The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – You Can Go Home Now: A Novel by Michael Elias Interview

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

You Can Go Home Now: A Novel by Michael Elias Interview Michaeleliaswriter.com In this smart, relevant, unputdownable psychological thriller, a woman cop is on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own. “My name is Nina Karim. I am a single thirty-one-year-old woman who likes cats, Ryan Reynolds movies, beautiful sunsets, walking on a wintry beach holding hands with a tall, caring, lightly bearded third-wave feminist. Yeah, right.” Nina is a tough Queens detective with a series of cold case homicides on her desk – men whose widows had the same alibi: they were living in Artemis, a battered women’s shelter, when their husbands were killed. Nina goes undercover into Artemis. Though she is playing the victim, she’s anything but. Nina knows about violence and the bullies who rely on it because she’s experienced it in her own life. In this heart-pounding thriller Nina confronts the violence of her own past in Artemis where she finds solidarity with a community of women who deal with abusive and lethal men in their own way. For the women living in Artemis there is no absolute moral compass, there is the law and there is survival. And, for Nina, who became a cop so she could find the man who murdered her father, there is only revenge. About Michael Elias Michael Elias is an award-winning writer, actor and director who has written film, television, theatre and fiction. His upcoming novel, You Can Go Home Now, is a timely and addictive psychological thriller featuring a female cop on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own. The book will be published by HarperCollins in the U.S. and by Editions du Masque in France in June 2020. He is also the author of The Last Conquistador, published by Open Road Media. Michael Elias was born and raised in upstate New York, moving to New York City after graduating from St. John's College in Annapolis to pursue a career in acting. He was a member of the Living Theatre (The Brig) and acted at The Judson Poets Theatre, La MaMa, and Caffé Chino. Elias transitioned to Hollywood and with Frank Shaw wrote the screenplay for The Frisco Kid starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, then Envoyez les Violons with Eve Babitz and began a long partnership with Rich Eustis. Together, they wrote the screenplays for Serial, Young Doctors in Love and created Head of the Class a television series for ABC, partially based on Elias' experience as a high school teacher in New York City. Elias also worked with Steve Martin, a collaboration that included material for Martin's comedy albums, network TV specials, and the screenplay for The Jerk. Elias wrote and directed Showtime's Lush Life with Forrest Whitaker and Jeff Goldblum. He was nominated for best Director at The Cable Ace Awards that year, and the TV movie has become a jazz film classic. His semi-autobiographical play about a small hotel in upstate New York was directed by Paul Mazursky, ran for four months in Los Angeles, with the LA Weekly naming The Catskill Sonata one of the best ten plays of the year. Michael Elias lives in Los Angeles and Paris.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly, certainly, certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to us. Go to YouTube if you want to watch the YouTube version of this show, youtube.com, for instance, Chris Voss, hit the bell notification button. Also, refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, go to the ECBPN or Chris Voss Podcast Network. You can subscribe to all nine podcasts over there, and you can check it out as well.

Go to Goodreads at goodreads.com. Of course, that's Chris Voss. We've got a book club we're working on over there. You can sign up and do all the different things we're doing, giving away some books, talking about some of the experiences we have with authors and everything else. The gentleman we have on today you may have heard from. He is Michael Elias.

He was born and raised in upstate New York. He moved to New York City after graduating from St. John's College in Annapolis. He pursued a career in acting and he was a member of the Living Theater and acted at the Judson Poets Theater, La Mama, and Cafe Gino. Elias transitioned to Hollywood and wrote the screenplay for The Frisco Kid. Remember that one? A long partnership with Rich Estes. I'm not sure if I got that right. Together with him, he wrote Serial, Young Doctors in Love, and created Head of the Class,

partially based on Elias' experience as a high school teacher from New York City. Elias also worked with Steve Martin. You may have heard of him as well. A collaboration that included material for Martin's comedy albums, network TV specials, and the screenplay for The Jerk. Everyone remembers that movie. That's just a classic. Elias wrote and directed Showtime's Lush Life with Forrest Whitaker and Jeff Goldblum.

It has become a jazz film classic. His semi-autographical play, The Catskill Sonata, ran in Los Angeles with the LA Weekly, naming it one of the best ten plays of the year. His first novel, The Last Conquistador, was about a lost Inca city. His most recent thriller, You Can Go Home Now, was published by HarperCollins this spring. In fact, we just got the book, You Can Go Home Now, a novel by Michael Elias.

