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Speaker 2
Hi everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Today I have on Rob Tymec and he is here to tell us a story today.

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Speaker 1
I thought I'd tell a goofy story from high school

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Speaker 1
because we were talking the other day and I was going on about how the high school version of me seemed to

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Speaker 1
be the most intelligent version of me.

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Speaker 1
And I should have always just listened to his wisdom. So I remember I was, in my first kind of serious relationship.

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Speaker 1

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Speaker 1
sometime during the, the end of the summer, it failed miserably. We finally just crash and burn. And it was a big, vicious breakup. Oddly enough, she was much more angry with me than I was with her. Even though the reason we broke up was because I caught her cheating.

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Speaker 1
Right? Like, it's always funny how the cheater is more angry. But I guess it's the gift, right?

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Speaker 1
During

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Speaker 1
homeroom period, the teacher took

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Speaker 1
attendance and they did morning announcements over the PA system.

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Speaker 1
Well, I had a friend on student council who was tasked with having to do them, and he hated doing them. So one day I'm trying to get to class, and I'm already running a little bit late and going past the main office, and I see him at the little booth at the you work the PA system from, and I just go,

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Speaker 1
I bet he'd like you to help him today.

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Speaker 1
I had like two motivations. One was I was already running late for class. So if I stop and do announcements, I'm not going to get in trouble because the teacher will hear me or he knows me, right, and then I can take my time, get in class after announcements.

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Speaker 1
But more importantly, I realized that that ex girlfriend would absolutely hate to hear my voice over the piano right now. So I was like, I'm going to ask if you want to help with morning announcements just to annoy my ex. So sure enough, I go on and you know, he's doing it very expressionless because he doesn't want to be doing it, whereas I'm doing it like a morning talk show.

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Speaker 1
I was like, oh, right, let's hear it. For the girls junior volleyball team. They won like 14 to 8 or whatever is a reasonable score in volleyball because I don't follow it. Right. And so all day long afterwards, it was like, we really loved morning announcements today, Rob.

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Speaker 1
I says, well,

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Speaker 1
I can enjoy my ex some more and do it again tomorrow.

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Speaker 1
And by the end of the week, I was actually starting to already create like prerecorded bits and commercials and stuff. I remember with the 80s. So I had like a tape recorder at home and like a stereo system, and I got my little sister to play the other role, and we did a whole little skit at home that I prerecorded and was brought into play.

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Speaker 1
So we started getting serious very, very quickly. And I had a lot of creative, artistic friends who all of a sudden came on board too. And so it actually introduced me to the discipline of doing an ongoing series. Right. Because all of a sudden we had like legitimate writer rooms, like we would meet regularly and pitch ideas and then, you know, okay, you and Joe, you work on that one and I'll work on this one.

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Speaker 1
And we come back to another meeting later and look each other's stuff over. And, and so it turned into a real show. We're like, you know, we'd have bits prepared, like sometimes weeks in advance, right? You know, because that's what you do when you're doing an ongoing series.

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Speaker 1
it was great because it helped me so much in my career later with understanding how to to schedule things accordingly and, and work with other writers and other artists in general, because I had people coming on and doing voices with me too.

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Speaker 1
And it it was funny because homeroom originally was,

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Speaker 1
10 to 12 minutes. They intentionally stretched it out to 20, 25 minutes just so I could do all my shenanigans on the morning announcements every morning.

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Speaker 1
And then I even came up with this little plan because the idea of, well, would dry out sometimes and we'd get a little bit nervous.

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Speaker 1
And I go, well, I got something that'll give us a little time off.

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Speaker 1
I wouldn't swear, especially since it was a Catholic high school. But I knew I'd say something that I knew was going to get me in a lot of trouble. And then they'd say, we need you to take a break for a while. And that's when one of the most

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Speaker 1
surreal moments in my adolescence happened, because I did.

