keep you around, we'll give you some projects or something. I said, okay, but I thought I was going to get fired. So I Kept thinking about this comedy channel idea, which I had mentioned to people, like, why is there no Comedy channel? And they said, well, it's too hard. It's writer intensive. It's going to be expensive, blah, blah, blah. So I said, okay. But then when I had no job, I said, well, I better get my resume together. And I decided to write up a proposal for the Comedy Channel and send it with my resume to MTV Networks. I thought they would be interested in it there, right? But before I did that, I said, you know, I better pitch it to somebody here. So I called up the office of the head of programming at hbo. Her name was Bridget, and she was a very scary person to someone like me. Uh, so I did get an appointment with her. She said, yeah, you know, her secretary said, yeah, she'll see you tomorrow. So I went down there and I say, bridget, I want to pitch you this idea. I think there should be a 24 hour, seven day a week comedy channel, all comedy. Now, HBO is known for comedy, so I think HBO is the one to do it. And she said, arthur. She called me Arthur for no apparent reason. My mother calls me Arthur. That's pretty much it. Anyway, she says, arthur, that is the worst idea I've ever heard. There is no way that there can be a, uh, 24 hour, seven day. Who wants to watch that much comedy. And she said, you know, you'd have to get really, the highest. You'd have to get Robin Williams, you'd have to get Whoopi Goldberg, you'd have to get Billy Crystal in order to make it successful. And they're not going to do a comedy channel. Their managers would die before they'd let them do a comedy. She went on for about 10 minutes, telling me why there would be no, you know, Whoopi, Billy, Robin. No, they're not going to do it. I didn't say anything. I just, you know, she. She didn't even let me continue with my pitch. And at the end, she said, okay, Arthur, thank you for coming down. Uh, you obviously. This is a true story. She said, you obviously know nothing about television or comedy. So, uh, see you around. So I walked out, and I remember walking out saying, you know, thank you. And I just thought she was wrong. I just thought she was wrong. So I went back upstairs. I kept working on my project of writing up this idea for a comedy channel that I was going to staple to my resume. And what happened? My boss's boss came by and says, what are you working on? You have nothing to do? I said, well, I'm actually writing up a proposal for a channel. He says, well, let me see. So he takes a look at it, reads it, says, this is great. I said, oh, thank you. He said, have you pitched it to Bridget, the head of program? I said, she didn't see it as great. Uh, she didn't like it at all. He said, yeah, that figures. He says, but, you know, I think the chairman of HBO should see this. I said, really? That's great. You know, I'll get a presentation. He said, no, no, let's just go down there right now. Now, the chairman of HBO at the time was Michael Fuchs. He had just been on the COVID of New York Times Magazine, and the headline was the Most Powerful man in Hollywood. I was the least powerful man in Hollywood. I was about to walk in unprepared to pitch my idea for a comedy channel. And that's what we did. You know, my boss's boss walked me in there and says, art has a good idea. Michael Fuchs first comment was, you know, you guys should really make an appointment when you want to see the chairman of a company. I said, wow, that's a bad start. That's really a bad start. But I sat down, did the pitch as best as I could. And Michael liked it because he was a big comedy guy. He loved comedy. He put comedy on HBO before he became chairman. So he set me up as, you know, um, he says, okay, let's see if this thing can work. And the rest is kind of history. But, you know, it's a long story. You can read about it in my book. But that is how I got into the comedy business and became an executive.
Steve Cuden: Well, I think that, uh, it's remarkable that she didn't see it at all when. Now, of course, in retrospect, clearly, it's, um, more than just a little viable. But even if it didn't exist, it seems to me if you just thought about it a little bit, even if you gathered up lots of old comedy movies and put them on for a while, that would at least sustain you. And old comedy shows, TV shows, that would sustain you for a while till you develop new stuff. So, uh, you know, to me, that just sounds like a natural.
Art Bell: And that was part of my pitch because we had to do it cheap. Everybody figured, okay, if you're going to do 24 hours of original comedy, it's going to cost a fortune. That wasn't the idea.
Steve Cuden: And there's hundreds. There were hundreds of comedy shows at that point. Sitcoms.
Art Bell: I know. And we got a Lot of them. And interestingly, we attracted. I remember one time we did an avid and Costello stunt. 24 hours, just Abbott and Costello. And I don't know if everybody knows this, but Seinfeld was a big avid and Costello fan. And we knew this because our talent person knew this and called him up and said, hey, you want to host the Avan Costell thing? And he said, yes. That's how we got, you know, the big stars on the channel in the early days, because they loved the old stuff. You know, they, they really, they knew
Steve Cuden: it well, it, it made the channel then cool. It was, um, irrelevant. And in that, in that, uh, it was, uh, something that you, if you were sort of not avant garde, but in the cool kids section, you would not have a problem turning that channel on. It wasn't, it wasn't musty and fusty. It was kind of cool. So I think that's, that's a really good way to go. Now, how do you get 180 degrees from the Comedy Channel to Court TV? I can't think so. To me, it seems that some court cases are clearly hilarious, uh, and some comedies are really a crime. But that's another story. Uh, how do you get from Comedy Central or Comedy Channel to doing Court tv? How's that work?
