99% Invisible - 425- Mini-Stories: Volume 9

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Each year, 99% Invisible producers select short design stories to talk about with host Roman Mars. Some of these were just too brief to make into full 99pi episodes, but many also reveal aspects of how we find ideas for (and ultimately make) the show. In this collection, we'll talk about everything from movie novelizations to disco costume designs! Mini-Stories volume 9

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's the end of the year and time for our annual mini stories episodes. We have three episodes this year, crusting over the new year, because we have so many stories. Since these are always fan favorites, I didn't think you'd mind if we stretched out a bit. If you're new to this, the mini stories are a hodgepodge of fun, quick hit stories that probably came up in our research for another episode, or maybe it's just some cool thing that someone told us about that we found really interesting, but we knew from doing a little bit of research, they didn't warrant a full episode and two months of hard reporting and interviews, but they're great 99PI stories nonetheless. The best part from

from my perspective is that we do them as unscripted interviews where I get to chat with the reporters who work on the show. Sometimes I know a little bit about what they're talking about like we pitch them an meeting, but sometimes I know nothing that keep them from me and that's very fun. This week we have stories about movie novelizations, Swiss defensive architecture, central park lamp posts, and the outlanders costumes of the Swedish supergroup ABBA. I mean there's no way you can hear that list and not listen, right? Stay with us. A first is producer Chris Barouba. So I'm here with producer Chris Barouba, hey Chris. Hey Roman, how you doing?

I'm doing pretty good Chris Brubay, Hey Chris. Hey Roman, how you doing? I'm doing pretty good. How about you? I'm well, I'm glad we are doing our mini stories chat. It is. It's the most wonderful time of the year, the mini stories. Partly because it is a less horrible chat with you because I miss coming to Oakland and just having some time where we see each other in person and we can have our movie talks. Exactly, exactly.

We have to make do with movie talks. Exactly, exactly. We have to make do with movie talks on the Slack channel. That's called movie. What is it called? Is it Chip Movie Club? Movie Club. I think it is. Yeah, it doesn't have quite the same effect.

Well, okay, so I have decided to import our movie talks into many stories. Perfect. So specifically, I want to talk about a quarantine hobby that I have taken up. I've been reading a lot of movie novelizations. So Roman, do you remember movie novelizations? Sure.

You know, the ones I find funniest are ones that are like these action blockbusters that are the novelization of, I don't know, Transformers Dark Side of the Moon or something. Sure. And you think, why would anyone read that thing? Yeah. Speed, the official movie novelization. Exactly. Exactly. It's funny.

There's actually this really rich history to movie novelization. So they go back to pretty much the beginning of movies. So as soon as people started making movies, the producers realized, you know what, we could turn a quick book if we make a book that is based on the movie. But they really took off in the 1970s when Blockbuster films started becoming a thing. So you got Indiana Jones and Star Wars and all these movies coming out. And some of those tie-ins were actually best sellers.

Like they made the best seller chart. Wow. I guess if you put yourself back in that head space, it makes a lot of sense. Like back in the 70s, you had to go see a movie in a theater or not, there was no home viewing. Like you had to just wait until it came out on TV or you could get the movie novelization if you wanted to relive the movie.

So it's kind of like if you wanted to quote unquote watch the movie at home, you bought a novelization. Exactly. Like this is the one way that you could relive it and revisit those characters and think about the movie again. That actually makes a ton of sense. I like that. Yeah. But that doesn't explain in this moment of streaming every type of video content that's ever existed, why you are reading them right now.

True. I could watch Star Wars. If I wanted to watch Star Wars, that option is available to me. So I started getting really interested in these because of the generic product episode that we made. So do you remember the generic branding episode? Of course, it was an instant class. Like everyone loved it, especially your Canadian brethren.

