'Duel', Author, John Scoleri

0:07John ScoleriSo for me, you know, any discussion of Duel starts with Richard Matheson. And my introduction to Richard Matheson was through his book I Am Legend, which I came to by way of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead because my brother and I had stayed up till 11:30 one night to watch it on Creature Features, and the movie blew me away. Fast-forward several years later, my brother was working in the library, and he brought home a book, had an interesting looking cover, you know, a guy standing amidst these flames. And when I asked him what it was, he said, "Well, this is the book that, you know, Night of the Living Dead was based on, or inspired by." And I thought, "Well, I've got to read it." And so one Saturday afternoon, I sat down and read the book cover to cover, which is something I had never done before. And so I credit Matheson not only for writing this amazing novella, n… novel, but getting me hooked on reading for pleasure like I had never been before.

1:14John ScoleriAnd I've gone back to the book through the years, and I still find it to be, you know, it's my favorite novel. But from that, I started to find out that Richard Matheson showed up in a lot of places. And for those that aren't aware of the name, I often describe him as he's that author that I can tell you three things he's done, and you'll be familiar with him. My little Zuni fetish doll from Trilogy of Terror is a horrific image that people that saw it on TV growing up never forgot. But Duel is another example. Everyone knows Duel. The Gremlin on the Wing episode of The Twilight Zone with William Shatner, everyone knows that. Well, that's Richard Matheson's Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Behind Rod Serling, he and Charles Beaumont were the most, prolific writers for the TV show.

2:20John ScoleriBut he, you know, he wrote across genre. He wrote Westerns, he wrote kind of mystery thrillers. One of his most celebrated novels, because of the film it inspired, is Bid Time Return, which became Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

2:39John ScoleriWhich was not a box office success for Universal when it was released. You know, all these years later, people go out to, the hotel where it was filmed in Michigan every year for a pilgrimage, and they get, you know, cast members and crew members, but just devoted fans that go out to celebrate this. You know, a fandom akin to what you might see if, you know, for Star Wars fans or comic fans, but for this kind of romantic fantasy. So again, people may not be familiar with the name Richard Matheson, but they're definitely familiar with his work.

3:21Jawad MirYeah.

3:21John ScoleriIn the ca… Go ahead.

3:23Jawad MirSorry, go on. No, please go ahead. I thought you…

3:26John ScoleriI was gonna say with Duel's kind of interesting 'cause Matheson started writing, his first published, story was called Born of Man and Woman in 1950, for a magazine of fantasy and science fiction, and he was a prolific short story writer. And then became a prolific novelist, and, he adapted the, his novel The Shrinking Man into the film The Incredible Shrinking Man. That was his first screenplay. But then went on to write, you know, movie screenplays, television screenplays. And Duel, interesting story, originated on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated because Matheson and a fellow writer, Jerry Sohl, had been golfing, and they went into the clubhouse for lunch and saw on the news, you know, President Kennedy's been shot. I think at the time they were also announcing that the vice president had a heart attack, even though that turned out not to be true, but you know, the chaos of the day, you know, who knew what to believe.

4:33John ScoleriAnd on their way home, driving home, they had a truck driver tailgating them and, you know, basically the foundation of the story of Duel happened to them. And as they kind of finally pulled off the side of the road and the truck went by, Matheson scrambled in Jerry Sohl's, you know, glove box and found a letter and started scribbling. And I guess Sohl turned to him and said, "What are you doing?" And he said, "I'm writing this down. I'm gonna, I'm gonna sell this story to Playboy." And sure enough, years later he did. I think he tried to pitch it as a teleplay to several shows, and it was kind of deemed, I don't think the scale was deemed appropriate. But it was published in Playboy, and two important people saw that. Steven Bochco, who was working for a producer named George Eckstein, saw it and showed his boss, and Eckstein got the rights to make it, for Universal.

5:38John ScoleriAnd Steven Spielberg's assistant said, "I read this story in Playboy. You have to read it." And he's like, "What are you doing reading Playboy?" She's like, "I love the fiction." And he read the story, fell in love with it. He was familiar with Matheson because of Twilight Zone, and you know…

5:54John Scoleri... They've got kind of a relationship that extended far beyond Duel. But he approached Eckstein Said he was interested in doing it. They found out that Matheson was working on a teleplay, and all the pieces fell into play for this to be a movie of the week. And then, you know, obviously in, for Spielberg, it was a huge, you know, feather in his cap after having done, you know, Columbo episode and…

6:23John Scoleri... You know, being kind of, still the youngest kid, you know, put on contract at Universal at the time.

6:32Jawad MirRight

6:32John Scoleri... But it, you know, it's, it's amazing the kind of, the genesis that went into it, and these kind of mixed elements that came together that, you know, ultimately resulted in lightning in a bottle, for this television show that, you know, we're still talking about all these years later.