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Speaker 1
I got kicked off the air. And if you remember, back in the 80s, it was a popular movie, but with Robin Williams, Good Morning, Vietnam, where he plays a DJ that keeps getting kicked off the air, too, for what he's saying. And people were already comparing me to him, which was the highest form of flattery because I love Robin Williams.

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Speaker 1
He's one of my favorite actors, but so I get kicked off the air for, I think, about two weeks

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Speaker 1
and everybody is like, oh, great, we can take a rest for a week, and then we'll we'll get together recharged and we'll have a bunch of more ideas. But within a couple of days, I remember distinctly walking down the hallway and they had these little bulletin boards every, you know, a couple of corridors in my high school where you could just post stuff and you could know what was going on in your school, right.

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Speaker 1
So, so one more way of distributing information back then, and I walked by one of these bulletin boards and I saw just a stack of papers that had been pinned to it that was just covered in signatures. There's probably about 100, 200 signatures there. And I looked at the top of the paper just to see what everybody was so upset about,

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Speaker 1
and it was

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Speaker 1
put Rob Dimmock back on the morning announcements.

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Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Exactly. And I was like, wow. And that's when I realized just how far reaching

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Speaker 1
this whole thing had become that like, people were really, really into it. Like to me, it was just this goofy thing that I was doing, and, and I like that. I was doing it without thinking. It was just, I was just enjoying it so much that I wasn't like,

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Speaker 1
you know, why are they getting paid for this or something?

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Speaker 1
I just was doing it for the love of it at the time. Nowadays, of course

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Speaker 1
I do things for the love of it, but that there's a paycheck attached to it too. But that really was sort of the first time that I was like,

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Speaker 1
I've created something that's grown beyond me,

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Speaker 1
And then the best part was this, that I walked down the hallway a bit more and saw like another bulletin board with another petition on it, full of signatures. And then I walked to another one and saw a third one, and that's when I was like, okay, I got to start putting some bogus signatures on me, you know?

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Speaker 1
So like, Adolf Hitler wanted me to get back on the air and so did various other historical celebrities, too. Julius Caesar, I think, was another one that I signed on it,

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Speaker 1
And so sure enough, within a couple of days, like

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Speaker 1
the school administration even was like, okay, we were going to say two weeks. Can you come back next week?

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Speaker 1
And I was like, oh, my writers are going to be mad at me. But I also knew the nation ride the wave. So, so I it became a thing where I just

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Speaker 1
to this day, people still come up to me and go, you know, I still remember morning announcements. You're so great, I loved it. You really, you know, there were days where I was just the most miserable person in the world, and your morning announcements cheered me up and made life bearable or whatever.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, so. But I just always loved the fact.

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Speaker 1
And it taught me an interesting life lesson. Like it all stemmed from me just wanting to irritate an ex. Right. And that's what happens sometimes. Sometimes we don't walk in with the best of motivations but it grows into something else. It's bigger than us and you just sort of embrace it and run with it.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Well you never know what's going to happen or what's going to come out. Anything. Yep. So

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Speaker 2
do things.

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Speaker 1
Exactly. You're not going to get anything done. Just staying at home, being scared of

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Speaker 1
putting a toe in the pool. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
So when you started the morning announcements, did you just kind of. What's that saying?

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Speaker 2
Ask for forgiveness, not for permission. Did you just, like, just go off the walls and just start making it your own thing,

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Speaker 2
a little bit of both.

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Speaker 1
Like some stuff, you know, I if I knew it was a

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Speaker 1
straddling the line, so to speak. And I was like, well, let's just see if I can get away. Because sometimes it was even a matter of like certain people just didn't happen to be listening to that day. So they didn't get upset about it. So they and they went through can do something about it.

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Speaker 1
Right?