It was the most Canadian episode of Nightingale PI we've had. So you may recall, one of the people we spoke to for that episode was a guy named Terry Bisson, who was the editor of this series of generic books. This was like a footnote in the story, but- Yeah, but it's a very memorable footnote. It totally is. So, just for Fesher Memory, here's Terry talking about the No Frills books that he helped

edit. I thought of it as a satire on publishing. If you could have No Frills cornflakes, why couldn't you have a no frills romance? So, I did this interview with Terry and we're talking and he's actually this really fascinating guy. So, he's a really well-regarded sci-fi writer and we were talking about his career and he mentions that for a while he used to write movie novelizations as a way to make some cash. So, he did some pretty big movies actually like Johnny Newmonic, the Kiana Reeves movie. He did Galaxy Quest. He did a Bruce

Willis sci-fi movie that you may remember called the fifth element. Of course. And you remember that movie was a bad 95 or something like that when it came out. And it sold really well. I think the reason it sold was because people thought, well, maybe the book will explain what's going on in the movie, because there's a lot of stuff in the movie that didn't make sense. And they thought, maybe I would make sense of it, but I didn't even try. So I'm talking to Terry. We're talking about his career. And I'm saying, wow, it's really

cool that you got to see these movies before anybody else. And Terry tells me something really surprising. And that is he never saw the movies. Well, that is surprising. How is that possible? Well, he might have seen the movie after it came out, but he didn't get to see the movie while he was writing the book.

It's usually done while the movie is either still being done or is in post-production. And at the last minute, they thought, look, we'll spend 20 grand and it promotes the movie a little bit. So because of the production schedules, Terry said in his experience, it was always based off the script and not the actual movie when you're doing the novelization. Well, I mean, I guess that makes sense now that you lay it out, but it is truly weird to think about that these novelizations haven't connected to the actual visual part of the movie at all.

Right. I was actually like a little bit skeptical when he told me this. I'm like, how do you write a novelization of a movie with no movie? So Terry, after we had our generic stock, he connected me with a friend of his named Liz Hand, who's another sci-fi writer who wrote a number of these novelizations. She pretty much confirmed everything that Terry said. She did 12 monkeys, she did the X-Files movie, and she said, yeah, all you ever get is the script. I did six or seven novelizations and With one exception. I know did not see a film as you've been reading these and doing a little bit of this research What does it mean for the person writing the novelization to have not seen the movie?

So what it means is that the novelization will have a lot of detail that is different from the movie Because of how movies are made So think about it. I mean part of the issue is that stuff will change from the script while you're making the movie So you know an actor comes up with a new line or some special effects or too expensive to film Terry was telling me actually when he was writing the galaxy quest book, they kept changing the ending. They kept rewriting the damn script, and they probably had these groups that told them what ending they liked and stuff like that. I had to rewrite the last 10, 15 pages of it three or four times. What Terry's describing, which is like he would go back in and rewrite it to match the

movie, that was kind of rare. That often did not happen. So with a lot of these novelizations, changes got made, and the producers just wouldn't bother to tell the writer who's doing the novel. So there's all of these examples of movie novelizations where there are details that are wrong compared to the movie. there's all of these examples of movie novelizations where there are details that are wrong compared to the movie. So Roman, for example, I assume you've seen ET,

the extraterrestrial. Sure, I did, yes. One of the most popular movies ever. Now you remember there's a scene in ET where Elliott, the little kid, is trying to lure out ET and he's using candy. With the Reese's Pieces, yeah. Yeah, it's super famous.

So in the novel, it's M&Ms because they hadn't struck a deal the Reese's Pieces, yeah. Yeah, it's super famous. So in the novel, it's M&Ms, because they hadn't struck a deal with Reese's Pieces yet. So another example is the Empire Strikes Back, the novelization of that. In the novel, Yoda is blue. If you had to describe Yoda, first thing you say is he's a green guy.

Like he's a Hall of Fame green thing. If there was a Hall of Fame for stuff that is green, Yoda would be in there on the first ballot. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that thing happens quite a bit. There were like small changes that would get made. And ultimately, you know, that doesn't really ruin the experience of reading the book. If it's still the same story, the other problem though is that screenplays aren't very detailed. So when you're reading a screenplay, there's just like a lot of gaps. The screenplay's 120 pages basically of material,

and it's all dialogue with a few set directions. You need a lot of filler. In a screenplay, it might say, the character's walk into a room, and you don't get any other details. So if you're the person writing the novelization, you have to fill in all these details of what the room looks like, what the characters are wearing, all these things you don't have access to. And sometimes the screenplay doesn't

have details of very important stuff. So Roman, one of my favorite movies is Alien, as you know, sure, it's great. It's one of the best. Here's something that's funny about the screenplay for Alien. They don't describe the alien. So what did they do when they had to do the novelization? So I found this old article about Alan Dean Foster who wrote the novelization and he says he went to the studio and was like, Hey, can I see the alien? And they said no. Oh my god, what's so what did he do? Well, there's a lot of passages in the novelization where you could see he's clearly trying to avoid getting specific about it.

