R.J. Stewart spent more than 20 years as a writer and producer in Hollywood. He got his first break writing for the NBC romantic-detective drama, Remington Steele that starred Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist. He’s best known for developing, writing and producing Xena: Warrior Princess (starring Lucy Lawless), once the highest-rated television show in syndication. Among his other Hollywood credits are movies like The Rundown, starring Duane “The Rock” Johnson, Major League 2, starring Charlie Sheen, and the TV series Cleopatra 2525. He’s also worked on projects with Kevin Costner, Rebecca De Mornay and James Garner.“Putting yourself on the page is what’s going to make your writing special. You know, there’s billions of screenplays and now with the self-publishing world, so many novels out there. So how do you individuate your book, your screenplay? Where it really works I think is when you take real life experience, but then apply imagination to it and make it something very appealing and universal.”
~R.J. Stewart
Recently, R.J. published the terrific post-apocalyptic thriller, Crazy Hawk, which I’ve read and can tell you is a fantastically action-packed dystopian western set in an inhospitable American future. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Crazy Hawk, and highly recommend it to you.
WEBSITE:
R.J. STEWART TV, MOVIES AND BOOKS:
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Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:
R.J. Stewart: Putting yourself on the page is what’s going to make your writing special. You know, there’s billions of screenplays and now with the self publishing world, so many novels out there. So how do you individuate your book, your screenplay? Where it really works, I think is when you take real life experience, but then apply imagination to it and make it something very appealing and universal.
Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative 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 StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, R.J. Stewart, spent more than 20 years as a writer and producer in Hollywood. He got his first break writing for the NBC romantic detective drama Remington Steele that starred Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist. He’s best known for developing, writing and producing Xena Warrior Princess starring Lucy Lawless, once the highest rated television show in syndication. Among his other Hollywood credits are movies like the Rundown starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Major League 2 starring Charlie Sheen, and the TV series Cleopatra 2525. He’s also worked on projects with Kevin Costner, Rebecca De Mornay and James Garner. Recently, RJ published the terrific post apocalyptic thriller Crazy Hawk, which I’ve read and can tell you is a fantastically action packed dystopian western set in an inhospitable American future. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Crazy Hawk and highly recommend it to you. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a great privilege for me to have RJ Stewart as my guest on Story Beat today. Rj, welcome to the show.
R.J. Stewart: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
Steve Cuden: It’s a great pleasure to have you. So let’s go back in time just a little bit. When did you become first interested in this thing called show business and creating it? When did that start for you?
R.J. Stewart: Well, uh, the very first thing was my father’s, the great love of movies. Uh, my dad was a sergeant, the Air Force, uh, didn’t even go to high school. He got his gad but one thing he had an extremely sophisticated aptitude for was movie. He was a movie critic from way back when.
Steve Cuden: Right.
R.J. Stewart: And so I was watching, uh, Marx Brothers, uh, Night at the Opera with him, watching him just laugh so hard. And my mother was similar. She also did not go to high school, but she took me to Charlie Chaplin movies at the Sorero Playhouse in, uh, Phoenix, Arizona, when where he was stationed at, uh, Luke Air Force Base.
Steve Cuden: Right.
R.J. Stewart: Uh, so they gave me this love of movies, certainly. And then television, of course. Uh, you know, I grew up in an era where television was becoming king. Right. It’s hard to communicate with younger people today. What a big deal TP was in the 50s, know, because now it’s just, just there, you know.
Steve Cuden: Now it’s on your phone.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, yeah. It’s a tool to enjoy your streaming, you know, or your video games and stuff. But at one point it was a gateway, uh, into this unique world, you know, Warer Brothers. And you remember those names from when they were from Warner Brothers studio in Hollywood. That was so exotic. So I grew up a fanboy for Hollywood stuff. Well, also, when I was a kid, I want to give my dad a lot of credit here. Cause he would tell me stories based on the cartoon characters that I liked. And he would make them up as he went along. When he went on to TDY on toro duty a couple of times, he would write me short stories based on the characters, the Mickey Mouse characters. So Goofy came in and shir Mickey’s hand. And then they both said, you know, I’m saying. And then I also love the Peanuts cartoons. So, uh, he would write me a story about Charlie Brown and Lucy and Schroeder and stuff. And then he daringly, this is how I imagining he would cross the two worlds. He’d have Charlie and the Mickey Mouse world sometimes, and Mickey Mouse in the Charlie world, you know. So he’d be telling me a story about, uh, Charlie and Schroeder and says, and then Mickey Mouse comes in chasing Stoopy, you know, that kind stuff.
Steve Cuden: Your dad was a storyteller then and he liked to make stuff up.
R.J. Stewart: He absolutely was. He just loved doing it. He had neither the, uh, education or the opportunity or the vision to see himself as a writer. He wanted to teach after he retired from the Air Force, but that required a lot more education than he had. And he ended up going back into a civil service to do. But anyway, yeah, ah, uh, he was a wonderful storyteller.
Steve Cuden: When did you start making up stories then?
R.J. Stewart: I was, uh, 14. Let’s say I was obsessed with the novels of Alastair McLean, who I’m sure you remember.
Steve Cuden: Sure, absolutely.
R.J. Stewart: Many, many novels. Uh, famous one that was made into a movie was Guns of Navarn. At that time I was my devastation in Greece, on Crete and uh, my teacher was a guy named Mr. Sayuda. And he said, I’ll give you extra credit if you write a short story, okay? And he said, you know, four pages all I’m asking. So I write an Alistair McLean kind of story and turn it in. I’ve found some of those stories, by the way, that I wrote but I didn’t find that one. I’m not sure how. How good it was. Probably wasn’t pret good, but he read it to the class. When it was done, uh, he read two or three of the stories he room that convinced me that I was you Shakespeare. And so every week I would write a new short story for him and turn it in. And after a couple weeks, he said, you understand I’m not giving you extra credit for all these stories. I said, that’s okay, you know, and I kept writing them in. He read some of them. I think at a certain point he was just saying, you know, he would just than thank you. You know, he was nice about it, but I don’t think he. He was waiting anxiously for my, uh, story. So from then on, I started thinking myself as a writer.
Steve Cuden: And this was about how old, how old were you then?
R.J. Stewart: I was about, I’d say 14, probably.
Steve Cuden: Oh, so you were just a kid. You weren’t m. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Got it.
R.J. Stewart: I. The play. In college, I went to Arizona State University, and one of my jobs was their, uh, summer job was teaching Indians at the Indian school. It was a different era. They used that term Indian. And I got to know the Indians quite well. And I wrote a play called Even the Eagle Dies that was produced at Arizona State University. And, uh, I got to see it done. So, you know, every step of the way I got encouragement that, you know, maybe I can do this.
Steve Cuden: And it was interesting and fun for you, I assume.