Art Bell: Well, I got fired from Comedy Central.
Steve Cuden: That's a, that's a way after being
Art Bell: there, as, you know, had a program in marketing for eight years. And I know what people in your audience are saying, like, what do you have to do to keep a job in this business? How about you start the channel? Yeah, no, that's, that's not, that's not good enough. That's not going to have you keep your job. I mean, they brought new, they brought, they fired the president. I was working for the president and they brought a new guy in and the new guy said, I can't have you here because you're with the old guy.
Steve Cuden: That's Hollywood, by the way, isn't it? The new regimes always kick out the old regimes.
Art Bell: Really. And you know what the guy said? He said, you got your fingerprints all over the place. You know, I can't have you here. I said, all right. And that was the end of that. So I was without a job. I was fired for the first time in my life. And you have to get used to being fired if you're in the entertainment industry. But this was the first time, and I took it very personally. But I did go around to, you know, I had friends in the industry and they kind of Helped me out. And one. One, very highly, uh, placed guy in the industry said, you know what, Art? If you don't get fired once in a while in the entertainment industry, it means you weren't doing anything worthwhile. You weren't making an impression. You weren't doing anything but keeping your head down, because that's how you keep a job.
Steve Cuden: You weren't moving the needle.
Art Bell: You weren't moving the needle. And that made me feel a little bit better, But I still didn't have a job. Um, so I work, you know, I consulted to a number of channels for a few years. And then, as it turns out, somebody who used to work at HBO called me up and said, uh, look, I want to interview you because I was just made chairman of this channel, Court tv, which is a failing channel. They're going to close it down, but they're giving it one more shot. So I went to interview with him. He said, okay, here's the thing. I don't know anything about cable television or cable channels and how to make them and run them. That'll be your job. He said, my job is to work the outside and take all the credit. I said, okay, sounds like a good deal. And that's what we did, um, until he left the channel and I became president. So.
Steve Cuden: And what. What was your background in order to be able to even think about law? Law and lawyers? You didn't have a law degree?
Art Bell: Let me tell you, I had absolutely no background other than I'd read a lot of, you know, mysteries, thrillers, legal thrillers, and watch, uh, Perry Mason when that was on, you know. I mean. Oh, well.
Steve Cuden: Well, that obviously qualifies you, that, you
Art Bell: know, that makes everybody a lawyer. But anyway, um, yeah, I had no. I had no, uh, background in this. And let me tell you something. When I walked into the comedy business, people said, what do you know about comedy? And I said nothing. When I walked into Court tv, it was. I walked into what was basically a newsroom. These people were journalists who had been at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and Time magazine and all these places. They were professionals. I walked into the newsroom, and I could just feel them saying to themselves, what does this guy know about what we do? He's not a journalist. He's not a lawyer. He doesn't know this kind of television. He's from comedy. This is, like, the wrong guy. And that was, you know, that was my introduction.
Steve Cuden: And what did you do to overcome that?
Art Bell: I had to, you know, get these people on my side by first of all, not doing anything dramatic. You mentioned that people walk into new places and fire everybody. I wasn't going to take that approach because, as you pointed out, I didn't know that much about it. Uh, and I wanted to see who was doing a good job, who wasn't, what was going on, how they did things and all that. So I just, you know, basically sat back and watched and listened to these people talk about what they did. And, you know, when you listen to people, they think you're smart. I mean, I. How's that for, uh, a. For a pro tip right there? I mean, they don't think you're smart when you tell them when you walk in exactly how you should do things. They think you're stupid. So I listened and I got the lay of the land. And, um, being smart when you're around journalists is like, you know, the number one qualification, you know, you can't be stupid. And so that's how I, eventually, I think, got them on my side. And they were also worried about not only their jobs, but that I was going to turn the channel into something ugly.
Steve Cuden: I think the listeners should pay very close attention to what Art just said. It's, uh, notorious that great leaders are unafraid to have people who know more than them around them and to learn from the people that you surround yourself with. That sounds like what you did there. Uh, and it's also really important that you go into a job and not be the bully and take over. And that just shows insecurity, I think. I think you go in and you absorb what you can from those that are there because they know whatever they know personally, plus whatever they know professionally. So learning from others is a very important factor, I think, if you're going to run an organization, Right.
