The Extras - The Archive Guys Take Over the Podcast

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Mayhem ensues as Matt Patterson and DW Ferranti aka THE ARCHIVE GUYS take over the podcast.  We get the scoop on their early days working for Warner Bros, the development of the Warner Archive Podcast, and the unique business model that paved the way for the Warner Archive's continued success.  Along the way, they drop some stories about George Feltenstein, celebrity meetings, and what it meant to them to work at a major Hollywood studio.  You'll laugh, you'll cry and maybe you'll even learn a thing or two you didn't know about the Warner Archive.  Ok, you won't cry, but you may laugh.Follow Matt Patterson on FacebookFollow DW Ferranti on FacebookThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifyWarner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm D.W. Ferranti. I'm Matthew Patterson. And that was an unprofessional pause. Well, I was letting you lead this one, and then I jumped in on the pause. Yeah, well, the pause was so you would introduce yourself. Which is normally what happens when someone says, I'm, and then you come in with, and. I've never done this

before. Clearly. Hi, he's Dan. Hi, I'm DW. He's DW. You waited longer. I thought you were pointing at me. I was because you started. Okay, I'll be quiet.

Hi, I'm DW. Okay, I'll be quiet. Okay. Hi, I'm DW. Hi, I'm DW. You lost me? Oh. Hi, I'm DW Ferranti. And I'm Matthew Patterson. Do you really want to wait that long?

Oh, you know what, Dan? I think there's actually a delay with you because when he said go, I heard a very long delay. I think that's actually what's happening. All right, let's test that. I'm going to say go and you tell me when you hear go. One, two, three, go. Go. Oh, there is a delay. That explains it. Yeah, I could see it from your face and you were like, that was a long, unprofessional pause. Yeah, alright. Okay. Yeah, because I can see the sound of writing.

Okay, I've got it. Okay, I've got it. Hi, this is DW Ferranti. And I'm Matthew Patterson. And you're not listening to the Warner Archive podcast, but The Extras. Ooh, The Extras? What is this podcast, Dan the extras. Ooh, the extras? What is this podcast, Dan?

Well, it's a lot like ours, only extra. I can't wait to tune in. Wait, are we guests? Why, yes, we are. So tune in to hear everything that you never heard about the Warner Archive. But extra. How did you guys start on the old Warner Archive podcast? Was there music?

Was there like some intro you created? Yeah, let's start with the music, Matt. Well, so the Warner Archive podcast is still up because for some wonderful reason, the new administration has not shut down the RSS feed. So there are, Dan, we hit, it's over 500 episodes total, right? There's a lot. Wow. And spanning from 2009 till April 2021. And for full clarification, the first batch of episodes are George Solo either doing a series of short interviews with guests that tied in with current releases or doing wraparounds for rebroadcasts of things like Lux Radio Theater that tied in with the weeks.

And then, and then what would you say about it? That's how it started. It was like Lux Radio and George Wood and Scott Levy was the producer at the time. This was his idea. And Scott has a wonderful history of, he worked for Roger Corman for a large amount of time, even directing the Piranha remake. Scott has a wonderful backstory and then came through Warner Brothers Digital. And when Warner Archive launched in 2009, it had zero employees, right? They just, they didn't really, and they meaning

it was the digital division. It was considered like, and get this as marketing, an extra for the relaunch of the WB shop. Because that was something that they had that you couldn't at the time buy on Amazon. And so George has this wonderful collection of classic radio shows and they did these wraparounds. And it was a great promotion for the show. And when Dan and I came onto the scene, we had George expand into doing interviews. And those proved wonderfully popular. And then around, I believe it was, Dan, it was 2012 when we started. That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. So what Dan and I, we had been, we had both shifted to mostly working. In 2012, I became like a Warner Archives employee after like three years of working on it. And we came up with this idea that we would take the newsletter that we had been working on and we would have a meeting with George once a week where George would go through all the titles and tell us the history about it and his feelings about it.

And Dan would take that and write a copy for it. Dan would take that and write copy for it. I would edit it, put the pictures together, help get it in and edit the HTML. And that at that time was starting to go out to like, well, at that time it was like two or three hundred thousand people. Right. Wow. Wow. Heyday of DVD. Yeah. Yeah. Blu-ray even 2012. Yeah. 2013 was when Warner Archives started with Blu-ray even uh 2012 yeah 2013 was when warner archives started with blu-ray but we were just at the cusp and i think also at that time we were uh distributing some other studios uh manufactured on demand because that was our niche was the you know demand. Yeah, right. And then we kind of worked a brand around this sort of production process, right?