So here's one. There was a vague suggestion of something tall and heavy. And this is a bit later on, above the helpless figure was a faint outline, something man-shaped, but definitely not a man. Oh wow, this sounds real verbal gymnastics to not be specific there. That's pretty good actually.

And that novelization of Alien is seen as a classic of the genre. It was an actual bestseller. But there are some cases where the writer is trying to fill in these details and add things and gets a little carried away maybe. Give me an example of that. So an example of this that's pretty notorious

is Jaws the Revenge, the fourth Jaws movie. way maybe. Give me an example of that. So an example of this that's pretty notorious is Jaws the Revenge, the fourth Jaws movie, and the writer added this whole backstory about why the shark in Jaws keeps chasing the same family. And the explanation is a voodoo curse. I think in Jaws the Revenge, the shark follows Ellen Brody, like down to the Bahamas or something like that. Yeah, that is what happens. And clearly the person writing the novelization. It was like to some inspiration. This is a leap in logic that's a little too far. So I have to do something to explain it. So ancient curse is the easiest way to connect those dots.

It makes as much sense as anything else. And this kind of thing would happen when you were writing and you know, you hit a book where you didn't know what to do. And Liz Hand gave me an example from her career where she had to do this. I won't say that, you know, the novelization of Catwoman is my finest moment, but it was a paycheck. Does she mean the Halle Berry movie, Catwoman? Yeah.

So the Halle Berry Catwoman, kind of a notorious flop, I think it still has 9% on Rotten Tomatoes last week. Rough, yeah. What can I do for you? Wait, Russia. No ice, hold a vodka, hold a candle. Green, straight up. Liz was given the script for this and she looks at it and she realizes, oh no, like this

is a mess. What am I going to do? There's very little detail in here. How am I going to fill a book? So then how did she solve this problem? So get ready. The way she solved this problem is kind of amazing. So what I ended up doing, there was a character in the book, in the screenplay rather.

It was a supporting character who was like a renowned cat ologist, a supposed anthropologist, archeologist who specialized in cats. And the cat woman character would go periodically to visit this woman to ask for, you know, oh, help me, oh be cat. Tell me what to do with my little pointy ears. And so what I thought was like, okay, I know what I can do, even though this is totally

out of line, I'm just going to do it anyway. So I wrote three or four little cat, I made up three or four little cat fables or fairy tails. And so each time the cat woman character would go to see this woman, the action ground to a halt, I dropped these things in, and basically they were filler, but for me they were fun. And actually one of these folk tales that Liz wrote turned out so well that she managed to get it published in a couple of short story anthologies, including this one anthology of stories about cats, where it's a story by Stephen King,

a story by George R.R. Martin, and then also her short story that was originally in the cat woman novelization. That is so good. It's really funny. I mean, it's so interesting because a couple months ago, I probably had the same thoughts that you did about movie novelizations, I think.

Oh yeah, these are cations. These kind of seem like hack work. But the deeper you dig into them, the more you realize there's creativity here. They're kind of weird. They're kind of their own thing from the movies. And to me, that's a really interesting way to think about the original movie and it kind of deepens the whole experience of being a fan. I mean, it's kind of beautiful.

I really love it. Like people operating with your creativity and the sort of marginalia of this gigantic, you know, creative apparatus. It's, it's so cool. I have a few special thank yous before we go. I want to thank my brother, Dan, who is a big fan of these novelizations. He gave me some great advice for this story. Also, thank you to Justin Morris, who gave me a great list of things to read to learn more about this.

And thank you to the authors who are very serious science fiction writers who indulge me and we're very generous with their time talking about these footnotes and their careers. So thank you to Terry Bissen, Oakland's own Terry Bissen, and thank you very much to Liz Hand, her new book. It's a novel called The Book of Lamps and Banners. Thank you so much. Thank you, Roman. One of the stories that came over the Transmavia Twitter this year is about the four digit codes on the lampposts in Central Park in New York City. A person named Gloria at Lucent 508 tweeted about this clever form of wayfinding in the park, and I think like a hundred people said it to me.

