Interview Transcript

I’m Jessica Harris. This is from scratch. My guest is Gary Goldberg, a producer and writer for television and film. His TV sitcoms include the 1982 show Family Ties starring Michael Fox as well as Brooklyn Bridge and Spin City. Gary has written a memoir called Sit, Ubu, Sit. Ubu was the name of his production company, which he founded in 1981 named after his black Labrador retriever, Ubu. Welcome.

Thank you. It is really a pleasure to be here.

You fell into a career in writing accidentally and you didn’t know that you wanted to become a writer until you were in your 30s. How did that discovery happen?

It really was based on the fact that I had been this giant failure in the eyes of the world from the time I was, I would say 20 to 31 I was actually 31 at the time and I had, so I had never graduated college. I, I had been asked to leave more than one, but less than four, uh, universities. And my wife, who was a super student of all time, was going on to get like a triple master’s degree on the way to her PhD. And I was just tagging along at San Diego state, uh, university and just taking care of the baby and the Labrador, you know, Ubu. So that was really it. So I needed credits everywhere. I needed a thousand credits. And so I took a beginning writing class and it happened that the writer was a gentleman name of Nate Monaster, who was a past president of the Writers Guild. The assignment was to write a television commercial, and I was older and I just hadn’t really no interest in that, but I thought, well, I’m in this class and I, maybe I should try to write something. So I went up to Nate. Uh, I said, you know, I, I’m not trying to get out of the assignment, but I don’t want to do a commercial. Can I just try to write something? And he said, great. So I started to write about when I was a waiter at the village gate in New York during the sixties, late sixties which was kind of a turning point in my life. And it was interesting to me as I sat down to write, I could transport myself back to the village gate, I could hear dialogue, I could hear individual voices, I could hear, you know, silverware, you know, drinks being poured. And it was startling.

And I wrote, and I had a good time, so I hand in these pages and we were not economically solvent at this point, so we couldn’t afford a telephone. Our phone was in our neighbor’s apartment. So he came over and he said, Hey Gary, there’s a guy from the college wants to talk to you. And I walk across the yard and it’s Nate Monaster. And he said, um, “Okay. You have to come in and see me. You have to come in now.” It was a Sunday. And so I go to see a Nate Monaster and I walk in, he’s got my script there and he looks up at me and he goes, “You can’t be in this class.” He said, um, “You’re a writer. You’re a writer. I have nothing to teach you. I don’t want to get in the way. You have an individual voice. It’s unique. I, I just, I don’t want to be involved here and trying to change it or even comment on it other than say it’s very compelling.” And you know, I was saying, whoa, you know, uh, what are you saying here? And he said, “Well, you can definitely make a living here, you know, at this. What are your favorite television shows?” Well, we didn’t even have a TV, you know, so I said, I don’t know. So he said, “Well, you should look at TV.”

There was a motel liquidating its furniture and that’s where you bought your television.

Yes, we got this big black and white set and we plugged it in and Diana was standing over my right shoulder, I remember. And we watched this show comes on called Get Christie Love. And I watched about 10 minutes of it and then I turned to Diana and I said, well, I can do this. I think I can do this.

Before this epiphany moment, you had been meandering professionally. You had been a waiter in Greenwich Village. You dabbled in acting, you were a postal worker temporarily.

Right. I was the worst actor, one of the worst actors ever. I was actually just trying to meet girls then. It was before I met my wife. I wasn’t actually a great postal worker either. I, I was not a good worker. I just had trouble focusing. Um, I remember my dad would always say, “What’s going to become of you?”.

Yet, despite the difficulty that you had in focusing, it seemed like your parents had this unconditional acceptance of you. You grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and from your book it seems like you, you grew up in a very loving, accepting household.

Yeah. I think the most accepting person was my father. His love was unconditional. Mom’s love was conditional on good grades and she liked it when you fit into that pattern of moving forward, you know, and yeah, we were over-loved as kids. Whatever craziness existed in our family, it was clear to my brother, Stanley, and myself that it really came from this just enormous love, this, this well of love.

Incidentally, you said before you are a failure in the eyes of the world. Were you a failure in your eyes?