Art Bell: And I had the added burden of getting them on my side because I wanted them to help me. And ultimately, that's what happened. I mean, the people started saying, well, here's what we really want to do and here's a good idea. And here's. And that's another thing I found. This was my. You know, when I was at Comedy, I wasn't executive. I was a vice president, senior vice president, whatever. And. But those. Those were early executive jobs for me. But when I went to Court tv, I felt like more of a seasoned executive. Like, I, you know, I could really figure out how to do this. And I didn't feel as scared, essentially, about, uh, doing a good job. And I. And I ended up, I think, doing a better job for that reason. I just knew I could do it.
Steve Cuden: You also brought a perspective to that job that is unusual and not expected. It's an unexpected thing that you did. So therefore you had a way of looking at it that no one else did, I'm sure.
Art Bell: Well, that was especially true in this case. The channel Core TV had been started by a lawyer who was a journalist, the head of American Lawyer, which is a big journal for lawyers. He knew nothing about television, which is why the thing was failing. He put cameras in daytime courtroom, uh, and covered daytime courtroom exclusively. And then at night, he ran it over again as the first thing you learn in the television business, cable television is it's prime time, where you make the money. I mean, daytime is not going to do that much for you. So I, um, walked in and essentially said, okay, look, we're going to keep the courtroom coverage. We're going to keep the focus on the justice system, but we're going to look at crime too, because that's the other side of the situation. So we became a channel of crime and justice and we started doing, uh, true crime documentaries and putting those on primetime. And guess what? We got ratings, we got advertisers, and things started going well.
Steve Cuden: You did, uh, remarkably smart thing, obviously, and that is you put conflict into your primetime program. It became conflict filled. And that's what people want to see going back to the. When they did not want to have sex, drugs and rock and roll on hbo, on. What'd you call it? The. What was the channel? The festival channel. Uh, so they wanted no conflict like this show. This show is a conflict free show story beat. But that's not its intention. Its intention is to inform. If you're going to do Court tv, it has to have conflict in it, right?
Art Bell: That's right. And to be fair, courtroom can m be pretty exciting once every 10,000 minutes. I mean, that was the problem. I mean, the big action in courtroom was just not. There wasn't enough of it to sustain. So again, we kept the courtroom coverage. And I got to tell you, that was, you know, people say, how did you go from comedy to court? It was a very exciting time for me because I learned so much about the criminal justice system. I mean, I ended up working with cops and detectives and lawyers by the thousands and journalists. I had never, you know, I never had worked with journalists before. I mean, it was a really interesting place to be in the television universe. Uh, and then I started, I started, you know, when you're, when you're running things, you get to do crazy things and So I decided, because I loved mystery and thriller novels, I decided we were going to do a show like that about mysteries and thrillers, only because I wanted to have lunch with some of these writers. And that's what I did.
Steve Cuden: That's such a great segue into where I was headed next anyway, which is your book. And so you already mentioned earlier about your love of mysteries, and now you're further saying it, that you loved it so much that you managed to get it into Court TV as well. Uh, how did you ever decide, okay, I'm now going to sit down and write a mystery, which is a task. It's a real, um. You have to be very smart about it because you've got to know what the plot is very, very thoroughly. How did that come about? How did you get into writing?
Art Bell: I had retired from the business because I was kind of done with it. I had been doing consulting for a few years after I left corporate, uh, which was really fun, but I decided that I was tired of it. I was done, and I always wanted to write, and I had done some writing. And when you're in the television business, you know, you end up writing something once in a while. So, uh, it was my wife who suggested, you know, why don't you go take a course at Sarah Lawrence College? Now people say you can't learn writing, and I disagree.
Steve Cuden: Oh, well, you're absolutely right. You can learn writing. You can't learn talent. You can develop talent, but you can't learn talent.
Art Bell: I think that's a great way to put it, Steve. Anyway, so I said, okay, I'm going to go take a class in, uh, writing. And they told me at Sarah Lawrence the first thing I should do, and this is good advice for anybody, is take a class in memoir because you want to write memoir. And the reason you want to write memoir first is because you know the stories. You've been telling these stories. And I love telling stories. I was always telling stories, funny stories, stupid stories, sad stories. So, yeah, that was a good place for me to start. And I wrote some memoirs, uh, short memoir stuff, got some stuff published. Then I wrote the big memoir. And the way I wrote the big memoir about comedy was I was in class, I read a story about Comedy Central about. Actually, it was Comedy Channel, where the head writer at Comedy Channel was angry at me because he said, I didn't know anything about comedy. And he said, I want your job, and I want to talk about it with you. And I said, you're not getting my job. He says, well, meet me for lunch, and he told me where to meet him for lunch. So I'm in my tie and jacket, he's in his, you know, T shirt because he's a writer. And I walk into this place, and it's a strip club. That's where he had made reservations. And there was nobody there but me and this guy Eddie and the stripper and we sat with. Right. Right up in front. And I know why Eddie did that. He wanted to disarm me. You know, that was. That was, uh, the whole reason for him to do it. But anyway, I wrote that story up, and it's a funny story, and people, you know, people had been sleeping through my other stuff, kind of like woke up and said, hey, wow, that's. That's great. Why don't you do more on comedy? And that's how I ended up doing, you know, doing the book. I just wrote a lot of stories. And. But I will say this. It's not just a string of stories. You can't do that. You have to write a memoir like a novel. It has to have a beginning, middle, and end. It has to have conflict. It has to have characters. You have to make characters out of the people in your lives. You can't just, you know, introduce them and hope that they're going to sing as characters. You really have to work it. And so that was great. A great education for me.
