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hello everyone karen glasser here and welcome to karen glasser live interviews
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with brilliant artists and authors and all the creative voices of today i invite you to tune in weekly to the show
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featuring these leading voices from around the world so whether you're here live or in replay it doesn't matter we
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love you make sure to say hi in the comments and tell us where you are watching from
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today we are welcoming adam sandel and christopher goodwin to the show adam is an emmy nominated screenwriter
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and a playwright who's had more than 20 productions of his plays performed internationally he wrote produced and
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directed the satirical web series the gay husbands of san francisco we'll talk more about that later which is streaming
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on comcast pluto oasis tv and youtube his play love life was performed at la's
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mark taper forum lab and paramount chicago theater project a television production of love life won several
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chicago emmy awards and a special nomination for sandel screenplays include my wild and secret
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world the film adaptation of this is not my life and dave's new world
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christopher goodwin is a writer director and performer whose work has been seen throughout new york los angeles and san
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francisco he co-created and directed the sold out world premiere of the tech satire south of market the musical he
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wrote and directed the critically acclaimed world premier and west coast premiere of his play the baker's oven
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winner of the new york new play festival in manhattan repertory theater for 10
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years he was the featured performer in san francisco's world famous musical review beach blanket babylon love to
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talk about that as well uh sandel and goodwin have co-created the tv series medium rare and it had to be lou i could
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go on and on and on but let's just get on with the show and bring in our guest
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today welcome to the show how are you guys doing hi thanks karen happy to be here you guys
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are very busy you you have been doing a lot of things separately and now together i'm just so excited that you're
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on the show we've got a lot of of stories to cover so but before we jump in let's talk
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about your story let's talk about how you guys met okay awesome you won you want me to go
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first okay uh we we actually met uh here in san
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francisco at the academy of friends uh annual oscar gala um which is a huge fundraiser for hiv
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aids charities and we met uh i think it was four or five maybe even five years ago someone
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introduced us hi how are you nice to meet you we added each other on facebook and then we would you know sort of
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connect on there you know chat hi how are you whatever and i think within
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about i then i realized just from something he was posting that he had a son he had a
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six-year-old at the time and i was like oh you have a son he said yeah i said well i have three girls and three
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daughters oh really yeah okay fine so then about uh and we're kind of
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following each other liking stuff you know how it goes and then um middle of the night there's an
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earthquake and of course what do you do when an earthquake wakes you up you get on
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facebook right to find out did anyone else feel it where is it right he was chatting about it i was
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responding we started talking about the earthquake fine the next morning i woke up and said
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i'm going to ask him out to lunch okay so i did
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and basically in our lunch which lasted about three hours i think
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uh we we paid bill well the bill wasn't so big but we had a lot to say
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we were um over and over realizing we had so many not only things in common but our lives
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had been almost the same over and over including when he got to the point about
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i said i hear you have a son yes he was married to a woman as was i split up as was i you know now you know
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growing up as theater kids etc you know writing and directing our own plays etc
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and it was kind of like we'd been having these parallel lives and then the universe said
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now now now no it was a shame it was an earthquake there's a jewish
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so christopher what would you add to this story that adam just told oh god you know it's it's so funny because it
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is kind of in a nutshell what you just said but it's more like you know it was it was a lot of fun that everything was
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just back and forth back and forth um adam came to see me in uh beach blanket babylon
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and so that was always a lot of fun but yeah i mean i don't know if i'd add anything else maybe some more jokes
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because the two of us are always laughing yeah um but definitely you know it was it was exactly the way that he
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described it so yeah so you guys are partners in life and partners in work you guys are creating
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together which is why we called the show imagine that creating together
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so you as as we said in the beginning you have multiple stage and theater credits to your name and you're now
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co-creating on two tv series which we're going to get to in a second but before
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we do that um i actually want to start with adam to talk about the gay husbands because um
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i know that first of all i think it's a great play on the whole housewives thing you know
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how did this come about well i've been a playwright since college uh and i've been writing plays
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and having them done and not having them done and you know is going about my life
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and um you know there is there can be a lot of frustration and you know you put all this work in you write something
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then you got to get someone to do it right that's that's not the easy part well you got to get someone to read it which is actually the hardest part
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getting someone to read a script is the hardest part of the entire process and then as i got this idea gee wouldn't
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it be funny to spoof the the housewife shows and living in san francisco and being
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pretty much aware of some of the different types that we have here in the gay community
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um i thought well how about the gay husbands of san francisco so i wrote it as a very satirical
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a satirical scoop on both the types in the community and also the housewives
