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This podcast is produced by fans of Veronica Mars, and is in no way affiliated with the UPN/CW network, Rob Thomas, or The Powers That Be, and does not reflect the views of any of the entities creating and producing the show.

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Intro
Bailey loves Josh Kramon
Chat with the Gilmore Girls podcast
Josh Kramon interview
Sign offs

[Greeting of many greetings again. Cameron supposes that this is a permanent thing now. The Loop: She is out of it.]

[OPENING THEME MUSIC: Vancefurd- Pirate Song]

SANDY: Welcome back, Pirates! It’s Sandy, and I’ve returned from the great land of California, and I’m back!

BAILEY: Yay!

SANDY: Right here to do another podcast.

BAILEY: Yay! I’m glad you’re back.

SANDY: Thank you.

BAILEY: We missed you a lot.

SANDY: I- well apparently Scarlett and Theo didn’t miss me too much ‘cause they didn’t show up for my welcome back party.

BAILEY: More, more for us. More.

[CAMERON: Yes.]

SANDY: More for you at least.

BAILEY: Yes.

SANDY: Good thing you love me. Um. For our listeners out there, it’s like we can’t get all of us together. It’s gonna be amazing when there’s finally another podcast with me, Theo, and Scarlett all here at the same time.

BAILEY: That hasn’t happened for a while. I feel like I’ve been filling in for a lot of different people for the past couple weeks.

[Laughter]

[CAMERON: Do you wanna fill in for me?]

SANDY: You have. You certainly have, and we are thankful of you for that. I guess that we should explain to our listeners that- hopefully they haven’t really run off because they hate me but um, Scarlett is visiting family this weekend and so she is out of commission. And Theo lives in New York where the heat has been wreaking havoc on the city, taking out power, killing the Internet. So.

[It totally was, too. Cameron did not have a perspiration-free day that week.]

SANDY: Well, let’s see. I think we have some pretty exciting things in this week’s podcasts.

BAILEY: Oh, I think so too. I’m, I’m very anxious, personally, to hear it all put together.

SANDY: Me too. This week we have a joint session with Dave and Alicia, who come to us from the Gilmore Girls podcast.

BAILEY: Yay!

SANDY: And we’re gonna talk about- they are so terrific, and if you haven’t checked out their podcast yet you definitely should. But they are coming in to chat with me, a self-proclaimed lifelong – and by lifelong I mean life of the show, not life of me – um, fan of Gilmore Girls. So we’re gonna chat about Gilmore and Veronica, and the relationship between the two shows, and Tuesday nights on the CW in the fall. So it should be really exciting.

BAILEY: That’s so awesome! I cannot wait to hear it.

SANDY: Hope it’s good! Hope people like it!

[Giggles]

SANDY: But you actually have an exciting segment coming up yourself, right?

BAILEY: Oh yes! We finally got the Josh Kramon interview. And for a while I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. There were some scheduling conflicts on both sides. It was a great interview. I had so much fun.

SANDY: Well that’s terrific. And actually Scarlett is, is doing that interview with you, right?

BAILEY: Right. Yes.

SANDY: Okay. So it’s the two of you guys and Josh Kramon. And I’ve actually listened to part of the interview. Based on scheduling we had to do the interview before we did this podcast, so.

BAILEY: Right.

SANDY: I’ve already heard it, and it’s terrific. And I just have to say: How amazing of a guy is Josh Kramon?

BAILEY: I’m in love with Josh Kramon now. I’m totally infatuated now. He just- he gives- he is such a great interviewee. He just- he has great answers and he’s just really easy to talk to. I was nervous because Sandy wasn’t there, and it was the first time I had scheduled an interview. But it just, it went so great, and he could have put us more at ease. He’s a great guy. I am so, I was- oh. It- he’s so great in fact that we kept him on air for 45 minutes. So.

[Laughter]

SANDY: Which is, you know, terrific-

BAILEY: Yes.

SANDY: -but in light of this being, you know, already gonna be a long podcast, we thought, you know, to get everybody to tune in next time, we should split it up.

BAILEY: Yeah.

SANDY: Get a little Josh this week, a little Josh next week.

BAILEY: It’s nice to spread out the Josh.

SANDY: I think so.

BAILEY: I think so too. Otherwise, this podcast would be the longest in history. And we’ve had some pretty long ones in the past.

SANDY: Yeah. This would definitely top all of those though. But I honestly just think it’s good for everybody to get the opportunity to, to hear him spread out over time.

BAILEY: Definitely.

SANDY: Because, you know, we all like to get a little special Veronica fix every once in a while, and what fun would it be if we got the whole Veronica/Josh Kramon fix in one fell swoop.

BAILEY: Yeah.

SANDY: Better to leave a little to come.

BAILEY: Yeah.

SANDY: And speaking of spreading out Veronica Mars fixes, if people haven’t noticed yet- if you haven’t been checking our site daily, and I don’t know why you wouldn’t…

[Laughter]

SANDY: The interviews that I conducted at Comic Con with Jason Dohring, Ryan Hansen and Michael Muhney are up on the site.

BAILEY: And they’re great.

SANDY: I um, I hope that they’re- I hope that you like them.

BAILEY: I’ve read them, and I have to say that I had to reread a couple times. I was laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes. It was- they were fantastic. I wish I- it didn’t do much for my little jealousy problem that you got to go. But still I think it sounded like you had a great time.

SANDY: I had a terrific time. I, you know. Those guys were so fun, and I was totally nervous. And, you know, it must have been written all over my face. They really, you know, took steps to try and make us feel comfortable. I conducted the interviews with the TV whore, and her site is also listed at the top of those interviews. You can go to her site for pictures, because I lost my camera at Comic Con. Don’t ask me how.

BAILEY: Oh.

[CAMERON: That totally sucks. I’m sorry.]

SANDY: I know. And I had all these like, really cute pictures of them from inside the media room, and I’m pretty bummed about it.

BAILEY: Aw.

SANDY: It’s okay because the TV whore took pictures. So you can go check out her site and see the boys in all of their wondrous chair hopping.

BAILEY: Yeah. And then you get to see the boys and wonder exactly how Sandy managed to keep it together in front of all of them. Yeah. That’s just a little too much hotness. I don’t think I could handle it.

SANDY: Yeah, they’re pretty hot. There’s no question that the boys on this show are really good-looking. So anyway, those interviews are up. So you should definitely check them out if you hadn’t, and I hope that you like them, and if you hated them I’m really sorry. I did the best that I could. Blame the hotness.

[Laughter]

SANDY: We also, you know, speaking of- well actually this has no relationship to anything I just talked about. I don’t know why I just-

BAILEY: Speaking of hotness, because we’re all hot…

SANDY: Because our entire audience is hot, um.

[Laughter]

SANDY: Just like, nothing. I had no transition there. Um. And I could have tried to fake it but it wouldn’t have been good. Anyway. Um. We- clearly we’ve run out of intelligent things to say, as is evident by the fact that we just keep giggling at ourselves and Theo and Scarlett have just run away from the podcast entirely.

BAILEY: Um. There’s a little podcasting secret. Theo and Scarlett just keep it together. They have to keep us on a tight leash. Because if left to our own devices, as you can see, we just sit here and giggle.

SANDY: Um, yes. It’s very true. And we’re, we’re being really good. We had like, 45 minutes of giggling before we hit the record button, so. Clearly we need Scarlett and Theo here to keep things together.

BAILEY: Yes.

SANDY: Everybody thought it was me. It’s not. It’s Scarlett and Theo. But we’ve decided that, you know, season three is coming up. It’s very important. We wanna get those 22 episodes. We want to hit the Veronica Mars fan force with a vengeance, and so we’ve decided that in order to make the podcast better, we should hold auditions.

BAILEY: Yay!

SANDY: And I hate the word audition because it’s not like you’re really auditioning.

BAILEY: Right.

SANDY: But we’d like to take on one or two extra staff members who would serve as writers for the podcast.

BAILEY: Podcast newbies. It’s exciting.

SANDY: I know. I’m really excited at the prospect of getting some new blood into the podcast, people who would be responsible for writing segments. And by segments I mean if people listen back at old podcasts and they listen to Scarlett’s World of Noir segment that she wrote, or our ridiculous jinx segment that we wrote, that’s what we’re sort of looking for. We’re looking for people who would like to write segments for the podcast, and also commercials.

BAILEY: Yeah, commercials. And probably- there’s so many different chances for writing things on the show. In the past we’ve had songs, parodies of songs or commercials, the segments. I think also like, coming up with ideas for segments, kind of mapping it out, ‘cause it’s not really scripted, but.

SANDY: Right.

BAILEY: Bringing people in with new ideas and new ways of presenting things. People who have been unbiased. Like, ‘cause we were all here from the very beginning.

SANDY: Right.

[CAMERON: We were?]

BAILEY: These are people who have been listening to us and can bring something new that maybe we haven’t seen or that we didn’t think of.

SANDY: Yeah. Exactly. And that’s, that’s sort of the idea I think. We’re so blinded by everything that has been going on that it would be great to get some new people in, get some fresh perspective, and with the new season- once the new season starts we are going to be so wrapped up, I think-

BAILEY: Oh yeah.