Steve Cuden: Well, you could write a memoir and have it be episodic, but it should have some kind of a through line. It should have a definite rhythm and flow throughout the whole thing. And so, you know, that's the difference between great memoirs and ones that are not so memorable. Uh, what do you think you learned all those years as an executive that helped you to be a good writer?
Art Bell: You know, listen, these channels were schools in lots of different things. I mean, comedy was a school in the comedy business, for one thing. Uh, but it was really Court TV that fueled my interest in writing the
Steve Cuden: novel and gave you a lot of information to use in the novel, I assume.
Art Bell: Information and really an understanding of how the criminal justice system worked. But even before then, I always point out that there were some things that I did in high school that informed this novel. One is I loved noir as a kid. You know, we've been talking about mysteries, throwers, but the classic noir, you know, the Maltese Falcon, the Postman Always Rings Twice, you know, the Big Sleep. And those things were made into movies. And. And the movies mostly relied on the snappy dialogue from the books.
Steve Cuden: 100%. 100% which is.
Art Bell: Which was brilliant was part of their brilliance. But I really. I didn't study noir, but I really got a sense of what noir was. So when I decided I was going to write fiction first I wrote some short stories. But that when I decided to. I was going to write something that was kind of noirish. I went back and read noir and I learned about noir. And one of the things I learned was there are also romances. So I had to really kind of think about, okay, I'm going to write a noir ish kind of thing. I want it to be current and I want it to have a romance.
Steve Cuden: And frequently quite sexy. Not just romance.
Art Bell: Well, sex. That's a whole nother thing.
Steve Cuden: It is.
Art Bell: It's. Of course they're sexy. Of course they're about adultery as well as murder. I mean, yeah, really sexy.
Steve Cuden: So who were you reading? James M M Cain and, uh, Raymond Chandler Dashiell Hammett.
Art Bell: Yeah, James M M Kane. Raymond Chandler Dash Hammett was, I think, my introduction to noir. Now, he didn't write a whole lot of stuff. You know, he didn't have a big volume of, uh, stuff. But he wrote the short stories of, uh, the Continental Op, which were. They're brilliant, these things. Brilliant. They stand up even today. I mentioned the Postman Always Rings Twice. Double Indemnity. It's basically the same concept where a bad woman leads a nice guy into a really horrible situation. She wants him to kill her husband for whatever reason. And I just. I loved that. I love the. They ended up calling it a femme fatale. They, uh, weren't always femme fatales in that. They weren't always gorgeous, but they were attractive to these guys. And they made the guys or either do bad things or they got them into trouble.
Steve Cuden: Certainly true in Double Indemnity. Big time.
Art Bell: Yeah. This woman wanted this guy to help her kill her husband so they could collect the insurance. I don't want to do any spoilers on these things because I think everybody in your audience should go run out and get the thing and read it. If they haven't, it's classic.
Steve Cuden: Or watch Mr. Wilder's great version of it. Uh, with Fred, uh, McMurray, Murray Barbrick, Stanwyck. It's just a tremendous movie. And the dialogue in that thing just snaps. I mean, it's just as snappy as can be.
Art Bell: Well, that snappy dialogue is what. That's what I wanted to write. Remember, I'd written some satire. I'd written some, you know, some comedy stuff. I wanted that snappy. I wanted to be an author who did snappy dialogue.
Steve Cuden: Well, I think you achieved that. Did you do anything to develop your voice in that? Was there anything that you practiced that. I mean, that's a. That's a sort of a skill set.
Art Bell: I, uh. You know what? I don't think so. I think I learned how to write a novel while I was writing a novel. It didn't really start out as a novel.
Steve Cuden: That's a theme in your life, isn't it?
Art Bell: Art?