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Speaker 1
other times I was like, okay, I'd think a better definitely ask if,

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Speaker 1
if I, if I can get away with this one. They eventually appointed someone

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Speaker 1
from the administration that was sort of in charge of looking over the material and stuff because we, we, we did go

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Speaker 1
pretty far sometimes. I do recall

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Speaker 1
I chalk it up as one of the most tasteless things I've ever done.

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Speaker 1
I did a parody of the Kennedy assassination. On the air.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
We assassinated our student council president instead. But yeah. Like I mean I wasn't I'm old but I'm not that old. I was around when Kennedy was shot. But some teachers

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Speaker 1
really reprimanded me for it afterwards.

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Speaker 1
But I just saw it as

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Speaker 1
satire at the time because I was like 16 years old and just wanted to satirize everything.

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Speaker 1
I going around me.

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Speaker 2
And push boundaries.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, push boundaries, I guess. I don't know, I think it was more just a case of being juvenile,

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Speaker 1
I do count that experience as, like a vital building block in teaching me discipline especially. Right. Like the whole idea that we were like, okay, every other Thursday we get together and we go over our stuff, and you didn't want to show up with no material written, right? Like, you would get berated, not even necessarily by me.

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Speaker 1
And I was considered the head of the of the whole operation. But I, like my writers, were so fiercely dedicated that they would yell at the lazy writer for me and I'd be like, good, I don't have to be the jerk here. So yeah, it is

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Speaker 1
something fairly, I would say, instrumental in

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Speaker 1
in my career.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. To have that experience so young, especially, when you're so soft and malleable, is really interesting. Would you say you knew you were on that career path before you did the radio announcements? Or did that kind of know that that has that impact on you where you're like, this is cool?

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Speaker 1
I was showing aptitudes

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Speaker 1
like even way back in grade school, like they were having me do,

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Speaker 1
like these gigantic presentations for the school.

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Speaker 1
And I was like, maybe grade five, grade six. You know, that was usually something that was given to a like a grade eight. And they were like, well, no, this kid's a huge ham. Let's just have him do it.

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Speaker 1
I got into

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Speaker 1
performance art, particularly live, because I was I was actually very, very timid and shy as a young kid

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Speaker 1
I still get a little bit of anxiety, but I think I was full blown agoraphobic, like when I was really young.

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Speaker 1
And that idea of presenting to an audience allows you to feel like you're in the crowd, but not in the crowd at the same time. So the first time I had to go up and do something in front of a class,

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Speaker 1
my teachers had seen how horribly timid I was. We're just like, oh, this is just going to be a train wreck.

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Speaker 1
But when I got up there, I immediately got that feeling of, oh, I feel like I'm in this crowd. But at the same time I have this comfortable barrier, which is am I presenting something? And I fell in love with it instantly, and all of a sudden this whole other personality came out of me. So

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Speaker 1
pretty much from, oh, I'm going to say 6 or 7 onwards.

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Speaker 1
Everybody was, oh, it was like, you're going to be an actor. I mean, I was like,

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Speaker 1
I guess, I still tried to have a period in my 20s, most of my 20s, I tried to have a normal life. And then I got back into all of this nonsense in my 30s.

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Speaker 1
And because I just, you know, you do tend to when you hit a new decade, you tend to contemplate a pivot.

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Speaker 1
I was having a lot of success just sort of working

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Speaker 1
a kind of upper middle management job. And it was going well, but I was just like,

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Speaker 1
is this what I really want to do with myself for the rest of my life? And I was like, no, it's not, it's you know, what you're calling has been since a very young age, so why don't you get back into it?

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Speaker 2
So was that an abrupt quit, or did you kind of have a job on the side when you were exploring the acting?

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a funny thing that you ask, because I do have people that always come up to me and go, oh, how did you do it? Because I've been full time at this for

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Speaker 1
almost 25 years now.

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Speaker 1
My last day of a real job was like 2002,

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Speaker 1
So it's been a while. So they're always like, they always think there's like a secret, like, I know an algorithm or something, right? It just I was like, get a real job. Were you working 40 hours a week,

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Speaker 1
do all that you love in your spare time as a part time job, which is only take 20 hours a week?

