Ducking Realitea

Manifesting with Tom

• Siobhan • Episode 30

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In this episode, Siobhan speaks to Tom Skinner as he shares the pivotal moments that have shaped his journey across various industries. They delve into the early challenges of navigating the digital market, recounting life-altering experiences that underscore the importance of resilience, adaptability, and breaking new ground. Tom reflects on the invaluable lessons passed down from his mother and how they've influenced his approach to both career and life.

The discussion also sheds light on the often-overlooked historical contributions of women in film editing, contrasting them with the ongoing gender disparities in the industry today. Through engaging anecdotes and insightful reflections, this episode highlights the power of mentorship, the importance of trailblazing, and the enduring value of learning from the past to forge a path forward.

Siobhan:

I welcome you all to this week's episode of ducking reality. Today we have a friend of mine from one of the bars I work at. I've had so many interesting conversations with him. And his life has been fascinating. And every time we kind of delve into it, I get to learn a little bit more. And you're so low key and relaxed Tom that I don't even think that you told me some of the kind of what I would have thought were like the highlights of your life. It's been like Irish John walking by and dropping little nugget and then keep going.

Tom:

Very much try not to talk too much about the highlights. Yeah. Oh, lights.

Siobhan:

It, but you're very humble about all your accomplishments. You

Tom:

know, I I've had a really good run, I think and I met so many people. And I don't I don't mean because I necessarily worked with them. I just came in contact with them and got to shake their hands. And it's just been amazing. I started a list years ago that I've lost. And I tried to think about it and recreate it, but it pops up all the time. I see stuff in the paper and on TV and I go cheese, I met that person. Once you know. I don't know why that is. That's just something that seems to happen to me. It's like, what was that? Like? There was that Woody Allen movie, the character that appeared and all these different period, the important parts of history. But anyway,

Siobhan:

so tell us how did your story start? Because you're here in Alameda, but you've lived all over?

Tom:

Right? Well, I'm an East Coast guy. I was born in Connecticut. I worked 30 years in Manhattan. And through, I guess, good planning and good luck. I was able to get moved to California. Right at the period where a house was being sold, the divorce was being completed. And I was given sole custody of my three young children. And I wanted to get them out of get them out of there. And so I worked for an advertising company in New York at that time, the party great advertising G two, and done a project for them that had worked out they were happy with me. The Aetna Medicare Site. I think that's what it was Aetna Medicare, Oh, wow. It was a big site. It was a complicated thing. And my boss was in his office one day, and he managed production, delivery for all their offices around the United States, which there were about a half a dozen of them, maybe more. But San Francisco was all screwed up. And he didn't know what to do about it. And I saw this sort of timeline in my head about the house, the divorce, the kids being my responsibility. And I said, Oh, I'll do that. I'd love to go off to San Francisco and try to fix what's wrong in the office out there you go. And I never did that. The Office folded in about eight months. And he said, Do you want to come back? God bless him. And but I didn't. I had my kids out here. They were in school. Everything had been moved out at the company's expense. And they were gonna give me a nice runway, they were like, Okay, well, if you don't come back, you know, they give me insurance for, you know, five or six months for me and my family and a couple of months of pay. And they gave me a good runway. And so I just started hustling around San Francisco, trying to get work similar similar work. And I was really fortunate because I had worked for a small startup digital company in New York called touchscreen Media Group. In the early 90s. And midnight, he's I was there for about five years, five or six years. It started by these two, Pete young people that were friends of mine and one guy did my sales rep at a post production facility and the other woman was out of IBM or something. And we were acquired by a company in Bethesda, Maryland and one of the some of the team members that came up and interviewed us and evaluated our relative value and everything else and negotiated the deal. And ended up at Wells Fargo in San Francisco, in property management. And one of them was a friend he said, Well, you need a job. I'll give you a job. That's always nice job. And I said, Okay, what do I do? And so I don't know we're gonna do this and that we got plans in the next couple of years. because we had to start all the planning, everything moves in this glacial way, in the world of banking technology. It's not like advertising or television. And so I went to work for Charles. And I think I'd come to the office, which was right on Market Street. I was taking the ferry boat over from, from Alameda at that point, we landed in Marin, but I had to move us out of moraine because the school sucked and I wasn't making enough money. And, or at the time, I thought, and I was on Market Street there, and it was just a great life. You know, I had commuted on trains out of Grand Central Station for 18 years and, and this was just commuter heaven. At a bar car had

Siobhan:

everything. Yeah, the ferries a good time, part of me was like, Oh, maybe I should work. At least one day in SF just to take the ferry every day

Tom:

I made I made friends there. And I really, I'm really grateful to the people I met on the ferry. That's another story. But anyway, I went to her for Charles and he, we go out to lunch, and he says, Look at, I'm going to have open heart surgery, I'm going to be gone for like five months. And I didn't have anybody else to report to. I didn't have any other bosses and, and he said, Do you work with this woman and Charlotte and this person and work on that project and just, you know, build the PowerPoint slides and you know, run the run the meetings and do all that. And I said, okay, so that was it. I worked for them for 18 months on that gig. I had three different contracts with Wells Fargo. And that sustained me, I made more money in that 18 months. And I made in the whole year with the advertising company in New York. Oh, wow. And it just got us going. You know, we got settled in. I've been in the same house for 14 years here in Alameda. And it was just good, really good luck. For me. Really good luck.

Siobhan:

So that's kind of a theme in your life, a lot

Tom:

of good luck, some bad luck, but a lot a lot, a lot of good luck. I didn't marry very well. But I I was lucky. I was I was lucky. I did a lot of crazy stuff when I was a kid. A lot of crazy stuff. My father died when I was about 14, I think and I'm one of two, three brothers, three sons. I'm the middle one. And my mother, God bless her was like, didn't really know how to handle me. She kind of just sort of said, well, you know, I want you to do this. And I said, Well, if I do that, then I get to do this. And I negotiated my whole life. And I kept up my end of the bargain. And she kept up her end of the bargain. And so I would paint a house and make some money. And when I was 15 I got a with a friend of mine, two friends of mine. We got Euro passes and airline tickets and went to Europe at 1515 Wow, I had like $400 or cash in my pocket. And maybe at the time that was more than enough money. And you know, did all this crazy, you know, stuff running with the bulls in Pamplona and and running a fourth of some grungy apartment with these Africans in Paris and I just had a fun I just had a lot of fun. How long did you go for I was gone for I think six or seven weeks. And it was interesting the way the trip ended. I had come back I take the train, you know you travel first class on the trains with these Euro passes. And I had been in Lisbon, Portugal. And I was coming back to London where I was going to meet up with my mother and younger brother. We were going to all go home together on this date. And I got there early. I was 10 days early but I had friends I'd made in London and I wanted to hang out in London. And so the subway pulled in from the train station I took the subway to Leicester Square for some reason. And I had a kind of big wallet that had my passport and all my contacts and my money and there was this thing that was you know fit into my pack and a really secure place. And I opened it up on the platform and the front of this phone and I didn't have the right coin and I turned around to get the coin from the guy right there and when I turned back it was all gone. Oh wow. And so I had nothing in London there I had the change in my pocket. I had my pack but I had no ID I had no money I had no passport, I had no nowhere to go no numbers to call. Everybody from home was over there it seemed and and so I spent about 10 days living on the on the streets of London and sleeping in the parks and going to revival meetings in the morning to get a tea and a doughnut and stuff like that and pan handling and doing whatever I could survive it. And I just kept repeating the name of the hotel though I knew my mother was going to be in. And I went the American Embassy and everything they wouldn't couldn't do anything for me. They were like, man. Good luck. Well, you know, I hope you would make it to your family shows up. Wow. And that was a life changing thing that that really changed my whole view about living rough like that. And how that happens to people in life. Was I look back and I go, that was a lucky experience. Yeah, at the time, it didn't seem so lucky. No,

Siobhan:

not at all. I must have been scary.