Because it's like, okay, you have all these little parts. How do you bucket it and put it together? And that turned out to be a wonderful way to do it in a bucket because you weren't spending money per title, right? in a bucket because you weren't spending money per title. Right. And, you know, just to throw it in, you know, sort of what, what set us apart, unlike the other MOD labels that were very much operating on the, well, we'll make it and put it out there approach, which is fine.

Because we had George and we had ourselves and we had a newsletter, we, and we were at, and a store and we had a newsletter, and a store, and we were active on social, we were able to develop a dialogue with the fans. And a voice. Yeah, and a voice and a back and forth. But, you know, essentially we took this weekly meeting we would have with George, which would be a fairly freewheeling discussion that went through the releases. And then Matt had the idea of like, let's do it as a podcast.

Gotcha. When did you decide that or launch the podcast? So this was 2012. And in a, as Dan and I like to call it, when you tell business stories, and this is also very interesting when you research other businesses in time, there is a very Rashomon effect on how ideas came apart and were executed. And the one consistency is when you talk to somebody, they always place themselves at the center and, of course, are the hero. And Dan and I are no different so from our point of view we went to uh the executive who was in charge of mod at the time and pitched him the idea because dan like i had just converted from a temp into an employee, and I think so had Dan. No, I was still a temp.

Oh, you were still a temp? I was a two-year temp or whatever you want to call it. But yes, I was technically still a consultant. That's right. And you probably converted like a few months after the podcast came about. Anyway, I remember you did. Go to 2012. It's a long time ago. But we weren't like

allowed to pitch something so big. So we went to the VP who was in charge, and he took it to his boss. Right. And this was also because we had started advertising on other podcasts. I had this budget. I was working with another marketing guy, and we got Kevin Smith and Adam Carolla. Those were the biggest. And a bunch of other smaller podcasts. podcasts. And my first pitch was for the amount of money we're spending on these big podcasts, we could hire some people to do a Warner Archive podcast. And they said, no, that was too much money. And so what is cheaper than like $10,000? Free. And so that's how it went. And basically, because as you've encountered this with George, the format isanti, a.k.a. the Warner Archive guys, as many of you might refer to them or know them. And we're having a great conversation.

We're going to revisit some of the old podcasts for those who are loyal, loyal, loyal fans. We'll find out what you guys are up to or have been up to. And then, uh, we'll talk a little bit about the state of physical media. So that's our tease for the rest of our conversation here. But I'm telling you that I was working on a different floor. Uh, let's see, I was on floor three. What floor were you guys on? At this time, were we on eight or seven? We started on eight. So I would, when I would run into you guys for the most part, it was like in the elevator going to get coffee. Maybe at Starbucks there or because the meetings, I was not in your meetings.

No. I was in home entertainment meetings with TV and film. And I would hear of this marketing genius, you know, as we all know him, George Feltenstein. Yeah. As he was, because those were, I started there in 06, 07, something, I think 07. And I mean, things were just good. Like it was just like money flowing down the hallway. You were there in the golden time.

Exactly. It was before Blu-ray even, It was just the golden age of DVD. But I remember hearing of the development of the Warner Archive, and it felt like it just grew in the closet, so to speak, to become something that nobody knew about.

It did. And literally, there was a closet. We considered you guys on the third floor. The big leagues. The big leagues. Home entertainment. Yeah, because you guys, you know, I started in February of 2009

under the banner of the WB shop. And so when we'd go down to like your floors and stuff, we'd be like, ooh, look, they have nice copiers and a huge staff of people working on all these, you know, like unlike us, you know, you guys had like there was a menu group of just people who worked on menus and, you know, the packaging group of people who just worked on packaging and the extras proofreaders and then those of us in the special features team which was a huge team at the time yeah oh man and so it was big and so in uh george's like you know when when he tells the story because we weren't quite there uh the issue with the Warner Archive was that there were certain titles that the salespeople in home entertainment felt couldn't get shelf space. And they're like, what do we do with these? And so when the Warner Brothers shop, the WB shop,

opened up, it was like, oh, well well if we do this you know made on manufactured on demand we could sell it through the website to the super fans who want this and their sales expectations were very low at the time yeah and but the timing was just as you're saying like as um you know dvd and even blu-ray the sales numbers went from like seven billion you know like it was huge huge amounts of money and going down our little operation was picking up steam because commerce you know moved from brick and mortar to online right right? And we didn't have one thing that your team had to deal with was returns. Right. What do you do with all those returns? Well, when they're manufactured on demand,

