# That's Showbiz, Baby: Steven Kunes

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 5 Mar 2026, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/72ef6189-2c93-4a50-b45f-b40301663e5c/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

To make it in Hollywood, you sometimes have to tell some half-truths and fudge your resume. People play a little fast and loose. But not so loose as to forge checks and scam friends. That's a little too loose, even by Tinseltown standards. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:03] Speaker 2: Saren Saren Saren, Wake Up, Wake Up Elizabeth. How are you.
[0:09] Speaker 3: I'm doing pretty good. I was just taking a little
[0:11] Speaker 3: cat and I'm not sleeping well. But other than that,
[0:13] Speaker 3: I'm great. How about you?
[0:14] Speaker 2: You're not sleeping well?
[0:15] Speaker 3: Have you not seen the State of the World?
[0:17] Speaker 4: Well?
[0:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like, so I stay up reading news I
[0:19] Speaker 3: shouldn't and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get to sleep. Dreams.
[0:24] Speaker 2: Oh, I bet you know it's ridiculous.
[0:27] Speaker 3: I do you love Law and Order SVU?
[0:30] Speaker 2: I certainly?
[0:31] Speaker 3: Do you also love Original Flavor?
[0:33] Speaker 2: Law and Order?
[0:33] Speaker 3: Right?
[0:33] Speaker 2: Original recipe?
[0:34] Speaker 3: Okay? The character Detective John Munch played by Richard Belzer,
[0:39] Speaker 3: A right. Do you know that he didn't obviously start
[0:42] Speaker 3: on Law and Order?
[0:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, he started in was it Homicide Life on the Streets?
[0:47] Speaker 3: David Simon's show Before the Wire. So it turns out
[0:50] Speaker 3: he was in Homicide Life for the Streets, which means
[0:53] Speaker 3: that exists. He played Detective John Munch.
[0:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and then he was on Law.
[0:56] Speaker 3: And Order a special victims unit, and then he was
[0:59] Speaker 3: in the Law and Order Original Flavor. Sure, but those
[1:01] Speaker 3: aren't just the only shows he's been on.
[1:03] Speaker 2: I know of one other.
[1:04] Speaker 3: What's the other one?
[1:05] Speaker 2: You know, the X Files.
[1:07] Speaker 3: Yes, he was an episode of The X Files, The
[1:09] Speaker 3: Usual Suspects. Yeah, sorry, The Unusual Suspects was the episode.
[1:13] Speaker 3: Then he was also on another Law and Order show,
[1:15] Speaker 3: Trial by Jury. He was also in one episode of
[1:18] Speaker 3: the Wire. He was really he was also in Arrested
[1:22] Speaker 3: Development may he plays John much every one of these shows.
[1:27] Speaker 3: He also played John Munch detective John Munch on Arrested Development,
[1:31] Speaker 3: like yeah, like with gob Bluth and all that, right, yeah,
[1:34] Speaker 3: So and then you know, since he was on the Wire,
[1:36] Speaker 3: he was also I mean he's been in thirty Rock
[1:38] Speaker 3: playing detective John Munch. Yes, and also the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
[1:43] Speaker 3: I don't know if you know that one. Yeah, And
[1:45] Speaker 3: so essentially if you do the math, right, that means
[1:49] Speaker 3: that Law and Order franchises, Luther, the TV show Homicide,
[1:54] Speaker 3: the TV show X Files, TV show The Wire, and
[1:56] Speaker 3: the Arrested Development and thirty Rocket.
[1:59] Speaker 2: How does Luthor was also in Luther.
[2:00] Speaker 3: He also was in an episode of Luther. They mentioned
[2:03] Speaker 3: him on the phone like Wetective John Munch over New
[2:05] Speaker 3: York is gonna he doesn't make an appearance, but he
[2:07] Speaker 3: does have a he shows up in the story. So
[2:11] Speaker 3: these are all one enormous television universe.
[2:14] Speaker 2: Yes, now it's and you can't back out of that.
[2:17] Speaker 4: No.
[2:17] Speaker 3: And then also if you do the math on that,
[2:19] Speaker 3: that means Idris Elvis is character of Luther and his
[2:22] Speaker 3: character of Stringer Belt in the Wire insists in the
[2:25] Speaker 3: same crime universe.
[2:27] Speaker 2: Well, you know doppelgangers there.
[2:30] Speaker 3: I love that Detective John Restedlopment and X Files and
[2:35] Speaker 3: thirty Rock and just that's incredible. It's ridiculous.
[2:38] Speaker 2: It's just the majesty of Munch, Like, how could you
[2:42] Speaker 2: resist using him? We got Maybe we'll put him in
[2:44] Speaker 2: the credits and he'll pull him into the Ridiculous crime universe.
[2:48] Speaker 3: Whoa, then we share the same You're a genius, I know,
[2:51] Speaker 3: I really am.
[2:51] Speaker 2: College. Do you know what else is ridiculous? I am
[2:58] Speaker 2: dB pages and I'll just leave it at that. This
[3:22] Speaker 2: is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
[3:27] Speaker 2: Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free
[3:31] Speaker 2: and one hundred percent ridiculous.
[3:33] Speaker 3: You damn right, I know I am, because you're a genius.
[3:36] Speaker 2: I am a bringing genius. You recently talked about Field
[3:40] Speaker 2: of Dreams, the nineteen eighty nine movie Yes, starring Kevin Costner.
[3:43] Speaker 3: Which came out two years before a point break.
[3:45] Speaker 2: Kevin Costner, I'm trying to not talk like a Californian.
[3:49] Speaker 3: And lose the teas and everything.
[3:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not Costner, it's Costner.
[3:53] Speaker 3: Actually, I think it's almost like a silent tea because
[3:55] Speaker 3: you hear him say it's Kevin Costner.
[3:57] Speaker 2: Does he's a Californier? Okay, you hat us do that
[4:00] Speaker 2: impromptu reading from the script.
[4:02] Speaker 3: Ridiculous crime.
[4:03] Speaker 2: It was a magical moment, to be sure. And so
[4:07] Speaker 2: the movie is based on the book, as you said,
[4:09] Speaker 2: Shoeless Show, great book by W. P. Kinsella.
[4:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like America's answer to magical realism. It's baseball
[4:16] Speaker 3: magical baseball realism.
[4:17] Speaker 2: Love magical realism. So in the book, the author JD.
[4:21] Speaker 2: Salinger plays a biga.
[4:22] Speaker 3: Yes he does.
[4:23] Speaker 2: And so a bit of background on background here. JD.
[4:26] Speaker 2: Salinger for those unfamiliar, influential American author best known for
[4:30] Speaker 2: his nineteen fifty one novel The Catcher in the rye
[4:33] Speaker 2: Yes and that follows sixteen year old Holden Coffield.
[4:36] Speaker 3: Who didn't catch baseballs. He caught kids.
[4:38] Speaker 2: He got kids in the rye over a few days.
[4:42] Speaker 2: It takes place over a few days after being kicked
[4:44] Speaker 2: out of prep school, wanders around New York City like
[4:47] Speaker 2: talks all about phoniness. Everything's phony in the adult world.
[4:50] Speaker 2: And so it's all about like alienation and innocence and identity.
[4:55] Speaker 2: And he's like all cynical guy, and he uses all
[4:58] Speaker 2: this slang total teenage angst and disillusionment. Holden Cowfield becomes
[5:04] Speaker 2: this iconic figure of rebellion. It was seen as like
[5:06] Speaker 2: a super edgy, you know book at.
[5:08] Speaker 3: The like the book's version of rebel without a cause
[5:11] Speaker 3: of James Dean.
[5:11] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that was good. So there were some who
[5:17] Speaker 2: thought it was it.
[5:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
[5:19] Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the beats are like challenging all sensibilities Ginsburg's working on.
[5:23] Speaker 3: How Yeah, it was more of a mainstream ed genis.
[5:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, but the book remains a staple of young adult literature,
[5:29] Speaker 2: even though it winds up on banned books not these
[5:32] Speaker 2: lists pretty often. So. Salinger was a World War Two
[5:36] Speaker 2: vet and he worked in counterintelligence in the war. Fought
[5:39] Speaker 2: in D Day. He landed at Utah Beach, did he, Yes,
[5:41] Speaker 2: he did not know that. So after Catcher and the
[5:44] Speaker 2: Rye became huge, he followed it up with a couple
[5:46] Speaker 2: other works, but nothing matched that first novel, and he
[5:51] Speaker 2: was overwhelmed by this. Yeah, and then there was like
[5:55] Speaker 2: some short stories, and but he got overwhelmed by this
[5:58] Speaker 2: massive success. So he moved to a ninety acre compound
[6:02] Speaker 2: in New Hampshire.
[6:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
[6:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, total recluse. He withdrew from public life. He stopped
[6:10] Speaker 2: publishing new work after nineteen sixty five and then refused
[6:13] Speaker 2: all interviews after nineteen eighty. So in Shoelace, Joe Ray,
[6:19] Speaker 2: the main character, quote unquote, kidnaps Salinger from his home
[6:23] Speaker 2: in New Hampshire.
[6:23] Speaker 3: That's a differencetwe in the movie in the book.
[6:25] Speaker 2: Right, And so the author Kinsella used Salinger because The
[6:29] Speaker 2: Catcher and the Rye had really deep meaning for him,
[6:33] Speaker 2: and he had noticed that his own last name, Kinsella
[6:35] Speaker 2: appeared in some of Salinger's work. So in the book,
[6:39] Speaker 2: Ray takes the reclusive author to a game at Fenway
[6:43] Speaker 2: Park in Boston, then goes out to the magical Iowa
[6:46] Speaker 2: Cornfield where baseball lives forever. Salinger guides ray on his
[6:51] Speaker 2: journey of faith and redemption. In the novel spoiler alert,
[6:55] Speaker 2: it's Sallenger who walks off into the cornfield with the
[6:58] Speaker 2: players at the end.
[6:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, and then that means you don't get the classic
[7:02] Speaker 3: at the ball field and Fenway with the whole What
[7:05] Speaker 3: do you want? Oh? I want to be left alone
[7:08] Speaker 3: about No, what do you want? Oh?
[7:09] Speaker 2: Dog gonna be right?
[7:11] Speaker 3: James Earl Jones is killed me.
[7:13] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, when it came time to adapt the book
[7:15] Speaker 2: into a movie, there was a problem. It wasn't just
[7:19] Speaker 2: that Salinger was a recluse. He was also famously litigious.
[7:23] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he was obsessed with protecting his intellectual property
[7:27] Speaker 2: and his privacy. He sued to stop a biographer from
[7:32] Speaker 2: using letters. We'll get to that later. He sued a
[7:35] Speaker 2: publisher to stop publication of previously unpublished works. So when
[7:39] Speaker 2: the novel's Shoeless Joe came out, he threatened to sue
[7:42] Speaker 2: about being included in the novel.