Tom:

It was scary. But you know, nothing happened to me. I didn't get robbed or

Siobhan:

you didn't get robbed, but just that first day.

Tom:

Killed. Yeah. But I guess that was lucky. I think it does. When I look back, I say I was lucky. I

Siobhan:

would say so. Yeah. 15 alone broke in London.

Tom:

Yeah. And the other part of the deal was that I came back and I went to a school like in this Giamatti movie. Now that's up for the Academy Award of this prep school in upstate New York, Episcopalian school with the ties and the jackets and all these idiots. But that was the deal. And I went there for my junior year of high school. I was not invited back. Oh,

Siobhan:

were you? You were a really rebellious kid, huh?

Tom:

I was a good hockey player. I was a good hockey player up there. But I was rebellious. Yeah, I was I really was. Anyway, so anyhow, so let's see. Let's keep the thread here. So I got back, I ended up in college, literally, the mail, but back then they used to just send you Yeah, I don't know what we would send them I guess an essay t score or something. And you would be inundated with the all these promotions from all these colleges that would take you well. And I had no interest in going to college. But my mother said you got to go to college, you got to go to college. And so one of them was from this place called Emerson College in Boston. And she said, Oh, my friend, Peggy some went there. You should go there. Try that. And I said, Okay. And

Siobhan:

she knew Boston would be a good fit for you.

Tom:

And I went up there and I didn't I had a girlfriend. His brother was a senior at Tufts. He was an actor. And he had been in India, he had been playing hair in the play hair in India. And for the summer, some traveling tour of hair,

Siobhan:

that'd be an experience. Well,

Tom:

he came back and he had a dump apartment up in Porter square. And he needed a roommate. And so when I showed up at school to sign up, they said, Well, where are you going to live? I got a place. You're gonna place up at Porter square. There's Oh, okay. So I never had the dormitory experience. And I lived in that apartment for about seven years up there. Oh, wow. And I got through college, and I went to work and I went to work for a guy named Stuart Cody, who was a kind of MIT Media genius guy. He had a place in Somerville, a shop and I said I'll do anything. I'll do it. I'll do the toilets, whatever, whatever you need. I just want to a job he had a to mixing rooms, film mixing rooms, and various services did a lot of rental of audio equipment, ethnographers and things like that we're just talking about it. His claim to fame was he had developed something called a remote start slate system, which was a wireless. This was a big deal back in 1975. That enabled these guys like Dickie Lee Kok and all these documentarians out of Harvard and MIT, the KonTiki, the recreation of the throw higher Dale boat that this guy built to replicate what could have been done the 1000 years and sailed it, you know, from Peru to Europe or something. Anyway, it was equipped with 316 millimeter film cameras, and the little Nagar tape recorders and this remote start state system. So while he's out there, in the waves, you can push a button and the cameras are all started.

Siobhan:

Oh, awesome. It was kind of like the first Yeah, it was self timer.

Tom:

It was really crazy stuff. Yeah.

Siobhan:

So for anyone that doesn't know Emerson is an Arts College in Boston. Well,

Tom:

it was a speech school. Oh, it started as a speech pathology school. Oh, I didn't know that. I did. Then it went into radio, television, theater, of course. But speech was their thing. You could go to these some of these teachers could tell exactly where you were from after you just talked to them for a lot less time than I've talked to you already. Oh, wow. They could just tell the regionalism and they could say oh, you're from Southie or you're from Worcester or you're from, you know, wherever it was Wyoming. And so that was that was my my college experience. My teacher was a guy named Vinnie de Bona is another famous guy. Vinnie was a newsman. He shot film for WBC. And he taught there. And he went to Hollywood. And he invented Entertainment Tonight. Oh, wow. And he, he invented America's Funniest Home Videos. Wow. So he created this sort of dream television show where all the content was free. People sent you the content for the vote. That's an amazing thing. It was just such a beautiful model. You know, like, wow, that's really is taking it easy, man. Yeah, you got to just do the intros and outros of the whole thing. Anyway, Vinnie was obviously very, very successful.

Siobhan:

So did you go there not realizing that you wanted to get into like TV and film, it was just

Tom:

I was totally into it. I was, I was a photographer, I had a dark room and my crummy apartment and Porter square.

Siobhan:

So you were kind of in that artistic realm before going there?

Tom:

i Yeah. But it was more it was more process oriented for me to there was no like, sitting around writing scripts. It was sort of more about you know, shooting film and developing four by five negatives and color printing and, and just understanding all the mechanics of film production process. Okay, I was very much into saying I want to understand what everybody's doing in the room here. And and that's sort of what I what I did, I kind of just sort of stuck with it. I was a sound guy and I used to work in the mixing in the post production and I don't know, I just I just love that I still I still am interested in in the gear and how it how it all works.

Siobhan:

So what was your first like, big project, you went to work for the gentleman that had the two audio rooms and

Tom:

yeah, that that was for Stuart, but I didn't. You know, I was just, I was a worker bee in the back room there. I got out of that, I guess I guess when I started to get it tasted what was going on? Is I moved out to the Berkshires out to Western Massachusetts. And I was gonna get married and I did get married out there. And I had a lot of jobs. I worked as a cook for a woman named Miss Ruby in West Stockbridge. I worked as a projectionist at the movie theater. I was at Massachusetts licensed projectionist. Wow. And I was a film editor for a guy named William Greaves who was in New York City, who had a home and there we come up on the weekends. And Bill always had stuff going on. And he wrote, He really put me to work. I was his editor, I was a sound man, we would go and shoot film all over the United States in things like the Peoplemover systems and airports. And I, when I go to San Francisco, I was here when they were done putting that creating that a and, and there was one another, anyway, they're like five or six cities, you know, we went in 10 days and shot all this stuff, and then came back and cut it up. But that's when I really started getting the feel of it. Enjoying the per diem getting paid, and and getting a per diem. And that's when I really kind of got hooked on it. So it was after doing that for, I guess, a couple years in the Berkshires. I was a projectionist. I had a buddy who was a production as there who worked for this German guy. And he kind of just did a lot of paperwork about television shows that were on every week. And I really couldn't understand this job. And one day he came in and he said, Mike, Klaus, the guy's name was Klaus Heilig, great guy said Klaus is looking for a producer to go to New York to work as a assistant producer in New York. And if it works out, well yield become the producer. Do you want to do that? And I said, Yeah, I want to do that. I had no resume. I had nothing. So I just wrote a letter and I can do this, this, this and this. I've done this. This isn't that. And I went and met Klaus Klaus hired me. And the next thing I know I got to Office on Third Avenue and 52nd Street, right have a PJ Clarke's and I, I work for this company of about 810 people that represents the biggest media distributor and creator in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They kind of ran the German Austrian Swiss market. They exported about 50 hours of American primetime television every week. Oh, wow. They had deals with all the six major studios. They own right to these things in their territory and another territories And it was all run by one man who had made his fortune on the film was strada, the Fellini film, he had bought the rights outside of Italy somehow for that with everything, mortgaging everything, and built that into literally an empire. And what he loved was classical music. It was his favorite thing. And he spared no expense and built the largest library of Performing Arts, classical music in the world. Wow. And they were the best. They were the Vienna Philharmonic. They were the best opera houses in Italy and the best musicians. And it was just amazing. And we would sell it to Exxon here in this country for a series called Great performances on PBS. And I was this post production guy. So I would get these cans and crates a film from Europe, and work with the appointed whoever they were from public broadcasting, which was usually good, but sometimes acrimonious, and subtitle, you know, essentially put these on American Standard videotape, transfer the film subtitle and shoot this sort of interstitial stuff, the interviews with the artists, you know, between the x or the show, you know, whatever it was, and flesh it out as a program. And I did that for Klaus for for years. And we would do a lot. I do, I don't know, 1520 30 hours, sometimes more in a season in the kind of fall to spring season. And then when that ended, I would go off on these, whatever this other producer from Germany wanted to do in the United States, which he had solid gold and all these sorts of shows, and we would go with the German hosts and take them out and do the German version of like solid

