Good to Know Bill Joyce

Paul Reiser and Jeff Beimfohr talk with Oscar winning filmmaker Bill Joyce about some of his career and his support for the Shreveport area.

What is KTBS: Good to Know Shreveport-Bossier?

KTBS Podcasting and the Committee of 100 present Good to Know Shreveport-Bossier, a podcast series showcasing the good things happening in our area. We’ll go in-depth about economic development, community growth and other topics about initiatives that are having a positive impact in our community. We’ll have new episodes every other Wednesday. You can find the KTBS Good to Know podcast wherever you listen to podcasting. Or go to KTBS.com or KTBS Now on your streaming device to see the full interview.

Hello again, everybody.

Welcome to.

Good to know, Sheree, for a blogger,
this is a podcast showcasing

all the good things, the positive things
happening in and around our community.

My name's Jeff Pyne for over here
to my right, that's my co-host,

Paul Reiser, a local businessman
and member of the Committee of 100.

And a French friar extraordinaire.

Every podcast
we focus on topics and initiatives

that are having, as I said,
positive impacts on the community.

We have new episodes
every other Wednesday,

and you can find good to know
wherever you listen to your podcast.

As always, the honors to introduce
our special guests belong to you.

And I know you're excited about today.

I'm super excited, Jeff, as always.

But as I just said, I'm

so excited today and I'm going to read it
to make sure I get it correct.

I didn't know you could read.

Stick around.

I can't wait.

So our guest today, William Joyce.

Bill Joyce.
We've been waiting a long time.

Our guest today is incredibly talented
and creative filmmaker Bill Joyce.

So he's won

six Emmy Awards, three Annie Awards,
which I'll have to describe in a moment.

And one Academy Award so far. Wow.

I'm impressed, man. Thanks.

I want to stop right there.

But I'm going to keep going.
Keep going on.

So he's contributed to a lot of Pixar
movies, Toy Story, A Bug's Life.

He's also worked on several Disney films.

He is a world renowned children's author
with over 50 titles.

40 of them change in over 40 languages.

He is an artist.

His paintings have been on numerous covers
of the New York New Yorker magazine.

The list goes on and on.

Keep going.

Keep going. I know.

I'm excited, man.

I'm going there.

But I'm excited
because you're not only from Shreveport,

but you're still in Shreveport.

You office
here, you work here, your studios here.

So without further ado.
And that's a lot of ado, Jeff.

I know.

Incredibly talented, incredibly talented
and just a heck of a nice guy.

Bill Joyce.

Well, thanks to the nice guy.

Pleasure to meet you.

I never met an Oscar winner before.

There's not a lot in Louisiana.

Yeah, I bet there's like, two.

I thought I met one once.

I was working in Memphis and Gary Sinise,
you know, Gary Sinise,

he came to
he had a band and he came to do a gig.

And I went out to interview him
and I said, Man, I've never

And I was thinking, Forrest Gump, right?

He was so fantastic in that.

And I can't believe
I was talking to him about the Oscar.

And he's like, looking at me.

You go, Hey, man,
I didn't win the Oscar for that.

And then went, You're kidding.
I really thought he did.

He was fantastic.

So, Captain Dan. Captain Dan? Yeah.

Who lost his legs?

Yeah. That's a lot to give for a part,
by the way.

That was pretty cool.
The way they did that to very well.

Or is that something that you would
kind of work on with what you do,

that kind of effect?

I could.

Now, back then it was so brand new. Yeah.

And it blew everybody away.
That was really big.

I knew that. Yeah, that's true.

That was neat.

Anyway,
let's not talk about some of your movies.

So you say not a lot in Louisiana.

There's not a lot anywhere.

It's.

It is a heck of an honor
and a heck of an accomplishment.

I watched your speech last night.

Your acceptance speech on YouTube. Yeah.

Do you recall being there at all?

Just how what was that like at the Oscars?

Look, it's you know,
I've loved movies since I was a kid,

and I've been movie crazy
since I was a kid.

And in fact,
I used to come up to this TV station.

Yeah. When I was in high school.

And cause, you know, back then, movies,
old movies showed up

just occasionally on the local TV stations
of the three stations.