you're not carrying an inventory, except, and I was dealing with this last week as I had to merge storage spaces. There are always a few overruns, right? But you multiply that by 3,000 titles. Dan and I rescued after they closed the building down for COVID. We probably got 1,000, maybe 1,500 disks out. I probably had 1, thousand of my own. I have so many discs and, and we had to leave,

like, I think we left like four or five boxes in front of George's door. Was that Dan? I mean, yeah. I mean, I mean, there was like,

you know, I had to leave. We, I mean, cause we were, you know, you know, it was like during the pandemic and they're shutting down the building and you're only allowed in one person at a time and you know if stuff

didn't get moved it was gonna get thrown away or whatever we didn't know but i i do remember putting all these boxes and putting signs in spanish and english saying like this isn't trash please don't throw away and you know hopefully someone helped that stuff get moved to where it is now but yeah it was all it was a crazy time as we all know well kovid i mean that that's a whole nother thing we should talk about in a few minutes but i want to go back to the actual podcast because i was asking you did you have music? What was your intro? The music story. This is good because this also ties into how you have to navigate getting things done in a much larger corporate structure. Right.

So we had a lawyer that was assigned to us, which was a thankless task being Dan's and my clearance lawyer. But occasionally, we had to run into the kinds of clearance issues that you, Tim, would be very familiar with, which was just a ton of it. And we thought that we could use some public domain stuff that maybe came from the MGM library. Like stuff that was in the library that was clearly owned. And all the lawyers nixed it. They were like, you can't use this. We can't, like somehow for podcasts, they needed to figure out exactly where it came from. So Dan, I probably have like zero musical training with would you would

you say that would you agree with that i would agree with that training but um i said oh don't worry i can make it with uh you know so apple's like free program that they had so i made that with like uh just like the thing that shipped with the computer i loaded some instruments to it and it was like some sort of generic jazz thing and i hit some buttons and you remember mike came over and he listened to it again somebody with zero musical training and he was like change it from horns to strings i was gonna say there's there's a few different versions there's like the horn version strings and then there was the the one with a bit a bit bit more drums and yeah yeah but he he said that to me and i go and then i hit two buttons and then that became the theme for 10 years well i i was working on floor three you guys are developing building this

mld business and the podcast and all these things and i remember hearing you know things about it now because that was more of a personal interest it's not like it came up in meetings or anything. It was more of a personal interest. And so I would be like, oh, you guys are doing some really interesting things there. I love this MOD concept. That's definitely a huge way, you know, a huge market and a great way to meet that market with such low overhead and returns and all that kind of stuff. So maybe you can explain to me when it started off as MOD. That's not what it is now, but some people are still under the impression that that's what the owner archive does.

Talk about how it started and how it's changed. So I suggested around 2013 that we call it AOD, assembled on demand, because we were starting to use many, many different methods of manufacturing the disk, right? Some of them are what we called, as Dan knows, remember, traditionally pressed, right? For the DVD. Properly pressed. Properly pressed. Yes, yes. And all the Blu-rays were just regular Blu-rays because at the time in 2013, the manufactured on-demand Blu-rays were not very compatible with current players. And so with that, the facility that puts them together, right, they would have a spindle of discs, or in the case of many DVDs, they'd manufacture them and maybe put a few on a spindle. And then when one was ordered, a digital copy would be made of the art. They would slide it in the slipcase and then put a disc in.

And now you have assembled it on demand. And now it is a unit. Yeah. And it's more proper to think of it as a non-returnable business because they're like different supply processes depending on perceived demand. Like if we're putting out a DVD and we know we're going to sell a lot of coffees, we are going to press those in what they called properly pressed when they were trying to put us down because it was relegated to MOD. Other things, if there's going to be a lesser demand,

that would get printed on demand. And Blu-rays, of course, were always printed on demand. But to this day, you will see people online who think that the Blu-rays are printed on demand as opposed to replicated discs. I was burning my own stuff, right, through your and all so i think there was a lot of this kind of thinking of there's some dude in a garage and he gets an email hey burn three copies yeah that's what you got and online we used to refer to uh where we worked as the burn pits because that's what everyone thought they were yeah we would we would tell people that there were gnomes who lived under the Hollywood sign in the tunnels and they'd be there making, burning the copies by hand.

But a little more technically, right, because these things, as Dan was saying, are non-returnable, there were so many options of what you could get. We could not guarantee, especially with the DVDs, which kind of disc was going to show up to you. Because if you bought it from the WB shop, for example, and these were regular DVD nines, and you bought it early in the run, you're going to get a press disc, especially if it was a TV series, because it was just so much less expensive per disc.