Siobhan:

gold. Oh, that's amazing. And

Tom:

so we go to Hollywood and Hawaii and Las Vegas and all these sorts of glitzy places that do all the shoot all the wraparound stuff. So it was a great job and it went great until Exxon pulled out an Exxon pulled out. That was pretty much it for me and Klaus. I did work for him for years after I did projects for him. Usually involving someone like Sony or some other group where he wanted someone in there that he knew. It was great job. He's gone now.

Siobhan:

No, but it sounds like a lot of his work is still out in the world, though.

Tom:

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's, it's out there. I guess it's up on YouTube somewhere. But Leonard Bernstein was an artist that was signed to the company. And these were pretty rigid contracts in money, made a lot of money. And he didn't do television for anybody else. So I got to know him because he was based in New York. And even this, Frederica on Stata, who ended up in Alameda, Alameda of all places. She apparently retired here and I had met her in New York a couple of times. She's a wonderful singer. And so I got to meet all these people. That didn't mean goes in the Pavarotti and the Carrera S and all these tenors and singers and musicians, which I loved. I loved that I loved the whole the idea of going into work and listening to classical music.

Siobhan:

That's amazing, like job that you fell into.

Tom:

I just fell into it. Yeah, I do nothing about it. I had no no knowledge of the classical repertoire that I was, you know, I had heard it. I didn't I didn't dislike it. But I I was not a musician. I didn't study this stuff. Right. I just fell into it. More Good luck. Yeah.

Siobhan:

Because we had a conversation once where you told me that basically, you had manifested your life even without knowing what what it was or I did. I know.

Tom:

I know. I did. I you know what, I It's so ironic how this all tied together. So it's amazing to me. I was so moved by the film version of West Side Story, the first movie that came out, I remember seeing that my town and saying, Wow, not only did they swear in it, which is amazing. But it was it was big, you know, it really it really got me the whole thing, the colors, the music, the dancing, the whole and the hood seem kind of believable in their own showbizzy way and but I really dug it end it just made me think that there's a way to get in on this. Yeah. And you know, it was it was a very kind of Protestant approach. It was work, work work, you know, you got you got to do the work, you know, but if you keep doing the work, this is going to work out for you. And I watched all the I loved old movies and all that stuff and, and was well versed in everything from map and Costello's Humphrey Bogart and I just thought someday I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make it in this in this business, somehow I'm going to make some kind of a, get a hold on. And. And it worked out it was kind of the first time I years later, the first time I came to an award show in LA was the Golden Globes. And then the ACAT, the Emmys for the making of West Side Story. It was a film that Klaus that we CO produced with the BBC. And I was the guy in New York. And there's some guys who came over from London, director and another producer. Great, great guys. And here, I was there I was sitting there going this is this is a little circle you've drawn for yourself here, isn't it? You know. And then a couple years later, I did win an Emmy for the Bernstein at 70. So I was sort of tied into this West Side Story kind of pulled you through. I ended up being involved with Leonard Bernstein and this, you know, these shows, and I just thought, I think I manifested that. I you know, I can't understand how that could have happened Just So randomly, right. You know, I just have I think I manifested that.

Siobhan:

I think you did, too. I mean, that's an amazing, it's

Tom:

just, you know, I having still remembering being so moved by that movie at the time. And what was it? 6212 13 years old? 12 years old. Right. And I hadn't really started on photography. My father had a dark room in Westport, Connecticut, where we grew up. But it was kind of mysterious to me, you know, what was going on in there? That I don't know. Yeah, that's what I meant when I said about that manifesting. That was the example. Yeah,

Siobhan:

I mean, that's a huge example. And it's one of those moments where like, you kind of don't notice it until afterwards, where you're in that moment at the Golden Globes, and you're like, oh, wow, we remember when I was 12 years old. No,

Tom:

I guess I guess I did the same thing. When I put these kids in the car and drove out here. I kind of manifested this future in California for them for us. All right. And it's really pretty worked out pretty well. I mean, they're remarkable. Kids, but they, you know, they they're thriving. Both the girls got scholarships to UC schools, Berkeley in Santa Barbara. And, but they worked up through the Alameda school system, graduated mountains and went went to the local junior college or whatever it is here. But they got these grades that were just couldn't stop them. Yeah, he just us kept going and going and going, was

Siobhan:

probably a testament to them seeing you work hard to get what you wanted. And I mean, it sounds like your job is

Tom:

fun watching me working hard. I mean, I don't know if you saw me when I got home and, you know, was ready to go to bed and get up in the morning and go again. I guess they figured that that was the work. But

Siobhan:

right. Yeah. Because I mean, as a young guy who's huge in the kind of the balls that you had back then. Because not only are you a single dad of three kids now you're gonna move them across the Yeah, I

Tom:

wasn't I was 59 years old. Oh. All right. I was 5959 years old. And, you know, I was kind of going out on a limb there.

Siobhan:

Yeah. But still, it still takes a lot of courage to say, All right, well, I'm gonna take these kids out of the city and into a new place and start a whole new life for them. Yeah,

Tom:

yeah. i It seems to be the only thing to do. You know, their mother was a drug addict and a nurse and just still was wrestling with it all, what, 14 years later, she's still got problems. And I just kind of was like, we're gonna do this. I'm just gonna make somehow this is gonna happen. Right? You know,

Siobhan:

where do you think that determination comes from?

Tom:

Well, it must be my mother because my mother didn't know my dad. You know, I was he was young. I was young when he when he died. And I had a very good mother. I really was quite again, very lucky with that. Well, I got to know much better as I got older, you know. Just died a couple of years ago at 96. And she was pretty much to the to the end. So I guess from her, she was a girl from Philadelphia, tough town. side of town and she she was a worker. Yeah, she reinvented herself she but after my father died, she remarried. He got Alzheimer's. She went through that for five years with Jack and then Jack died. And she said no more marriage. I'm done with that. And she started a kind of career in Florida selling got into real estate got into a good niche of thing and she did very well for herself. It's amazing. It is it is amazing. I think she was an inspiration actually.

