Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat

John Vorhaus: It has to pay off in the moment or we simply won’t do it. If I say to myself, well, I’m gonna write this, but I don’t care if anybody reads it until after I’m dead, maybe you would. I’m never gonna write that because I can’t care enough about it. But if I say to myself, I’m gonna write this because I want to have a fabulous day as a working writer, as someone who practices his craft, and in so doing, I’m gonna deepen my self-understanding and expand my legacy. That’s what I’m here for.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for Mind. Storybeat 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, John Vorhaus is making his third appearance on Story Beat. John is best known for his classic comedy writing book, the Comic Toolbox, how to be funny even if you’re not. At last count, he’s taught and trained writers in 40 countries on six continents and created TV shows of his own in Nicaragua, Romania and elsewhere. His writing credits include dozens of teleplays and screenplays, plus seven novels and more than two dozen works of non fiction. John’s latest books are the Book of Practice, how to do what yout Want to Do well, and the Comedy Writer’s Companion. I’ve read all three of these books and can highly recommend them to anyone who is thinking about writing comedy or in the middle of doing so. We’ll chat more today about the Comedy Writer’s Companion, which I find to be highly helpful when working on funny stories and scripts. If you’d like to know more about John and his work, please check out johnvorhouse.com so for all those reasons and many more, I’m delighted to welcome back to the show the prolific writer John Vorhaus John, so great to see you again for your third spin in the Story Beat barrel.

John Vorhaus: It’s great to see you too. Uh, every time you mention Pittsburgh, I remember going to school there in the 70s. When the air was visible, it was cuttable.

Steve Cuden: You could cut it with a knife.

John Vorhaus: It was cuttable. Yeah, exactly. Um, but I imagine it’s a lovely, lovely place to live now.

Steve Cuden: It has been very much cleaned up. It is a cultural gem and, uh, you know, if you ever come back, let me know and we’ll take a little bit trip around the city. It’s a very different place from when you were here back in the day. So let’s go back to about two years ago, the last time you were on, we were talking about comedy and your second book and so on, your second comedy writing book. What, if anything, do you think has changed in the last couple of years in terms of comedy, the entertainment business? What’s the biggest changes?

John Vorhaus: Well, I mean, AI, obviously, you could track it in jokes. When. When AI first came out, I tried to get it to come up with jokes. And of course it was horrible and laughable. Not. Not laughable because funny, laughable because terrible, but not so terrible now. And I think that partly we know how to handle that better and partly AI, ah, is getting better at understanding what a joke is.

Steve Cuden: Is that a good thing?

John Vorhaus: I don’t stand in judgment. I say of most things, it’s not a good thing, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just a thing that is. Uh-huh. Because the minute I assign a value to it, it’s a good thing or a bad thing, then I have expectations for it. And reality has taught me that it has very little regard for my expectations. It’s going to be what it is.

Steve Cuden: What do you think AI is going to do in terms of the world of writing comedy and sitcoms?

John Vorhaus: And I see a very positive vector and a very negative vector. And I know those are value judgments, but let me tell you what I mean. On the positive side, it’s taking a lot of stuff that writers are challenged to buy. Story outlining, identifying plot holes, this kind of thing, and, um, manifesting itself as a useful tool. Also, I have some young proteges who are doing complete DIY short films using AI text and vision of visual generation. So there’s a lot to be said for using AI to make the music you make, if you will, to have your own cottage industry as a creator in a way that, uh, when I was a young writer, couldn’t really do it. I could write a script, but unless I had a budget, I couldn’t bring it to life in any meaningful way. So we can see a vector where that’s going to get easier and easier for. For artists to create using these tools. But on the other hand, with AI and many other related factors, the value that one can place on original creative services, writing, painting, music, whatever, it’s getting harder and harder to make a living doing that because it’s so Easy now for people who want to do it, to do it and get their work out there. To give you an example, I might spend a year or two years writing an analog novel. That is to say, a novel without aid of AI A passion project that I want to put out there. But somebody else might come along and generate an AI Novel. Or generate their own not very good work, but put it out there for free, because why not? They just want to have their voice be heard. It’s hard for me as a practitioner, as a professional, to compete against, um, competitors who don’t care if they make money. So an AI by definition, doesn’t care whether it makes money or not.

Steve Cuden: That’s for sure. Well, so do you think that it’s going to, at some point down the road, completely eliminate the need for writers and directors and actors and all the rest of it?

John Vorhaus: I won’t say eliminate, but I’ll say change and situationally eliminate. Uh, let’s take, uh, genre fiction, whether it’s romance novel or pot, uh, boiler Detective or what, uh, you might find, uh, in an airplane, in an. In an airport, uh, what do they call it? Airport novels. Like a Tom Clancy kind of thing or Dan Brown kind of thing. So fans of genre fiction have. They’re fans of certain authors, but mostly they’re fans of certain styles. And I. I predict that in a very short period of time. The reader won’t care whether the material was written by a human or not. They’ll only care about how is my reading experience. If I’m having a satisfying reading experience, it’s because this is an author I like. Or has successfully simulated an author I like. But I don’t really care. I’m not interested in the provenance of the material. But we’ll also see a lot of growth in creative expression. No longer limited by lack of tools or budget. Because AI UH can fill in so many blanks. You can be your own filmmaker.

Steve Cuden: There’s only so much material that people can absorb on top of. I’m talking about the audience now. They can only absorb so much material. So there’s a limit to that too. And if you flood the zone with everybody doing everything, it becomes, uh, more of a mishmash than it is at the moment. Which I think it’s pretty much a mishmash.

John Vorhaus: You know, uh, I’ll go back to 1995, when I was making my first website for the then nascent World Wide Web. I said, how shall I think about this? Because I can’t really expect to compete with the World the information age had already arrived. There was already way too much content. So I thought, well, what I have here is my own Little Amusement park, johnforhouse.com or whatever it was at the time. All I can do is be a steward of this amusement park and try to expand the boundaries as much as I can. And I think that that path forward lies in the future. You have a way of expressing yourself. It either will or will not find an audience. It may never find the audience that you want it to find, but the possibility exists that it will find an audience that you find satisfying. And how well you engage with that audience will rely, as it always has, on doing the creation and doing the marketing. That won’t change whether one can make a living in that paradigm or not. I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s the death of creativity. Uh, it’s just a different set of challenges.

Steve Cuden: Well, I don’t think it’s the death of creativity at all, as you say, and I think rightly so. It’s more likely going to be the death of professionalism in creativity, because I think the studios and the people with the power and the money and, uh, the ability to market things with that kind of resource are going to rely more and more on things that require them not to pay people. And I think that’s where the big fear is, is that they’re going to turn out lots and lots of product that people will like to watch or read or whatever, and they’ll eliminate the middle person, that is the artist, the creator. That’s what worries me.

John Vorhaus: Competitive advantage rests on, um, efficiency gains. That’s how you win the game of competition. You do more efficiently what the other guy does. I feel like the Writers Guild of America as we know it will not survive this set of changes.

Steve Cuden: I agree.