Michael, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm fine, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming on. And give us your plugs. What dot coms maybe people you want to have to take a look you up at? Michael Elias, writer.com, Facebook, and that's about it.

I guess I'm on, I think I'm on Twitter, but I hardly use it. So that's it. Check out the book, guys. You can get it probably at Amazon, all sorts of local sellers. We have a Chris Voss show thing on Amazon. You go to Amazon.com force a shop for says chris voss see all the uh books of all the great people who've been on the show so michael you've written on you've written a lot of different stuff a lot of different formats what motivated you want to write this book uh well this one uh i guess two things i i started thinking about revenge and where it fits in our society and how we glorify it, we love it.

It's in our culture. It's so much in our culture. As I said, there's no Clint Eastwood movie where the bad guy goes to a trial. He usually gets thrown out the window. So that's what we love. But we're told it's not civilized. We're told it's not what we should be doing. But I wanted to write about that, about our fascination with it.

So I created a story where there's a heroine who's bent on revenge. And at the same time, she's a cop. So, and she's trying to solve the murder of her father. And she's also going to take revenge when she finds him. So that was sort of the, that was the beginning. And then I needed, why was he killed? So I borrowed, I took a story of a Planned Parenthood doctor, Bernard Sapien, who was murdered, who was assassinated by an anti-abortion terrorist in front of his kids while he was washing the dishes. And I took that story and made that her she's looking

for the guy who killed her father wow put those two stories together that was a powerful story do you do you have to get permission from anybody well no because you know play it in there yeah I mean that was a that was a hell of a story but I that's I did. So, yeah, so it examines that world. It examined. And it happened to her when she was 16. So it's indelible. And sometimes she worries in the book. Sometimes she's worrying that her rage is ebbing.

And she has to revive it with memory and stuff. So that's what it is. And I think it has a – it moves pretty quickly, people tell me. It's a thriller. It's got a lot of surprises. And I'm not saying it's politics change, but it shows the other side of the story too. And just one more thing,

while she's looking for this guy who killed her father she as a cop is trying to solve some unsolved murders cold case murders of men whose widows all have the same alibi they were in a women's shelter when their husbands were killed you just told me the first part of the book that I was reading. Yeah, so she goes undercover into the women's shelter, posing as an abused wife to see what's going on. Ah, there you go. That's really interesting.

The book is a gripper. From the beginning, it grips you. It starts out with some stuff that's going on that you're just like, I got to find out more about what's going on here because this is really interesting. And it kind of grips you. It's got some short chapters where you just get sucked right into it and you're just like going, I got to find out what's going on. I love cop thrillers too. And especially when you get into the the cop and you get into his personal life and the the conflicts there like one of my favorite movies is heat and you

know robert de niro and al pacino and al pacino you you kind of see not only is he's a cop but he's doing all this stuff but you see his life falling apart and some of the other things and it seems like you know that's what what you got going on here you've got you you see the you see the the police officer trying to do stuff right but then he's also he's got that dark side or he's got you know sorry she yeah yeah yeah and and that's uh i wrote it in the voice of a woman so that and there's a lot of other cops in it too but i wrote in the voice of a woman and that that was another really interesting thing for a male writer to do is write a woman. And the question is, I guess, for the reader to decide, did I get it right?

Did I get her right? Yeah. In fact, I think there was a review that you had here that somebody wrote that was really great. And they said, Michael Elias writes woman like a woman and he writes a police thriller like a former cop that's from uh jessica blau the author of the trouble with lexi so i thought that was a pretty good compliment i'm not sure i could write like a woman if i really wanted to uh but so that's good but no it's very engaging gets you in the thrill of it and and stuff what what um what was was the overall thing that you learned writing the book,

or was there anything that stuck out at you that's like your favorite part of the book? Hmm, good question. Well, there were a couple things which are just maybe tropes or whatever. Could she commit the perfect crime as a cop? Could she? And she finds out. I think it was interesting to find out and do research about women who, battered women who are hiding out.

And, you know, right now in the middle of the pandemic, there are more women at home. They can't go to shelters. They can't get out. And being at home and not being able to go out with either an abusive spouse is really tough.

