The Chaser Report - Behind The Missed | Sami Shah

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Sami Shah returns to talk behind the scenes of his new project: The Missed. Charles and Dom interview Sami on what inspired him to write the story, and discover the fun of creating an audio-play. Plus Dom and Charles get back at Sami for hijacking their review section. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Friday the 12th of August 2022. Charles Firth and Dom Knight here. Now, Charles, there's a guest on this show who's taken a little bit of a life of his own, particularly in the review section on the Apple Podcasts app. It's Sammy Shah who's laughing in the background there. And Sammy at one point just made a joke on our podcast about people,

people mentioning how much they loved his podcast, News Weekly, you know, in our review section. It's taken off. It's now the main theme of the review section. It's all very funny. It's very mean. I think we need to convince our listeners to love us again. Yes. And so when Sammy wanted to come on and basically plug this new project that he's done for Audible,

I thought, well, it's a win-win for us. Yes. Either the people will love hearing more Sammy, even when he's plugging something that he did. Yes. Or they'll dislike it and thereby love us again by contrast. So we can't lose. No, this is good. In this conversation.

Let's hear some ads before we hear Sammy doing another ad for the whole episode. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecues lit but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. And you can supposedly avoid those ads at chaser.com.com. Watch this space for more options on that front. Sammy Shah, welcome back. Thank you for dining our podcast with your very popular presence. My pleasure.

I just checked the reviews section for The Chaser. And the top review right now, the most recently submitted one, it's five stars. So, you know, obviously, someone who likes quality content. But it goes, yeah, it's funny enough. That's it. The other review goes more Gabby, less ads. That's it. So, hey, listen.

Too many ads for trombines. Yeah. Oh, that's an interesting. That was a thing. But yeah, listen, I didn't I didn't realize how much power I wielded. I asked my Newsweekly listeners to kind of go out there and leave positive reviews for the chase.

I just said, leave five stars, but also talk about how much you love Newsweekly. And they kind of destroyed your review section. I didn't realize I basically can start a cult. You have a mob. You have a flash mob. This is all I've ever wanted. This is going to end with me in a compound,

making everyone drink Kool-Aid. Well, how many people died at Jodontown? That was about 1,000, wasn't it? Like, yeah, 900 and something. A pretty large number. Do you reckon you could do more? Do you reckon you could... I mean, my listenership is kind of like leveled out for Newsweekly

at about the same number as the Jonestown massacre. Right. So, if you like leave a margin for error, you know, some people will obviously go, I'm not drinking your Kool-Aid. Then they'll have to be forced to at gunpoint. It's only really the super... fans, isn't it? Yeah, that's right.

You know, the Patreon subscriber, those kind of people. So, yeah, I need to expand my base a little bit more before I go full cult leader. If you convince a subscriber to drink the collate and thereby in their lives, how long until the Patreon stops paying you every month? Oh, yeah. You've got to factor this in, Sammy. Yeah, that is true. This needs to be the big finale.

It can't be something like a mid-season thing at all. Put Sammy in your will. I think Jim Jones got everyone's property. before he then made them drink the cool. I mean, he also killed himself. He also killed himself. Yeah, it wasn't a long term. He wasn't thinking long term.

That's right. At all, at all. A lot of these cult leaders don't. Even the one who was responsible for, what is that? The comet, they were going to... Oh, yes. The Branch Davidians, weren't they? No, no, no.

This was a separate one. We wanted to buy Nike sneakers. Yeah, with the Nike sneakers, you remember that? Yes, yes, yes. It was only about 45. people. Yeah, that was a sure smaller group. But, you know, again, like, you know, you make, like, you're like, you've ended your

own ability to cash in on this enterprise by killing yourself. Whereas, say, the Bugwan Rajneesh, oh, he knew how to do it. Because he had, there's a few rules. One was he was allowed to have sex with anyone. Yeah. And then standard. Isn't that cult 101? Oh, is that cult 101?

Gosh, I'd be a bad cult leader, wouldn't I? Yeah, yeah. Any self-respecting cult leader starts with the sex clause. then goes on to the suicide afterwards. Heaven's gate. Heaven's gate is no other. Heaven's gate. I hope they found that gate and we're well dressed for it.

What if it turns out they were right? We're all wrong. They were right. There is a UFO trailing the helis comet and now they are on that UFO living on the way to better interstellar galaxy. What if they were right about everything except for the no shoes policy?