Steve Cuden: You learn as you're going. You just jump into things and go,
Art Bell: yeah, and it's a crazy way to live. Uh, and it doesn't always work, and I'm proud of that. So I started writing this novel, and you mentioned. Okay, you know, it's hard to write a novel like this because you got to. You got to think about the plot twists and everything like that. And I learned. What I did was, remember I said I was really drawn to those characters who. Bad women who dragged nice guys into horrible situations. I wanted to do that. I wanted. And I wrote the first scene in my novel where a woman walks in to a lawyer's office, her ex husband, and says, I'm in a lot of trouble. I need money, and you're in trouble, too. And that's all I knew about the book. That's all I knew about the book. And he didn't believe her until it became clear that she was right, that someone was after both of them, and he didn't even know why. So that's where it started. No. No plot. I don't know if you've talked to, um, writers about this, but I found out. I thought I was the only one who wrote like this. Like, okay, I'm just going to write and see what happens. No, about half the. Half the novelists in the world write like this are called. We're called pantsers, which means we write by the seat of our pants. Plotters. They have 10,000 index cards behind them. They write everything up on their index cards. They write from scene to scene. Sounded like too much work for me. So I was a panther. And as I said, I thought I was the only guy in the world who did this, but turns out everybody did, or about half the people did. And I really just kept writing with that setup to see what happened. I wanted to see how this guy would handle mortal violence for the first time. And there was one other influence on that. I read an article when I was in high school called the Violence that finds you, and it was written by a guy named Harry Cruz. It was an Esquire. And I always thought of it because he was a writer. He went to Wyoming or something and he was in a bar and some guy wanted to fight and he didn't want to fight, but he ended up having a fight. And he said sometimes you just get into situations where there's violence and you got to deal with. And I always thought about that. And so I was going to bring that into it too.
Steve Cuden: There's nothing better in storytelling. Well, as a storyteller of any kind, you need the audience to always be in suspense. They need to not know what's coming next. You, the writer, at some point, need to know what's coming next because you're writing it, you're creating it, but you didn't plot it out. I'm a plotter, I'm an outliner. You do it. I've talked to many people on this show who do not. And, uh, I find that fascinating because I don't know how to do that. I would just get. I would find myself down dead end alleys. Did you find that you got lost in places where you had to sort of abandon it and do something else?
Art Bell: Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. But, uh, let me. Before we get to that, let me tell you the good part about it. Characters show up and you don't even know who they are or what they are, but then suddenly you like them and you say, wait a second, this character is great. I'm gonna keep him or her in this novel. So that's the good part. You kind of trip over great things. But as you point out, the bad part is you write yourself into a corner all the time.
Steve Cuden: And sometimes that's a good thing because you have to work your way out of the corner. And that makes it interesting.
Art Bell: I'm telling you, I was up at three in the morning plenty of times saying, how am I gonna get my carrot character out of this mess? Or into. There was one time I had to get the character into a cab with another guy so he could interview him, you know, basically ask him questions about the crime. And I said, how am I going to get these guys into a cab? The guy doesn't want to get in a cab. How am I going to do it? And I had to figure out how I was going to do it. Now, I will say this. I was lucky. I did not have to go back and rewrite stuff. I talked to a lot of people, panthers who end up saying, you know, I ended up here. So I had to go back and rewrite this stuff again. Lazy. I did not want to do that.
Steve Cuden: That's remarkable art. Uh, as I have taught many people, which I believe in. I truly believe in that the first draft is a craft thing. It's your drafting a first draft. And the art comes. The real storytelling comes in the revisions. You're saying you didn't do that?
Art Bell: No, no, Please don't misunderstand me. This thing got, uh, rewritten 47 times. Oh, great.
Steve Cuden: Okay.
Art Bell: I'm. Yeah, edited to death and changed and scenes added and everything else. What I'm saying is I didn't get to a point where I said, okay, all this stuff is happening, but the first part of the book doesn't really kind of lead to this. And so I gotta go rewrite all that stuff.
Steve Cuden: Right, right, right, sure.
Art Bell: Or the character didn't carry through. So, uh.
Steve Cuden: Well, many, many novelists will get 100 pages into a book and realize that the book doesn't start till page 101. And they abandon the first hundred pages pages and start the book on 101. That's not what you did.
Art Bell: That's not what I did. And I was so glad. But I tell you what I did find. I found, as I said, I was learning how to write a novel. When I went back to the early parts and started. Started editing, I said, wait a second. I got to be a better writer in the second half of the, you know, as the book went on, the book got better. And so I did rewrite. You know, I kept the concepts of the scenes and the characters and everything else, but I didn't. I did a lot of, uh, adjusting and rewriting and everything else. Well, you.
Steve Cuden: It's like going to the gym. You got more muscular as you went, you know, and the more and more you write, the better you are as a writer. That's just the way it works. It is a lot like an athlete, only with your brain. Uh, and you do get stronger as you write. So let's go back a half a step, tell the listeners what. What she's hiding is really about what happens.
Art Bell: Okay, Well, I told you the setup. This woman walks in, she says, if you don't give me a lot of money, they said they're going to kill me. And he doesn't believe her. And then he throws her out of his office. Uh, this is his ex wife, and as she's leaving, she says, and they're going to kill you too. He goes home that night not believing her, didn't give it a second thought, and, uh, his place was trashed. So now he's got a. He's got to find her. He doesn't know where she is because it's his example. Uh, and he's got to figure out who's looking for them, what the problem is, why they're looking for him too, and get them both out of this mess. That's what the book is about. It goes on from there. I mean, I don't know how much you want me to get into, um, but he ends up asking his best friend for help, who helps him a little bit, and, uh, offers his private detective to help him. And that's Gabriela. The main character's name is Henry. And Gabriella and Henry are a great team.