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Speaker 1
You work 60 hour weeks for about 3 to 5 years, but then all of a sudden that part time income is exceeding your full time income and you can quit the full time job. And now it's only a part time obligation.

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Speaker 1
And nobody likes that answer. But it's really what you got to do. You just got to grind.

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Speaker 1
I was lucky I only to do it for about three years.

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Speaker 1
And even then, make the third year was done as, like, a precaution because I really was making the income already by the end of my second year. But I was like, let's do one more year to make sure that it's stable income.

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Speaker 1
I was ridiculously burnt out on so many occasions during those three years. But to me, it seemed like

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Speaker 1
the only way to do it as far as I was concerned.

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Speaker 2
Most of this work that you've done was in Windsor area. Yeah.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Pretty much Windsor, Essex. I do wander into Chatham-Kent

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Speaker 1
a little bit,

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Speaker 1

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Speaker 1
I actually I've done a lot more of just like teaching workshops up in Toronto because then I'm just hired to go in and teach the workshops for a weekend and come home. Right. Whereas most of the time, you know, they're not going to give you a role without an audition. Up in Toronto, at least down here, they're like, oh, you're that guy, you know, oh, we need you for a show.

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Speaker 1
Okay. Did you want me to read for it? No, no, we know you can do it. We saw you. That's one of the advantages of Windsor. It's. It's a small area. You start making an impact, people start noticing it fairly quickly. Whereas somewhere like Toronto, you're a drop in a bucket.

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Speaker 1
for instance I have an update on my CV and probably nearly a decade because if nobody asks me for it.

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Speaker 1
in Toronto. You're an actor. They're not they're not interested in your writing and they're not interested in you directing. You're just going to go in act. Or if you are a writer, then you're not acting or so on and so on. And so they don't usually let you cross over too much, at least not at the beginning.

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Speaker 1
Whereas again here. I love that I have organizations that are just like, can you what? They don't even say, can you build a show from scratch? They know I can build a show from scratch, so they just commission me, give me a budget to work with and everything.

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Speaker 2
That was my next question.

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Speaker 1
I'm just.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. You're predicting it's my telepathy. You said you act in live shows. So what do you write to direct also live or. Yeah.

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Speaker 1
I'm a playwright, for the most part. I've done some screenwriting. I was even lucky. At one point, I had a couple of friends that had broken into LA and were submitting to, like, real production companies. And the thing is, when you're a new writer, they're not so much interested in your ideas. They're interested in giving you. The executives want to give you an idea and have you flesh it out.

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Speaker 1
Well, neither of these guys really knew how to write to spec, which is where you are given the central premise and you develop it. But they've remembered working for many years previously, and they knew that I could write to spec quite easily. I almost prefer it because it's like, well, they did half the job for me, right? Yeah, but most writers get thrown off by that.

00:15:06:14 - 00:15:22:17
Speaker 1
They only want to work for their own ideas. So, so they came back and found me and said, we desperately need you because they just like all these executive producers, they were like, we want a movie with this in it. And they're like, yeah, we can write that. Sure. And then they were just like, Call Tim tomorrow.

00:15:22:19 - 00:15:27:02
Speaker 1
We can be him now. So. So I did get it was cool.

00:15:27:02 - 00:15:34:23
Speaker 1
it's nice bragging rights to say that I've, you know, I have submitted two major production companies in LA.

00:15:35:19 - 00:15:53:13
Speaker 1
it's that idea, like you were saying earlier, where you just don't know where something is going to go, like these guys who just acted in my I have a, my own theater company, too. That's where I do a lot of the writing and directing, of course. So they just worked in my theater company for me for a couple of years, and they remembered that they'd done some work that was to spec.

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Speaker 1
So that just stayed with them. And as they moved on into their careers and broke all kinds of ground that I wasn't breaking and, you know, they still came back and found me.