And so if there's a classic movie
that you'd never seen,

usually the only way you would see
it would be on The Late Show.

And so I got to know the programmer
for Channel three,

and I go under the guise
that I was writing reviews

for the old movies for the Byrd
High School newspaper, which was true.

Yeah.

And I'm like, Hey,

you know, there's some movies
I really want to see that I've never seen.

And he goes, Well, you know, they
sell them to us in these batches, right?

So just look through and.

Right, you know what you want.

So I was like,
All right, Citizen Kane, that'll be great.

And he goes, Yeah, okay.

Reportedly the finest film ever made.

It isn't made, but does it hold up?

Do you think it holds up? Absolutely.

Yeah, I'd probably watch it.

It's a little bit of a slow start,
but I'm going to watch it again.

Yes, please.

I mean, look, it's.

I probably watch it twice a year, really?

And it rewrote the language of film

and a lot of what I use and it's it's
an extraordinary accomplishment.

Yeah.

It the first time I saw it, though,
in high school because I showed it on TV,

Channel three,
I was disappointed. Right. Yeah.

And but it was over my head right away.

You have to be sophisticated now.

You just have to have that sense
of having a.

Yeah, I've never.

I still don't.

But man, you're not going to like it.

Yeah, it was.

I learned a lot from that movie
and I sure as a filmmaker,

I mean, using it,
you carried some of that stuff.

Absolutely. All right.

The way he uses sound,
the way he added, the way he sets up

shots, the way he light the guy.

I was 23 years old
when he made this movie.

That's just crazy.

But back to your Oscar.

Yeah. You walked up there in the crowd.

I mean, all these movie stars
and they're clapping and cheering

and you look pretty happy.

Do you remember it
or you have blacked out?

No, I did not blackout.

I did lose the ability
to think for a little while.

And and a friend of mine told me
who had won, he goes, Your brain's

going to start doing some weird stuff
when they start announcing your category.

And he was right.

I lost my hearing.
I couldn't hear anything. Yeah.

And so I was looking ahead to me
because all the nominees in my category

were sitting at the end of the row,
in a row in front of me.

Right?

So since I'd lost the ability to hear,

I, I looked to see if they stood up
and they didn't.

They didn't.

So I turned to my son, who was sitting
to my left, and he was like, Yeah,

you couldn't hear.

Well, I guess that means we won.

For those of you listening
who just made a very excited face

for the sun was making shaking him.

And you had
you're the only cool guy with a hat on.

You came up and it was a great speech
talking to right away about Louisiana and

yeah well we had practiced the speech
and they told us to do that.

There's a there's a cool lunch,
a few days before the the awards

where all the nominees go to lunch
and they kind of prep you, okay?

And they're like,
don't write a speech down and pull out

a piece of paper, you know, figure out
what you're going to say ahead of time,

make it quick, pithy, funny, And like,
you just made it up on the spot.

Don't say pithy in front of how you

antipathies and.

Yeah.

And so Brad
and I sat down the night before

and came up with our speech

and they said only one of us could talk
and which everybody breaks that rule.

Right?

And we were just going to, we were going
to throw it back and forth to each other.

And so we worked on this
when we felt like we had a down pat

and we get up to the stage and

we could hear it right in front of us.

And the first row was,

Oh God, I'm drawing a blank.

Two of the biggest stars in the world
and then narrows it down.

Oh, my God.

This is like that night
when I heard them again.

I heard him whisper
because we sat with with

some other big stars. Oh,

Anyway, we sat with them at lunch,
and we had a great time.

And he goes, Kevin Costner,
now a bigger, bigger.

Whoa, that is big Colonel Ocean's 11.

Oh, Dean Martin.

Frank Sinatra.

Oh, way back. Yeah.

Oh, no, I can. I can see him.

Same guy from over there with you guys.

And so we've all got the diseases.

I know this guy.

All right.

Anyway,
never mind the Clooney George here.

George Clooney.

Well, yes, He turns to Sandra Bullock

and the stage whispers as those
are those animation guys.

They are so crazy
and so much fun and feels like, Oh, cool.

