Green Light with Chris Long - George RR Martin in The Fish Bowl

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

The mastermind of the most iconic show in television history, Game of Thrones, swims into The Fish Bowl to talk about his favorite topic.....sports! You know George RR Martin for his legendary writing and storytelling, but Chalk Media is betting you didn't know that George RR Martin is just as passionate about his favorite sports teams. Chris Long and George RR Martin cover NFL Football, favorite MLB baseball moments and just about every other sport as George proved he's the author of The Grays Sports Almanac. George talks about his childhood, his inspirations and what influenced his writing and storytelling. About Chalk Media: Following the unfiltered voice and vision of Chris Long, Chalk Media is the interactive online community for you, the intelligent and humorous sports fan. Driven by access, Chalk delivers a unique perspective that cuts through the canned talking points and provides a variety of content from your favorite sports and entertainment celebrities. Here at Chalk, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we are rooted in challenging the perception of professional athletes. We embrace the “real” with a unique combination of humor and intelligence. Chalk is a community with a voice beyond 240 characters that brings a perspective and vibe to a traditionally brash and boastful sports media space. Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more. Nothing is off limits at Chalk - hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. 🌍🏀🏈SUBSCRIBE NOW ⚾🏒⛰️ http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I had a great conversation with George R.R. Martin, obviously the brainchild for what turned into the Game of Thrones series. And that's a sentence I never thought I'd say before that I sat down with George R.R. Martin, well, indirectly, on Skype. And it was awesome. He's an interesting dude. He's not all dragons and dire wolves. He's a big football fan. We talked about growing up a Giants fan and kind of a Jets fan, too. I don't know how that works. but we did talk about wolves, and we talked about, you know, his upbringing in New Jersey and, you know, how pet turtles possibly played a role in the inception of the Game of Thrones, a Game of Thrones idea, so to speak. And we obviously talked about his new project.

He's still working, still creating wild cards. I've been a Giants fan, you know, for a long, long time. I mean, the first game I really remember watching the kid was the greatest game ever played, where the Giants, the so-called greatest game ever played, it really wasn't that great a game, but it was pretty exciting, where Johnny and I just beat the Giants in the last quarter. And one of the hallmarks of the Giants was always great defense. You know, it was the first franchise in the league where the fans actually started cheering, defense, defense, defense. And, you know, we had Sam Puff in the middle, the violent world of Sam Puff.

and then later, of course, Carl Banks and Leonard Marshall and L.T. And, of course, the Super Bowl wins over to Patriots with people like Michael Strayhan, O.C. U.M.N. U.S. U.N. U.S. and Kiwi, Matthias Kiwan. To see this defense just collapsing and giving up lead after lead is heartbreaking for a Giants fan. Well, it's got to be tough. But you all had your bets nicely because you're a Jets fan too, and you grew up in the Joan Namath era, who's one. of the original personalities in the NFL. You know, you also grew up in Bayonne, right?

And so you have somebody who works on my crew said they're from Bayonne. They said to ask you about the Bayonne B's. Did you go to the, were you at the high school of the Bayonne B's? No, that was our arch rival. I went to the Catholic High School, Maris. Oh, okay. Okay, all right. So you got after the Bees.

A big rivalry game every year. We played Bayonne High School, which was the Bees. They were the public. high school and they they kicked our ass every year my senior year my senior year it was a beautiful culmination high school the first time Maris ever beat Bayonne yeah well I mean and one guy you ran into maybe along the way I was really curious about when I put two and two together I was like who else I know from Bayonne I mean there's Chuck Wepner right I mean he's iconic he's adapted on screen did you ever meet him run into him and do you think they did a good job with him

I have never met Chuck Weptner I certainly know of him he was was very famous, you know, in Bayonne for a while, the Bayonne bleeder. And he was the inspiration for Rocky. He fought Muhammad Ali and, you know, never defeated him like Rocky defeated Apollo Creed finally. But he gave him a much better fight than people thought. And that was what inspired Stallone to write the first Rocky script. Right. Right.

What's the best Rocky movie? You know, I still think the first one. I mean, some of the later ones are good. the very fact that they made the second one sort of undercut the first one now because if you look at the first one the whole point of it is Rocky Rocky realizes that

he's just not good enough to beat Apollo Creed but he's going to go 15 rounds with him which nobody else has ever done and that was basically the Chuck Wechner story in no universe could Chuck Wechner beat Muhammad Ali but he gave him a much better fight and knocked him down once and gave him a much better fight than anybody expected.

And he got satisfaction of that. And that's what Rocky got out of that first fight, which he lost. But then, you know, I think in the first movie, Rocky Balboa is based on Chuck Webner. Right. In all the later movies, Rocky Balboa is based on Rocky Marciano.