Yes. The shoes behind. The aliens get there and the aliens are like, what the fuck is this? Where Adidas people? We wanted you to bring us some cool kicks. Where are your Yeezys? Yeah, yeah.

No, yeah, you got to start a cult. Even the, if you remember what's his name, the guy who did the naked yoga, what is it, under the sweaty yoga stuff? Oh, Bikram. Bikram, that's right. Like, he can, you know, like. Was that a cult?

Oh, there was a lot of sex involved, allegedly. Well, it kind of. In the end, it was just him having sex with a lot of people. Have you ever done hot yoga? I went once and did normal yoga, and I was like, I'm never doing this shit again. I liked hot yoga. I didn't do the full Bikram where it was that hot. But then the concept is, you know, that you make it as hot as it is in the hottest parts of India.

In India, basically. It's like being outdoors in India. You've got to heat it up. So basically, you get jaundice, you get cholera, and then you do yoga. But it's really good because you get so much more flexible. Suddenly you become like, you know those good people in yoga classes. actually can move. So, also, to be fair to Bikram, by the time

you got all, you gear off, you're sweaty, you might as well have sex. Like, you're most of the way there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, the funny part of the Bikram Yoga documentary, have you seen the documentary for it? I think it's on Netflix or someplace. It's great. Because the moment he comes on screen, in the first five seconds,

so when he says comes on screen, can you just clarify? Appears on screen, appears on screen. He comes elsewhere, but he appears on screen. This documentary for, I think, Ahead tube, was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I like how Charles is pretending not to know the porn websites.

But it's a, you literally, you take one look at him and you're like, yeah, obviously, he's a sex pest. There's no other way, no man with that ponytail in that tight black underwear is doing anything other than molesting people. And everyone was shocked later. I want to pay tribute to a good friend of ours. We should get on the podcast, actually. Richard Cook, who's been a chaser writer for a long time. is now known as a sort of high-brow intellectual writer. But here's a thing called Cook's Law, which is always true,

which is whenever you see any photo of someone who's a convicted sex pest, you always go, wow, they really look like a convicted sex pest. Like, there's just a look. Yeah, there's no surprise involved in all, ever. And Bikram completely fulfills. I text in pictures from the news. It's quite extraordinary. Like, we were all forewarned in every episode of, hey dad, shall we just say,

by the appearance of the dad. Yes. Anyway, are we plugging your product? Are we plugging your product here, Sammy? We might have to get to that. Speaking of sex best. Um, yes. So you're recruiting your army, Sammy's army. And you're now leading them to the, to the pastures of audible, the Amazon, um, audio service.

Yeah. So, okay, basically I wrote a, can I, can I, can I guess what they've commissioned you to do? Go for it. Have they, uh, commissioned you? to exploit a whole lot of underpaid workers and create injuries and then not allow them to unionize at all? I mean, that's not far from the truth, probably. Were you allowed to pee during the writing process, is my question. I just wore a diaper the entire time, but that's just how I live. I normally just wear

adult diapers just for the fun of it. Look, it's what Bickram used to do. Anyway. Yeah, exactly. Right, so what is it that you made? Okay, so basically I wrote a script many moons ago about a crime noir story set in a small town of Western Australia. And Audible commissioned it, and they asked me if I can turn that into an audio drama. So the idea is basically, I don't know if you remember radio plays. Like, this was the thing that used to happen in the early 1900s, and then television came along, people stopped doing it.

But it's awesome. It's a great medium. I always like radio plays because they're podcasts with full costs. And I got to do that. So it's basically an eight-part crime noir, very serious story set in a small town in Western Australia where something horrible happens. And we got an incredible cost to do the entire thing, including Palavishada. So you, as we've discussed before, when you first came to Australia from Pakistan,

you lived in a town called Northam in W.A. Yes, yes. Is this a thinly disguised version of? your time in northern. Did you really have that bad a time? I mean, look, here's the thing. So basically, here's what happened, right? Like, and I talk about this a lot and I have spoken about this a lot in the past, where the main reason we kind of moved to Australia is because I had a daughter and I looked at my daughter when she was born and I was like, I don't want to raise her in a place like Pakistan where

her life will be so hellish and raise in a place where more opportunity and freedom. And then also the risk to life has got a lot less in places like, you know, Australia compared to a place like Pakistan. And we were living in a small town in Western Australia for four years. And in that time, I kept thinking all the safety and security I could ask for is available here. And then because at the end of the day, I'm a horror writer, a part of my brain goes, well, what if it doesn't happen? What if it goes wrong here? And so I kind of wrote that story, which is a refugee family from Pakistan with their child, moves to a small town, Western Australia, to start a new life away from threats of danger, and then the danger catches up to