SANDY: -in actually addressing the episodes, and the new music that’s gonna be starting, and Scarlett’s gonna be all over what new messenger bag Veronica is carrying-

BAILEY: Very true.

SANDY: -and where her college wardrobe comes from, that I think, you know, it would be really great to have people who come in and just sort of focus on, you know, this character’s been a little neglected. One of our awesome listeners out there wrote in and said why don’t you guys talk about Wallace more?

BAILEY: That’s a good point.

SANDY: You know, that’s a great question.

BAILEY: Yeah, that is a great question. Oh my God. Poor Wallace has been neglected.

SANDY: He’s been totally neglected and I adore Wallace.

BAILEY: Oh, me too.

SANDY: He’s one of my favorite aspects of the show. So it would be great to get one or two new people in who can sort of say, hey, you guys. We haven’t really been talking about Wallace too much. Why don’t we do a segment on him? So, that’s what we’re gonna do.

BAILEY: Right.

SANDY: We’re gonna bring some new people in. One of two. Just depending on interest. You guys might say we have no interest in being involved in the podcast whatsoever. That’s cool.

BAILEY: Well, I could just say from experience that this is probably the most fun that I’ve had with anything Internet related ever before, so.

[Cameron thinks Bailey’s lying. Do with that what you will.]

SANDY: Come on.

BAILEY: Yes, come join us. It’s a big party.

SANDY: I love it. I mean I think it’s fun, too.

BAILEY: Yeah. I think definitely having some people involved who are there specifically as writers, and like you said, some new perspective would be great. And so, that’s what we’re looking for.

SANDY: That’s what we’re looking for. And, you know, like we said these people would be strictly- the new people we bring in would be strictly writers that sort of work behind the scenes. But as is evident from the past, you know, sometimes we call on everybody involved with the podcast to submit a How I fell in Love with Veronica Mars segment or a Podcasters Predict. So, in those instances we try to get everybody involved.

BAILEY: Right.

SANDY: But primarily, you know, it would be behind the scenes with written work. And the way we’re gonna conduct these- again I hate to use the word audition, because it sounds so formal.

BAILEY: Say, say um… not interview. Submission? Submissions?

SANDY: Submissions. The way we’re gonna conduct the submission review, I don’t know. Um, is we would like everybody to submit a written segment. Like, if you want an example, go check out the World of Noir segment or the Jinx segment. Send a written segment, 2-5 minutes long, which seems like a really long time. It can be shorter than that if it’s really, you know, sort of quick and funny.

BAILEY: Right.

SANDY: But for the shorter segment we would like somebody, we would like you to also submit a commercial. And these are written. You don’t have to record anything. Don’t worry if you don’t have a mic. Just write them and submit them via email, in the body of an email, to neptunepirateradio@gmail.com.

BAILEY: Yay!

SANDY: We would like this to be as anonymous as possible, so if you have written us at NPR before, or if you are really active in, I don’t know, fan campaigning or fan message boards, or any sort of way like that and you have an email address that you use for those sort of things, we would like you to, you know, just go on gmail invites or go through yahoo and create a new email. Or use another anonymous email that you have, and submit to us that way. That way we are not blinded by any other work that you’ve done in the fan community. We’re not blinded by the fact that you might have sent us an email that said, hey guys, that segment sucked.

BAILEY: Right.

[Cameron thinks this is a good idea, because she likes to hold a grudge. Forever.]

SANDY: Um. This way it’s just as blind as possible and we can notify you back through that email, and then obviously go from there.

BAILEY: Right.

SANDY: And the deadline for this is one week from the day that this podcast goes live, which is this Sunday.

BAILEY: Mhm. Sunday the 6th, so that means that the deadline will be Sunday, August 13th I believe.

SANDY: Yes. So we will take submissions up until the 13th, and after the 13th we will take about a week to review any submissions that we receive, and then notify those new writers in that week before the new podcast. That way we can announce the new writers, the new members of our staff, um, on our next podcast. Get everybody acclimated before the new season starts. I’m excited. I am really, really excited about this.

BAILEY: Yeah, it’s kind of unbelievable how excited I am.

SANDY: Yes. I can’t wait. And on that note, I think we should probably start moving on to the other aspects of this incredibly long podcast-

[Laughter]

[Cameron holds a grudge.]

SANDY: -And take our first break.

BAILEY: I think so.

SANDY: We’ll be back with the Gilmore segment.

BAILEY: Yay!

SANDY: Yay, Gilmore! Okay. See you soon, Pirates.

[Chasing Yesterday by Carpe Noctem plays. Cameron rocks her body.]

SANDY: Welcome back, Pirates. As promised, we are here with Alicia and Dave who come to us from the Gilmore Girls podcast. Hey guys.

DAVE: Hey Sandy.

ALICIA: Hey.

SANDY: Thank you so much for coming on. I hope that you guys are as excited as we are about uh, Tuesdays starting at the end of September. Should be really exciting.

ALICIA: Oh yeah. I’ve already started calling it Logan Day, actually.

[Laughter]

ALICIA: I think that the CW should make that their new promo, is that Tuesday is Logan Day. That’ll help it a lot, so.

SANDY: Yeah, I keep seeing, um, all the promos with the girlie side of things, and I really think that they need to play up the male hotness. You know?

ALICIA: Yeah.

DAVE: Yeah they’re, they’re shooting for their true demographic, but I think they’ve already got that in the bag. I mean, women already love the show and uh, I was- I just recently took a communications class. We were like, analyzing TV shows and movies and stuff like that. And I was able to bring up Gilmore Girls in there. I mean, partly because I’m partial and I have a lot of, you know background with doing the podcast. So that helped. But we, we ended up talking about how like, the plotlines and some of the character development is really deep on both shows, Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls.

SANDY: Yeah. You know, and we sort of talked about this a little bit before, but just the idea that- I know with Gilmore Girls last season people got very invested and, in a lot of ways, irate at some of the plotlines that were going on with the characters. Arguing whether or not character actions were out of character, and the same thing happened on Veronica Mars. You know, there were- the season finale was pretty controversial, and just Veronica herself all season people- hundreds of pages of debate over whether or not Veronica would actually act this way or that way. And it can become frustrating at times. But at the same time, I think it says a lot about the show that people are willing to get that invested. You know?

DAVE: Sure. Yeah. I think uh, Gilmore Girls especially, with people that have been watching it for six years. I mean, all those Tuesday nights and, you know, sitting down with their family watching. They grow with the character, and so they have an emotional attachment to it.

ALICIA: And an expectation.

DAVE: Sure.

ALICIA: And when those expectations aren’t met. I mean I know that I’ve read where there’s a lot of fans that are like, well, I don’t know if I’m gonna watch this next season because unless this happens, it’s very out of character for some of these people. So.

SANDY: Yeah. And, you know, the same thing is true with Veronica, but at the end of the day, you know, if you look at- I don’t… I mean, we could name names, but you know I don’t think that the average 7th Heaven fan sits down and passionately engages in debate over whether or not Lucy and Kevin would really act this way based on their previous actions. You know, I don’t think that there’s that same level of- there are certainly people who watch the show to critique it. But I wouldn’t call them fans.

DAVE: Personally I don’t care. I watch 7th Heaven when it’s on, or when Alicia flips through the channels or whatever. And, I don’t care. Like, I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t watch it early enough but I just don’t care about those characters. Like you said, if Lucy does that I’m like, eh. That’s nifty. It’s a lot like Full House. Like, they’ll have- maybe that’s why we don’t really care too much about that. But they’ll have conflict and resolution within the same episode.

SANDY: Right. Right.

DAVE: And that ticks me off a lot as a viewer, because it’s never that simple in real life. You know what I mean?

SANDY: Yeah.

DAVE: The rift between Lorelai and Rory took you know, half a season to get through. So- and that keeps people enticed, and it also is true to life as much as television can be.

ALICIA: You can relate to these characters a lot more. The issues like Veronica had with her mom, the alcoholism and leaving and that kind of stuff-

SANDY: Right.

ALICIA: -there’s lots of people who have dealt with that. So they’re like, oh yeah, Veronica and I have that in common.

DAVE: Right. Imagine if Veronica, you know, found out that, you know, was dealing with her mom being an alcoholic and by the end of the, you know, hour long episode she’s in rehab. There’s a good sense that she’s gonna be just fine.

ALICIA: And they never mention it again, ever.

DAVE: And that’s the plotline. It’s done. They go on to the next thing. I’m like, what is this? You know what I mean? Is this T.G.I. Friday?

SANDY: Right. Right.

DAVE: Cut. It. Out.

[Laughter]

[Cameron would like to know if this is made of…. WOOD.]

DAVE: Ridiculous.

ALICIA: Actually it’s gonna be T.G.I. Logan Day.

SANDY: Yes. T.G.I.L.

[Mushy sighing]

SANDY: You can mention Logans as many times as you want and you will hear no complaints from me. Um.

[CAMERON: Where’s WEEVIL?]

DAVE: Yeah our, our next episode is gonna be a character analysis of Logan.

SANDY: Oh yeah?

DAVE: So. That ought to be fun for me.