[7:44] Speaker 3: I don't think he can.
[7:46] Speaker 2: Well, he just he made all this noise. He never
[7:48] Speaker 2: followed tru with it. They get to adapting the book
[7:51] Speaker 2: for the screen, and everyone was worried that he would
[7:54] Speaker 2: actually file a lawsuit. On this one and come up
[7:56] Speaker 2: the works.
[7:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, because then that's different because now you're portraying
[7:59] Speaker 3: his likeness in the book. It's more of his public
[8:01] Speaker 3: figure of his persona.
[8:02] Speaker 2: Right, So once again Salinger makes his threats and they're like, ah,
[8:06] Speaker 2: So the producers changed Salinger to this fictionalized composite character,
[8:10] Speaker 2: as you said, played by James Earl Jones, Terrence vis Man,
[8:14] Speaker 2: And that was just to avoid legal action, that was
[8:16] Speaker 2: the only reason. And in the film, Terrence Man is
[8:19] Speaker 2: like a sixties counterculture writer who's brought out of his reclusive,
[8:22] Speaker 2: angry state by the magic of the field.
[8:25] Speaker 3: So it's the same think if James Baldwin was JD. Salinger.
[8:28] Speaker 2: Yes, so it's the same. You know, he plays that
[8:31] Speaker 2: same plot role, but it's you know, they can't use
[8:34] Speaker 2: the man himself. So now we've established that JD. Salinger
[8:38] Speaker 2: was both reclusive and litigious. Yes, his biggest lawsuit, as
[8:42] Speaker 2: I kind of talked about a little bit before, was
[8:44] Speaker 2: Salinger versus Random House, and that was in nineteen eighty seven.
[8:48] Speaker 2: So the case addressed whether a biographer could quote from
[8:51] Speaker 2: unpublished private letters without permission, okay, and the ruling strengthened
[8:57] Speaker 2: copyright protection for unpublished works and had this huge impact
[9:00] Speaker 2: on literary biography and archival research.
[9:03] Speaker 3: Could just buy letters and then publish.
[9:05] Speaker 2: Them, right, Well, so, in the early eighties, this British
[9:08] Speaker 2: literary critic Ian Hamilton, he was writing a biography of JD. Salinger,
[9:14] Speaker 2: and Hamilton don't forget like at nineteen eighty, Salinger's like,
[9:18] Speaker 2: no more interviews. So Hamilton asked Salinger to collaborate on
[9:23] Speaker 2: the project, but Salinger was like, no way, get out
[9:25] Speaker 2: of here. Hamilton's like, I'll just write it alone. So
[9:28] Speaker 2: he's doing his research. He gets access to Solander's unpublished
[9:32] Speaker 2: letters that were kept in university library archives, and so
[9:37] Speaker 2: although researchers were permitted to read the letters under controlled conditions,
[9:41] Speaker 2: Salinger retained the copyright in them.
[9:44] Speaker 3: Gotcha.
[9:45] Speaker 2: Hamilton ignored that his manuscript included direct quotations from the letters,
[9:51] Speaker 2: close paraphrases that closely tracked Salinger's wording, and descriptions of
[9:56] Speaker 2: like the emotional tone and the personal content of the
[9:58] Speaker 2: correspondence and so. But like, at this point, though, like
[10:02] Speaker 2: it's hypothetical that Salinger has the copyright. How so he
[10:06] Speaker 2: hadn't actually put in the paperwork to attain it okay
[10:10] Speaker 2: for the letters, so random House they sent out uncorrected
[10:14] Speaker 2: proofs of the biography to various reviewers. One forwarded their
[10:18] Speaker 2: copy on to Salinger, and that's how Salinger found out
[10:23] Speaker 2: that his personal letters were in the libraries and accessible
[10:26] Speaker 2: to the public. He didn't know.
[10:28] Speaker 3: Wow, that's got to be.
[10:29] Speaker 2: So he couldn't claim copyright on it because he didn't
[10:31] Speaker 2: even know they were there. Yeah, he registered his copyright
[10:34] Speaker 2: in the letters, had his lawyer demand that everything in
[10:37] Speaker 2: the book that came from the unpublished letters be removed.
[10:41] Speaker 2: And so then Hamilton he makes all these revisions.
[10:45] Speaker 3: Well, I have to imagine that Hamilton was kind of
[10:48] Speaker 3: inspired by like Norman Mahlers doing the thing with Marilyn
[10:52] Speaker 3: Monroe where he basically takes her diary, he turns it
[10:55] Speaker 3: into a book and then he just fabricates stuff and
[10:58] Speaker 3: makes up a whole thing. And that was a real
[10:59] Speaker 3: big hit just a couple of years prior. So I
[11:01] Speaker 3: think he's probably going, well, here's another icon from the fifties. Yeah,
[11:05] Speaker 3: I can do the same.
[11:05] Speaker 2: Thing totally, totally, I very much see that. So he's
[11:10] Speaker 2: now pressed, I have to make these revisions. He changes
[11:13] Speaker 2: direct quotes, into paraphrases. Soalngers like that's not enough, still
[11:17] Speaker 2: too close, So he files suit to prevent publication. In
[11:21] Speaker 2: October of nineteen eighty six, Salinger sued both the author
[11:24] Speaker 2: and the publisher, Random House. He wanted damages and he
[11:28] Speaker 2: wanted an injunction against publication of the book. He said
[11:31] Speaker 2: they had violated copyright, breach a contract, unfair competition, like
[11:35] Speaker 2: he was just throwing everything.
[11:36] Speaker 3: Sure.
[11:37] Speaker 2: The central legal question was whether Hamilton's use of the
[11:41] Speaker 2: quotations and the paraphrases from unpublished letters qualified as a
[11:45] Speaker 2: fair use under US copyright.
[11:47] Speaker 3: That is the question.
[11:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, So there are four statutory fair use factors, okay,
[11:52] Speaker 2: one purpose and character of the use. Two nature of
[11:56] Speaker 2: the copyrighted work, sure, three amounts and substantiality used, and
[12:02] Speaker 2: for effect on the potential market.
[12:04] Speaker 3: Totally. I've had to go through all these before.
[12:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well this is something that we actually think about
[12:08] Speaker 2: a lot on here and why we don't use popular music.
[12:10] Speaker 3: Well yeah, and also that's why we can use documentary
[12:13] Speaker 3: stuff because if you add to it, if you change
[12:15] Speaker 3: it and make it a commentary and you're not just
[12:17] Speaker 3: going here it is right, then you can't do it.
[12:19] Speaker 3: So fair use allows you to use something as part
[12:22] Speaker 3: of a new work. It allows you to do something
[12:24] Speaker 3: where you're going to transmography its values. You have to
[12:27] Speaker 3: add to it, and you have to take it out
[12:29] Speaker 3: of context and provide new context.
[12:31] Speaker 5: Right.
[12:32] Speaker 2: We can't do that anyway with music.
[12:33] Speaker 3: Obviously, you can't do that.
[12:34] Speaker 2: Yeah. So the US District Court for the Southern District
[12:37] Speaker 2: of New York rejected all of Salinger's claims, and the
[12:41] Speaker 2: court said that while the Supreme Court had quote stressed
[12:44] Speaker 2: the tailoring of fair use analysis to the particular case,
[12:48] Speaker 2: it neither stated nor implied a categorical rule barring fair
[12:52] Speaker 2: use of unpublished works. Okay, and then it went on,
[12:55] Speaker 2: Hamilton's use of Salinger's copyrighted material is minimal and insubstantial.
[13:00] Speaker 2: It does not exploit or appropriate the literary value of
[13:04] Speaker 2: Salinger's letters. Yes, it does not diminish the commercial value
[13:07] Speaker 2: of Salader's letters for future publication. It does not impair
[13:12] Speaker 2: Salinger's control over first publication of his copyrighted letters or
[13:16] Speaker 2: interfere with his exercise of control over his artistic reputation.
[13:20] Speaker 3: I love how much of law is based on exercise
[13:22] Speaker 3: of control.
[13:23] Speaker 2: You right, exactly? So the court rejected it, but it
[13:28] Speaker 2: also issued a temporary restraining order pending an appeal.
[13:31] Speaker 3: Okay, so they allowed him, like come back with a
[13:33] Speaker 3: better argument.
[13:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, if you can, Yeah, if you can strengthen it up.
[13:35] Speaker 2: So they go to the US Court of Appeals Second Circuit,
[13:39] Speaker 2: and they ruled largely in Salinger's favor, so that court
[13:43] Speaker 2: emphasized an author's right to control first publication published. The
[13:48] Speaker 2: court found that Hamilton's close paraphrases captured the quote expressive
[13:52] Speaker 2: content of Salander's letters and that was not sufficiently transformative.
[13:58] Speaker 2: And then the court also concluded that the amount and
[14:00] Speaker 2: qualitative value of the material used weighed against fair use.
[14:05] Speaker 2: It's just too much.
[14:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it is the big issue. You can, like,
[14:08] Speaker 3: even with the music you can use. I think it's
[14:10] Speaker 3: like a one point five seconds, like a second and
[14:11] Speaker 3: a half of music. Yeah, just that people know what
[14:13] Speaker 3: you're referring to, right, But if you go and play
[14:15] Speaker 3: like a minute and a half, you're practically playing the song.
[14:17] Speaker 2: You know, so they're like no, no, no, exactly.
[14:19] Speaker 3: So that inclusive writing you usually can't do like large
[14:23] Speaker 3: swaths of a page. You have to do like maybe
[14:25] Speaker 3: a paragraph at most. And then even then you have
[14:27] Speaker 3: to introduce it and change your like you know what
[14:29] Speaker 3: it leads to it you have to make new connective
[14:31] Speaker 3: tissue exactly.
[14:33] Speaker 2: So that rule, right, It led to significant revisions in
[14:38] Speaker 2: the manuscript. The biography was eventually published in its altered form,
[14:43] Speaker 2: with quotations removed, all these like generalizations made, and at
[14:47] Speaker 2: the time the decision was viewed as like a really
[14:49] Speaker 2: strong pro author ruling.
[14:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds like it made it.
[14:52] Speaker 2: More difficult for biographers to quote unpublished materials. And then
[14:56] Speaker 2: but this like really concerned history marian's and literary scholars.
[15:01] Speaker 2: They start freaking out. I could see that, because, yeah,
[15:05] Speaker 2: so either way, the case becomes this leading precedent and
[15:07] Speaker 2: copyright law concerning unpublished materials.
[15:10] Speaker 3: Maybe such a big name too.