I wasn’t, you know, because I had this great love. I was involved in this romance that I’m still involved in with my now wife, Diana Meehan. So I could see interpersonally how happy we were and how we were exploring and discovering things together and putting things in place. And what I was learning from her, she was much more daring, uh, physically than I was. You know, I remember one time she had come in and she said, “You know, uh, we, we have to go up the Alaskan highway because it’s going to be paved soon.” And I was thinking, well, shouldn’t we wait until they pave it and then we’ll go? I would say any good thing that’s happened, really, has come from Diana and my relationship with her and just the way she saw me as a person. I was just really lucky

You met Diana at a party in Brooklyn in 1969. She, at the time, was playing the guitar and she was a Pan Am stewardess, and in your book you said, “I was always and am always writing for an audience of one.” And it’s, it’s, um, it’s just lovely to see.

Thank you. I remember there’s something in the book–and this is really true–I went for a psychic reading, you know, and the woman said, um, “Never leave the woman you are with, you’re nothing without her.” And I said, could I take my coat off? You know what I mean? I get, I know that!

During the time when you were in the desert professionally, before you found your writing career, one of the jobs you had was opening a daycare center in California after your first daughter was born.

It was an interesting time for us to, Diana and I had been together for about five years roughly at this point, and we had spent 24 hours a day together, uh, every day. And we had hitchhiked around the world. And I was, again, fortunate with Diana, because Diana didn’t want furniture or a house. I mean, when we first met, I said to her, look, if you’re looking for a guy who’s gonna make a living, it’s not me. Okay. There’s nothing I want to own. I don’t, I don’t want furniture. I don’t want a house. I don’t want a car. So all of a sudden we’re pregnant. And, um, we knew some friends who had run a daycare center and it was, we could do the math. It was $100 a month, I think. They had 12 kids, $1,200 a month. Diana and I sat down and tried to figure out how to spend $1,200 a month. We could not spend all 1200, no matter how many times we went to the movies, you know. So we just thought, we want to be together and I want to be with the baby every day. And, um, so we came up with this idea of getting a big old house. And then we would run the daycare center in the bottom part. We were in Berkeley and it was called the Organic Daycare Center and–you have to know your audience–our motto was “We take your kid on a trip every day.” There was no structure. There was just, there seemed to be, you know, dogs running everywhere. Uh, you know, it was chaotic. But what people liked is there was a man and a woman and we had our own baby and it worked really well.

I’m Jessica Harris, you’re listening to From Scratch. My guest is the award winning writer and producer Gary Goldberg. In 1981 he created Ubu Productions, after his dog, and in 1982 he created the family sitcom Family Ties starring Michael J. Fox, which ran for seven seasons and launched Michael’s acting career. His other shows include Brooklyn Bridge and Spin City. How did not having an ambition early on to be a TV writer almost help your TV writing, if at all?

When I started to write, and I think this was my secret weapon coming up to LA also to do it, which was I wanted to do it a certain way or I didn’t want to do it, which comes from it never actually having been a dream of mine, you know, so it wasn’t like I have to do this, uh, at all costs. I thought, well, I’d like to do this if I can do it a certain way. And Diana was always the one who would read what I wrote. And her opinion of it mattered to me more than anyone else’s. And so the fact that–with Family Ties and shows that we did–that Diana was on board with that and really a big fan, was very important to me. Had she not liked that work, I don’t think I would have continued with it no matter what.

Yeah. Well, it seems that there are a handful of people who impact the course of your life and it seems that Nate Monaster was that for you professionally. And of course Diana was that personally.

And, and the third person in that, a holy triangle for me is Michael Fox who is, uh, you know, another angel who came down to, uh, to be in my life. You know,

Speaking of Michael Fox and switching to Family Ties, Michael Fox wasn’t the original, uh, actor who was going to be Alex P Keaton. It was Matthew Broderick and the deal fell through.

Yeah, Matthew was, um, one of the, maybe the first person I saw for the, for the part. And then I think Matthew, uh, his dad was not well. And I think he also had a clear picture that his New York theatrical life was going to take off. And, and he chose to not go forward and, and then, you know, because I’m from Brooklyn and we have these attachments, you know, I, I, it took me so long to get over that. And Mike Fox came in. I saw him way too soon after losing Matthew and I wasn’t available to his charms, you know?

Hmm. And actually, Judith Weiner, the casting director, begged you to look at him. Not just once, but twice. Could you tell us that story?