And the femicide and murders and beatings have gone up exponentially. So it was interesting to explore and learn about that life. I couldn't go into a shelter because, you know, they're not going to let me in. But I did do a lot of research and talked to women, of course, and lawyers and stuff. Yeah, right now we're kind of in the middle of that too. Like you say, we've had a lot of people that are uh authors writing about real life um and one of the problems is like the

child abuse reports that used to take place because kids would go into school and say my parents are beating me that's not happening anymore because the kids aren't going to school a lot of domestic abuse um i know all my it's one or my all my guy friends who are married are still alive evidently according to their wives uh they always tell me they go after this corona thing is solved there's gonna be a lot of divorces and you bet in fact they should be probably working not mine but there are it's tough i was gonna ask you you know what what was their personal motivation on the revenge thing i'm just kidding i love cops uh and cop thrillers where you know you like say you have that they have that uh chi where you have the yin and yang and you have different things going on where where you know they're they're they're just like human beings they're not perfect like you know

everyone thinks well they're authoritarian so they must be perfect they have rules and training and and stuff but you know just like anyone thinks, well, they're authoritarian, so they must be perfect. They have rules and training and stuff. But, you know, just like anyone else in the world, they're conflicted. In fleshing out the character, what did you feel was the strongest points of your hero? She hero? She tends not to take crap from anybody.

She's a feminist, right? Yeah, and she never uses the word. But she's a tough cookie. She doesn't... At the same time, she's not Wonder Woman, you know. At one point she's faced, you'll get to it in a kind of physical thing, and she just says, like, I'm sorry, you know, I studied all the martial arts,

I studied all this, but I'm 5'2", 112, you're 6'5", and it doesn't matter how much karate I have or whatever it is. So let's see if we can work this out a different way. It's like the Indiana Jones scene with the guy with the whip where he just goes, I'm just going to shoot you because I don't know if that's the way the scene goes. Yeah. I knew a guy who was in my gym, and he was a Wing Chun instructor. And this weightlifting come over to him.

And, again, he was like, you know, twice a football player. He was like 6'6", and he was 2'8", whatever he was. And he says, man, I'd like to learn that. And the guy looked at him and said, why? You don't need it. Anyway. So was it – what pressed you to come up with the title

you can go home now what made you choose that you're going to get to that part it's what they tell you you can go home now in the women's shelter it's safe to go home there you go

suspense you can go home. There you go. There you go. Suspense. The problem is all it's you can go home now. Yeah. It's an interesting thing because we, I mean, for me, I grew up on Thomas Wolfe, who said, you wrote the, you know, you can't, you can, you can't go home again. Well, you can go home now is actually a very sweet sentence. And there's a lot of people who would like to hear that. You know, wives in a shelter, you can go home now. Maybe refugees who can say, you can say, okay, you can go home now. There's no more war in Syria. That would be a sweet thing to hear, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it definitely would be. In fact, it reminds me of that, what was it? It was in the movie, the FBI movie with Sean Connery, and he said, it was right before he said, here, end of the lesson, but he's like, your job is to go home at the end of the day. Yeah. It was The Untouchables, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. David Diamond, I think it was. Yeah, yeah. David Diamond, I think. Great movie. So you had a story career. Was it kind of the coronavirus and shutdown of Hollywood that kind of motivated you to want to put this book together?

No, I finished this before. I had a pretty good career in Hollywood, and I was working and everything, and then all of a sudden it was sort of like a friendly divorce between myself and television. So I had a lot of stories in me and I decided the first one I had in me, which I really liked, was about a lost city of the ink, kind of an Indiana Jones, Michael Kreitnisch thing. So I wrote that and got it published. And I said, I like this. And I like this life where I can just, you know, do my stuff and end up and avoid, try to avoid writing for as long as I can during the day.

And finally, I run out of things to do and I have to do it. So, and my wife, I was really lucky because my wife got a job in Paris and she was nice enough to bring me along and she went to work in a cultural center, an American cultural center, and I stayed home and I wrote on the kitchen table.

And that was great. So that's where I wrote this novel. And it's going to be published in France also in February. So I'm looking forward to that. And it mostly takes place in America, correct? Yeah, it all takes place in Queens and upstate New York and one trip to Hawaii. So, yeah, yeah.