So they made a shift there, and instead of just being a club fighter who has one glorious night, they made him one of the great heavyweight champion. means of all time, which is a total change in the concept there. Yeah, absolutely. And like, you know, when you think about like on-screen movie characters and all that, I mean, back in your day, the sports characters were few and far between. I mean, they might have been characters, but the way things are now with the advent of the 24-hour

news cycle, and, you know, you talk to beat writers and newspaper guys, and they're like, listen, like, I write stories about the box score, but people don't want to hear about it. They want to hear about who these guys are. And I think that's one of the coolest things about sports now is like, you know, characters develop over time. You got a guy like Tom Brady who comes in and he like kind of conquers the Rams, the greatest show on turf, and he's the unsung hero that everybody's rooting for. And now 15 years later, he's the arch nemesis of everybody. You got Steph Curry going through that right now. He was a fan favorite, non-threatening. Now he's getting shots taken at him. You know, guys like Katie, who's become a villain, but I think

he's misunderstood. And some heroes that are, quite frankly, probably villains in disguise. Do you watch sports through that lens with your writing background and your pension for creating characters? Do you look at the characters in sports? I do. You know, I think America loves the underdog. So we don't like, you know, except if it happens to be your dynasty, we tend to not like dynasties, you know. I mean, when I was in college, it was Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers.

And if you were from Green Bay, you loved them. If you were from any, well, she ate at Vince Lombardi in the Green Bay Packers and wanted to see them and go down to defeat. And the Yankees in baseball. Of course, I, growing up, I was a baseball fan, but I was a Dodgers fan, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And all through the 50s of my childhood, like every year we met the Yankees in the World Series,

and every year we lost until we finally won in 55. And it was glorious. It was glorious because the underdog finally won. We finally beat, you know, We finally defeated, well, Darth Vader and the death star didn't exist then, but it would be felt like it. You know, never defeat the Yankees and all that. But unfortunately, then two years later, they moved out of Brooklyn to Los Angeles and ripped out my heart. Hey, Chris and George, 95, one of the best years of my life.

A lifelong Dodger fan, and you know what I went through before 1955. We kept getting beat by the Yankees. and then came 1955. I was 21 and a half years old. Followed the Dodgers thoroughly and then that wonderful day when they won the World Series.

Johnny Padres, who I came to know pretty well later in life, pitched a magnificent game, shut them out two to nothing. Sandy Amros makes that crazy catch in left field, turns it into a double play. And in the bottom of the ninth inning

when the Yankees came to bat, all of us Dodger fans said they're going to win, they're going to do something. The Yankees always did something. And wacko. Two minutes, the ending was over. And we won two nothing. There was the parade. I went to the parade.

It was just a great moment in my life. Ninety-five. Two years later, I would move to Florida to break into broadcasting, and the Dodgers would move to L.A. and a whole new chapter in their existence. but there was nothing like Brooklyn and nothing like the Dodgers. But the U.S.A. we got the Mets and we started all the way over again from the depth of the thing. But still, you know, it's a whole different experience.

I think being a Yankees fan of being a fan of the Warrior, Golden State Warriors and New England Patriots, these teams that are in it every year, every year, I don't know. I've never really had that experience. My teams are not in it every year. But every once in a while they're in it, like 69 for the Jets and the Mets, both in the same year. That was amazing. Tom Seaver on one hand and Joe Mabeth and the other. And, of course, the 86th World Series where the Mets defeated the Red Sox.

I was at game six. Yeah. I still have my ticket there. So I was sitting in the fourth row on the first bet side when that ball went between Bill Buckner's legs. And the Giants, two Super Bowl wins, you know, in recent memory, They were both amazing over the Patriots. And we were huge underdogs in both of those games, which made to win that much sweeter.

I mean, the first time in Super Bowl 42, the Giants were a wildcard team. They were on the road, and the talking heads on television picked against them in every game. They picked the Buccaneers to beat that. They were playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Then they picked the Cowboys to beat them in the divisional game. And then in the NFC championship,

they picked the president. Packers to beat them and the Giants kept surprising them all the way to the win over to Patriots and it was amazing. It reminds me and I asked Stray Hand at one point I said hey Stray who's the bigger underdog upset victory the Eagles and the Patriots or the the Giants and the Patriots and I said you know I would actually concede that you guys are far and away the bigger underdogs because you were 12 point dogs we were like eight to start the week and it moved to four and we had a backup quarterback yeah but Nick Foles is kind of of this guy that was laying in weight. And the one thing that y'all didn't do is you didn't come up