them anyway. But the idea is what happens to the town when that happens? Oh, what's it called? The mist, the M-I-S-S-E-D, not M-I-S-T, it turns out. I'm bad at naming things for audio. But, yeah, the mist. I wish it was pronounced the missid, because that makes more sense. I like, I like the strapline as well. A family in

fear, a town in panic. It is. Charles is part good at that, by the way. Yeah, I should have gotten you to do the feel of voice. So if you're a fan of Semi-Sha comedy, let's just prepare you for this. This is not that. This is you being deadly serious as a thriller.

There's not even political satire. Well, because I do have like a whole second part of my existence, which is as a writer. And as a writer, I write basically horror and urban fantasy and now crime noir. So this is great. So you have two separate ways of channeling your massive misanthropy. I love it. Let's have a listen to the trailer for Sammy Shars, The Mist. A refugee family confront.

hunted by their worst nightmare. The moment it fell apart when the kid started screaming. A journalist finding the headline of a lifetime. If I broke this story before anyone else, that would be my career made. A small town mayor fighting for her career. I realized I wasn't ready. No one could be ready for what came next. A detective trying to stop a killer before it's too late.

late. Whether he did it or not. That's not the point here. The point is, you've been doing this too long to be this naï. Medics! Get inside. This is the mist. The story of a family in fear. Where is she? A town in panic. You never get you through this. I get it. An audible original podcast. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart MatterMov?

when your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecues lit, but there's nothing to grill, when the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. Wow.

So there we go. Production values. What's it like to work on a project with those in your audio space? You don't understand how exciting this was. So basically I wrote the script in 2020 in lockdown, right? So it was just me alone kind of doing things. And then we audible found with Screen West. They found a company in Fremantle in W.A.

called Envelope Audio. And Envelope audio was like on a shoestring, budget basically did this entire thing i've i normally all the stuff i do is so solitary i got to work with people that was so much fun um and they how hands on were you like did you actually part of the limitation was can you move the scream like to be three seconds no well i the whole thing was i was going to be directing it in person in w but because of the lockdown i couldn't make it across i don't know if you remember there was a thing called covid and the batteries were closed W.A. had a fairly specific attitude to that environment.

Yes, exactly. And that, regardless of COVID. They just don't like anyone. So did you have to set up in the intro that this is, you know, a threat during a period that isn't COVID? Because during COVID, W.I. was the safest place in the world. You couldn't possibly tell us to worry about a threat in W.A. Yeah, true. Very good point. That should have been part of the prologue.

All events in this happened before. Of COVID. Yeah, right. But the cool thing was, envelope audio, what they did was. Normally you do these things and, like, you know, I'm sure you guys have done voice overwork yourself. You go in a studio, you put on the headphones, you're talking to a microphone, read off the script, and you're alone, and you're done.

What they did was they got the whole cast together. There were mics all over the stage and all over the room. Wow. Everyone wore baseball caps, so the little microphones taped to those, and then they acted it all out together. Like, it was a whole theatrical performance that there was all, the audio was recorded and then that's what you hear in the series. It was a really cool way of doing things.

That's so cool. Maybe we should do that for the podcast. Was the theory there that you could actually hear, like there was a sort of subtle change in their voice because as they were moving, you could hear the move or whatever? Yeah, absolutely. And not just that, it's because I was very specific about a few things I wanted. I wanted the sound to travel.

I wanted like someone. If someone's talking to you on one side of the room and you're listening on the other side of the room, then you should, the characters at least, then you should be able to hear them on the left and the right, you know, like things like that. As they walk across all of those things. The other thing I really was particular about was I wanted native W.A. Countrytown sounds. I wanted the birds to be like the sounds you'd hear in those towns, the wind through the wheat, things like that. And so they went and got that audio and then they used it all in a 3D. way so it's really kind of cool but that's all the production stuff if the story isn't doesn't

hold up then none of that matters yeah yeah but are you sorry just before we get on to the story are you sure that they actually went out and got all those sounds or they did they just say yes sammy we did that and then they just downloaded them from invarta i have i have many i have many pictorial evidence bits of them holding microphones up in the middle of wheat fields oh wow Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, hardcore, yeah. That's great. Well, it must have been incredibly fun to actually have that.