6:50Jawad MirYeah, I mean, it's all, it's, you know, the universe is always trying to make things work if it's destined to become, if it's destined to work. That's what I truly believe. I mean, it's, even in any of the stories that you hear about behind the scenes of any film, any book, even in my life, I'm sure in your life, the work that we do, some of the most craziest things happen to make you, that lead you to do projects that you had never imagined, or you had turned them down over and over again, they just keep coming back at you.

7:25John ScoleriYeah.

7:25Jawad MirSo it, that's so definitely true. And the thing with Duel was, you know, a… as you know, it wasn't that popular. So the first time I heard about it, I became familiar with Spielberg, knowingly that it was Spielberg in, after Jurassic Park in 1993.

7:43John ScoleriSure.

7:43Jawad MirAnd then, you know, f… sort of following his work, like there was no IMDb at the time, you know, there was nothing like that. And I remember I came across, in the early days of internet, you know, I read up on some article and they talked about Duel. And there was, again, not that much information out there on it. And initially, then when there was a little bit more information as internet started expanding, coming out, you know, there was Spielberg websites and all that. There was, initially it was a 70 or 72-minute long short. Well, not short, like a smaller, shorter feature, not short. And then because when they showed it on television, it really did well, and then they took it to Europe, I think in European markets like France and, UK, if I'm not mistaken. They did, and they had to sort of made an extended version of it. So Spielberg went back and, you know, added all those scenes.

8:44Jawad MirWhat I didn't know that I learned about, that it's so funny, I mean, I've seen the movie so many times, it never hit me, and I learned this three years ago, just before COVID, it was the first film of its kind which was actually filmed inside the vehicle or outside the vehicle while the vehicle was moving. Normally in those days, it was like, it would be like the screen in the background.

9:08John ScoleriYeah.

9:08Jawad MirAnd I, and I think that's, you know, when I found that out, I was like, "That's," aside from many other factors, "That's what makes it so profound." I mean, imagine if there was a screen running in the background, you wouldn't be involved.

9:22John ScoleriWell, it's interesting, 'cause I think Bullitt had actually done some of this too, and 'cause I think they used some of the Bullitt rigs for Duel.

9:30Jawad MirOkay.

9:32John ScoleriBut it's…

9:32Jawad MirThat's not what I read in Empire Magazine, but hey, I don't know.

9:36John ScoleriBut you're, you're right. And at one point in time, the studio I think said, "Well, you know, we could just, we'll just do this on a sound stage. We'll do it in, you know, with process." And Spielberg said, "No. I… if you, if you wanna do it that way, I'm not interested."

9:50Jawad MirYeah.

9:51John ScoleriWe need to be out there. We need to be, you know, in the real world. You need to see these, you know, these man and machine, you know, going head-to-head. And it makes all the difference. It really does, the fact that... And when you think about it, on the schedule that they were at, that they pulled this off and were able to kind of make it happen is all the more impressive. It's interesting to note for the, for those extended scenes, they did, they needed about 15 minutes of footage to pad it out to a, an appropriate theatrical running time.

10:27John ScoleriAnd Matheson wasn't involved in that. Spielberg basically, he had some ideas and George Eckstein had some ideas. There's a phone call with Dennis Weaver's wife at the beginning, which is kind of a throwaway scene. There's the famous scene where, there's the busload of kids that he helps, which I think i… is a great scene because it ends with the truck, who you think is gonna do something menacing, kind of ending up helping the school bus of kids along, on their way.

11:01Jawad MirYeah.

11:01John ScoleriAnd then there was the one scene where the truck kind of pulls up behind he and his car at the railroad tracks and kind of pushes him towards the train. And a very interesting thing, Matheson didn't like that scene, and the reason he didn't like that scene is he felt that the truck shouldn't actually touch the car until the climax. He felt that kind of took away from some of the menacing nature of it, because it's like it, y… the truck actually, you know, pushes him, and then he kind of gets away right in time. What's particularly fascinating about that is that in the, in the first draft of the s… the teleplay that Matheson wrote, there's the scene where Dennis Weaver's kind of pulled off the side of the road, by the train tracks, and he kind of falls asleep. Well, he had written a scene that basically had… the dream sequence where he has a nightmare of the truck actually hitting him and the car exploding.

12:13John ScoleriAnd he cut that. He cut that very early on, and I thought, "Well, that's kind of interesting that kind of, kind of worked its way back in a little bit later."