Steve Cuden: A great team. She's a terrific character.
Art Bell: And that's a case where she showed up. She showed up in a phone call. She was just calling him up to say, hey, my boss, Aiden told me to, uh, give you a call because you have a problem with your ex wife or something. And he hangs up on her, essentially. But she didn't give up, and that's what I liked about her. And she ends up helping him. She's tough and knows what she's doing, and he's a wimp and doesn't know what he's doing, and he's scared, but he knows he's got to do it, and that's how the book proceeds.
Steve Cuden: What's one of the things I really enjoyed about the story a lot is that your protagonist, Henry, uh, is really not a heroic guy, but he becomes heroic, that is.
Art Bell: Thank you for noticing. You know, not everybody. I do book clubs all the time, so I get to talk to people about the book and I love doing that. And a lot of times they say, well, I don't know, did Henry really change? And I say, yes. I have to describe it. Henry ended up not being a wimp to the same extent. And that's the kind of change you want to see in a character.
Steve Cuden: Well, there's no question. That's called a character arc. He goes from a, ah, want to a need. And he becomes a different person in doing so. He grows he. In a way, whether he likes it or not. And that's what his learning process is. Um, so you learned, obviously, a lot about he's a lawyer, and you learned a lot about the law and lawyering and so on from Court tv. How much of your background in Court TV is in the book?
Art Bell: Well, again, I'm not a lawyer, so I was guessing at what corporate law was all about. But I did know what Lawyers think about. But even more from Court tv. I'll tell you what I took. We did documentaries with some of the finest documentary filmmakers. The guys who were winning Oscars these days, they were kids then, but they were doing some really great documentary work. And what do you have to do in a documentary? You have to tell a story, beginning, middle and end story arc. Build the characters into interesting characters, not just people in a tough situation. And I learned all of that from them. I went watch them put piece together what were essentially, you know, entertainment shows from real life. And I thought, that's cool. So I learned how to tell a story from those people. Honestly, it was the most. It was the best education I could get in that.
Steve Cuden: I think that's fantastic. And, and the listeners should understand that. Again, Art has said something incredibly valuable. I've had, ah, a handful of, uh, documentary filmmakers on this podcast. And all of them, and it's the truth, they're all storytellers. And they all need to follow the basic plotting of most movies. Seven plot, I believe in the seven plot points. And they all follow that. They have a beginning, middle and end. And there's an arc that you follow. And if you don't, you'll lose the audience quickly. And so you there, that's what you want to do, is sell the story in the way that people. Except storytelling.
Art Bell: Right now you're talking about the big overall effort. The other thing to keep in mind is scenes. You know, you want every scene to have conflict. You have to know what characters want in every scene. Cause if nobody wants anything, it's a dead scene. You know, I tried to make every scene in the book interesting. Now, I don't know if I succeeded, but what I hate is reading a book and having it sag in the middle. And I did not want to do that. So I tried to make every scene interesting. Yeah, that was my education from Court TV that helped me write this book.
Steve Cuden: All right, so your process. We've already talked about your process a little bit, um, which I find very interesting. When you started, did you have Henry in mind at the start? Since you didn't have your story worked out? Where did Henry come from?
Art Bell: Okay. Uh, as you pointed out, I've known lawyers in my life, and I've had friends who are lawyers. Henry is not based on any one particular friend or one particular lawyer, but I knew I wanted him to be a lawyer. And as I started writing, I realized I had to give him a little bit of a backstory. Now, I knew a couple of things about Henry, he was divorced and he still loved his ex wife. He still carried the torch. That's all I knew in the first few pages. But that was a lot, that was a lot to build a character around. And then, you know, I started thinking about his background. Where did he grow up, how did he grow up, who were his influences? I had one really bad influence on him. He was like the cool guy in high school that everybody knows he's a bad guy, but they want to hang out with him anyway. And he, he had that kind of influence. I wanted him to have to face some tough choices and have to make, you know, some real big moral decisions about what to do next. So, you know, listen, I mean, all I can say is I developed the character as I was writing and after a while, you know, 40 or 50 pages in, it's like, oh, I know this guy, I know him, I'm thinking about him, I can have lunch with him now. I found it more difficult to do. Uh, his ex wife.
Steve Cuden: Well, you describe her, and I'm going to quote someone who took life by the balls and lived dangerously. Close quote. That's how you describe her. So that tells you a whole lot in one very brief sentence.
Art Bell: Yeah, that was her. And I liked the combination of her and Henry, who did not live dangerously.