I grew up in upstate New York, as I said, in a tiny Catskill town, and I don't know, 1,500 people. And so I used – I stole a lot of my life and a lot of my experiences. And people – friends come up and say, hey, that's my story you used in the book. That's right. We steal everything, don't we? Change the names to protect the innocent or whatever, the old dragnet thing. But, I mean, that's what you're right.

You're right what you know and what your life is. I like the line here. This is from the press thing. How far would you go to protect yourself and your children from domestic abuse at the hands of a husband, boyfriend, or partner? Domestic abuse is pretty rough. I did some appeals of some speeding tickets in my BMW one time, and the appellate court put me into domestic violence court. And since my last name is Voss, I was at the end of the docket. So I had to sit for like two hours and watch all these people that, that were on both ends of domestic violence.

And it was extraordinary to watch. Yeah. Heartbreaking. I mean, it's heartbreaking. And if you're, uh, I don't know if you're a kid, I mean, it's just, it's, it's terrible. And if you're, if you're the woman, by the way, domestic abuse is exactly the same statistically in gay couples as it is in straight couples and hetero. Yeah. Interesting human nature problem we have with the nature of humans. Do you see yourself, if we ever get this coronavirus thing taken care of,

do you see yourself going back and writing for TV or film? Or this could be converted into film. Yeah, yeah. There are people looking at it now, you know, some producers. And I think, I don't think I want to go back into television. I have projects still, and every writer who's been, you know, you have stuff in your drawer. So there's a couple things I'd like to, you know, bring them out

and freshen them up, but screenplays. I have some screenplays I like to do. And I'm interested in a lot of different things, science fiction, crime, noir, all that stuff. So, you know, it's funny. I have a screenplay that actually takes place in a pandemic. And I'll get that out and, you know, as I said, freshen it up, you know. I love film noir. I'm just a big bogey fan from back in the day.

I just love black and white, old black and white film noir. Yeah, I do too. It's great. It's great. So what's your favorite medium, would you say? I mean, you've written for just about everything. What's your favorite medium that you like the most? Well, it's an interesting thing.

Television is actually the writer's medium in the sense that, I mean, you've the, you become the power. So like everybody, remember, everybody knows David Simon and everybody, you know,

who did the, the wire or, or the guys, Noah Hawley and Fargo. People don't remember the directors, but in the movies, the director is the king. So you write a screenplay, the director takes it and do whatever he wants. You're producing, you're the showrunner of a TV show. Director just wants to come back next week. I mean, there are great directors. I'm not saying there aren't, but it's the writer who has the real control.

So that's one advantage about, I mean, one of the things that I always liked about writing in television. Writing in film is great too, but you're more at the mercy of as i said directors stars i don't think that line suits me i'd like to change it well you know brad it's you know guess what uh and i don't mean him particularly because he's a pretty good guy but but it does happen and yeah and if you say i don't you know to a director uh i don't like what you did you get your ass kicked and you're out of here security call security i i guess i understand what you're saying that would mess you up i mean you've you've put in all this work to write these beautiful lines and some actors like, yeah, I don't know, man, that's not working. And even when I was,

you know, I was directing Jeff Goldblum, he says, uh, I said, you changed the line, man. He said,

yeah, I thought it sounded better this way. I said, look, if just say the line, the way I wrote it. And if I don't think it works, I'll change it.

I'll be the first one to change it. Cause my name is still going to be said, you know, it's still going to say written by Michael Elias, but you've got to let me hear it first. That was always my rule. Yeah. Anyway, but it's, you know, it's, and some

directors and some producers are more collaborative than others, and some are, you know. So, and I also like, I do like writing the novel, but it's hard because it's a singular. Most television writing, you do it with somebody else. You have a partner.

You have a collaborator. And I've had some great ones. So I could say, I got to, you know, I don't know. I got to go to the drugstore. Would you finish this scene? Okay. Or I can't think of anything. Well, I can.

Or you try stuff. And it's really important, of course, in comedy because you need somebody to either laugh or not laugh. If they don't laugh, you know, well, let's find a third way. And the timing is important, too. Otherwise, you know, I've seen comedy where the timing's off and you're just like, yeah, that's not working for you. Like sometimes I'll see shows and I'm just like, was this supposed to be a comedy?