with a mask. You know, we had the dog masks. There was no mask. So there was no mask. You grow up in Bayonne. You know, I wanted to talk about your beginnings and your creativity. I mean, you know, your dad's a longshoreman. He's probably unpacking boxes from all over the world. You know, you're kind of, you're not seeing much of anything that's not Bayonne. And I wonder, as somebody who's so incredibly creative, it begs the question, is creativity nature or nurture? Is it, are you born with innate creativity or is it nurtured through a lack of new experiences

and having to use your mind more? That's an interesting question, and I don't really know the answer to it, but it certainly my creativity was spurred by Bayonne. I mean, we were, we were, were poor through most of my childhood. My father did become a longshoreman and eventually made pretty good money as a union job. But when you first become a longshoreman, you go to work every day and they don't necessarily pick you.

It's like scenes in Cinderella Man or Rocky. The guy said, oh, we need six guys today. And he picks that. That's called shaping up. So my father would leave the house before I even got up. He'd leave the house at dawn to go shape up on the dots. And he wouldn't get picked because he was the new. guy and by the time I was up and eating breakfast to go to school he would be back in another

day of uh of not being employed and before before that he had a couple years where where he was unemployed and we were just living on unemployment insurance and we lived in the projects on first street but we never went anywhere we did on the car uh we didn't go on vacation down to jersey store in the summer like some of my friends i just stayed in the same apartment thought i had books I could see the world with books. I could go to Paris or London and historical novels. I could go to Mars with Edgar Rice Burroughs or to Middle Earth with J.R. Tolkien or the Hiborian Age of Robert E. Edward E.

And so even though my world was five blocks long in the real world, through books and comic books. I love comic books as well, Batman, Spider-Man, you know, Gotham City and Metropolis and all that stuff. I got to visit some pretty amazing places in my imagination. And then very early I started making up my own stories, you know, sort of mixing these places that I'd read about with things that I made up entirely. Yeah, I heard a little bit about that. And I heard one story in particular.

I mean, you seemed pretty, you had a lot of ingenuity for a kid. I mean, you were selling stories. You were doing dramatic readings. And then there was a story about the turtles. If you care to tell it, I thought it was a terrific story. And I also want to know if the turtles are okay at this point. Well, not those turtles. Those turtles, sadly, are long dead.

Yeah, living in the projects, we were not allowed to have dogs or cats. They were prohibited in the public housing that we lived at. So the only pets that I could have as a kid were, you know, like fish, tropical fish. We could have goldfish and guppies and stuff like that. And we got these little turtles, red-air turtles, the dime store turtles. You got them at Woolworths and Kreskes and places like that. They came in a little plastic bowl with a palm tree in the middle and half of it was gravel and half of it was water.

And then they sold your turtle food to feed them. And it happened that two of those plastic bowls fit exactly in this toy castle I had. So I could put the two plastic bowls in the courtyard of this toy castle that was right by my window. So that's where I kept them. And since they lived in a castle, I started thinking of them as kings and knights and all of that stuff.

I don't think that turtle food that they gave you when you bought the turtles was the healthiest thing. These turtles died very easily. I never had one of them last longer than six months or something like that. And sometimes they would escape the castle. You wouldn't know where they went and you'd find them six months later under the refrigerator. So the turtles, the turtles didn't have any plot armor. they were very susceptible to untimely them. They did not.

I did not succumb, you know, some people like to paint the turtle shells, which is not good for them. I never did that. But the turtles died anyway, and I was a kid, so I needed an explanation for this. I didn't want to. I wasn't sufficient enough to blame the crummy turtle food that they gave you. Right. So I decided that the turtles were competing for the crown, and they were all murdering each other. And when one of the turtles died, they must have been killed by the other two turtles.

And I started writing this whole story about, you know, this king was killed by that king and somebody else took the ground and all that. So that was my first epic fantasy was Turtle Castle. It was a slow moving epic. It was very slow moving. That's right, yes. So you grew up a big comic book fan. You were a big fan of long-form storytelling. And, you know, it's something you've done tremendously throughout your career.

But do you ever feel like, man, if I was, you know, if I, you know, if I, you. If the 70s were the 2000s or 2010 with this explosion of interest in comic books on screen and Netflix and Hulu and ways to tell your stories on screen, do you ever wonder what it would have been in the 70s? You wouldn't have been struggling through the 70s. I know you were teaching, you were into chess, but I saw you say something where you were like, I wasn't making enough money to survive. I mean, do you ever wonder what it would have been like? Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, sometimes there's an alternate world there.