Siobhan:

She sounds like she was good. And that's probably Yeah, that's probably is where you got that determination and the ability to know that you can reinvent yourself and after anything, right.

Tom:

It's a good thing to remember that

Siobhan:

you can do that. It is and I think people forget that a lot. Oh,

Tom:

yeah. Yeah. I, I agree. It's sad. It really is very fluid. What you can be out there. It's all in your head. And I think there are limitations.

Siobhan:

Because, yeah, I look at you guys. You know, you have a good group of friends at the bar that you all you go on adventures all the time, you're going to movies, you're active, you're out, you're still living, and kind of reinventing yourself. You're always traveling somewhere new, or, you know, yeah, trying. Yeah. And it's nice. It's a reminder to me to like that I can do more than I think,

Tom:

well, that's, if we're an inspiration for you to be more active. And good.

Siobhan:

Yeah. Cuz sometimes, you know, I get into like a rut, and then I'll hear you guys are either one of you is traveling somewhere, or y'all have plans to go see a movie or you're going hiking on this one. It's like, or you just went to this restaurant? And it's like, Oh, I haven't I haven't left the island in two weeks.

Tom:

Well, I guess there are times in life for that later whether it'll be more opportunity for you to get out. Well,

Siobhan:

yeah, of course. But it's but it's also so fun to be able to come in and talk to you guys. Because you you all have taught me so much. And like your stories on meeting Betty Davis.

Tom:

And yeah, that was before I went to college. That was a

Siobhan:

it's what I mean, like your life is just all these little nuggets that you'll drop in. And I'm like, yeah, you've met one of the most beautiful women who was something

Tom:

else. Yes. She, my mother had a friend named Robin Brown and Robin was went to school with Eddie David Colby in Maine. And they both went to Broadway. And Robin was a dancer, I think and and they were you know, chorus people. And Robin got out of that she married this characters. I don't know what else. I can't remember what I was into. But they remain great, great friends. And my when she would come out in the summer she'd run a little cottage somewhere in Westport. And my mother would say, well, robins here, Betty, she's going to be there. I'm going over there. And it was always sort of around. And I was now a film student at Emerson. This was like, I think my second year I was home for the summer. And I was with Don, my first wife. And she said, Do you want to meet her? And we looked at me and Don looked. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so we went over to this cottage and it was she had drink. We were drinking bourbon. I think I remember was Jim Beam might have been might have been Jim Beam. But she was smoking the Philip Morris Commander, the long unfiltered ones like John's pong balls. Yeah. And there was like a little thing full of kitchen matches on the counters. And, and I remember her putting a cigarette in her mouth and reaching under the chair. And she's getting white, the lady might end up on the bottom. They're gonna lay them on the bottom of anything around here. So if you need to let your cigarette and she was very nice to us, you know, we only visited maybe a drink or two drinks. It was not a it wasn't all about her. You know, it was just visiting with her. You

Siobhan:

know, she was just a person. She

Tom:

was a little but kind of, you know, notable, of course. kind of remarkable person. I can only reason about what you did, you know, took you taken on Louis B. Mayer, and all these guys and just like saying screw you.

Siobhan:

Yeah, she was something. She was a trailblazer.

Tom:

She was she was a trailblazer. She was always talking about people that I ended up meeting that were like world figures like that. I remember I did a two day thing with Henry Kissinger. We had him hired to do a voiceover on a six hour documentary. And at the time, what we called HD high definition television, which was before there were high definition televisions. And I spent two days with Henry. Me and Michael in this, you know, audio studio downtown in Manhattan showed up every morning got dropped off came in had bagels and coffee and went in and you know, did his did his thing. I couldn't really none of us could really tell what's going on here. It was all in German. I think he was doing it in German to voiceover Yeah, the that's that's how I met a lot of these people was doing audio audio recording. Dialogue, replacement, right?

Siobhan:

How many different so what you've worked in the production of all these kinds of musical document injuries and things like that for a lot of years and then you went into advertising. Yeah,

Tom:

I mean, I ended up it was the internet I got the film thing was ebbing. You know, it was there, people were all shooting the tape up there. And I had a relationship with a wonderful company in New York called crossroad films, downland Allen, and Dean Winkler, who's good, still good friends of both friends of mine. And Dan was good, he'd get me gigs, I'd get these, you know, commercial gigs, which were wonderful. They paid like, you know, 1500 hours a day. And, you know, you had a lot of responsibility. And a lot of you only had a few days to do this stuff. And we go to like silver cup studios and these big studios and shoot these commercials, whatever, whatever they were. And that was dying out for me. I mean, I guess I was ageing out of it. I don't really know. But I saw the writing on the wall. And when these two people I mentioned earlier from touchscreen talked about starting this internet company. They wanted somebody that had experienced shooting video, because they wanted to generate user generated content, right? And for their clients, and I was perfect guy for that. And you know, had my fucking me and I was like, yeah. And he'll take care of, you know, and I sat down with Cheryl and woman, the co owner. And she said, Do you want to learn how we do this? And they they were doing games for Paramount, like Star Trek games. Oh, wow. And they had this whole thing. What was what is that language? They speak in TARDIS Star Trek? I can't remember the not the Borg

Siobhan:

cleaning on Yep.

Tom:

Yeah, there's a they have a whole language. They did a video game around that you learn to speak, cling on and all this sort of stuff. And you want to know how to do this, learn how to do this. And I said, Sure. And that began for me, what was this getting involved in the production of digital properties, websites, or whatever. And I didn't write code per se, but I kind of could get people that did write code to tell me how long it was going to take them to do it. Really, and, and so that's how I got into it. I jumped I jumped off of the film wagon, and got onto the internet wagon. But mostly video stuff. We had big clients. IBM was a big one for the Nagano, Nagano Olympics, we did a big thing for them, took about 50 moderate, you know, setups over to Japan and created this thing called the surf shack, where all the athletes could communicate with their, the world, other teams or other other members, and it was a you know, big sort of social media experiment.

Siobhan:

I love that you like, fall into winning an Emmy, then you fall into cutting edge, like the start of the internet and gaming and digital like, you just really have had this luck that

Tom:

Yeah, well, I You're right. I agree. I've been very lucky. But it's a time it seemed like it was I wasn't falling into it I was kind of working your ass. Your as often use your contacts are some way to keep them, you know, bread on the table. And there's a lot to be said for that sort of. It's common now this sort of gig economy but the gig economy was pretty much how the business worked in New York, you know, you got you got shows you got gigs. And you could always tell when when, when a thing was wrapping up a day or two everyone be on their phone, or go to the next thing. We're going to the next thing. And as a producer, you get a little worried about that, because you don't want to leave till this thing's over. Right? So they've completed their job on

Siobhan:

this one. But it seems like it could have been a really stressful way to do it was

Tom:

stressful. Oh, yeah. It was very stressful. It's, it's, it's a it's a job, it's got a lot of stress in it. You gotta be able to embrace that.

Siobhan:

It's gonna say how did you deal with the stress? Or is that something that kind of feeds you for?

Tom:

I guess if you don't, you don't love it, you just shouldn't do it. And I don't mean you love it every day, believe me, but you have some core. Be Your materializing Some. Some, which I guess in a way you are. You're always thinking you're gonna, you know, this thing is gonna look this way. And it rarely comes out the way you thought it was gonna be. But hopefully it's better. You learn what you have learned along the way.

