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The Interview that Never Happened XXXX

MichaelRead interviews Walt Disney

MR: ”Where do we start. Walt? The movies or the company and the recent defection of your brother from the board?”

Walt Disney:” Michael, They’re intertwined. I have to ask: is the objective to make money or to make money the way we have made money?”

MR: “You’ll have to explain that, Walt. The company has made money and it has done this by making movies that people want to watch. Look at the success of Pirates of the Caribbean.

WD: “No doubt it’s a good movie yet it’s PG13. How many children will see it with their parents? Possibly on DVD but not in the theaters and even on DVD it’s a scary movie that some parents won’t want their children to watch.”

MR: “But, Walt, you’ve had scary moments in the movies you made.”

WD: “Manageable moments, Michael. All manageable and in context. A child may be scared yet he or she can interact with a parent. All good fairy tales had a wickedness that was expressed yet was thwarted. Fairy tales were to be read by an adult to a child and even at the scariest the child could rely on the adult being there.”

MR: “So you’re upset that Disney is making money but not in a way you would have done?”

WD: “I know you saw Toy Story and its sequel. I know you enjoyed them but you were not our market. Yes, sure, that you approved of them sufficiently to send copies to your grandchildren yet will you do the same with Pirates of the Caribbean? Pixar made what I call my movies: children’s movies that a family can enjoy.”

MR: “So, as I hear you, you think that Disney Studios has lost sight of what you created in a rush to gain income?”

WD: “You answer me this, Michael. What would you want to watch again?”

MR: “Walt, I don’t think that’s the question. Pirates of the Caribbean is going to make a lot of money for Disney Studios. So it’s a different demographic than, say, Sleeping Beauty yet it cannot be denied that with Pirates the income can be used for projects such as Sleeping Beauty or Beauty and the Beast.”

WD: “Yet that income can be used to make pictures that are as Pirates and then where? What then does Disney stand for? Does the studio, on the success of Pirates make Pirates of the Caribbean II with more that will make it again PG13? Or why not take the leap into making Disney Studios into a filmmaker that produces slasher movies.”

MR: “Walt, I think you’re exaggerating.”

WD: “Would you, ten years ago, predicted that Disney Studios would produce at PG13 movie. Michael, in that area are movies no parent would take his child to. Do you realize why Toy Story was such a success? To be sure, it was a fine movie but more than this it was a relief to all other movies being shown. It was a movie that was loved by child and parent alike – and enjoyed simultaneously by both. It was a movie that parents could take their children without qualms. That’s my argument, Michael, that Disney Studios has taken the route of making money at the loss of what made people look to Disney Studios.”

MR: “Yet the stockholders are happy.”

WD: “But at what cost? Do you know, as fact, that the next Disney movie will be suitable for your family? Or will you have to rely on the revues or have to prescreen it? This is not what I ever wanted.”

MR: “Your brother, Roy, quit the board. Was this his reason?”

WD: “I know it. There’s so much invested in theme parks and almost all that go to them are families. So how does it help to alienate families with movies that are PG13? Moreover, if the direction of the company is in increasing gross receipts, does it matter what the theme is of the movie? I say it does. Obviously, the present management says it isn’t.”

MR: “We are running short of space, Walt. As is the custom at The Interview That Never Was, you have the last word.”

WD: “I started making cartoons with Steamboat Willie and I progressed into full-color animation. All along I made films that featured story and always a story that a family could share. Maybe that’s an old-fashioned view yet I think it a long-lasting view. People will be viewing the movies I made into many generations. They are classics because all tales that can be shared by the whole family are classics.

“Families have a dearth of such movies. Television offers much in Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues and children enjoy them tremendously. But, to take a theme and make a movie of it is different. Don’t take me wrong, Johnny Depp in Pirates is excellent. In fact, it’s a well done picture. Yet, is it Disney? Or is it another competing in the PG13 market?

“Michael, Disney carved a niche and I see that niche broadening and it disturbs. All right, you cannot argue with success yet if that success is at the cost of your core then what is the success? I can see a Toy Story III whatever it is named and it continues in a pattern it created and that’s of a good story well told and acceptable from grandparent to grandchild. What if Pixar then made a movie Toy Story: Lolita Meets Buzz Lightyear? It would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

“My concern, Michael, is that we are destroying that which made us successful by seeking success in areas we should not have trod.”

MR: “Thank you, Walt. Do you think that Eisner should step down?”

WD:”That’s the Board’s decision, not mine. All I say is that Disney Studios is capitalizing on a genre that created a family acceptance and they will dilute this hub through not hewing to it.”

MR: “Thank you again, Walt. Will you sign my copy of The Little Mermaid?

WD: My pleasure. Just tell me, Michael. How many of these have you bought and sent to your grandchildren?”

MR: “Five.”

WD: “Point made.”

MichaelR

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MichaelRead “did” this interview around the time Pirates of the Caribbean was released. He notes in his “interview” that Pixar made Disney movies, “children’s movies that a family can enjoy”. That was a heck of an observation in light of recent events:

Pixar stake makes Jobs key player at Disney

In an agreement announced last week, Disney has agreed to buy Pixar in a stock-only deal worth $7.4 billion. When the takeover goes though, Jobs will become Disney’s biggest individual shareholder.