John Vorhaus: And that has to do with AI, but it also has to do with globalization of creativity. Now, I’m kind of a student of this. As you know, I travel all around the world teaching and training writers. But my last, uh, continent to conquer was, uh, Africa. And last year I got to South Africa for the first time. I was working on a Netflix project, but I was astounded by what I found there, that the writers there were doing a good job in making a good living creating content for their market that had the potential to extend outside of their market. And I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I was reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and thinking about imperialism and globalization and exploitation of stuff. And I realized that in the 19th century, uh, global traders exploited natural resources and rode that exploitation to profit. A company like Netflix has found a way to be a worldwide exploiter of intellectual property. They can find it everywhere, nurture it, pay for it at, ah, rates, ah, far below what the Writers Guild will charge and export it to other countries. Netflix has discovered they might create a North Korean or, uh, South Korean soap opera that’s huge in Norway, or a Norwegian comedy that finds an audience in South America. At this point, they’re becoming a little like venture capitalists. They can invest in 10 shows. Nine don’t have to succeed because the one that’s a worldwide breakout hit, Squid Game, for example, will carry water for all the rest. Exactly.

Steve Cuden: And they are highly successful with Squid Game. They’ve discovered they can do things much less, uh, expensively for them, uh, and still get the enjoyment of the audience.

John Vorhaus: They’ve also convinced us that we need eight hours to absorb a story we could easily absorb in an hour and a half.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s interesting. One of the things that people, futurists talk about, and I’ve heard futurists talk about it, and we’re nowhere close to it at the moment, but they are discussing it, is that they will eventually plant a chip in people’s brains. And the chip will be, will give you instant information from the whole World Wide web. And so you will be able to essentially download into your thoughts an entire book in a matter of moments, or a TV show in a matter of moments, and you’ll have it in your thoughts. That’s a, uh, weird concept, but that’s where I think we’re heading.

John Vorhaus: I wonder what that experience will be like. I was thinking more in terms of the augmented brain. Like, I meet somebody on the street, I go out walking my dog, and I run into somebody who’s given me her name 100 times. I can’t remember her name, but with my augmented brain, I won’t ever have to remember her name.

Steve Cuden: You won’t have to remember phone numbers. You won’t have to remember anything.

John Vorhaus: Well, we already don’t know. We can’t remember phone numbers. Our phones remember our phone numbers. And God forbid we should lose our phones. So we’ll be out of touch with everybody forever.

Steve Cuden: That’s exactly right. Well, it’s the same with storytelling. Um, the information that we have in our pockets has so much information that we never had when you and I started in the business. Because if you wanted to research something, you had to go to a library.

John Vorhaus: No, I was just thinking about that. I wrote a Screenplay that took place in Africa in the Great Rift Valley. And this is like 1986, probably the first thing I wrote. I had to go to the library to get. Look at the atlas to see where this place was. Uh, that’s good news and bad news because now you can’t cheat and make it up because everything can be fact checked. And that’s bad for me because I’m a real liar. I play a game called True Fact Bar fact. Well, I’ll propose something and challenge you to figure out whether it’s true or false, whether it’s true or would sound true in a bar late at night. Um, and, uh, it’s harder now because people can fact check me in real time and I can’t win those bar bets as much as I used to.

Steve Cuden: Well, I guess you could say you’re not allowed to use a phone or computer.

John Vorhaus: Of course. Of course you can. Which takes us back to AI There may be circumstances where the audience has an expectation that this is free of augmentation. This is natural analog writing, let’s call it. So you might find a book with the words 100% human content written on it as a, as a value proposition to people who want that sort of thing. It could very well end up that the market splits itself. The people who just want the content, just want the information, just want the ride and don’t care about its provenance, will absorb it one way, and people who do care about such things will absorb it another way. But, Steve, aren’t we talking about the difference between fiction and literature? Because there exists a tradition of Pulp Fiction. People don’t care about the writer, they just want the ride. But there exists a tradition of leadership where people care about the craftsmanship behind the literature.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the. The. One of the fears is, is that, um, a computer will be able to do both of those better than a human. So. So you could have a computer doing Pulp Fiction. You could have a computer doing Hemingway, uh, and, uh, Fitzgerald. And you will have a hard time being able to tell. That’s what’s going on right now with visual stuff. It’s getting. I was absolutely gobsmacked lately at some things that I later learned were AI generated videos. And it was so real. I was, you know, up till now, I could kind of tell it didn’t really look as real as it could be. And then there were some things I saw and I thought, is that real or not? And discovered they were not real. That’s where we’re heading.

John Vorhaus: So we’re Approaching the singularity.

Steve Cuden: Yes, the singularity.

John Vorhaus: On a related subject, uh, I’m going to give you a betting proposition. Tell me which side of this, the action you would take. You have a print copy of a book, and you have a digital file of that same book. Which do you think will survive longest into the future? Wow.

Steve Cuden: Well, if I were a betting man, I would say depending upon the material that the book is made from, the solid book, the real book, not the virtual book, I think it will last much longer than the digital book, because

John Vorhaus: the digital book would just be swamped, will become information that’s no longer available, or because the power plug will be pulled.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s either the power plug or some kind of electromagnetic, uh, explosion in space or something that will wipe out all the data that we have everywhere. That’s something that they’ve talked about some. What is it, EMF or whatever that’s called that will.

John Vorhaus: Electromagnetic pulse.

Steve Cuden: Emp. Correct. Sorry. Uh, if that happens, a lot of what we have today, including our banking system, um, our ability to, you know, use a credit card, our ability to operate our vehicles, all that will get wiped out. And so it will go back many generations until it can be, if it can be rebuilt, uh, in the meantime, a book. Well, we know for fact, certain that there are books already that have been around for thousands of years of years, made on papyrus and whatnot, that wasn’t even designed to last any length of time. And here they’ve last. So, uh, I believe in your question about what will last longer. I think as long as the book is not made out of something that quickly deteriorates, like some books are now so cheaply made that they are, they will deteriorate quite quickly if it’s made out of a very good paper with good ink, uh, and it’s kept out of the sun, you know, or out of water, it’s going to last for thousands of years.

John Vorhaus: I cannot resist the following segue. Speaking of cheaply made books that won’t last very long, let’s talk about the Comedy Writer’s Companion.

Steve Cuden: Indeed. Very good. So, uh, tell the listeners what they can find in the Comedy Writer’s Companion, or why should they get it?

John Vorhaus: Okay. Uh, Comedy Writer’s Companion contains four parts, actually, three revised and expanded books and then a new section. The three revised and expanded books are Comedy Writing for Life, the Little Book of Sitcom, and the Little Book of Stand Up. And then the fourth section is basically everything I’ve learned about writing comedy since I wrote those books. And I think the Value is to be found in equal parts across the four sections. My motivation for doing it was people were buying the Little Book of Sitcom, the Little Book of Stand up, as standalones. Uh, but I thought I could probably deliver better value by creating an omnibus edition. So that’s what I did.

Steve Cuden: Well, okay, so what, in other words, that you’ve taken what you’ve already put out and put it all in one place and added to it.