The timing was off or is this really not a comedy? And I'm just not getting it. Like some parts caught in the middle. So maybe the issue is, is, is like, since you're a writer and if, when you direct, uh, I don't, maybe, I don't know what the statistic is, but maybe many directors don't write. And so that just makes it more personal since you wrote it when you're trying to direct people for it.

Yeah. Every once in a while. I mean, writers, if you're in film, I think you eventually you want to direct, you want to have control of your material. It's your story, and you want to do that. So like Aaron Sorkin is directing, and David Mamet directed, and Bob Towne directed. So all these writers, eventually they want to direct because they have the control over the material. Now, sometimes it doesn't mean it's going to be a really good movie because sometimes the worst thing you can have is somebody who doesn't say no to you.

And that's no good because you need breaks, especially you need – because otherwise – and also what happens when actors direct is they get so in love with the performances that they lose the story uh and that happened to john malkovich a couple times where he directed and it just it didn't it didn't move because he just was so focused on on the actor was getting this great performance and all this stuff but you gotta have to have a real eye or feeling for the story so

it's always good to have a no man or no woman around who can say you know I think you should cut the scene you should edit this you can't force you to do it if you're the director but it's really important and sometimes when you see a movie you can say it if you're the director, but it's really important. And sometimes when you see a movie, you can say, you know, I think the director had too much control. Wow.

So that's kind of interesting. I never thought about that. But as a director, you can watch the movie. You can see the interplay, or you can see the different formats there. Scene is going on too long, man. Get out. play or you can see the different formats there huh scene is going on too long man get out he's in there with your timer in the audience of the theater going yeah the scene's gone on way too long well there weren't billy wilder used to direct with a stopwatch

really yeah he said it was very good cut five seconds you know so everybody has their own way everybody put in put it in there. You directed and wrote Lush Life with Showtime's Lush Life with Forrest Whitaker and Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum has such delivery that I can see him screwing with lines. Yeah. Yeah. The first argument was it's about a saxophone player. I don't care anymore. I love him.

He's a good guy. But the first argument was it's about a saxophone player. And in real life, Jeff Goldblum is a piano player. He's a really good one. He said, so, you know, first thing he says, so I'd like to play piano instead of saxophone. I said, no, I didn't write it. I didn't write a piano player. I wrote a saxophone player. That was the first one. The other one, and he's a funny, if you, I've been looking at some commercials. You know, this is my, I can only do my Jeff Goldblum impression because he's always pointing, he's always doing this, you know.

And I said, at the time when we made this movie, I said, listen, you're a jazz musician. You're cool, right? You're a hip guy. You don't point. That's Woody Allen. You don't stutter, right? You're a hip guy. You don't point. That's Woody Allen. You don't stutter.

Right? That's Crystal. You're 6'5", man. And he is. So, I don't want you pointing. I don't want you shrugging. I just want you to be cool. And so sometimes, I mean, well, not sometimes. A couple times I had

to run out and put my arms around him and say, don't point. Horace Whitaker is a hell of an actor. The one movie that I just really loved of his, of course, I think he won an Oscar for it, the one where he plays the South African general, I think it is. Oh, no, he played Idi Amin. Idi Amin in, what was it called?

But that's right. Yeah, it was a hell of Amin. Yeah. Idi Amin in, what was it called? But that's right. Yeah, it was a hell of a performance. It was great. It was like made for him. Like that was, you're like, wow, that was your movie that you're made for. You worked with a lot of other great actors. What was it like working with Steve Martin? Steve Martin was, well, Steve Martin and I, we met

on a TV show, a little TV show called... Do you remember Pat Paulson? The name rings a bell. Pat Paulson was on the Smothers Brothers. Yeah, Smothers Brothers. He was a really funny guy. He even ran for president at one point.

Pat Paulson had a show called The Pat Paulson Half a Comedy Hour. And Steve and I were both writers on it. And we met and became friends. And he said he was just starting his career as a comedian. And he said, I'm not going to do this much longer. I'm going to be a comedian. And I said, well, you know, you're really funny. And I said, can I write for you? He said, yeah, sure. And we started writing material together for him. And that led to, I guess it led to the jerk and a long friendship. And he's fantastic. So writing with him, I actually didn't. and this is, again, going back to this notion of collaboration, I didn't actually say, okay, Steve, here's a joke. Okay, Steve, here's a sketch, here's a bit.