ALICIA: I’m looking forward to it. I’ve that- the response of that character versus all the other analysis that we’ve done is just… it’s just like the other characters weren’t even on the show. Like it’s just- every day I get like email after email after email: oh, this is my favorite Logan part. You know.

SANDY: Yeah. Oh yeah. Trust me I- we’re in a situation where our Logan wasn’t even supposed to be the great love of Veronica Mars. He was supposed to be a secondary character who just served as an antagonist to her, and now he is, you know. If you did a poll of people’s favorite character on the show, it would be pretty close between actually Veronica, and Logan.

ALICIA: Right.

SANDY: Which is, it’s amazing that people can get that - and I’m one of them – get totally invested in a character that way.

ALICIA: And it helps because you have a lot of um, ‘shipper issues and battles between people that wanted Duncan, people that wanted Logan. Where on Gilmore Girls just, you know, for some reason Jess fans, I never understood. I always make people mad with that.

SANDY: You know what? I never got it either.

ALICIA: I’m just like, did you watch this show? So. I don’t know.

SANDY: Yeah. I never got the, I never got the Jess love either. It’s not for me. But, you know. There, there are- it’s the same thing with Duncan. There are people who really like Duncan and I don’t really, I don’t really understand it myself because I never really got their charisma or any chemistry between the two of them.

ALICIA: Right.

SANDY: But there are certainly, you know, there is conflict there within the fan groups where everybody sort of has their favorite.

DAVE: Sure. And those can form, you know, work as a catalyst to make more, you know, intense fans. So if they all sit down it’s not just, you know. If you have a group of like ten Veronica Mars fans and they all agree on every single issue than, you know, the conversations would be very boring. But if someone’s like, oh I love this character, or that character’s an idiot, or she shouldn’t be dating Logan because of this, than you really get some interaction. It gets people to talk. And that’s, that’s a lot better fan base than just everybody agreeing that everything’s perfect.

SANDY: Exactly.

ALICIA: I would be really curious to see, although there’s probably no way to collect this data, but some of the reasons that I got turned off by Jess are the same reasons that I got turned off by Duncan. And some of the reasons that I liked Logan for Rory were the same reasons that I liked Logan for Veronica. You know. Like, maybe it’s just a preference thing and they both had something that I liked, but um, I don’t know. I just- like Duncan and Jess I felt both… and this could be the actor and I hope I don’t offend people to badly, but I just felt like that they were numb a lot of the time, and showed no emotion.

SANDY: Yeah. Yeah. No I can definitely, I definitely see that. Um.

ALICIA: And then you wonder if they even care about their girlfriend. If they’re not being emotional at all, how can you care? Whereas like, Logan Echolls we’ve seen practically cry before, Logan Huntzberger the same thing.

SANDY: Right.

ALICIA: So.

SANDY: You see that, you know, there are moments- in Veronica Mars season one, obviously in Leave it to Beaver you have that great emotional scene between Teddy Dunn and Kristen Bell when he finally confesses that he was the person who had sex with her at Shelley Pomroy’s party. He really emotes there and sort of expresses himself. But outside of that I think a lot of times the fans who prefer Logan complained that you never really saw him- you never see, you know, him really court her in any way. And I hate to use the term court, but it’s the only word that’s coming into my head. Um.

[CAMERON: A southern girl, our Sandy is.]

DAVE: No, no. That’s appropriate.

SANDY: Yeah. But you never saw, you never saw him really try or get invested in winning her back or show any sort of passionate emotion like you were saying. He just sort of left, he was very passive about the whole relationship. Whereas, when you have a character like Logan who, you know, is saving her life or making speeches about being epic, you know. You get more invested in that relationship because you see where the emotions sort of lie. And I think that’s a good analogy between Jess and Logan Huntzberger. I can totally see what you’re saying with the two of them.

ALICIA: And I don’t know if part of it’s because I started watching both shows after they started. So, when I started watching Gilmore Girls it was actually in season five when Rory was dating or getting to know Logan, and Jess was out of the picture. And then I saw reruns and knew I didn’t ever have to deal with Jess, and was really thankful.

SANDY: Right.

ALICIA: And then I also saw um, I saw like the end of season one of Veronica Mars, beginning of season two, and I got to compare really close together in scenes and in episodes: Logan versus Duncan, with Veronica, you know. Where I didn’t have to wait all of the first season for that to happen.

SANDY: Right.

ALICIA: So. I think that that’s made a difference too, possible. But then there are some people that were fans of both shows from the very beginning and feel the same way that I do, so.

SANDY: Right.

DAVE: Well I think some of the different relationships are, are great to keep the fans, you know, to keep their blood boiling. You know what I mean?

SANDY: Yeah.

DAVE: And the- having that devotion of fans is the kind of thing that keeps shows like Veronica Mars on the air. So.

SANDY: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

DAVE: You know what I mean? Like if you have, if you- it’s hard to judge, you know. We talk about how many, we were talking earlier about how many people listen to podcasts and things like that, and do we really know. And same thing with TV is a whole lot worse, because they can’t count downloads like we can.

SANDY: Right.

[Again, Sandy is so agreeable.]

DAVE: But they have to sort of guesstimate how many people are watching Veronica Mars. So. Uh. Your best bet is to make as many fans as possible and get them online talking about it, discussing things. That way the studios can go and see that there’s a community of people. You know. Those, those make up a certain portion of the rest of the country.

SANDY: Right. Yeah. You know. Sort of making your presence known even if you’re not doing it in Nielson numbers. Which I think, you know, given the online reactions and response- I think Television Without Pity broke um, after the finales of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, which were on the same night.

DAVE: Yeah.

SANDY: You couldn’t even log in to Television Without Pity because people were just going crazy with the messaging. And, you know, I think it’s nice that people- and it’s gotta be great for the showrunners, as much as it’s frustrating at times as well, to have created something that, good or bad, at least people are passionate about, as opposed to being the standard television that sort of washes over you. You sit down. You watch it. You never really think about it too much afterwards. I mean, if I was gonna be an artist and a writer, which I think most of these people who go into television at least initially are, you know. They’re artists in a sense. I would want people to feel passionately about it. And there’s no question, you know.

DAVE: Yeah. I agree. Yeah. The best thing we could do for our fans it to get them Nielson boxes.

[Laughter]

SANDY: Oh, that would be the best thing ever.

DAVE: I don’t even want to try to get more fans. I just want to get the ones we have, get them involved with that program. Really, really throw the numbers our way.

SANDY: Yeah. I just wanna break the remotes of all the Gilmore Girls fans, so that next season their televisions are just stuck.

DAVE: Oh that, that brings up another thing. You guys talked about it in your last podcast, about the uh, Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls, though they’re running- they’re supposed to be running together as a pair, but they’re not starting on the same day.

SANDY: No.

DAVE: Do you think that sort of hurt you guys at all?

SANDY: I’m a little worried about it. Um. You know. I think it’s odd that that decision was made to, to not air them on the same night. And I’m wondering- maybe you guys know, I think I’ve tried to look this up before. Is the Gilmore Girls premiere gonna be two hours? Is that why? What are they gonna be airing in that nine o’clock hour?

ALICIA: I have not heard what it is. Um. I seriously doubt that it will be ‘cause they’ve never had a two-hour thing.

DAVE: Yeah.

ALICIA: And granted, they have new, all new writers this year, but-

DAVE: That’s a lot of content to get through in two hours.

ALICIA: -I’m not aware of that happening so I haven’t, haven’t heard what they’re actually gonna air.

DAVE: I mean you guys, Veronica Mars might catch up, ‘cause you guys are having an uninterrupted spew of episodes to come out.

ALICIA: But Gilmore Girls takes a lot of breaks.

DAVE: Yeah. Gilmore Girls will take a break for no reason.

SANDY: Right.

DAVE: They have doctor’s appointments; they’ll take a break.

[Laughter]

DAVE: They don’t care.

SANDY: Yeah. Well I know that part of the reason why we’re starting October 3rd as opposed to at the end of September is because, for sweeps purposes and all that blocking up the scheduling, they want to have those nine uninterrupted episodes and, you know, and go through November. So that’s why, I guess. But it just seems- I have no idea like, what they’re gonna run in that nine o’clock hour, because the network- it’s not like the network doesn’t have, or has a lot of stuff to just throw on the air, you know.

ALICIA: Yeah. I know. Um. I’m not really sure. I guess one thing that’s gonna help Veronica Mars this coming year is that- I know that a lot of people that use like, DVRs and TiVo with Gilmore Girls would hesitate to flip over to Veronica Mars because you wouldn’t want to miss like the previews for the next week. If your timer were off, than the two channels weren’t on the same time, than that would, you would miss it.

SANDY: Right.

ALICIA: But now you can just let it roll from one to the other without changing the channel, so hopefully that’ll help out a lot.

SANDY: Right. Yeah.

DAVE: Yeah. I think we’re gonna have a huge flock of uh, Gilmore Girls watchers jumping over to Veronica Mars if for no other reason, their intelligence level. If I’ve learned anything from doing the Gilmore Girls podcast, it’d be the average intelligence of one of those viewers is above average. I get emails that are well written. I get-

ALICIA: From younger people as much too.