Steve Cuden: Mhm.
Art Bell: He did not want the dangerous life. So why did he marry her? Because he liked the fact that she could make his life interesting, make his life more dangerous. That's why he married, that's why he was attracted to her and that's why he married her. He married her and that's why he missed her.
Steve Cuden: He missed the excitement of being around her, didn't he? That's right, because his life was not all that exciting to begin with. Uh, um, so how much research did you then do on the Russian mafia? You have all kinds of things going on in your book that I don't see any of that from your particular personal history. Did you have to do research to get there?
Art Bell: We go back to the, the laziness thing. I, you know, I, I did a little bit of research. I didn't do much on the Russian mafia because, you know, I figure most readers don't, aren't well versed in the Russian mafia themselves. So I could make up the Russian mafia and the characters and listen, we've all seen mafia shows and read mafia books and have some sense of what these people are like. They're psychopaths, you know, they appear charming but are, you know, in the next minute we'll be Happy to kill you. Thank you very much.
Steve Cuden: And with a smile on their face.
Art Bell: Yeah, exactly. So, um, yeah, so that's how I developed those characters. Um, and there was some more Russian stuff I did have to do some research on. Uh, and I don't want to give too much away about the book, but, you know, you know what I'm talking about.
Steve Cuden: Well, you don't need to give anything away. Did you do the research by going to a library or mostly online?
Art Bell: Well, truthfully, I knew a little bit about what I was researching, you know, what I was talking about. So I think I just filled in some facts by looking online. And then I did actually check into a book at one point.
Steve Cuden: So I think that your book, uh, and I guarantee you've thought of this, uh, uh, your book would make an excellent movie or series, a miniseries. Have you gone down that road and tried to sell it that way?
Art Bell: It's, uh, a dirty road.
Steve Cuden: It is certainly a difficult road, no question.
Art Bell: No, it is a difficult road. And I knew, you know, I know people in the business, but, um, and I tried to get the attention of some of them. It's hard to get their attention. Listen, you did some producing, right? Selling an idea, selling a show is about the hardest thing you have to do. My boss once said the hardest thing that anybody has to do is get a movie made. If you get a movie made, you're a genius, because it's hard to do. So many people write script after script after script, screenplay after screenplay. Nothing happens. They get paid for it, but the movie never gets made.
Steve Cuden: You now have what I think of, uh, from a marketing perspective, as a lost leader. You have the book, and the book exists. It's in the world. It's for sale. People have bought it and commented on it and reviewed, been reviewed. And now you're on this show talking about it, and I know you've done others. And so it's a real thing. It's not a, you know, it's not an imaginary thing that a writer is sitting in a room and trying to sell their story to someone, whole cloth. You have an existing property, so that's an advantage, don't you think?
Art Bell: I think it is. But producers or agents or whomever you're trying to pitch, they're inundated with this stuff. And that's what I was told. Now I will tell everybody a secret. This. This book was not on the bestseller list. I sold a lot of books, and people liked it, and I'm still selling a lot of books, but it was not A bestseller. And a lot of producers look to the bestsellers because they have built in audiences. Everybody's going to want to see the movie. What this book does have that I think would make it. And by the way, every time I do a book group or every time I talk to people about this book, they always say, so is, you know, is this going to be a Netflix series? Or what are you on working, working on here? And I say, it's hard to get Netflix's attention. Um, and I will continue to try, Steve, because I think the characters are really, uh, really worthy of carrying a television show. Really able to carry a television show. Anybody who wants to help out there, uh, in podcast land, please give me a call because I really think it could be a great, a great thing.
Steve Cuden: Well, I have been having just the most marvelous conversation, uh, with Art Bell, and we're going to wind the show down just a little bit. And I'm wondering, in all of your experiences, can you share with us beyond the stories you've already told us, uh, and any kind of experiential story that's weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?