R.J. Stewart: It was interesting, fun. I always thought it was work, though. I still think of that as work. You know, the old days was the blank page, and now it’s the. It’s the blank, uh, screen. I was going to find it work, but writing first drafts, or in this case a novel that I self published, didn’t have to go through editing or, uh, I used a copy editor, if you know what.
Steve Cuden: A copy editor, sure, absolutely.
R.J. Stewart: But didn’t have any creative editing. And that was very liberating. Yet that adds another level of pressure is like, I got to be, um, my own, um, uh, judge. And although my wife helps out those.
Steve Cuden: We’ll talk a lot more about Crazy Hawk shortly. But I want to go through a couple of things. First, especially about TV and that era for you, when did you start to write screenplays? How did you even get into that?
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, okay, good question. I moved to Hollywood originally as an actor. Okay. I told you that I taught the Indians, uh, or the Native Americans, the indigenous people. I taught them, uh, creative dramatics. Well, the reason I was in that is I was in the theater acting. Right. I did write a play, they got produced. But other than that I thought of myself as an actor. So when my wife and I, uh. I’ve been married to the same woman for 52 years, by the way.
Steve Cuden: Wow.
R.J. Stewart: Uh, so when we moved to uh, Hollywood, I was going there as an actor, uh, but I had writing in the back of my head, uh, certainly. And uh, didn’t make it as an actor. And I started writing first with a partner named Richard Breen, uh, Jr. Whose father actually won the Academy Award for the original Titanic, the uh, Robert Wagner version of the Titanic back in the day.
Steve Cuden: Right.
R.J. Stewart: So he had some Showbiz connections. And so that got me kind of excited and we wrote a couple of things together. Nothing got made and so I started, uh, writing. I was at that time a teamster making a living delivering stuff around Los Angeles, a lot of Hollywood stuff. Because actually I have Hollywood stories about that. Running into Clint Eastwood and stuff. But while I was there on that job, I decided to write a screenplay about a driver who’s trying to find himself and you know, very much about my life. Sure, right. I was a character in it, obviously. My wife was, my stepson, Mike was. And people loved it. I uh, got an agent and that agent gave it to. Of course, you know, whenever you tell this story, it always sounds like it happened in five minutes. But it happened over, you know, a couple years. The agent gave. Gave the script to Glenn Carn, who was, uh, a supervising producer on Showok called Reming of Steel.
Steve Cuden: And he hired me and he eventually went on to create Moonlighting.
R.J. Stewart: Exactly, exactly. I’m, uh, unfortunately not associated with that story.
Steve Cuden: But, uh, no, but he was working on Remington Steel.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, uh, that was a wonderful experience for me that first year. That was a terrific show. You got to meet Pierce and uh, Stephanie Zimbalist and it was wonderful being around that kind of stuff. Learned so much from Michael Gleon, who is the executive producer and Glenn, Karen moved so much for him.
Steve Cuden: Well, it’s very important that we talk about the fact that you didn’t go to school to learn how to Be a screenwriter. You just did it.
R.J. Stewart: I just did, yeah. I went to be an actor.
Steve Cuden: How important do you think it was to your screenwriting that you had acting training and that you were thinking that.
R.J. Stewart: Way in the sense we did a lot of good plays at Arizona State, like Williams Oryan and we Bombed a New Haven by Joseph Heller. I have a good ear. Of fact, I used to call it, you’re a good thief. You can remember dialogue and it stays in there, and you. You mix it up. Uh, you. You. Obviously you don’t use the exact dialogue you’ve heard before, but it sort of stimulates new dialogue. And so, uh, I had a good ear for good dialogue. And then, you know, my background in reading a lot of adventure novels and stuff had given me a good story sense.
Steve Cuden: So you were a deep reader as well then?
R.J. Stewart: Oh, yeah. One advice I give to young people. Yeah, of course read screenplays and of course read the genre you like. If you’re writing novels, read genre novels and that, but also read great literature. And, ah, it’s not that you’re going to be Joseph Conrad or Jane Austen or Tolstoy. It’s that you learn what they did and you can be ambitious that way.
Steve Cuden: Well, you want to always be the best. You. You’re not going to be somebody who’s already lived.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from, uh, to Steel, I was telling you, I learned so much. It was created by Michael Gleason and Bob Butler. Michael Gliesis was the executive producer, the head writer. And, uh, the way they ran their story sessions is always the way I ran story sessions from then. I learned that from them. They’d have a whiteboard up. Uh, they’d split it into four, uh, acts, you know, four columns, which each column would represent the act, and then you’d fill out the scenes as you go along, and then the writer would go off and write the script. Uh, that’s how I did it.
Steve Cuden: Um, Zena, so you’re a believer in. Let’s call that outlining for the sake of a better word, but putting it up on the board. You know, early days they would call it story boarding.
R.J. Stewart: Y.
Steve Cuden: But in fact, you were outlining, you were setting the story out.
R.J. Stewart: Absolutely.
Steve Cuden: Did you outline your book as well? And we’ll get more to the book shortly. But I’m just curious if that was your same process.
R.J. Stewart: Not so much with the book. Matter of fact, at first I started out just what’s the next scene? That’s what I would do I sit down and what’s the next scene? I got to about, I’d say 100 pages. And I realized this is going to be a thousand pages long. I need a structure for this. So I threw out a lot of that stuff, which is frequently what you have to do uh, in a much more, uh, jetline or uh, speeded up way. In Hollywood with screenplays, you got more time. When you’re writing a novel you plan to publish yourself, that’s a luxury you have. Then I started structuring it. I’d say structured it. I didn’t outline it because. Because I wanted to be able to explore things that this would come to me as it go along. And I think novels that are overly outlined become a little bit pat. A novel is such a commitment of time compared to, for instance, know, when somebody sends me a screenplay, I usually read it over weekend. When I first send the novel out to friends, particularly friends in the business, I kind of waited. They’re going to respond over the weekend. But it’s a novel.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, no, it’s a novel. It’s going to take them days or weeks.
R.J. Stewart: Then the reactions started coming in from Liz Freeman and Bob Goomer and Chris Mannheim and Paul Coyle and people. And they really love the book and it was very encouraging. But we’ve jumped ahead a bit. So, uh. The outline. Yeah. I think in screenwriting the reason why you need to be disciplined is you have to be economic. You can’t afford the rambling, the charming side, uh, uh, trip that you might do in a novel. I mean, you can overdo that in a novel too. Of course. Screenwriting is about economy, economy, economy, economy, economy. I think you definitely need out what you just call an outline, storyboard, whatever. You need that when. And also too, the deadlines are so ferocious. In television in particular, if you did, you know, I told you I threw out part of my novel and started over again. You do that a couple of times in a season. With, uh, screenwriting, you’re way behind on.
Steve Cuden: Scripts and you’re probably out of work is what you probably are.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. And when you send a writer off, uh, to write the outline you’ve given them, there’s a chance that the script they turn in, particularly freelancers, may not hit it. So therefore I got to write it and I want the outline to work, you know, so I can. I can write within the outline rather than reinvent the whole thing.