At today’s prices, his stake of around 6.5 per cent will be worth about $3.5 billion.

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The Folksmen interviewed by MichaelRead.

MichaelRead: “The movie, A Mighty Wind, the story of your group, its history and it’s appearance at a tribute concert to your deceased manager, starts April 16. So, a little history first. Were you always known as The Folksmen?”

Mark Shubb (double bass): ”Well, we did toy with the idea of being The Menfolk but that implied a woman folk and we weren’t have much success with women at the time even though we thought starting a group would attract chicks.”

Alan Barrows (banjo): “Except Darlene.”

Jerry Palter (guitar and lead vocals): “I still don’t think that Mark, Alan, Jerry and Darlene had a ring to it like Peter, Paul and Mary. Besides, with all of the equipment we could only fit three in the car. We’d have to have the bass on the roof.

Shubb:  “Or Darlene.”

MR: ”Some of your earlier reviews, I have one here from your album, Wanderin’ were not that enthusiastic. This one: ‘The Folksmen sing songs of protest for those who don’t want their protests to upset anybody.’ Did this affect you?"

Barrows: “We never saw them. After each show our manager would burn the newspapers before we got them. After every show we’d have burning newspapers – it got to be a ritual. Get the newspapers, burn them, and go on with another show.”

Palter: “We never read about anything. We were the last to know about the spot of trouble we had once.”

Shubb:  “Michael, let me explain. Jerry had laryngitis and couldn’t sing so we lip synced a whole evening and we got caught at it.”

Barrows : “We didn’t have any tape recordings of ourselves so we used tracks from Minendo. The slow ones. We covered up the drum track by stamping our feet.”

Palter: “Strange, that. The next night people asked why were weren’t stamping our feet. I told everyone that it was copyright to Stompin’ Tom Connors, the Canadian singer, and we’d been told to stop it.”

MR: “The Mighty Wind movies has other groups in it other than yourselves.”

Shubb :  “Yes, it also has Mitch and Mickey, and The New Main Street Singers. I think that Mitch and Mickey aren’t as organic as us. We’re more closer to our roots than they. As for The New Main Street Singers, they’re a cult. Huge bunch of people in electric blue sweaters looking and sounding like clones. Which I think they are.”

MR: “As for roots how do you think you have progressed musically since your beginning in the 1960s?”

Barrows : “We started knowing three chords. I knew one, Mark didn’t need chords for the double bass, and Jerry knew two.”

Palter: “In the key of C. It wasn’t for a while until we were able to play in the key of G. The fingering books helped but we’d both share one copy so Alan had to read upside down and so it took him longer to get the fingering right for the banjo.”

MR: “You have an uncanny resemblance to Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean of This is Spinal Tap. Anyone else know that likeness?”

Shubb:  “Terrible band that Spinal Tap Just too loud. We were playing the basement of a club and Spinal Tap was upstairs in the lounge. Too loud. Plus because we looked somewhat like them we got stuck with their bar tab. ”

MR: I am looking forward to your movie A Mighty Wind starting April 16/03. As is the custom on The Interview that Never Happened you get the last word.”

Barrows: “Watch the movie and buy a lot of popcorn and sodas since we get a cut on the refreshments sold.”

Palter: “Yes, watch the movie, buy the popcorn and sodas and look out for the VHS and DVD versions coming out later. In fact, buy both the VHS and the DVD since a backup is always useful. Why not buy two of each and have your Christmas stocking problems solved in one go?”

Shubb:  “I would add that there’s also a music disc coming from Sony. If you don’t get one then you’re out of the loop and you won’t get the chicks, that’s all.”

Barrows: “Our music is chick magnet stuff. Our music, subdued lighting and a freely used 26-er gets them every time. Or so I’ve been told.”

MR: “Thank you, gentlemen. I still think you look like the guys from Spinal Tap.

Palter: “We’re more handsome. However, if you’ve mind to, buy their albums and also those of The Folksmen. But do see our movie. It will be a spirit-lifting time for each and every viewer.”

Shubb:  “And don’t forget to buy lots of popcorn. We need the money.”

MichaelR

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More blogs on The Folksmen.

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This article was written by Michael before the US-Iraqi war began.  It
is just as pertinent today as it was then. You know who Dwight David Eisenhower
was.  I’ll just let the interview take over.

MichaelRead: “Sir, I think there is only
one subject to discuss: war or not? I’d also like your view on the
ramifications of either, please.”

President Eisenhower: “You fight a war to end what is yet also to prevent what maybe. Which would prove the most costly?
If it is removing an unpopular head of state that has little of no power outside his fiefdom then it is costly to war. Yet if this same head of state
has ambitions beyond his own land and it is greatly believed these ambitions would unsettle the balances achieved – no matter how fragile – then war has a
reason to its cost since the cost of his ambitions exceed that of the cost of war. So your question ‘war or not’ has to take this into consideration.”