I mean, I actually started writing stories about superheroes when I was in high school for comic book fanzines. You know, I wasn't paid anything for them. There were these little mimeographed or dittoed amateur magazines that came out. But I wrote my stories and I sent them in and they were published and people liked them, which was very important to me because it gave me

a lot of confidence. So look, you know, I published a story and people are saying it was good. So that was very encouraging to me. And of course, the first stuff of mine ever published in a professional publication were letters to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and the Avengers, where I wrote them and they published my letters to the editor. That's crazy. So in 1971, when I got out of Northwestern University, I got a bachelor's in a master's in journalism, and I was looking for a job. So one of the places I applied was Marvel Comics.

But sadly, they did not hire me. They brought me in for an interview because I was fairly well known within the little world of comics fandom because of all my amateur stories. But they had a full writing staff and they didn't need anyone else. But I often thought, well, how would my life have been different if they had hired me? And it would have been very different. I think I would have probably made up a lot of superheroes and superiors. I would have become, I would have had a career like maybe my friend Len Ween, who created Wolverine and the new X-Men and Swamp Thing, and then Len sadly passed away last year. But he was a brilliant god, but he and I were both in high school together. We met at the first comic convention era held. Or Marv Wolfman or Jerry Conway or somebody other people broke in that. I could have had that sort of career. But I think it's probably better the way it turned out. Things have turned out great.

One of the things, if you wrote for Marvel or DC, then, they owned everything you created. So, you know, Len, as brilliant as he was, never received any money for Wolverine, despite all the giant movies made or any money for a small thing, I think. Everything was owned. You worked for a salary. You work for page rates, and everything you got was owned by the company. I think it's better these days. Comics have changed a lot since the 60s and 70s. So creators have a lot more rights

and they have a lot more ownership of the properties that they create. But just the same, I'm glad that my career went away, did, and that I'm able to have Game of Thrones and have a Song of Ice and Fire and all the other things I create too. And my penchant to my love for superheroes, does have a way of expressing itself in the wild card books.

Yeah, yeah. Writing for it's 87. Well, I mean, we're going to get to the wildcard. It's on Hulu. I'm going to be excited to watch it. I need new shows to binge to watch. I mean, but I got to feel like I know things turned out well for you. I got to feel like the comic people probably feel like passing you up

was like passing up Jordan and taking Sam Bowie. No disrespect to whoever they got your job. I wanted to pivot a little bit. Really a quicker question. A more fun question. What superhero power would you want if you could have it? Oh, boy, that's a tough one. I would always love to fly. I always love flying was cool. You wouldn't have to wait in a lot of airports, none of that stuff. I hate airports, so. Yes, I do, I do too, especially since I've now become, you know, well-known.

Yeah, yeah, you're a little bit. Someone recognizes me and then suddenly there's a circle of people around me wanting selfie. It's never the first person. What I get annoyed with is the person that like see the picture and then they flock and they're like, I don't know who you are, but I know you're famous. Like I love talking to people that are fans. Like I'll talk to any fan, especially kids. But the person that I'm eyeballing that walks over because they saw somebody else take a picture, that can be a little annoying. If I could change history, I'd go back and kill whoever decided to put cameras in cell phones.

you know what you got something there at that point you know there was just an occasional guy who had a camera yeah you know yeah now like everybody has a camera all the time and they don't frequently they don't even really want to talk to you or meet you they just want they just want to take the picture i enjoy a good conversation so um but my my my superhero power that i would like obviously as a football player would be wolverine you mentioned your buddy at created wolverine i mean can you imagine i mean i guess that's what it's like to be on HGH or steroids or one of these guys that's like shooting up. But for me, it's like it takes

so much in the NFL. Literally our week is, you know, you wake up Monday, you can't walk. You wake up Tuesday, the tort all wakes off, wears off, and you can't move. It's almost worse. And then Wednesday through Thursday through Friday, you're working through pain, and you really feel better by Saturday

or Sunday, so Wolverine would be my power. Well, the healing factor would definitely be good there. Yeah, it would be. Do you worry about the long-term effect? There's concussions and late in life, not damage. Yeah. It's a great question. I think we are the last generation that won't fully understand the ramifications of what we're doing to our bodies.

I think when we look at the next generation, my son's generation, who I hope he doesn't play football, both my sons. I hope he does something much cooler, like become a writer or something. But, you know, my dad played ball. He played 13 years. He's not a guy who I could grow up and play catch with or go hiking with. or the things I love to do, and he sacrificed his body for that. Now, the one thing is he's cognitively awesome, and he's really sharp. He's one of the smartest guys, most even-keel guys I know.