DAVE: -from younger people. I mean, thirteen year olds, twelve year olds, and above. And versus other TV shows, you know, where you get a gambit of different character types. But I think the quality of people that are interested in that show are of higher intelligence. And so they’re gonna really have, take a liking to a mystery kind of show.

ALICIA: A smart mystery show.

DAVE: That doesn’t, that doesn’t exactly like, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not dumb it down. I mean like, they don’t assume that like everybody’s got a sixth grade education and like, let’s make the plotline that. Let’s make the dialogue no higher than, you know, this particular grade level. They’ll throw, you know, some stuff out there that’ll make people think.

ALICIA: I think that they’ll appreciate it because along with Rory Gilmore, Veronica Mars is smarter than me. You know, so.

[Laughter]

ALICIA: I feel that they both are, and I feel that they’re really good, um, role models for young girls, and moms that watch Gilmore Girls with their daughters will see Veronica Mars as the same kind of role model they see Rory as.

SANDY: Yeah.

ALICIA: I think that’ll help as well.

SANDY: Yeah. You know. Here’s a question I have for you guys that’s something I’ve been thinking about. Um. You know. I was at Comic Con last week, and I covered the Veronica Mars panel. One of the things that Rob Thomas said was that the network had put a lot of pressure on the show to conform more to a Gilmore Girls type audience, which thankfully, the studio sort of said no. You know. It defended the show as it is. I mean it says we’re gonna keep the show as it is. And we thank Warner Brothers for that. But I also thought it was kind of insulting a little bit to the Gilmore audience that, you know, here I thought that the reason everybody thought these two shows would be compatible is because the demographic of the audience is very intelligent, um, likes the complex emotional plotlines, and it has very little to do with the actual subject matter of the show. And so, to me it seemed like it undermined that in a sense.

DAVE: Yeah. I think the viewers should be almost insulted if Veronica Mars started going down to a Luke’s rip off and sat down, you know, and had coffee and stuff, you know. Some kind of lame Kirk wannabe comes in. You know, what? You can’t turn Veronica Mars into Gilmore Girls.

SANDY: Right.

DAVE: Even have similar things like, to pull people over. People are gonna come over just because they’re smart. Veronica Mars is a new kinda show. Yeah, mysteries have been done before but as I watched it, the way that they do their editing, the way that they do the cuts of their scenes, the way they do the music- I mean it’s all very new and very fresh, and that’s the kind of thing that’s gonna make people wanna watch it. Not because, oh, it’s kind of like Gilmore Girls. Or they’re similar in these ways. No, they did the right thing to stand on their own feet and carry that torch.

SANDY: Yeah. And I definitely, that was sort of my reaction, and I think most of the fans reaction. It’s funny, because most of the Veronica Mars fans I know are also Gilmore Girls fans and they’ve been very behind this idea of um, you know. Back when we got moved, before anybody knew there was gonna be a new network and we got moved from Tuesday nights to Wednesday nights, everybody was very upset because most of the Veronica Mars fans were already making Tuesdays a Gilmore/Veronica night. And so, to me it suggests that okay, these are just a bunch of Gilmore Girls fans who’ve already found this other great show. Why do we think that the other X-numbers of Gilmore Girls fans need anything about the show to change in order to relate to it? They just need to be exposed to it, which is sort of our attitude.

ALICIA: Right.

DAVE: I’d agree with that a hundred percent.

ALICIA: I think this exposure is gonna make a huge difference. One thing that, I don’t know, I never watched the UPN channel at all, and so, like I had to find out what channel Veronica Mars was on ‘cause a friend recommended it to me. So I think that being on the same network, and the WB was more Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, you know. Those- the genre that Veronica Mars is in, but it was just on a different network. So I think that that is gonna make a huge difference them both being on the same network now, so.

SANDY: Right. Well I have a question about these promos that have been airing. I don’t know how- I assume that you guys have seen all the, the billboard signs and you’ve gone on the CW website and seen the little promo videos.

DAVE: Yeah. We’ve seen a lot of them.

SANDY: I think it’s interesting- and I know it sparked a lot of debate in both Gilmore Girls/Veronica Mars communities that I belong to, as well as a Veronica Mars community, that they’re advertising it as, you know, free to be girlie. It’s the girls’ night of television. And a lot the Veronica male audience is sort of insulted by that or upset by that because they feel like they’re sort of casting out this whole aspect of the audience of both shows by undermining it’s appeal to the male audience entirely.

DAVE: Yeah. That’s definitely not gonna help my ego or my male status with the guys at work ‘cause I already get teased. I mean, people are like, oh that’s nice. You watch Gilmore Girls with your wife, huh? Does she give you your uh, your nuts back in a purse when you’re done?

[Laughter]

DAVE: So I gotta deal with stuff like that, you know. I get teased. But when I suggest that another guy friend of mine watch the Gilmore Girls or Veronica Mars for that matter, I would hate for their first episode to sit down, that the commercials in between the promos for like, next week, are female oriented.

ALICIA: Tampons.

DAVE: Or yeah, not just the commercials, being like, you know, about tampons or other feminine products, you know, stuff like that. But just the promos from the CW. If they come out and say oh, it’s girls’ night or whatever. That’s not gonna help at all.

SANDY: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, you know. And that’s unfortunate. And it seems like they’re doing this whole um, commercial, this new wave of commercial idea that Dawn Ostroff and the people at the CW have come up with, that they’re having these commercial pods that sort of run over the entire night of television. So.

DAVE: Oh, the ones down at the bottom?

SANDY: Well, yeah. It’s gonna be down at the bottom like, date night, like all the products will be oriented to getting you ready to go out on a date. It’ll start at the beginning of Gilmore, and I guess the date ends at the end of Veronica Mars.

ALICIA: Really.

DAVE: Oh wow. That’s news to us.

SANDY: Oh yeah.

DAVE: That’s interesting. They call them pods?

SANDY: Yeah. They’re commercial pods, and there’s a story that is gonna be told over the course of the evening. It’ll run that way for, from my understanding, every night of television because, you know, every night on the network is sort of a different theme night. Monday is family night and Tuesday is girly night, and Wednesday is reality night or whatever. Um. But yeah. They’re gonna be like, these pods, and it’ll be, these two people are going on their first date. Let’s dress them up and, yeah.

DAVE: Oh my goodness. That’s gonna blow up in their face. That’ll be awesome.

ALICIA: Yeah. That’s gonna get really annoying really fast. I already hate it.

SANDY: I just-

ALICIA: I already hate like, like ABC Family will do the things at the bottom where they’re promoting a new show and like, the sound effects will go over and interrupt you.

DAVE: Oh. Like the Supernatural ones. You remember those?

ALICIA: Oh, and Supernatural would too, yeah.

DAVE: Oh, those were the worst. They’d like, swoop in and be like wooj, wooj, wooj.

ALICIA: Yeah.

DAVE: I’d be like; I’m trying to watch the Gilmore Girls. Get out of here!

ALICIA: So those are already annoying for just the TV shows. So something that’s not related will be really getting on- and that would definitely be turning guys off from watching it big time. I think that they’re just trying to get rid of their male viewers. I have a lot of fans that watch the Gilmore Girls that are male, and they don’t mention that oh, I watch it with my wife. They just say, I’m a fan of the show. So if they’re a fan of the show in one of their buddies is over, and if they are watching it, they’re gonna turn it off if something like that comes on.

SANDY: Right.

[Cameron would like to clarify that Dave and Alicia are talking about something different than Sandy is trying to explain. They are talking about the pop up bubbles that sometimes appear as a show is running. Sandy is talking about ads in the form of stories that play as commercials during the break. Remember Dinner and a Movie, or Movie and a Makeover? It’s like that. They keep airing these little Movie and a Makeover breaks during commercials, only with product placement. No actual show interference. That is all.]

DAVE: Yeah. That’s not good. I tell you what. CW, if you guys wanna make a lot of money, you need to just go back to product placement. Try that. Have Veronica Mars commercial free for a straight hour and then when she uses her Sidekick, just have a close-up of her face and have the Sidekick logo on there. That’s it. Don’t say anything about it. Just show the freaking Sidekick. You know what I mean? Have Veronica Mars start picking up the habit of drinking Mountain Dews.

[Laughter]

DAVE: Slip it in there, sneaky like. You know what I mean? Be Veronica Mars. Be sneaky about it. You know?

ALICIA: Have Gilmore Girls do the one brand of coffee.

DAVE: Yeah. Have the Gilmore Girls love Folger’s and have just a little dialogue back and forth one time about how they like Folger’s versus Maxwell because of this reason. And then that’s it. You know what I mean?

SANDY: Yeah.

DAVE: Or just have like a Folger’s cup on their counter in their kitchen or something like that. They need to go back to product placement. That’ll keep me interested. I hate commercials.

SANDY: I mean, there are already- I know it goes this way for both of these shows. There are already communities that are completely devoted to figuring out where every piece of clothing, every tech object comes from. People go out and buy it. I mean, I’ve spent a fair amount of money – and I know I don’t hold a candle to Scarlett – on Veronica Mars’s clothes on eBay. You know?

DAVE: Yeah. I think there was- wasn’t there a website somewhere that said dress like Veronica Mars, and it had a huge list of everything that was ever featured that she wore?