MR: “Agreed, sir, yet how do we know for
sure that Saddam Hussein has designs on extra-territorial control? Yes, he did
invade Kuwait claiming it was Iraqi territory yet he was beaten back. Should not that be also
taken into consideration?”

PE: “Beaten back, sure. And by a superior
force. What is he builds by whatever means a superior force? I have a question:
how do his neighboring countries interact with him?”

MR: “I see your point, sir. They are
wary. Yet, my point: war because of what he might do?”

PE: “Let me emphasize
my point. Wars are fought to prevent what may happen. World
War II began because the threat was the enslavement of Europe. Hitler wanted Europe. Simple fact. Winston
Churchill fought against this. And let me underline that Hitler had said in his
writing and his speeches this was his aim. What has Saddam said are his
intentions? Don’t forget at one time Hitler’s aims were thought of as coming
from a madman.”

MR: “Are you saying, sir, that because of
what Saddam Hussein may do based on what he has done and has said his
intentions justifies a war? That there will be a war?”

PE: No, I don’t say there has to be a war
yet I do say that a war now will be a preferable alternative to finding out
later that by waiting the consequences are worse than a war now.”

MR: “Sir, if we do have a war then
Hussein will never achieve and we won’t know what he may have done. It seems so
speculative.”

PE: “And how many more unfortunates would
have gone up Hitler’s chimneys if the war had not been won? Your use of the
word ‘speculative’ is a poor choice because you’re implying there’s an
alternative embedded in Hussein’s mind beyond what he has expressed. Do you
think that he will be visited by the Ghosts of Christmas and then undergo a
conversion into a western-based democracy?”

MR:. “No, sir, I doubt that highly. Yet
what if there is a coup and Hussein is overthrown by his own people? Surely
that’s better than a war?”

PE: “Then, Mr. Read, that
would be a war. Yet think on this: what if after all the
repression Hussein has placed on his people and the misery he has caused has
not yet caused revolt. What if the Iraqi people don’t have the means to revolt
even though they may wish to? Which brings me to my next question of you: would
the forces going into Iraq be welcomed as liberators or what? I have to ask that question because it was
also asked of Afghanistan and you know the answer there.”

MR: “I wish we could continue this.
However, Mr. President, I do not have the space. As is the custom on
The Interview That Never Was, you have the last word.

PE: “Would that the other alternative to
war is peace when more often than not it is the continuance of a tyranny. War
is not to be entered lightly yet it has often been the only route preventing
something worse than war: enslavement of a people. It is said the winners of
war write the history yet is there one thinking person who doesn’t believe that
the war to rid the world of Hitler was a wasted war? If Hitler had won do you
think he would have ceased his ethnic cleansing?

“What you have to answer is the question of Hussein becoming
more powerful across time and what would he then do when he had the power? If
you think he would take this power and use it against his foes then a war now
becomes imperative.

“Does this make me a warhawk, Mr. Read? I have seen war. It
is despicable. Good men die. War is so terrible that every means should be done
to prevent it. Every means. Yet, if the choice is war against a probability
that evil will become stronger then war is a necessity.

“Realize, Mr. Read, the US is not territorially inclined.
Yes, it wishes its political power to expand but even this political power is
not based on conquering and then putting in US administration. In Afghanistan the Afghanis are in control. Yes, this regime is more amicable to the west than
the regime it replaced, yet it is not a puppet government. Why would then Iraq be different? We won World War II yet our enemies then are in control of their
own countries now. Why would Iraq be different?

“War? Inevitable? Hussein invites war. Why? Let me say this
one last time: if Hussein gathers power he will use it to his already stated
aims. You may think he’s ranting and he is a madman but too often in the past
we have found that madmen as he meant every word he said.”

MR: “Thank you, Mr. President. May we
continue this discussion in May?”

MichaelR

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Secretary of State (1933-44) Cordell Hull as interviewed by MichaelRead

MR: “ Just looking at your biography at http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1945/hull-bio.html begs asking this question: a new world order or a new order of the world? Also isn’t the ‘good neighbor’ thrust you emphasized now being affected as alliances shift?”

Secretary of State Cordell Hull: “I think your second question answers the first. One essential reason for having a United Nations is to strengthen ties yet it also has in its function a means of weakening ties. As the saying goes, ‘If trade does not cross boarders then armies will,’ and my underlying reason for the UN was to make it a trade-based group of alliance makers. If trade and the understandings of trade were made a reason for alliances then possibly war could be averted. My ideal for the UN was that it would be an organization having economic and military strength dissuading the need for war. If you look at most warlike nations – those intent on conquest of another – you will often find a nation poorly organized for trade.”

MR: “You warned of war yet no one listened.”

Hull: “No, they listened but it wasn’t heeded. That was what made it necessary – to me – to have a United Nations having a strong power to discuss all matters and be in many fields. One of my basic views was that impoverishment was a cause of a lack of interaction that often lead to conflict. I never believed that trade sanctions solved a problem when it was a lack of trade that caused the problems. A lack of material goods or the lack of trade has not felled any nation yet there’s a strong argument for an increase of goods and trade have.”