This was all, we were saying that Vice President Mike, who was with us, this was all his, like, his undergraduate degree was in engineering. And so all this kind of, like of refinement came very naturally to him. And it's like pennies here, pennies there. But when you add up to millions of disks, this just helped increase the profitability. And the overhead, as you said, Tim, the overhead was so low. And the overhead, as you said, Tim, the overhead was so low. Like, you know, it didn't – the barrier to profitability was so much lower for our business than it was for traditional home entertainment. Tim, that's what made it fun because Dan and I had access to a lot of information by like – because everything was smaller. like Dan and I saw in real time, what people were saying on social media, you know, we had this active

email list going. We also knew all the influencers who were reviewing our discs because we would contact them through social media. So we created this feedback loop that really helped the engine go. And because our manufacturing and processing methods were nimble enough, we could actually respond much more quickly than traditional home entertainment could because there were fewer moving parts. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In the traditional group, we had this like like, you had to get everything in three months

ahead. And people are sweating bullets over getting the, in our special features group, getting the extras in. And the movie hasn't even released. Right. It's kind of insane that we're worried about the home entertainment when we don't even know if the movie is going to be a hit. Right.

And it's not even in theaters. And we can't get masters of the final because they're still editing it and we're trying to arm wrestle back and forth operations yeah over these things and then people would have to take small calculated gambles of like well let's you know and and sometimes they're very expensive gambles because right you would order all of these DVDs based off of the hope. And then the film would flop. And it's like, oh boy, we have pallets and pallets of DVDs. Pallets and pallets that have to be stored somewhere.

And that all costs money. And they go out and they come back. And it's funny, you mentioned all of the sweating bullets and all the prep that had to be due for special features with new release films, you know, a million years ago in the late nineties and aughts, I was involved in the early days of digital marketing on movie websites. And we would develop these extensive special features for these, you know, immersive websites in the early days of the internet. But meanwhile, like I knew people on the other end who were doing what you did. And I was like, I was like, you know, we're doing all this work and they're doing all this work. And, you know, the kind of features that we're developing

aren't that different. Why don't we all work together? And I actually like had a number of meetings at one of the studios, got up to the VP and they're like, this is a great idea. This was like 2001. And they were like, yes is a great idea. This was like 2001. And they were like, yes, yes, we're going to restructure things. We're going to have one group. And as you know, that never happened. Never happened. I worked for – Dan got me in at that company that was making websites

at the time, and I made um horrible and i apologize deeply to everybody flash banners for uh you know mostly home video releases right of like somebody animated walking across and then hulk you know blows up um flash banners that takes me back that's that's actually what got me the job where the flash banners I made for that company, because I put them all on the website. And the guy who was working on the WB shop just saw a lot of movie banners. And they're like, oh, hire that guy to make flash banners. And then the second meeting I had was, do not make flash banners. They were like, what? They were so confused. That's what I was hired to do. And I was like, they do not pay out.

And so we ran these A-B tests of static banners to flash banners and then could tag them to the WB shop. And the static banners outperformed the flash banners. And that VP took me aside and he said, I like you, you matt you're the only person i know who would hire to do one job convince me not to do it and have me make more money so you're staying that's a great story i mean the the whole internet age that we've been living through and then you know obviously i remember working on this might take you guys back but interactive cds that's oh yeah which one by the way now i'm really curious oh these were some documentaries uh back uh oh geez late 90s or whatever yeah we would we would like put in little clips and you know you do the authoring and everything yeah and it was history it's science mixed in and then you'd watch a

little video clip for 30 seconds. And it was horrible quality. But do you remember the CD-ROM they did for like mouse was actually great in terms of the information you could get out of it. And yeah, the videos were all that and they didn't look great. But like the CD, I totally missed the CD-ROM days because they were information rich resources. And now everything is pretty surface. It was a lot of reading, though. I mean, there was a lot of reading, right?

I like that. I like to read. Yeah. On your computer. Dan and I are not the normal consumers. Yeah. Which is why we ended up at the archive. Oh, God. ended up at the archive oh god i was just emptying the storage space full of uh stuff that i that i

had to um deal with and i've collect a lot of uh dead media formats then i did find a box of my vcd collection cds yes those were mostly popular in asia and you could buy them in Chinatown for like a dollar. Just for me, getting back to the archive, it was funny that Matt ended up where he was because I was one of these guys grumbling in the background going, you know, they say there's not a market, but the technology has changed. And they could just, you know, because I was somebody that was like finding rare stuff and burning an archival copy if I could, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, they could just market it directly. And then Matt ended up with this job. And then he told me what they were working on. I got very excited.