I think there are a lot of concerns with head trauma, but it's compounded when your family played the game for 13 years. And on top of that, though, I don't think they have a great handle on predicting behavioral outcomes. So I do think some of it's genetic, some of it's, you know, a guy's mental wellness. that could have nothing to do with head trauma. I think nowadays we get into this game where any time a player is going through something, we automatically are like, well, that guy has CTE.

I think there are existential crises. I think there's, you know, when you leave the game, you have to grapple with reinventing yourself and you have to grapple with being somebody new. So that can challenge your existence. And that's a big issue. And I think a lot of guys go through that. I think we just need to wait a couple more years,

but my body feels great. I hope I'm good. Nothing I can change about the past now, but here I am talking to you on Skype, so my brain's working pretty well. I've always startled by the accounts of NFL players and other sports figures, who I know have made tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and then they're broke. I think when a normal guy on Wall Street gets rich, there's a few people in his family that know what the guy that sees him walking down the street in an Italian suit, they know that guy's rich. but when you're a wealthy athlete and you've got a name and you can your salaries Google, you know, I think you do get some sharks and you get people that are your family and friends, but they become sharks because, you know, it gets into this dependency on your used to providing for

everyone. And a lot of guys in my league didn't grow up how I grew up. And that included my dad. My dad grew up in Charlestown, South Boston, tough upbringing, you know, and gave me a life he didn't have. So he had to probably deal with more of the, you know, the I grew up and came from nothing and I'm the guy with the big paycheck now. You know, where I grew up, you know, I went to a good school. I've got good friends. I stay in touch with everybody. And I think another thing is, like, you frontload your earning potential as a player. So what you have is a bunch of money up front. You see everybody else in this rat race for a lifestyle. And then the music stops. And you're not only going through this crisis, you have a ton of free time. And what do guys do

with free time. They spend money. And I think that's a big problem. I was just in Los Angeles recently and I visited the Peterson Auto Museum, which is an amazing museum if you like cars. They have a special display right now of cars from movies and television. So they have the cars from Mad Max and the DeLorean. Do they have Night Rider? Yeah, they have Kit. They have Kit from Night Rider and they have the Delorian from back in the future and some death rates 2000 all of that. But they also have their regular displays. And one of, one of the kids, of them was a display of electric vehicles. And I'm wandering through that. And I saw this car

built by a company called U.S. electric car, right? Which really had a personal resonance for me. Because in the early 80s, around 1983, I sold my novel, Afeber Dream, my vampire steamboat novel. and for the first time in my life, I had enough money to invest. Up to then, I've been, you know, just living, paying my mortgage, hoping I'd sell something else by the time it came. But now I had enough money, I said, well, I should buy some stocks and bonds, right? So being a science fiction writer, I said, well, I know, I know the wave of the future.

What's going to come? So I'm going to invest shrewdly in things that will come in the future. So I invested in US electric cars. I said electric cars, yeah, that's the future. I know that. I'm a science fiction guy. Of course, I had the right idea, but I was 20 years too early and the wrong company. I lost, of course, every cent that I put in this electric car.

And now I'm looking at one of them in the museum, and it's got a little plaque next to it saying, oh, yes, this company existed for two years, and they only sold one car. And here it is. So I invested in a company that sold one car. You had too much foresight. That's the problem. You were too far ahead. You were a step ahead.

You had to let everybody else get out of the way. And they just wait for Tesla, man. You're in Santa Fe now. I really was interested in some of the things you're doing in Santa Fe. I think it's pretty interesting because I don't know anybody in Santa Fe, but I know that one thing that you do have down... I would love to be... I'll take you up on the invitation.

There's one thing I want to do. I want to go with you to the Wolf Sanctuary, because I know I'm a big fan of wolves, and I was going to ask if you're planning on getting a wolf tattoo any time soon. That is pretty righteous. Pretty righteous. Are you going to get a tat, man? How much you love wolves?

No, I'm a tattoo kind of guy. But, yes, it's called the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary. It's not actually in Santa Fe. It's about five hours from here. Okay. A little town called Candy Kitchen, New Mexico. But they have more than 50 wolves and wolf dogs and a few other things, like dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs,

one of the rarest dogs in the world. Right. And it's a sanctuary. They don't breed them. They don't sell them. They, you know, give them a home in nice, large enclosures, rescues, most of them. The wolf dogs in particular, there was a trend a number of years ago

of people wanting to have wolf dogs, half wolf, half dog. And, you know, they'd be cute as puppies, but then they'd get big and too much for people to handle. They'd give them up, and so they wind up in the sanctuary. We have to do that with Game of Thrones. I mean, Jerome Flynn, who plays Braun, has a very nice message on YouTube. Hi, I'm Jerome Flynn for Peter. Saying, don't adopt wolves.