John Vorhaus: I added to it and I subtracted from it. I went through a whole process that I called squeezing out the stupid. I went through everything that existed in the earlier editions that I felt was just self indulgent, off off topic, and created a much leaner and more user friendly version of the material and then added and amplified based on what I know now. See these books, I wrote all these books maybe 10 or 15 years ago, maybe as much as 20 years ago now. And I had a lot of, I have a lot of insight now that I didn’t have then that has to do with aging and sort of reaching the top end of my career. I have perspectives and insight that I didn’t have before. And I, uh, really wanted to get that into the material that was well intentioned but wasn’t as well seasoned as it is now.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that on top of that, you have spent many years beyond having written those books and teaching the subject to others. And that’s given you a lot of insight, hasn’t it?

John Vorhaus: Back in the day when I wrote the Comic Toolbox, I said, comedy is truth and pain. This was kind of like the, the, the rock upon which my church stood. It’s true. In every comic moment, there’s some human truth that’s available to our understanding and a pain that’s related to that. Let’s say you and I are having technical difficulties on this podcast. The truth is the technology is letting us down and the pain is there’s nothing we can do about it. That if we make jokes on this subject, then we are surfing, if you will, the truth and pain of the, uh, of the moment. And that’s true. But many, many years later it occurred to me, yeah, but also comedy is cruelty. A thing isn’t funny to the person it’s happening to. It’s funny to the people watching. And that’s the whole point of doing it. So comedy is truth and pain. That’s true, but also comedy is cruelty. Now what does this tell us? A couple of things. One is, now I don’t have to have a casual relationship with the truth and pain. I can have a, um, fruitful one. I can say to myself, this character is, in this situation, his truth and pain. He wants the technology to work and it’s letting him down. Okay, comedy is cruelty. How can I make him suffer even more? In other words, how can I take his bad situation and make it much, much worse? Now, as a writer, I’m not just observing the comedy, I’m creating the comedy. And that’s a big deal. The other big deal is as soon as I say to myself, as a comic writer, comedy is cruelty, I suddenly have permission to really use my comedy in one of the main ways it’s meant to be used, which is to attack and destabilize the reality in which other people live. And plus the other power, which is to, uh, uplift people in times of suffering. In other words, if I can show you somebody suffering, but surviving on something that matters to you and make you laugh about it, it makes it easier for you to survive the corollary suffering that you have within yourself. Death, sex, etc.

Steve Cuden: And pretty much everybody feels that their life is some kind of suffering.

John Vorhaus: Exactly. One liner I use. Uh, haven’t had sex in a year. Oh, are you celibate? No, married. The truth and pain. The truth is people don’t have as much sex as they want when they’re married. And the pain is they wish they had more.

Steve Cuden: So you have truth equals pain. And you’ve added cruelty in as a, as an additional thought process. Right?

John Vorhaus: No, comedy equals truth plus pain.

Steve Cuden: I’m sorry, comedy, Right.

John Vorhaus: That’s how you identify what’s funny. And then comedy is cruelty. That’s what you do with what you just found.

Steve Cuden: So let’s take a step a half back. Why, um, could you not have the same thing, be with niceness and peace? Why would that not work in comedy?

John Vorhaus: It can. There’s a lot of comedy that’s just uplifting, heartwarming, but somebody somewhere is suffering. Um, I’ll give you an example. I’m, um, a consultant on a German animation project about a little girl who wants a unicorn but instead gets a pig with a unicorn horn. Gets like the worst possible imaginary friend. There’s, there’s everything in the story is well intentioned. There aren’t bad guys there, there’s not real, there’s not jeopardy. But the little girl is suffering so much because her expectations are being defeated. Reality isn’t giving her what she wants. And the point of the story is for to understand reality is not going to give you what you want. You must accept what reality gives you. So even if the comedy is soft and warm, the storytelling must necessarily put the character under pressure. Otherwise there’s no story.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s boring. If there’s characters are not under some kind of pressure, it quickly grows uninteresting to an audience, I think.

John Vorhaus: Well, yes, because at its heart, a story is, um, an exploration of character change, and pressure is used to catalyze change within a character. Uh, let’s say I’m a widow, widower, living on my own in my little bungalow. I’ve stopped living my life. I’m just waiting to die. But the point of a story about me is not to confirm that it’s okay to wait and die. The point of a story about me is to transform me into someone who’s determined to cross the finish line at full speed. So into the situation, we’re going to bring a catalyst for change, probably, uh, a young woman half his age who’s going to reinvigorate his sense of self, his desire to live, but is going to do it in a way that makes him feel terribly uncomfortable, is going to force him to change and force him to accept change. Otherwise there won’t be enough pressure on him to create the change that the audience wants to see in order to have a satisfying, uh, story experience.

Steve Cuden: Well, the whole. The whole thing from my perspective, is storytelling is something that reveals character in both us and the audience, and that from it, you are growing in some way, some thought process that takes you into another place. Otherwise you’re just spinning wheels. You’re not really doing anything.

John Vorhaus: So, as you said, if story is intended to reveal character, then the actions of the story must do that job. And if the actions of the story don’t destabilize the character in any way, then the character is not challenged. The character’s character is not challenged. No change takes place. No change, no story.

Steve Cuden: All right, so why do you think that the way that you teach this in the book, throughout the whole book, both as. Because you teach it somewhat in stand up as well, but mainly in the sitcom part of it. That’s where we’re getting what we’re talking about. Um, why do you think your methodology and your process on it, and why, how you lay it out, why do you think that works well for comedy writers in particular?

John Vorhaus: For a couple of reasons. One is comedy is scary, and if we can call it creative problem solving instead of being funny, that makes it less scary. And, you know, from all of my books, my approach is rules, tools, and a good swift kick into Motivation certainly is true. True here as well. So my approach says, don’t rely on the magic of creativity. Use creative strategies that achieve your goals. And if you’re playing in a high stakes, high fear environment, like comedy, either on the page or on the screen stage, such an approach has an emotional benefit. Lots and lots of emotional benefit. You feel safer in the work you’re doing, both when you’re writing the jokes, when you’re editing the jokes, and when you’re performing the joke. All of it works better if you view it as creative problem solving rather than, ooh, scary creativity.

Steve Cuden: Well, and you give the reader a lot of tools to use, which is very helpful.

John Vorhaus: That’s the other thing. If the strategies work, and I contest they do, and other people think they do, then the outcomes are going to be better, which is what you want in the first place. Look, uh, I want to be clear about this. The ocean is blue, but it’s also wet. There’s always more than one right answer. Somebody else can come along and achieve the same goal for the reader as I do with a wildly different approach. Um, I mean, they do. Some people take the approach, you know, immerse yourself in the magic of creativity. Don’t worry about structure. Just explore and see what you find. That’s a completely valid strategy. I use it myself. Somebody else might come along and say, um, you are a writer if you start writing at 8am and don’t stop until 5pm and that’s what I want you to do. And that might work for some people as well. That’s not my approach. Everybody finds their own way to their practice.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, there’s no one right way to get to what you’re trying to achieve. And, you know, from when I taught at School for 10 years, taught screenwriting for 10 years at a university in Pittsburgh here called Point Park. Uh, and one thing that I noticed is that sometimes there’d be professors that were teaching different things than I taught but were trying to achieve the same goal. You’re trying to get to the same place. And it took me, you know, a little bit of being thrown off by that in the very beginning to realize, no, there are many, many, many valid approaches, and students should learn all those or as many valid approaches as they can, and then they can pick and choose what works best for them. And your methodology is a way, it’s not the one and only way. Do you think that your book will work well or your books combined will work well for novelists and playwrights, not just sitcom writers?