SANDY: Yeah.

ALICIA: She inspired me to have a messenger bag for my laptop.

DAVE: There you go. Alicia’s walking around with a messenger bag. Why? Veronica Mars.

SANDY: Me too. There are people out there who are making a killing on the American Eagle messenger bag that she’s carrying this season that retailed for like, 35 dollars and now it’ll cost you at least 90 on eBay. I mean, so obviously there’s something going on in these shows that make people want to buy those products. We don’t need commercial pods about people going on dates.

DAVE: Pods be damned. Pods be damned. That’s silly. CW, pay attention. Start hawking the messenger bags.

SANDY: And have- show the tech equipment too, you know.

ALICIA: Oh yeah.

SANDY: Show the laptops.

ALICIA: Lauren Graham has a different cell phone every week, just about, on Gilmore Girls.

DAVE: Veronica Mars uses a Mac laptop. There’s no ifs, and, or buts about that. You know what? That brings up another point. I know this is getting off on a tangent but one of the other things that I like as a guy about Veronica Mars is they’re not afraid to just zoom in and show her desktop. And when they do, like they don’t show like, some made up graphic of oh, a file being transferred. They show OS10. They show like, her looking on things and doing it real time, and that’s the kind of stuff that keeps me interested because I- for trying to make it as real as possible. If I see them zoom in on her Mac and it’s not a Mac all of a sudden, or it’s a Windows desktop, I’m gonna be like, aw. And I’ll notice stuff like that because I’m a geek. But that takes me out of the show.

SANDY: Yeah.

DAVE: So kudos to whomever the prop person is who made that decision on Veronica Mars.

ALICIA: Can you tell that his favorite character is Mac?

DAVE: Oh yeah.

[Laughter]

SANDY: I love Mac too. Everybody loves Mac. Um. Well they-

DAVE: She gets me going.

[Laughter]

SANDY: One of the funny things about that on Veronica is like, you remember um, well it’s happened many times but it happened in… um. I don’t know. Oh. Why am I blanking? One Angry Veronica. I can’t believe I forgot the name of that. I blocked out that whole episode. That’s how I felt about it. But, um. They had all those email addresses. You could email those email addresses that they kept listing. You had vmars@aol.com or gottapes@aol.com

DAVE: Yeah. That’s genius. Why not do that if they’re gonna put it in the show? Uh. There was somebody that did- somebody did that on Gilmore Girls. There was like, somebody mentioned a web- oh, that was two things. One uh, April Nardini had a website. And that wouldn’t take anything for somebody to just sit down and make the April Nardini website that you could actually visit.

ALICIA: Yeah. You could actually call- Luke left Lorelai his cell phone number one time, and you could actually call it. It was like, Luke’s voicemail. You could leave him a message.

DAVE: Yeah. That’s one of the things they got.

ALICIA: But yeah. Like with the emails, you go to AOL or somehow if you click on an ad and they make money that way instead of showing you commercials during the show.

SANDY: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s fun ‘cause you can email, again like you said, you can call that voicemail and get a message. You could call. You know when you emailed those email addresses from Veronica Mars you got an email back. You know?

ALICIA: Really.

DAVE: Wow.

SANDY: Yeah. And the guy who does that for Veronica Mars um, his name is Rick. And he is, like he does a lot of the graphics, and if you see, you know if she’s got her GPS tracker out and it’s got the screen, like he does all that.

DAVE: Wow. That’s awesome.

SANDY: And he puts it there and will create the replies to those emails or like, if they use her search engine on Veronica Mars, if you type it in it redirects you to the website. You could totally capitalize on stuff like that because the fans of these types of shows follow up on those little details. If you put a phone number on the show, we’re gonna call it.

DAVE: Well the next time you see Rick you tell him I’m very impressed.

ALICIA: That’s like David’s dream job.

DAVE: I know.

SANDY: Oh yeah?

ALICIA: If Rick ever moves onto other stuff, you know. We’ll send his resume in.

SANDY: Yeah. He’s a very, very cool guy.

DAVE: This goes full circle back to our listeners being intelligent, and Veronica Mars’s listeners being above average intelligence. They know that if Veronica has to email a video that she captured with her webcam to somebody, you know what I mean; they know that that’s possible.

SANDY: Yeah.

DAVE: Or if it’s too big of a file it’s not gonna go. You can’t fool the kids nowadays. You know what I mean? They’re hip to this stuff, so.

SANDY: Oh yeah.

ALICIA: There’s a lot of like, movies that have tricks and stuff and they’re all hokey. And you’re just sitting there rolling your eyes like, you can’t do that in real life. But with her, like all the stuff that she does, even though it’s like really smart, swift stuff, she could actually do that.

DAVE: Like when they made that website to blackmail that guy, remember that?

[CAMERON: M.A.D.]

ALICIA: Yeah.

DAVE: You could really do that.

SANDY: Yeah. That was, yeah. And that’s what- it’s fun to like, know that by paying attention you get rewarded. You know?

ALICIA: I hope that Veronica and Logan don’t break up in the first episode like they did last year.

SANDY: I would kill someone.

ALICIA: ‘Cause that was like- I started watching it, like I said, season two mostly. But I missed the first couple episodes of season two. And I went back, and I was like oh, she’s with Logan. Then I was like, oh, no, she’s with Duncan now. Wow. That was really quick. So. I don’t, I don’t like that. They can’t toy with my emotions that way anymore. So.

SANDY: Yeah. I’d be very unhappy. Hopefully that won’t happen.

ALICIA: I think that they would have a lot of unhappy people, and the way the Veronica Mars fans are… they’re really intense and very impressive. I think the CW might be kind of scared that people would like, you know, stampede onto the set in protest about it.

[Laughter]

SANDY: I wouldn’t put it past Veronica Mars fans. It’s a little rabid.

DAVE: The different tangents between Logan and Logan, I expect to see something come from the CW probably like midseason. Where they, you know, try and- whether through commercials or something, try and make mention of the fact that both shows have a Logan.

SANDY: Oh yeah. I’m just waiting for those promos to come out. It’s gonna happen. They’re gonna have Matt and Jason back to back in those old, you know, fresh new episodes of Gilmore and Veronica Mars.

DAVE: Yes.

[Laughter]

SANDY: You’re gonna see them standing very stoically with wind blowing on them.

[Laughter]

ALICIA: I’m telling you, if they just change the name to Logan Day, that’ll be a pretty easy way to do it, too.

SANDY: Yeah.

ALICIA: You know.

SANDY: That’s what I’m saying. Put ‘em in like, some fancy cars and using some fancy gadgets, and guys won’t be so offended. They’ll be like, look, cool guys doing cool things. I don’t know. It’s better than free to be girlie, right?

DAVE: Yes.

ALICIA: Right. Right.

DAVE: Yes. Sandy, you have a great grasp of the male mind.

SANDY: At this point, I’m really excited about the new night, and I know you guys are really excited about it, and we certainly appreciate you coming on and talking to us.

DAVE: Well, we loved being here.

ALICIA: Thanks for having us.

SANDY: It was a blast. It was really fun getting to chat with you. And if people wanna check out your podcast we direct them to- you guys are available on iTunes and through your site, right?

DAVE: Yeah. http://gilmoregirlspodcast.com.

SANDY: Yeah. You guys should go check it out. You guys have great episode analysis and you guys have some character analysis that you’re doing right now, so if you wanna hear more about Logan Huntzberger, that’s the place to find it.

ALICIA: It’s gonna basically be a whole episode of me just being, he’s so dreamy. You know.

SANDY: I’m waiting.

ALICIA: And I think if we ever do an interview with Matt Czuchry that’s- I’d probably sound like a little emo girl the whole time. So I think that would be pretty interesting to check out.

SANDY: I can imagine.

ALICIA: That would be like, the happiest day of my life.

SANDY: A little Alicia puddle on the floor.

ALICIA: Right.

SANDY: It would be good stuff. I know. I made a fool out of myself in front of Jason Dohring, so.

[Longest sigh ever. Cameron laughs.]

SANDY: I sympathize. Um. All right. Well thanks so much for coming by!

[CAMERON: But they never did Two Truths and a… ah, screw it.]

DAVE: Thanks, Sandy.

ALICIA: Thanks.

SANDY: All right. We will be back after this with our interview with Josh Kramon. See you soon, Pirates!

[Cool new thing plays. It’s the sound of a radio dial tuning to various songs that have played on the show. Very cool. But not very long. Ends with the Kyle Gallner intro.]

[Cameron sighs.]

BAILEY: Welcome back, Pirates. As promised, here with us now we have Josh Kramon!

JOSH: Hey guys!

BAILEY: Hey!

SCARLETT: Hi!

JOSH: Awesome.

SCARLETT: Now I just- [giggle fit] Excellent. As you know, we always start off asking guests to play Two Truths and a Lie with us. So, do you have some prepared for us, Josh?

JOSH: Uh, yeah. Let’s do it.

BAILEY: All right.

JOSH: Okay, uh. Uh, let’s see. One: My middle name is Miles.

BAILEY: Okay.

JOSH: Two, the second one, let’s see. Okay. I grew up uh, amongst a bunch of hippies, lots of hippies, and we spent most of the year camping. And, let’s see, one more. Uh. I once appeared in a movie with The Pussycat Dolls.