Meanwhile, of course, I, like everybody else, had followed the evolution of home entertainment. And there was a couple of guys who really knew what they were doing. Later on, of course, I found out that a couple of guys who really knew what they were doing later on of course i found out the couple of guys were just george uh just george i was like well there was a guy at mgm no that was me oh but then it weren't yeah that one or night the movies yeah that was me so like yeah everything different companies right yeah exactly george moving with the library was i had been unknowingly following George. And then it all came together, of course, when Matt let me know that Legends of the Superheroes was coming out. Which is the Hanna-Barbera two-episode TV movie series from January 1980.

The greatest version of the Justice League most people have never seen. I was going to say, it does not ring a bell. There's a reason it doesn't. You're a normal human being. You shouldn't know that this exists. But it was the last appearance of Burt Ward and Adam West as Batman and Robin. I think it's probably simplest to describe it as the Star Wars holiday specials of superhero. Yes, that's a good way to put it.

And it was very hard to find, and it was unreleasable. But then when I started to talk to George, George was like, oh, you know about this? Oh, yeah. Oh, we can release it. I was like, I heard it's unreleasable. He's like, tap, tap, and then not only did he find the regular video master which which i had seen a pirated version of but george found mislabeled the two inch videotape masters that they had made. And so we stopped production on it and sent them out.

There were only two machines at the time working that could read two-inch tape. And we re-telecined them, and it looked beautiful. And we added... And Tim, this is where I got to be the extras guy, because they found some extra footage on a two inch tape and they're like what do we do with this and I'm like ooh ooh give it to me

and I got to edit a seven minute like little blooper reel and that that was um I did that that year and I did my first commentary that year because we had upgraded the master to a TV movie and we were going to release it and they were like we need something else and I was like oh

I'll do a commentary but as you know for for us at Warner Archive we would mostly port old commentaries but because the production window on our stuff was so tight uh i could probably i probably only wound up producing like 10 commentaries total over all those years uh like original ones because it was just very hard for us to schedule. And I was always jealous of you guys because you got to do like commentaries. Commentaries. Yeah. The amount of money now that I think back that we spent on those commentaries is a little bit staggering. But yeah. Yeah.

And there were a couple of times because of this production window, we would have talent that wanted to be involved on the commentary, but there just wasn't enough time to get it done before we went to press. And then we would do a podcast where we would basically say, okay, this is essentially a commentary. You queue up your computer and hit play now, and then we would let them go. We did a couple of those.

And we'd play the video in the booth. So it was a real-time podcast commentary. And every now and then, someone would discover one of these podcasts by accident and not understand because, you know, it's people referring to a visual, like, they're listening to it like a radio show,

but there's no visual component. They don't understand why these people are talking about what's happening in Young Justice. Right. Yeah, it was. We did the Young Justice ones. Those justice ones those were good it's fun to kind of go back i i wanted to ask you guys also like when you think back on it what what are some of the favorite memories you have or things of that nature from from those years meeting somebody maybe a star somebody who was older that you're like oh my god i always dreamed about this like i have a two off hand i was a huge danny k fan growing up like a lot of

people yes and and his and that kid's album he has the mommy can have a glass of water you know got played till the grooves were flat and uh we were uh releasing some Danny Kaye stuff. And George was actually interviewing Dina Kaye, his daughter. And there was a mix up. And I was at my cubicle and I heard this woman's voice looking for George. And I know that George had gone onto the lot to have lunch with Dina. And I looked up and I was like, oh, my God, it's Danny Kaye's daughter. And there's no one here who knows who she is. So I stood up and I said, I think you're here to meet George.

I'll take you to him. So I got to, you know, eight, nine, 10 minute walk and talk. And I was just really nice just talking to her about how much her dad meant to me and what her dad, for her, what it was like.

It was very short. You know, I took her to the commissary and for her, what it was like. It was very short. You know, I took her to the commissary and say goodbye, but it was super nice for me. And then getting people online to know who Alan Jenkins was, was a major victory for me. Who? Alan Jenkins.