John Vorhaus: Yeah, uh, yeah, and not just comedy writers, to tell you the truth.

Steve Cuden: True, truly.

John Vorhaus: Right beneath and behind all of this comedy tool craft is the fundamental transformation from I’m somebody who should be in creative practice to I’m somebody who wants to be in creative practice. And I would say that anybody who goes through this material and just does the work that’s. That’s in the book, they’re going to have so much fun with it. Uh, not. Not haha fun. Well, haha fun too, but just this sense of, wow, I really can do this. That they’re going to get what they want more than anything, which is the desire to do the work that overwhelms the fear of doing the work.

Steve Cuden: That’s correct. That’s a huge part of what stops people from getting to where they’re trying to go is they get afraid of. Either they don’t know how to finish it, or they get afraid because they are finishing it. Did you discover anything new while you were finishing the, uh, Comedy Writers Companion? Did you have any unexpected twists and turns that showed up on you?

John Vorhaus: When I got to the last section and I found myself thinking about, what else can I add to the reader’s experience? Based on my experience, the thing that struck me was I finally came to terms with how old I am and how long my perspective is now. What I’ve put into my work now that didn’t exist in my earlier works is the view from here. Uh, I won’t get this quote right, but it’s something like, where you are, I was where I am, you will be. Myself and my audience exist on the same path. We’re just at different places on the path. Because I’m older, I’m further down the path, and from my perspective, further down the path, I see so much more about what that path looks like because it’s all revealed to me in hindsight. Such things as when you’re making the choice, it seems to matter a lot. But in retrospect, you realize it doesn’t matter that much because your path is your path and you’re going to be on it no matter what choices you make. And I think, um, the sense of just relax, be cool with yourself, it’s all going to be okay, is something that I owned, came to own and put into that work.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that someone who is, let’s say, in their early 20s, do you think that they can have that perspective, or do they need to go through life’s experiences in order to get to what you’re talking about?

John Vorhaus: That’s a really good question. When I was that age, I wanted. I read certain types of books that are called head books, books that would enlighten me into the experience of what I was going through. I didn’t have exactly the book that I was looking for, which is why I ultimately wrote the Book of Practice. It’s basically time travel to my younger self. Uh. Ah, a letter to my younger self. If, um, one is on the path and one is aware of oneself on the path, then the mission is growth. I’m not here to be a good writer or a bad writer. I’m here to be a writer who is growing in his practice or her practice. So if somebody comes along and says, From 50 years down the line, don’t worry, relax. It’ll all be okay. I probably want to take that on board because I’m genuinely a seeker. But I probably don’t believe it because I’m only 25 and I don’t trust it.

Steve Cuden: It’s hard to see it when you don’t have it. When you have it, it’s easy to see it.

John Vorhaus: Um, that’s the nature of faith, is it not? Faith is belief in something you can’t see.

Steve Cuden: Truly correct. Uh, but as a young person who is eager and, uh, desirous of having, uh, a big career of some kind or a lot of money or fame or whatever it is they’re desirous of, which, by the way, I think is the wrong way to approach it. You should approach it as, let’s get the work done, and if the fame and the money come, so be it.

John Vorhaus: But.

Steve Cuden: But someone who has that feeling in their 20s, you can tell them that it’s gonna be okay, but you can’t guarantee it because other things can get in the way.

John Vorhaus: Well, you can guarantee it if you redefine what okay means.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s true. But if you keep doing the work, you can guarantee that you will have

John Vorhaus: done the work, and that’s how you’ll end up feeling okay and sitting here at 70. I very much believe that you actually

Steve Cuden: write in the book. And I’ll give you a quota for how to write it out of the book. Quote. Over the course of your career, most of your work won’t work. Close quote. You write that in the book.

John Vorhaus: That’s absolutely true.

Steve Cuden: So explain that further so that someone who is sitting there at 25 or 24 and they’re going, oh, my God, how am I? I’ve written something and nobody’s paying attention to me. Explain.

John Vorhaus: Back in the comic toolbox I described the rule of nine. The rule of nine says for every 10 jokes you try, nine won’t work. This looks like bad news, but when you break it down, you realize it’s quite good news. Because now you don’t have to invest 100% of your ego in one joke. You can spread that ego investment across 10 jokes. And then if the joke doesn’t work, it only hurts a little bit, it doesn’t destroy your entire ego. Now, let’s expand this and look at. Let’s say you’ve just finished a screenplay or a sitcom script or a stand, um, up comedy act. If it’s the only one you have, then you have to put everything you’ve got on it. You have to, you have to stand, uh, upon it and only it. And if it doesn’t work, then you just fall. But if you’ve got five or 10 or 15 or 20 different scripts or acts or whatever, then you’ve got five or 10 or15 or 20 different places to stand. And since the ego investment is so much lower and the craft is getting so much better because you’re doing so much work, over time, it gets easier to do the work and the work gets better. How do we get there? By not over investing in one thing, by spreading our investment, both of craft and of ego, in as many things as we can. If we do that, then we create a platform upon which our creative practice of any kind can stand. Because now we know outcomes don’t matter. All that matters is doing the work. It’s process, not product. And that’s what gets us fruitfully into creative practice.

Steve Cuden: And in addition to that, the fact that you don’t have one script, but 10 or 20 scripts means you’ve done a whole lot of work that has strengthened your abilities.

John Vorhaus: Exactly. So, um, in. In all of my books, I talk about this idea of don’t fear bad outcomes. There’s no such thing as a bad outcome. An outcome is an outcome. It might be useful, it might not be useful. But the point is to create the outcome and then see what it is, not judge yourself positively or negatively for it. I created a good outcome. I’m a good guy. I created a bad outcome. I’m a bad guy. No, I created an outcome which is my job. And having created that outcome, I now go create another outcome, and one after that, another after that.

Steve Cuden: Well, or you’ve created an outcome that nobody is interested in, or they put it down, or they give you, you know, say, this is terrible. Whatever the criticism they have of it, versus if you have 20, probably one or more of the ones that you’ve written or are going to get much better, uh, reactions from people.

John Vorhaus: Yes. And so most of your work doesn’t work speaks to your apprenticeship, which is not something you serve and then leave, but something you’re kind of in your entire life as a writer. You’re creating a body of work with the full understanding that many of the things you create will never see light of day, maybe should never see light of day. And that’s quite okay.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. Absolutely right. One of the related. Another quote of yours from the book is one of my favorite tools is repetition. Well, part of that is repeatedly writing. Not just writing something repetitiously, but the act of writing itself is repetition.