[15:11] Speaker 2: Yeah. And then, in response to concerns about what this
[15:15] Speaker 2: would do to scholarly pursuits back when Congress cared about
[15:18] Speaker 2: higher education and scholarly research and integrity, Congress amended the
[15:26] Speaker 2: Copyright Act in nineteen ninety two to clarify that the
[15:28] Speaker 2: unpublished status of a work does not itself bar a
[15:32] Speaker 2: finding of fair use. So unpublished status should be considered,
[15:36] Speaker 2: but is not just positive.
[15:38] Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's fair.
[15:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's nineteen eighty six. Right, yeah, let's go
[15:43] Speaker 2: back to nineteen eighty two for a second.
[15:45] Speaker 3: Please. I love nineteen that's when.
[15:49] Speaker 2: That's when Salinger sued a guy named Stephen Cunis.
[15:53] Speaker 3: Stephen, how do you spell that k.
[15:56] Speaker 2: U n E s? So it looks like key, looks
[15:59] Speaker 2: like a Cunis, So, Salinger said, Cunis was trying to
[16:04] Speaker 2: impersonate him and sell written work as if he'd written
[16:07] Speaker 2: it different.
[16:09] Speaker 6: Question.
[16:10] Speaker 2: Here's, according to the lawsuit, Cunis quote offered for sale
[16:14] Speaker 2: to People Magazine a completely fictitious interview with JD. Salinger
[16:19] Speaker 2: and misrepresented it as quote a transcript of an actual interview.
[16:24] Speaker 3: That's crazy.
[16:25] Speaker 2: Here's how it went I can imagine. I know here's
[16:28] Speaker 2: how it went down. So Cunis submits this interview to
[16:31] Speaker 2: People magazine. It was, according to the Washington Post, quote
[16:35] Speaker 2: a poignant tale of a young writer's chance meeting with JD.
[16:39] Speaker 2: Salinger on a New York street. Salinger is quite taken
[16:43] Speaker 2: with the young man and invites him to New Hampshire,
[16:46] Speaker 2: where he gives a philosophical discourse in the manner of
[16:49] Speaker 2: a grown up Holden Coffield. Maybe this interview will help
[16:52] Speaker 2: you get published, Salinger tells the interviewer, just before bidding
[16:56] Speaker 2: him godspeed.
[16:58] Speaker 3: It sounds a lot more like what you expect from
[16:59] Speaker 3: John Style.
[17:00] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So Salander had other accusations. He said Cunis
[17:05] Speaker 2: forged a letter from Salinger to Cunis on Salinger's letterhead.
[17:11] Speaker 3: How did he get the letter head?
[17:12] Speaker 2: I don't know. In the fake letter, Salinger told Cunas
[17:15] Speaker 2: that the interview quote is just fine. I wouldn't change
[17:17] Speaker 2: a word, so Salainger tells the court quote. Within the
[17:23] Speaker 2: last several months, it has come to my attention that
[17:25] Speaker 2: one Stephen Cunis has been impersonating me through forged writings,
[17:29] Speaker 2: has signed my name to forged letters, has prepared and
[17:32] Speaker 2: circulated letters on false letterhead which he has claimed were
[17:36] Speaker 2: sent out by me, has offered for sale at least
[17:39] Speaker 2: one completely fictitious quote interview with me, which grossly misrepresents
[17:43] Speaker 2: both my character and my outlook on life, attributes opinions
[17:47] Speaker 2: to me that I do not hold, attempts to copy
[17:50] Speaker 2: my prose mannerisms, and altogether tries to pass off as
[17:54] Speaker 2: real an interview that never took place.
[17:56] Speaker 3: So he faked the letter head he did identity that,
[18:00] Speaker 3: and then he also, like you know, basically shined himself off,
[18:04] Speaker 3: using Salander being like, oh, I love this kid.
[18:06] Speaker 2: He's kind of amazing this guy.
[18:08] Speaker 3: I want success for this guy.
[18:10] Speaker 2: Salinger also wrote quote, I am appalled to think that
[18:14] Speaker 2: there are in circulation a number of holy false and
[18:18] Speaker 2: grotesquely inept pieces of writing attributed to me. I believe
[18:22] Speaker 2: this defendant expected no troublesome reaction from me to his
[18:26] Speaker 2: forgeries and deliberate misrepresentations. In fact, however, I find the
[18:31] Speaker 2: defendant's activities too corrupt and too destructively consequential to ignore.
[18:36] Speaker 3: So that's, in my world, a big bright star for W. P.
[18:40] Speaker 3: Kinsella who's able to write so well. The Sounders like,
[18:43] Speaker 3: all right, that's that's pretty good.
[18:44] Speaker 2: I'll let you go. Character.
[18:46] Speaker 3: You know you're not going to pull my writing.
[18:48] Speaker 2: You appreciate me, do you see me as this kid's.
[18:51] Speaker 3: Like you're treating he's like basically training like a stepping
[18:53] Speaker 3: stone to get to a publishing career. He's like, I
[18:55] Speaker 3: don't want to go to prison to get a book deal.
[18:57] Speaker 3: I just rip off JD.
[18:59] Speaker 2: Challengerskudas denies everything at far. His lawyer went so far
[19:04] Speaker 2: as to say, quote, a hoax may have been perpetrated
[19:07] Speaker 2: on both mister Cunis and mister Salad.
[19:09] Speaker 3: Oh they're doubly victims.
[19:10] Speaker 2: Someone's out to get both of them.
[19:12] Speaker 3: Because they're both genius writers.
[19:13] Speaker 2: Right, So more details emerge, Cunis and his lawyers shift gears.
[19:18] Speaker 2: They said that, you know what Cudas is a quote
[19:21] Speaker 2: young new writer. He's newly married. They said, like, you know,
[19:25] Speaker 2: his wife just had surgery and oh she's also pregnant.
[19:29] Speaker 2: And they're like, what does it have to do with anything.
[19:31] Speaker 2: I guess like he was in a tight spot and
[19:33] Speaker 2: needed the money, and.
[19:34] Speaker 3: The lawyers like, look, I got to zealously defend this guy. Yeah,
[19:37] Speaker 3: I got to come up with something.
[19:38] Speaker 2: Now, most of us would go out and get a job.
[19:41] Speaker 3: With his pregnant wife.
[19:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe plan. I don't know.
[19:43] Speaker 3: A couple of things.
[19:44] Speaker 2: Not Steve, not Stephen Coonis. He faked an interview with
[19:47] Speaker 2: the most infamously lawsuit happy writer around. Yes, because like
[19:51] Speaker 2: this this was before the Random House case, but Salinger
[19:54] Speaker 2: had already been suing FH.
[19:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very clear.
[19:58] Speaker 2: After some negotiations, Salader with drew his claims for damages
[20:01] Speaker 2: and legal fees. He Gotkonis to sign a statement promising
[20:06] Speaker 2: never to say the two had ever met or we're friends,
[20:10] Speaker 2: and Cunis also had to recall any documents he had
[20:13] Speaker 2: sent out quote which purport to be derived from JD. Salinger,
[20:16] Speaker 2: written by JD. Salinger, or transcribed from statements made by JD. Salinger.
[20:20] Speaker 3: So it's the keep my name at your mouth cutte percent.
[20:24] Speaker 2: Oh, and he had to file with the court the
[20:25] Speaker 2: name of every person, firm, or company to whom he
[20:29] Speaker 2: had addressed any communication relating to or purporting to be
[20:32] Speaker 2: derived from JD.
[20:33] Speaker 3: Souder WHOA.
[20:34] Speaker 2: So what we've seen here is the beginning of the
[20:36] Speaker 2: not so great career of Stephen Cunis.
[20:39] Speaker 3: It goes on from here.
[20:40] Speaker 2: Let's take a break. When we come back, we're going
[20:42] Speaker 2: to get to know him a little better, all right, Zaren, Stephen,
[21:06] Speaker 2: ste what you think you'll come to find that it's
[21:11] Speaker 2: almost impossible to believe anything this guy says.
[21:15] Speaker 3: He does seem to fair no matter how.
[21:17] Speaker 2: Much he swears to it. But people do. People believe him. So,
[21:20] Speaker 2: according to a self written author bio quote. Stephen Cunis
[21:25] Speaker 2: was born on September seventh, nineteen fifty six in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
[21:30] Speaker 2: and attended New York University, where he received BA degrees
[21:33] Speaker 2: in Creative writing and comparative literature in nineteen seventy eight.
[21:37] Speaker 2: Is any of that true?
[21:39] Speaker 3: I was just about ask you the same question.
[21:41] Speaker 2: Thank you? The Pennsylvania part, Yeah, that's true. The rest
[21:45] Speaker 2: who knows? So his bio goes on. In nineteen eighty three,
[21:49] Speaker 2: at age twenty six, TV legend Norman Lear hired Cuonis
[21:53] Speaker 2: to write and develop half hour comedies for his company,
[21:56] Speaker 2: Embassy Television. This led to assignments in the areas of
[22:00] Speaker 2: one hour TV Movies of the Week, a five year
[22:03] Speaker 2: stint writing monologues for Johnny Carson, and eventually to motion pictures.
[22:07] Speaker 3: Oh Johnny Gonna get him.
[22:09] Speaker 2: So, as we learn from Annalise Rutger, you can put
[22:12] Speaker 2: a lot of made up stuff into IMDb and it
[22:15] Speaker 2: will go unnoticed for a long time, for a long time,
[22:18] Speaker 2: and others others will look at who is does anyone know?
[22:24] Speaker 2: Analiese Rutger. Others will look at IMDb and take it
[22:28] Speaker 2: as gospel, especially like journalists who aren't in the entertainment world,
[22:33] Speaker 2: looking for confirmation of what someone says, and.
[22:36] Speaker 3: Also people who don't do the you need two sources thing.
[22:39] Speaker 3: You just find it once on the internet, good enough to.
[22:42] Speaker 2: Get out of people. And I think in the entertainment
[22:45] Speaker 2: industry itself, people are more wary of Yes, yeah, not always,
[22:51] Speaker 2: not always. So let's go back to Norman Lear to refresh.
[22:56] Speaker 2: Lear was a screenwriter and producer who produced, wrote, created
[23:00] Speaker 2: more than one hundred TV show TV Powerhouse, Yeah, stuff
[23:03] Speaker 2: like All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Jefferson's One
[23:06] Speaker 2: Day at a Time, Good Times. He did sitcoms, but
[23:10] Speaker 2: they tackled social issues and political Maud. Maud was on
[23:15] Speaker 2: that list.
[23:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, you're talking about tackling social issues. You got to
[23:18] Speaker 3: give a respect to be Arthur's first show.
[23:20] Speaker 2: He Norman Lear was a genius, like truly a genius.