Alan Jenkins is a great Warner Brothers character actor who is most famous as the voice of officer Dibble on Top Cat. But, I mean, great, huge career, tons of movies, and really one of the great character actors of the 30s and 40s. And I would just talk about Alan Jenkins as if he was a major star, like Cagney. And eventually people online started talking about Alan Jenkins, and it was like, yes! We even had, like, Alan Jenkins week on social media. And you would refer to him all the time on the podcast and we would work him into the newsletter. So because we had all these different, you know, venues where we could spout, all of a sudden it would look like this major corporation was getting behind this character actor, but it was really just Dan. That's the power of, of, uh, this medium, right? Of well,

websites and the internet and social media. Oh yeah. And something trending, right? You were, you were like, that's basically what you guys were doing. You were trending this guy. And, and what was fun about, uh, I'm going to say something because I would have a usual answer to that, but I was just listening to Dan. And this is what I miss the most about, you know, because to the pandemic and then Dan and I got let go during the pandemic. And it's different now. But what I really liked about the job was being there, you know, on the lot or just outside of the lot. And because in my house now, the most unexpected thing that happens is my dog jumps up on me or barks, right?

But I would not have Danny Kaye's daughter running around in front of me lost, you know, like these serendipitous moments and the moments where, as you were saying, like meeting people in the elevators or just seeing what was going on in this giant business, you literally some days would never know what was going to happen. Dan was there. Probably one of the dumbest moments of my life was we were walking around. Oh, the Batmobile? Yeah. We were walking around the lot. And one of the funny things that they have at Warner Brothers is they have all the different Batmobiles from the different eras.

And it's a special collection. But we're walking around like the New York Street area, right? You know, and all of a sudden, this Batmobile, not super fast, but it comes around right by itself. And it kind of stops right in front of us. And I point at it. and I go, that's the George Clooney Batmobile. And the driver looks at me and starts laughing and then he drives away. And Dan, who was it? LeBron James. Yeah, I didn't recognize him. Matt's a few feet away from LeBron and he's transfixed by the George Clooney Batmobile, not even aware that the person laughing at him is LeBron, and he's transfixed by the George Clooney Batmobile, not even aware that the person laughing at him is LeBron James.

I know who LeBron is, but I just didn't make the connection. Right. You know, because I'm just so I'm so excited by the Batmobile. But yeah, you I am my day now. I don't come across the George Clooney Batmobile driven by LeBron. That just doesn't happen anymore. Those two things, you don't expect them to be together necessarily, but there they are. That looks like – too bad you don't have a picture of that.

That's awesome. Yeah, the rumor – We aren't allowed to take pictures. And I want to be very clear. This was just a rumor. No idea if it's true, and I'm going to say it's not true just for legal purposes. But the rumor we heard was when LeBron was signing like a development deal, whatever, this was like before they did Space Jam, a new Space Jam. Part of like LeBron's negotiation was can I drive a Batmobile?

And they were like, okay. It's a great story whether it's true or not. I have no idea if it's true. We don't know if that part is true. If I was as powerful as LeBron, I'd want to drive a Batmobile too. That just made me think. You know the gym on the lot? Yeah, yeah.

You remember the gym? Well, sometimes you go there, there's a basketball court. Yeah. You'd see some stars out there playing. I think people would say, oh, I saw Clooney out there shooting hoops or whatever. Yeah. You know what would have been fun is to see LeBron James playing. I think people would say, oh, I saw Clooney out there shooting hoops or whatever. Yeah. You know what would have been fun is to see LeBron James

playing. He was, he knew his place. He's like, why do I want, why would I want to play basketball there? I want to drive the Batmobile. I respect that choice.

We can't insure you to play basketball on the Warner Brothers lot, but hey, you can drive the Batmobile. But you know, sooner or later, it all comes down to Batman. Yeah. It comes back to the batman we all love batman that just really

sticks out on something that you know just was a lot magic right that's that was what i lived for well i'll throw i'll throw in a story or two here as well when i started off like you guys i started as a temp so i was on the seventh floor just because there wasn't room on the third floor you know well i was once on the seventh you were on the seventh okay yeah so remember how uh when i first well this was maybe a little bit before you guys but when i first moved to the seventh floor the production the um yeah show two and a half men the writer's office everything was right there on the seventh floor so yeah i'd go to the restroom and guess who, obviously, you know, you're standing next to somebody like, Oh, Hey.

Yeah. And, uh, I got to know the writers of the show because we were just across the hall just a little bit, you know, getting in the elevator at the same time. Um, and there'd be Chuck Lorre or some of the writers and those kinds of things to what you were just saying. And then soon after some other shows were up there, you know, Supernatural was up there for quite a few years and you'd run into everybody in the, uh, in the elevator, Starbucks downstairs, whatever. So yeah.