MR: “The US and coalition forces are at war with Iraq. I don’t have to get into the reasons why but I have to ask the effect: is the United Nation still viable.”

Hull: “I sincerely believe the UN is even more needed. But, Mr. Read, let us discuss the reasons why. Two opposing thoughts clashed. Set aside for a moment that Iraq played both thoughts against each other – I would expect then to do nothing less – but look at trade. Those opposing the war or possibility of it were heavily involved in trade with Iraq while the other thought – held by the US and principally Britain – was that Iraq’s meddling in terrorism made for a threat to be removed. There was no consensus between the thoughts. Nor could there be.”

MR: “So your saying, sir, that this is a trade war?”

Hull: “No. What I am saying is that one side has a financial stake in preventing war as to continue trade while the other has a stake in making war to remove a probable threat. That’s why those defending their trade with Iraq called those defending against a probable threat called the latter ‘warmongers’ and those wanting to remove the threat calling those wanting a delay of action ‘intransigent’.”

MR: “Why is the UN more necessary than ever? Because it will sort out trade after the war?”

Hull: “That it will do. Your first question: ‘Is this a new world order or a new order of the world. The answer is both. The US is a massive military machine yet simultaneously it is a massive trade machine. What you are seeing is the realization made by many countries that the success of the US is from its ability to manufacture and trade. Japan and Germany made that realization after the war; now China has made that realization. After the Gulf war Iraq must be able to trade and that function must be upheld by the UN.”

MR: “Yet some are saying that France is trying to cash in on the expected victory and that they are asking for gains without putting an effort into that victory.”

Hull: “France and the others are not going to stand back and see trade shift away from them. Consider their view that the US will be the main beneficiary of the war not from the aspect of reducing terrorism but as an opportunity to control the assets of Iraq. Their view is they are going to be cut out and they will not stand for that.”

MR: “Is there a middle ground?”

Hull: “Of course. Yet it means the US has to understand France’s position of a loss of trade and France has to realize that the US’s action to remove a threat has authority. That will take some doing but I think it can be done. The hardest part will be the face-saving for both. ”

MR: “I wish we had more time, Mr. Secretary. As is the custom on The Interview that Never Was, you have the last word.”

Hull: “The events recently have been used as saying the UN is irrelevant. I disagree. For all that has happened – the sifting alliances and the positions taken – the UN is able to resolve what has happened. That’s its function. That the US took a defensive action seemingly contrary to UN wishes and using this to say the UN is derelict misses the point entirely. So is also the point that a ‘unilateral’ action by the US and its allies gives right for others to act this way.

“What I see is the US view that supporting terrorism is contrary to world peace is the US’s concern. That the US believes this concern supercedes trade alliances is because the US sees threat more important than trade. However, once this is over trade will become a vital aspect of the rehabilitation of Iraq.

“This, Mr. Read, is the true threat that the US represents. Once there is a regime change in Iraq all UN sanctions will be lifted and Iraq can do nothing else but prosper. Think of what message that sends. This war will upset the cozy prior arrangements and institute new ones. That policy has worked extremely well in the past and it will work again as it did with Japan and Germany.

“It would be a grave error if the UN were to crumble. We can look at the verbiage and say that it is irrelevant and in certain ways the UN must accommodate more than it has and its reliance on veto power. Yet, that said, the power of the UN to solve problem – and I believe it can – is as essential as it was before.

“However, it will be necessary for a position shift on France, Germany and Russia, and the US and Britain. How this is done I leave to the politicians yet the outcome must be an increase in Iraq’s trading and a lessening of it as a threat.

“I believe both can be accomplished.”

MR: “Thank you, sir.”

MichaelR

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William Gaines, founder and publisher of Mad Magazine interviewed by MichaelRead.

MichaelRead:. “Mad is now in the running for being one of the longest lived humor magazines. Did you think it would have as long a run as it has?”

William Gaines: “In perfect hindsight I have to say yes since Mad hit a chord transcending generations meeting the need for extinguishing existential angst. In a word, no. I knew we were selling well and we increased the print runs with each issue but I thought we could milk it for maybe a year or two. Paper costs made us raise the price per issue and I thought that would cut sales but it didn’t. Also I thought that we’d not sell once the generation we aimed at grew into adulthood but fortunately our readership added years but not maturity and we still sold well.”

MR: “And Mad is still produced by ‘The Usual Gang of Idiots.” Why that listing of your writers and artists?”

WG: “Well, I thought we’d have a whole slew of people coming and going so it made sense at the time to just have that. What I didn’t realize was that people like Dick DeBartolo, Don Martin and others found a place. A few years before I died I wanted to change the masthead to recognize their contribution but I was voted down. So it’s still the usual gang of idiots which, incidentally, they are.”

MR: “When did you feel that Mad had made it?”