Yeah. Well, Judith was, who’s no longer on this plane, was an extraordinary person and an extraordinary talent as a casting director. We were very much like a married couple, you know, it was very, we could say anything to each [inaudible] Judith said “You have made a terrible mistake.” I said, Judith, I think I know the character. It’s not this boy. She said, “this is the boy”. And I said, can we just move on? And we saw a lot of other people and we weren’t getting close and Judith would always say to me, it’s Michael Fox. See Michael Fox again. And meanwhile we did another project which was very well reviewed. And so we’re down in Washington DC where the premier was for some reason the press tour. And I’d called Judith and I had been drinking heavily at the party, had many Margarita’s, and I said to Judith, I just want you to know you’re getting rave reviews for the casting and thank you very much. And uh, she said, you’re in a good mood. I said, I’m a great mood. She said, would you do me a favor? And I said, anything Senorita, you know, and, and she said, see Michael Fox again? Just see him again. I said, I’ll do it, but only because I love you because I know he’s not the guy. So Mike came in the second time and he was Mike and I was available to see it. And after he left the office, I turned to Judith and I said, why didn’t you tell me about him? This is the guy.

When you finally did hire Michael Fox before the show started, you had trouble sealing that deal because you couldn’t find him. Could you tell us about that?

Well, one of the great things, you know how moments occur, you know, Michael Fox said later to me, if I didn’t get family ties, I was giving up. I had been pushed around and overlooked and I just, I just couldn’t do it anymore. So he had no money. He was selling off furniture to stay alive. So he didn’t have a phone. Something I could certainly relate to. So, um, he was using this Pioneer Chicken outlet up on Highland Avenue as his office. So I called Bob Gersh, his agent. I said, Bob, we want to make the deal. And he said, I have to wait till he checks in. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, he’s going to go to the chicken place and call me.

Finally, you convinced yourself that Michael Fox was the right person, but Brandon Tartikoff, who was the president of NBC, green-lighted the show and said, yes, Gary, we’re going to do Family Ties. But on one condition: we use someone other than Michael Fox. Uh, and you fought for Michael.

Well, Brandon was a genius, you know, and so he was trying to help, you know, it certainly didn’t seem like it at the time. His suggestion was that we replaced Michael and I said, you, you can’t, that’s crazy. I mean, he’s the guy and I couldn’t do it. I mean, I would rather there not be a show. It wasn’t a hard fight with Brandon, you know? And they basically said fairly quickly, basically if, okay, if you feel that strongly about it, let’s just go with Michael.

In your book, you say that Michael Fox delivered Brandon–after the show was a success–a lunchbox with Michael’s face on the cover of it and inside was crow. And there’s this idiom to eat crow. What does eat crow mean?

Well, it means to admit your mistake and eat [inaudible] I’ll eat my hat. Well this is it. Eat your hat. Because Brandon had said about why, so why don’t you want Michael Fox? And they said, well, is this the kind of face that’ll be on a lunchbox? And I said, well, I don’t know a thermos maybe. I mean, how can you cast like that? But what was so great about Brandon is Brandon had that lunchbox on his desk. So it was the first thing you saw when you walked into his office.

Also, there was a little bit of a pivot in the show. You initially thought the show would be centered around parents, uh, you know, echoing your life with Diana. But it ended up being more about the kids.

That really is just testament to the power of Michael Fox. You know, it’s like you draft Michael Jordan, you change your offense. I don’t care what your offense was the week before or if you have Joe Montana, you all of a sudden go into the West coast offense cause that works for Joe Montana. Well we had Michael Jordan and Joe Montana. We had Michael Fox. He was, it was something that could not be denied.

NBC aired all seven seasons of family ties, but this is after CBS turned you down. What’s the story there?

It was, you know, that almost anything that’s worked has been turned down somewhere. E.T. was turned down at Columbia. You know, Star Wars was turned down at Fox. I mean they hated it so much that they let George Lucas keep the copyright to it. You know, the first, uh, screening of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, they wanted to take out the song Moon River. Do you know what I mean? There is just a history of this. So no one gets kind of nervous when your show is turned down. It’s just, do I have another, uh, option? I was fortunate in that my deal with CBS was not exclusive, which is another example of what we were after when we came in. CBS had offered me two ways to structure the deal I had with them. Uh, one was, um, guaranteed shows on the air, but I’d be exclusive or guaranteed pilots, but I wouldn’t be exclusive. And you know, I had a wonderful attorney still, my attorney, uh, Skip Brittenham, and Skip said, “You won’t be happy being exclusive. It’s just not for you.” And I remember being arrogant and you think, well, my show is going to get on the air anyway. Why do I need this exclusivity? And the first thing is Family Ties and it doesn’t get on. They won’t even film the pilot. But luckily then I could move it. So I called Brandon, I said, I’m going to send you the script. And Brandon said, “I love it. I’ll do it. Let’s make the pilot.” And, but that, that’s almost common.