Steve Cuden: Sure. So, uh, let’s talk for a moment then about Crazy Hawk. I think it’s really outstanding. It was a lot of fun to read. And it just crackled along and that’s the way you want it to be. And I could kind of tell from reading it if I had not known your background at all, I would have thought that this is someone that has maybe been in the screenwriting business because it is fairly economical the way you write it. Tell the listeners what it’s actually about because I barely touched the surface of it. Tell us the story a little bit.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, we meet, uh, the main character, Deir Drun, also, AKA Crazy Hawk. She’s on the trail of the men who kidnapped her sister. And that’s bad news for those men because she is a very formidable soldier from a tribe called Hussard.
Steve Cuden: The way you’ve written or you don’t want to mess with her, that’s for sure.
R.J. Stewart: Y And so, uh, the world is, you know, I deliberately leave it vague of how many years have passed because they’ve lost track of the time. They’re trying to figure out, matter of fact, and when I say they, and particularly Deirder, uh, what the world was like before the breakdown that brought the post apocalyptic world, uh, into existence. But, uh, she’s fascinated with the world she’s riding her horse through. Uh, very few, uh, fossil fuel vehicles are still functioning. The, uh, world she’s riding her horse through is the world that Stepen RJ Live in. The ruined world, uh, our world ruined. And so she’s slowly but surely learning about what the world was before the breakdown. And in the process of that, she meets a guy named Jub who is a, uh, photographer, uh, and has found enough things to be able to produce digital photos. And that makes him like a very employable guy because nobody, you know, people want that. And, uh, they traveled together and that results in a love story. But a lot of it is about her relentless pursuit to find the people who took her sister so A, she could save her sister and B, wreak revenge on these guys.
Steve Cuden: You could have written this in a way today. You could have written it in another country. You could have written it in all kinds of places. You chose the Southwest of the United States of America in a dystopian apocalyptic future. What was your reasoning behind that? Why I grew up in.
R.J. Stewart: Well, I shouldn’t. I grew up. I mentioned earlier that my, uh, uh, my father was stationed at, uh, Luke Air Force Base, right in Arizona. I loved Arizona History West History. Uh, so I really identified with Arizona. I went to college in Arizona State. I actually graduated from Florida International. But I got a lot of credits in Arizona State, uh, and then of course I’ve lived in the show business. Requires you to live in Southern California. When I was done with show business, I retired and I bought a nice horse ranch here in San Diego county. And uh, have fallen in love with this era. So it’s an areas geographical areas that I no relate to, but more importantly love. I’m passionately in love with this part of the world.
Steve Cuden: But why said it in the future that has been decimated, why not write it today?
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, excellent question. When I was uh, in college, I read a book called A Canticle for Leibboitz. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.
Steve Cuden: I’ve heard the title. Who wrote that?
R.J. Stewart: Walter Miller. Walter Miller, okay. Only novel. He started a sequel and then died while he was writing the sequel. Oh boy, it’s it and Earth Abides, uh, by George Stewart, uh, are usually considered the two seminal post apocalyptic novels. Now remember, Brave New World and 1984 are dystopian novels but they’re. I don’t know if you call them post apocalyptic.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, I don’t think so.
R.J. Stewart: What was the apocalypse? You know, a bad governance. What was the apocalypse?
Steve Cuden: It’s just another society, but it’s dystopian for sure.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. And uh, in that I love the idea that there’s uh. We’ll tell you too much, uh, but the. It opens on uh, a monk living in an isolated area. By the way, this is in the deep future. This is like hundreds of years after a nuclear war has wiped out the world that was in the 50s. And he finds a fallout shelter that’s pristine, that’s in great shape. And he starts to construe what the world was before the nuclear war. It’s just a small segment of this novel, a candle called Leibboitz. Well, that fascinate me. And I’ve been thinking about that for years. So this is something, uh, wanting to take my own shot at a futuristic world that tries to figure out who we are. Because what you can do there is you have the fun of creating the new world, the post apocalyptic world, at the same time making a commentary on our world. Because she’s learning what our world is. For instance, the cloud. She’s fascinated about what the cloud is. Uh, she doesn’t quite understand it. Her and Jub talk about it and she says, uh, he asked, um, was it a real cloud? She says I don’t think so. But it was in the sky. It something with satellites. But anyway, they stored everything and all the Information in the cloud. Her knowledge that that’s what happens on so much data is it got lost when the cloud disappeared. That books and uh, DVDs and cds are so valuable because at a certain point and in real life we’re going to stop having as many books and as many uh, DVDs because everything will be accessible in the cloud.
Steve Cuden: When you say we stop having more books, you’re talking about the physical thing called a book.
R.J. Stewart: Not. Yeah, yeah, yes, that’s what I mean. Yes. What I mean. Yes, yes, yes. I was just in Barnes and Noble the other day and nothing to worry about. We got plenty of book.
Steve Cuden: No, no, lots of books still out there. I do have a feeling that at some point it will be more or less coffee table and specialty books. Yeah, not so much basic good old fashioned novels and mysteries and so on. I’m just curious, where was the inspiration for Deirdre? How did you come up with her? And by the way, it’s very interesting to me because you also developed Xena Warrior Princess and so she was also a very strong fighting woman. And here you’ve also created another character who’s a strong fighting woman.
R.J. Stewart: Keep in mind where my career started too. And Remy Castil reminds you of what the original premise of reming Caillel was is that Laura Holt is this great detective, but the Piccoa prejudice against hiring a female private eye. She decides to have a front, uh, to hire a man and give him a fake name, Remington Ste. He’ll be the front for the agency and so she’ll get to work. She’ll of course solve the cases but he gets to be the front. And that first year he was written as a brilliantly comic character. Glenn KN in particular wrote him wonderfully that way. My point is, I started off my career writing for a dynamic woman, strong.
Steve Cuden: Female lead, empowered woman.
R.J. Stewart: When I went back to my dad being station in Crete and uh, Back to Alistan Mc McLean and Gunsson Averone. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie lately, but had Irene Pappas, the Greek actress played a resistance fighter with a submachine gun. Um, and the short haircut, I mean she was brilliant. And she’s gorgeous by the way. When I was in cre she was on every bus stop and buses and stuff of that beautiful woman with the short hair, a short haircut there. I think it was because she was doing a lot of Greek plays and um.
Steve Cuden: So you think of your specialty then perhaps as empowered women.
R.J. Stewart: I always thought of that. I was really always Thought of myself as that, uh, you know, I’m surrounded by women I admire to my wife in particular is someone I have great admiration for. So, uh, when it got to, uh, well, I want to write a novel, I said to myself one day and uh, started playing with things. It just seemed, given my background, given what I’m known for, given my propensity towards writing strong women and the fun of writing a character like Deirdre.