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Speaker 2
That's awesome.

00:16:05:16 - 00:16:14:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what you kind of do in life is just put your best foot forward and hope for the best. Yeah. And don't do parodies of the Kennedy assassination. Yes.

00:16:14:12 - 00:16:15:13
Speaker 2
That's also that.

00:16:15:16 - 00:16:17:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's another valuable lesson I've learned.

00:16:17:18 - 00:16:35:21
Speaker 2
So you have been a creative in Windsor for many, many years. Yeah. Well, I, a new creative. I would say. What are your favorite things to do in Windsor that kind of explore the on the creative side?

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Speaker 1
Well, you doing open mics is a very good move.

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Speaker 1
I got in spoken word quite a bit a few years ago. There was a really great spoken word movement in this area for a while. It's kind of whittled down to maybe just one event now. But, you know, you just running into so many people and being impressed by what they're doing, and,

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Speaker 1
they inspire you

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Speaker 1
Same with like stand up comics have a lot of open mics. You got certain artsy fartsy bars downtown that have all kinds of interesting things going on.

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Speaker 2
So open mic comedy, stand up. Do you you do stand up.

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Speaker 1
Do emcee for stand up.

00:17:15:09 - 00:17:16:12
Speaker 2
Okay.

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Speaker 1
Sometimes I haven't much lately because it's a pretty easy job. So they usually just get an actual stand up to do it. I keep thinking of doing a proper set, but I'm not passionate enough about stand up. And I admire stand up comics because to get even a good like tight six as they call it,

00:17:37:03 - 00:17:50:03
Speaker 1
good. Six minutes of material that nobody will not laugh at, right. Yeah. That's what a tight six is. It's it's universal and it's appeal. Everybody's going to be entertained by it. That can take like almost a year.

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Speaker 2
Oh wow.

00:17:51:04 - 00:18:10:20
Speaker 1
Right. And I mean I have certain advantages with my experience that I could probably cut some corners and get to my 86A little bit faster, but I'd still just, you know, having to hit those open mics over and over and over and go, oh, that sucked. Let's try something else that's up to let's try something else. Right? I just I don't have it in me for, for standup.

00:18:10:22 - 00:18:32:06
Speaker 1
That's the other thing that I've learned is, you know, be flexible, try some new things, but also understand your limits. Or if there's passion just isn't quite there. Like I was saying earlier, I'm not a big film person because it doesn't feel like acting to me half the time. And it's like, we're going to shoot you from this angle.

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Speaker 1
Just say the same lines four times, and then we'll change the angle. We'll say that same line four times again. And I'm like, I like the immediacy of live. I mean, you still through go through that rehearsal process. But the rehearsal process is fun. You're just goofing off with your friends. Half the time you're getting the work done, but you're goofing off a lot, too.

00:18:50:05 - 00:19:04:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. But, it that idea of I go out, I do it, I do it linear, you know, there's no opportunity to do retakes. I love that kind of thrill.

00:19:04:18 - 00:19:10:21
Speaker 2
For your creative work, are you exercising your creative muscle every day?

00:19:10:23 - 00:19:11:18
Speaker 1
Every minute.

00:19:11:20 - 00:19:12:09
Speaker 2
Every minute?

00:19:12:09 - 00:19:37:19
Speaker 1
Yeah. Like even now. Like, I'm like, my mind is racing. Like she's got a good question for me. What's the most entertaining, interesting, engaging way to give an answer? Rather than just be like, yes, no, I love cats, guys. Right. You know, and that's kind of where I'm at. Like I mentioned Robin Williams earlier and like I don't quite move at his speed, but I don't think anybody did really.