And we forgot our speech.

So those are the ones you had dinner
with the night before lunch earlier.

And and I had the speech
on a piece of paper under my hat.

That's the reason where they

look at trade secrets.

I guess we get so flustered by that.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so I remembered the first line
and I said it,

and then Brandon just repeated
what I had said.

Yeah, okay, he's lost.

And then we just started talking
and I really didn't know what we had said

until late that evening
when we got to see it play back.

And I was like, I think we did okay.

People clapped and stuff

and then people were coming up to us
afterwards saying, Y'all were great.

Oh my gosh, I just love your enthusiasm.

You were so happy
and we were so well done.

Remind us again
the name of the movie that you won for.

It's it's a it's the longest title
to ever win a short film Oscar.

It's called The Fantastic Flying
Books of Mr.

Morris. Less more. Very cool.

And then we made it into a book
and into an app, and it was the number one

bestselling book
and the number one best selling app.

And it was an Oscar winning
and an Oscar winning and all made here.

It's all made here, and that's fantastic.

So the name of your studios is Moon,
But it was me about.

Yeah, change it.

Yeah.

We went in kind of closed
moon bond and okay

during the before the pandemic

and they changed the um, the incentives

tax incentives for film
because the state was so broke and,

and it was just a tough we had done it
so beautifully for a little while and,

and I like moonlight.

That's neat. What do you call it
now? It's called Howdy Buy.

How do you buy it? Okay, well,
you're going to buy two in there.

That's right.

Yeah. Okay.

And tell us all about your studio.

I mean, that's pretty cool.
And it's located right here in Shreveport.

Yeah.

You know, it's it's it's

we're like guerrilla warfare or something.

I don't know.

We're so small and nimble and we're able

to jump into new technologies
very easily. And.

And that's for the last like four years,

five years, I've really been focusing

the on new stuff that's that's changing
the industry and it's changing.

It's so fast and it's not,

you don't have to be there. Like

we're using Epic Game Engine, which is
most powerful game engine in the world,

and to generate our imagery
and even like figure out how to do

our, our films and to use a different kind
of methodology.

It's very complicated
to make an animated short film.

There's nothing there.

Yeah.

When you start,
there's literally not a thing.

So every blade of grass, every doorknob,
every nostril,

you have to like design and render
in these, you know, powerful computers.

And the game engines have developed these
these supercomputers

that have so much
they can do so much in real time.

So during the pandemic,
when everything was shut down,

it was like, let's try
the epic game engine to do a short film

to prove
that it's a viable way to make a film.

And we contacted Epic and they're like,
We would love for you to do that.

And they paid for this short
film to be made

and just use our technology
and then tell everybody about it.

So during the pandemic,
you know, my small team here in Shreveport

worked in tandem with most of the crew,

which was in, uh, in London,

and then coordinating
with all the people at Epic Games.

And we we had crew all over the place
in Czechoslovakia and Chicago

and Los Angeles, and we just zoom,
you know, several hours a day.

But we were able to do things that were

I never thought were going to be possible
in computer animation.

We were able to do things faster,
more intuitively, much more

like live action
filmmaking by using that powerful engine.

And the short
turned out really beautifully.

And we won a ton of

of film festivals.

I was hoping we'd get back at the Oscars.

We just missed making that.

But then in the last few months,
last year,

I has been coming into the picture in
a big way and we've been embracing that.

And I found some very talented
young people in town that are so into AI

and we are blazing amazing trails
and right now we're doing things that only

a handful of people on the planet
are doing and it's very exciting.

And so part of
like what's always interesting me

about Shreveport is there have always been
amazing talents here.

And everybody,
every town has that going on.

You know, it's like

Johnny Carson came from Nebraska,
you know, like all

everybody comes from somewhere
else, basically. And

but to be

here and be able to tap into that is
and find these people that are here,

I mean, they would have to go somewhere
otherwise. You're right. Yeah.

So I'm very excited when I'm able to find
that kind of talent here.

And I always I almost always do.

I mean, it's not just in L.A.

and it's not just in the big cities.

It's everywhere. Especially now.