Steve Cuden: But you also managed to put in a very solid love story into it. You have romance in it going back to sort of Remington Steel a little bit.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Where you have a romantic liaison between them that’s very deep. And so is that something that you thought was important in terms of the way that the story laid out or was it something as an afterthought that got pushed in?
R.J. Stewart: No, I always saw it as uh, a. There would be a love interest for her. Now how I did. I told you that I started at one point and then threw a lot of stuff out. I had that. That she knew the guy for like, right. You know, 100 pages before I even got to the romantic part, you know. But, uh, you know, I decided, no, I got to start that little earlier. And then I, you know, you know how the book starts is that she. She and him are in conflict. And then she decides it’s to her, uh, advantage to get information out of him, so warms up to him. Uh, and from there it starts to happen.
Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the start of so many great romantic movies, whether they’re romantic comedies or romantic dramas. It starts off with your two lead characters. Not a particularly meet cute as the phrase is, but kind of like that where they are at odds before they actually fall for each other.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. And that’s big. Although I do suggest in that scene where uh, uh, I describe him trying to get to sleep the day he met, that he’s already kind of in love with her because. And this is a place where on the trail, he doesn’t really have much contact with women and his wife has been killed in a, uh, catastrophe. So he’s really open to it. Where she fights it. She does not want to fall in love with. She’s on a mission to get her sister back. She doesn’t have room for this in her life. But.
Steve Cuden: But nature takes its course.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. I don’t want to get away too much. But they definitely get separated.
Steve Cuden: They definitely get separated. And that’s part of the joy of, you know, how we get to the resolution of the whole story.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So you have it that Crazy Hawk, the story of Crazy Hawk is that America has been broken by this civil war in the distant past. It’s not been reason at all.
R.J. Stewart: Well, in a way, it’s still going on. It’s still going because the tribal warfare that you’re seeing.
Steve Cuden: Right.
R.J. Stewart: Is like that civil war just kept break breaking down into smaller and smaller conflicts.
Steve Cuden: Sure. And not unlike a lot of what’s happened for our civilization as a whole over time there are long term conflicts between peoples. I’m just curious, do you think of the story as a cautionary tale?
R.J. Stewart: Uh, yes, and I hope, I suggest there’s a, you know. Well, of course, one of the things that I don’t want to give too much away about the book, but, uh, it’s a cautionary tale, but there’s some hope in it. I hope I leave some hope.
Steve Cuden: I think you do. I think you definitely do. So I’m also curious. I know that you have a one eyed horse, is that right?
R.J. Stewart: I did. He died in 2021.
Steve Cuden: Okay. Sorry to hear that.
R.J. Stewart: 20 years. 20 wonderful years. Yes.
Steve Cuden: But you have this fantastic horse in the story named Danny.
R.J. Stewart: On my website, hvartist.com you can see me riding Dany.
Steve Cuden: Oh, is that right?
R.J. Stewart: Y. Yes, trail riding. You know, that’s what I did mostly. My wife went out with a camera one day and just took lots of pictures and lots of film.
Steve Cuden: And so that was the inspiration for this horse for Danny in the story.
R.J. Stewart: Absolutely. Danny is a, uh, palomino. But I always think you should fictionalize something if something about characters you don’t want to. I think it’s good for your imagination if you’re too disciplined with imitating, uh, reality. Uh, I mean, I’m sure, you know, Toulai can do that. But you know, when you’re writing, uh, imaginative stuff, you should fictionalize everything a little bit. Even this valley, which is Husser Valley. In the book, the valley I live in. I fictionalized it to certainly said some of the geography.
Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the old phrase, uh, write what you know.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The real life Danny was palomino. I made the horse in the book of Buckscape.
Steve Cuden: Well, I don’t think the reader would know it one way or another or be affronted by it. It was just a way for you to take it out of the actual reality and give it a little fiction.
R.J. Stewart: Yes, exactly.
Steve Cuden: So would you say that the story came somehow from also your military background as a kid, from you traveling around in the military?
R.J. Stewart: Well, I’ve thought of that several times. Uh, not so much for this book, but I just finished uh, reading a biography of the 18th century French General Marshal de Sas and was. I found it fascinating. And then I could have questioned why every once in a while do I return to military stuff? And it could be my dad’s background.
Steve Cuden: Well, you were around military men and bases.
R.J. Stewart: I really grew up with that stuff. Uh, many kids with my background are deeply into airplanes. I uh, was more into military stuff as a whole because my dad was in the Air Force. And uh, you know all the air shows that people pay to go see, we always got into them free. You know, that was a big thing. Um, when you’re a kid in the Air Force, they had the swept back uh, wings on the jets in those days. And uh, it was yeah. Uh, anyway, that’s a whole different.
Steve Cuden: So how deeply did you get into research to write the book?
R.J. Stewart: Well, I mean one of the advantages of it is the research is up here. I’m making up the world. You know, the world that I’m writing.
Steve Cuden: About is, is here in your head.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. Now I have shot black powder guns. So the hustlers keep their sidearms and cap and ball. And I’ve shot cap and ball guns. That didn’t take a lot of research. Uh, I know the geography real well.
Steve Cuden: Mhm.
R.J. Stewart: I did do research on how to make black powder. I did do uh, research on uh. The villains have a specific plan about genetics as you know. So I did some research on that brain size and stuff compared to earlier the crombagnum man compared to us and stuff. So the villains, when they present their vision of the world it is well founded, uh, in the science that they could discover are protected in that way because uh, they might have things wrong. But that’s because they don’t have the research available to us. They can’t go online and look it up.
Steve Cuden: Well, one gets the feeling that they’ve been sort of in the void for so long that they’ve lost a lot of science but they still have some vestiges of it. That’s the feeling again.
R.J. Stewart: Yes, absolutely. I really wanted to stress that uh, one of the early readers said they were confused. How could he uh, have cameras and stuff. So I went out of the way in the first scene or the. When they talk that she mentioned she loves the way some people rule, revise some of the lost technology. And I think that’s realistic. You know, can’t. I don’t know why everything would disappear. It would be, you know, some vestuses of uh, the of the technological world would survive.
Steve Cuden: Well I always find it amusing in uh, post apocalyptic stories that they sort of have lost. There’s no one left that understands engineering. There’s no one left that understands medicine. Ye, they’ve lost all of it. It’s like well wait a minute, aren’t there, isn’t there anyone around that remembers how to build something?
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, exactly. How did, how did they get there in the first place? How did the people figure out to build things in the first place?
Steve Cuden: Exactly, exactly.
R.J. Stewart: I’ve always with that and the also too the abruptness of the memory. You know we’re talking about know how now but I’m talking about just the memory of what the world was.
Steve Cuden: Right.