You know, you may love them in Game of Thrones. You see the dire wolves, but don't go out and get a wolf puppy or a wolf dog or anything like that, because especially if you live in an apartment or a house with a tiny little backyard. These are big dogs, and if they have wolf and them, they're half wild or they're all wild,

and they're not meant for an environment like that. And then when they get too big, you've got to send them up north curiously. So I was going to ask you what your favorite thing about wolves are. I mean, like what drew you to wolves? Because it seems like you have a passion for them. Well, I like their feroceros. I like the fact that they're social animals, that they have, they're packs, they're not

lonely hunters. They have their own society, their own packs, they work together. You know, I tried to make that point in Game of Thrones, and that'll come back to it in a later books, you know, when winter comes and a cold winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. And human beings need to keep them in mind, too. We all need, we all need each other. We all need packs.

That's true in a football team as well. You know, the individual star can't succeed without a great teammates around him. That's what I love. That's running back in the world, but you need an offensive line. Yeah. And I think it's really, it's fitting for a D-Lyman because what I love about Wolves is, you know, the pack mentality. And being D-Lyman, the way we rotate and the way we chase our prey, quarterbacks and running backs, I mean, you almost feel like you are a pack.

And that ferocity you talked about, it's applicable on the football field. But obviously, if I ever ran into a real one, it would scare me and I pissed down my leg. But we got these coy wolves in Virginia now, where I live. They're like crosses, you know, and they're pretty creepy. I love looking at them, but I don't want to run into them on a trail. The dire wolves, of course, in Game of Thrones, are fictional, but there were real dire wolves in prehistory. You can see some of them at the Librea Tar pits.

And they were fascinating creatures in themselves. They're extinct now, but they were not as long. large as the ones in my show, but they're larger than today's wolves. And they ran in much larger packs. Yeah. You know, today a wolf pack is, you know, six to 12 maybe is the average size of a pack. The dire wolves would have packs of 50 to 100. Can you imagine, you know, being a caveman or something and suddenly,

probably 100 dire wolves are, you know, swarming over your camp. It's been pretty blood-curdling. I'm Dr. Miami-Belisi, researcher at Labrea Tarpitz and Museum. As an expert on carnivores, I'll tell you about dire wolves. They lived from about 500,000 to 11,000 years ago, going extinct at the end of the last ice age when our largest animals in North America, like mammoths and saber-toothed cats, died off. Dyer wolves coexisted with saber-toothed cats. Both were large predators and hunted differently.

Sabretoothed cats ambushed their prey while dire wolves hunted like gray wolves today. by chasing down prey like juvenile bison and cow. Now dire wolves were the linebackers of the wolf family. They had stronger jaws and teeth than gray wolves today. They could crush bone better to get to nutritious marrow inside. I think sometimes that's where our legends of werewolves and vampires and all that come from, from our Stone Age ancestors who didn't know what was out there in the night, but it was pretty scary.

Yeah, I mean, when I was a kid, you mentioned Librea Tarpitz. I grew up early, early years in Southern California. My mom used to take me all the time. I've always loved, you know, hearing about extinct animals. I was actually watching a video last night about short-faced bears. Do you remember those? They were giant bears, like twice the size of grizzly bears. I mean, saber-toothed tigers.

What do you think about, like, bringing animals back? Are you a proponent of, like, you know, cloning DNA or, you know, bringing back? not in a Jurassic Parkway, because they totally botched that because at the end of the day, in real life, if you did that, it would be a disaster. But I'm saying in a controlled environment where you reintroduce an animal that's extinct. I'm in favor of it. I mean, there's an organization called the Long Now, and I'm a supporter of them. I've donated money to them.

And they're initially, they're trying to bring back the passenger pigeon, you know, by breeding from contemporary pigeons. But the big goal would be eventually to be. bring back to woolly mammoth and, you know, some of these, and the dodo, the dodo, you know, some of these animals would, we killed ourselves in history, in recent history. I mean, dodo's existed, you know, until the 1700s, I think, the Dutch found them and wiped them out pretty, in the generation. But yeah, I love the I bring back. What about? You know, even Jurassic Park, I'd like to see a real life dinosaur.

I think Jurassic Park, the first movie, is very entertaining. But I don't agree with Jeff Goldblum's message there that disaster was inevitable because we brought back dinosaurs and they were not meant to exist with man. That's a very anti-science measure. If you actually look at Jurassic Park, the reason of the disaster occurs is because the fat guy turns off the fence.

Right. If he doesn't turn off the fence, nothing bad. Everybody here on set agrees with you. It's like, hey, listen, hey, because that was the whole thing. It was like, man, they just botched it. They had a real good thing going. You'd go see dinosaurs. I would love to go see dinosaurs.