Siobhan:

Well, yeah, so I mean, how long did you do the digital marketing for the beginning of the internet? Well,

Tom:

it was relatively early. Like I say it was in the early 90s. And I did have I had another I had another lucky thing I'll tell you about if you want to talk. Oh yeah. Like, uh, but it's just kind of funny story, I think we were casting around, you know, for something that we could create this is now we're about, I don't know, maybe there's 810 10 of us in the company, and Ford manage the sales production technology. And I guess there's four hit their foreheads. I was one of the four. And so we all had to pitch our idea, you know, because we're going to spend company resources and time and on creating this thing. And so Sheryl wanted to do a thing about lose sight about Barbies. And I was like, no, no, you'll never get that to me. And then sure enough, she found out that Mattel was not exactly going to let her do this. And then someone else had an idea. Meanwhile, I'm commuting every day. And, you know, busting my ass to get on the 705, the 8056 30, how to Grand Central out to Westport to get home to kids and everything. And I'm on the bar car. And I said, Let's do a site about the bar car. It this is like a great idea. Because this is a global phenomenon. People are going home in London, Paris, Tokyo, with the same people every night. And there's a certain group of these people that are going to be in the bar. If they got one, they're going to be there. I said, this is a this is a community waiting to be tapped. And they said, Okay, we'll do it. So I wrote it up and sourced some retro 50s pictures off of photo disc or whatever that thing was, we get you get the pictures for free if you well, not for free, but it's a one time payment. And, and we launched this site, and me and my buddy, Jim, a producer there would get around and sort of posted up to Yahoo, and this and that. And eventually, we became a Yahoo Site of the Day, which was like, wow, get excited. So I'm keep plugging away at this. And I had a $600 marketing budget. And I went out and printed cheap cardboard beer coasters, with an image of the 50s computer on it and the URL. And I got like 5000 of them, whatever it was. And I started going that we'd go down to Grand Central and there'd be like 1314 Bar cards leaving Grand Central a given night. And I'd be on there before they have to deal with them out all over the all the counters. All these guys I see on the train. They say, Oh, I'm going here. I'm going there as it takes them take some of these. Yeah. And they did. They went to Australia, Japan they detect and people people liked it. So the site suddenly starts to get written up. And it's in the New York Times. And it's in the New Yorker magazine. Wow. And the best part for me was a day I got a call from CBS Radio, who want to talk about commuter matters. To me, this was all just a gas about you know, he's on the train and, and, you know, taking care of each other and taking looking out for each other. And so I heard I ended up on the radio on in New York City, talking about computer commuter matters, of which I was totally, you know, didn't know anything about just saying that. I think we should continue to the park cars, there's always they're always under threat. I think they're gone now. I think they have finally gotten gotten them off the New Haven line. That was the only line that had that one. I know, they were the last ones. But they used to go into New Jersey, it used to go up the Hudson, they squat to Long Island. They used to be coming out in New York City every night. And that was that was a fun one. I still have the or I still up there. I still pay the domain registration, and it's hosted up in Pittsfield or someplace.

Siobhan:

Nice. I have seen it before. I've looked at it before we've talked about it. And it's great. I think we should you should update it. Bring it back.

Tom:

One point 1.0 Yeah, it needs a lot of technology overhauling. But it had it had its things at the time. You could send people virtual cocktails, which are a little little flash GIF, animated GIFs and stuff. And I don't know, I had a pretty good list. I had about 50,000 email addresses stored somewhere. God knows where they are now. Yeah. Or if they're, if they're still viable. Yeah, but it that was that was a fun. That was a fun run in New York to do that.

Siobhan:

That is fun. And then yeah, like you've been on the cutting edge of being like creating those things and being able to send people gifts and it's amazing.

Tom:

That yeah, I don't know, man. I

Siobhan:

well, you you were in it and working in so it probably doesn't seem as

Tom:

Yeah, I I guess I guess I just don't feel like it's behind me somehow. I still feel in the middle. Have a lot of this stuff in my head. Yeah.

Siobhan:

Do you still do any of that where I know you're mostly retired now? Nothing

Tom:

really useless. I have no, I have no function. Really? That is not true. I don't know. I mean, I don't really have any reason to be taken up space. I just, I'm not really doing doing that much.

Siobhan:

But you worked so hard for all those years now. You're retired and enjoying it?

Tom:

Yeah, I am enjoying it.

Siobhan:

So you're setting good examples for people like me. If I work hard, then maybe I can get to retire and travel and hang out with my friends most days. And yeah,

Tom:

that's a good thing to do. I agree. I agree. I just I'm surrounded by people. I mean, my beloved Carol is so focused on just always, every day, another project another, this you know, let's try that. I mean, this moment is something she walked into a store in Sonoma last week, there was a beauty product thing. And she said, to go see what I'm gonna go into, I'm gonna offer to work for for free. I mean, I'll get paid in product. I don't want to be on their books. I don't want a W two. I don't want any, any any paperwork. I looked at it, I would just I would just love it. I could do this so well. And she does. She could she has worked, you know, all these kinds of as a young woman, before her business began and took off. She was a retailer, she could sell anything to anybody. So she's still out doing it. She's 76 For God's sakes. And she's like, you know, give me a job. I want a job.

Siobhan:

Right? Yeah. So she works and you hang out and go, I guess I try not to feel guilty, but you shouldn't because she's doing what she enjoys. And you're doing what you're enjoying now? Yeah,

Tom:

I know. Everyone says it's important to find something when you get to this point in your life something and I just haven't really found anything. I like hiking. Good. You know, I like smoking some dope. Yeah, I like to kind of look around and travel.

Siobhan:

Because you and John have now hiked you guys set out right would be

Tom:

10 years. He told me in the car this morning that we're coming up on 10th anniversary. The first day I went with him to Snow was the first time 10 years ago. I just couldn't believe

Siobhan:

that. That's a long time and you in that 10 years you guys have hiked how many different? Didn't you try? Look?

Tom:

We have a book. Yeah, we're we're over 800 miles and of hiking around the Bay Area. And there's a book with all of them. Bob, the grumpy bog, made a very thoroughly documented list of every hike.

Siobhan:

Who is grumpy Bob and how come I have not met him yet?

Tom:

Grumpy Bob left us he moved to Bellingham, Massachusetts, or pardoning Washington. And he was the third amigo in this whole cycling hiking thing that he would come into to the bar. And he was at the time. Was he retired, I guess he must have been. But he had worked for Wells too. But he was in the security of digital security stuff. And very smart guy and a great musician. He would come in with John, they would talk about this, I would go really crazy. You're gonna go walk in the in a big circle for 510 miles and a circle. Really, we don't do that where I come from. Anyway, they talked me into it. And I think expecting I would give up I don't know what they were expecting. But that's that was it and, and Bob was doing it for years. Uh, Bob knew all the trails he had been to all these places as a kid, he grew up in Walnut Creek, he would have been all these things. And so that's how that's how we got to do it. And we all became fast friends from that. We just spent so many we would meet every Wednesday morning in front of the bar. So 7am we meet in front of Z's Yeah. And usually decide that where we're gonna go and sometimes it would be you pick a place you pick you know, we look for new places. I'd go on the East Bay trails or whatever and say nine miles not Yeah. Okay, let's try that one. And there we go.