[23:24] Speaker 3: And also both sides of the divide thought he was
[23:27] Speaker 3: making the comedy for them. So if you watch Archie Bunker,
[23:30] Speaker 3: people thought that they weren't making fun of Archie Bunker,
[23:32] Speaker 3: they were finally giving voice to the silent majority of America.
[23:35] Speaker 2: Exactly so, as I said, Kunis tells people on podcasts
[23:40] Speaker 2: and other interviews to this day that he wrote to
[23:43] Speaker 2: Norman Lear when he was twenty six and he sent
[23:46] Speaker 2: along spec scripts that he'd written for Taxi and Mash
[23:50] Speaker 2: and Lear loved them. According to Steve, Lear was like,
[23:56] Speaker 2: you are amazing at dialogue.
[23:57] Speaker 3: You're so good, better than I am.
[24:00] Speaker 2: So Actually, according to Cunis, he said Cunis had quote
[24:04] Speaker 2: a real ear for dialogue that was what not the
[24:07] Speaker 2: other one, And he told him, quote, your big mistake
[24:09] Speaker 2: with Salinger is that you should have waited until he died.
[24:13] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's the Norman Mayler play.
[24:15] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So Lear thought Cunis was so good at
[24:19] Speaker 2: Dialogue that he wanted to fly Cunis out to LA
[24:23] Speaker 2: And we know that Lear wanted to give him a
[24:26] Speaker 2: two year writing contract.
[24:27] Speaker 3: Two years.
[24:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, So even his self created IMDV credits don't really
[24:33] Speaker 2: match up to what he boasts about. Like, I do
[24:36] Speaker 2: think he went to LA and landed some writing gigs,
[24:39] Speaker 2: but they didn't last more than an episode or so
[24:42] Speaker 2: for each show. And I think he worked on a
[24:45] Speaker 2: couple of Norman Lear pilots, and he wrote for one
[24:47] Speaker 2: episode of a show that lasted only a season, something
[24:50] Speaker 2: called Aka Pablo, starring Paul Rodriguez as a struggling standard.
[24:55] Speaker 4: No.
[24:57] Speaker 2: I think it was before our time, I was able
[24:59] Speaker 2: to firm that he did write for a TV movie
[25:02] Speaker 2: that Norman Lear did called Pop Okay.
[25:06] Speaker 3: How many writers are on that?
[25:08] Speaker 2: Not many? No, And it's I found this book that
[25:12] Speaker 2: like he had to go into internet archive and it's
[25:16] Speaker 2: like this crazy book that's a compendium of like every
[25:19] Speaker 2: sitcom and TV.
[25:21] Speaker 3: No pop is that like pop? Worker's like a robot.
[25:23] Speaker 2: Not to tell you relax, Rubby Toes on a mink
[25:28] Speaker 2: rugg Okay. Pop. It aired on NBC on August twenty ninth,
[25:31] Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. Here's the cast. Charles Derning as p
[25:36] Speaker 2: Oliver Pendergrast, b Arthur as Roslind Gordon, Todd Graff as
[25:43] Speaker 2: Johnny Pendergrast, James Lashley as Russell Penda, by the way,
[25:47] Speaker 2: is incredible, Oh yeah, fran Dresher as Maggie Newton, Jane
[25:52] Speaker 2: Anderson as Dana McNeil, and Tonio Fargas as Frank Wilkie.
[25:56] Speaker 2: And Anthony Holland as Mark Alderman.
[25:59] Speaker 3: If I'm not mistake, and Charles Derning is one of
[26:01] Speaker 3: the most awarded soldiers of World War Two.
[26:03] Speaker 2: Really interesting.
[26:05] Speaker 3: I did not know got some of the most metals.
[26:07] Speaker 2: The guy you know, he was in a TV movie
[26:09] Speaker 2: called Pop.
[26:10] Speaker 3: No but I do. I can do his dance from
[26:12] Speaker 3: the best Little Horouse in Texas when he's the governor
[26:14] Speaker 3: does stuff with his hat. I can do that. Good.
[26:17] Speaker 2: That's good.
[26:17] Speaker 3: I like that for you remember anything about ever hearing
[26:21] Speaker 3: about pop? You know, hearing references.
[26:23] Speaker 2: It's a one off nineteen eighty four TV movie, Yeah
[26:27] Speaker 2: but still. The credits list Lear as the producer and
[26:30] Speaker 2: both Stephen Coonis and Norman Lear as the writers, and
[26:34] Speaker 2: it was directed by Bud Yorkin, who would later go
[26:37] Speaker 2: on to direct Arthur Two on the Rocks.
[26:40] Speaker 3: You know me. I like the Arthur movies. I like
[26:43] Speaker 3: eighties entertainment. I go back. People are like before your birth.
[26:46] Speaker 3: I'm like I do.
[26:47] Speaker 2: Here's the concept. Twenty years after deserting his family, a
[26:51] Speaker 2: lovable con artist named p Oliver Prendergast Pop for short,
[26:56] Speaker 2: returns to his estranged family, his wife, Roslyn, the published
[27:00] Speaker 2: sure of a magazine called Personality Plus, and his now
[27:03] Speaker 2: grown sons, Johnny and Russell. Oliver's effort to become a
[27:06] Speaker 2: father and husband to a family he really doesn't know
[27:09] Speaker 2: are depicted. Maggie, Dana, Frank, and Mark are employees. Of Roslin.
[27:14] Speaker 3: This sounds like a Max Dugan return to Knockoff.
[27:16] Speaker 2: Doesn't it, Roderick, Yeah, just on NBC Quickie.
[27:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, a version.
[27:24] Speaker 2: But how it wasn't an instant classic. I don't know.
[27:26] Speaker 2: Why don't we watch it every year on ourbor Day.
[27:28] Speaker 3: I'm going with Stephen Cunis's a contribution, I think.
[27:32] Speaker 2: So, So let's get back to the bio, because he
[27:34] Speaker 2: got a dialogue. He said he wrote monologues for Johnny
[27:38] Speaker 2: Carson for five years, and according to his self written
[27:42] Speaker 2: I am dB bio quote, during his last four years
[27:46] Speaker 2: on The Tonight Show, Cuonis was Johnny Carson's primary monologue
[27:49] Speaker 2: writer and wrote the final joke that Carson ever delivered.
[27:53] Speaker 3: I do not believe him.
[27:55] Speaker 2: No, Like that's like no. So. IMDb states that he
[28:02] Speaker 2: was a quote creative consultant on the show from nineteen
[28:05] Speaker 2: eighty nine to nineteen ninety one.
[28:06] Speaker 3: Okay, so it'll be close to his last year, but not.
[28:09] Speaker 2: Any of the writers, and he didn't get credit on
[28:11] Speaker 2: the final episode, which was in nineteen ninety two.
[28:13] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[28:14] Speaker 2: What I really love is the trivia section on his
[28:17] Speaker 2: IMDb page, and I shall read some to you. Wrote
[28:22] Speaker 2: the two hundredth episode of Love Boat tv Guide. The
[28:27] Speaker 2: TV Guide rank number eighty two among the one hundred
[28:30] Speaker 2: greatest episodes of all time.
[28:32] Speaker 3: That's a lot of numbers, it is.
[28:34] Speaker 2: Likes to tell strangers he's a taxidermist or an insurance underwriter.
[28:38] Speaker 3: That's kind of like you that that's one hundred percent.
[28:39] Speaker 2: What I do now. I'm like scared, here's one for you.
[28:44] Speaker 2: Writes his screenplays by hand on a yellow legal pad
[28:49] Speaker 2: you graduated from New York University in nineteen seventy eight.
[28:54] Speaker 2: Writes most of his screenplays with Dustin Hoffman in mind.
[28:58] Speaker 3: Like just for all the parts.
[29:00] Speaker 2: Favorite movie is Midnight Cowboy.
[29:02] Speaker 3: That's an interesting choice.
[29:03] Speaker 2: Likes to work with cinematographer John Seal Okay, I sure
[29:07] Speaker 2: want has been a Ham radio operator since age thirteen,
[29:12] Speaker 2: and then it gives his handle KQ six d F
[29:16] Speaker 2: formerly WA three m ZV.
[29:18] Speaker 3: Sure, I don't know what that means. He always wanted
[29:21] Speaker 3: to though.
[29:22] Speaker 2: Moved to Montecito, California, where he continues to write and
[29:26] Speaker 2: help aspiring writers through seminars and workshops.
[29:28] Speaker 3: I was just about to see this, so I'm like,
[29:30] Speaker 3: you know, this guy has done seven.
[29:33] Speaker 2: From January two thousand and seven, Carson present is an
[29:37] Speaker 2: adjunct assistant professor in the Creative Writing Program at New
[29:40] Speaker 2: York University. May twenty second, nineteen, New York University.
[29:45] Speaker 3: Okay, that's being New York Film Academy NYU.
[29:47] Speaker 2: Okay, his last four years on The Tonight Show, as
[29:51] Speaker 2: we said he was, he claims he was Johnny Carson's
[29:53] Speaker 2: primary monologue writer wrote the final joke. In May twentieth,
[29:58] Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. Kun has sold an original screenplay entitled
[30:02] Speaker 2: First Comes Love to Westport Film Partners, headed by former
[30:06] Speaker 2: Warner Brothers Music president Stephen Craig Aristae, for one point
[30:10] Speaker 2: two million dollars. This was the highest amount ever paid
[30:13] Speaker 2: for an original screenplay at the time of its sale,
[30:16] Speaker 2: and made the front page of Daily Variety.
[30:18] Speaker 3: Okay, now, Joe esterhass eat my short Marissa and I
[30:23] Speaker 3: he has the highest Yeah, you know, had a heck.
[30:26] Speaker 2: Of a time running some of these down.
[30:28] Speaker 3: I bet so.
[30:29] Speaker 2: The variety archives for Daily Variety seem to have been
[30:32] Speaker 2: shuddered because I was like, I kept finding where you could.
[30:35] Speaker 2: I'm like, I'll pay yeah to go through their old
[30:37] Speaker 2: I'll give you credit. It doesn't exist anymore. But the
[30:41] Speaker 2: only mentions of that First Comes Love screenplay and Westport
[30:46] Speaker 2: Film Partners online are from Kuna's himself. Yeah, I couldn't
[30:51] Speaker 2: find a record of Westport Film Partners. And Stephen Craig
[30:55] Speaker 2: Aristae wasn't the president of Warner Brothers Music. He was
[30:58] Speaker 2: general manager, or at least he says, like he has
[31:02] Speaker 2: a super hazy online presence in work history, and he
[31:06] Speaker 2: was supposed to be moving into movies with that screenplay acquisition,
[31:10] Speaker 2: but his IMDb page only lists one project something will
[31:14] Speaker 2: get to later. But that involves Stephen coonis oh for real? Yeah,
[31:18] Speaker 2: and it's not a feature film. So then Marissa was
[31:21] Speaker 2: like super tempted to call NYU to see if he
[31:25] Speaker 2: really was an assistant, like an adjunct assistant professor at
[31:29] Speaker 2: the Creative Writing program. But instead she's like, I just
[31:32] Speaker 2: went through all their directories and schedules and came up
[31:34] Speaker 2: with nothing.