The technology is so I'll call it
democratic that

there's no reason why you can't
do something amazing any place.

This city has always been very supportive
of that and of me trying to do that.

And so it makes it easy to be here.

How many folks work in your studio
here in Shreveport?

Well, it varies, you know, from
time to time when we were doing the, um,

more the last

short film, the Epic Games short film,
which had the title almost as long

Mr. Spam gets a new hat.

Um, we had it that you were wearing.

I mean, it was close.

It was a derby.

Okay? It,

we probably had about six people here

and about 45 people in the UK

and then a few sprinkled
around the rest of the world.

And but right now
I really only need like five people

and we're with a I'm with the Epic Game
engine.

We're able to just do amazing things.

Now, when it comes down
to getting into production

on a feature film,
we'll have to ramp up a lot.

But these tools make getting there

so much faster and so much less expensive
than it used to be.

And that's part of the excitement of it
these days.

What's what's your capacity to ramp up
a larger feature here in Shreveport?

Because I think that's
that's always been a challenge.

People say,
well, we've got to go out to like,

say, New York or L.A.,
but how do we bring film in to Shreveport?

And what's our capacity for that?

Right now, the capacity is just depends on
what if it's live action or animation.

When you have live action,
you're asking a crew to come in, be

for be here for a little while,
make the film and go away.

During the heyday of film production,
you know,

we had that going on like crazy
after Katrina.

For the years after that, you know,
we were able to to build a steady

talent base.

So there was, you know, enough
people to be able to crew

at least two movies at any given time
without people having to come.

Too many people having to come in.

And that was wonderful.

And then when the tax incentives

dried up for that span of time,
now they're back.

We just we lost it, lost

all the wind that was in our sales.

And, you know, Georgia picked up
everything that we were getting

different places and for animation, it's
a different kettle of fish.

And that, you know, we were able to bring
about 60 people in moonlight

and we we didn't

listen to our own advisors

that said, do your big project
and scale back down to about 15

and then when it's time
to get back into it, scale back up.

And we loved our employees too
much, right?

You know, we fell in love with our, our,
the culture that we'd made

and that put us at a disadvantage.

We had to just do stuff
to try to keep the doors open instead of

what we're supposed to be focused
on, which was our ideas.

And and then when the tax incentives
went away, I just burned it up.

So you said the tax incentives are back.

They are.

And they're and they are tailored
in a way to help out.

They call them indigenous filmmakers,
you know, people who are from here.

So they're even better
now If you're from here and you live here

and you make it here.

And so I'm starting a a live action film
that I want to film in Shreveport

to take advantage of and completely
and just see, just show everybody, see

it can work again and and we could start
getting the stuff back here.

Two questions.

What's a
what's the name of that film? Okay,

you got a minute?

You like this one?

It's shorter.

Oh, it's run by expectations.

All right, this is I'll set it up
with my thinking behind it.

All right, now. Okay.

What is it? What? I want it.

We can't afford to make. I can't.

I don't want to try to raise $100 million
to make a movie in Shreveport.

I don't want to raise $100 million
for anything.

I want that to be somebody else's job.

But if I'm going to do this,
I'm going to have to raise this money.

All right? Okay.

So I'm like, all right, I'll do a lower
budget film, maybe around $10 million.

What are the low budget films
that succeed the most,

uh, science fiction and horror?

And I love science
fiction and horror. Yeah.

And I've been wanting to put
on those long pants for a long time.

I've been in cartoon land for, you know,
almost the entire during my career.

So getting to do something
that would scare the

bejesus out of somebody,
something I've really wanted to do.

Not like a splatter film.

Like the stuff like a film
that really just scares you.

Like The Shining or something.
Yeah, more psychological.

So I decided to make a film
set in Shreveport, Louisiana,

and Halloween night of 1937, the year
I was born.

Okay, I want to recreate the Shreveport
of our childhood.

Anybody that grew up here
around that time.

And the funny thing is,

it's so much of it is still here,

like I've done location
shooting or scouting all around town.

And to make it 1957, there
entire neighborhoods

that are just ready to go
haven't changed that much.

So you park a car,
an old car in front of it and you're done.