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shows which i think are actually worth making fun of okay i would agree i would
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agree i would totally agree and i think could you not yeah
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so so we put it together and i i found you know the the best actors i could find
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many of whom were friends i kind of wrote the roles for some of them etc etc
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and uh we did a season of uh six uh ten minute episodes and then we did a
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reunion a live reunion that we shot and and filmed that and uh they're on a lot of different um
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they're streaming on a lot of different outlets but including youtube which is kind of the easiest one to go right
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right and they can search for it they can just search for uh gay husbands in san francisco and it's going to show up
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and i'm going to show that by the way if you are tuning in right now live which we do have viewers on right now and you have a
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question for either adam or christopher make sure you put in the comments and we'll just slap it up here on the screen
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so if anything that you want to apple almost anything that you would like to ask so let's go
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back right now to um the shows that you are working on together the first one
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first of all i want to make a big huge congratulations and this is for
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medium rhea now um christopher i know that there are a lot of people that may not
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know that you are also a medium that's correct correct medium yes that's that's
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it's a talent that i always have possessed um so this is something i do um it's
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something that's come into more of my life with ovid with the pandemic
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working online from home i also do readings for people when when
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we were still seeing people right i was doing face-to-face readings so this is
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definitely something that i do uh it really helps a lot of people and
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this is kind of it was an idea uh we actually took a trip to reno
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and we uh went to the world famous uh washoe club and we're in virginia city and uh
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notoriously you know inhabited by spirits the whole entire one of the most haunted buildings in the
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u.s mm-hmm those countries have gone there etcetera etcetera so i took him i knew he'd love it took me it was going
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to be a fun time it was an anniversary trip by the way this is what we do exactly and
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we go up and and as we're waiting to ascend the staircase to this you know
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the second level there's these twin girls and i'm looking like oh my god are you curious serious twins are going to
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be on this two or two over and for they were like four years old yeah i'm like kids if the kids are crying already you
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know it's not a good place okay kids animals just just go turn around i'd
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turn back if i were you yeah so um no we go and it's it's such a it's it's
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a very intense experience which lingers and haunts us back to the hotel room and
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that's when adam comes out and says i've got a great idea for uh
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yeah yeah actually what we were we were talking about and he was he was like
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seeing all these things and then later they would describe them it's like he was describing to me and
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then the tour guide would say yeah and then actually the the tour guide was so
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fascinated with christopher's experiences and his take on it that they kept buying us free drinks afterwards
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and to find out more and he says you're verifying everything that you know oh my
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god so we go back to the pepper mill uh casino where we were staying and we're
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talking about this and then we uh uh christopher likes to watch the ghost
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hunter shows uh when we're in a hotel because sometimes he doesn't have cable he doesn't get cable at home
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i stream everything he streams so he likes to watch the ghost hunter things so we're watching it and then i i got up
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i went to the bathroom i came out i said here's a tv series
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and basically we came up with in very short order the concept for medium rare
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which is a supernat it's a supernatural female female-driven comedy drama
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about four generations of women in the early 90s in early 90s florida
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what could go wrong what could go wrong yeah one of whom one of whom discovers in the pilot that
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she is in fact a medium and can see and speak to dead people
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who is one of the others in the family wow and uh uh
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hijinks ensue yeah you just and you just just today
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this very day you were awarded an honorary honorable mention with the santa barbara
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international screenplay awards on this very show for first of all congratulations that is extremely
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extremely cool thank you i just wanted to intersperse there so yeah you did this show you this this and it
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can somebody see it i mean what happens now well we've written it and we're in the process of an agent that's working with
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us in the process of getting it out to production companies so we're shopping it around but it's uh
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uh i mean it was it was really icing on the cake it was just a couple i mean we've been getting great uh response
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from some of these other places i've submitted it and gotten written feedback um
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and then just a couple hours ago i got the email that we got an honorable mention with the uh santa barbara international
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screen competition so you know all of that helps but i think
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you were our lucky charm karen glasser uh because it happened right before we
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that's my job i did it well then that's my job so we're in the process of
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shopping it around it has four terrific roles for women of you know the four generations comedy drama i i love that
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and then you have a a second show that you guys are working on it had to be lou tell us
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about that christopher yeah one actually uh started in palm springs
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at a chinese buffet and that's where as everything starts with
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the chinese buffet in oxford in palm springs uh and as we're sitting there we're eating you know our chow mein and
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our sweet and sour chicken and uh we're just talking about i love