[31:35] Speaker 3: Oh look at her.
[31:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, So can't get anything by that woman. So, according
[31:40] Speaker 2: to the Santa Barbara Independent, Cunis mentioned his work on
[31:45] Speaker 2: to a lot of people on Harry Potter and The
[31:47] Speaker 2: Half Blood Prince, and he said his name didn't appear
[31:50] Speaker 2: in the credits because he was part of a larger
[31:52] Speaker 2: writing group.
[31:54] Speaker 3: That does happen, but that's usually for like later punch
[31:57] Speaker 3: Up Dash. It's like, oh, you write for one character
[31:59] Speaker 3: or you at joke, So you had, mister, you had
[32:01] Speaker 3: some element that isn't there because somebody wants it.
[32:03] Speaker 2: But well, he his his IMDb page is riddled with
[32:07] Speaker 2: credits that aren't really credits, so like he listed himself
[32:10] Speaker 2: there as uncredited creative consultant on movies like Legally Blonde,
[32:16] Speaker 2: Wag the Dog, Groundhog Day, Rainman, The Pelican bin Man,
[32:21] Speaker 2: Catch Me If you Can so great. He was interviewed
[32:26] Speaker 2: on a podcast called story Beat, a podcast for the
[32:29] Speaker 2: creative mind, and he said that he has that credit
[32:33] Speaker 2: on Catch Me if you Can because the producer asked
[32:36] Speaker 2: him to rewrite the script to make the main character
[32:39] Speaker 2: quote more likable.
[32:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go, that's what That's what a script
[32:42] Speaker 3: doctor does.
[32:42] Speaker 2: Agreed to do it for free, which sounds you know,
[32:47] Speaker 2: and then when the script eventually got sold many years later,
[32:50] Speaker 2: it was totally rewritten. Yeah. Well, but there's like the
[32:54] Speaker 2: analyst Rutger of it all.
[32:55] Speaker 3: Does he actually have a credit on that? Like if
[32:57] Speaker 3: I go watch the movie, well I see his name.
[33:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's out there telling tales about his Hollywood success,
[33:06] Speaker 2: and then he's also pulling some traditional ridiculous crimes. So
[33:10] Speaker 2: from that same Santa Barbara Independent article quote, Kunis has
[33:14] Speaker 2: been in and out of trouble since nineteen ninety nine,
[33:18] Speaker 2: with felony convictions of forgery, grand theft, and false use
[33:22] Speaker 2: of financial information. He was implicated for participating in a
[33:26] Speaker 2: Los Angeles caper during which thirteen victims lost a total
[33:30] Speaker 2: of three hundred and nineteen thousand dollars after fake credit
[33:33] Speaker 2: cards were made in their names.
[33:35] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so he's back to identity theft Zarin.
[33:38] Speaker 2: That is conduct unbecoming of a sitcom writer.
[33:41] Speaker 3: Quite frankly, Norman would not be happy now.
[33:44] Speaker 2: He ran check fraud too, So in two thousand and one,
[33:47] Speaker 2: he stole two checks from a Santa Barbara man's mailbox.
[33:51] Speaker 3: This's why he was in to catch me, if you can.
[33:52] Speaker 3: I was taking notes.
[33:53] Speaker 2: He was totally taking notes. He got out his chemistry
[33:56] Speaker 2: set and used chemicals to erase the writing on hostolen chain,
[34:00] Speaker 2: then filled in his own stuff. The guy filed a
[34:04] Speaker 2: forgery report with the detectives, and when the cops tracked
[34:06] Speaker 2: the money down, Cunis had already used it. He made
[34:09] Speaker 2: car payments, he paid for a membership at the golf club.
[34:15] Speaker 3: Right.
[34:15] Speaker 2: So, while the Santa Barbara p D were investigating, they
[34:19] Speaker 2: learned that other municipalities were on the hunt for Cunas,
[34:23] Speaker 2: San Mateo and Palo Alto up in the Bay area.
[34:26] Speaker 2: Oh wow, thousand oaks in the South Line. I'm wondering,
[34:31] Speaker 2: but it was all like similar financial crimes. Then they
[34:34] Speaker 2: learned that he was under investigation in Princeton, New Jersey,
[34:37] Speaker 2: and East Levettown, Pennsylvania, too, closer to his old hometown.
[34:42] Speaker 2: So Cunis was eventually found guilty for the check washing incident.
[34:47] Speaker 2: He pleaded out got felony probation, but the probation didn't last.
[34:52] Speaker 2: He violated his probation by getting pinched on a different
[34:55] Speaker 2: forgery case and that got him two years eight months
[34:58] Speaker 2: in prison in November two thousand and seven. That wasn't
[35:02] Speaker 2: all he was up to. In two thousand and seven, Elizabeth,
[35:05] Speaker 2: he contacted the Santa Barbara Daily Sound newspaper and he
[35:09] Speaker 2: sold them an interview that he did oh No this
[35:11] Speaker 2: time with Jimmy Buffett ahead of a show that Buffett
[35:14] Speaker 2: was about to play at the Santa Barbara Bowl.
[35:16] Speaker 3: He didn't wait for him to leave.
[35:18] Speaker 2: He did it before so Buffett would see the interview
[35:21] Speaker 2: ran in the paper, and then the paper got a
[35:23] Speaker 2: call Hello Daily Sound. Yeah, I'm Jimmy Buffett's manager. He
[35:27] Speaker 2: has no idea who this Stephen Kunis guy is and
[35:30] Speaker 2: has never even had done an interview with him, never
[35:33] Speaker 2: met him. Like what, Gibbs. Yeah, They're like, yeah, what
[35:36] Speaker 2: gives you know what? Conduct unbecoming a sitcom writer? So
[35:41] Speaker 2: he does his time for forgery paper, she's a correction exactly.
[35:45] Speaker 2: He got out. He decided he wanted to make a comeback.
[35:49] Speaker 2: He'd written a play when he was inside.
[35:51] Speaker 3: Of course.
[35:51] Speaker 2: It was called Hopeless Romantic, not to be confused with
[35:55] Speaker 2: the incredible nineteen ninety nine Bouncing Souls album and song
[35:58] Speaker 2: of the same name.
[35:59] Speaker 3: Thank you very legit.
[36:00] Speaker 2: That's a great album. It's got bullying the jukebox and
[36:03] Speaker 2: Night on Earth.
[36:03] Speaker 3: On it good classing.
[36:06] Speaker 2: Now, this was some stupid play. I have no idea
[36:10] Speaker 2: what it was about. But in twenty ten he decided
[36:13] Speaker 2: to hold a reading of the play. He rented Center
[36:16] Speaker 2: Stage Theater in Santa Barbara for it. Uh huh. From
[36:19] Speaker 2: The Independent quote Terry Ball, executive director of center Stage
[36:23] Speaker 2: said Cunis wanted to give the knight's proceeds back to
[36:26] Speaker 2: the playhouse, which she agreed to, but Ball said Cunis
[36:29] Speaker 2: went around town falsely representing Center Stage at the time
[36:33] Speaker 2: it was about to celebrate its twentieth anniversary and trying
[36:36] Speaker 2: to raise money for it. So he goes into Helene
[36:40] Speaker 2: Schneider's office, you know who that is, Mayor of Santa
[36:44] Speaker 2: Barbara at the time, and he convinces her to save
[36:47] Speaker 2: the date. He wants her there not just to watch,
[36:50] Speaker 2: but also to read a proclamation commending center Stage's success
[36:54] Speaker 2: and his success such economy, because that was just as important.
[36:59] Speaker 2: He also wanted to.
[37:00] Speaker 3: Wear a sash, says Mayor of.
[37:02] Speaker 2: Santa He wanted her to present a check for fifteen
[37:05] Speaker 2: thousand dollars, big check that he said he had an
[37:08] Speaker 2: investor who wanted to give that to the theater, of course,
[37:10] Speaker 2: and she's like, all right, she shows up, she does
[37:13] Speaker 2: her mayoral duties, she spoke, she read the proclamation, She's like,
[37:17] Speaker 2: all right, where's the check, will hand it over. There's
[37:19] Speaker 2: no check, Like on with the show, just keep going.
[37:22] Speaker 3: I forgot to make a check.
[37:24] Speaker 2: So he made around seven hundred and fifty bucks at
[37:26] Speaker 2: the door that night. Most of it came from himself
[37:30] Speaker 2: because he bought up these huge blocks of tickets for
[37:33] Speaker 2: his friends. The theater never saw a dime. He's like,
[37:35] Speaker 2: I'll give it all back to you.
[37:36] Speaker 3: They never saw her, of course, not imagine it's like one
[37:38] Speaker 3: hundred seat theater or something. So he's like judging eight
[37:41] Speaker 3: bucks or whatever.
[37:42] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[37:42] Speaker 2: He wrote checks to the actors and the stage folks
[37:44] Speaker 2: for their work. All the checks down, of course, and
[37:47] Speaker 2: it wasn't account was empty. It was because the routing
[37:51] Speaker 2: numbers on the checks were correct, but they connected to
[37:54] Speaker 2: an East Coast bank account that didn't exist. Oh wow,
[37:58] Speaker 2: fake everything fast.
[37:59] Speaker 3: I thought. He was like that payment, No, it wasn't
[38:02] Speaker 3: even from a real thing, had fake routing.
[38:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, so some of the people were able to track
[38:06] Speaker 2: him down.
[38:07] Speaker 3: And take off.
[38:09] Speaker 2: I think so, yeah wow, And then he was like
[38:11] Speaker 2: he scared up some cash for some of them, but
[38:13] Speaker 2: most went.
[38:14] Speaker 3: When they showed up in his door pounding on the.
[38:16] Speaker 2: Basically, and I feel like maybe Konis thought that this
[38:19] Speaker 2: was a way to get back into the good graces
[38:21] Speaker 2: of like the Hollywood set with a vanity production and recognition,
[38:25] Speaker 2: like at the expense of the Santa Barbara set.
[38:28] Speaker 3: This is such the screenwriter has like workshops and they
[38:31] Speaker 3: tell you, you know, if you want to make it
[38:33] Speaker 3: in Holly, I'll tell you so.
[38:36] Speaker 2: At the end of twenty ten, he gets busted again.
[38:39] Speaker 2: He was arrested for second degree commercial burglary. Wow, intend
[38:43] Speaker 2: to commit larceny and forgery for attempting to pass twelve
[38:47] Speaker 2: grand in bad checks at Montecito Bank Intrust.