By the way, as I’m sitting here with you, and I’m listening to your stories of, you’re saying no, no. You know, to the establishment, even while you were basically just starting on, you were very athletic growing up. To what extent did, did your, your athleticism help with the confidence that you had to even be carried into your professional life?

I think it was key for me. Uh, and you know, I remember my daughters one time saying to me, dad, not every problem in life can be solved with a story about sports. And I said, well, actually it can and it, and it, it is, that’s what life is. You know, there were two things. One is to physicalize the work. So I always felt that we outworked other shows. So for every page that got on the screen, on Family Ties, we wrote 30 you know, and we would just keep practicing, keep rehearsing, keep rewriting, trying to make it better. The other thing about growing up from Brooklyn was Brooklyn was confrontational. There were limited resources and a lot of people who wanted them. And at some point there was going to be a fight of some kind. So my way of dealing was always, well let’s fight now, you know, I don’t need to wait four hours or a week. I could tell we’re not getting anywhere here. So this is now the fight.

You are so aggressive. Your mom would come to your basketball games for instance, and say, I don’t know who that boy is.

Yes. And that aggression actually was also how we did the show. And we, as I said, we never stopped. And Mike Fox especially was a guy, you could give him a new script as he was going out or the morning of, and he would look at it and just boom, boom, boom. Okay. Got it. And if he couldn’t do that, I, I knew I hadn’t written it right. But the sports part of it was we did the show live in front of an audience. So when we would get a big laugh, very successful scene at the end of the scene, I would run up and hug the person who had done the setup. You know, not the person who made the basket. So I wanted everyone to notice you don’t get that laugh without that setup. You don’t get that without the assist. You don’t get that basket.

Now you filmed in front of a live studio audience and so it was really every week creating a 23 minute play. So it was more almost like theater rather than taped television. How did that impact your writing or the success of the show?

Well, it was great for me because you use that word, I would say Friday night was our game and so we, everything we had to do was to get from Monday to Friday. So it’s like if you’re great in practice, that doesn’t mean anything. I was not a great practice player, so I had sympathy for guys like Michael who didn’t want to over rehearse. Right? If you’re a great anytime before Friday night, it’s a waste. And so my whole deal of coaching in effect these actors was trying to figure out their rhythms. Michael Gross gets to Friday night in a different way than Michael Fox.

How different would the show be if it hadn’t been in front of a live studio audience? I mean it’s always hard to talk about the counterfactual, but what would it have been the success that it was?

No, no way. Because Michael Fox is a different human being in front of an audience and what we would go Monday through Friday and whenever he would get it he’d go, “Gary, I got it.” Basically, “just don’t make me show it to you. I got to know what I’m going to do here. Don’t make me do it. Cause I’m going to, I know I’m going to dunk but I don’t know if it’s going to be over the hand backwards or…” Cause this is how we actually talked.

I’m Jessica Harris. You’re listening to From Scratch. My guest is the award winning writer and producer Gary Goldberg. In 1981 he created Ubu Productions after his dog Ubu and in 1982 he created the family sitcom Family Ties starring Michael J. Fox, which ran for seven seasons and launched Michael’s acting career. Other shows include Brooklyn Bridge and Spin City also starring Michael Fox. By the way. You mentioned that E.T. Was turned down by one of the production companies, you are friends with Steven Spielberg, and when he was telling you about his idea for E.T., you thought it was the worst idea ever.

As always, I had my finger on the pulse, you know, uh, it’s a little more complicated than that, but it’s not far. Well, the E.T. thing, he’s telling me this idea, you know, and Diana was there too, and he had to go take a phone call and I said, Dan, okay, this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. And I said, here’s the thing, he’s so big now no one will tell him the truth. It’s up to us, his real friends that we have to tell him the truth. And he came back and I said, you can’t do this. Okay, you just can’t do this. And Shawna was there and Shawna kept saying, “I like it, dad. I think it’s really good.”

Your daughter?

Yeah, and she was 11, I think, and Steven said, “I like it, I’m doing it.”

Did Steven give you a lunchbox with crow inside?