Yeah.

And so it all takes place in one night
on Halloween night in 1957. And

these kids have gone to the movies
that day.

It's a science fiction movie.

I want to set that and like rebuild
the old Broadmoor movie theater

that used to be across from A.C. Steer.

Do you remember that?

And when you probably went to movies there
I was a Munroe.

Okay, Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. And

but I see a science fiction movie
and the rest of the night

is that science fiction movie.

In a strange way,
it comes true, starts playing out neat.

And only these kids are immune
from what has happened.

These invaders that have come and taken
over the mines and all the grown ups

and all their friends
and only they can save the day.

And I want it to be so scary.

You can't even breathe.

And the but it's the kids
that save the day.

So it's not like it's kind of like it's
something like Stranger Things.

I was just thinking stranger things,
but in the fifties and scarier

and using Shreveport like crazy.

All right, so what's the name?

The name of it is. That's a long title.

It's a long set up for this.

Okay.

The name of it is Shadows
Come, Shadows come.

All right.

I like it.

Thank you. I like it. All right.

My next, my Jack

put it on his stamp.

Okay, My next question is,
I wanted to get your thoughts on the 50

cent coming in, reviving the millennial
Millennials, Millennium Studios.

Anything that can bring the energy

and brings back is great.

I don't know that much about 50 Cent
and you know,

I hope that it goes great
because I do too.

And so I'm glad that that deal
got put together.

And, you know,

it's I know I just hope he succeeds.

I wish him all the luck in the world
and everything goes swimmingly well.

That would be telling is 50 Cent 50 cent
sorry I just can't it can't really.

City Come on it is it

takes over a millennium Studios
and he starts bringing that in.

We have somewhere between ten and $100
million horror film going on and

yes there you go back to you
but I've never been on budget in

anything I've ever made. Well,
that is a problem.

Hopefully it'll be closer.

Ten budgets for French
fries are not much, so you be surprised,

but that's exciting.

Thank you.

We filmed a sequence for it

this past summer,
about a ten minute sequence

and doing night shoots took us three days
and our three nights.

And my step kids were the stars.

Oh, nice.

And they did a wonderful job.

There's no dialog that made it easier.

It's a silent like them being chased
by aliens thing, and it was so much fun.

The city was so cooperative,

you know, and we could find every location
we needed.

And it was

it was my wife was like,

You haven't slept in three days
and you're still so excited.

What's going on like this is the funniest
thing in the world making a movie.

And so, yeah.

How long does it take to complete a film
like that?

You know, if you're
depending on your budget, you know,

it took us three days.

This 7 minutes that that's pretty good.

Yeah.

And so for to keep the money down,

trying to keep the shoot
as short as you can and so you design

I'm designing this movie
so we don't have that many locations

that we don't have
that many speaking parts.

It's at night which, you know,
we won't need as many extras

because the streets
are supposed to be empty.

I mean, you think about all these things

when you do and these
and you work within those limitations.

So probably three weeks shoot would
probably be as good as I think you were.

Maybe.

Maybe more than that, I'd probably.

But and then another year
of editing on top.

You'd be surprised if you except for this
new gaming engine you have,

you can knock it out or effects or the
effects can come together really quickly.

Um, if you shoot with a lot of clarity,
which is what

I like to do, I like to prep,
you know, within an inch of

as much as we can before we

get on set, start filming
so things will go faster.

And it's, it's just, it's
thrilling to have it all

set up and hope it all goes okay
if things always go wrong.

But if you're prepared enough,
you can tack right.

And some of my favorite times
in making films, animation or live action

is when everything's going wrong
and you have to think on your feet

and come up with something on the fly.

And sometimes that turns out to be
the best thing that ever happened,

you know? Sure. Yeah.

I don't know.

So I'm wondering.

So. So why did you decide
to stay in Shreveport?

You could go anywhere

near your talent and your creativity
and your winning Oscars and.

But you decided to hold it
all here in Shreveport. Why?

I tell you, I understand

you're quite the proponent
and the quite the advocate for Shreveport.

Well, it's a complicated
a simple question,

and it has a complicated answer.