R.J. Stewart: So and so often it’s like it’s gone. They’ve totally forgotten what the past was. But there’ll be books, there’ll be pictures, there’ll be magazines for instance. I have them referring to magazines quite often uh, that they find absolutely. Like a hobby of mine is collecting historical manuscripts and letters. And I know that stuff lasts for a hundreds years. You know paper isn’t quite as frail as we think it is.
Steve Cuden: If you keep it out of the sun it’s not a problem.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. And out of way from water moures.
Steve Cuden: And away from water. Sure. Or chemicals. Deirdre is very good at surviving. She’s a, she’s tough. Where did you learn about survival skills?
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, um, part of it. I also use the word enduring and she endures. Uh, uh there, there’s a famous uh, Greek memoir written by Xenaophon called the Anabasus which is about them. Uh, you know the Greek mercenaries are on this uh, expedition to Persia and the Persian army, uh, wipes out their army but they survive and now they have to get back to Greece from being in the middle of Anatolia. And so I say that uh, I uh, used to have chapter titles in that long trek that Deirdre does in uh 3/4 the way through the book to get back home. The Chopra title at one point was Deirdre’s Anibasis. And the Anibasus means uh, a up country your trip up, up. You know, he see’s trying to get it back to Husser Valley. So in that way it’s been a model for me for many years and my wife and I went through some very tragic losses. I learned a lot about self fortification, developing a uh, fortification inside that will survive horrible catastrophes. And I think it’s real important that we develop in our lives. And I hope I uh, Made that theme clear in the book too. Uh, an inner life is really important.
Steve Cuden: Well, it’s very clear in the book that an inner life is important. And she’s got a very strong inner core to her. She’s not weak in any way, shape or form. Even when she typically we would see in a story that love would weaken someone, perhaps, but she’s not weakened by it at all. And I think she’s got a really solid steel type of core. But what I was fascinated by is she’s very smart and handy. She knows how to do a lot of things in order to keep herself from being killed or for to go after other people. She’s really smart. So I was curious how that came about, that you had to obviously think that through. How does she do X, Y or Z?
R.J. Stewart: Well, that’s something that came to me late in life because when we retired, we wanted to live in an area that was. Required us to do some stuff that, you know, I was very conscious of the fact of living in Hollywood, uh, you know, making a good amount of money. That the elemental world was so far from us. You know, basically my challenges in life as a have a car that got me to work and it was a nice car. And, uh, be able to put gas in it and then go into this office and write screenplays and writers even more extreme. I used to joke the Eric Grundamman, the line producer down there, and he’d call me and say, look, we need a more interior set. We’re getting a lot of rain. And I’d say, uh, Eric, I can write when it’s raining out. I don’t know why you can’t produce a show that’s so, you know, being a writer chained to a desk, you really lose touch of the elemental well.
Steve Cuden: And you just walk a few steps down the hall and there’s a table full of food and drinks and all kinds of things.
R.J. Stewart: You know, in Remington Steel, you know, what they did, it was like give on. I was a driver, you know, waiting for my lunch break. You know, that’s what my life was before on Remington. Suddenly I go to this place and they give you multiple menususe. They wanted the writers to stay. It was a. I learned later that it was a specific policy that Mary Tlon Moore studios had because Remington uh, was made by mtm. Uh, so they would give me, you know, this classy restaurant, you know, and, you know, I’d order it and they’d bring it to me and I wouldn’t.
Steve Cuden: Have to you wouldn’t have to leave. No. Cause otherwise you were wasting an hour, hour and a half or whatever going out to a restaurant.
R.J. Stewart: Exactly have been. Yeah. And uh, somebody said we’re like veal writers, like Field.
Steve Cuden: Just keep bringing them up. What would you say were the biggest challenges you had to overcome in writing Crazy Hawk?
R.J. Stewart: Uh, you know, because it was totally self motivated. Uh, I think uh, discipline. We had a loss in the family. It was devastating the family. I didn’t get a lot done during that period.
Steve Cuden: Of course.
R.J. Stewart: I’ll say. You want, want to hear a good story about COVID Sure. That’s when I said, hell, I’m going to finish this book. You know, I got nothing else to distract me from it.
Steve Cuden: You had the time and the opportunity.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. And uh, you. That’s so it forced discipline upon me.
Steve Cuden: Well, so how long had you written? How long you been working on it?
R.J. Stewart: I started it in uh, 2014.
Steve Cuden: Oh, wow. Okay.
R.J. Stewart: But wait a minute. Uh, it’s not like it took me 10 years to write it because our daughter was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in November of that year and that changed the subject. Qu. I didn’t get back to it really. “ 2019 and then you know, was dealing with the. The discipline issue and then came and gave me a present.
Steve Cuden: Yeah.
R.J. Stewart: It’s like stay home and, and work on your book.
Steve Cuden: Do you think that your writing style harks back to your writing and tv? Sure I do. When I read it it again, it felt like you had that terse, colorful ability to write the way that screenwriters. Right.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, probably. So there’s no question about. I made a good living for several decades. Uh, how many. I don’t know what I’m saying. 23 years or something I knew was that not out of work for 23 years.
Steve Cuden: Just so the listeners know. That is not typical that you get a 23 or 24 year run with no interruption. Most writers go through some kind of downtime in there.
R.J. Stewart: Ye. I had uh, a couple of good agents and I worked hard and I was easy to work with too. I think that’s. I’m giving advice to people. Be easy to work with. You know, I know good writers do screenwriters who just can’t stand to do. To change their work and they’re just not going to survive and show, you know.
Steve Cuden: No, that’s. You have to be willing to go with the flow and deal with that. Well, let me ask you, what is your philosophy on receiving notes and giving notes? Because everybody’s going to get Notes in Hollywood. And you’re going to, I assume you got them probably from your publisher as well. But how do you take a note and how do you give a note?
R.J. Stewart: Well, I’m my own publisher, so I self publish.
Steve Cuden: Oh, okay.
R.J. Stewart: Uh, so the uh, how do I, uh, receive a note? Here’s advice for people. Uh, there are bad notes that could hurt the script. You never do those notes. You can nod in in the room. But if they’re gonna fire you for refusing to ruin the script, then so be it. But uh, there are good notes that may be even better than your ideas. You have to embrace them and run with them because that protect you from not doing the bad notes. You see what I’m saying? Sure. Uh, if uh, a non writing producer or an executor gives you a note that is wonderful, you want to pay that off and give him credit for and that’ll allow you to not do the crappy note that he or she.
Steve Cuden: Or so when you’re sitting in a room, if somebody is verbally giving you a crappy note, do you take the note and just walk away?