12:23Jawad MirYeah

12:24John Scoleri... And I know Dennis Weaver also had commented that what he didn't l… what he didn't like about that scene as it played in the film was that he felt like he would've gotten out of the car. You know, you wouldn't just sit in the car as someone's pushing you into a, into an o… you know, a train that's going by. And I guess he had, he had mentioned that to Spielberg and Steven said, "Oh, you know, you're right. Maybe I should, maybe I should, I should cut that out," but, you know, it never happened.

12:52Jawad MirYeah

12:52John Scoleri... But it is interesting. It doesn't, you know, the, none of those scenes feel, tacked on when you're watching the theatrical version. I have to admit, in today's world of home media, I'm kind of disappointed that they haven't released both versions, you know, the original, television version as well as the theatrical version. Because, you know, we have the means of doing that these days and, you know, the cost isn't great to make those available. And…

13:26Jawad MirYeah

13:26John Scoleri... I think it's neat for the fans, you know, the people that are really into it, to be able to kinda go back and compare and see how things play out a little bit differently.

13:36Jawad MirI know there is, they're planning something in September. It's, called 4K Ultra HD in Blu-ray, and it's like a collector's edition. I mean, it has a whole bunch of, memorabilia that comes with it. I don't know about the ending and all that s… I mean, the extended version versus shorter version. But…

13:56John ScoleriYeah, I know that's coming out, but I hadn't heard if they're, if they're planning on doing both.

14:00Jawad MirYeah. I doubt it. I highly doubt it, because otherwise they would sort of advertise it. But…

14:07John ScoleriYeah

14:07Jawad Mir... Going back to your comment about the train sequence, any time I think about Duel, like immediately three things come to my mind, like three scenes or shots which, whatever you wanna con… consider them. The train part where his face is screaming and the camera is really close, and that really pulls you in.

14:27John ScoleriOh, yeah.

14:28Jawad MirAnd the telephone booth where you can see Spielberg's reflection a little bit.

14:31John ScoleriYeah.

14:31Jawad MirI don't know if you... A… and obviously the finale. And I, and I, now that you mention it, I mean, from a re… realistic standpoint, yeah, he coulda just jumped out, but I think that scene really played for the rest of the film, the, it showed the antagonist, what he is capable of and what he's willing to do. And that just sets the stakes so high that you're immersed and involved in the, into the film.

14:59John ScoleriYeah. And definitely w… watching the film during that scene, it's very easy, p… you know, people always in retrospect say, "Well, this is what I would do in that scenario." It's like, well, you're in that scenario.

15:09Jawad MirYeah.

15:09John ScoleriYou're probably not…

15:10Jawad MirMaybe

15:10John Scoleri... Thinking clearly. And everything leading up to him getting to that point, you know, he was pretty frazzled. So i… it's not ridiculous to think that a character wouldn't be thinking clearly about, you know, "What do I need to do?" You'd be frantic, thinking, "I'm being pushed into a train."

15:26Jawad MirWell, you also can factor in that he's trying to save his car, too. I mean, this guy's an average, you know, citizen, and he doesn't... Obviously his life is the main thing, but you know, those things, like you said, they don't cross your mind when you're on the verge of death.

15:42John ScoleriYeah.

15:42Jawad MirYou know, you're just trying to save yourself, whichever idea comes to your head first. But yeah, no, Duel had such an... I mean, it became more of a cultural phenomenon, I think, and I could be dead wrong, more in after the '90s. It was always there, but I think because of the internet it became much more bigger. Because there was, even the DVD that came out first time on HD, I think it came out like in 2004 or 2005. It took a really long time for it to even come out on DVD. But that entire thing with the truck, it's so funny. You know, what Jaws did for going into the beach, which, you know, I still think about…... You know, sharks and whatever's under the water that you can't see, what, you know, you don't know what's down there, right? And you see these reports all the time. And then the same thing with the truck. If I'm on the highway in a similar... There's been a few times with not just the same shape, but like a rusted truck is right behind me, and you know, then I would just change the lanes.

16:50Jawad MirBecause it has such an effect on you. And that's what you call popular cultural, popular cultural effect. Like it is such a phenomena that you have this fear. If you had not seen them, then, you know, you wouldn't know.

17:03John ScoleriYeah.

17:03Jawad MirAnd that's what Spielberg does amazingly. He's a genius at it.

17:07John ScoleriYeah. Yeah, no, I don't think anybody was throwing around the terms, you know, road rage in 1971.

17:13Jawad MirYeah.

17:14John ScoleriBut this is a perfect example of that sort of thing, which is, you know... A… and what I love, and this is true of the original story, you know, it, so much of the, you know, what appears on film really does come right out of the original short story. And it is that sense of just what, why? It's not clear to him why this is happening, and he's trying to reconcile, you know, "What did I do? What is, what is going on? Why is this guy doing this?" And that initial scene when he kinda waves him, waves him by, and he starts to pull around and there's a car coming right at him, is kind of a moment of realization of this, he's not kidding. You know, this isn't a game. He, you know, that would've killed me and this, you know, innocent, you know, person in this other car. And so then I think it really raises the stakes. A… as a viewer, you know, you're there watching, but you're thinking, it's like this is, you know, this isn't just cat and mouse games. This is somebody who's really a threat to him.