Art Bell: Okay, check this out. When I was at Comedy, uh, Central, we got a call from a guy named Bill Maher, and he says, look, I got this show to pitch. And so we met him, my partner and I, he, uh, was a co. Head of program, and we met him in a diner in LA and he pitched us a show and he said, you know what the problem with talk shows is? Nobody talks. They don't really talk. I want to do a talk show where people really talk. And I want to call it Politically Incorrect. We brought it on the spot. We said, okay, 12 episodes, let's go. We had no money for it. Zero. Anyway, we put the show on the air. We get the show going first six months not doing too well, but we're doing the best we can. Then suddenly it starts to get an audience. Now, at that point, I'm also responsible for marketing. So I say, you know what? I'm going to build a marketing campaign around this guy. So we do a marketing campaign around Politically Incorrect. And I, as you have to do in a corporation, I showed it to everybody. I showed it to his producers, I showed it to his writers. I showed it to, you know, everybody who made, um, who had to see it. But I didn't show it to Bill. Now why didn't I show it to Bill? Because Bill's very opinionated and I didn't want Bill to be the head of Marketing on this thing. So I didn't show it to Bill. So the thing breaks, and it's all over the place. And Bill calls me up and he says, I saw that ad campaign. I said, yeah. He says, and I'm going to get you fired. I said, bill, you can't get me. He said, I hate it. It's terrible. It knows nothing about the show. Doesn't know anything, anything about me. It really m. Uh, you know, represents me badly, and I'm going to get you fired. And he hangs up. Now, he didn't get me fired because he couldn't, but he didn't like me much after that. Anyway, cut to. I get a call from the ad agency months later. Hey, we've been nominated for, uh, an award for the Bill Maher campaign. A big award. He says, and I got tickets to the award show, so let's go. So we go to the award show, and this is almost unbelievable. Bill Maher was the host. Now, I didn't know he was gonna be the host, and he didn't know I was gonna be there. Uh, anyway, he's the host, and up comes the campaign, you know, for best campaign, outdoor campaign in New York or something like that. And he turns around and says, that's my campaign. And guess what? We won. He turns around, looks at the thing again and says, now that's advertising. He walked out that night, passed our table, didn't say a thing to us.
Steve Cuden: Oh, wow. Still, uh, still upset about it, huh?
Art Bell: Huh? Is that a crazy story, though?
Steve Cuden: That's a. That's a crazy story. Now, I. You know, I don't. I've never met him. I do watch his show. He kind of has a little bit of that acerbic character to him. That's.
Art Bell: That's sort of a little bit. I mean, look, I'm not going to tell stories out of school, but I will tell one coda to that thing. I did the book Constant Comedy, and I did my own reading of the book, of the memoir for the audiobook, because you can do that with a memoir. And I got. You know, I was checking out the reviews one day, and I got this horrible review, one star. And I hadn't seen that before. And I read it. I kept reading, and I said, my gosh, this is.
Steve Cuden: Is terrible.
Art Bell: This guy is taking personal shots at me. And I showed it to my wife, and she says, oh, uh, that's Bill Moore. Bill Moore wrote that review. And I said, yeah, you're right. Because he said, who did? You know, the only worthwhile Chapter in the book is the chapters on Bill Maher. And who does Art Bell think he is? You know, it's like, of course it was Bill Maher. Anyway, can you imagine holding a grudge for 30 years?
Steve Cuden: Oh, uh, my God. Well, welcome to Hollywood.
Art Bell: You know, it's like you'll never work in this business again.
Steve Cuden: But I did exactly right. Um, so. All right, last question for you today, Art. Um, you've shared with us, actually, a really significant amount of advice already throughout the show. But I'm wondering, do you have a single solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to give to those who are starting out in the business or maybe they're in a little bit trying to get up to that next level?
Art Bell: Well, uh, you know, what I like to talk about is what you do with an idea. Because anybody going into the entertainment business is creative and wants to pitch ideas. My idea, my big idea was comedy. But you end up pitching all kinds of things. And I wrote 10 rules. This is when you're making your pitch. Okay, first of all, you gotta have an elevator pitch. Make it exciting. Inject passion. Think of Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run. Second, if it's an investment kind of thing, like you got to raise money for a movie, let investors, others feel the passion in every communication. Everyone electrify them. 3. Understand everything about your potential customer or audience through research. I gotta tell you, research is so important in the entertainment business. Four, Expect setbacks. Don't dwell on them. Fix the problem. Five. Talk to everyone about your idea in order to hone them. Six, Find allies and advocates. Seven. Assess your strengths and weaknesses. You can't do everything. Eight. Identify the competition. Who are you up against? Nine. Check your vision. How will your new venture or movie or television show change the world? And that's how you have to talk about it. 10. Be prepared to compromise, especially in the entertainment business. Steve, am I right that? And 11. I said there were 10, but there's 11. Be prepared to fail. Nobody does something great by avoiding failure. Go for success. And failure sometimes leads to great insights and great success. That's my advice.
Steve Cuden: In my book Beating Hollywood, I have a chapter called Fail Up. Failing is part of the process, and you must fail in order to succeed, to learn. But you've got to fail in a way that takes you upward. You have to allow yourself to learn from it. And, uh, if you dwell on it and get depressed about it, you're not going to help yourself. So I think that's those, those 11, um, um, uh, pieces of advice are absolutely tremendous, and I thank you for sharing them. And this has just been a tremendously wonderful, fun, uh, time on the show for me. And I can't thank you enough for your time, your. Your energy, and for your great wisdom.
Art Bell: Uh, oh, it was absolutely a pleasure talking to you about it. And, uh, I really appreciate you.
Steve Cuden: And so we've come to the end of today's Story Beat. If you like this episode, won't you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you're listening to your stuff. Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I'm Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.
0 Comments