So each Lamp Post in the park has a four digit number on it. The first two digits represent the closest cross street to the post in the 840 acre city park. So if the first two digits are 96, the post is parallel to 96th street. The second two digits represent two things. Which side the lamp post is on and its relative distance from the edge. If it is an even number, then it's on the east side of the park. So, e, even, e, east. Let's see how I remember that. And an odd number means that that light is's on the east side of the park. So, e even, e east. Let's see how I remember that. And an odd number means that that light is closer to the west side. The

smaller the number, the closer it is to the edge. So, for example, 96.05 is roughly parallel to 96th Street, and it's pretty close to the west side because it has a small odd number. But if a lamppost is numbered 9642, it's closer to the east side than it is the west side, but because it has that high number of 42, it's more towards the middle of the park. So if you ever get lost in Central Park, find a lamppost, read the embossed number, and you'll know roughly where you are. When the explanation for this code, you know, found found people on the internet a lot of people were intrigued by it, but they often wondered what good is this cool wayfinding method if nobody knows

about it. Well the answer is, it's not really wayfinding for us, for patrons of the park. It's really for park employees, whose job it is to replace and repair those lamps. But now that you know, you could spin around with a blindfold on, set off in a direction, find a lamp, and know where you are in Central Park, which is pretty cool. Up next is the digital director of 99PI, and the co-author of the 99% Invisible City, Kurt Colstein. and the co-author of the 99% Invisible City, Kurt Kohlstead. So if you know anything about the history of Switzerland, you probably know that it's a beautiful mountainous country,

and it has famously remained as neutral as possible when it comes to global conflicts. Kurt Kohlstead is here to talk about how that stance has shaped the built environment of Switzerland, including, you know, kind of obvious ways, but also really strange and fervent ways as well. Yes. Switzerland is filled with defensive architecture and infrastructure. And yes, some of it is pretty obvious. Like, on the tops of some hills and mountains, you can find these rows of jagged concrete teeth just sticking up from the ground. And some people call them toblerone mines. Like the chocolate.

Is that the thing that's another thing that's what you're in his famous for? Is that spiky chocolate? Exactly. And it's because of that, you know, jagged shape. But these are built up to stop incoming tanks from rolling over hill sides into Swiss territory. So these like literally look like if you were to take one of those chocolate bars out of its package,

it's a piece of con, a big piece of concrete that just looks just like a toplerum and it's not like that. Yeah, basically, yeah. So that's an example of a, you know, a kind of an obvious defensive design. What's it, what's it more invisible design? Well, I'll start with the one that sent me down this whole rabbit hole. So a few years back, the Swiss government decided to remove some explosives from an old bridge, and that made the news. So, wait, so they actually had explosives built into the bridge itself? Yes, and that was my reaction to, I understand the same question.

I was like, why would you rig your own bridge with explosives? And the bridging question is an old one. It's 700 plus years old. But during the Cold War, they strapped TNT to this thing so that key supports could be detonated in case of invasion. Okay. So they removed those. Is that tactic no longer a thing in Switzerland? Well, here's the thing. Switzerland won't actually comment on that for security reasons. So it's possible that they're just done with that. But it's also possible they just swapped it out with new explosives. And this is just one part of the equation, right?

So some bridges are also flanked with artillery, which is like hidden in the mountain side. And works as like a backup system, so they can retreat. And then if the enemy tries to repair the bridge, the Swiss can just rain fire down on them and stop them from doing it. And so all of this is a way to keep the enemies, both from crossing the bridge, and then from fixing the bridge in case they want to come back across. Right. So they got explosives to detonate the bridge, and guns pointed down at them in case they want to come back across. Right. So they got explosives to detonate the bridge and guns pointed down at them in case the enemy wants to repair that bridge if it's been detonated. So they have all kinds of things and they're arsenal. Yes, totally. And secrecy and redundancy

are a huge part of that. And bridges are also just a small part of that. So in the Alps, for example, the government has carved out tens of thousands of bunkers and other installations over the decades. And they've also rigged explosives up at the mountains to trigger land slides, again, a way of stopping or at least slowing down would be invaders. And then there are those little villages. And you know the ones I'm talking about. You see them on postcards. You see me in like these Swiss hill towns with little picturesque cottages and some farm animals

and beautiful views. Those are part of the defensive design. Not all of them, but yes, there's this whole subset of camouflage designs Like anti-aircraft guns that are tucked behind these cute little windows in cozy-looking fake cottages And the juxtaposition is crazy here. Check out check out this lake. Just take take a look Okay, oh my goodness. There's like a big gun coming of the cottage. It is super strange, right? Like, yeah.