18:13Jawad MirYeah

18:13John Scoleri... And also, you know, and Steel… and s… Steven was always, you know, quick to point out that Matheson was, you know… Greatly responsible for what Duel was. Even commenting that, you know, in the, in the story and in the teleplay, you know, it's clear that you don't get a good look at the driver of the truck. That was always the intent of this, you know, you're not seeing, not knowing exactly, you know, who this is and why they're doing it and what their motivation is. And he... And the scene in the cafe works great for that reason 'cause, you know, it sets up the whole, you know…

18:54Jawad MirYeah

18:54John Scoleri... He comes out of the bathroom and realizes the truck's here, the truck driver's probably in this place. And then, you, again, as a, as a viewer, you can put yourself in that scenario and think, "What would I do?" You know, you would, you would, of course, distrust everyone surrounding you as being this potential threat.

19:16Jawad MirYeah. And that whole thing about not showing the tru… the truck driver, right? That, not for the same reason, but because of the problems on the set with Jaws, you know, the unseen terror.

19:30John ScoleriYeah.

19:30Jawad MirThat has become such a thing, even up to this day, where the less you see, the more scary it is. I mean, the, you know, Spielberg did that with Jurassic Park. Like, you don't really get to see, you know, the carnivores until, like, halfway into the film. And, what's his name? John Krasinski, he directed Quiet Pl… Quiet Place, same thing. Like, you don't see the terror. Same thing with Signs, M. Night Shyamalan. You don't see the alien until the end of the film.

20:03John ScoleriYeah.

20:03Jawad MirAnd those things really play on people's fear if you execute it properly. And I could be wrong, you tell me. I think Duel kind of set that precedent. I always thought that Jaws did, but I think Duel actually did.

20:18John ScoleriWell, Duel very deliberately does as far as the, you know…

20:23Jawad MirYeah

20:23John Scoleri... Kind of giving any sort of specifics. I obviously, you know, going back in the history of, you know, horror films, in the beginning it was all, you know, you, they couldn't, they couldn't show things often because technologically they were limited.

20:42John ScoleriOr, you know, by the ratings board they were limited. I would argue that one of the most terrifying films I've seen, is Robert Wise's film, The Haunting. He doesn't… You see nothing. But what you hear and, you know, you see doors kind of being pounded on. And, you know, he does things so effectively that it's like you don't need to, you don't need to see something, grotesque to, you know, have the sense of fear. That said, you know, again, I, Night of the Living Dead is a pivotal film in my upbringing, and that was a film that basically threw, cast that notion aside and said, "We are going to show you what h… historically, you know, the camera cuts away from." and so I certainly have an appreciation for the films that are willing to kind of push boundaries and, do the taboo things that you think, "Oh, you're not, you're not gonna show me that. You're not gonna go there," and then they do, can be equally horrifying. But it takes a skilled filmmaker I think in either, in either case. Because you can have films where they just kind of throw buckets of blood at the screen…

22:00Jawad MirYeah

22:00John Scoleri... And it, and it's, it, you know, it's, it's not effective. And similarly you can, you can, you know, different people have different takes on it. But you can do things where you don't kind of show, you know, what the terrors are. And that can work for you if the audience is engaged. Or it can work against you if the audience, you know, if they're not connected to the characters, if they're not into the story. Then it just feels like, well, it's a cop-out, right? It's just like you're not, you're not delivering on any level. You're not delivering on the suspense level, the Hitchcock level, and you're not delivering on the visceral level of, you know, showing me something to really scare me.

22:41Jawad MirYeah. And it's funny you mentioned Robert Wise, The Haunting, which I haven't seen and I've, I've, I've been meaning to see it for a long time, and then I forgot about it. They remade it, with Jan…

22:52John ScoleriYes

22:52Jawad Mir... Jan de Bont, with Owen Wilson and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson. And I remember, I mean, they used... It was very similar in a sense that you don't see the terror. You hear the doors hitting, closing in the stairway, but it didn't do anything. Like, it, that same technique didn't work there because it was the lack of s… script writing, the characters, whatever it was, it just didn't work. And the key word, as you said, is execution.

23:21John ScoleriYeah.

23:21Jawad MirYou know, you can... And that, I'm gonna check that film out. I've been meaning to go back to it, and I haven't seen the original one. I would love to.

23:29John ScoleriIt's, it…

23:29Jawad MirA similar film like that is Evil. Have you seen Evil? Not Evil Dead, Evil.