BAILEY: Huh.

SCARLETT: Ooh. I’m gonna say you- your middle name is not Miles. I’d like to think you were in a movie with The Pussycat Dolls.

BAILEY: Yeah, and I’d like to think you grew up with hippies, so I think I’m gonna go with Scarlett on this one. I’m gonna say your middle name is not Miles.

JOSH: Well, obviously I’m not very tricky ‘cause you guys are right.

BAILEY: Really?

SCARLETT: Yay!

BAILEY: That’s a first!

[Laughter]

SCARLETT: We never get this game right.

JOSH: Miles, Miles Davis is one of my heroes. That’s why I threw that in there. So.

SCARLETT: Excellent.

BAILEY: So you grew up with hippies.

JOSH: Yes. My parents were and there was a lot of, a lot of hippie stuff going on.

BAILEY: That’s neat. My mom is a bit of a hippy but not really.

JOSH: Oh yeah.

SCARLETT: I think my family is allergic to camping.

JOSH: You know, it was the early 70s and uh, it was crazy but worth it.

BAILEY: Yeah, that was probably a very neat experience.

JOSH: Yes it was.

SCARLETT: Excellent.

JOSH: That’s why I’m such an archconservative now. I had to rebel against it.

[Laughter]

JOSH: I’m kidding. But I had to rebel for a little bit. Kind of go in the other direction.

BAILEY: Well, that’s s-

SCARLETT: Everyone needs that rebellion period.

BAILEY: Yeah.

JOSH: Right. Right. And most of the, you know, people who have parents that are conservative will rebel the other way, but I had to rebel in the conservative direction.

SCARLETT: It’s hard times. We wanted to start off-

JOSH: It was actually, it was actually The Pussycat Dolls, but it wasn’t the- this is what I don’t- I don’t because it’s the group- it wasn’t the group that like, that’s out now.

SCARLETT: Oh no.

JOSH: They were like a, like a um-

BAILEY: The dancers.

JOSH: Yeah. The cabaret like, dancing like, like burlesque dancers.

BAILEY: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

JOSH: So I don’t know. It was from my old, you know, days when I was in a band, and I don’t really know what the relation is. Maybe you guys know.

BAILEY: No. No.

SCARLETT: I have no idea. But that sounds cooler than the band now.

JOSH: Oh, it was much cooler than the band now. And it was- this is in like, ’96, so I don’t know maybe- I don’t know if they own the name or if it was the same thing, or I don’t know. But I can find out. But I just don’t have contact with those people.

BAILEY: Yeah. That’s very- that’s cool though.

JOSH: Yeah. It’s fun.

BAILEY: Bet it was nice to be all around those lovely ladies.

JOSH: Yeah. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t painful.

SCARLETT: Aw. We wanted to start off mostly by- we know that um, Rob heard your album, Forward, which we love, and contacted you to come and do the score.

JOSH: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

SCARLETT: No, we do. It’s excellent. And um, just- did you know how big the show was gonna be? Did you have any idea before you started scoring for it?

JOSH: No. No. I just did it- no, I just did it um, you know, every- every spring I do pilots.

SCARLETT: Oh okay.

JOSH: And uh, whichever pilots go, you know, that was the shows that I do. And that was, that was one of them. And uh, you never, you can never know if a show’s gonna be a hit or not in this business.

BAILEY: Right.

SCARLETT: Yeah.

JOSH: I mean it doesn’t matter how good it- it has nothing to do with that, really.

BAILEY: Yeah.

JOSH: So. It sort of uh, you don’t really have any control. I- I’ve been told that oh, this is gonna be huge, you know, by my agent and it just gets dumped after a week. You know, or this pilot’s definitely getting picked up, you know, and it doesn’t get picked up. No one knows what the networks are gonna be thinking.

BAILEY: Right.

SCARLETT: Yeah.

JOSH: It’s really hard to second guess, and Veronica Mars um- it just, you know, a lot of it had to do with just this, the fans that were into the show were so hardcore.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: I don’t think the network was able to ignore that, you know. And also the quality of the show.

BAILEY: Yeah. Definitely.

JOSH: So, no. There was no way to know. There’s no way to know now. I mean, it’s on a new network, so. You know.

BAILEY: Right. It’s a little scary.

SCARLETT: That’s true.

JOSH: It’s a little scary ‘cause it’s kinda like, well all those shows are kinda like, they’re new shows again basically.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: And Veronica Mars, just like all of them are sort of like, it’s like its first season in some ways.

BAILEY: Right. Exactly. Well, how did you get into scoring?

JOSH: Um. I- well in, what was it? ’96 I was uh, coming out of a, out of a band that was, that had been through two record deals that made two records. Neither of them came out. That had done a lot of touring, and, you know, it didn’t look like it was gonna happen.

SCARLETT: Yeah.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: Through all that I always was really into uh, into film scores, just the music from film scores, and a lot of different kind of music beyond what the band was doing. So, um. In the back of my head it was always something I was interested in doing and I just, I needed a break from, from the whole, that whole part of the business, from the band scene.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: So, um. I had- I had a friend from- he was a music supervisor who used to be in the music business. And he was on a sitcom for the WB, and they hardly had any money for a composer. But um, it was still like a network, primetime sitcom. Things like, you know- I didn’t have any equipment or anything. It was like, put a set together and, you know, see if I can get you on the show. And, he did. And I was, you know, I would have done it for no money. I didn’t care.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: But that got me a- you know this business is so much about your credits and who you, you know, it’s cliché to say it’s who you know, but it really is about who you know.

BAILEY: Right.

[CAMERON: Yes.]

JOSH: So that kind of got me in the door and uh, so that was, that was my first show, and I also started- I had started working… you know. It was all sort of um, serendipity. I started working for another composer, also not knowing what I was doing, because a friend of mine was a film composer agent that I knew in high school. So I started working for this guy for like a couple months, and he was doing a lot of- he was doing like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a couple other shows. And I just kind of by, you know, by fluke and by people I knew got in and went from there, you know. And uh, yeah that was my first bit. But the show, the first show I did went for two years. So it established my name.

SCARLETT: Wow.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: Yeah. It was just like, wow. This is cool. Better than, you know, better than sitting in a van with five smelly guys for three months on end.

SCARLETT: Definitely.

BAILEY: Much better.

JOSH: But it was a great band. I mean, you know. I think basically they/we deserved to make it, but there was a lot of things that happened. That’s a whole other story.

SCARLETT: Yeah. How different is it writing songs to score? Do you have a preference for either one?

JOSH: No. I really don’t. It’s uh, it’s just- they’re very different but I don’t have a preference. What I love about doing TV scores, you know, that’s why- one of the reasons I haven’t done much film is that – as you guys said – there’s a TV season that ends in the spring. So I get three months off.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: That’s when I do my own stuff. I work on my song stuff. And um, I mean it’s different. It’s different in many ways. I mean, first of all story, especially for TV, you have to write very fast. You know, sometimes you have, you know, four or five days to write 20, 30 pieces of music.

BAILEY: Wow.

SCARLETT: Wow.

[Cameron is speechless.]

JOSH: It’s very- you have to make it very formulaic. You have to have sort of, okay this is- you have to have sort of, you know, in your head what you do for certain scenes in shows, ‘cause you have to work really fast. And you’re also um, you know, you’re working to, you’re more of a vender. You’re working to bring forth the vision of the producer/creator of the show. You know. It’s not your vision. It’s their vision. You’re trying to enhance. When you’re working on songs, first of all it’s- especially the way I do it ‘cause I’m not beholden to any record label or anything, you know. So I can take my time and I’m doing it, you know, purely as a form of expression. You know?

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: And usually with TV scores that’s not the case. Although Veronica Mars has been a little bit different ‘cause more than any other show, I’ve had the freedom to do something stylistically closer to what, you know, what I would do.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: Rather than having to, you know, do the musical acting so much. So Veronica Mars is a bit of an anomaly in that case, but it’s still, you know, you have to crank out a lot of music in a short time, which with song writing, you know- it’s not the greatest. There’s such an extreme difference. But I love doing both of them.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: I mean I set out to do the song writing. I set out to be a “rock star.” But uh, you know. This is uh, pretty close.

BAILEY: Yeah. Well, so long as you enjoy doing it, then…

JOSH: Oh yeah. No, I’m very lucky. I’m lucky to be in this business at all, but to have a show like Veronica Mars where there’s such a, the communication between Rob and I is so smooth and I know exactly what he, you know, what he’s looking for, and there’s really, there’s hardly ever changes. You know, a lot of shows that I’ve worked on, even when the producers love what you’re doing, they feel that they need to somehow be involved to the point of me making changes at the last minute.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: You know, ‘cause they see things a certain way, and Rob and I always see things on the same plane.

BAILEY: Which makes it nice.

JOSH: So, I don’t think there’s ever really any changes to it. I mean, he totally trusts me and I know what he’s looking for. And again, even stylistically there’s a little more freedom than other shows I’ve done, so.

BAILEY: Right. Well that’s awesome.

JOSH: Yeah. It’s great.