I met a lot of it because seventh floor, I met a lot of those same people too. And when, uh, when I was still there, the big bang theory was just starting. And I don't tell this story too often, but I'm in the seventh floor bathroom. I'm doing my business in a stall. And like four people come in and they're like, like, they're just like joking, like locker room joking. Like they were they write a good show, but they were just being not funny at the moment. And I'm there quietly, because you've been in those bathrooms. They're big, but not that big.

Right. And I'm just trying to be invisible in there, because I'm like, I don't want to be a target of humor right now. And then one of the guys comes and turns off the lights. And the other guys are like, and they leave and the lights are, I'm in the dark on the toilet, not finished.

And I'm like, I hate these writers. Thanks Chuck. Okay. Yeah. It's, it's fun though. It was funny. I just was the object of the Chuck. Okay. Yeah, it's fun, though. It was funny. I just was the object of the joke. I remember other people, too. It was great fun.

People would come out and say, I just saw Jensen Ackles from Supernatural in the elevator and Jared Padalecki. And I was like, really? And then you go, it's too late. They're already gone. They were going up to the seventh floor to have script meetings with the producers. Yeah, they had those little rooms, the casting rooms up there.

Yeah. Right. And then there would be casting. That's right. People would be coming in and sometimes you'd be like, I think I recognize that person. There's a reason why she looks so dressed up and everything. Going for a cast. That's where it was like fun. You know, like that's just that's that time when people say like, oh, you worked in a movie studio.

I feel like, yeah, no big deal. And then but with the memories, I'm like, oh, I did work at a movie studio and it was. Yeah. And we weren't even on the we weren't even on the lot. We were just outside of Gate 5 or whatever. Yeah, just outside the gate. Because we had the TV shows there and some of the lot. We were just outside of gate five or whatever. Yeah. Just outside the gate. Because we had the TV shows there and some of the other, oh, also the other thing, you know, I worked on a lot of, of that to kind of direct to video type movies and they'd do all the casting in our building. I loved your direct to video movies, by the way, big, big fan of those.

Yeah. They still, you know, they still do well. I mean, things have changed over the years, but you know, we've, we did a ton of different ones and they would all get cast there and then they get shot somewhere else. Dan once said when we were in the cafeteria in that building and, you know, they had a video monitor where they would loop a lot of the direct to video previews. Yeah. That Dan, I remember you just looked up one day and you go, no movie with a shark has ever lost money. Or Scooby-Doo. Well, speaking of Scooby-Doo, you know, one of the great things about working at Warner Brothers, specifically Warner Archive, is, you know, we got to release a lot of the new animated DC stuff because we were putting out the Blu-rays and we had the podcast.

And so, and we were able to work conventions like Comic-Con. And so we got to meet a lot of the, a lot of the writers and a lot of the voice actors. And, you know, the great thing about voice actors is I don't think there's any group of happier actors than voice actors. Yeah don't think there's any group of happier

actors than voice actors. Yeah. Uh, and, and, uh, Matt and I used to do this thing where, um,

called tune stock at a wonder con and a comic con where first half would be semi promotional, but we would all be focused on the music history of popular music in cartoons. And then the second half is we did a sing along with a episode of Batman, the brave and the bold. And, you know,

we got to know the dynamic music partners who wrote the music. And then we got to do this. And one of the times we had John DiMaggio, who's probably, you know, most famous for Futurama, but this is his Aquaman is off the charts and outrageous. And, you know, most famous for Futurama, but his Aquaman is off the charts and outrageous. And, you know, we were able to do Toonstock

with Gary Mariano, the publicist, and John DiMaggio. And it was, I mean, we did a number of these, but that one was super fun. But he's like singing live on the stage over, like he's doing karaoke to his own character. And so Dan, I would just sit there like, wow, like we're we're on the stage, but like we're also the audience, you know. And that's the that was the privilege of that at a New York Comic Con. that at a new york comic-con uh we were doing an animated panel once and we just had all these you know writers and performers on the panel and then you know we get to the question part and the

guy goes uh how do i get a job uh like like yours any any points and uh who is it who answered dan was that um it was it mike carlin yeah yeah that, it was a Mike Carlin. I think it was Mike Carlin. Mike Carlin started, who's a, you know, like I, he was at DC forever and wrote so many episodes of so many things. And Mike's like, well, you work hard and you know, you just got to keep writing. And the guy goes, no, no, not you, him. And he pointed to me. And then I'm like, oh, because you're not talented or something.

That's hard work. Like somehow I just showed up to tempt, dude. I don't know. Get lucky. That was my answer. That is hilarious. Yeah. I mean, if you want to break into animation cartoons, that's a long grind, unless you are just talented beyond the kazoo.