23:34John ScoleriNo, I don't...

23:36Jawad MirI remember seeing…

23:37John ScoleriThat sounds like a name that I should be familiar with

23:40Jawad MirI'm wondering if it's Evil, because I saw it when I was a kid, not here, back home in the movie theater. And I remember the concept was it was a group of friends who get in... Maybe it was Evil Dead. It was, they get into this castle and, you know, they're spending the night and they're having fun, partying around, and all of a sudden all the doors of all, every single door, like dozens of doors in the castle, they sh… they shut down, and they're locked in. And then one by one they're, you know, they start dying. Now, I... As far as I remember it was Evil. I could be wrong, but that was a similar thing. Like, where it didn't really show anything, but, and it was terrorizing.

24:21John ScoleriYeah. Yeah, I, you know, one of… One of the most kind of frightening images from my youth, came from, a movie called Burnt Offerings. And this is another one that the people that have seen it will never forget it. It was, Dan Curtis directed, Dan Curtis of Dark Shadows fame.

24:44John ScoleriWritten by William F. Nolan, who was a contemporary of Richard Matheson, based on a novel by an author named Robert Marasco. And there's, there's a character in there, a chauffeur… ... Who shows up in a flashback sequence. He's, basically the driver at this young boy's,.. He goes to a funeral. And this chauffeur, s… tall, skinny, the actor's name is Anthony James, appeared in a lot of Clint Eastwood movies, but he smiled. And it is, it is just the most frightening thing that this kind of image of basically death, right? It's like, 'cause he was, you know, he's driving a hearse, and he shows up at different times. He pops up in the movie. He doesn't really do any… He doesn't interact kind of directly, but he shows up and he grins, and it is just this terrifying image because it's seemingly so innocuous, and yet, it's played so effectively, and the music that they use. It's like all these elements coming together, and it's like, yeah, you know, you don't have to, it doesn't have to be horrifying to be scary. You can just be unsettling.

25:57Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, that completely makes sense. Now, you know, we've talked about dual, we've talked about suspense and all that. Tell me what you're working on right now that you're able to talk about…

26:08John ScoleriSure

26:09Jawad Mir... Your projects. Yeah.

26:10John ScoleriSo I just, I just finished, I… w… we just put out kind of three books back to back to back, with, a friend of mine. We've been co-editing a magazine called Bare Bones for… We s… we initially started it 30 years ago, but we ramped it back up during COVID, using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program just kind of for kicks, and…

26:40John Scoleri... We just put out our 14th quarterly issue, and we go into kind of all the things that interest us. So it's, mystery, crime, Westerns, horror, science fiction, in film, TV, comic books, you name it. It's a lot of fun because we, there's really nothing that we can't make an excuse to cover. And we've got a lot of great writers that write for us and do things. Another book, a good friend of mine who I've done a lot of books with, David Schow, screenwriter of The Crow, author of numerous novels and short stories, and an expert on the TV show The Outer Limits, has written a couple books on The Outer Limits, but we just put out a new book in hardcover and paperback, kind of celebrating the 60th anniversary of that TV show, which is a lot of fun. And my last kind of new book, is a short story collection by an author named Duane Swierczynski.

27:44John ScoleriDuane has written a lot of comics, novels. He's, he's in LA working in the kind of Hollywood game now. Our… we published his first collection of short stories, which is a lot of fun. And the title story of our collection, Lush, is currently in development as a film, so we're hoping all goes well with that for Duane. But he's, he does books with James Patterson. He's doing a lot of, a lot of cool things. And so a… as is the case with a lot of the projects I work on, these are people that I've gotten to know and enjoy working with. And so, I take the pleasure not only in, the time I spend with them developing the books, putting the books together, but just getting their books out to a new audience and, you know, I take a lot of pride in doing that. And my last big thing, which I'm starting up again after kind of working on and off and on for the past six years, finally gonna put to bed a kind of dream project for me, which is a photographic retrospective on the making of Night of the Living Dead.

29:03John ScoleriI've been working with the people who made the film. I've gotten to know them over the past, gosh, 30 years. And this was something that I'd always wanted to do, to kind of show my love for the film and what they had done and, have this book coming out. It'll be a kind of a big hardcover coffee table book, behind the scenes photos, color photos, things people have never seen before that, I'll be perfectly honest, I'm selfish. I'm doing the book because I want it. But like the Ralph McQuarrie book, I think there will be other fans of, this film and fans of kind of classic horror films that are gonna be really excited to see some of the images that we've got, rescued, and we'll be able to kind of share with the world for the first time ever. So that, I'm hoping all will go well.