BAILEY: How do you go about creating the atmosphere for the show? Like, you just said that you and Rob are kind of in tune on a lot of it, and so obviously there’s a lot of input from him. But you still have your freedom ‘cause usually his input is kind of along the same lines of where you were looking. How did you go about- Veronica Mars has a very distinct sound to it. How did you go about creating that?

JOSH: Um. Well. It was really done during the pilot of the first season. You know, we took a long time on it, which was cool, you know. That’s the great thing about it. Sometimes you have a month to work on a pilot, when you have 5 days to work on the actual show. So that gives you time to experiment with stuff. So um, a lot of- I mean Rob was, he was looking for kind of a noir, but with some modern sounds in it. Modern orchestration. And he was looking for a lot of textures. You know, the show has a very specific look. The lighting is very specific, and it the music, it was important the music reflected that. It was important that the music was uh, reflected the psychological aspects of the show and the story more than the, more than the action. Like there aren’t a lot of big hits, and that type of stuff.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: So, um. You know. We talked about different- obviously he had talked about um, stuff like Air and Zero 7, that kind of stuff. Um. But with a more kind of old style, like 50s and 60s, you know, mystery show. That’s where I brought in the vibraphones, the rose piano mixed with strings. You know, beyond that it was just sort of reacting and responding to the picture, and trying different stuff to picture. And uh, we kind of settled in on the sound.

BAILEY: Right.

[CAMERON: Left.]

JOSH: What you get into with pilots a lot is, you talk about it so much and everyone’s got their ideas of what they think will work. And then, you know, the picture doesn’t lie, and then you get in the editing room and all the stuff we talked about doesn’t work at all. And something else works when you put it up to picture. So we tried everything. We tried different instruments. Um. We tried- we even tried a more traditional kind of score and it just didn’t, doesn’t work for the show. And we kind of settled in on this sound that, that seemed to, you know, work for the first two seasons.

BAILEY: Definitely. And you can’t even- now you can’t even imagine the show with another sound.

SCARLETT: Without that.

BAILEY: Yeah.

SCARLETT: Yeah.

JOSH: Yeah. I mean, the main guidelines in this were for the sound to be as processed- for some reason processed sounds work with the show, you know, not a lot of natural. You know, a lot of shows you hear natural piano, and strings and acoustic guitar, and um, you can use those instruments on the show but you have to put ‘em through lots of effects and process ‘em and that just, you know, it just works with the show. It works with the look of the show.

BAILEY: It definitely does. It’s so much a part of the show now.

JOSH: Yeah.

BAILEY: It definitely adds in to the noir feel of the show.

JOSH: Yeah.

SCARLETT: It is. It’s kind of very neo-noir, just electronic, creepy.

JOSH: Yeah. That’s really new. I mean he really, Rob says that word noir a lot, and neo definitely. You know, bringing in modern instruments but keeping that classic noir sound. ‘Cause that’s really the show. Really.

BAILEY: Well you’ve definitely accomplished what was set out to…

JOSH: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I mean, you know. I, you know. It’s hard for me sometimes to talk about it, because I just sort of- sometimes I don’t even know how I do it. I just sit there and I open myself up to what’s going on. I’m a pretty emotional, sensitive, you know, guy. But that’s an asset with this type of thing. You’ve gotta be able to really tune in to what’s going on with the characters and the show. That usually- if you can focus and open yourself up to the show, that usually can create a sound that works. You know. I think that’s a lot of just, what I do. I just sit and I do it. When I’m done I don’t even know how I did it.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: So it’s hard to explain exactly, but you know the things that you can explain are the things that are more technical and that are more strategized are the instruments. You know. There are certain instruments that work with a certain thing.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: And uh, the show definitely uses more electronic instruments, rose pianos, not a lot of strings, but when I use strings I usually put a filter on a string, you know. So it doesn’t sound completely pure on our test roll. And obviously a lot of vibraphone. I do a little, you know, percussions. There’s a lot of percussion stuff.

BAILEY: Well so you’re just an extremely talented person.

[Laughter]

JOSH: That- how do you respond to that? Yeah. I mean, you know what?

SCARLETT: Just say yeah.

BAILEY: Just say yes.

JOSH: No, I think that I found something that I am really good at, and there’s things that I’m not good at.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: And I think because of uh, because I’ve just, you know, I’ve watched a lot of movies. Because since I was four years old music has been pretty much everything, like I spent so much time listening- I think this is the only thing I could do. You know. I had no choice. So. And then I was lucky enough to work, which a lot of people don’t do that are really good. And then now I’m lucky enough to find something like Veronica Mars where it just comes so naturally. So, you know. It’s yes, talent, but it’s a lot of luck too, and there’s a lot of- a lot of things have to line up correctly. You know, they don’t always do that. So. It’s talent and luck.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: It’s just as much luck as talent ‘cause there’s a lot of talent out there that goes wasted.

BAILEY: Right, ‘cause they can’t get their-

JOSH: They don’t get in the right situation or they don’t have luck. So. You know.

SCARLETT: You were just talking about some of the instruments you like to use. Do you have a favorite or any favorite brands of instruments to use on the show?

JOSH: Um. Yeah, I mean a lot of the ones I listed. Um, vibraphone, percussion. Um. There’s a lot of synth plug-ins I use, which I don’t know if that’s too technical. But basically I love synthesizers from the 70s.

BAILEY: Yeah.

JOSH: Like Move, there’s a synth called a Move.

SCARLETT: Oh yeah.

[Cameron has no idea what that is and is not even certain if Josh said Move. She tried.]

JOSH: An Arp 2600. Um. A bunch of ‘em. Um. CS 80-0. That’s more from the 80s. Um. A Pro 53. Now what they do now is, instead of having to have all of those synthesizers, you know, stacked up in my studio and everything, all cables everywhere, they have software plug-ins. They’re called soft-synths. And they’re virtual instruments. Basically they’re in my computer, the software, and they’re controlled through my music stuff, and they sound exactly like the originals. Just absolutely incredible.

BAILEY: Yeah.

JOSH: So I can have all of those synths lined up, you know, when I’m working on the show, virtually, in my computer.

BAILEY: Right. Yeah.

JOSH: So, yeah. I mean all of that stuff. They all- I use them all pretty much equally. So there isn’t really one. I mean I think that- I guess the vibes and the rose piano drive the show a little bit more than the other stuff. But I use all that stuff and it’s just like, I’m in awe of where the technology’s gone.

BAILEY: It’s crazy what they can do.

JOSH: Oh yeah. Especially for a show like this. ‘Cause, you know, you can use all those cool synth sounds.

BAILEY: Right. You can utilize all the stuff that you have there.

JOSH: Yeah. There aren’t a lot of shows where you can do that. You know.

SCARLETT: We were talking about that earlier.

JOSH: Yeah.

SCARLETT: Just how some shows you have a piano and a guitar, and you just, you know when something big is gonna happen.

JOSH: I know. I know. I mean that was like, there was a guy named Snuffy Walden who started doing that in the 80s, the mid to late 80s with the show um- there was a show called Thirtysomething and there was a show called Wonder Years. And before that um, it was all really traditional. It was all orchestral, like big orchestral music. He kind of brought it in where it was just, we can use rock stuff like, rock flavored. I guess flavored instruments like acoustic guitar/percussion, and back then that was a big deal. That was like, I don’t wanna compare it to what I’m doing now, but it kind of is. I mean, that was like, you know, very modern for then and that went on for, you know. Well it’s actually still going on. It’s longer than I thought, and there are guys now who are doing a little more like um, what’s that show? Nip/Tuck. Like, that kind of a cool… there’s a few shows that are doing it, but I thought it would- ‘cause I started doing… When I started doing Veronica Mars two years ago, I was also doing a show called Life As We Know It, which was on ABC.

SCARLETT: Oh, right. Yeah.

BAILEY: Yeah.

JOSH: And that show also um, was really, used a lot of cool like, you know, more contemporary driven- a lot of the same stuff actually, without the noir thing. But still, a lot of synths and stayed away from the acoustic guitar/piano thing. And that season, which was I guess two seasons ago, when I had the first season of Veronica Mars and I was doing Life As We Know It, and uh, Michael Engler who was one of the producers of Life As We Know It, was like, you know, really into all of that Goldthrap and the Gorillaz, and all that, and was way into that stuff. And I kind of had this feeling like, wow, it’s all gonna change now, ‘cause they’re letting me do that.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: You know, and maybe this will really be happening. But it kind of hasn’t, as much as I thought it would.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: ‘Cause I think- I don’t watch a lot of TV, but besides Veronica Mars and that show I don’t think there’s much of that going on. And I did some pilots this season and generally they’re still looking for the same type of orchestral and a lot of stuff they’ve been doing. So maybe, I don’t know, sometimes it takes longer I guess for things to move in a certain direction.

BAILEY: Right. I think people have to kind of take that stuff, and for some shows I think it would work. It works perfectly for Veronica Mars, and I think other shows are just too frightened to try it in case it doesn’t work well with it.

JOSH: Yeah. Oh yeah. Especially with more of the CBS formulaic shows.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: But then I don’t know. If everyone does it, is it still gonna be cool? I don’t know.