I'm all for it. I'm glad you said it. I want to bring them all back. You know, I want to bring the dinosaurs back. Tasmanian tiger, like all this stuff, man. Like, I'm really into the Tasmanian tiger, yeah. Yeah, dude. So, so you got, you're talking about movies.

You're talking about Jurassic Park. One thing you got in New Mexico is you have an independent theater, which I think is really cool. So my two. burning questions about that. First thing, what's your stance on bringing in your own candy and not buying it at the front? Is that a bad move? I don't know if we have a chance on that. I don't think we enforce it. We wouldn't frisk anyone, but you could probably get away with it. Okay. But we do have the best popcorn in town. We're very proud of our popcorn. We have organic Amish popcorn that we get from Indiana, and we put real butter on it. None of this golden

flavor, great taste of it stuff. And we have like 20 different popcorn. We're very proud of it stuff. And we have like 20 different toppings you can put Parmesan cheese or brew a cheese or chili peppers that you can sprinkle on your popcorn no extra charge so you know you want to bring in your candy you want to get our popcorn. I'm coming to your theater. A drink with

the movie. Oh my gosh dude. All right, I'm coming to the theater. The second burning question is what are your favorite sports movies? I like boxing movies I think more than I actually like real boxing. Cinderella Man? The Cinderella Man is great. Yeah.

The Rocky movies, especially the first one. But those are all good. And, you know, some of the, some of the older ones, like the harder they fall. Okay. With Humphrey Bogart. You're not even a 10th rape fighter. You know what they call a bum.

What about Raging Bull? Is Raging Bull too dark? Raging Bull is pretty dark, but it's a good movie. It's tough. Yeah, it's pretty powerful. He was a great. He was a great boxer. And a credible performance by De Niro there.

Cinderella Man sort of a feel good movie. Yes, we can balance Raging Bull and Cinderella, man. We got a good mixture there. For somebody like you who's creative and still very active at about 70 years old, you don't seem like the type of guy to retire. I mean, like, what's next for you to do? I know, you've got so many projects. You've had projects throughout your life.

Like, is it hard to, A, stay focused on one thing? And then B, like, do you ever see a time where you're like, I'm going to relax and chill out and quote unquote retire? I can't imagine retiring. I've had friends who've retired writers, and it still startles me when I hear somebody doing that. You know, right now I have, of course, the two remaining books in A Song of Ice and Fire to finish.

I think some of my fans already think I'm retired. No, the fans, they just miss you. They just miss you. Believe me, I haven't. Yeah. So I have to finish Winds of Winter, Dream of Spring. And then I have more of the Duncan Egg stories I want to write. My latest Westrose book was Fire and Blood, which was not part of the main series,

but a history of Targary and Kings. And it was only the first half, so I have to write the second half of that. And that's just the stuff in Westeros. Beyond that, I edit and write for wild cards, the series. That's been going since 1987. So it's actually a series that's been around longer. We're up to like 29 books. series. And it's about it's about aliens, it's about you know, DNA and illness. It's basically

superheroes, yeah. I mean, we have aliens in it. The premises in, in 1946, some aliens released a virus over Earth to experiment on us. And it kills most people who contract it. But nine out of every hundred are deformed in horrible ways, they call jokers. And one in every hundred gets superpowers and becomes what we call an ace. But it's a little more gritty and realistic than traditional comic books. I mean, when we looked at this whole concept of superpowers, you know, what would you do if you got superpowers?

Like, you would like to have Wolverines powers, but I assume that if you did get Wolverine's powers tomorrow, you would continue to be a football player. You would not immediately go out and buy a spandex costume in order to fight crime. Yeah. Am I correct in that? Yeah, but I'd also do crazy shit.

I'd jump off like the side of Mount Kilimanjaro with a wing suit on. I would, you know, I would swim with sharks and they would bite me. I'd be like, I'm good. Like a five minutes from now, this chunk will grow back. I mean, probably the last thing I'd do would be football, but for a lot of guys, maybe they would play. Yeah, I've asked that question to many people when pitching wild cards or explaining it to people. And nobody ever wants to buy a spandex costume. Yeah, no spandex.

People want to fly, you know, say, okay, I'll still be a banker, but I'll fly to work now. Right. You know, if I'm invisible, if people want to be invisible, want to do various kinky things with it. That's what we try to get at Wildcourt. What would the effect be on the world and what would the effect be on human life if people did have these powers and if the world was transformed in this way? What would you do? I'd probably still be a writer. Right, exactly.