R.J. Stewart: No. Uh, the problem would be and reasonable people, good executives, good producers will go, yeah, you’re right. But some people are not reasonable, uh, and they are insistent. And so when you go off, you know, when you turn in something and you know, you know you haven’t done a couple of notes it you were waiting here. I mean I’m a fired off projects and certainly one of the reasons is I didn’t do the note that I could point to one famous movie I was fire off, um, because I wouldn’t do what the director wanted me to do. But clear this is not ego. Another person involved with the project. The star of the movie had all kinds of good notes. I did his notes all the time and tell everybody it was his ide show was, you know, you want to do that, you want to be collaborative and easy to work with. People stumble all over themselves. To get back to working with you, I’m not going to tell you the project. But the thing was the director kept saying we don’t need a villain. We need conflict with nature and that stuff. Uh, we don’t need a villain. And I would call the producers and say he says we don’t need a villain. I this is an adventure movie. This isn’t like some arty thing. This is an adventure movie with big star. Don’t we need a villain? And the producer would say, you tell him we need a villain. He yes, to be in it by end of the first act. And I’d go back and tell him that, and he’d, uh, get on the phone and yell at them and they would surrender. So in the end, you know, I did not do what he wanted me to do and I left. Left the thing. Now, when the movie came out, it had a villain, you know, so, sure, I don’t know what battles were forought after I left, but it definitely. There was a villain in the movie.
Steve Cuden: When I came out, smarter heads prevailed.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So, you know, there is danger if you’re constantly saying yes. I suppose there’s maybe a talent of, um, you know, how do you do that? You know, how do you make that note work, even though it would be catastrophic for a story?
Steve Cuden: So I taught screenwriting for many years at a school here in Pittsburgh called Point Park University. And one of the things that I would teach is take the notes. You don’t have to agree or disagree. Just take the note, go off, think about it. Sometimes that note will trigger a, uh, something better. And if it doesn’t and it’s not right, don’t put it in. You know, Mel Brooks famously would just agree with every note that he got and that do none of them.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: And then when he would, he’d come back with the finished stuff and they would say, this is brilliant. And he hadn’t taken a single note.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, I wrote a spec script. I know you know what a spec script is, but for listeners, sure. It’s a script that I’m just writing independently, speculatively, to see if I can sell it.
Steve Cuden: Right, Correct.
R.J. Stewart: And, uh, a couple of, uh, producers got attached to it. Probably mistake for me to do it that way. I should have, probably should have sold it and didn’t get producers, but, you know, sol it to a studio or something. But anyway, they started giving me notes and this is my script. Right. And so I wouldn’t do the notes and they would get all bent out of shape on it. I’d say, guys, you know, you’re not paying me anything. I allowed you to attach yourself to this. And now you’re getting about me not ruining it. So it comes in all forms. But the, uh, your advice you gave is great. That’s great advice. That’s probably what I would say to.
Steve Cuden: What you just say Hollywood is maybe the only place in the world where people who aren’t doing the work are the ones that get to tell you what to do with the work. It’s very strange that industry.
R.J. Stewart: But it is, you’re right in the sense how much control they have. I mean if you’re a sports van, you know that these know nothing people comment on these quarterbacks course players all the time but they don’t have really any control over who starts next Sunday. It is kind of like in Hollywood the sports writers get to higher and fire people.
Steve Cuden: Uh. Exactly, exactly. I think Crazy Hawk would make a fantastic either a movie or a series miniseries of some kind. Are you considering trying to get the really good news?
R.J. Stewart: Things I got early on when I send it out to people in show business to read was my agent Bob Gor who’s actually both he and I are retired but he said rj, this is a miniseries, you know. And so he’s contacting people and stuff. So we’ll see what happen.
Steve Cuden: It’s sort of right there. Have you sat down to try and write an adaptation of it to screen?
R.J. Stewart: No, uh, I published it in April 10th and uh, the whole self publishing thing is a busy, busy world.
Steve Cuden: Yes.
R.J. Stewart: So I haven’t done uh, that part of it yet. Uh, I, I am playing with the sequel. I have a idea for a deep future sequel which is probably not the smartest. Uh and well I’ll give you a clue what of the in the deep future that it’s based on scientific discoveries made after the time in the book. Crazy, right? And one of the famous visionaries who broke into this mystical world that they used to, you know that is a very important new element is named Coachise Buford. You see, you know who he is in the book. Yes, yes. He’s little Coachise in the end of the book is anyway so. But that one is me being just the writer who wants to do something. I’m thinking now that I’m reading so many nice reviews on different places I went for the reviews, uh, in the literary magazines, you know, the uh, Kirkass and uh, uh, Publishers Weekly’s book Life and um, Forward Clarion because there’s a magazine know. I know that’s me being old fashioned in a way, but I like that idea.
Steve Cuden: Sure.
R.J. Stewart: And uh, I got some nice reviews there. And then I’m reading the reviews of uh, the fan reviews on Amazon and I’m beginning to think maybe I should write a sequel because I know that that really helps with sales if you have more than one uh, volume. So now I’m thinking of a more traditional sequel. You know what happens to Deirdre J. In part two, you know.
Steve Cuden: Well, let’s hope that Crazy Hawk uh, has A life beyond the book itself, because I think it should. It’s really good. So I need to ask you a little bit about Zen. How did you get involved with Rob Tappert and Sam Raimi in the first place?
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, my agent, Bob Gor, had scheduled, uh, meetings with, uh, us with that group, David Ike, who was the executive, and Liz Friedman. And then I headed off with Rob. Oh, I remember I went. He was doing Hercules. Right. And I went in for a meeting just to get to know you. Meeting, Right. And, um, he was talking. Was a character on, uh, Hercules name Iolus, I think his name was. And they were talking about what to do with him. And I said, well, you have a mythical world. Why don’t you just kill him off and bring him back alive, you know? You know, in this, in this particular quandary. And he smile, I remember him smiling, says, yeah, I like the way thinking, you know, that you use the mythology as a strength. Plus, both he and I had read a lot of Robert Graves, uh, which is the great mythologist. And so we had a bond there. And then, uh, I wrote the pilot. They loved me. And I got on for a deal for 22 on the air. I remember those. You don’t hear those words much anymore in Hollywood.
Steve Cuden: Not much anymore, no. So your agent got you to them and then they hired you to develop the story based on character that came out of Hercules.
R.J. Stewart: O. Right, right. She was a villain on Hercules. Right. That was a unique, unique, uh, thing because I don’t think it’s ever happened before. A villain on one series becomes the hero on another series. It was very unique. A lot of fun to play with the dark past of, uh, Xena. And uh, we had a ball with it. We made a lot of fun.
Steve Cuden: That show was shot in New Zealand, right?
R.J. Stewart: Correct. Lucy is from New Zealand too.
Steve Cuden: And you were, I assume, in Hollywood, not in New Zealand.
R.J. Stewart: That’s right. Most of the time I got some. Spend some time in New Zealand.
Steve Cuden: So explain how that works when this is before the day and age of the Internet. Right.