Siobhan:

We want what are your top three favorite hikes in the Bay Area?

Tom:

Well, I'm big, big point raised fan. I'm a big snore fan. snores a beautiful, beautiful spot I don't know it's hard to I can't believe how lucky I am to have this little walk up on the Oakland Hills there. Yeah. I mean, if you don't go with when the school starting could take you up take a bit longer you can be up there and 2025 minutes and and you can get away from it. You can you can not hear stuff it can be perfectly quiet and you're out there but I guess no and and point arrays are my there are a lot of different heights there but those have been the most impressive we did big base and that was exciting. That was that was our one of our longest ones that's now near San Jose or someplace.

Siobhan:

How long has That one,

Tom:

I think it was like 13 or 14 miles. And we were good. I tell you, we're all in pretty good shape at the time. Yeah.

Siobhan:

Well, I mean, you're all still in pretty good shape. You're still doing it. 10 years later, you're still going

Tom:

up 14 miles?

Siobhan:

Well, that's alright. If you've dropped it down. You still do like 10 mile hikes.

Tom:

Yeah, we couldn't do it. We could do that. Yeah, it's just important to keep moving. That's one of the things gotta keep moving.

Siobhan:

Yeah, I often say that like, because I deal with so much chronic pain, I'm always like, I work through it. Because bodies in motion stay in motion. And when you sit in the pain too long, it just makes it worse, really. Because if you're going to be in pain either way, you might as well be out living it instead of just wallowing in it. Yeah, I'm

Tom:

sorry, you have to your suffer. From that I've been really lucky. I get aches and pains. But once you start moving away from me, that pretty much goes away.

Siobhan:

Yeah, same. Sometimes if I'm sitting for too long, I get up and I look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame or like a crappy old lady. And then five minutes later, I'm moving and you couldn't even tell. But it's just like that transition into getting back to moving can be a little slow. So a bar the bar has been a theme in your life too, with the

Tom:

nude has it you know, I don't know how it's gonna sound but there's always been a bar in my life. I had one in New York on Third Avenue, I have to actually one left one close down, I cross the street and start what do another one. But it's always been the sort of center of my kind of the neighborhood base, you know, even though these people in this place where no one lived on 55th Street and Third Avenue, but we all drank there every day for lunch and after work. And it's gotten me out of some jams, I really it really has helped me out. When I when I was separating from my first wife, I had to find a place to live. And I saw this thing on a lamppost in New York Don't ever do this. It says you know apartment for rent, and you tear off a little thing with a number on the bottom. So I tore the number off the bottom. And the apartments literally around the block from my office, I said, this is perfect. Wow. Not much of an apartment, I guess. And so I meet the guy, look at the apartment, give them a check. And it's all supposed to transpire in the next week, or 10 days to the end of the month. And that comes and the guy doesn't get out of the apartment. Oh, and he's taking the check. He's got the he's got the he's got the money. And, you know, after a week of excuses, as he suddenly not making it not making any excuses anymore. And I I was worried I had a lot going on my head, of course, was going on. And I happen to go over to check the building to see if he's there. And one of these things, situations where someone's coming out of the building and the doors open and I go in and the next thing I know I'm standing at his door and his door is not locked. It's open. It's like a jar, you know. So I'm there and I confronting him. And he's essentially telling me to, you know, fuck off. And I I took his watch like fair collateral for me. Yeah, you're gonna have this back when he give me my money back. So then I go off to, you know, work, whatever. And I'm working over on across the city audio room over there. Matrix, where they ended up doing the John Stewart show. That's where that was out of stage on 11th Avenue. And I get a call. And it's from my office. And that's the police have just been here. Oh, and the guy had filed a assault, beef robbery and assault. Anyway, we thought you should know. I said, my cell phone. Thank you. I pick up the phone and I call the bar. And the night door guy was in New York City police detective. And he was a guy named Bill Clark. And Bill's got was quite famous because he ended up being the technical consultant for a TV show called NYPD Blue. Oh, yeah. And he built moved to Hollywood and the bill went up but before he was bar guy, that doorman and I call him up and I talked to Bill I said Bill, this is what happened is he goes you have to Watch, I got the I got the washers, bring me the watch. I said, Okay, so I go back across town, it's now seven or eight o'clock at night. And I hand it to him. I say I'm young, I'm an idiot, but this guy told my money and, and he says, I want you to come in early tomorrow. That means you got to get really early. I want you to be at the briefing down here at like 10 of seven. Okay? And I want you to go talk to and give them the watch. So, okay, so I come in, I go to this empty police station relatively empty. And see this detective and he takes a watch and I started to tell him because now I heard. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well let you know. And I think it must have been maybe 24 hours later. I had a postal money order for the money on my desk at work. It had been dropped off there. So I bought Dylan ice. He was into his neckties I bought him a nice necktie or two Brooks Brothers. He liked that shit. And and that was the you know the bar but the save my ass literally in this case. I mean, I could have ended up in Rikers. So yeah, I've always had a bar in my life. I think they're, they're great resources, if they're not abused. Yes. You meet interesting people sometimes and you know, barstools, things say they have softball teams and, you know, do stuff. Yeah.

Siobhan:

I'm a big proponent of there's always been a bar in my life, too. And I think when you get to see, like, especially a neighborhood bar like ours, where it's like, you get to see the community, you build friends. I see people meet there all the time that then our friends for years. Yeah. And there, it's a good if someone doesn't show up, you notice and you're like, where are they? Are they okay, it's a nice community feeling, right? Yeah. Which I think people sometimes forget. That happens with bars. Yeah.

Tom:

These was a friend from England, the guy that used to sit down at the end of the bar,

Siobhan:

Graham Graham. I only got to meet him very briefly. But he was

Tom:

he was a crusty old character. He was he was a he was Graham was not more you got to know him. He wasn't that likable. He was charming in his way. And

Siobhan:

he had the accent. So did the accent that always helps in America.

Tom:

But he was a character and he you know, he was like, found because he was missed. So where's Graham? Have you ever seen gram? No, let's go look for it. And they go over there's gram lying on the floor in this apartment for day two? Yeah. And they found they found him. So it just a good thing. It does provide that it

Siobhan:

doesn't it I think it's sometimes the pluses are way more than in a bar than the minuses, but it just has that negative connotation by so many people because it gets abused so easily. Yeah,

Tom:

it's not a private club, you know, it's open to the public. So you never really know necessarily what's going to happen in there. But that's why ability and that's its beauty. I think the fact that it's wide open Yeah. So anyway,

Siobhan:

we were talking about you being in the TV production. Well, you went from the TV production to the digital marketing. And then is that how you got into kind of like working for the banks is doing their digital marketing?

Tom:

Yeah, no, that's that's exactly what I was doing. I was one of my longer contracts with Wells Fargo was building something called your loan tracker. This is a this was a phone based thing that allowed people to modify their mortgages and essentially the screw up their entire life on their phone at the bar their whole mortgage everything they can take and mess it all up right at the phone. Wow. And yeah, it was building these these tools. Some are public facing some were internal into the into the bank. And and then some advertising, we did do some work on the Wells Fargo website. You know, stuff like that, sort of reduce the the checking area, and it's all about team building and collaborating and getting buy in. Yeah.