30:06John ScoleriWe'll get that out. This is the 55th anniversary of Night of the Living Dead this year. I'm gonna be back in Pittsburgh, or actually Evans City, where the film was shot in Pennsylvania this fall. They have a, an annual, get-together they have that's always fun to attend, and it's kind of more like a family reunion for those of us that go. But, You'd be amazed at how many people are willing to fly, not just, you know, fly or drive not just from around the country, but from around the world to kind of make this pilgrimage. And so it's a lot of fun. It's kind of a close-knit, family group. And like I said, this is a project I've been working on for a number of years, so I'm, I'm excited to finally see it come to fruition and can't wait to get it into the people's hands who have been kind of waiting patiently for, you know, us to get over the challenges that COVID brought to the traditional publishing world. While it opened up all these doors for me to do, things with, Amazon's print-on-demand platform, the world of traditional publishing and, you know, the costs involved in materials and shipping books, you know, around the world, it's like, introduced a whole new series of challenges.

31:24John ScoleriBut things have finally started to settle down, so this is the year that we get to finally put this one to bed.

31:31Jawad MirThat's great. And you know, the thing with... I've started noticing now is in the last, I think especially after COVID, the idea of books not fading away is like, you know, it's coming back. Like, I mean, all these books that you see here, right? All these behind-the-scene making of books, there's a demand for it. Obviously, that's why they're being made, otherwise why would anybody do that?

31:55John ScoleriYep.

31:55Jawad MirAnd it's… And similar to DVDs, similar to LPs and CDs. You know, there's a company in LA called La-La Records, which is like relea… re-releasing all these classic soundtracks…

32:08John ScoleriYeah

32:08Jawad Mir... You know, from John Williams to Alan Silvestri. And I think obviously, you know, it's for the people like us who have sort of grown, you know, grown up, and we wanna sort of relive all those memories and all that time that we grew up and listening to this and watching this and reading this. And I'm just so glad to see that because, you know, for the longest time they were talking about newspapers would disappear, which they pretty much have, with the exception of some.

32:32John ScoleriYeah.

32:32Jawad MirYou know, everything will be replaced, but people still want to read books. Like, you know, there... If I'm on a plane, I would see a lot of people on iPad watching movies, but for reading purposes, the percentage of actual books versus Kindles is much higher. Every time I'm on a plane, I see books everywhere, which is great to see.

32:57John ScoleriWell, I've done in the past, since the fall of 2019, I think I'm up to like 35 books that I've put out through Amazon's platform.

33:07Jawad MirWow.

33:07John ScoleriTwo of those have an e-book equivalent, and the majority don't. And one of the primary reasons why is I'm a physical media person through and through.

33:22Jawad MirYeah.

33:23John ScoleriAnd I like to do, you know, design. I like to do layout. I like to do things that, you know, that are visually interesting, and you give that up in large part when you go to an e-book. Now, yes, you can do books that are basically a, you know, a big PDF and it, you know, it can have the images and things. But most people that wanna read, they want an e-book. They want to be able to resize the text and sit there on their phone and, you know, flip through pages. And I am... You know, for me, part of the, part of the goal of what I'm doing is trying to create the physical object. That's, that's what I really enjoy about publishing, is the creative aspect that goes into designing what fonts we use, what, you know, how we do the layout, what kind of ornamentation we put in the books, things that a good percentage of our readers may not even notice.

34:27John ScoleriYou know, it's the kind of thing if we're doing it right, a lot of people won't. You know, it's not distracting. But, for those people that do appreciate it, the goal is that it's kind of, it's icing on the cake. It's for somebody who's reading a book and can say, "Oh, I can, I can see that somebody spent some time designing this." You know, they didn't just…

34:48Jawad MirRight

34:49John Scoleri... Take a Word doc and, you know, have a book printed of that. And so to me that's, that's where I really get, the pleasure out of publishing, and working, like I said, with authors. Because authors dealing with New York publishing, and New York publishing has changed drastically and is, you know, not the same as it was years ago. But working with New York publishing, you'd s… you know, you'd submit a manuscript, and if it's accepted, you know, years down the road it's, you know, announced and it's gonna come out, and maybe they, you know, fix all the typos you caught in the proofing stage, and maybe they slap a cover on it that they had lying around that, you know, doesn't do anything to serve your book, and you're just stuck with it 'cause that's the reality.