John Vorhaus: I talked earlier about this notion of should I should be writing. We all know this feeling as writers. Oh yes, sometimes I should be writing is driven by, I have a deadline and I got to get the work done. But a lot of times I should be writing is just another way of saying, I fear to be writing. I’m afraid to write. And so the only way I can get myself to do it is to like, guilt myself into doing it by saying, I should be writing. Okay, I’m going to go right. But there’s a concept in, um, nuclear physics called critical mass. I’m sure you’re aware of it. If you have enough of stuff that goes boom and you put it all together, eventually it’ll go boom. And that’s called critical mass. So when I think of this young writer we’re talking about 20, 25 years old, just trying to find her way in the world, she has yet to achieve critical mass. If she creates outcome after outcome after outcome, even if she has to do it by forcing herself by saying, I should be writing. Okay, I am writing. Eventually, the sum of all that practice, the sum of all those outcomes will bring it to a point where she says, hey, I’m not afraid anymore. I can sit down and write and have fun with it and accept the outcomes aren’t always going to be great. But now all of a sudden, I’m where I wanted to be in the first place and in my fricking practice.

Steve Cuden: Well, yeah, that’s, uh. And as I’ve said to many people many times, it is like a muscle. Before we started the show, we were briefly talking about exercise and being, you know, going to the gym or working out with weights or whatever it is. It’s the same thing with writing. You get stronger by doing more writing. And that’s part of the Repetition of it all.

John Vorhaus: It’s also where the buzz lies. And it’s not, uh. This is not to be overlooked. Because if I’m going to be a writer, if I’m going to spend hours a day at my desk knowing full well that most of what I write isn’t going to see light of day, I better get something out of it. And the thing that I get out of it is the joy of creative expression. And if I’m existing in a post AI world where the chances of being a famous writer are diminishingly small, but I have to do it anyhow, because I’m a writer and I can’t get away from that, I better find some satisfaction other than the paycheck, because I can’t count on the paycheck. And this is where once we leave behind the fear of creativity and enter the joy of creativity, this is never a problem because we’re where we want to be and we don’t care about the outcome.

Steve Cuden: I want to talk for a moment about the notion of taboo, things that are taboo, and that you say writers should not be afraid to go too far. Explain that a little further.

John Vorhaus: This I got from, um, a teacher, professor, well, visiting professor I had in college. I was in a copywriting class, advertising copywriting. And he said, famously, go too far. If you go too far, I can always bring you back. But if you don’t go too far, if you don’t have that capacity to go too far, you’re never going to be any use to me. And, uh, I kind of took that on board as my own mantra. If I go too far, and it’s legitimately too far, I can always come back. But how am I going to know what too far looks like if I don’t give myself permission to go there? So when we connect this to taboo, there’s a couple of ways of thinking about taboo. One is an emotional taboo. If I go too far, they’re never going to let me get away with it, and they’re going to hate me for it. And I’m afraid to face their disapproval. Therefore, I’ll play it safe, which is something Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso never thought about, nor should we. Or, you know, uh, Andy Kaufman or Damon Wayans or Chris Rock. Everybody goes too far. Everybody who’s successful goes too far.

Steve Cuden: I would say you have to test that line, don’t you? You’ve got to go there.

John Vorhaus: Well, you have to go there in order to know where it is. And sometimes in order to go there, to quote myself, the Trouble with too far is you never know you’re going till you’ve gone. Uh, but then what? Then, uh. Okay, so that’s emotional taboo. There’s also social taboo. You might be talking about things that the audience does not approve of or does not accept. And so you might, on stage, go too far and lose the audience. That’s no problem. Simply acknowledge you’ve gone too far. Accept the reality that you’re in. Tell the audience, oh, I guess that one didn’t really work, and the audience will give you their loyalty back again. The only way you can lose them and keep them lost is if you go too far and then you don’t acknowledge it because then you’re telling a lie. It’s like there’s a rift in the fabric of space. They get nervous. They can’t. They can’t be your ally anymore, and they feel bad.

Steve Cuden: The thing that immediately comes to mind to me is when a comedian is talking about someone who has recently died, and they do a joke about someone who’s recently died, and they get a groan from the audience and they say, too soon. And that can then work. When I recently heard. I can’t remember who it was, but there was a comedian that was doing a joke about Abraham Lincoln being shot. And the guy, somebody groaned and he said, too soon. I thought that was great.

John Vorhaus: And, uh, the punchline, the joke. Ah, there. What’s the truth in pain? Truth is, you went too far for the audience, and the pain is they’re telling you about it. And that’s revealed in the joke with the words too soon out of context, because, you know it’s Abraham Lincoln. It’s like doing a spoiler alert on Birth of a Nation.

Steve Cuden: So in terms of sitcom writing, you write that, um, there are that. Comic storytelling boils down to two steps. Create a bad situation, make it worse, and then figure out what your character wants and never let him have it. Expand on that. How does that work in a true story? What are you trying to achieve? Is that about setting a goal and not being able to achieve it? Or putting obstacles in the way? Is that what you mean?

John Vorhaus: As you put the question to me, I, uh, realize it’s about setting two goals. Your goal is the writer and the character’s goal in the story. Let me see if I can break it down. We got a teenage girl. She’s got a crush on a boy. What’s her goal? Her goal is to get the attention of the boy. Right. Okay. What’s my goal as the creator of this character in this Situation. It might be. Discover you’re interested in girls. It might be. Don’t ask for more responsibility than you can handle. It might be. And this is what I would go for. Give yourself to the relationship. Because there’s value in giving yourself to relationships, even though they’re problematic. Like, it’s okay to have a crush on a boy. Go for it. That’s what I. That’s my goal for this character in the story. So I know my goal. I want her to go for it and get it. But now I look at what’s her goal? Exactly the same thing. To go for it and get it. But if I let her go for it and get it, as we talked about before, without putting obstacles in her path, then there’s no victory because there’s no change. She has this fantasy idea of what a crush should be. And reality is going to change her mind about what that is, but only if we force her to. Now, I’m already thinking about the story. Beats. Uh, she starts out thinking that this crush is a fantasy romance, like a romance novel. But the first time the guy does something that’s just reality. Farts, let’s say, because farts are never not funny. Uh, now all of a sudden, she’s confronted with the absolute truth. What I thought was a relationship isn’t a relationship. Uh, if I’m going to be this guy’s girlfriend, my God, does that mean I have to accept farts? And if I have to accept farts, what does that say about me? All of a sudden, I’m excited about this story. Why? Because, uh, I figured out what her goal was. I figured out what my goal was and started thinking about ways to advance. Both at the same time?

Steve Cuden: Yeah, it’s both at the same time. You also say in the book that it’s not that a comic character breaks your rules, it’s that they follow their own. Which I thought was a very great way to say it. And that any idea always has at least two. I’m sorry, Any idea is always at least two ideas itself. And the opposite. That sort of relates to what you just said. Isn’t.