WG: “When we were denounced as an insidious force corrupting

America

’s youth. We had replaced comic books as the insidious force and were up there with the insidious forces of pinball games and the growing insidiousness of computer games. A ripe moment I savored from then on. We were classified as anti-intellectual porn and with no redeeming value. I said we did have value: the cover price. No more, no less.”

MR: “Is time passing Mad by? What I mean, is Mad’s humor becoming outdated and not fitting with today’s readers?”

WG: “Aw, come on, Michael. Jar Jar Binks? As long as there’s any movie or a TV show that’s headlined it can be skewered. Satire itself may change in what is skewered but everything is skewerable. Parody never ages because parody is looked for. It’s like an antidote to a seriousness that takes itself too serious. It’s not only that the emperor doesn’t have clothes but that his hairy ass is sticking out at the same time. Mad points out the nakedness and the hairy ass. You just can’t run out of satire and parody and that’s one reason Mad is still selling. That plus what Mad satires or parodies it does this well. You know what, Michael, Mad does this puncturing so well that we’ve survived all these years. Part of the reason is that those trying to copy Mad failed because they didn’t realize the stiletto of Mad beats the axe approach. How can you be more than Mad? More blatant? More obvious? Hell, we had blatancy and obviousness nailed down years ago.”

MR: “What of Alfred E. Newman and ‘What me worry’?

WG: “You know what I feel? Mad is considered by some as a teen magazine with a slant that’s centered in those of that age. I disagree. Sure, kids read Mad yet it’s my feeling that any adult that reads Mad hasn’t bought the blandness of being older. Sure, when you grow you have other worries yet if you’re a Mad reader you’re not holding on to a lost youth but are still able to see that you’re being sold a con that being an adult is without an alternate of being childlike. Plus, Jar Jar Binks is embarrassing. Man, did we ever skewer that character and it was richly deserved.”

MR: “Bill, we have to close. As is the tradition on The Interview that Never Was, you have the last word.”

WG: “Will Rogers said he didn’t have to write humor and that all he did was to report what Congress did. Stephen Leacock wrote Sunshine Sketches of a

Small

Town

as bland reporter of a small town engaged in its daily doings. Mad is nothing like Rogers or Leacock and I wonder why I brought them up other than funny is funny. Mad has an approach that Mad created.

England

’s Punch magazine lasted for more than a century but it is no more because it lost its sense of itself. Punch tried to outdo Punch and became a satire of itself. Mad will continue if it follows the path it created: lampooning that which deserves pricking. Pick up the current issue (please, we need the money) and look at the world through eyes that see the need for lampooning. Mad Magazine is a cultural need balancing the existential angst of the world.”

MR: “You mean that?”

WG: “Not really but it sounded good. Hey, what do you want for free on TMF?”

MR: “Thank you, Mr. Gaines.”

WG: “You’re welcome. Oh, I see you’re again aiming at The Feste Award and are lampooning it by introducing a fake The Feste Award Third Class with Palm Cluster. Good. Nothing that’s worth is worth lampooning. Now if you had Jar Jar Binks in the running you’d have it made. Hell, a three-page spread titled The Feste Awards with Dick DeBartolo as writer, I can see it now. Since you’re getting up to get a beer, get me one too and bring back a pencil and some paper. We have work to do.”

MichaelR

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Soldat 7789556-877 (b: 1914; d: 1944) Interviewed by MichaelRead

MichaelRead: You were a member of the Einsatzgruppen who, after the army swept through, orchestrated the deaths of the survivors – at Babi Yar in Kiev in which you participated – your unit killed 33, 771 people in two days. All with a bullet to the head.

S: Was it that many? I never knew the total. All I remember is that our pistols were so hot that the grips were too warm to hold. We were worried that the guns were so hot the bullets would explode in the magazine. I asked over and over for a cool pistol and I got pistols from the officers so mine could cool. We had some men passing guns to those on the firing line so that there was no halt in the shooting and the guns were so hot as to burn the hand.

MR: Is that what you remember of Babi Yar, that your pistols were hot from the number of bullets fired? You have no thoughts of those who died?”

S: Why should I? I had a task, as did the others, and we accomplished it.

MR:. I ask because I want to understand how someone can kill that many people and sleep the night after. The criminologist, Lonnie Athens, says there are four stages leading up to the socialization of violence: brutalization by an authority figure through violence or threat of violence; the realization that violence is ‘necessary in this world’; the carrying out of violence on someone who has provoked the response of violence; and the resolution to resort to violence on the slightest of provocation. But I find it hard to believe that all members of the Einstazgruppen were that uniform in their background.

S: You miss the point. We were more than soldiers. We were a force not of the present. My sergeant said, ‘The army is fighting the war of now; you are fighting the war of the future’, and he was right. We were gardeners weeding out that which would choke the crop. We belonged to a special group of soldiers. Men fought to be in our camaraderie because we were the arm of the Reich that would cause it to be one thousand years – and create a race not known for a thousand years before because it was mongrelized.

MR: So your rationale was that by killing you were creating the means of the life of the Reich?