00:19:37:21 - 00:19:47:01
Speaker 1
But he had such a tremendous effect because my brain was already moving kind of at that speed close to it, at least. And to see someone

00:19:47:01 - 00:20:01:12
Speaker 1
monetize it, even for lack of a better term. Right. Like what made me go, okay, I have this weird brain that doesn't seem to be like anybody else's brain around me, particularly since I was growing up in this rural area back in the 80s.

00:20:01:14 - 00:20:21:04
Speaker 1
In the 70s. Right. So, you know, it's like, oh, here's someone who's like me, and he's successful with it, right? And it's the same thing with George Lucas and Star Wars. I was the perfect age for Star Wars when it came out, and I had this wild, vivid imagination that everybody was sort of looking at me like, he's a witch.

00:20:21:04 - 00:20:43:07
Speaker 1
Burnham. Right. Because again, this is 40, 50 years ago in this small rural town. And I would be like, wouldn't it be cool if aliens had a bar to go to? Right? And they were like, what? Are you crazy? And then sure enough, I go see Star Wars. And there was this bar with all the aliens, and I was like, again, it was like him saying, it's okay to have this crazy imagination.

00:20:43:07 - 00:20:58:18
Speaker 1
You can do something with it. Yeah. So, so there's a couple pivotal figures like that that just I was the perfect time for them to be successful and for me to see their success. Jim Henson, be another great example of that. Right.

00:20:58:18 - 00:21:02:16
Speaker 1
I don't pretend to be as creative as any of them.

00:21:02:16 - 00:21:17:00
Speaker 1
They're geniuses. But they at least still said, hey, you can be like us and do something with it rather than just trying to fit in this example. Yep. Yeah, exactly.

00:21:17:00 - 00:21:26:23
Speaker 2
Because you need the you need the role models like that because you need to see it to believe that it's even possible for yourself. Right. So yeah, just having them there really opened doors for a lot of people I think.

00:21:26:23 - 00:21:45:21
Speaker 1
So. And even retrospectively, you have you know, I run into people way younger than me that still watch the old episodes of like The Muppet Show or of course, there's huge Star Wars fans still out there that are still being affected by them, by his work. People are even finally admitting they like the prequels.

00:21:45:23 - 00:21:48:23
Speaker 2
I thought that was the cool thing to like the prequels.

00:21:49:01 - 00:21:51:00
Speaker 1
The prequels would be one, two, and three.

00:21:51:02 - 00:21:51:23
Speaker 2
Okay.

00:21:52:01 - 00:21:53:18
Speaker 1
4 or 5. Six is what everybody says.

00:21:53:18 - 00:21:55:13
Speaker 2
Yes, yes, that's the cool part. Yeah.

00:21:55:13 - 00:22:06:12
Speaker 1
Whereas both of them pretty much strike me as being more or less equal. Prequels have better special effects. That's about it. Yeah. Better lightsaber duels.

00:22:06:12 - 00:22:13:17
Speaker 2
So if people are loving this conversation they want to learn more about you. Okay. Where can they find it?

00:22:13:17 - 00:22:15:22
Speaker 1
I've kept it simple.

00:22:15:22 - 00:22:22:20
Speaker 1
I just have a Facebook page for my theater company and my theater company called monkeys with a typewriter. Multiple monkeys, one typewriter.

00:22:22:22 - 00:22:23:06
Speaker 2
Okay.

00:22:24:09 - 00:22:26:14
Speaker 2
Are you working on any projects right now?

00:22:26:16 - 00:22:53:01
Speaker 1
No, particularly. I have slowed down a lot because, I'm I'm down to one parent now, and so I've missed because I work very little. I have time to take care of my mother, so I mainly home taking care of mom, and, and I, you know, artists, oftentimes when they do start getting successful, just get really stupid with their money.

00:22:53:01 - 00:23:10:11
Speaker 1
And I again, I always say that that time I spent my 20s having a normal life taught me financial management a bit. So when I did finally start doing some shows that were making me a lot of money, I put a bunch of that money aside so that I. I barely have to work at this point, and I can't just focus on being there for my mom.