John Vorhaus: Don’t. Doesn’t. Um, it. Sure. And in fact, it might be that I get into story development and I say, you know what? I got the wrong ending here. It should be that the relationship doesn’t work. I don’t know why I might say that. But in ending A, the relationship works. In ending B, the relationship doesn’t work. I don’t know which of those is going to be the right story. Yet I have my intention, but I’m going to have to write my way into it to find out. Since I know there’s always more than one right answer. I don’t get hooked on the false idea that I have to have the right answer. I, uh, just have an answer and see where it leads.

Steve Cuden: Well, you correctly write also that judgment kills creativity. And that’s what you’re talking about right now. You need to get it out and figure out whether that’s the ideal solution to the problem or not. But if you judge it in advance, you’re going to stop yourself from getting there in the first place.

John Vorhaus: Mhm. Whether you judge it good or bad. I call this taking yourself off the page. Here’s how I experience it. I’m writing away. I write a joke, it makes me laugh. And now I’m thinking about how great this joke is going to be when it makes other people laugh. And not only that, how much more work it’s going to lead to because it was such a funny joke. And not only that, how it’s going to make me famous because I’m doing all this work and how I’m going to end up on like a talk show talking about this joke and how funny it is and how wonderful my life will be. Okay, the outcome of this is I’m not writing. I’m shining. I’m off the page. Then I go back to the page and I look at the joke again and I say, well, this joke kind of sucks. And then I start thinking about what a bad writer I am because I wrote a joke that I thought was good and now I don’t think it’s good anymore. Now I feel like a complete losing loser. And once again, I’m off the page.

Steve Cuden: And welcome to the classic neurotic writer who sits there and is sitting in judgment of him or herself going, this isn’t working. I’m no good. Then they turn out something and somebody else says, yeah, this works great. And then they have all the accolades and then they turn around and the next thing they know, nobody will hire them. I mean, that’s the neurosis of being a writer.

John Vorhaus: Well, it’s also the fact I discovered when I came to Hollywood that Hollywood has an affinity for, uh, the new. Like, a lot of people were interested in me just because they didn’t know what I could do or couldn’t do. Then as soon as they realized I’m not any better or worse than anybody else, they kind of moved on to the next fantasy.

Steve Cuden: Well, and they also, you uh, know, they’re so used to certain people not playing games with them anymore or not, you know, going along for the ride with them anymore. They want someone else who’s new in that chair who they can maybe push around a little bit. They think. Or in other words, it’s all part of, it’s a personality game, that whole game.

John Vorhaus: Yeah, it’s, it’s the culture that gets passed down. I had, I had some challenges in that culture. I describe it this way. I struck Hollywood a glancing blow. Uh, Hollywood didn’t even notice. One of the things that I found challenging was you, by the way.

Steve Cuden: You and thousands of other people. Exactly.

John Vorhaus: Sure. Yeah. Ah. Um, because they give you a little bit, but they won’t give. No, they’ll give you a little bit. They’ll give you enough to know whether it’s right for you. I do believe that the image I held in my head of Hollywood would not have been right for me. You know, I’m speaking of, uh, a house in Bel Air with a big floor to ceiling picture windows looking out over the, uh, out over the Los Angeles basin. To me, that was what I thought of when I thought of being a Hollywood writer at the pinnacle of success, a made guy. To get to that place, I would have to participated in Hollywood in a way that I was not comfortable with.

Steve Cuden: I understand me either.

John Vorhaus: I only like being in charge. I really don’t like other people being in charge of me. I have a big problem with that. Uh, but fortunately I’ve been able to build a career out of teaching, which is a form of being in charge, and writing, which is a form of being in charge of the self. But I don’t, you know, the elementary school evaluation plays well with others. And I don’t really think I play well with others.

Steve Cuden: So that’s part of why you’re a writer. Because you could sit in a room alone and not be bothered by anybody else, but suddenly you get onto a sitcom on a staff and you have no choice but to collaborate with many other people.

John Vorhaus: Uh, uh, there are other challenges. When I’m writing, I’m happy because I’m writing, but there’s a lot of lot that goes into the job of being a writer. That involves doing things other than writing, of course. Like being on set or pitching to people. Yeah. Uh, so much as I enjoy being a writer, in order to sustain that practice, I have to put myself in situations that I don’t necessarily enjoy.

Steve Cuden: And that’s why you’ve also written novels and why many writers in Hollywood eventually turn to novel writing, A, because they can’t get hired for whatever reason, but B, because they are in control of

John Vorhaus: what’s on the page, which is worth noting. If you’re in television or film and you’re a writer, you are in a collaborative medium. Even if you’re Shonda Rhimes and you’re basically calling the shots, you’re still in a collaborative medium. You can’t do all the jobs, can’t do all the jobs yourself. So again, reality is not going to conform to your expectations.

Steve Cuden: And there are very few people, I mean, we’re talking about little more than a handful of people in all of Hollywood above whom there is no one. So if you’re a Shonda Rhimes, there’s still someone you’re answering to, uh, and

John Vorhaus: someone whose needs have to be met. So if you plan to work in television and film or stand up comedy, to take another example of a place where community is very important, you have to buy into community, otherwise it’s not going to work.

Steve Cuden: Well, let’s quickly talk about stand up, because that’s the third part of the book basically about stand up comedy. What is it? That’s very different. I mean, I think it’s obvious. But let’s talk about it. Between doing standup, which is a solo act most of the time, and unless you’re a team, which is rare, um, but a solo act as a standup comedian versus writing stories and writing uh, screenplays or books, what are the biggest differences?

John Vorhaus: Well, huh, that’s a great question. The emotional risk is much, can, uh, be much greater because you’re putting yourself literally in front of other people and there for them to pass judgment on you.

Steve Cuden: Yes.

John Vorhaus: Yeah, on you. Not on your creativity. On you. If I write a script and I give it to you and you don’t like it, you didn’t like my script and maybe by inference I think you don’t like me. But if I go up on stage and I tell jokes and the audience gives me crickets, it’s pretty clear they don’t like me. Not just my material, but me. They don’t like this guy right here. And so that’s an emotional challenge. Another difference between the two is the nature of the buzz. Uh, we were talking earlier about the buzz of creativity. Like it’s just fun to sit down and write. To me that is a low, uh, uh, low temperature, but long term stimulation. I can be on the creative high as a writer for a long, long time and feel pretty healthy with it. When I’m on stage, it’s a whole different type of buzz. It’s much shorter, it’s much, much more intense. And it hits in completely different ways. And if it sounds like I’m comparing two different experiences of drugs, I literally am, um, because I’m talking about two different neurochemical responses to stimulus. If I’m writing, I’m getting chemically rewarded by my brain for being engaged in an act of creativity. But if I’m on stage, I’m being chemically rewarded by my brain for taking a risk. And those are two very different chemical rewards. I think a lot of what makes a stand up comic, a stand up comic, is the same thing makes a writer a writer or an artist an artist or a musician a musician. It’s just there’s something about this that I can’t say no to. That’s my place, that’s where I belong. And so a lot of people will say to themselves, well, if I’m funny, I should know how to do stand up, because that’s a direct line to an audience. That’s the shortest route to the audience. Write a joke today and tell it tonight. But then if I’m in that environment and I don’t feel comfortable with it, maybe I make the decision that’s not my path. Or if I find I’m quite comfortable with it, then I say, thank God I found my place. But then I also have to be down with community because comedy, stand up comedy in particular, is by definition community driven. You need the community of other comics to put on a show. You need the community of the audience to have a show. And without these things, there is no stand up comedy. You cannot be a loner coming up in stand up comedy.