He had a house in Aspen, and I would go up and I would spend the weekend, and we would just walk around with a pad. You know, one of us, me, we had a pad. And we would think of funny bits. And we'd write them down. And they would do them. So that was that. Yeah. The movie part of the jerk that I always, you know, whenever you're watching cable or TV,

you always go to the same part in a movie for some reason whenever you turn it on. And I always go to the shooting part where the guy is shooting him at the gas station. Yeah. And he's like, this guy really hates the cans. That's right, the cans he's shooting. It's the cans. That's the greatest scene ever. I think that car chase where they're all going like five miles an hour.

I don't know what it is. Every time I come across a jerk it's that bloody scene. You're just like, is there some sort of karma in the world? Watch this scene over and over again. But it is such a great scene. The gas station. And I forget who plays the gas station.

Jackie Mason. Yeah, Jackie Mason is so great. And he's just like, yeah, whatever. He's like, I got to get out of here. And he's driving the car. Everybody gets the phone book. He's like, my name is in the out of here and he's driving everybody gets the phone book he's my name is the bathroom which is you can live here he's just oh my god this is incredible i can have a flow through here and when and uh did the guy at the urinal look turns around looks that was david picker he was the producer uh but so much you know a lot of that stuff i mean Steve and I wrote the screenplay

there's no I mean we did but I tell you Carl Reiner the late Carl Reiner and and Steve so much of that comedy

is the physical comedy is so much of it is Carl Reiner and there are moments in that picture where somebody,

who wrote that scene? I said, nobody, man, that was just Steve Martin turning it on when he leaves. And he says, I don't need this. And I don't need that.

Well, I do need this. And he takes, he's in his, his pants are around his ankles and he, he's leaving the house. And he says, well,

I'll just take this. That was all. That was like roll them. And he just made all that shit up. I mean, I'm sorry. That was really good. No, you're fine. The, the, uh, yeah, I mean, he was so classic. I mean, there was people don't remember, like we were talking pre-show, um, my first experience with Steve Martin, uh, in listening to him was the,

was the, I think it was the wild and crazy. He had the bit, you know, the wild and crazy. And, uh, he had the bit, you know, The Wild and Crazy. And he had the arrow going through the head with the thing. And I was just like, what? King Tut, I think, was on that album. Or we had the album, had King Tut on it. I was just like, what the hell is this going on? And it was just hilarious.

In fact, I was kind of bummed out when he went from being a comedian to start doing, you know, the serious films. I think it was the LA story. I'm like, I want him with a comedian back. I mean, he was great in it, but.

You know, I said to him once, I said, you know, you can write novels, you can write plays, you can write, do serious movies,

but, but when you died, he's still going to put here lies the jerk on your. Yeah, that's probably true. He didn't like it, but he agreed. Well, that explains why I always see it on cable at the same time. I mean, I haven't come across L.A. Story for a long time. Yeah, that's right.

It came out. The thing about that movie that I really like is that a lot of people have come up to me and said, you know, this is like the first movie or whatever that I could watch with my parents. And one guy said to him, you know, my mother said, you've got to watch this movie with me. And I realized my mother has a sense of humor. I never knew that before. So it's a real family kind of rite of passage.

Come on, son, we're going to watch the jerk and you're going to hear his mother reading the letter, you know. Yeah. Paul Reiner, what a guy, man. Physical comedy is hard to do. Like, everyone thinks it's easy. It's not, if you really understand it. No.

Another great physical comedy guy was Gary Marshall. And if you have a chance, look at Young Doctors in Love, and they're some of the best physical gags you'll ever see. I think that's what movies are, I mean, I wouldn't say the best, but that's one of the things we love about movies, because you can't do physical gags in a book.

You can't do them gags in a book you can't do them in a on on stage so much but you can do uh in the movie you know we love buster keaton we love uh chaplain because those gags are incredible you know buster keaton standing in front of the house remember and the house falls down and he goes through the window it just falls right down on them. I love the Three Stooges. I grew up on the Three Stooges. Chaplin. And then, who else am I thinking? Laurel and Hardy were kind of that way.