R.J. Stewart: Uh, well, about. I’d say about the fourth year. This. Six years. It. About third or fourth year, I finished a script and said, get this into the pouch. And my person said they already got it. Well, how would they get it? We emailed it to them. What? I mean, I knew what email. I had no idea you can email a script. And, uh, that changed everything. Well, and, uh, yeah, so it was, uh, finishing a script knowing that it took time to get it down there. Hard copy. Think of that doesn’t sound like Pony Express or something.
Steve Cuden: Well, that’s what I’m asking is how did you do it when you weren’t actually a round set, you were somewhere halfway around the world.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, I know the first few years, it was, uh, a lot of pouches and stuff, particularly with rewrite.
Steve Cuden: Did stuff come back from New Zealand, footage come back and it was not what you’d written?
R.J. Stewart: Not very often, but sometimes, uh, there were producers down there. Rob was down there most of the time, and, uh, Eric Grundamman was, uh, a really good line producer. And they protected the scripts pretty well.
Steve Cuden: And this was written specifically for syndication, correct? It wasn’t a network pickup?
R.J. Stewart: No, that is correct. It was, uh, a. For syndication.
Steve Cuden: It was force syndication. So is there a difference for you as a creator between working for a network show and a syndicated show? Is there a difference?
R.J. Stewart: Well, in the first year, we had a, uh, writer on staff named Babowski, who was a veteran. A great writer. And, uh, she had a thing like, there’s always a network. Okay. Know, because the temptation to say, hey, we don’t have a network to give us notes and says, there’s always a network. Don’t know where it’s gonna come from. And indeed, the studio, a fair amount of time, started sounding like a network, you know, and, ah, when I did Remington Steel, uh, the studio was totally supportive of us, and it was the network that was giving us, you know, beating us up a little bit. Uh, but in this case, it was like there was a vacuum there, you know, so the studio stepped in. But the great Dan Philly. Late, late, great Dan Philly was the executive at the. At Universal who really protected the show very well.
Steve Cuden: That’s, uh. You know, I find that fascinating that there always is some kind of a network. Yeah, but there’s no. You weren’t getting notes from a network. You are getting it from a syndicator.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, well, actually, the syndicate was just so fine. They looked at ratings. They weren’t. They. The syndicate did. Never acted like a network.
Steve Cuden: As long as the money was coming in, that’s all they cared about.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Steve Cuden: I was just curious. When you’re coming up with stories for a show like Azina, are you going back to your mythological research and studies? Absolutely.
R.J. Stewart: I was one of the fun things Rob and I had because we were both so steeped in our mythological information of how much we could. We could take from the mythology and what we could do with it in different ways. And it was a lot of fun in that way. That was just a fun part. Steve Sears was also, uh, a wonderful writer on the show who also contribute a lot in that way, coming up with different ways to use the mythology. And we branched out. It was probably Rob’s. The idea that we branch out to all mythologies. Why just do Greek mythologies? Let’s do, uh, Nordic mythology and Chinese mythology.
Steve Cuden: Well, because Zen wasn’t coming from a specific mythological character, was she?
R.J. Stewart: No, no. So it was totally.
Steve Cuden: We were making that up.
R.J. Stewart: Yeah. But, you know, in the opening, in the first season, we definitely have it based in Greece and with Greek gods.
Steve Cuden: But you had Sky’s the limit with mythology because that’s in the public domain. You didn’t have to look for rights.
R.J. Stewart: Absolutely. And we did. We went wild with it. And we brought in historical characters. We brought in Julius Caesar with us. We were merciless to uh, any kind of chronology. Uh, we just had. We would be in any era we wanted to be in, you know.
Steve Cuden: Uh, sure.
R.J. Stewart: Because, you know, we had her, uh, go to China and the China she went to was very, you know, 1000 A.D. kind of China. And that’s okay. The Greek world was like 300 BC.
Steve Cuden: Well, as long as it was fun. Wasn’t that the point?
R.J. Stewart: It was fun. And I think the idea of, you know, this is, uh, sitting here in 2024, looking back in the 1990s. I think we created a world that did hang together. It’s a big mythological pseudo historical thing that was of a piece because it was the same people creating it for six years. I wouldn’t, uh, defend it intellectually as a consistent thing, but it turned out creatively to be, I think, a consistent way.
Steve Cuden: We had that tableau, I’m gonna guess. And in no way am I putting anybody down that your general audience for Xena was not considering it to be an intellectual thing.
R.J. Stewart: Probably so. But I think one of the big things that evolved through the years, uh, of uh, when it was on the Airra was that the fan fiction that came out of it and uh, uh, the gay audience took it so seriously. And then adventure gamers, uh, I mean, people got deeply into the show. It’s safe to say it was not on a. Well, in the sense that a mythological character might stimulate a lot of comments on the Internet about where did that come from. And it launched people into finding out who Callisto was, even though the Callisto I created was nothing like the mythological Cal.
Steve Cuden: I guess what I’m talking about is the watching of the show, people probably didn’t approach it as an academic or intellectual exercise. They took it as entertainment, as fun, of course.
R.J. Stewart: Yes, of course.
Steve Cuden: So if you went off in all these different tangents and directions that weren’t based on actual research, that’s okay.
R.J. Stewart: I don’t think we got one single bit of criticism about that.
Steve Cuden: That was my guess. Well, I’ve been having just a ton of fun chatting with RJ Stewart for a little more than an hour at this point, and we’re going to wind the show down. And I’m just wondering. You’ve already told us a lot of really wonderful stories, but you’ve also been around for a while, and I’m wondering if you are able to share with us a story throughout your experiences that it’s either oddball, weird, quirky, offbeat, or just plain funny.
R.J. Stewart: Two of them, I’ll tell you both of them. One’s very short. Uh, I told you I delivered on, uh, to the sets as a teamster. I, uh. Right. It was a printing company, so the companies would order, uh, posters from us, and we would deliver skids of posters and stuff there. And, uh, we drove, uh, a GMC Bobtail, a SE van, and little Hondas if we were just doing artwork. So I was sitting in a Honda outside of Malpazo, uh, offices. And, uh, over the radio, they told me just to wait. The artwork wasn’t done yet. So I put my chair back to get a little nap, right? And suddenly the car moves and I sit up and Clint Eastwood is sitting on the front of my, uh, vehicle. And you keep in mind this. I. I didn’t know any famous people, right. I met Julie London once. I was the only famous person I’d ever met. This was sitting on the front of. I rolled down the window. It had been wintery, so I had to. Rolled up the window. I rolled down the window so I could overhear what he was saying to this guy who Imaging was associate producer or something. And they were talking about kind of boring stuff about, you know, logistics and stuff for a movie. And then, uh, the producer notices me in the car, uh, and points me out. And then Clint turns around and sees me, and he backs over and says, o, man, I’m sorry. You should have said something. And I said, oh, no, I’m waiting for artwork from your place. Uh, I’m supposed to be just waiting for. He says, am I office? I said, yeah. He said, well, go on in, have a cup of coffee, relax. You don’t have to Sit out here. So that was my big, and I can’t tell you big, uh, a deal that was for me when I was 20, 24 years old or whatever it was.