S: So, you understand. That is good. Extermination of rats keeps the granary full. Eliminating the breeders of pollution of the race is no more different. We did not kill people, we killed the carriers of the seeds of the destruction of the Reich. I was proud to be an arm of the Reich. You point your gun; pull the trigger and the man falls. But what falls is not the man but what he carries.

MR: You were captured and shot by the Russians.

S: By a weeping Russian. We had cleared out an area and the Russians made a pincer movement and we were cut off and the Russians saw our work and shot us. What soldier cries? Why shoot us when we had made their world better for them? The Russians had no love for those we erased yet this soldier cried as he shot me. His sergeant was crying. For what?

MR: I asked for this interview because I wanted to understand you motivation yet I find it’s not so much your motivation so much as how well you embraced an idea. An idea that I find completely out of what I think any rational person would believe.

S: You want your bloodline not to be pure? You want to add into it the blood of the unclean? Why would you want that? Men like me made the world a better place because we took a stand and decided that blood must be uncontaminated. We did not kill the clean but the unclean.

MR: We’re running out of time and at this point I say that you have the last word but not this time. You are everything that I despise in how a man can be turned into something beyond barbarian. Forgive me for saying this but I hope you rot in hell. How in God’s good name could you put a gun to a fellow human’s head and pull the trigger and not know that you have taken away from us all. How could you view the pits full of bodies and say you have done good work? How can anyone say this?

MichaelR

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MichaelRead: “You keep me up nights.”

Conan O’Brien: “This is a gag, right? You only interview dead people and I’m alive –at least I was the last time I checked. Max put this up to you, didn’t he?”

MR: “No, I thought it would be fun talking with you. After all, how many people can claim to originating The Masturbating Bear?”

COB: “It was the guy in the bear suit that put you up to this. Jeez, give a guy a part in the show and he wants an Emmy. Why am I here? I have a pulse. I am breathing. I can ejaculate. Want to watch?”

MR: “Not particularly. I just wanted to talk about you and the show and how you didn’t think you had whatever needed yet have succeeded well.”

COB “Then you didn’t see the show when we had [deleted] on and there weren’t enough commercials to fill the time. I was at the point of ripping her clothes off just to make a change of pace. Sometimes it’s a disadvantage that late night hosts aren’t armed. Don’t do the crime unless you can do the time and I would have gladly shot her and spent the next 25 years in the slammer. A date with Old Sparky would have seemed better than listening to her.”

MR: Oh, come on, Conan. Some shows have been brilliant. I miss the staring contests with Andy Richter though. You miss him?”

COB: “If you only knew how much I owe Andy. Absolute 100 percent support in the early days when we were trying to find what worked. When Andy left I was as if I’d lost a sibling. A deep, deep wrench. I do believe he’s in Encino now working in a MacDonald’s saying, “You want fries with that?” We often talk on the phone if I can reverse the charges.”

MR: “But you’re making millions.”

COB: “A lie. I make barely enough to keep body and soul together. By the way, what’s Canada selling for these days? I need a place to go weekends.”

MR: “You were a writer first and then took on the role of a late night host. Obviously you enjoy being a host. Do you have as much impact on the writing of the show?”

COB: “When I was a writer I knew that my output was better than the host could handle and I was frustrated that some absolutely funny pieces were trashed; now that I am a host I realize that writers have the intellegence of flat worms. One of them, I won’t mention names, has the intellect of mould. Another, again not mentioning names, couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the sole. Hey, a comedic cliché.”

MR: “Be that as it may, you have good ratings.”

COB: “Due entirely to us going to Neilson rating houses and threatening with a loaded revolver. I may not be armed during the show but after it’s strapping on the old Colt and persuading.

MR: “We’re running out of time, Conan. As is the custom in The Interview That Never Was, you have the last word.”

COB: “Okay, who set this up? I’m taking names here. I still think it’s Max. If it isn’t him then I want a roll call on this first thing at the writers’ meeting tomorrow. First one to giggle gets the ax. I’m serious. Oh, am I to make a solemn statement at this point? All right then: humor is tragedy plus time. I got that from a fortune cookie. Well, actually, it said, “Place your trust in your work for it will bring you happiness,” but I know how to read the deeper meaning of these things. That’s why I am host and you’re not.”

MR: “Thank you, Conan.”

COB: “That’s it? Nothing more? Jeez, Michael, these interviews suck. Just as we’re getting into the swing of things you call a halt. What’s your problem? TMF going to cut you off because you’re taking up hard drive space? Can think of another question, Michael? Is that it? Or are you just sloshing back those beers and you can’t type straight?”

MR: “I said thank you and that means it’s over. Say goodnight, Gracie.

COB: “How much did Weinberg pay you to do this? Whatever, double it and I’ll pay not to have this interview posted.”

MR: “No deal, Conan. Mr. X, your company’s Deep Throat, gave me tickets to the show and a pass to the company’s coffee bar. You have been sold down the river for a seat in the audience and a latte. I hope the show will be as hot as the latte which I will place between my legs in full expectation of a hefty law suit.”

COB: “MAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXX!”

MichaelR

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The Interview that Never Happened XII Lawrence Welk interviewed by MichaelRead

MichaelRead: “Music. Better or worse?”