BAILEY: Yeah. That’s kind of what makes it cool is that it’s kina…

JOSH: Yeah. It’s this weird cycle like, once it becomes mainstream, you know, you gotta look for the next thing.

BAILEY: Right. Then you got someone else starting something else new, and then that’s cool…

JOSH: Right.

BAILEY: Well, how much score do you generally write for a season? Do you write it as the season goes on, or do you do a lot beforehand in chunks?

JOSH: Um. For a whole season?

BAILEY: Mhm.

JOSH: No, I mean I do it weekly.

BAILEY: Weekly?

JOSH: Yeah. I mean I can’t until they finish the show, you know I don’t- I mean you end up using like- you end up reusing material from other stuff just ‘cause you naturally end up going to a certain thing, and you’re using the same instruments, you know. But no, you basically uh, spot. We have what’s called a spotting session, which is where we sit down, you know, Rob and I, and a couple other producers sit down. And uh, the music editors sit down and we go through the show and um, they’ll be some music, you know, that they temp in there, and we go through every scene and decide what’s gonna go there. Where it should start, you know, the ins and outs, where it should start, where it should end. And then I usually have about five days to do it.

BAILEY: Wow. So you’re, you are composing the score after the episode’s been filmed and cut together. So you’re viewing it-

JOSH: Oh yeah. Yeah yeah. Yeah. What they do is they- they basically shoot the episodes and they edit for um, I don’t know exactly. Maybe like, two weeks they edit. And while they’re editing they’re picking you know, whatever songs they’re gonna use, which is usually about really like two or three songs that we can.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: They’re also um, tracking in some of whatever existing score, you know, of mine works. And then um, about a week before the show, what’s called a dub session, which is where they mix all of the elements together, that’s when we have that spotting session. ‘Cause we do that last because- the very, very last thing that gets done is the music of the show. The music and sound effects are last because you have to do them exactly to picture like, to the frame.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: So there can’t be any more editing going on once I start, because I’m doing stuff, you know, I’m starting exactly in certain places. I’m hitting things in certain places and then the music’s coming out in certain places. So there’s, you know, I have to- I’m working with time code. You know, I have a window that tells me where everything is. So they, you know, they have to be completely done with the show. That’s one of the reasons composers have such a tight turnaround is that obviously, you know, the producers want to work on the picture for as long as they can.

BAILEY: Right. Yeah.

JOSH: So, and they know that once I get started on it they can’t really work on picture anymore. That’s why a lot of times we get stuff with a shorter turnaround.

BAILEY: Yeah, five days, that’s crazy.

SCARLETT: It is.

BAILEY: Sometimes I get more. Like I said with like, especially the first episode. I’m already uh, you know I don’t start on the first episode until the end of, the end of August, which I guess is today. It’s the end of this month. So I’ve been bugging them already the last couple of weeks where like, you know I want- the first show I want to have two weeks to do it because, you know. Although the sound will still be the sound of Veronica Mars, it’s a new season. You know, I wanna take my time and I wanna get the feel for the, whatever, if there’s any new feel or new looks to the show. And I’m not gonna reuse any material. I wanna make sure that for the first episode I have two weeks so they work that out. And after that it’s, you know, it’s a five day turnaround.

BAILEY: I don’t know how you do it.

SCARLETT: I know. Kinda crazy.

JOSH: You know, that’s the thing. But I don’t either. I mean that’s the thing is that it’s hard for me to even say how I do it because you go in there and you can’t even think about how you’re doing it because you’ve just gotta start. You just dive in and then you always, there’s always that initial panic. You know what I mean? But you always get it done. You know. Like, the spotting sessions there’s always some panic because you’re sitting there and you’re going through all this music you have to do, and you know, how am I gonna get all this done?

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: And, for whatever reason you just, you know.

BAILEY: Well that short amount of time probably kicks you into gear a lot quicker if you have no choice.

[Cameron agrees that pressure is the best cure for procrastination. Especially when transcribing.]

JOSH: But again, when you’re working on a show that you truly love, which that doesn’t always happen-

SCARLETT: Yeah.

JOSH: -it really doesn’t ‘cause, you know, you work on whatever’s on the work that you get.

BAILEY: Yeah.

JOSH: So that helps it, when it’s a really good group of people on this show. You know. That really helps. And, you know, I’ve done some shows in the past that have been a lot crazier than this. I did a sketch comedy show for the WB a few years ago. That was like, when they’re taping live I have to have stuff done for shooting and for playback. So they would- sometimes they’d call me at seven in the morning and they’d need something by nine. You know.

SCARLETT: Oh wos.

JOSH: So I’d be writing on top of whatever score I was doing. They’d call me at eleven o’clock at night, singing like, you know, ‘cause they did like, video parody and stuff. So they’d call me like, singing into my voicemail. Um. Like, you know, three minute pieces that I’d have to record into my Pro-tools and then write music to the voicemail for the next morning.

BAILEY: Oh my God.

[Cameron is duly impressed. Again.]

JOSH: So when you’ve done something like that it’s like, you know.

SCARLETT: Five days is fine.

JOSH: It’s like holding two baths before he goes to bed. It becomes much lighter and much easier to do.

BAILEY: Right.

SCARLETT: Definitely.

JOSH: If this had been my first gig I think I probably wouldn’t be able to do it.

BAILEY: Right.

JOSH: But after doing stuff like that you just, you find ways to work. You also let- you have to, you know- luckily the music’s turned out cool and people dig it, but you also have to know when you have to move on and let stuff go that you normally wouldn’t let go. You start to know in your head how much time you have to work on each cue. So if something is eh, maybe I ought to change that. But no, you’ve got to move on.

SCARLETT: Yeah.

JOSH: So you learn ways to get through it. So by the end of the season-

SCARLETT: As well as the scores- oops.

[Pause]

JOSH: Go ahead.

SCARLETT: No, go on.

JOSH: I was just gonna say by the end of the season it moves a lot faster ‘cause you’re really, you know, you are reusing a lot of material. Not literally reusing a lot of material, but it’s just become more formulaic because you’ve been working on it.

SCARLETT: Well that’s gotta be kind of handy.

BAILEY: On that note, we’re gonna take a little bit of a break. To hear the rest of the interview, please don’t forget to tune into the next podcast, which is due out on the 20th.

[Cameron has gnarled fingers again. She needs a new job. She does this all for Josh.]

[Cool Beast Within My Mind by Team Salt]

BAILEY: All right, Pirates. This is the end of another podcast. I know it’s kind of like a teaser with the first half of the Josh interview, but there will be more. A lot of good stuff. We get to hear about the kind of things that Josh goes geeky for and uh, we have some information that he actually called back with after the interview was over because he wanted to add to it that we’ll be bringing you in the next podcast, so look forward to that.

SANDY: Because he’s just that awesome.

[Cameron jumps hilariously high at the sound of Sandy’s voice. Cameron did not think Sandy was in the room. Jeepers.]

BAILEY: Yeah. It was really great. I was just sitting here and it started ringing and I was like, oh my God, Josh Kramon is calling me.

[Laughter]

[Cameron is jealous.]

SANDY: We won’t complain. We’re such fangirls. It’s ridiculous.

BAILEY: Oh, it’s great.

SANDY: Yes. But that was a great first half of the interview. I think he’s- I’ve already gushed over him. I will stop um, before he is afraid to ever come back on the show.

BAILEY: Yeah, I keep trying to remind myself that he’s actually gonna listen to this and I’m like, I love Josh Kramon!

[CAMERON: It’s a secret.]

SANDY: Yeah. Okay. We’ll just stop with our fangirly-ness and um, close up this podcast. Don’t forget to send your submissions if you are interested in joining the Neptune Pirate Radio team. Don’t forget to send your submissions, one segment and one commercial to: neptunepirateradio@gmail.com.

BAILEY: You have one week.

SANDY: One week.

BAILEY: One week.

SANDY: One week from Sunday, the 6th.

BAILEY: Yes.

SANDY: Keep that in mind. And, on that note, Bailey, I think that’s it. Hopefully, Theo, Scarlett… we miss you.

BAILEY: Come back. It’s bland. The podcast is bland without you.

SANDY: Please come back. I don’t blame them. I don’t, I won’t hurt you. I haven’t gotten a big head coming back from California. I miss you.

BAILEY: And even if she does, she just had a rabies shot.

SANDY: Exactly.

BAILEY: I’ve come out of this experience unscathed, so. It is safe.

SANDY: Exactly. Bailey’s fine. See? Please come back, guys.

SANDY: Um, on that note I think that I will leave you all with this week’s inspirational message. Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. –Confucius We’ll see you next week, Pirates.

BAILEY: Bye!

[CLOSING THEME! Brent Pocker- Neptune’s Water]

[The closing theme is always Cameron’s favorite part.]

BAILEY: If you enjoyed the music featured in this week’s podcast, find out more at www.neptunepirateradio.com or email me at bailey@neptunepirateradio.com. Additionally, some of the music you heard here tonight was provided by the Podshow Podsafe music network. Check it out at: http://music.podshow.com.

[END BROADCAST]

[Cameron isn’t serious about that last comment. It’s only her favorite part of the transcript. Thanks, Josh Kramon!]

[END TRANSCRIPT]