Whoa, that is really something. That's a Swiss gun right there. It really is massive. It's something else. And what really is impressive to me too is the attention to detail on these things. So in theory, these only really need to work in a distance, right?

They're not made to be camouflage up close, but nonetheless, they're really skillfully painted. They even paint like fake shadows under the fake overhangs. You have to almost walk right up to one to see what they really are, or at least see what they're really not. So it sounds like this approach kind of pervades all kinds of things in terms of their defensive design. Like it has effect on the architecture of the infrastructure. But you know, is this a particularly

Swiss thing? I mean, is this where this kind of thing started? Yeah, I mean the Swiss have bonkers that you know, day back to the 1800s, like most countries, but they got really worried and really serious about this stuff in the 1930s. I wonder why. Yeah, right. On the one hand, they had this relatively defensible mountainous landscape. But on the other hand, they were completely surrounded by countries that as it turned out, were on the brink of another world war.

So their preparations made sense. So this kind of cropped up between those world war. So their preparations made sense. So this kind of cromped up between those world wars, but you also mentioned the Cold War. So it sounds like they got started, but then they saw kind of more of a need even after the access and allies powers fought all around them. Right. Thankly confirmed their suspicion, but they really needed this kind of defense. And so Switzerland wanted to be prepared for anything and to make guerrilla war as hard as possible on potential enemies.

So among other things, they even built enough shelters to literally house the entire country's population, which it's unprecedented. No other nation has done anything like this. And it even became a matter of policy to make sure every citizen had the right to access bunker space if they needed it. Well, that's really something. And then there's all this, you know, self-destructive, you know, design, the big red button that blows everything up. I mean, it's hard to imagine why I have a button that destroys everything. The emergency destruct system is now activated. The ship will detonate in T-minus 10 minutes.

What circumstance makes you decide to really go through with that? I mean, that's the crazy thing to be in. And if you could imagine this from the point of view of an engineer, right? A Swiss engineer who is tasked with doing this. So they're building a bridge, they're building it to stand up and work as a bridge, but they're simultaneously building it to blow up or to serve another function, right? Like to be turned into a bunker or whatever. And I actually read about this one bunker, for example, that is really just a railway tunnel that's used as a railway tunnel, but they've packed it with supplies. And the idea is that in an emergency, they can house 20,000 people in there and they'd blow up and cave in the two main entrances. So it's like a rail tunnel by day. And then if disaster

strikes, it can be this huge, huge bunker that's carved into a mountain. The world has moved on. The Cold War has evolved in certain ways. Is this still a thing? Are they still making things like this? Is this part of the Swiss mentality when it comes to building things to have this kind of defensive structures? I mean, it is in part. So they now have more publicly known structures and installations and bases and things, but a lot of this stuff is still classified. And so it's hard to tell exactly how much, but you can see this shift in that they've started to sell off some of these places. So, you know, there's some bunkers that people have turned into houses,

and also these fake homes that once housed artillery are now in some cases becoming real homes, that house people. Like that. That's something that we wrote about in the book with Toronto, the electric substations that were Cameloges' houses and then the technology evolved past the point of needing these kind of converters

and therefore those houses became actual houses. Yeah, exactly. It's a really strong parallel. It's one of the reasons I was like, I thought about talking about this in the book and that section was getting a little bit long. Yeah. I came up a flash so I felt a little redone it. Pretend to be a thing long enough. Maybe you'll go off to be that thing.

Milkio becomes a real boy. Exactly. Thank you, Kurt. Thanks so much. We have one more mini story about the strange tax law that made Abba dress the way they do. Maybe. After this. Up next is producer Vivian Le. Hey Viv.

Hey Roman. So what do you have for us this year? So what I wanted to do for my mini story this year is talk about the band AbBA because it's been a very long, very difficult year and ABBA brings me a lot of joy. Did you have anything specific about ABBA? Did you just want to chat about ABBA for an extended minute? I would actually love to chat about ABBA and the momomious cinematic universe and how much it rules, but I actually do have something specifically that I wanted to talk about, and that's ABba's outfits. Because I think it's pretty well documented

that they consistently dressed in these outrageous stage costumes we're in performing. Yeah, they were not known for their subtlety. No. So I guess I'm just gonna give you a quick tour of some of Abba's best looks so that we could be on the same page. So I dropped in a photo, which is a lot. It's a look.