Steve Cuden: And he is a physically imposing man. He is a large man.
R.J. Stewart: He is. He’s so cool. He was. So. I mean, look, movie stars generally are very nice, you know, to the little folks. Why shouldn’t they be? They have, uh, you know, their life is pretty good. You know, James Garner and Pierce I mentioned pierced. Uh, and Lucy, of course, is a wonderful person. So it’s not, like, shocking to find out that he’s a nice guy and was taking care of me, but it was nice to be the recipient of that. Uh, that was very nice. The other story that I is very odd is what we did. We were just talking about all the different mythologies we explored on, um, Sinaa, and we had them go to India. I was familiar with some Bollywood movies where they would portray some of the gods. And, you know, uh, there’s one character who’s, uh, uh, like. I think he’s like a monkey. Is he? Anyway, um, I’m blanking on the names of them.
Steve Cuden: I can think of Kali. I can think of Shiva. Ah, yeah.
R.J. Stewart: Those kind of characters. So we had portrayed them in Sna and an episode of Xina as characters. Some of them are her wrote, some of them were comic. Because, like I said, in some of the Bollywood movies, I saw them presented comically. Well, uh, we filmed the show and we aired it, and, uh, we thought it was great. And then we start hearing words that the Hindu community in America was deeply offended.
Steve Cuden: Oh, wow.
R.J. Stewart: Now, no. Well, there’s a catch to this. You’ll see. And so, uh, I was given marshing orders to go to this, uh, Los Angeles Indian, uh, convention where all these professional Indians, uh, are coming to talk and they lawyers and doctors. The Indian community in Los Angeles is incredibly well educated and sophisticated. So I’m supposed to go there and apologize for all this controversy. Uh, so were picked up in a limo and taken there. So at the place I see that my name is on a list of speakers when I supposed to get out there and do a Maya Kalpa for this episode that has steeply offended these people. So I started talking to people, and somebody says, so, what are you here for? He says, well, I’m a producer, uh, for Xena Warrior Princess. They said, what’s that? You know? And I explained and I said, why are you here? She said, well, there was an episode we did. And I told them what and Then I remembered the names of all the characters and told them what we did. And everyone I talked to said that sounds so charming. I’d love to see that. And I said I heard that it was offensive. And they said, what are you talking about? We do that kind of stuff in Bollywood all the time. Why would it be offensive? Uh, now I’m mind like the fifth speaker and I realize nobody here knows there’s a controversy about it. Nobody. And I’ve been set uh, up. And later on I learned it was the Hare Krishnas who complained. American Hari Krishnas had complained about it. It wasn’t an Indian. So I’m at this, this Indian thing, supposed to apologize for something that nobody’s ever heard of, you know, so a controversy. And so when it came to my time to be, I went, uh, just saying how much I’ve loved uh, Indian spirituality, which is true. I’ve read and many things like that. And uh, through the years and some of us, I respect India to go there one day I’m sure they were scratching like, why would this TV producer just come over and tell us what a neat culture we’ve got? Very polite about it. But they’re probably wondering that was on the, that’s an important thing on, on the thing. And then I get back in the car and I call Sar calling, you know, uh, do we have cell phones by then? I think we had cell phones. Anyway, before the night was over, I was calling people saying what the, uh. And that’s what I learned it was. I finally got ah, hold of Rob and he was in New Zealand and I told him and he said, oh, you didn’t have to go to that man. It was the Hari Krishners. It’s not the, not the Indian Hindu. Just because we were concerned that the Harry Christmas might get something going, you know. You know, he might get the ball rolling.
Steve Cuden: So the folks that were upset about it weren’t really in play in this instance at all.
R.J. Stewart: No, not at all. They were American Hare Krishnas. I’m not knocking Hare Krishnas and stuff. I am knocking the leader of Hare Krishnas at that time. I’m knocking him.
Steve Cuden: They made your life a little miserable unnecessarily. Yeah, yeah, indeed. So. All right, last question for you today, rj. You’ve already given us huge amounts of advice along the way here, but I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice that you like to give to those who are starting out or maybe they’re in a little bit and trying to get to that next level.
R.J. Stewart: Well, main advice I would give as, as a writer, you know, that’s where my advice would be valuable. Sure. And uh, as opposed to a producer stuff like because I became a producer because I was a writer. So as a writer you touched on it, you said, you brought up the old saw. Write what you know. But here’s how you have to interpret that. That has to. Yes, you write what you know because putting yourself on the page is what’s going to make your writing special. It’s going to individuate your writing. Uh, then that’s all you know. There’s billions of screenplays and now with the self publishing world going on, there’s so many novels out there that are self publishing soff. So how do you individuate your, your book, your screenplay and that is to make sure yourself is on that page and that’s what’s going to jump off the page. And this is how you do it. In my opinion. You meld your real life experience with your imagination to say write what you know. That means everybody’s going to write of the story. Like I had told you, my first screenplay was actually about me driving around making deliveries. Right. Well, if everybody does that, uh, that’s a bunch of boring stories. That’s not really what you want to do. But your imagination is part of you too. Where it really works, I think is when you take real life experience but then apply imagination to it and make it something very appealing and universal. For instance, I wrote that script that was about me delivering packages. It was very realistic and it did very well for me. Good for me. But I could just as well have used my imagination to write about a guy who delivers to different space stations throughout the solar system. You see, taking my imagination and applying my real life experience to it. And I think that that marriage between your life experience and your imagination is where good writing lies.
Steve Cuden: I think that’s really outstanding advice because a lot of people don’t know where to begin. So if you can just begin with what you have for yourself, then expand out from there using your imagination. That’s a really good jumping off point. I think that’s outstanding advice.
R.J. Stewart: I’m sure there are people who read enough genre novels that they can knock off a genre novel very quick. But I’m talking about how to give them part of themselves to the genre novel too. So to taking their life experience. And it’s always a. You know what is always true in writing is the more life experience you have, the more you have to pick from when you’re looking at that blank page or in the blank screen. So accumulate a lot of life experience.
Steve Cuden: That’s also outstanding advice because a well lived life may turn into a very great story. And without that living, it’s pretty hard to tell a great story.
R.J. Stewart: Ye, for sure.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, you might be able to tell a little story, but not much of a big story if you haven’t lived life. So I think that’s really also sound advice. RJ Stewart, this has been so much fun for me to chat with you today, and I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and your wisdom. That’s for sure.
R.J. Stewart: Me too. I had great time, Steve. You’re really good at this, and I had a great time.
Steve Cuden: Well, thank you so much and keep writing. And maybe, uh, Crazy Hawk will turn into something that people can actually see. Wouldn’t that be cool?
R.J. Stewart: That would be cool. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. 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 StoryBeat episodes to you. StoryBeat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Tune In, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.
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