Siobhan:

So what's your favorite tip for getting someone to buy in that you've used over the years?

Tom:

Well, I guess it depends what they're concerned about. What what what their their point is, that there's you know, there's only three dials on the machine. I think as I as I recall, there's, there's cost, there's time and there's resources and you can twist the dials if you want it sooner then you're going to have to add more resources and that's going to make it cost more and if you want you know, as I can just tweak these things all you know, away so you You can have what you want, but it'll take more time. Or you can have what's here and save some resources for the future. You know what I mean? Yeah, so it's all a matter of what, what the circumstances calls for. But it's not that complicated. There's only so many variables. And this is what you're playing with, you know, the advertising a lot of people just want everything tomorrow. Right, you know? And that's, that's, that's where some discussions begin.

Siobhan:

I want it all and I want it now. Yeah. So it's about getting down to like the brass tacks of it. And then, yeah, distilling it down to those three knobs. And, yeah,

Tom:

it is. They, they're, the people that do it know that, you know, there are a lot of wonderful was that the ay ay, ay ay CT, something commercial producers, American Independent commercial producers, these long budget documents, they literally have a column, or a box, for every possible expense, you can imagine, on a given situation, you know, horses and boats, and this, whatever, whatever it is, it's in there. And I used to love it, I thought that was just just the greatest thing in the world that I do, you could actually make the grind, it's so fine, you know, that you could really, you know, figure out what something's going to cost. And of course, you always add a contingency. But yeah, I'd like to I'd like that part part of it. I did enjoy that part of it. The timing. I'm very obsessed with time. I'm really scheduled driven in a way that I never thought I'd be in my retirement. Right. I I can't explain it Carrie Carol laughs at me about it. But, you know, on Thursdays, I come down to Alameda from Sonoma and I usually leave Sonoma around nine o'clock in the morning. And I always, you know, get the coffee. They're always you know, get them off in there. Always take a leak there. I always eat an apple in Marin. You know, I have this routine. Wow. And I'm, I'm really kind of enslaved to it. You know, I don't even notice that I'm doing it. But I look back and, and I do that a lot about my life. I wake up in the morning and plan a day. And I, I really think of exactly how it's gonna take me to do this. Where I'm going to be at this time. And I don't know if it's a curse, or if it's somehow making my life easier. I don't really know. Carol's not like this at all.

Siobhan:

Yeah, I'm not like that. And I actually just been thinking about that, like, I don't have a regular daily routine. Because my schedules are always changing and things but I'm like, maybe if I did a regular routine, it would help me in some of these aspects of my life. I've never been a routine.

Tom:

I used to do it every day, because I don't have that much going on. But the days that I do have stuff going on. Yeah, I have definitely down there know what I mean? I've really, it's crazy to me. If I have if I have to, you know, do something like to like travel here, travel there. You know, today, go on a hike, do the shopping the kids shopping, take a shower, or go to be or two o'clock, you know, when I get out of there, maybe go to the log at four o'clock. You know what I mean? I've got this whole thing already in my head, about what I'll do where I'll go.

Siobhan:

I wonder if that comes from being in production for so long. And you have to have like a checklist to make sure it all gets done. And it does.

Tom:

I think it does, because there's always a sort of potential for people's hair to burst into flames. And and there's it's always good to have a sense of like, well, this is really where we're at, you know, yeah. And we can do this and this and this if we and meet this deadline, if we you know, but I don't know, I just maybe it's a defense mechanism of some kind, and I don't really know.

Siobhan:

Well, it seems to be working for you. No, it does. But it makes

Tom:

me you know, think I'm kind of crazy to have it, but it does work for me. It does work for me.

Siobhan:

This Carol appreciate your scheduling.

Tom:

She just thinks it's amazing that anybody anybody, you know lives like this. Anyway, doses. She's laughs She does. She does. She just calls me this Libra, who has all this time management capability. I don't know.

Siobhan:

So how long have you two been together? Now?

Tom:

I think Carolyn are going on nine years. Oh, wow. So

Siobhan:

you met her and your hiking buddies at almost the same time for this phase of your life? I'd

Tom:

been five years in California. About that. Five years in California. We started hiking in early 2024. Yeah, I guess I guess I did. I met Carol on the internet. And in another one of these weird things I went to visit her in her apartment was right across the street from the office that I was sent to when I came to San Francisco on day one. Oh, wow. Second on Second Street in San Francisco right across from my office was and which I just thought was so strange. Yeah, it's been about nine years. remarkable, remarkable person. I think she's on her fifth house since I've known her.

Siobhan:

Wow.

Tom:

She just does this. It's just amazing to watch see rehabs houses, kinda? Yeah. You know? She does. But she's

Siobhan:

not volunteering to work for a retail store. Well,

Tom:

she seems to have not yet right. It doesn't seem to be enough time maybe because this house is pretty much getting done. But she's now doing all this stuff. But she's out, you know, networking and trying to get colored jobs and this job and you know, I'll help you I help there. There was this restaurant that had been abandoned or was not occupied. In front of this kind of chintzy mall on the corner of Sonoma. Abbey Road, this big, big route 12 up in Sonoma, we drive by it for months and months have been killed. It looks like a what a mess. Yeah, we got to do some of that play, you know. And now next thing I know, she's got the guy's phone number. She's on the phone with him saying I'll do all the color for you. I'll tell you what color to paint this thing. She's done this whole blocks of San Francisco. Wow, CVS is and apartment houses and all the girls got these photographs. And she's got the the things from the paint store now that sample chips and the person who put them on or they're there, they're there. They're there. And she hands it and that's a deliverable for her. She gets paid for that. That's awesome. And she said, I'll do this for this guy. And I guess when he gets it together, he'll call her, you know, right. But she's not passive about this. She's really if she sees something that she doesn't like to look at, she's gonna do something to change it. That's

Siobhan:

amazing. It is it is amazing. In the fact that she's gotten it done. Yeah, there's so many people that talk about it. But for her to actually pull it off and get them to paint it. Yeah,

Tom:

she's she, she feels she has a responsibility to raise the value of the real estate property of her neighbors.

Siobhan:

That's a great neighbor to have

Tom:

my place really nice. So your place is going to be more valuable. Yeah. And if you want any help, I'd be happy to help you. Right?

Siobhan:

Because then it just makes her place even more valuable, right? That's a smart businesswoman. It's

Tom:

very smart. It's very smart. Again, not not my kind of brains but very smart. I agree. I never would have put it together like that.

Siobhan:

Yeah, but you've put together so many things that you know, you have your creative brain to. I

Tom:

do. I do have mine. I do. i The only thing the only way I use it at the moment, though, is in a very limited way. When I go to the walk. I have this archive of stuff sky escapes from this one position on the bay that features the skyline of San Francisco in the corner usually, but mostly it's all about the sky and the light in the Bay. And that's been really fun for me I have a I like to do that I really there are certain objects in the world that I like to to go and photograph. They used to be actually two of them are outside bars. One of them are those two old stately palm trees on the corner opposite z's. Yeah. And that house there.

Siobhan:

I loved I have a couple of shots of the moon, right? Yeah.

Tom:

And then there's there's those catalpa tree outside of the back door of the bar that I go to on Tuesday nights and Sonoma. When Carol was on her phone, she had a phone meeting every every Tuesday night, and I've cut loose. So I go to the dive bar in Sonoma.