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something you know and and and this that the other favorite favorite sitcom from the 50s things that
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are nostalgic and um we were thinking of how many different scenarios that existed in the
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50s that still exist today in modern times and how a lot of certain uh situations
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can be updated so we came up with it had to be lou
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uh you know which is a loving homage to another favorite sitcom classic remain unnamed
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and uh it takes place modern times set in san francisco uh with a couple lou
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and the uh the latin lover and we have enrique enrique henriquez
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yes i'm not sure how much i can say i can say the names okay
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and then we have uh two landlords who live above us who are ex-hippies
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and you know they like to grow their own uh herbs yeah in their backyard
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and uh one older couple older couple and it's frank frank and echo so frank and
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echo frank and echo schultz oh good names yeah
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and yeah and so we we actually we we did a few uh fundraising
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uh stint in san francisco to critical acclaim and we had a fundraising
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campaign which unfortunately got a little bit prematurely shut down due to covid yeah so we are actually uh you
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know we're still looking to produce this and shop it around because we think um it's a it's a grand slam idea and i
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think that people would love to see something like this updated again check out your facebook you have a
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facebook page i know that you're not on facebook but but the show is um it had to be lou just check it out there check
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that out there as well as and i'm just going to put this up right now um the gay husbands of san francisco on facebook that's also there as well
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um so what is it like creating together you clearly both of you are very talented
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and you've done a lot of work under your belt there so as a solo artist so to speak what is it like
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coming together and creating these entities well um it was interesting the
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way it started because after our first like three hour lunch by the way in the first month or so
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getting to know each other and telling each other you know about our stories we spent a lot of time doing this
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because of all these coincidences right and um i got home and i've written a a
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screenplay called dave's new world which is semi-autobiographical story about a guy who's married with children
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gradually realizes he's gay and has to leave the straight world and enter the gay world as a single gay man for the
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first time a lot of that was uh autobiographical right um and so when i
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got home i think the next day i sent christopher the script i said i
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think you might like this this is something i've written i think you might
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appreciate it and christopher what was your reaction i loved it i think it was great you know adam has a really great use of pen you
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know he his his writing style is very unique it's beautiful i think the synergy that
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we have together is something that um and he's referred to me as a fire hydrant of creative creativity
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once that opens shoot out of me like this yeah fire hydrant yeah and um he'll
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be like enough enough stop too much um because i'll have like an entire
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series in my brain and it will yeah in one full swoop
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um so it is i think i i've i've had to learn to like taper it down and and
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and no one's no no you don't have to do that well no but guys i'm
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yeah and we we really do work off of each other and so i'll say something and he'll just add it's a yes and thing so
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yeah like oh my gosh that's a great idea let's do that and let's do this and then i say oh my god that's an awesome idea
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let's do that that that and then this and that's how we come up with these wonderful ideas and that makes for a
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great writing team that makes for agreement yeah so yeah as we said you know the fire
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hydrant opens and christopher has these incredible ideas um
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and they come quickly they come together very quickly and i'm sort of like
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sifting sifting filtering filtering thinking like okay would this go with the character yes would this mean and
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then kind of like thinking like a producer too it's like oh we really need to build a new set just for this scene or we got to have extras you know
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and all that and also is this within the tone of the piece i mean it had to be
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louis very classic sitcoms three-camera comedy right uh uh show medium rare is is it going to be a
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one-camera one-hour show um comedy drum okay um
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but so i'm you know always kind of like doing that that's mentally sifting process right then how do we craft this
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into something but really everything on both shows we really came up with together
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and then you know i've done what i can to to to kind of refine it into you know
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but then he's fantastic with editing after i've done the writing so as you guys continue to create you're going to
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be you know you're going to be known as the the uh your names together the sandel and
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goodwin or goodwin and sandel writing team right i mean that's is that what you're going towards or not really
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christopher do you want to tell yeah i came up with a sandwind productions sandwich production okay you heard it
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here first guys you heard it first i think it's awesome you know this is the first time we've actually said it
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in front of anyone so well i'm thankful thank you for that i appreciate that thank you for that i will i will tell
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everyone that you you did it you heard it here first um what would you say is the main difference between theater and stage and
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tv or creating for youtube because there definitely is a difference what would
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you what would you just right off the bat tell me would be a difference control control control for me i actually have i
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have a youtube channel i actually during the pandemic i'm a huge gardener as well so i have this whole little episodic
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thing that's very weird it's very steve like tim and eric show like between two burns
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gardens garden and it's funny and it's dark and it's sick and it's educational