Lawrence Welk: “As always, Michael, it’s getting better and it’s getting worse. It depends on who you talk to. Is there music you can dance to? Yes, and there’s music you can’t – and, as ever, there’s music that was never meant to be danced to. Do people still polka? Yes.

MR: “Your band played for many years and crossed many musical styles. How come the longevity? Because it was a popular style, sure, but what else?”

LW: ‘When the band started we played roadhouses then radio then television and we had that rhythm that people liked to dance to and, if they weren’t dancing, just to enjoy. It was an easy music and very popular. Television gave us a much larger audience and we placed often in the top ten viewed shows. Then the networks changed their view about us – said we were an out-of-date band playing just to the oldsters. The revenge is that the show is syndicated and still bringing in advertising dollars. Michael, some of those shows are thirty-forty years old and still people are dancing in their living rooms just as they did in the 50’s when we played on radio.”

MR: “Rap music. Or is that a red rag to a bull?”

LW: “Some rap music is extremely well done and the musicianship is first rate. Yet it lacks variety. It’s a race to see if the artists and musicians doing rap now change – evolve, if you will – or if another style takes over. Some jazz styles are coming back and so is the full orchestra sound but neither is mainstream as they once were – but, again, it’s who you talk to and where. Music isn’t a solitaire diamond but a bracelet of diamonds. I know you like some New Age music but you don’t like some just because they’re labeled New Age. Same with all music yet I had a band that many people liked. And, in reruns, still do.”

MR: “Some of your people stayed with you from the beginning. Why? The money, guaranteed employment?”

LW: “I never altered one thing: when we played every part of the band was featured at onetime or another during the evening. Look at one of those shows now in syndication and see how, in one hour minus the commercials, we gave prominence to all including the singers and stage dancers. No one was left out, ever. If you were in my band – and this was true when we were recorded on radio of television, you could say you were a featured player. It also added variety and I am a strong believer in having variety in a music presentation. Plus we were a family. We knew each other well and knew what we could do.”

MR: “That last part, “knew what we could do,” brings me to asking about music these days. I know I started off with ‘better or worse’ yet how do you see music?”

LW: “Michael, the bar is being raised all the time. There are now more well-trained and talented players than ever. There are teens playing at adult levels. In Seattle, two high schools – that’s high schools — who play big-band jazz magnificently and Glen Miller would hire them in a flash. I know I would. The quality of musicianship is now very, very good. It is a shame that some school boards are cutting back on music education yet even this won’t stop a person who wants to play – but it does prevent music education being exposed to those who could benefit from it.”

MR: I wish we could continue but we’re running out of time. As always in these Interviews that Never Were, you get the last word.”

LW: “When you’re dancing with your lady and the music is smoothly there it can be so pleasant even if the lady is new to you or one you have lived your years with. We come together with music. No society ever has been without it. When it’s a music that touches you then it then becomes your music as much as it is that of the players. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians were the New York sound just as my band was the sound of the Midwest. People in New York danced to Lombardo’s music and felt all the better for doing it. When we played so did our listeners. No, it wasn’t just a regional thing but what people wanted. “Tastes in music change, that is inevitable. Why? Because as we grow older we want something from music that music didn’t meet before. No, it isn’t that when we grow older we slow and then like slower music but that as we age we demand something different from music. I wonder how many, now older, realize the sheer brilliance of The Beatles Yesterdays and how it fits with growing up. Not the words but the sound, the meter, what is created in you as you dance to it. “Those old black and white kinescopes of our show are not hi-fi but, Michael, people still dance to the music. Most of the band members have passed on yet through these scratchy films of years ago someone is dancing with another in his or her home. They may not be able to afford champagne but they can afford to dance to the Champagne music of Lawrence Welk and his band. I think that’s a legacy well worth having.”

MR: “Thank you, Mr. Welk.”

MichaelR

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The Interview That Never Happened VIII John F. Kennedy Jr. interviewed by MichaelRead immediately following John’s death.

MichaelRead “I’d like to talk about the plane crash. You okay with that?”

John F. Kennedy Jr. “No problem but it’s been hashed over many times.”

MR: “But not to the cause, John. Speculation ran rampant as to mechanical failure but none was found. Some said that you were stressed and shouldn’t have been flying yet you were rested. I think there was another cause.”

JFK: “Michael, the cause was the plane stalled and stayed stalled until it hit the water. I couldn’t get it out of the stall. Simple enough.”

MR: “You were coming into land, you were high and you pushed the stick forward.”

JFK: “That’s when it stalled.”

MR: “But you still had power on.”

JFK: “I reduced power and as I pushed the stick forward the pane stalled. I pushed the stick further forward but the plane was still remained stalled. I was lifted off my seat against my straps.”

MR: “You took stalls in your training.”

JFK: “Of course. We’d go to 4-5,000 feet, chop the power keeping the same attitude, the nose would drop and I’d push the stick forward to get speed back. What’s your point?”

MR: “What’s the indication you’re in a stall?”