[38:50] Speaker 3: I can't believe he's trying to do.
[38:52] Speaker 2: He got an enhancement on the charges thanks to the
[38:54] Speaker 2: prior felonies, and they should have also charged him with
[38:58] Speaker 2: what what conduct becoming a sitcom writer? So next the
[39:03] Speaker 2: next year he's at it again. March twenty eleven, he
[39:06] Speaker 2: gets arrested on a parole violation. And this is such
[39:10] Speaker 2: a good one. He is apparently swindling a friend of his.
[39:14] Speaker 3: Always with the friends.
[39:16] Speaker 2: It was a guy named Wally Roncietto, and he owned
[39:20] Speaker 2: a Santa Barbara restaurant called Cafe Buenos Aires. And Roncietto
[39:24] Speaker 2: had given him some footage of an Argentine tango violinist.
[39:29] Speaker 2: You know, as you do among friends and cunis is
[39:33] Speaker 2: like this would make for a great movie, like the
[39:35] Speaker 2: violinist life story. I don't know. Cunus is like, you
[39:38] Speaker 2: know what, I know a guy, good buddy of mine,
[39:41] Speaker 2: that guy producer, director Robert Semechis.
[39:45] Speaker 3: Wow, He's like, you seen director.
[39:47] Speaker 2: Of Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future trilogy, who
[39:50] Speaker 2: framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, contact castaway and his most
[39:55] Speaker 2: important work tales from the crypt Bordello of Blood. Okay,
[40:01] Speaker 2: okay people. So Ronchetto's blown away. Yes, he's like, I
[40:06] Speaker 2: can't believe it, and even more blown away when Cunis
[40:09] Speaker 2: forwards him an email from Zamechas and he's like, I'm
[40:13] Speaker 2: a Forrest Gump? Have you seen Bordello of Blood? I'm
[40:18] Speaker 2: all in. We are go. So Cunis then tells roncietto look.
[40:23] Speaker 2: We all we have to do is we each put
[40:24] Speaker 2: in two thousand dollars to secure a top shelf film editor,
[40:28] Speaker 2: because that's how you do it in the biz. When
[40:30] Speaker 2: you're working with Robert Zemechis, every little council film editor
[40:34] Speaker 2: you have to have four grand if you want a
[40:36] Speaker 2: good film editors walk in the door money. Yeah. So
[40:39] Speaker 2: Ronchetto cuts Cunus a check. Oh my god, but he's
[40:42] Speaker 2: starting to think something's off, so he contacts Robert Zemechis himself.
[40:47] Speaker 2: That's an amazing cold call to make. I don't know
[40:50] Speaker 2: Zamechas had never heard of Cunis, knew nothing about the project.
[40:53] Speaker 2: The forwarded email was fake, of course, and the two
[40:56] Speaker 2: thousand was now cozy in Cunus's bank account. Shatto calls
[41:00] Speaker 2: the cops.
[41:01] Speaker 3: Cunus Is arrests answers or however he got.
[41:04] Speaker 2: To my god, yeah, exactly. Kuus gets arrested, charged with
[41:08] Speaker 2: theft by false pretenses and resisting arrest. On that way,
[41:14] Speaker 2: Apparently there are other victims of the con, but they
[41:16] Speaker 2: didn't want their names publicly released.
[41:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing.
[41:19] Speaker 2: Let's take a break. When we come back from these
[41:22] Speaker 2: delightful and robust ads you're about to hear, you'll be
[41:25] Speaker 2: shocked to learn that Stephen Coonis just can't help himself.
[41:29] Speaker 3: Boy can't stop.
[41:50] Speaker 2: Zaren.
[41:51] Speaker 3: I'm still hung up on him writing the last Johnny
[41:54] Speaker 3: Carson joke. I now want to go and see what
[41:56] Speaker 3: it was.
[41:57] Speaker 2: I know, I thought that I was going to pull
[41:58] Speaker 2: up the last episode, but I kind of ran out
[42:01] Speaker 2: of time.
[42:01] Speaker 3: That's all right, that's fine. I don't expect everything from you,
[42:04] Speaker 3: my little fixation.
[42:07] Speaker 2: I wanted to know, like when you say he wrote
[42:10] Speaker 2: the monologues, like I just am not buying it.
[42:13] Speaker 3: No, not at all.
[42:14] Speaker 2: I mean it's like a Bruce Valanche type thing, but legit,
[42:17] Speaker 2: but legit. I would have met like he could. If
[42:20] Speaker 2: Bruce Valanche told me I wrote all of Johnny's monologues
[42:23] Speaker 2: for the last four years of his show and I
[42:25] Speaker 2: wrote the last joke, I'd be like, Bruce Valanche, You're
[42:28] Speaker 2: a madman and I love it.
[42:30] Speaker 3: I mean that guy wrote most of the Oscars jokes
[42:32] Speaker 3: of our childhood.
[42:32] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
[42:33] Speaker 3: So it's like, okay, I believe him, and we've heard
[42:35] Speaker 3: of him. Yeah, everybody reference other comics.
[42:37] Speaker 2: Reference because I use it. I use him as an insult.
[42:40] Speaker 2: When someone thinks they're being funny, you say, okay, Bruce Valanche,
[42:43] Speaker 2: and then they look at you and they say, I
[42:45] Speaker 2: don't know who you're doing.
[42:47] Speaker 3: That's that's two inside baseball for me.
[42:49] Speaker 2: So anyway, we would have heard this dude. Uh speaking
[42:53] Speaker 2: of dude, Steve Kunis so to April twenty eleven, he's
[42:58] Speaker 2: at it again. Santa Barbara is apparently just like lousy
[43:02] Speaker 2: with newspapers, which is how it should be.
[43:04] Speaker 3: I know, I'm incredible the number. So far.
[43:06] Speaker 2: We've heard about the Independent and the Sound. Now we're
[43:08] Speaker 2: going to talk about the Santa Barbara Paper News Hawk
[43:12] Speaker 2: n O O z H A w K wow. Right,
[43:17] Speaker 2: that's extreme. That's like heart, that's they mean it. They
[43:21] Speaker 2: really have a let's metal.
[43:22] Speaker 3: They're about the news.
[43:23] Speaker 2: They are let's have a frank discussion about it, shall
[43:25] Speaker 2: we please? So Kunis had been submitting essays to the
[43:28] Speaker 2: paper and they're running them, of course, but then an
[43:31] Speaker 2: eagle eyed reader pointed out that they didn't seem like
[43:34] Speaker 2: original pieces, and maybe that person saw the name and
[43:38] Speaker 2: knew something had to be up. Like Santa Barbara's a
[43:41] Speaker 2: good sized city, but it's also it's a small like
[43:44] Speaker 2: people know each other and they talk where it gets around.
[43:46] Speaker 3: Gossip, and also there's like clicks, you know.
[43:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's social strata and the group in which he's
[43:52] Speaker 2: moving that would spread like wildfire.
[43:53] Speaker 3: So it's like NAPA, like you know, some people, people
[43:56] Speaker 3: are going to know other people and they're going to talk,
[43:58] Speaker 3: especially if something like this was just a using stories like.
[44:01] Speaker 2: This bozo totally so News Hawk publisher Bill mcphaden launched
[44:06] Speaker 2: an investigation, and of course he got something plagiarism. So
[44:10] Speaker 2: at least two of the essays My Children the Experts
[44:14] Speaker 2: and Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover were copied,
[44:18] Speaker 2: in some cases verbatim from pieces that ran in Newsweek,
[44:21] Speaker 2: and by the same writer both times. Not bombak No,
[44:26] Speaker 2: best selling author and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Anna Quinlan. Oh,
[44:30] Speaker 2: he just ripped off. Bill mcphaden found that none of
[44:35] Speaker 2: the references or bona fetus that Kunis cited for himself existed.
[44:39] Speaker 3: He's got an ear for dialogue that I know he
[44:41] Speaker 3: really does.
[44:42] Speaker 2: None of the other publications, none of the awards that
[44:45] Speaker 2: he said he won, none of the Hollywood credits all fake.
[44:51] Speaker 2: There's another Santa Barbara newspaper. It turns out, the Santa
[44:54] Speaker 2: Barbara News Press.
[44:56] Speaker 3: Yes, isn't that the actual the.
[44:58] Speaker 2: Actually the paper, Cuona's had columns that ran there and
[45:03] Speaker 2: in the Santa Barbara Independent. They were also ripped off
[45:06] Speaker 2: from Newsweek. CUDA's still had actual criminal charges pending when
[45:13] Speaker 2: he's doing this and not just conduct unbecoming a sitcom writer.
[45:17] Speaker 2: Oh man, he tried to make it go away by
[45:20] Speaker 2: going away. So yeah, he skipped his court dates that
[45:24] Speaker 2: were in August of twenty eleven, and he ran off
[45:26] Speaker 2: to New Jersey with his girlfriend. The state yeah, so
[45:30] Speaker 2: the judge issued a twenty thousand dollars bench warrant for
[45:32] Speaker 2: his arrest. Police in New Jersey got word that he
[45:35] Speaker 2: was there. I don't know how, and they arrested him
[45:38] Speaker 2: a month after he ran Wow. A month later, he
[45:41] Speaker 2: pleaded guilty for the whole Tango violinist movie con thing
[45:46] Speaker 2: and fakeful and the fake checks that he tried to
[45:49] Speaker 2: run through Montecito Bank and Trust. He gets sentenced to
[45:52] Speaker 2: five years, and he said, though, if you pay back
[45:56] Speaker 2: all your victims, we'll knock it down to four years.
[45:58] Speaker 3: Okay, So I think we.
[46:00] Speaker 2: Cannot be surprised that Cunis never paid anyone back.
[46:03] Speaker 3: I am not surprised at.
[46:04] Speaker 2: First, he told the court. Yeah, I paid Everybody's cool,
[46:06] Speaker 2: it's I'll just keep going. No, No, they're busy, don't
[46:09] Speaker 2: bother them. And it was so painful, don't bring it up. So,
[46:15] Speaker 2: according to the Independent quote, Cunis told his lawyer that
[46:19] Speaker 2: his Montesito Bank and Trust victims had been paid back,
[46:22] Speaker 2: saying one of his former bosses now deceased had put
[46:25] Speaker 2: seven thousand dollars in Cunis's account. The money was then
[46:29] Speaker 2: transferred back to the right customers, and that's why his
[46:32] Speaker 2: account showed a zero balance, Cunis said. Lear, His lawyer,
[46:36] Speaker 2: claims Cunis's story was mistakenly corroborated by a bank employee
[46:40] Speaker 2: who spoke to one of his law office pairalegals. It
[46:43] Speaker 2: turns out, explained the prosecutor, who followed up with the
[46:46] Speaker 2: branch's manager, the bank had actually zeroed out the account
[46:49] Speaker 2: as part of its internal collections procedure, knowing Cutis as
[46:54] Speaker 2: I do, the prosecutor told the court, I didn't take
[46:56] Speaker 2: his word for it. Bank account records show what looked
[46:59] Speaker 2: like a deposit, which CUIs apparently claimed was money given
[47:02] Speaker 2: by a former now deceased boss, but the banks of
[47:05] Speaker 2: the account was emptied so it could report a loss
[47:08] Speaker 2: from the forge check and sent it to collections SOW.