35:41John ScoleriAnd for me, I en… I engage my authors because at the end of the day, I want them to be as proud of the books as I am. And so I want their feedback and I want them to feel like they're involved in the design and the development, and are well-represented by whatever the finished product may be. And I think for those that have kind of straddled both sides of that fence and have kind of been in the reality where you're at the mercy of somebody who says, "Yeah, you know, we don't have time to make that change to fix that." And it's like, well, y… you really could, but you just have to go down to the guys and, you know, that are doing the copy editing and ask them to do it. And whereas us, we can say, "Oh, we need to make this change. We need to make this fix." We can do that. We can do that quickly. And in terms of turnaround, you know, th… this Outer Limits book… came out of a discussion David and I had in March, and…

36:40Jawad MirOh, wow

36:41John Scoleri... The book is out and available, and, you know, in people's hands. And that, to me, that was one of the most exciting things about this prospect was I can come up with an idea, and in the time it takes, you know, in a matter of weeks, we can assemble materials, generate proofs, and, you know, bring a m… book to market in, you know, weeks to months, you know, but not months to years or, you know, crazier times. And that's really rewarding, to be able to q… you know, kind of quickly see, here we go. Here's a sample. Or, you know, even to put a proof copy into an author's hands and say, "All right."

37:20Jawad MirYeah.

37:20John Scoleri"We talked about it. We got the files. Here's something." And it's like, wow, it's like it's already at this stage, and we literally, you know, just kind of m… got it off the ground, you know, three weeks ago. The technology is great, and it, and also the quality. You know, print-on-demand has a stigma that people that have been around publishing for a long time, they didn't feel or seem like real books. You know, the quality of materials, the way they were put together, didn't reflect well on the process. But the technology is now at a level where not only do, can we produce books that look like something that comes out of a New York publisher, you will see that New York publishers are using print-on-demand to do a lot of their product. And, you know, it's one of the ways that they can keep books in print without having to commit, you know, to inventory, and having tons of copies of a book sitting in a warehouse, and whether or not they're selling, and do we pulp them because they're taking up space and, you know, not serving us.

38:31John ScoleriWhen I started to see books coming from, you know, major publishers, and I'd go, you flip to that last page, and you're like, oh, here's the date and location it was printed, you realize they're aware that this is a viable, a viable alternative. And again, for ideally, the reader doesn't, doesn't care. The reader, you know, they get a book. You know, we've done our due diligence. You know, we don't we spend time proofing so that, you know, it's not riddled with typos. You put quality in, to the reader, they're gonna say, "Yeah, this is, this is a quality book." and so it's, it's, it's really exciting what we're able to do, and like I said, just the timeframes that we can do it allows us to get crazy ideas and say, "Well, what if we did this?" And like I said, in a matter of months, you know, have a book on our shelves.

39:25Jawad MirYeah. And you know, the thing is that w… you kinda touched upon it, but to me, you know, if you look at photographs, they don't tell a story on a phone as opposed to in your hand. You know, th… this book, you know, Catch Me If You Can screenplay, like I can read it on the computer, but this is a story. There's a memory attached to it, like when did I get this? How did I get this? You know, getting a soundtrack as opposed to downloading from Napster or, you know, Apple Music, and I think that's also a big part of it too, that we are attached to these things through a very personal way, and we like to be associated with it, that this is mine. You know?

40:07John ScoleriYeah.

40:07Jawad MirHow... You know, digital music, like you can't say it's mine, because it's all subscription. Like you don't really own anything. These are, you know, these things that you own, and I think people like that ownership, that, "I wanna be part of that history, that cultural phenomena," and just being part of that film, you know? Like even if I hadn't worked on Star Wars or Indiana Jones, even having some sort of a collectible item makes me part of that saga.

40:33John ScoleriYeah, my friend David, who wrote the Outer Limits book, described it really well in that for those of us of a certain age, things like soundtrack albums…

40:42Jawad MirYeah

40:43John Scoleri... And the movie tie-ins, m… at, for a lot of film, that was it. If you wanted memorabilia, you know, maybe if you were lucky, you knew somebody who could get you a poster from the theater, but…

40:54Jawad MirYeah

40:54John Scoleri... You could go into the bookstore and buy the movie tie-in to Star Wars or, you know…

41:02Jawad MirYeah

41:02John Scoleri... E.T. Or in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or you could go buy the record and sit there and, you know, play the record while you're reading the book. And those used to be kind of the minimal things you'd get, right? It's like, yeah, they can put out a soundtrack album. They can put out a novelization. And these days, there's such…

41:22Jawad MirSo much more

41:23John Scoleri... Interest in that nostalgia that, you know, y… you look online at what people pay for, you know, these new, you know, vinyl rare, you know, pressing, alternate color, you know, albums, soundtrack albums or, you know, going back and buying old '80s paperback movie tie-ins of movies that you'd think, "Well, nobody cares about that." And suddenly it's like wait, somebody really…

41:47Jawad MirHm

41:47John Scoleri... You know, somebody really wants John Carpenter's Halloween novelization, because they're paying, you know, $1,000 to buy a paperback book that, you know, you used to go into the used bookstore and find for a dollar.