I'm old. You and I might be the same age. Well, we could say, no. What was it like working with always my favorite Gene Wilder in the Frisco Kid and of course Harrison Ford in his early career

well hey you're not supposed to say anything bad about the dead but Gene was a tough tough and difficult guy really? yeah he had that sweet demeanor he looked at you and he just had those beautiful blue eyes but underneath that was a kind of tantrumatic, occasionally tantrumatic, yelling, screaming child would lose his temper and freak out. And he was manageable because I had grown up with people like that. And he was great in the role. But we had some big fights about that movie.

And so did the director, Robert Aldrich, who was a strange choice for it because Aldrich, I don't know, he was one of the tough noir directors. And he also directed, what's that great one, with the two women, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and war movies. He was a tough guy guy so he and Wilder sometimes crossed swords but Wilder was a star but he was a pretty formidable guy

Aldrich so but Harrison I loved Harrison still do, Ford. And I don't know. Harrison was just becoming a big star, but he wasn't as big a star as Gene. But he went on to become this monster star,

and Gene did his movie, did Mel Brooks movies and stuff but maybe I'm not being clear about this but I don't think that Gene got what the Frisco Kid was really about

and he kept trying to make it into a movie that he thought it was, but it wasn't, and it shows. So I'm still proud of it. I love a lot of it, but there are moments where I say, ah, Gene won this argument. He should have.

So that's gone back to that thing when I was telling you about, you know, the director versus the star, the writer, it's all that stuff. I'm going to have to go back and watch that to get that again. But, yeah, it wasn't a movie that really stuck out to me. Yeah. Maybe that's why. I can introduce, go to any synagogue in America and say I wrote The Trisco Kid, and they will say, come in and have dinner or whatever it is.

It's the number one movie for young Jewish kids or whatever. They love that movie because it's a story about a rabbi who comes to America and makes his way across the country. And growing up, I never saw Jews in movies, cowboy movies. They didn't exist. The truth of the matter is jews settled the old west just as much as anybody else and there's some great stories so this was that's what it was yeah made a contribution as a okay and then you did the head of class a series for abc i mean

that's something everyone's seen yeah yeah uh that was. That was a lot of fun. Howard Hessman, for four years. Then our fifth year, we had this Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly, took over the role of the teacher. We had a great cast. We had Robin Givens, who at the time was married to Mike Tyson, who used to show up a lot. We went to Russia.

And it was a fun show. And I think they're bringing it back on HBO. I think they are. There you go. There you go. The recycle everything in Hollywood. It's always about the stories and stuff. So I think you have a couple different things you have in the works book-wise,

right? You're just not working on the sequel for this one. No, I'm working on a sequel and then a little bit on the sequel and then, as I said, this thriller that takes place in Maui about a night dive where somebody disappears and then I have

just putting the finishing touches on another novel which is about a writer. It's about me. And I took all my stories of my life and, you know, in Hollywood, and I turned it into a novel. And I fictionalized it so I could tell the truth. And it's kind of like maybe a nicer version because i'm a nicer guy and uh you're cleaning it up giving a little pr i'm not i'm not an asshole so uh uh but it's about and my character uh whose name is bender

uh and it's bender's bender's holly's Hollywood and all his adventures that I've been sharing with you, including, though, playing tennis with Abby Hoffman, who was wanted by the FBI on a producer's tennis court, getting stoned with Sterling Hayden from a movie star, all kinds of stuff like that. Yeah. And women and stuff, you know. There you go.

There you go. Maybe you should do a book where you just go full asshole and just skip the nice PR part and you just go full. Yeah. We always want to. And, you know, I'm at a point in my life where nobody can say to me, you'll never work in this town again because I don't care. A part of me can say whatever I want. You know,

it's like, it's, I don't, I don't care. And there's nothing you can do to me. So, and that's a certain kind of freedom. It doesn't mean I have to turn into an asshole, by the way.

It just means I don't have to watch my whatever. There you go. So on the book, You Can Go Home Now, would you like to direct it, make it a movie yourself, and be the director? I don't think so. I wouldn't mind writing the screenplay, but I think a woman should direct this movie because it's about a woman,

it's women's shelter, women's issues, and there are so many terrific women directors now that, you know, I think it, I'm not going to say requires, but I think it would be really good if it was

directed by a woman and And, you know, there's a list of stars I'd love to see in it, from Jennifer Lopez to Jennifer Garner to, yeah, there's a whole bunch. And it's an interesting thing, too, that when you write a novel, you, I'm not saying I don't care, but I did my, my novel is it's there. I wrote it.