JFK: “You lose flying speed, the nose drops, and you’re lifted off your seat. I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

MR: “The silence in a stall. It gets very quiet. Sure, the engine noise drops but that’s because you’re at a lower throttle setting. What I’m getting at is that in a true stall the wind noise also drops. It didn’t when you crashed. The plane hit the water almost inverted and it could only hit at that attitude if you had the stick full forward and you were making, essentially, a half loop.”

JFK: “But it was stalled.”

MR: “No, it wasn’t. The one indicator you had was that you were lifted off your seat like a stall and mistook it for a stall. You were on a powered curve that threw you upwards from your seat and the more you pushed the stick forward the more you enhanced that curve and the more your ass was off the seat. That’s why you crashed almost inverted. What should have tipped you off was that the wind noise increased. The answer was to have centered the stick and then pull out of the resulting dive. Like getting out of a spin.”

JFK: “ It’s a little late for a flying lesson, isn’t it?”

MR:. “Possibly. Yet other reasons were given that didn’t make sense such as you having a reason for the incident: psychological, your foot being banged up previously, and so on when the answer is that you were inexperienced in a particular situation. I think setting the record straight is important.”

JFK: “It’s a little academic now.”

MR: “I disagree, John. Someone’s going to find themselves in the same situation and maybe discussing it here will help that pilot. I saw a sailplane go down in the same manner and I gave evidence at the inquest. There was a belief the pilot deliberately crashed because of troubles in his life and I knew that was wrong. That was more than 18 years ago and one of the recommendations coming out of that was pilots being taught the differences yet few instructors teach it. Anyway, as in these interviews you get the last word.”

JFK: “What do I say? You may be right. I just can’t think of anything to say other than it was a stall to me.”

MR: “Thank you, John.”

MichaelR

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Dr. Hannibal Lector interviewed by MichaelRead

MichaelRead: “Dr. Lector, how does someone who heals become someone who kills? When you became a doctor you swore an oath to do no harm yet you slaughter without regret.”

Dr Lector: MR: “So you’re judge, jury and executioner of those who deserve death? The Green River killer killed more than 50 prostitutes saying virtually the same thing. I don’t buy that.”

HL: “The state does. It decides that death is a punishment and it may sound trite to say but once death there are no more murders done by the state-approved dead. I have dispatched – do you like that word, Michael? – those who once are removed cannot do further harm. They are gone and trouble no more. I can give you case histories of those I have removed and you will not find one of them worth redemption. Even the redemption of a last prayer on their death bed. No, Michael, some people ‘dessarve shootin’.”

MR: “Yet the state believes you are worth keeping behind bars and right now we’re separated by inch-thick Plexiglas. The state considers you a menace rather than an asset to refining the population.”

HL: “Michael, Michael, Michael. I was caught and that is my crime. My crime was of hubris. My error was in being caught not in the causes of being sought. A question for you: how many rapes will there be today and how many women will have their lives shattered irrevocably. My question then is ‘What punishment is apt for this lifelong effect? A year? Two? Five? And then parole? Good God, Michael, some are let out and rape again. Would you want this?”

MR: “So you do not believe in rehabilitation.”

HL: “Of course I do. However, there are some that will never rehabilitate and…”

MR: “Obviously we’ll never know that of those you killed because they are dead and…”

HL: “True, yet of no consequence. Their evil is interred with them; there was no goodness in them to be reformed.”

MR: “And some you ate.”

HL: “Why waste good meat? The meat was not evil, the consciousness was.”

MR: “I believe what you did was evil.”

HL: “Aww, Michael doesn’t like the gene pool being thinned. Michael thinks that there’s good in the worst of us. Michael, poor baby, doesn’t think there’s a problem because he lives in a nice neighborhood where the worst crime is spitting on the sidewalks. You do have sidewalks in White Rock, I hope?”

MR: “Trying to rile, Doctor Lector? I find your analogies facetious. You say you killed to better and I say you killed because you believe killing is the only answer. As I asked in the beginning, why kill when you swore an oath to first do no harm and your answer is that to not kill is a greater harm. I think that is a nihilistic position. You believe there is no purpose to life but your own so you remove those who conflict with your purpose.”

HL: “Michael! Obviously you are not understanding my purpose. Don’t you skim off the fat from a stew or trim a steak or whatever? Don’t you remove that which is not healthy? Tell me how through not dispatching those I have the world is not healthier. You cannot.”

MR: “At this point in The Interview that Never Was, I give the person the last word but for this one I am not going to. You only would repeat your theme and I find that you’ve said it all. Thank you for your time which, my strongest wish, weighs heavily on you.”

HL: “Well, good enough. Anyway, the guard is coming to escort you out and you’ll go back to your life. One thought to take with you. You love your wife and you would not want a hair on her head harmed. What would you do if she were? I’ll tell you. You’ll sit in a courtroom and listen to how this person who harmed her cannot be held responsible for his actions because of his appalling childhood and his descent into drugs. The sympathy properly directed to your wife will be turned to the aggressor. Where justice, Michael?”

MichaelR

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