No, I think he’s such a gentleman that I think he’s forgotten.

You had a loyal team of writers at Family Ties to help create the success of the show. Can you talk about that a little bit?

I had unbelievable writers, you know, that were in our life for a long time, especially at the beginning with Michael Weithorn who went on to do a show King of Queens. But again, I want to backtrack to my sports and my instinct was I met Michael Weithorn. Two other producers had met him beforehand and not hired him. To me that’s like saying you had a chance to draft, you know, uh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and you didn’t, it was like I met Michael Weithorn eight minutes into the meeting. I said, Oh no, oh no, don’t leave. Don’t go anywhere. Let’s hammer out the deal here.

Did you hire writers from other disciplines as well?

One of the things that happens sometimes in show business happens in a lot of disciplines is people are talking only to their people in their own universe and you have a very skewed idea of what’s actually going on in the world. So one of the things I wanted every year was to bring in somebody from another discipline who’d never been in show business. And I got really lucky. So I’d meet people at parties or whatever and you know, and say, come on you, you don’t have to be an advertising. You could come and be in our, in our world, you know. So I had great success with that. Um, uh, Weithorn was a school teacher, Marc Lawrence, who went on to this brilliant career directing and writing movies. He was a college dropout. He had, uh, dropped out of NYU law school and Mark had sent in a spec script and I read this script. It’s as good as anything we’re doing. It just is. I call him up, he’s in Long Island and I go, hey, Mark, um, you know, you sent us a script. It’s really good. I want you to come out and be on the show and be on the staff. He goes, ah, “I don’t like to fly.” You know, I go, well, you know, well, that’s right. You’re right. This makes sense. You stay where you are. We’ll move Family Ties to Syosset. I said, get on a plane and get out here, you know, and he finally, he did. I think his aunt was representing him and we would get him and he’s perfect. He’s in tee shirts, shorts, red sneakers. And he, he said, uh, “my mother said I should wear a suit but I don’t have one.” I said, come, come, you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s just say your financial status changed with Family Ties and Ubu Productions–which was your production company–became this, this empire, and you were able to start producing other shows as well. Um, why was it, uh, so financially successful to you personally? Was there some deal with NBC that fell through to catalyze that?

It was interesting that I was at a moment in time when, uh, this was available. It’s almost like when the American football league started up against the NFL. And so some mediocre players or average players were able to command unbelievable salaries just because there was all of a sudden a bidding war. So studios at this point and right around 1980-81 had realized that they had missed the boat on the situation comedies which were money makers. I was blessed to be represented by Skip Brittenham who saw the future. And Skip was able to basically alter the flow of money cause he could can reconceptualize how it was distributed. I co-own the show with Paramount Studios. The deal I had with Paramount was they put up all the money I own 33 and a third percent of the back end of Family Ties or any show I created there. And that was gross dollars. They couldn’t do any bookkeeping tricks to keep me from getting it.

Whereas before you might have gotten 12 and a half percent net profit.

Yes, I could give you at this moment 100% of the net of Family Ties, which has probably grossed over $1 billion and you wouldn’t see a penny. You couldn’t buy a latte with that net. So there is no net. And so I had real economic investment in these shows. And, um, when family ties hit, it came in a staggering amount of money, like at once.

How did this financial success impact you as a couple that wasn’t used to that?

Interestingly for us, that was the only thing that ever threatened us. And as a couple, we never had any romantic construct for being wealthy people. It was actually the opposite. You know, we, we had no interest in that or being that, you know, so it was upsetting in a way and, and threatening and really threatened, you know, who we were to each other. And, uh, the, the thing that always worked for us was it was me and Diana against the world. And now money really changes everything if, if, if people don’t think money changes everything, it hasn’t been enough money cause it changes everything. It changes the way people look at you, changes the way you look at the world. Um, the best of you begin to feel you’re entitled to certain things that other people aren’t entitled to. There’s no question you have to work your way through this. Um, and everyone has an idiot moment.

What was an example of that for you?