And it's like

I know I think

I watched too many like Frank Capra movies
growing up or something

where home was very,
you know, prominent in the theme

that home had a very strong pull
for all those characters.

And I mean, Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

It's a Wonderful Life.

It's a Wonderful Life.

It's all about those those those small.

All towns and staying devoted to them
and paying back the debt.

Right.

You were raised in this wonderful place,
raised by these wonderful people.

And leaving it

shouldn't be the answer.

It should be an option.

But I don't know.

I always like home, has very strong
emotional pull for me.

And I went away to school.

I went to SMU and lived in Baton Rouge,

in New Orleans,
when my wife was going through law school.

And then we came back here
and she practiced law here.

And then she was like,
I don't like being a lawyer.

And we quit.

And I was doing good
with with books and stuff and movie stuff.

It just started happening for me.

So we we spent a year
and this is when things hit

rock bottom in Shreveport, when the bottom
fell out of the oil business.

And like so much energy was gone.

And it seemed really kind of sad
and desperate

and so many of our friends were moving in.

I'm like, All right, let's just
look around and see what it's like.

You know, it's things are tough here.

So we spent a year because we could

and we we lived in Cincinnati,
which is an awesome town.

I lived here.

I worked here for two years.
It's a great city.

And we went to New Orleans.

We went to Austin,

we went to Washington, D.C.

We went to upstate New York.

We went to, um, Berkeley.

We just bounced around and we couldn't.

Nothing ever felt quite like home, right?

And so we came back,
you know, you're back.

And then we raised kids here
and they're grown and nice.

You know, then I lost my wife,
I lost my daughter, and.

And the people who.

That was a tough, tough time

in the community, really.

I wouldn't have gotten that kind
of support, you know, from anyplace else.

I'd grown up here.

And so people I know in my whole life
were there for us

during that time
and there for us after that time.

There for me.

Right. Good.

And there is something I got to say.

I used to say it without irony.

I used to say I like knowing old people.

And now, well, now, now I'm over 60

and I'm like, I like being an old person

and knowing older people. Yeah.

I don't know. It's.

It's I.

I take great satisfaction
in knowing people

for the whole span of their lives
and enjoying their company.

That's an interesting way
to look at it. Yeah.

So if anybody's interested in working
for you, how do they go about doing that?

Is that a thing?
Can they just walk in and apply or.

Oh, man, I hired out.

Yeah. Okay.

There is no sign for our office.

There's a, um.

Here's a post.

It just says the number nine.

Okay.

And it's

when I need somebody, I'll let I.

Let I let it be known. Gotcha.

Uh, cause for me,
I had moved out, and we're.

We're at the RF building.

You know, they're. Yeah.

And, uh, Kings Highway and

we got.

We were, too.

Um, what's the word?

We were too visible, too successful.

Well, people wanted to be part of it, so,
I mean, we had to really be careful

about people wandering in and,
you know, even to be sweep

takes 20 minutes,
you know, and even just to be cordial.

Yeah, it takes some time.

And you need to put Jeff
at your front door.

So maybe me and Jeff

every night and I can tell you that.

So Jeff and I, baby,
we could try to be extras

like newscasters in your movie
or something.

We could do that.

Absolutely. I'd love to be awesome.

You know, if you look at the 1950s
so we can get that.

Well, I yeah, I was making
those statements before we came in.

You're making fun of me.

But regardless, I'm used to it.

I mean, man,
I want to talk to you forever,

but I know you're super busy today.
Thanks for coming into the studio.

You've got me in
the chair. I'll let you know.

Really?

We got, like, three more minutes here.

Okay.

We've done so many creative things.

I mean, were you just born creative?

I mean, like, my one of my favorite things
you did was the Rise of the Guardians,

because you've completely reimagined
all of our childhood heroes, you know?

So are you familiar with the.

So you take like, no, you take like

the Sandman
and Santa Claus and Jack Frost.

And when you picture them this way,
but you don't think much about it, well,

he takes them and turns them
into the Justice League or Marvel Love it.

See, I'm a DC guy, okay?

So it's like the Marvel heroes,
and they're fighting the boogeyman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sweet.