Steve Cuden: To me, that’s the biggest difference, generally speaking, and I’m being very general now, between stand up comedians and people who call themselves for one, for one way or another, a writer, whether they write comedy or drama or whatever, but the standup comedian has to be willing, has to be comfortable, as you say, to get up in front of others. Where many, many, many humans are freaked out about the idea of getting up in front of a crowd of any kind of, whether it’s a crowd of their family or a crowd in a, in a bar or a restaurant or whatever. Uh, and in the case of a comedian, they have to be willing to get up and literally make fools of themselves in order to succeed. And if you’re not comfortable with that, you, there’s no way.

John Vorhaus: That’s right. And even worse, you have to do it A few times being extremely uncomfortable before you can judge whether you’re comfortable or not. Because by definition you’re not going to be comfortable the first time. Well, you’re.

Steve Cuden: There is no such thing as a comedian who has not bombed. It doesn’t exist. So you have to be willing to put up with the fact that you are going to be disliked very vocally and it’s just no getting around it. So you have to be comfortable with that.

John Vorhaus: But Steve, we were talking about what AI is going to do and what AI is not going to do. As long as there are comedy clubs, as long as there’s a road, you can go on the road as a stand up comic and make a really crappy living.

Steve Cuden: So interestingly that you say that, uh, I have been thinking for some time now AI has the potential to replace the manufacturer, the production of what we call motion pictures, tv, movies, et cetera. But what I think that AI is never going to replace is the thing that’s been around for 27, 2800 years and that’s live theater. And stand up comedy is part of live theater itself. A live act where some human gets up in front, talks to other humans that I don’t think AI is going to replace easily. Now they tried to at Disney World and Disneyland by having Mr. Lincoln stand up and talk to you. And it’s an animatronic, but that’s not the same thing at all. Um, so I just think that’s why AI is never going to succeed 100% though it may get close to it. That’s what I certainly fear. What are some of the questions, qualities that are needed to be a stand up performer beyond the being comfortable in front of others. You list a number of qualities.

John Vorhaus: Whole lot of self awareness for starters. Which means I have to be willing to look at a joke and say that joke doesn’t work and accept that fact and then work to fix it. Because the minute I say the joke works, not because I trust it, but because I’m afraid to change it, then you’re kind of doomed. So you need that. You need a uh, low. I’m m trying to think of a word that’s not the slang word. You need a small nut that doesn’t really tell you what I mean. A low cost of living. Because if you’re going to be a stand up comic, you’re not going to make a lot of money for maybe ever. So you need to have life circumstances

Steve Cuden: that support it, typically at least 10 years to develop a real comedian that works typically around 10 years. You write in the book that you need a sharp wit, sense of humor to have a bent perspective, good work habits, talent, knowledge, drive, attitude, stamina, timing, honesty, insight, and more and more you go on and on. But those I plucked out as those qualities that I think stand out in sharp contrast to someone who thinks, oh, there’s nothing to it, I’m a funny person. My friends think I’m funny. I can just get up and start talking and I’ll be funny. That’s not the way it works, is it?

John Vorhaus: Well, that’s the way it works the first time. That’s how you, you get, you make that giant six inch step, climb from the audience to the stage. Screw it, I’m just going to throw it out the window and see if it lands. You know, maybe I’m um, I’m a little drunker than usual and give it a try. What’s going to happen in those first five minutes? Two things for sure. Something’s going to work and it’s going to make you feel completely high and something’s not going to work and it’s going to make you feel completely low. Both of those two things will happen and they will change your world. Because if the high is good enough, if you say to yourself, I want more of this and then I need more of this, then you’re down the road. Then it’s a question of, do you have the stamina, the stick to itiveness, the community, the sharpness of wit, the willingness to change. All of those things that you just read out. If you have those things or you can develop them, then you can build a career. But if the low is so shockingly bad that you just never want to be there again, then you live your life like a normal person and you never worry about it again.

Steve Cuden: Well, you go back and you become a writer and work in your room alone again.

John Vorhaus: Work in your room alone. Exactly. Make the music you make. This is something that I thought of back when I was a singer songwriter. In the early first stage of my career. I wanted to rock, but I couldn’t rock. I’m not a rocker, I’m a folkie. I was at the time. And so I just said to myself, you know what? Don’t worry about the music you can’t make. Make the music you make. So if we’re talking about someone who is trying to figure out, do I want to be a stand up, do I want to write sitcom, do I want to write screenplays or comic novels, all of these things need to be explored. And then the fruits of that exploration simply need to be accepted. This is where I seem to be happy. This is where I seem to be good. I should probably put my energy there. This kind of makes me miserable. Maybe I don’t want to put my energy there, even though my ego tells me I should. This is the way we find ourselves or find our way through life. And guess What? Sitting on 70, I’m prepared to say, don’t worry, it’ll all work out.

Steve Cuden: Well, it does all work out, especially if you keep at it. Uh, one of the things at ucla, where I went to graduate school, that they told us, which is true. I mean, it’s a truism, which is the only people who definitely will not succeed in show business are the ones that don’t keep at it. Uh, so you have to keep at it. If that’s your passion, if that’s what you want to do, you have to keep at it. Well, I’ve been having just the most marvelous third time conversation now with John Vorhaus and we’re going to wind the show down just a little bit. You’ve already told us quite a number of amusing, uh, stories within this particular episode. But I’m wondering, are you able to share with us any other stories that are either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?

John Vorhaus: In 2007, 2008, I was working in Russia. I was running the writing staff of the Russian version of Married with Children, which was Trip and a Half. As you can imagine, imagine Russia at the time was a real wild west. There was a lot going on. This was after the fall of communism, but before Putin. So it was like that five minutes of freedom that they never had before. So there was a lot of chaos and a lot of, um, I want to say Russian ness taking place. And I got a real taste of it that I’ve never forgotten. One day I’m going to say it’s 2008, just before the economic crisis. Crisis, because that changed everything. At that time, you couldn’t find studio space in Moscow. There were not enough sound stages for the production that was being done. It was just, it was on fire. And Married With Children was supposed to go into production in six weeks and we didn’t have a space. And so the, the, uh, line producer took me to the. What was going to be our space. And it was a, it was a former. This is true. I’m not making this up. It was a former munitions factory. And in that sense it was a really, really good place to shoot a TV show, because those were some thick walls you really didn’t have. You could throw some blankets on there and your soundproofing would be solved. Plus no windows, obviously. Good security, A lot going for it. But here’s what it didn’t have. Plumbing, electricity, or a floor. I walked into this facility, and it’s a dirt floor with pieces of rebar coming up and exposed, bare wires here and there, and then plumbing fixtures, uh, where a bathroom might or might not go. And I just kind of looked at the thing aghast, and I said, this is going to be ready in six weeks. And the guy said, uh, no problem. And I said, in America, we couldn’t pull permits for this job in six weeks. He said, what is permit? And that’s when I realized I was in a different work environment.