You know, where you walk into a Mercedes dealer and barefoot and go, I want that car. And then, but luckily in Hollywood, you know, they had seen enough of that that they more or less know. It’s just another idiot kid who’s somehow gotten some money. I bought that Mercedes that it was the first time, I think it was like the first hundred thousand dollar car. Everyone knew what it costs and it had the automatic top and all that. People you drive by people would give you the finger, you know, and rightly so. And the funny thing is I hated the car. I just hated it from the minute I got it. And it got stolen and I was in a restaurant and the guy came in, he said, “did you have the blue Mercedes?” I said, no, no. I had the pasta primavera. I have a blue Mercedes. He goes, “well, you don’t anymore. It was just been stolen.” He said, “what do you want us to do?” I said, I just want you to forget about it. I couldn’t be happier. I don’t have this car anymore. And when they found it, I said, I don’t want it back. I just, I don’t want it. It just wasn’t, I was not comfortable in that car. Um, but you’ve worked your way through it. It’s, uh, I think I would have a trouble going back to not having money now. Yeah. But I could, especially as you get older, it just gives a certain freedom from idiots. You know, I would say the thing that most works in my life, I don’t spend two minutes a day doing something I don’t want to do or being with someone I don’t want to be with. I’m never in a position of having to falsely flatter anyone. And I’m almost never in a position where I’m trying to get something from someone.

So, you’re financially successful now. Uh, but there was one night when you are in your Central Park West apartment in New York city, and you, you looked out the window, you actually put your head out the window and you screamed, “I need $14 million!” And this was in the context of an entrepreneurial pursuit of Diana’s. Can you, can you explain that?

My wife is really changed the lives of, uh, of girls in Los Angeles by creating the school, the Archer School for Girls, which was the first school founded on all the new research that had come out. It showed that girls actually learn differently. And the genius of Diana’s idea was that it not be a school for rich kids that had, have a 35% scholarship base. These girls are now at Princeton, at Yale, at Harvard, at Brown. Um, but we needed a lot of money because we needed to buy this building and we had bought it. And the neighbors, um, who were an, uh, a really unpleasant group decided to fight the school going in there. So we had mortgaged everything that we owned at this point and, and so everything was now, um, against that. And when it was time to now pay the money and I delve in the psychic realm and, uh, have had some really interesting conversations. One of these women had said to me, the universe really is always available to help you. You have to be very specific and you have to ask for it and say thank you. And I used to stand out there every night before I went to sleep.

Stand out where?

I mean, look out that window overlooking Central Park.

With the window open.

With the window open and scream out into Central Park, “I need $14 million. It’s not for me. It’s for the Archer school. It’s going to change girls’ lives. I didn’t need 14 million. Thank you.” Now I was worried because Spielberg lived two floors above and Bono was above in the penthouse and God seems to really like them a lot too. And I was afraid that he would hear the scream but give them the money. So how to tell 13D it’s apartment 13D where the money has to come.

Because the money came from Jeffrey Katzenberg who was the founder of Dreamworks.

Yeah, Jeffrey was a, and Steven and David, they were willing to, to help. And so there was this little period there where theoretically this money was coming in, but it wasn’t 100% and they said, we will, we’ll do it. We’ll give you the 14 million now and give it to Diana.

Ubu Productions was named after your black lab Ubu, who really traveled the world with you and Diana and you have this iconic photo that was after every episode, I remember as a child, of Family Ties. Where was that photo taken and what does it mean to you?

Well, Diana actually took that photo and it was taken in 1969 as we were hitchhiking our way back to America because Diana was pregnant and we were, we had to get back to America. It was taken in front of the Louvre in Paris and we actually had run out of money that day. I don’t mean we had like a little bit of money. We had no money. It was gone. And Diana was pregnant and Ubu had his Frisbee and, and I, I remember thinking how happy I was that day, how lucky I was, and I could look at my life and see the blessings of it. See Diana in my life, see the baby coming. See Ubu, who was a great friend to me and would always look at me like, you can do this. You know, you can do anything. The two, the two beings always thought I could do anything or Diana and Ubu. And I just thought, I don’t want very much distance between who I am today and who I may one day ever be. And so when the company was formed, we started I thought, I want to remember that. And so that logo at the end always kept me from taking it all too seriously. The bark at the end is not Ubu, it’s the sound engineer. Yeah, he threw it in. It’s a human barking. He threw it in at the end. We had, you know, you do several of those “Sit, Ubu, sit, which is my voice and “Good dog”. And then in one of them he went [makes dog barking sound] and I said, what do you think? I said, I like it. Keep it in, you know?

Well, thank you very much for joining us.

It’s really been my pleasure, Jessica. Thanks for having me.

My guest has been the writer and producer, Gary Goldberg. I’m Jessica Harris. This is From Scratch.

End of transcript