Oh my god. Yeah, indeed. Yeah, so Frida, who's on the left, she's wearing snake skin jumpsuit. You've got Benny next to her who's wearing like this blue blazer and his lapels are made out of a giant like ostrich plume. But my favorite is Bjorn, who's on the very right, he's wearing a head-to-toe jumpsuit, blue skin tight with a cape. I mean, they kind of look like professional wrestlers or kind of like circus performers or maybe circus performing professional wrestlers. Like Bjorn literally looks like he's about to be shot out of a cannon in this picture. That's right.

Oh, it's so good. I know I love it so much. But like, the reason why I want to talk about Abba's fashion choices in particular is because I had read this really weird piece of trivia that, you know, if it's true, makes this the perfect mini story for me. The reason why Abba's outfits were like so out there and so wild was because according to Swedish tax law at the time, if you're a performer and your costumes were not suitable for everyday wear, they were tax deductible.

That's so funny. So the point is, if you're a musician and your stage clothes are just too impractical for everyday wear to go to a birthday party or an Ikea or something, you could actually write them off as costumes. They were professional wear. Yes, exactly. This had been picked up by a bunch of different websites, but it was reported that this particular tax law encouraged Abba's costume designer to make their stage outfits, you know, as flamboyant

and essentially as unwearable as possible. Yeah. I mean, this actually kind of reminds me of the fact that bricks were taxed differently in England at different times and so you can sort of date how old a building is by the size of its bricks. So there's all kinds of things in the design world that are due to, you due to mundane tax considerations and not because of some grand design idea, but it does make me think, you know, in the case of how flamboyant these costumes are and because it's ABBA and because it's the internet. You know, just like how much this is true versus how much this is just ABBA clickbait. Yeah, exactly, because this is still disco music that they are dressing for.

Exactly. And it got kind of hung up on this. So I ended up calling somebody to find out. Yes, Vivian. I'm with you. Hi, you know, it was me. Is now still a good time to talk? Yes, of course.

And nothing can take me away from you onto the death door spot. That's a charmer there. Seriously. So who is this? So this is Oversensrum. My name is Oversensström. I am among other things, the designer of the world famous Abogur Up from Sweden. Wow, so you went straight to the horse's mouth. This is the sword. Yes, exactly. And I really wanted to talk to Uva,

not just because he knows the answer to this tax question, but also because he might literally have the most fascinating career on the planet. I'm also Professor of Science, teaching young people to become zookeepers and working with wildlife and endangered species. I'm actually also working as a safari guide in Kenya. I've been doing that for 25 years. What? So he's a zoologist who leads safari tours in Kenya and also designed all the costumes for Apple. Yes, and he also arranges flowers, and he owns a restaurant,

but probably the thing that he's really known for now is his work with endangered animals. He's actually one of those television animal specialists who will bring like tarantulas and tortoises on the talk shows, so he's basically like the jackhanna of Sweden. Totally. I know exactly what you mean. He actually started out his career wanting to work with endangered animals and just kind of fell into costume design. So how does one do that? How does one go from working with animals to

Abba? Well, that's also kind of a wonky story. So according to Uva, he was at university studying like zoology and botany and marine biology. You see, studying at the university was quite expensive. So I had to earn some money. And you see, believe it or not, but during a period of my young life, I was studying the art of flamenco. Wait, flamenco dancing. That was it? Wait, flamenco dancing. Is that what he says? Yes, flamenco dancing. Okay, so let's back up for people who just told us. He's a zoologist who leads Safari tours in Africa. He designs costumes for Abba and is also, was a professional flamenco dancer.

Yes, he's literally the most fascinating person on the planet. So Uva told me that he basically started sowing because he and his fiancee, you know, at the time, they had this background in flamenco dancing. And Uva figured that they could earn some extra money by performing at Flamenco clubs. But there was this one problem, which was that his fiance said

that she didn't have any flamenco dresses to perform in. And I said, that's not a problem darling. I will make one for you. And of course, you laugh. And she said, but you can't make flamenco dresses. Oh, where come on? It's quite complicated. And you see, you shouldn't say no to a person like me.

So he ended up taking his mother's old dresses and then teaching himself how to make flamenco dresses. And he just ended up being being very naturally good at it. So the dresses that he was making for his fiance caught the eye of a local theater group in the area. So he started designing for them. And then he started working with local musical artists making costumes for musical performers.