41:59Jawad MirYeah

41:59John Scoleri... But I do think there is that sense for those of us that have that collecting bug, and if I could turn the camera around, you'd be frightened to see how badly I've been by it. But…

42:12Jawad MirNo

42:12John Scoleri... But it is a sense of that having those tangible kind of aspects that you can relate to and say, "Yes, this connects me that much more to this film, this book, this author," i… i… you know, it's just, it's, it's so meaningful. And other people can say, "Yeah, I read the book, and then I, you know, I donated it to the library, 'cause I was done." And those of us like, no, it's like my I Am Legend. I'm gonna keep this forever and ever.

42:43Jawad MirYou know, I'm just gonna kind of wrap it up on one part. If we're talking about collections, I've always known that there's ET fans out there's Star Wars, there's Indiana Jones, and a bunch of other films. Like, there's collectible items and toys and posters. Little did I know, I mean, now with Jurassic Park 30th anniversary coming out, there's a whole bunch of merchandise coming. But forget that. I discovered during COVID on Instagram people in Europe have, there's at least that I know of, four or five crazy fans that have ridiculous amount of Jurassic Park collection. I'm not talking toys. I'm talking, you know, giant dinosaurs with authenticity. And all they do is on Instagram is they, you know, "Look what I got today. Look what I got today." And obviously these are companies in Europe that are making these with, you know, they're being licensed by Universal. But it's crazy. I found... I'm like, this guy's collection must be over 60, 70 grand minimum.

43:46John ScoleriOh, yeah.

43:46Jawad MirLike…

43:47John ScoleriYeah

43:47Jawad Mir... It g… it's just insane. I didn't even know that there was such a big fan base for Jurassic Park. But yeah, it's, it's huge. And same thing with... I mean, I'm sure yours is way more, which I'm too scared to see.

44:01John ScoleriSo…

44:02Jawad MirAnd I...

44:03John ScoleriMy crazy cred, as I said, I Am Legend is my favorite book.

44:10Jawad MirYeah.

44:11John ScoleriI have more than 200 editions of this book from around the world. I have copies of this book that came from Richard Matheson's personal library. I've got limited edition hardcovers. I've got paperbacks. I've got original cover paintings for the book. O… of all my kind of obsessive collecting habits, this is probably my most, i… in some ways my most unique in that there aren't a ton of people in that space, which is good because things can be affordable. But in the pre-internet days it was, it was very challenging. In the post-internet days it got a little bit easier 'cause you could go online and buy books from around the world. But, you know, you start to find out, you know, trying to buy books from Brazil and they won't ship to the US, and so you've got to make friends around the world who will…...

45:15John ScoleriYou know, be your conduit for these things. But that's, that's probably my, one of my biggest elements of fandom is just, my goal is to someday have a complete collection representing at least one copy of every edition of the book that has been published, and it's probably my white whale that I will never kind of quite reach. I probably know about two dozen editions of the book, that exist that I've, like, seen physical pictures of that I don't yet have. And it's a book that remains in print, so it's not like there's a finite number and then I'm done. It's like there are constantly…

45:58Jawad MirYeah

45:58John Scoleri... New ones being published. But, it's, it's, it's a fun pursuit. It's a fun pursuit, and, one that many of my friends can just kind of shake their head and say, "Okay. I guess. I guess you like that book."

46:19Jawad MirI, you know, I, on that note, if you're ever interested, I would love to talk to you about your connection with I Am Legend and, you know, we don't have to go, obviously…

46:31John ScoleriYeah

46:31Jawad Mir... Go through all the editions of the books, but just because the fact that you have 200 editions is an obvious indication that you love the f… love this film, book, and I don't know about the film, but you love the book at least.

46:43John ScoleriYes. No, well, o… obviously there is kind of crossover, interest in the kind of ancillary things. So, I'd, I'd be happy to, pontificate about it. There's, there's a lot of interesting stories, relating to the different books and different countries and it is kind of fun to see, a lot of the different, editions, the different covers, the different ways that the book has been represented, through the years and through publishers. And I've got a lot of fun stories. You know, I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Matheson, several times and, I'm, I'm working on a book, of his shun… son's short stories, right now too. So, the legacy continues.

47:28Jawad MirNo, that's great. Let's, let's do that in the next coming months maybe when things are a little bit more, less busy for you and as well as for me…

47:35John ScoleriYeah

47:35Jawad Mir... And we can schedule something.

47:37John ScoleriThat'd be great. I'd love it.

47:39Jawad MirGreat. Lovely talking to you again. Thanks for your time, for fitting us in.

47:42John ScoleriTake care.

47:42Jawad MirAnd looking forward to talking to you again.

47:45John ScoleriThanks very much.

47:46Jawad MirTake care. Bye-bye. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share and comment, and do come back for another episode. Until then, have a great day.