Siobhan:

I didn't know you're cheating on me in Sonoma

Tom:

only got 90 minutes. I really I'm out there calls from six to 730. So it's short. But I always go back and take a picture of this guitar poetry because I had one in our front yard in Westport. And I miss it screen tree.

Siobhan:

Do you share those photos anywhere? No,

Tom:

I don't. In fact, I maybe somebody will hear this and help me figure out how to really organize them. Carol thinks I can sell them. I bet you could tell you think Susan these are definitely marketable things. Yeah, she encourages me naturally, of course, you know, to do this, but I I don't know. It's all its digital stuff. And I can't print it in my own dark room. I don't you know, I don't I I've had some prints made and I don't. I don't know. I haven't figured out how to do it in a way that gets the result that I like. Alright,

Siobhan:

I bet you will find you someone that can help with that.

Tom:

I hear there's some people that that are out there that do this. Yeah. Maybe I'll find one.

Siobhan:

Do you still have a darkroom? No, no He's gonna say they're so they're hard to find no other than maybe community colleges and colleges and universities

Tom:

in the chemicals. I mean, good even buying film, to me is I don't know where you'd even do that. Yeah.

Siobhan:

And I remember, there was some event that I had bunch of those disposable cameras and it took me like I had to mail them away, to get them developed instead of just bringing them Yeah, yeah. And I thought It's so wild that used to be able to do this anywhere. And now you can't. It's hard to find I know.

Tom:

It's an archaic medium, but

Siobhan:

it's, it's we were talking about this before we turn the mics on about how when you see something that's on film, it has a different feeling and a different vibration than when you see a print made from a computer. Yeah,

Tom:

it definitely has a different feel. I mean, just to hold it and manipulate it and, and get familiar with it. Yeah. When I was a projectionist at the man hey, we lots of films all kinds of arthouse stuff, all this stuff, and you're just dealing with me literally miles that film every day. And I loved it. And I just loved it. But I was an editor too. And that was a lot of a lot of that in editing a lot of hands on. It wasn't like it wasn't electronic. It was, you know, glue and splicing blocks. And, you know, all this. It was a whole different Moses old technology.

Siobhan:

Yeah, it was an art. I mean, it not that it's not an art now, but it was just a different kind of art. Yeah.

Tom:

Well, you know, it was it was a area of the business that was really dominated by women. Oh, really? Yeah. The early film editors were women. Hmm. I never knew that. Yeah. Either. A lot. A lot of famous filmmakers use had women editors. And I should remember some names now. But I don't. But they were women. And they they cut the film.

Siobhan:

Back in the day? Yeah. Probably because they had the patient's work. Maybe or

Tom:

the organizational mind. Yes. for it. But there was an area that they covered. Not that they're into it yet. I mean, they're into the industry yet. On the New York Times today, there was about that thetic percentage of women behind camera and the industry down there in Hollywood.

Siobhan:

Yeah, I mean, even now, it's mostly male dominated. Yeah.

Tom:

Yeah, it is.

Siobhan:

I mean, we're getting better. But it's sometimes when you look at the numbers, you're still like, how are we still so far behind?

Tom:

I don't know. I don't know. I can't explain it. I I couldn't I that was I could never get into the whole of that aspect of the business, the real commercial, theatrical film production. Even rock and roll it was I've had bad experiences in dealing with deals with that kind of those kinds of folks. Right. met some great people but artists but not it wasn't right for me. Right wasn't a good fit for

Siobhan:

that. You enjoyed the classical and the you know, I enjoy

Tom:

that. I enjoy all the music, but there seem to be less fewer poisonings and

Siobhan:

I just gonna say politics and you went to poisoning. Yeah,

Tom:

no, I think these guys have slipped me and Mickey once on a job in London. Oh, wow. That they got me out of the picture for about four or five days. Wow. But that was rock and roll. That was another another thing I got to meet a Beatle though I got to meet George. He was he was involved in Eric Clapton and Dave Gilmore. And was John Sanborn, the saxophone player. It was a piece of music that was written for him. Concerto for saxophone by Michael Kaman. You know who he is? I don't. He's a New York guy. But he writes film music. He wrote all the music for the lethal weapon movies. Die Hard. And Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Michael was a great guy. He's he's not with us any longer either. But he wrote a nice piece of music, classical train Juilliard guy for Sandborn and ended up being a deal with Pioneer LaserDisc at the time. It's actually it still makes me slightly nauseous to talk about this deal. It was Wow, they're all great. The music was fine and all the artists are great, but my co producer was a sociopath. Oh,

Siobhan:

anyway, yeah, I mean, we move on. Yeah. Was what was your favorite project that you've ever worked on? Well, it sounds like you've had so many. But is there one that is like the crown jewel for you?

Tom:

The favorite one to work on? Well, I was quite I enjoyed working on the Bernstein 70 show out of Tanglewood. That was good because that was a nice, wonderful location placed him to work out of and it was right near where I had lived just a couple of years previously, as a cook and a film editor and everything else. I was in West awkward zone tangle woods in Lenox, and I used to see Seiji Ozawa at the coffee shop in the morning when he was coming in and I was going off to cut woods somewhere for money or for heat instead of for money, I would be working for cordwood and so that was kind of fun to go back there and do that. Do that show and have that conversation with Seiji about that? Do you remember me? I used to? Yeah, I do.

Siobhan:

That's another full circle moment.

Tom:

That was a kind of full circle moment. So I liked I liked that one a lot had a lot of great people and Victor Borger joy, you know, meeting these characters. You know, Victor Vargas,

Siobhan:

I know the name.

Tom:

He's an old he's an old actor. He's a he's just like this clown. And he's Danish, and his act is kind of discombobulated conductor. Yes, sir. Yeah. But he's quite musical and quite quite knowledgeable about all this. But you know, he was in it. But there were lots of people that are famous and fun to to work with. They all did a nice job for Lenny. No, I don't know. I just like to work. I just love to work. It was nice.

Siobhan:

Well, I guess we'll let you get back to your schedule for the day. But thank you so much for coming and talking to us about

Tom:

it's been my honor to talk to you about it. Thank you for asking. Yeah.

Siobhan:

I love hearing these stories. And I love that I get to keep them going for a while longer. And yeah, to know them.

Tom:

We'll see i have i It's funny. It's a funny experience for me to do this. And I get forget that I'm doing it. And it's only I remember, I'm doing it and it kind of

Siobhan:

jams me up a little bit. Oh, well, it's always it's fun to have someone that I can that I talked to and hear so many stories from then come here and see the difference of having a mic in front of them. Yeah,

Tom:

I'm not usually on this end. Yeah, it's yeah, you seem a little

Siobhan:

basketball, which is fun. Because you're usually the one doing the audio and the behind the scenes. probing for

Tom:

the directing guy. Can you say that again? Please? Yeah. Mike, say that on my face?

Siobhan:

No. Well, thank you. And I hope you will enjoy the audio from this. I look forward to it. Give me the critiques that I may need.

Tom:

I look forward to I think I should listen to it alone.

Siobhan:

Oh, yes. Well, that you listened to it alone before. Let the rest of the world chime in.

Tom:

For my kids, my kids here. Yeah.

Siobhan:

All right. All right. Well, thank you so much, Tom. And thank you all for listening. Okay.

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Siobhan Kelly

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