Yeah, so you'd be a writer with some hidden superpowers. Okay. Well, do you like your comedy? Do you have a character in Super World or in Wildcurds, the great and powerful turtle, and he's the most autobiographical character I've ever written. He's in many of the early Wildcard books. So he lives in Bayo, New Jersey, just like I did. He lives in a project just like I did.

You know, he's got a weight problem just like I've had. But he also has powerful telekinesis. So he builds a giant show. shell because he doesn't like being shot at or punched. And he hides the shell, which he can make basically fly, and then he can go over and help people and do things like that. So that's probably the closest to what I would do, you know, the turtle. That would probably be the turtle if I had his teleponiesis.

Yeah. Do you, do you, you mention it being darker, and my last question would be, you know, you love comics. I think they're super popular right now. Admittedly, I'm like a pretty run-of-the-mill comic book. fan and with the movies as well, I think I'm more drawn to the darker stories. Are you more drawn to the darker comic book stories, the adaptations that are a little bit grittier? Or do you find room for the ones with the one-liners and the feel-good stories and the big explosions? Well, you know, I'm not actually a fan of big explosions. I mean, yeah, the action movie's fine,

but, you know, in a superhero movie, you probably want some fight scenes or some action, but I I actually like the character moments. Yeah. I mean, in a lot of movies that are, you know, more like action movies, I get up and go get popcorn during the car chase. Because now I know, okay, the car chase is going to go on for 10 minutes, and cars are going to be crashing and banging into walls. It's boring to me.

I want to see the scenes where two characters are talking to each other, and there's some emotional conflict. But having been a comic book fan for all these years, I'm afraid I'm a bit of a I don't know a purist It bothers me when they diverge from the comic books And I'm always boring my My companions in movies

That's not the way it was in Fantastic 4 number 12 Did they get in this character all wrong? And you know as well as anybody I heard you say before That You know sometimes when you're working with TV You're almost like

You're talking to your producer or your director Whatever you're like I need X Y and Z And they're like we don't have a budget for that. You know, but you're, but writing and and and and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, these, these, these predicaments and battles out, you know, you know, you know, on film, it's tougher to, to adapt these things. Yeah, that was actually one of the things that inspired me to write, uh, Sol of Ice and Fire at a Game of Thrones books. I mean, from, from, from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, I was predominantly working in television. Although I did, I was still writing some pros and, and, and,

keeping my hand in there. But I was on Twilight Zone Revival in the mid-80s. I was on staff on that. I did five episodes. Then I did 13 episodes for Beauty and a Beast with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. And after that, I had what they call a development deal where I was coming up my own pilots and shows.

And through all those 10 years, the message that I was constantly getting when I turned in my first draft was, George, this is great, but we can't do it. It's too expensive. big. There are too many characters. It's too complicated. You know, you've got 12 matte paintings in here. We can do two. And, you know, this big battle at the end, you got 10,000 people on a side, make it a duel between the hero and the villain. And I would do that. That was the job.

I would do that. But I never liked doing it. I always preferred my first draft. So after 10 years of it, when I went back to books, I said, okay, now I have an unlimited budget. I can have as many characters as I want. I can have as many battles as I want. I can have giant iconic castles. I can have dragons. I can have dire wolves. I'm just going to do it exactly the way I want and not worry about anybody's budget. And then because life is full of these weird little ironies, that turns out to be the thing that's the huge television hit. Right. Not the ones that I created expressly for television. Right. So that's life in Hollywood, I guess. That is the irony of it. And I really, I really wish you the best of luck.

It was whatever your next endeavors are. I'll be watching, I'll be reading. I can't wait to dive into your books more. And I'm going to become a really avid reader, and I'm a big fan of yours, and I just appreciate the time today, George. So thank you so much. My pleasure.

And please do come to Santa Fe and visit sometime. We'll catch a place. You've seen Meow Wolf, too. That's another thing I'm involved with. Oh, yeah? Yeah, look up, meow wolf. Okay, I'll look it up, and I'll make a little list, and I'll be there, and we can go see the wolves.

We can go check a movie out of your theater. I want the chili, powder popcorn. I'm petrified to try it. It sounds good, but I will be there and I can't wait. Thanks a lot for listening. Please make sure you subscribe and check out our Chalk YouTube channel for more content. Stick around for next week's Fish Bowl. That's going to be with Michael Rubin, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. It was always very good to me in Philly, really good to all the athletes, not just the basketball players. One of the, The reasons I love Philly was guys like Michael Rubin.

He obviously runs the sports retailer website Fanatics, which has just been, you know, become a giant among other e-commerce businesses. So pretty interesting to talk to a guy who started with a ski shop and ended up with the 76ers, and that's what we have here. So please subscribe and poke around the chalk media YouTube page for more content.