You want to turn it into whatever you want to turn it into. That's on you. I can always say, sorry, here's the novel, you know? Uh, sorry,

Stephen King. And just be like, that's not what I wrote. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's everything. Even The Shining, man, he says, that's not what I wrote. Yeah. I don't think a movie is ever as good as the book.

Like, even great movies that I've loved, I've gone to the books. I mean, there's only so much you can fit in two hours or three for some movies these days. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And we're kind of an interesting age right now where you really can't go see movies.

Yeah. So you want to go to, would you go to a movie theater and have somebody say, excuse me and go by you bumping your knee, maybe breathing into your popcorn. It's just not going to happen. In fact, I think Stephen King, we were just talking about, he just wrote that he went to a theater and there was like seven people in there.

And he's like, this is really bad. But on the other hand, I think the next thing is we have to start making bigger walls for ourselves so we can put up our 105-inch television, right? I mean, right now, my television, I think it's about the same size as some of the – remember when multiplexes started coming out? You'd go into a room and there'd be a screen, which is the same size as my television screen now so or maybe a little bigger so you didn't have any sort of actress in mind when you wrote this then huh no okay no

uh jennifer gardner would be good she's played a cop and stuff she's hot yeah i could go for that uh what about uh i'll show you see writers keep lists you see it oh there you go you got the list okay i got uh let's see margaret robey scarlett johansson scarlett johansson might be interesting she's true she's kind of short like this character is maybe yeah yeah and she she can be edgy yeah kieran knightley brley, Brie Larson, Julie Gardner. You know, the one who was Ozark. Do you like Ozark? And then there's a list of directors.

There you go. Keep it up here. There you go. Well, you can go home now. A novel with Michael Elias. Anything more we should know, Michael, about the book and all that good stuff? Sexy. That was the the thing part by the way to write sex scenes from the point of view of a woman ah there's sex scenes in here all right i'm gonna finish this book yeah i'm just in the beginning the uh from a perspective of a woman so did you have to do any research on that somehow?

Well, it's actually, no, what I did do is I wrote, whatever I wrote, I gave to my friends, to women and my wife. Again, did I get it right? Does this sound like a woman? And by the way, in the beginning, I got my ass kicked a woman. And by the way, in the beginning... Sorry. No problem. I got my ass kicked a lot. Uh-oh. Oh, yeah. They would say, are you kidding?

A woman wouldn't wear that. A woman wouldn't say that. A woman wouldn't do whatever. So I said, thank you. Thank you. Because I'd rather get it now rather than after it's published because you can't take it back yeah i think i thank them all i thank them all yeah well check it out guys you can go home now novel my michael elias you can find it on your bookshelves anywhere and uh give us your plugs michael, before we go out.

My plugs? I would say you're going to really enjoy this book. It's a page-turner. It'll keep you up. It's short enough that you can read it in one sitting, maybe two. And it's a serious book about a couple of serious issues. And

also, I have to say, it's sometimes, because I'm a comedy writer by background it's pretty funny occasionally so it's I think it's enjoyable and when you go to your Amazon if you go to Amazon you can read a lot of reviews from readers ignore

the one bad one I'm looking for who wrote it I'm going to find her that's it so I think yeah I think it a and if you're in a book club there's a lot of issues to discuss in this book there you go there you go it's wonderful to have you on the show michael and tell us all your great stories uh i'll be interested to see the story the next the book that you do that has all the stories but the names have been changed because then i'll be like ah i'll be trying to figure out who, who the person was.

Okay. There you go. You really interesting to talk. Yeah. It's like, I just said, like a guy, I just sat down in the bar and we just talked. Thank you. Thank you.

That's what we try and do. So be sure to check out the book, go to amazon.com or your local book dealers. Watch the video version of this on YouTube.com. For just Chris Voss, hit the bell notification button. Go to the CVPN. You can also subscribe to online podcasts. Follow me on Goodreads.com.

For just Chris Voss. Thanks to my audience. Thanks to Michael for being here. And we'll see you guys next time.