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but it's not for children um that's like really weird mr abby very
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weird mr rogers meets yeah like sesame street meets nature so for me the whole thing
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about doing theater and what i what i really uh like with beach blanket stage
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versus youtube uh you know with beach blanket babylon there's a lot of different ideas going
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on here there's a lot of different concepts right it's something you do have to have to do eight eight times a week sometimes i was gonna say what's it
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like in the show for that many years that many shows a day that's gotta be a totally different mindset there are some
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songs i have probably sung thousands of san francisco san francisco i've sung thousands of times wow with jars of
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spaghetti on his head and bananas and okay yeah it's pure stamina
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and and it honestly is like you know the big difference between live versus something you can edit
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is as you know you know you have to get it right the first time and if you don't
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then you messed up yeah and the audience sees that whereas you can take as many takes as you want putting up a youtube
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video and then edit it together put a graphic here sound effect there and and you really have the control that you
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that i would like to have when i you know direct and produce but even on stage with directing and producing you
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don't have all the control there's a lot of moving pieces there's a lot of puzzle pieces that are that you
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have to work with and that's great you can collaborate but at the same time you need to make sure that you have a great team with you so right adam what say you
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i had the same experience uh with the gay husbands was the first my first experience with any kind of film
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okay uh everything before had been in the theater and um it was interesting because you get all
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this raw footage i mean uh you know on set we'd be like fighting to not laugh okay and
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we're going to take and then we get the raw footage i look at him like this isn't funny at all we were like in
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hysterics and we're doing what and then i realized it's about the editing okay
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almost all of comedy is the editing it's like when you cut and then sometimes it's just cutting to someone else in
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their reaction there's the laugh you'll know that i don't think people realize what it takes
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to do a youtube or a an edited video versus live stage right yeah and i i can't do
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the technical part of it so i have other people do the editors and the editors might be over their shoulder and just
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split second difference between something that's dumb and something that's
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a big laugh yeah uh that so that was interesting i mean i um
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uh but in theater you rehearse it and you get it you know and then you get it and you do it and you get to laugh so
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you know it's funny right um so the editing was really interesting for me uh on uh on the gay housemates so
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you know for from somebody like me who does a lot of live stream we're doing that right now but i also record shows
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and i also do standalone youtube shows which get fully edited but the rest of the stuff that i do i tend to like the
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live i tend to like the fact that we don't always know what's going to happen right i like that uncertainty and
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i think it keeps things fresh for me personally i i happen to enjoy that piece of it yeah i don't know how you
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guys think about that i mean you have to have a particular kind of stamina to know that it's mess it up
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yeah yeah there's definitely yeah he's done more live performance oh my god yeah yeah like i mean whenever i i
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guess the thing is this uh my beach monkey my beach blanket family they're always gonna be family we're always gonna be
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there we're always gonna have this unique shared experience of this era of san francisco that was like you know a
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studio four situation um where it will probably never exist again and it was just a
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special time um and and the thing is this you you do so many shows that i'll i you know
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there's times where you're thinking about your grocery list while you're doing something over here you know
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you're kind of on a pilot because you've been doing it for thousands of times years you know and um
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no it's definitely like you've got to keep it fresh you do have to figure out a way to keep it fresh too to make sure
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that you don't slip into that autopilot and um i'll tell you this whenever someone would mess up a line on stage
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we'd all bust out laughing backstage it was always the biggest joke of all because
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we all know what's going to happen and and it was just that's the best you know the bloopers
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are you guys are you guys looking forward to doing theater again or are you going to stay in the medium of of youtube and
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this kind of thing well we're aiming for the series we're aiming for you know streaming services you know to be to be
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on tv really for real but not that this is no i get it no i i get it
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all these that's yeah yeah it's not what it is to be people are consuming their their yeah their media yeah
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so but there there's a couple of things we realize with uh it and and we are
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going to be i guess we can announce this christopher sure next within the within a couple months
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uh we are planning to relocate to palm springs
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yeah so we'll be neighbors we're going to be neighbors oh my gosh we can do this without our
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earphones but but um i'm going to hang on to my place here
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but you know we're we we're gonna we're ready for a change yeah it's a little bit cold i like 115
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degrees 122. oh we've had some beautiful 62
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degrees weather here later this is where i say shut up yeah no no i'm like get me to palm springs
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the reason though i was going to go back to lou and and sorry to get back to so we are planning
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on filming that in front of a live studio audience so it'll be in a theater so in terms of
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getting back to live theater absolutely i miss it like the dickens you know it's not something that it's i have a degree
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in it you know this is something i've been doing since i was five years old right and it's something that has been going on since the greek times and this
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has seen pandemics that's when i was five years ago it's that's in europe yeah but it's gonna come back it's gonna