[47:13] Speaker 2: In May of twenty twelve, Stephen Kunis gets sentenced to
[47:16] Speaker 2: five years in county jail that day.
[47:19] Speaker 3: Don't go over six wens.
[47:20] Speaker 2: I didn't think so either, But you know, if you
[47:22] Speaker 2: go to prison lockups no good under California's prison realignment legislation.
[47:28] Speaker 2: Cunis opted for at home detention, which I did not
[47:31] Speaker 2: know was a thing. That choice.
[47:32] Speaker 3: So he has like an ankle monitor and.
[47:34] Speaker 2: They just so that's what he picked. You know, it
[47:37] Speaker 2: must be nice. Check your privilege, Steve.
[47:39] Speaker 3: So this like under Jerry Brown, Like what are we
[47:41] Speaker 3: doing herewelve twelve? I think so. I think Jerry Brown
[47:46] Speaker 3: was like our governor.
[47:47] Speaker 2: Then I don't recall Zarin. Close your eyes.
[47:51] Speaker 3: Oh, I'm scared. You don't want to be in his
[47:54] Speaker 3: own prison.
[47:59] Speaker 2: It's in August twenty twelve. The Dark Knight rises as
[48:03] Speaker 2: captivating theater audiences. Call Me Maybe by Carly ray Jepson
[48:08] Speaker 2: is a top of the shirts. The Badminton World Federation
[48:12] Speaker 2: has just charged eight women's doubles players from South Korea,
[48:16] Speaker 2: China and Indonesia with quote not using one's best efforts
[48:20] Speaker 2: to win a match conduct unbecoming a badminton player. You
[48:26] Speaker 2: are a clerk at a FedEx store in Santa Barbara, California.
[48:30] Speaker 2: Today is a slow one. You've finished arranging all the
[48:34] Speaker 2: forms on the counter and have replenished all the shipping boxes.
[48:37] Speaker 2: Now you just sit there, a radio playing softly in
[48:40] Speaker 2: the background. Your notepad in front of you. You are
[48:43] Speaker 2: a student at Santa Barbara City College. You're majoring in Film,
[48:47] Speaker 2: Television and Electronic Media Associate and Science for Transfer. You
[48:51] Speaker 2: intend to transfer to UCLA next year to continue your
[48:54] Speaker 2: studies and work toward a career in Hollywood. You ultimately
[48:58] Speaker 2: wanted to erect, but right now you're working on a screenplay. Well,
[49:02] Speaker 2: you want to be working on a screenplay. You just
[49:04] Speaker 2: don't have a solid idea right now. Your notepad is
[49:07] Speaker 2: full of vague notions, but you just aren't there yet.
[49:11] Speaker 2: A professor of yours told you that all you need
[49:13] Speaker 2: is one moment, one scene that sets it all off,
[49:17] Speaker 2: not necessarily the first scene in the movie, but the
[49:19] Speaker 2: heart of it what grabs people, and you'll be able
[49:22] Speaker 2: to build it out from there. You've got to think
[49:25] Speaker 2: of that one moment, that one thing that'll stick in
[49:28] Speaker 2: people's minds, that'll grow a rich story around it. The
[49:32] Speaker 2: door chimes as a man enters the shop. He's carrying
[49:35] Speaker 2: a canvas tote bag Writer's Guild of America West. It
[49:39] Speaker 2: says on it, he must be a screenwriter. Your spine
[49:42] Speaker 2: straightens as you sit higher in your stool, and he
[49:44] Speaker 2: walks across the store to your counter. He sets his
[49:47] Speaker 2: tote bag on the counter and looks you in the eyes.
[49:49] Speaker 2: He tells you that he needs to ship something. You
[49:51] Speaker 2: tell him that's what you're here for. He tells you
[49:54] Speaker 2: he'll need a box as he pulls a scrap of
[49:56] Speaker 2: paper with an address out of his pocket. You ask
[49:59] Speaker 2: what he shipp He looks both ways and then reaches
[50:02] Speaker 2: into his bag and pulls out an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
[50:06] Speaker 2: The strap has been cut. You tell him that you've
[50:09] Speaker 2: got a box that'll fit that, and you reach behind you,
[50:12] Speaker 2: pulling a flatten shipping box from a stack on a shelf.
[50:15] Speaker 2: He slides the paper over to you. Santa Barbara County
[50:18] Speaker 2: Sheriff's Office four four three four Kaye Real, Santa Barbara, California,
[50:22] Speaker 2: nine three one one zero. You ask about the sender's address.
[50:26] Speaker 2: He tells you just to use the store's address name
[50:29] Speaker 2: of sender. He looks at you, Stephen Kunis. He stammers
[50:33] Speaker 2: a bit and tells you that he found the monitor
[50:35] Speaker 2: on the ground at the beach. He just wanted to
[50:38] Speaker 2: get it back to the authorities. You ask how he
[50:41] Speaker 2: knows it's from the Sheriff's office. He pauses, says it's
[50:44] Speaker 2: the most logical owner. You ask, why aren't you just
[50:47] Speaker 2: dropping it off at the station. He tells you he's
[50:50] Speaker 2: late for a bus and he's got to get going.
[50:52] Speaker 2: No time to head all the way out to the
[50:54] Speaker 2: sheriff's office building. Okay, you say. You fill out the
[50:58] Speaker 2: shipping form, your pens scratching on the triplicate papers. The
[51:01] Speaker 2: man looks at your notepad. You quickly construct the box,
[51:05] Speaker 2: put the ankle monitor inside and seal it up. You
[51:07] Speaker 2: slap the shipping form on the outside and enter all
[51:10] Speaker 2: the addresses into the computer. It spits out a shipping label,
[51:13] Speaker 2: and you tell the man how much he owes. He
[51:15] Speaker 2: hands you cash as he puts the change into his wallet.
[51:18] Speaker 2: He looks again at the notepad and asks you what
[51:20] Speaker 2: you're working on? Screenplay. You tell him, ah, his eye's brightened.
[51:25] Speaker 2: Do you need help with that? No, you tell him,
[51:28] Speaker 2: I've got it, I've got the moment I need. He
[51:30] Speaker 2: looks at you a little quizzically and then nods. He
[51:33] Speaker 2: turns and leaves the store. You flip to a blank
[51:35] Speaker 2: page on your notepad and you begin to furiously write
[51:38] Speaker 2: interior shipping off this morning we see a man walk in.
[51:42] Speaker 2: He's got a tote bag over his shoulder and inside
[51:44] Speaker 2: is the ankle monitor. He's just cut off his leg
[51:46] Speaker 2: with a bowie knife. Clerk, Can I help you? Yes,
[51:51] Speaker 2: says Saren. Four months went by with Kunis on the run,
[51:57] Speaker 2: and one evening he was at the Palms Restaurant in Carpentia,
[52:02] Speaker 2: just twelve miles down the road from Santa Barbara, super close.
[52:06] Speaker 2: A lady saw him and recognized him. She called the
[52:09] Speaker 2: Sheriff's office. Next thing he knows he's doing two and
[52:11] Speaker 2: a half years at Wasco State Prison.
[52:13] Speaker 3: Lady recognized him.
[52:14] Speaker 2: Lady recognized him.
[52:15] Speaker 3: I think it was from one of the theater things.
[52:18] Speaker 3: Probably I went to the worst show.
[52:22] Speaker 2: So he got out in June of twenty fifteen. He
[52:24] Speaker 2: was supposed to report to his probation officer and he
[52:27] Speaker 2: did not.
[52:28] Speaker 3: Shocking.
[52:29] Speaker 2: That gets you a warrant. He had actually left Santa
[52:32] Speaker 2: Barbara County this time went back to Pennsylvania, where his
[52:35] Speaker 2: parents were still living. He refused to stay under the radar, though.
[52:39] Speaker 2: He came up with a concept for a show. No
[52:42] Speaker 2: he'd be the executive producer. It was called over my
[52:45] Speaker 2: Dead Body.
[52:46] Speaker 3: Okay, this is not a play that got the theaters show.
[52:49] Speaker 3: This is a TV show.
[52:50] Speaker 2: This is a TV show, and the premise is at
[52:53] Speaker 2: the host interviews famous dead people because they can't sue.
[52:58] Speaker 2: Voiceover actors play the dead celebrity.
[53:00] Speaker 3: Of course, get the Mark Twain.
[53:02] Speaker 2: Yes. So Kunas was promoting the show and the Bucks
[53:06] Speaker 2: County Courier Times reported on it.
[53:09] Speaker 3: He's doing like public access TV.
[53:12] Speaker 2: Well no, he's going around saying that it's going to
[53:14] Speaker 2: be on Netflix, okay, and that Bill Maher is going
[53:18] Speaker 2: to be the host.
[53:19] Speaker 3: Oh wow.
[53:20] Speaker 2: And he told people there would be all these like
[53:22] Speaker 2: a list celebrities coming on and they'd be filming in
[53:24] Speaker 2: the area, according to levittownnow dot com. Quote after publication,
[53:30] Speaker 2: the newspaper published that they discovered Kunis had lied about
[53:34] Speaker 2: the project. A correction noted a Netflix representative denied Cunis
[53:38] Speaker 2: was involved in any series they were producing. So now
[53:43] Speaker 2: that his name was out there and he was being
[53:46] Speaker 2: publicly called out on his shenanigans, the cops are onto him.
[53:50] Speaker 2: They arrested him in January of twenty sixteen. Quote while
[53:53] Speaker 2: picking up a package from a post office box location. Yeah,
[53:57] Speaker 2: so he gets extradited to California, he did his time again.
[54:01] Speaker 2: He had time to rethink things, and you know what
[54:03] Speaker 2: that means book Ted talk. Oh he he did a
[54:08] Speaker 2: TEDx talk in twenty twenty one. That's not a real test.
[54:12] Speaker 2: I no, it's like part of It's like they're kind
[54:16] Speaker 2: of like franchisee spinoff thing. He's in front of a
[54:21] Speaker 2: green screen and there's no audience, but it's to look
[54:24] Speaker 2: like he's on a stage, and then there's like fake
[54:26] Speaker 2: applause at the end. Wow, it is a little creepy.
