Category: Interviews

There have been many great things to come out of the invention of Twitter, and one of those things is the fact that Joe and Jane Average Geek can have a closer relationship to the celebrities they admire. Of course, sometimes what happens as a result of those Twitter conversations occurs in a completely unpredictable way, and the result can be something rather spectacular.

Take screenwriter Josh A. Cagan (@joshacagan) for example. One minute, he’s noodling around on Twitter, the next he’s starting a friendship with Adam Savage from “Mythbusters,” after that comes an appearance at the inaugural w00tstock shows, and just recently, a script he sold last year was on the 2011 Hollywood Blacklist of the year’s “most liked” spec scripts.

But as Lowell Greenblatt and I found out during our interview with him, Cagan’s life and career has had its low points, too:

• Am I ever going to start one of these podcasts without some audio difficulties? Skype is great for doing long-distance conference calls, but for some reason we had to stop and start so many times. The best part is that after every time we stopped the call, Skype sent us a “So how are we doing?” feedback form. Also, if you hear clicking, that’s me attempting to log some of these notes during the interview. I promise to use a quiet pen and paper (or my boyfriend’s iPad) next time.
• Here’s the w00tstock performance by Josh Cagan which got me interested in stalking him following him on Twitter:

Josh A. Cagan performing in w00tstock at Largo Los Angeles, CA, 2009. from Kayla Cagan on Vimeo.

• I gotta say, I only ever listened to the audio and I still cracked up watching the video of Cagan’s performance.
• The items on the American Science & Surplus Clearance page alone makes this worthy of linkage. No wonder Mrs. Adam Savage took a fancy to the cut of Cagan’s jib.
• Homestar Runner was one of the best Internet things ever; I’m sad that it hasn’t been updated since December 2010.
• Yes, Virginia, there was an unreleased Fantastic Four movie from 1994; I don’t encourage people to bootleg media, but it’s the only way you can see the whole thing.
• Almost every geek knows about “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” but only a select few will recall The Golden Turkey Awards; an interesting side note is that one of its co-authors is now a conservative pundit.
• Just like Coke and New Coke, some people like the post-MST3K stuff from Cinematic Titanic, others like Riff Trax. You can like both, too! As Tim Gunn says, “It’s all a matter of taste.”
• Interestingly, this very thing happened again back in July 2009 when the co-heirs to the estates of Superman’s creators were able to get a few, but not all, of the rights to that character back. The result is that Man of Steel is now in production, and the U.K.’s Henry Cavill (“The Tudors”, Stardust) is stepping into the famous tights, sans red briefs.
• Still going strong, FilmThreat.com is still the awesome resource that Cagan remembers, minus original founder Chris Gore who is now does the film beat at G4’s “Attack of the Show,” amongst other things.
• Yeah, “Turkish Star Wars” is really a thing.
• “Undergrads” still maintains an official online presence with two clips from the show on it; I’m sure more stuff is on the fan sites that are linked as well.
• The Calgary Expo just announced that Cagan, Pete Williams, and Andy Rheingold from the crew of “Undergrads” will be attending their show, which runs from April 27 to April 29 this year. Other recently announced guests include Wil Wheaton, Richard Hatch (both versions of “Battlestar Galactica”), and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy, from the Harry Potter movies). Get your tickets and/or your passports now!
• Is now a bad time to confess that I’ve never read Charlotte’s Web?
• I have to say that having worked with a celebrity’s management agency in my former profession as a luxury real estate broker’s executive assistant, I know from experience that they are the real deal and do a lot for the people they represent. Cagan’s lucky to have had the people at H2F Entertainment at his side for so many years.
• Just so you know, Gary Glitter is out of prison, and back in the U.K.
• The sad (or maybe awesome) thing is that Yaffa Blocks still exist at its original website.
• You can buy The Duff for your Kindle or your bookshelf; author Kody Keplinger’s site is here.
• According to Gawker.com, here are the “rules” behind the concept of director jail. As for Todd Graff, I’m not sure if he’ll be put behind bars for having directed Joyful Noise, a choir competition movie starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton. It made $11 million on a weekend where it went up against the Mark Walhberg vehicle Contraband, the re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D and the very awesome and still out in theaters Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol—but it has a 35% rotten rating from the critics. Sounds like Graff just can’t please everyone all at the same time.
• I remember Adam de la Peña as being a very cool guy to know in high school, and I also remember for our school’s French club and Spanish club fundraiser, he and his classmates translated the witch scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail into Spanish and performed it. Unfortunately, it bombed, because the audiences was all about the broad physical comedy, not the subtle foreign language wordplay comedy. (My original French skit about a writer and the characters in her private detective noir novel went over a little better.)
• Cagan’s fellow writers in “The Job Factory” are: Rob McKittrick (Waiting…), Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson (Four Christmases and Soul Surfer), and John Davis (The Dukes of Hazzard, the Eureka: Dormant Gene miniseries).
• Cagan’s comment about Wil Wheaton is referring to an interview I did with him for Sequential Tart.com in 2004 which was so long that it had to be split into two parts. A summer project I have is to convert those mini-tapes into something suitable for a podcast.

Our many thanks again to Josh Cagan for spending so much time with us. If you have suggestions for other people you’d like for us to interview who deserve a wider audience, please let us know in the comments below.