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come back in a different entity and i think what it has uh forced it to do a
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lot of people were thinking oh theater's a relic theater's kind of aging out you know but it's forcing it to evolve it's forcing
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it to change which is the only real you know constant life has
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changed so um i am i'm excited to get back on the stage and just have a live
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audience there with that that enthusia because you don't get that when you're filming right and i i i'll be in the
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audience because if you're going to be here that's our goal that's our goal is to do a theater run and film it and then have
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a live audience and i wrote lou for christopher in the role of lou because when i saw him in beach blanket
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i said it was very nice you're not a chorus boy you're not a chorus boy you're a
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headliner you're uh you're a headliner he said yeah and i'd had actually i had the title it
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had to be blue about 10 years ago i came up with it sometimes i have titles i write them down i had no idea what i'd
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do with it i'm like it's obviously comedy it had to be lou right i didn't have no
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idea who lou was and then it all came together with uh with christopher yeah so you know i
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always like to ask my guests why you do what you do what is your why people you
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know it's all about the stories you guys are this is what you do for a living it's about the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that we tell
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others and more importantly why we do what we do what is it that gets us up in the morning why do you do this um
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adam why don't you go first why do you why do you do this uh i don't think i have a choice not to
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okay that's been pretty much ever since i could remember performing way back in school elementary school
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junior high high school uh the ucla theater theater theater my whole life and then of course i
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discovered uh i was a playwright at ucla and so it's been like that ever since i
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was like oh thank god i don't have to be an actor but then i was getting i was getting a lot more gratification and
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uh out of writing right and it's um there are a lot of
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see there are there are all kinds of uh um things that can happen to discourage you
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to make you want to stop and i just uh you know times have come and gone when i've been
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doing other things but it's like you know this is what i gotta do that's that's a great answer christopher
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why do you do this you know i do it i choose i choose this life
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i choose to do it because um it's it's something that i need to also
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do it's also something that i feel like the world really needs right now um especially comedy i feel like the
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world really needs to laugh right now there needs to be there is a need for laughter
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that uh in our lifetime i can't speak for other lifetimes um or can you or i can
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you're the me yes i can't i can't but it's a different way yeah different way but in this lifetime um i just feel like
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there's and especially right now um you know there's a lot of stuff going on we've still got a different variant
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coming out like every day it seems like we're it seems like we're constantly inundated with a lot of negative
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a lot of negative one of the reasons why i deleted my facebook account and i do believe the reason why i do
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this is to put more positive out there in the world it really needs to be balanced
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and um and so that's that's another reason why i do it is for a lot of people
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there's a lot of community there's there once people realize that we're a lot closer and a lot more connected than
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people imagine then they're i think they're going to get it because we're all we're all in we
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are all in this together i love that maybe not you know but there's so like
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we really are all in this together and and this is something the arts bring people together
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that's what happens i i talk about music that way music speaks to those who might otherwise not understand or hear you can
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just listen to the melody i i think that what you're saying both of you is so important um believe it or not we're
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getting to the end of the show and i want to let people know how they can follow you and how they can really keep up on the things that you're doing um
30:43
we like to say on insta you can go see adam at adam h dot sandel and you can
30:48
see christopher as well on insta hey underscore goodwin
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um adam is on youtube and just look for adam sandel
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um it had to be you is on facebook the facebook group gay husbands is also on
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facebook gay husbands of san francisco go check that out um
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any last thoughts any last things that you like to share with our audience before i say goodbye to everyone
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i just wanted to add that making making people laugh is something that i've always loved doing
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yeah and i love being able to do it and i'm very very grateful that we're able to do what we do despite all this shutdown that we've had
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last year and i'm very very grateful for you know the technology and the ability to keep doing what we do and and
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to the point what christopher said i think there's more that that keeps us that ties us together that we have some
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similar traits then we have differences and i think i think we just have to um get that
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message out whether it's through comedy whether it's through music whether it's through um
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theater whatever that is i do believe that there are we are more alike than we are different so
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thank you thank you thank you you guys are our trip i just we're gonna have to do this again totally
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yeah i'm ready i'm ready i'm gonna roll and go there we go oh yeah anytime yeah we're gonna do that and guys don't
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forget to follow us on social media it's at karen glasser it's just the same thing everything we're on insta and on
32:19
pinterest and on youtube and on facebook and on roku and on amazon fire we are
32:27
everywhere you cannot get rid of us we are everywhere and i want to thank the audience you guys have a choice as to
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how to spend your time you chose to spend it with the three of us today we are thankful and grateful for that that
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you chose to do that so go out give somebody an awesome day and we'll see you next time on
32:46
the next karen glasser live goodbye everyone