And you're thinking of this, right?

This. This fat,
jolly old elf, Santa Claus.

And he makes in this huge boat upside.

Yeah, I like it
with naughty and nice tattooed on it.

How do you how do you come up with that?

Look, this was.

I don't usually come up with these.

I mean, just some.

It's like somebody it's like an idea.

Rock gets thrown at my head
or something, and, you know, and I'm off.

So when my kids were little and
I was first starting to tell them about

the icons of childhood, you know,
like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny

and the tooth fairy, and it hit me like,
where did this stuff come from?

Because it's like, I don't remember,
like reading about, you know, the origins.

Yeah.

Like there was the
the Congressional Whimsy Act

30 that established these guys
and so when my kids started

asking me questions about them,
I didn't have a lot of answers.

And I'm like,
this is this is there should be answers.

You know, how do they do their job?

Do they know each other is right?

My daughter asked one morning.

Yeah, that's a good question.

And so I had a winging it.

I go, Oh, they know each other.

They work together.
It's a big what they do.

Yeah.

You know,
And so that's that began that whole like

how to make them interesting,
how to make them believable,

how to make them cool,
how to make them magnificent.

Because I mean, in my mind as a kid,
they had to be the coolest guys ever.

So when I was thinking about Santa,

I was thinking that he was kind of like
Sean Connery, you know,

because the coolest guy when I was a kid
growing up was James Bond.

Sean Connery is
James Bond is still pretty cool.

Yeah, there was.

And as he as he got out
and when he quit doing Bond movies

and he kept doing different movies,
he was still just so cool.

So I even tried to get him to do The Voice
and we talked to him.

Really? Wow. Yeah.

It was

God, I really because
there's cussing in this story.

So but we presented it to him right now.

I was just a lowly writer and were like,
Can you?

Sean only comes in twice
a year into CAA and the talent agency.

And so

you are going to be in this other room.

And when we get to presenting him
this and the Santa part to him,

I'm going to push the button on the phone
so you can hear what's happening.

But you're going to be in this room
because you're not important enough

to be in here.

And so I hear the beep comes on

and and I hear them saying,
you know, this is it.

This young author, I was younger then,
you know, he's done this amazing

bunch of books, you know,
and he thinks that you would be wonderful

as Santa Claus.

And we think this
these books are going to do really well.

And I hear I hear him
going, well, sounds very interesting.

Hand it over.

I think I flipped through goes
lesion lovely

when you when when I do this

and I like when we read
like start recording right now and he said

do you like us on this.

Know you're going to be to
you know I go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead.

I said, yeah, and I'll my golf game.

So yeah, be

be so keep it.

ED And then the thing, the line went dead.

So I stood out in the hall
when the meeting

started breaking up
so I could just see him right there.

He comes down, he looks.

He's got this awesome suit,

and he just radiates movie stardom.

Like, sometimes you meet movie stars
and they're.

They're kind of ordinary.

You're kind of surprised at how they would
blend, right?

Sean Connery radiates stardom.

Yeah.
There's not anybody like him. Very cool.

So he's walking down the hall towards me

and a lot of guys with,
I mean, just kind of like three nods.

And he goes like that.

And I went, Oh my God, James Bond.

He was like, You're James Bond.

There's two of you out there
licensed to kill.

All right, we got to wrap that.

I would like this to go on all day.

But you ended up with Alec Baldwin, right?

We got to say that.

Yes, we did. And Alec Baldwin,
he did a triumphant job.

He did really good.

But final you want to hit.

It's as long as one of his movie titles.

Well, I just can't stop.

Thanks, Bill, for coming on.
Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Excited for the work
you're doing in Shreveport.

And I know you.

We could have a whole nother meeting
just about the things that you do

to kind of bring awareness
to the good things in Shreveport.

We can do that one.

But thanks for
thanks for your talent and stay.

If you mean it, we will do it again.

No. And thank you so much.
This is awesome.

I really like talking about it.

We like talking to you about it.

You know, Oscar winner Bill
Joyce has been our guest today.

Good to know.

Shreveport voters, pick it up
wherever you listen to your podcast.

Have a good one, everybody.