00:23:10:13 - 00:23:26:14
Speaker 1
So, so, yeah, like, my friends want to punch me because I'll grumble like, oh, I worked a whole six hours this and they're like, oh, go to hell or die robbed him. And I'm like, well, you know, I did do 60 hour weeks for three years straight.

00:23:26:15 - 00:23:27:02
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:23:27:08 - 00:23:51:00
Speaker 1
Well, you were like, why are you out partying with us more? And I was like, because I can see a long term goal. So yeah, I do what I call my high yield shows, which are shows that make me a lot of me. Like, we just got through, October, a little while ago. And that's why I do all my ghost walks and stuff and just basically get paid to tell ghost stories in general.

00:23:51:02 - 00:24:15:16
Speaker 1
And I brought about 100 of them bobbing around in my head at any given time. So I did that. I've gotten really attached to, the prohibition era. I was involved for quite a few years with, a show called the Rum Runners Tour, which was a theatrical bus tour where you you have characters from the 1920s.

00:24:15:18 - 00:24:39:12
Speaker 1
I eventually spun off into my own little thing with the blessing of the producer from, writers. I didn't want to compete with them, but now I just do this one person show called, Bootlegger Tales, and that people with in Windsor are fascinated with Windsor during the prohibition era. So every time I put it on, I get like a couple hundred people showing up.

00:24:39:13 - 00:24:52:07
Speaker 1
I've done multiple bootlegger tales since, and, and ghost walks are always I've been doing them for well over a decade. And they always people love their ghost stories, too.

00:24:52:09 - 00:24:52:19
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:24:52:19 - 00:24:58:08
Speaker 1
So, you know, I've got my other passion projects too, that still get me an okay crowd,

00:24:58:08 - 00:25:11:07
Speaker 1
There is another one person show that I do. It's all about geek culture. That that makes me quite a bit of money to that you would probably only half like because you didn't even know what the prequels were.

00:25:11:11 - 00:25:16:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, you wouldn't class them. I find myself as yeah.

00:25:16:07 - 00:25:34:02
Speaker 1
No, that's fine, but I am. So I capitalized on it. And geeks love coming to see it because they get all the inside jokes, right? Yeah. So that's another one that the whenever I bring it out tends to do well too. I'm favoring a lot of one person shows too, because they're just easier for me to put together.

00:25:34:04 - 00:25:37:01
Speaker 1
And actors are pains in the ass to deal with.

00:25:37:02 - 00:25:49:15
Speaker 2
I've been getting direct sponsorship from Sandwich Town BIA for the last couple of years for the Ghost Walks. And so now they're putting it all on their promotional platforms, and they set up an event. And I was seeing like

00:25:49:15 - 00:25:52:09
Speaker 2
3 to 4000 people engaging.

00:25:52:09 - 00:26:09:21
Speaker 2
And I was like and I still had some huge crowds. I was they still mic me because I wouldn't be able to shout over 300 people outside. But I was still just like, there's no way 3000 people are taking my walk, but it's still overwhelming to see it. It's like, wow.

00:26:10:01 - 00:26:14:20
Speaker 1
I mean, on Facebook, I have, I think almost 200 people that marked interested.

00:26:14:20 - 00:26:20:03
Speaker 1
I, I trust that it's going to be a good event. I just let it flow and it is what it is.

00:26:20:04 - 00:26:26:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. And that's again the best approach you can have to that sort of event having done a bunch of them myself.

00:26:26:17 - 00:26:27:00
Speaker 1
Okay.

00:26:27:00 - 00:26:30:20
Speaker 2
Thank you. Not to make myself sound like old wise Rob or whatever.

00:26:30:22 - 00:26:32:03
Speaker 1
I trust your experience.