Steve Cuden: Well, you had, I assume, had hoped that you would turn out something that was not yet another bomb that was

John Vorhaus: not, uh, very good. Very good. I would sabotage it if necessary. It turns out it completely didn’t happen because when the world global economic crisis of 2008 happened, it was in the fall of the year. The price of oil fell through the floor. And when it did, the Russian economy fell with it. Now, the special circumstance of the Russian economy at that time, it was a boom economy with a lot of, uh, extra cash floating around that could lubricate all of the payoffs and graft and corruption that needed to take place. You always had to pay somebody, something for everything, which is great when the price of oil is high, but the price of oil is low. There’s not enough loose cash in a system for a highly inefficient, friction, heavy economy to work. They canceled Married With Children overnight. I stayed on and developed other projects because I was working for Sony and they had already promised to pay me. I guarantee that munitions factory never became a studio.

Steve Cuden: That’s just a totally different way to look at the production of entertainment than we do here in America. I mean, it’s just utterly different. Well, you’ve given us so many tips throughout this whole show. I’m gonna kind of gloss over it in this particular episod and then ask you what else you have going on. What are you working on now?

John Vorhaus: I’ve just written a book that I didn’t write, and, uh, let me explain. Uh, a hundred years ago, there was a young woman who was determined to go to sea. And she traveled the world in the 1920s on tramp steamers and sailing ships as a single woman all by herself. In a time when women were not Doing this, needless to say, 50 years later she wrote her memoir. But it wasn’t widely produced. It was handful of copies for family and friends and it kind of sank without a trace, one might say. Now in 2026, only three copies of this book are known to exist. But I have one because this woman is my great aunt and I actually was one of the people who encouraged her to write her memoir. Way back when she wrote it, I had a copy. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for 40 years, gathering guilt. But now, thanks to digital tools and AI, among other things, I translated it back from print version into. I had it scanned in ocr, uh, and got an editable text. And I’ve edited it and prepared it for publication. And so this is at, uh, almost 90,000 words. It’s longer book than I normally write, but the challenge for me has been to edit somebody else’s material. But the joy of this is something that’s opened up a whole new experience for me because now I’m a custodian of something bigger than myself or different from myself. As writers, we become very self indulgent over time. We’re very self oriented, self obsessed, one might say. But this woman wrote a message in a bottle and cast it loose on a sea of time. And now it’s bobbing along and its future hangs by a slender thread. If I don’t capture this message in a bottle and take out its contents and lovingly repackage them for further travel through time, put it in a better bottle, tighter sealed, and throw it back out on the sea of time. It’s done, it’s gone forever. And I’m really happy to be taking a moment, a moment, a year of my life to bring to life something that would have no chance of living it were it not for me. It’s a different way of thinking about legacy.

Steve Cuden: It is, uh, it’s a wonderful thing that you’re doing. I mean, I do think about my legacy. I’m sure you think about your legacy and what we’re leaving behind. And that’s, I think part of what artists and creators are doing is you are attempting to leave something of Yuba behind because, you know, we’re not going to be here forever. And then the question then becomes, over a really long period of time, what is actually left. I thought about that a lot recently about the notion of there are. If you think about it, there are extremely few people over the course of hundreds of years or thousands of years who are remembered. There are just a tiny Number of people who wind up being remembered. But we’re all trying to achieve, or I shouldn’t say all, but many people are trying to achieve, uh, the sense of not immortality but that there’s something of you that remains and I think that’s what you’re doing for your great aunt.

John Vorhaus: Yeah, I have some thoughts on legacy. I’ll try and make them quick. Uh, to me legacy is not what happens in the future. It’s happening right now. Everything that I do contributes to my legacy and the act of making it contribute to my legacy is the creation of that legacy. But I’m in a special circumstance because I wrote the Comic Toolbox and that book’s going to be making money for somebody long after I’m dead, buried and gone. It’s got 30 years in and it’s not going away. It’s like uh, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Comic writers are going to be finding their way to that book for a long time. I feel confident. So I have a carrier wave that will take the rest of me into the future. One might say nothing I’ve done has the impact of the Comic Toolbox by far and away, but it’s there and it’s real. So, so my legacy, my legacy exists. But everybody who creates legacy must be in the now. If I’m a parent, the legacy I’m creating is forming my children to be good people and create legacy of their own. That’s a job for now, that’s not a job for after I’m debt. If I’m building a company, my legacy is all of these people are going to be employed who wouldn’t have been employed if not for me. But I’m not doing it for then, I’m doing it for right now. Uh, and again when we ask ourselves why are we doing this? It has to pay off in the moment or we simply won’t do it. If I say to myself, well, I’m going to write this but I don’t care if anybody reads it until after I’m dead, maybe you would. I’m never going to write that because I can’t care enough about it. But if I say to myself I’m going to write this because I want to have a fabulous day as a working writer, as someone who practices his craft and in so doing I’m going to deepen my self understanding and expand my legacy. That’s what I’m here for.

Steve Cuden: Well, I completely agree with you and I did not mean to imply that uh, we’re writing in an attempt to have a legacy. I’m saying that as you continue to create and you build a body of work of some kind, you look back and go, oh, here is something that I am leaving behind. Uh, and the question is, does it have any longevity or not? You won’t know. You won’t be here.

John Vorhaus: Here’s another way to think about it. I got an email today from a first time reader of the comic Toolbox. I get them from time to time and basically he said, thank you for taking a hard thing and making it easy. And, um, I’ve gotten emails like that over time. They’re very rewarding to me. But if you want to know what legacy is, it’s right there. It’s my ideas getting into that person’s brain so that he can do what he wants to do a little bit better than he was doing it before.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, I’m not, don’t want to brag, but we’re talking about this idea, uh, of what are you leaving behind? And clearly I’ve left, I’ve done something that’s going to be behind and that’s one musical called Jekyll and HYDROME and then 90 cartoons that I think will be watched by kids for generations to come. So I’ve left stuff behind that has my name on it. I, uh, won’t be here to enjoy other people enjoying it. But it’s a nice, it’s a nice thought that something that I’ve done actually has some time left in it.

John Vorhaus: It’s sustaining you in the now.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it because you’re going back to what you’re talking about. It is sustaining me in the now. Even if I’m not here, it’s still sustaining me in the now.

John Vorhaus: It’s still sustaining you in the now. Can I quickly tell you the difference as a joke between a legend and an old fart?

Steve Cuden: Sure.

John Vorhaus: Uh, you live long enough, you become an old fart. Live longer still, you become a legend. You’re still an old fart. Only now you have historical significance.

Steve Cuden: And that doesn’t stink.

John Vorhaus: And that doesn’t stink.

Steve Cuden: John Vorhaus This has been an absolutely wonderful third episode, as I say again, of having you on story, uh, beat. And I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy and all this wonderful wisdom and carry on writing, sir.

John Vorhaus: It’s always my pleasure. As long as you. As we’re live, we’ll keep doing it.

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 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, radio, TuneIn, and many others. Uh, until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.