And that's how he ended up meeting Frida from ABBA. So she took her friends, three of them, and herself of course, to my studio. And I said, well, tell me, tell me, friends. Frida från Abba. Såg honom för att honom har förkostade till Mastudio. Jag kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att honom kunde jag säga att was, remember them. Remember, nothing is too wild. I guarantee he did regret that many times. So the first outfit that he ended up designing for Abba as a group was for this video called Ring Ring. Those are actually the costumes from the picture that I showed you above where, you know, free does in the snake skin jumpsuit and Bjorns in that blue body suit with the cape. If you look at it you can see Bjorn he looks like something between a

circus artist a drag show and Superman. He has a cape he has this leotard you know with big with big sequences, enormous platform shoes. Well, it looks really crazy. Because you see, I was so fascinated by circus because I had some friends working with circus and look at these outfits and costume and you got a small circus company. Really, it was the first time that a pop group should be dressed with blooms and with sequences and leotals and everything. And that was the beginning. So what do you say in there? Is the reason why Avav, look like they were straight out of the circus

in that music video is because Uva was literally inspired by the circus. Yes, exactly. Ova was literally inspired by the circus. Yes, exactly. It's a straight line. Yes. Well, so I guess the big question is, is did that tax deduction incentive encourage Ova to make their outfits even more absurd? That's a very fun story.

Well, it is actually partly, partly true, but not concerning Abba. But can you imagine Abba wearing these outfits when they go shopping, singing honey, honey, you want to buy some honey, yes, and I won't sell that. So he said that while he did purposefully make costumes more in practical for tax reasons for other musicians, that was never his goal when he was designing for ABBA. I had some artists who came to me because I made costumes for most of Swedish artists, really most of them, and some of them came, can you please write me paper to the tax authorities

so you can convince them that this outfit is not suitable for wearing at a funeral or at a dinner sitting or whatever. So that happened three or four times. So actually it's partly true because there was a law and it's still a law is written. But I can tell you it was never any part of any of the costumes that are designed and produced for the Abergrook never ever. So now you've got a complete answer. So in the end were Aber's costumes tax deductible? I mean, probably because they were clearly not...

Yeah. Yeah, like seriously, like why not write them off? They're not suitable for everyday use. But that wasn't a factor in how OVA designed for the group. Like I know that the tax deduction story, you know, makes for a good story, but I kind of like his answer better. I mean, you know, he didn't create these bonkers outfits for Abba because he needed to. It's just because he wanted to, you know? Yeah, exactly. Like OVA was telling me that his inspiration came from everything, from like the animals that he worked with, to Swedish flowers, to his friends at the circus.

So what he created was really a reflection of his eclectic background. And he really does have an eclectic background. We're a fascinating man. Oh, Vivian. Well, that was great. Well, thank you for solving that mystery that I didn't know. I actually needed soft. It was my pleasure. I did want to give a quick thank you to the Aba Museum in Stockholm

for connecting me with OVA. Oh, that's great. Well, and thanks to OVA. That's probably the most interesting man we've had on our show. He's the most fascinating person I've ever talked to in my life. Thank you, OVA. I love it. Thanks. Thank you. I love it. Thanks. Thank you. If we don't hear from each other, a very, very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Or as we say within the family, Happy New Year. Happy New Year. As we say. Bye bye, Vivian! We're going to be hearing more mini stories from the rest of the 99 PI crew as the first two episodes of 2021.

Happy New Year. The rest of the 99 PI crew is the first two episodes of 2021. Happy New Year. As of the end of 2020, 99% invisible is Katie Mangle, Kurt Colesde, Delaney Hall, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sean Rihau, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Le, Sophia Klatsker, Chris Barube, Abby Medon, Christopher Johnson, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. Oakland, California. We are a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a collective of the best most innovative shows in all of podcasting. Discover, listen, and support them all at radiotopia.fm.

You can find us and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI Ork, or on Instagram, and read it too. I bet you can still buy a last minute copy of the 99% invisible city just in time for Christmas if you act right now. Get it at your local bookstore or by going to 99pi.org slash book. I know that your daily habits have changed a lot this year and for the people who have stayed with us listening from week to week, I thank you.

I am grateful and I do hope you keep coming back. There's so much more good stuff in 2021. I cannot wait. Keep in touch at nyanp.org. Radio tapio. From PRX.