00:26:32:03 - 00:26:33:15
Speaker 2
Well, still, I just

00:26:33:15 - 00:26:36:01
Speaker 2
noticed there's a lot of people in the arts that are just

00:26:36:01 - 00:26:44:17
Speaker 2
dying to be mentors. Right. And so they dispense a lot of advice that you didn't really see before. Right.

00:26:44:17 - 00:26:47:00
Speaker 2
So I try not to be one of those people.

00:26:47:02 - 00:26:48:01
Speaker 1
I'm open ears.

00:26:48:05 - 00:27:03:11
Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay. Well and you ask questions that's like we, I remember earlier saying what can I get involved with? And I was like, okay, she's asking now again, that's how I like to work. If you're asking me if you're seeking feedback. I'm more than happy to give it.

00:27:03:11 - 00:27:07:09
Speaker 2
If you're not, I can sometimes even just watch you flounder and go.

00:27:07:09 - 00:27:12:11
Speaker 2
They're drowning, but you're not asking me to toss them a lifeline, so I'm just going to let them drown.

00:27:12:11 - 00:27:23:01
Speaker 2
if people start picking my brains enough, I'm like, okay, we need to sit down and talk about a consultation fee, right? This advice should not be free for for too long either, I believe.

00:27:23:06 - 00:27:26:20
Speaker 2
Yeah. Like my mind. Yeah. My knowledge and experience has value to it.

00:27:26:20 - 00:27:34:11
Speaker 2
I like to not just be one of those critical assholes that's only telling you what you're doing wrong. And I always believe that

00:27:34:11 - 00:27:39:02
Speaker 2
You need that positive reinforcement too. So we'll sit down and we'll go through both

00:27:39:02 - 00:27:46:01
Speaker 2
and and that's why I get a lot more work as a consultant than a lot of other people do, because a lot of other people do see that as just an opportunity to go,

00:27:46:01 - 00:27:50:16
Speaker 2
you're absolute shit, right? Let me tell you exactly every little thing that you did wrong,

00:27:50:16 - 00:27:54:07
Speaker 2
I didn't ever think people would pay me money to just

00:27:54:07 - 00:27:57:06
Speaker 2
tell them what to do, basically, right?

00:27:57:06 - 00:27:59:01
Speaker 2
But that's even what directing is.

00:27:59:10 - 00:28:10:05
Speaker 2
But I do like to make it into like an open forum where it's like, okay, do you have any ideas of how you might want to see that scene? Yeah. And though and again I've asked them. Right.

00:28:10:05 - 00:28:12:15
Speaker 2
there's quite a bit of stuff in my plays now that

00:28:12:15 - 00:28:13:14
Speaker 2
I've had to just

00:28:13:14 - 00:28:16:13
Speaker 2
own up to when people go, I love that you did this in that show.

00:28:16:13 - 00:28:21:12
Speaker 2
And I was like, that was actually their idea over there. But and great. Yeah, we'll.

00:28:21:12 - 00:28:21:19
Speaker 1
Do that.

00:28:21:20 - 00:28:37:02
Speaker 2
I mean nobody likes seeing their ideas get stolen and I've had my ideas stolen. Left it right. So yeah, I try to be very careful about that. If I'm getting complimented for someone else's work and I'm very quick to go, especially if that person's right there.

00:28:37:04 - 00:28:42:14
Speaker 2
And I know so many artists that are like, oh, he's standing right there, but I'm still going to take ownership for it, right?

00:28:42:14 - 00:28:44:23
Speaker 2
so having been in that other place,

00:28:44:23 - 00:28:46:07
Speaker 2
I try to be empathic.

00:28:46:07 - 00:28:48:18
Speaker 1
Well Rob yeah, it's been a fun conversation.

00:28:48:18 - 00:28:49:16
Speaker 2
Rambled on quite a bit.

00:28:49:17 - 00:28:51:14
Speaker 1
Anyway, thank you so much for joining.

00:28:51:15 - 00:28:53:02
Speaker 2
thank you for having me I appreciate it.