[54:28] Speaker 4: You know why?
[54:29] Speaker 3: I think cringey? Yeah.
[54:30] Speaker 2: Yeah. In it, he shares that by his sixtieth birthday
[54:34] Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, he was out of jail, but he
[54:37] Speaker 2: had no car, no credit card, no home, and only
[54:40] Speaker 2: four hundred and eighty three dollars in his bank account.
[54:43] Speaker 2: He wrote his own oh bit, and he was ready
[54:45] Speaker 2: to pack it in, but then a bolt of inspiration.
[54:48] Speaker 2: He had a conversation with a childhood friend and they
[54:51] Speaker 2: came up with an idea for a talk show where
[54:53] Speaker 2: they interview their fantasy guests, all of whom happened to
[54:56] Speaker 2: be dead, but they talked to them like they're alive, Okay,
[55:00] Speaker 2: over my dead body. So uh and that's what that
[55:03] Speaker 2: guy who he said was the Warner Music president. Yeah,
[55:07] Speaker 2: he's got a he's got a credit on this. That's
[55:10] Speaker 2: his only IMDb credit.
[55:13] Speaker 3: So, uh, did that guy have like a hard time
[55:16] Speaker 3: drug problems?
[55:18] Speaker 2: I think that maybe fabulous as well. I believe it
[55:23] Speaker 2: was on YouTube, not Netflix, and I think you can
[55:27] Speaker 2: buy episodes to watch on Amazon Prime. There's six episodes. Yeah,
[55:32] Speaker 2: it appears to also now be a podcast, and I
[55:35] Speaker 2: couldn't bring myself to listen. I'm just I'm so sorry.
[55:39] Speaker 2: There's some things like I would like implode from the cringing.
[55:44] Speaker 2: The guests include May West, Steve Jobs, the cast of
[55:48] Speaker 2: The Wizard of Oz, Mark Twain, Richard Nixon, Tupac. How
[55:53] Speaker 2: offensive do you think the Tupac is?
[55:55] Speaker 3: Don't get me started. I was staying away from.
[55:58] Speaker 2: Quotes Norman lear As saying about the show, quote, this
[56:02] Speaker 2: is the best idea for a TV series that I
[56:04] Speaker 2: can remember. It's absolutely hilarious.
[56:07] Speaker 3: And this is I assume after normally passed. If he
[56:09] Speaker 3: passed like right around the twenty nineteen, twenty twelve.
[56:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, so who knows. I'm gonna guess
[56:15] Speaker 2: that he never said it either way. Yeah, Saren, what's
[56:17] Speaker 2: your ridiculous takeaway?
[56:21] Speaker 3: I mean, like, when you're creative, right and you can
[56:24] Speaker 3: you have an air for dialogue. Yes, you would think
[56:27] Speaker 3: that he would come up with better cons. His cons
[56:30] Speaker 3: are so lazy and so like, I think you're a sucker.
[56:34] Speaker 3: So I'm going to lower the bar of what I
[56:36] Speaker 3: have to do to convince you, Like, is it him
[56:39] Speaker 3: is it his respect for his audience? I can't tell.
[56:42] Speaker 2: I thought he would be far more magnetic in person,
[56:46] Speaker 2: and then I watched his ted talk.
[56:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, just not No, I'm kind of like I imagine,
[56:51] Speaker 3: kind of awkward, kind of like one of those guys
[56:53] Speaker 3: where you're like, he doesn't talk to other people often.
[56:56] Speaker 2: He's very he comes across as very sincere.
[56:59] Speaker 3: Oh what's surprising and you and you.
[57:03] Speaker 2: Get the sense like he's had a tough time, like
[57:05] Speaker 2: there all about reinventing yourself at the age of sixty, okay,
[57:10] Speaker 2: And but at the same time, it's like I feel
[57:12] Speaker 2: like he's not being honest with himself. That's part of
[57:16] Speaker 2: the weird and he's not honest as we see like
[57:19] Speaker 2: with everybody, and so I don't know what's going on
[57:22] Speaker 2: like with that, but yeah, I think that you.
[57:24] Speaker 3: Kind of have to know people if you really want
[57:26] Speaker 3: to manipulate the way that he wants to. And he
[57:28] Speaker 3: seems like he doesn't take the time to really get
[57:30] Speaker 3: to know other.
[57:30] Speaker 2: People well, and he seems to be trying to like
[57:34] Speaker 2: pass like you know, and also ran Hollywood Life on
[57:41] Speaker 2: by people who weren't involved in this, so like they
[57:43] Speaker 2: hear names and it goes you.
[57:44] Speaker 3: Know, I met people I used to when in one
[57:48] Speaker 3: of the times I was in Hollywood. I uh, this
[57:51] Speaker 3: is weird, but like I had a sidecart and I
[57:53] Speaker 3: pretended I didn't because I needed work, and so I
[57:55] Speaker 3: would go and sit around with extras thinking I could
[57:58] Speaker 3: just like work real quick, and it worked fantastically, and
[58:01] Speaker 3: all the other extras hated me because I kept getting
[58:03] Speaker 3: like pushed to the front and they're like, oh, you
[58:05] Speaker 3: got screen time. And I felt so bad for so
[58:07] Speaker 3: many of them because the would sit there and just
[58:09] Speaker 3: obviously lie to me about things that I had even
[58:11] Speaker 3: taken part with, or I know you're lying, but they
[58:14] Speaker 3: would just so earnestly and they wanted It's like this
[58:17] Speaker 3: proximity to success or to fame, and I'm like, you
[58:19] Speaker 3: do realize that's why you're not having the proximity because
[58:23] Speaker 3: you think that you can just you think everybody lies
[58:26] Speaker 3: down here.
[58:26] Speaker 2: I'm no, it's not like that, not like that, but
[58:29] Speaker 2: they do. And I think that is misleading to people
[58:31] Speaker 2: that people do not tell the truth in Hollywood. Sure,
[58:34] Speaker 2: and like deals go forward based on all these like
[58:37] Speaker 2: lies but easily proved right, that's where the lie exactly.
[58:44] Speaker 2: And so if you're not like in that expert level
[58:46] Speaker 2: of them, you just think, well, they lie.
[58:48] Speaker 3: And also it's a lot of like lying by omission
[58:51] Speaker 3: as or lying by allowing you to create and fill
[58:54] Speaker 3: in the live for them. They don't give you all
[58:56] Speaker 3: the details. They kind of like hint at where.
[58:57] Speaker 2: They were and lie exactly.
[59:01] Speaker 3: A lot of like unfinished thoughts turn into lies and
[59:03] Speaker 3: they let you do the work for it. It's like
[59:05] Speaker 3: Hitchcock lying to you.
[59:07] Speaker 2: If you're not savvy, you know you're not going to
[59:09] Speaker 2: see that you Well, we lie here.
[59:12] Speaker 3: And also they don't get they don't know people, so
[59:14] Speaker 3: they don't get the idea that you can't lie to
[59:17] Speaker 3: someone if you don't understand them, not really, not successfully.
[59:20] Speaker 3: And they don't they think that people are paper thin.
[59:22] Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't know if that's a comment on you.
[59:24] Speaker 2: What exactly.
[59:28] Speaker 3: What's yours? Elizabeth?
[59:29] Speaker 2: Mine is that uh, you know, just I don't think
[59:36] Speaker 2: people understand how embarrassed I get for them when they
[59:40] Speaker 2: do this.
[59:41] Speaker 3: I do not think they understand it.
[59:42] Speaker 2: No, No, I'm just embarrassed for him, and for that
[59:45] Speaker 2: I need to talk back. Yeah, Oh my god, I lo.
[1:00:01] Speaker 6: Hi's Aaron Elizabeth Producery. My name's Naja. I'm a longtime listener,
[1:00:05] Speaker 6: first time caller. I've been here since the Avalonia diver
[1:00:08] Speaker 6: first episode came out, and I'm just really really grateful
[1:00:12] Speaker 6: for just all the content, all.
[1:00:15] Speaker 5: The laughs, all the knowledge over the past couple of years,
[1:00:19] Speaker 5: and just keep being you guys, because there is so
[1:00:22] Speaker 5: many places in the world where we just don't have
[1:00:24] Speaker 5: laughter or spacer community.
[1:00:26] Speaker 6: So it's Onnesday, thank you and say hi, and keep
[1:00:29] Speaker 6: doing what you're doing.
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: Yes, thank you so much, amazing, thank you there for
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: so long. Thank you. Yes, I got it. You know,
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: when I hear things like this, like I remember when
[1:00:41] Speaker 2: we first started, I was like.
[1:00:42] Speaker 3: Nost You're legitimately said that.
[1:00:45] Speaker 2: I honestly didn't think so. So this is you know
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: when people talk about how you know we can all
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: laugh together and you guys get to laugh with us,
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: and uh, it means a lot.
[1:00:55] Speaker 3: It really means a lot, and it's absolutely truthful because
[1:00:59] Speaker 3: we are laughing right there with you, even though we're
[1:01:01] Speaker 3: not physically there with you. I think we're finding humor
[1:01:04] Speaker 3: in the same place completely.
[1:01:06] Speaker 2: And we see too from like a lot of the
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: notes that you guys forward on on Instagram and stuff,
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: but we all have to see love it. So yeah,
[1:01:14] Speaker 2: thank you for that. That was really sweet and that
[1:01:17] Speaker 2: you know we need. We need sweetness and laughter and happiness.
[1:01:20] Speaker 2: So let's make it for ourselves. Uh, that's it for today.
[1:01:24] Speaker 2: You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.
[1:01:28] Speaker 2: We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and on Instagram.
[1:01:32] Speaker 2: We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. And you can
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. And
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: I'm always going to close with it. Leave a talkback
[1:01:42] Speaker 2: on a free iHeart app reach out. We want to
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: hear you. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the actual host. Inside
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: the Johnny Carson costume Dave Kusten, starring Annals as Judith
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: with uncredited assistants by Stephen Coonis. Research is by head
[1:02:05] Speaker 2: writer for Happy Days Marisa Brown and executive creative director
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: for laugh Tracks on Mister Belvidere Jabari Davis. The theme
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: song is by Ed McMahon, enthusiast Thomas Lee and doc
[1:02:15] Speaker 2: Severnson Truther Travis Dunton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany
[1:02:19] Speaker 2: five hundred guest Haron, makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre.
[1:02:23] Speaker 2: Executive producers are author of the autobiography of Ja Jagabor
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: Ben Bollen and TV executive with an extensive and highly
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: classified IMDb page requiring a secret password, No.
[1:02:35] Speaker 4: Breath, gidus clime, say It One More Timequeus Crime.
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
[1:02:51] Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
[1:02:54] Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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