And even then, you just got to keep working, keep trying, keep writing, keep performing, keep auditioning. Yeah. So at least that guy was realistic. That's all I'm saying. Well, one nice thing you guys have just touched on about the Warner Archive is just the diversity. Yeah. You know, from the animation you're talking about, whether it be the new animation or the animation catalog. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I mean, you know, special bucket list privilege, you know, getting Johnny quest and space ghost and Hercules out the door. And, you know, it was also like part of the, where the great part of the job was a lot of it was a movie catalog search and rescue. And, you know, by, you know, it was also like part of the great part of the job was a lot of it was movie catalog search and rescue. And, you know, by, you know, getting that stuff, getting new masters made, getting them back in the pipeline. You know, these masters that we worked on and got out for disc are also the same masters that people are accessing online on streaming services or video on demand and all that. And, you know, always the goal is just to keep this stuff from disappearing. And the more

copies that are out there, the more it's in circulation, the more you've rescued this stuff from obscurity, because it's all worth preserving. And as Dan was starting to get into you know at the other end like toward the end of the gig it became about format preservation right because uh less people were buying newer shows on blu-ray or high resolution formats and so uh you know if you if you weren't going to be able to sell a hundred thousand or a million copies of a Blu-ray, it just didn't make economic sense. But if you're going to sell 20, 30,000 of a new show, then our distribution method made sense. So, you know, you could get these shows that were popular, but not, you know, Game of Thrones level. Right. And and that that wasn't that was a a good um

you know like a fan service right because there are people who want the higher quality output that even a blu-ray has over what you're going to get on a netflix which is you know those are well compressed sometimes 4k files but it still doesn't quite have the bandwidth that a disc can have. Well, that reminds me of like the fact that I would work on a season one of something, let's say the Jetsons from the 60s. And then didn't they do another season like 10 years later? More than 10 years later.

But yeah, in the eighties. Yeah. Yeah. So then we, uh, so our TV group, we were like, okay, we're going to do season one. And then I would to save money and to stretch the budget for the extras is I would shoot interviews for, for both seasons. You know, I get Jerry back in. And when you get Jerry back in front of the camera, you want to ask him about all the

seasons or maybe even four different titles. Right. Right. And so we would film these interviews. And when you get Jerry back in front of the camera, you want to ask him about all the seasons or maybe even four different titles. Right. Right. And so we would film these interviews. And so I would have them. And then season one would numbers would come back and they'd be like, we're not going to release the next season. I'd be like, oh, man, I have all of this stuff. I can. It'd be great. And then you guys would pick it up. Yeah. And then we would pick it up. We didn't always get your stuff, though. Yeah, you did. I would talk to George and I'd get it to you guys. Okay, good, good. I'm glad.

Johnny Quest. You think Johnny Quest season was good? Oh yeah, that was really good. Yeah, and then also the Jetsons and there was a few other things and I was like, oh, I'm glad it gets to live somewhere. I've already spent the money. Yeah, yeah. You know, I want the fans and some of them we actually did like you kind of needed to watch the second part of the featurette to to

understand the full story and i don't know if you worked on this particular there was still there was one time i was at uh when we released westward the women oh yeah i was at cinecon i was talking to a the guy who had a table next to me who had written a book on shooting out Mount Monument Valley. And I don't know if you worked on the commentary for Westward the Woman, but he, as we're just casually talking, he was like, you know, a while ago for Warner Brothers, I shot this commentary for Westward the women, whatever happened with that. And I'm like, I don't know what happened to the commentary, but I know we're putting it out. I'll ask George. And that alerted George to look for it. And then we found it and got it on the disc, which was great because it's a great commentary. Yeah. I mean, it was unfortunately a large corporate structure like that. One floor is not talking to the other floor. One division sometimes doesn't know all the things that might be available. So thank goodness for George, because George would be in enough meetings that he would be able to tap into the different groups and, you know, because everybody wanted him to come to

their meeting. So whether it be catalog or new release or television or catalog animation, you know, there's just all these meetings going on. You don't even know how many meetings are going on. And you find out, like you hear the whisper of some, some title or something. Did Dan fly off? So it looks like we lost DW. So while Matt and I try to get him back, this is just going to be the end of our first episode together. And you can look for another one coming soon. Soon as we find DW. Until next time, you've been listening to the Archive Guys

take over of the Extras podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And be sure to look for our next episode where they come back and tell us even more behind the scenes stories about their time at Warner Brothers and working at the Warner Archive.