And what a pity you couldn't actually get there, although that meant you didn't actually go to W.A. Yeah, that was the only thing. I got there at the end. So basically, you know, one of the main cast members, Palavis Sharda, who's an amazing Australian Indian actor. She was in Sydney during the time when we were doing her voiceover. The production company's in W.A.,

and I'm in Melbourne, and we did the whole thing over Zoom. So directed her over Zoom and stuff. So, you know, it's kind of weird. You do the best you can, but the end result, you can't tell. That's a cool thing. And it's rocketed up the charts. I noticed today it's at number two in the charts. That's right, and on audibles thing.

So it's audible, I don't know. Like, do you guys listen to audiobooks? Yeah, yeah. I love them. Except for, the ones that I don't like are those sort of radio play style things. Oh, damn it. Lots of different actors and stuff. They're really hacky.

I studied that. I actually at university, when I did my master's, I studied that. I took a course on writing for kind of radio. And there was this whole, there's this guy who was dedicated to the form of the radio play. His time has arrived. I know.

Where's he now? Well, this is the weird thing about it. Because he would occasionally, he said, look, okay, we'll talk about this. It's quite hard to get these made. And occasionally the ABC Commission is on. Whereas in the UK, they still do. Oh, the BBC does amazing ones.

Yeah, exactly. So that's kept the art going over there. Yeah, they do horror. They do historical fantasy. fiction. They do all kinds of genres. The ABC doesn't like, like their approach to this is basically they approach to a lot of things, which is it's a new idea, even though it's been happening the rest of the world forever. And what if instead of doing this, we just give Jonathan Green another radio national show. And so that's been, and it's worked for them really well

as a method of not inventing anything new. You could write a radio player based on that negotiation. We did one, we did one called the Blow Parade once, which was, which Andrew and Chris wrote. That's right. I remember. It was like a fake, like, greatest album shown. I played on the music and it was really fun. I played bass in the sessions and had an incredibly fun time. I think I got paid more than them because of the award for playing music as a session musician.

But no, it's an art that now is back right because you can do things for audible. And we found doing sketches for a commercial radio that it's amazing because you can just set something anywhere. A few sound effects and suddenly you're in space or you're underwater or... Yes. It's a brilliant thing for crowd. It's so much cheaper than having to make television. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm banging out the ABC, but like Tokyo Hotel.

I don't know if you've heard that one. It's done by Ben Russell and Xavier Mike Ladies. An ABC podcast released it a few years ago. Some of the best sound design I've ever heard on one of these things. And it was a comedy, but it was with the template I gave envelope audio where I was like, I wanted to sound as rich and lush as this. And the cool thing about these things is, like you said, can, there's no limitation on genre, you know, you can play with format, you can do whatever,

as long as you learn to write for audio, which was a cool thing I had to learn where I enjoyed learning that. There you go. So how do we get it? Like, how do you actually get the, so the only downside is you got to sign up for audible if you don't have a membership. Are you saying you've got to pay for a piece of creative work in 2013-2? Well, actually, I have a way around that.

So here's the thing. If you do have an audible membership, just head over to just do a search for The Mist or or M-I-S-S-E-D or search for my name. It should come up and you can subscribe to all eight episodes and listen to them. If you don't have a membership, Audible offers a three-month trial membership. Oh, and so what you're saying, which you're probably contractually not allowed to say,

is sign up for the free trial, download Sammy's show, and then cancel your free trial. I didn't say that, but you did Charles, and I think it's very unethical of you to encourage people. Or if you're me, and therefore you forget. And then you're not. funding Amazon

and their horrible sort of workplace practices. So that's win-win. But you are getting Sammy's work of art for free. That's brilliant. Exactly. Yeah. It makes you feel any better. You know, the money that I got from this, I'll probably use for something irresponsible anyway.

So, you know, no one involved is doing anything ethical at all. I've got an amazing idea, actually, for an audible radio sort of play. I can just pitch this. An Amazon factory. The workers revolt They've had enough

And they want to weigh in the toilet What a great idea Coming soon to Audible The urinal A factory in terror A factory in revolt A company's shithouse workplace practices I hope we haven't made this too awkward

Yellow bottle blues Listen you better be funding Or any other future Audio projects I have Because Audible is probably going to walk away from me up I hope we've helped, Sammy. And if not, we'll give you more free time to come on the podcast. Thank you very much.

Our gear is provided by road, and we're part of the ACAST. Creative Network. We'll catch you next time. See ya. Bye. What's better than a well-marbled ribby sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribby sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribai you ordered without even leaving the kitty pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver.