Marty O’Donnell the Ytram: Always Take the Risk. Never Stop Weaseling

The worst possibility is not taking the chance and always regretting it. That actually would keep me up at night.

So he typed in the code, and up comes Myst. And I was like, I turned off all the lights, I turned up my speakers, I was just like, what is this? And then Josh just sat next to me and I just started playing. And, you know, two hours later, I look over at him and he's still there just watching me play. He said nothing. And I'm like, can I buy stock in your friend's company?

If I push through and take this chance, something good might happen. Now, a hundred bad things could happen, but how bad is it? That's always what I think. The worst possibility is not as bad as the best possibility. So I'm going to take a chance.

Do not be afraid. There is nothing you should fear. Failure is your friend. You'll never be successful at anything if you have fear.

You know, I never had a day where I said I want to be a jingle writer, but I can tell you this. I was working as a grip. But I'd already had my degree in music composition. So I'm on the set of a film, and the producer came up to me. This is absolutely dead true story. And she said, hey, Marty, you've got a degree in music composition. Why don't you write music for film and television here in Chicago?

And I said, I don't want to prostitute my art. And I mean, I said it, I meant it. I'm a 22-year-old stuck up, or whatever I was. I might have been older, but at that point I was 24 or something. But I actually meant those words. I truly thought I was going to go in and teach, you know, at the university. There was a conservatory in Chicago. I thought I was going to teach, but I was just working to put food on the table. That's why I was a grip.

I was married, had a daughter. Actually, I think I was 26. I'm a late bloomer. No excuse. No excuse at all. This is absolutely what happened.

On the set, the very next day, the director came to me and he said, you know, Marty, it would be great if you did the score for this film. I'll give you 500 bucks. And I'm like, okay.

Yeah, yeah. It was a nothing film. It was a point-of-purchase film for Sears. I mean, but he said, I'll give you 500 bucks. And I'm like, absolutely. And then I realized that was my price. Like, prostitute was okay. Nobody had offered me money before. Now I get it. Now it's a little different.

Of course, I had to split it with my partner, my friend, Mike, who had a recording studio. And I thought, well, how do I even do anything? I had no equipment.

I went to Mike's house. I said, I'll split the 500 bucks. And so that was the very first night. We came up with five different songs that we produced in his little basement studio with eight tracks. We had equipment from the band he was recording at the time, so we were borrowing. What was the...

Oh, gosh. I have no idea. It was a nothing band, right? But they had a Roland TR-808, which is, for those who are in the know, a very, very hip little drum machine. And there was a Casio keyboard and a Prophet Pro-One, which is not the Prophet-5. The Pro-One was a single monophonic synth. And I'm like, okay, what's this? And how does this work? And we're like, okay, that's cool. Let's do that.

Yeah, yeah. And so Mike sort of knew how to make it work. I knew how to, like, make music. He had some ideas, I had ideas, we just had a blast. So that evening, the next day, I brought the cassette in of what we had done. The director said, yeah, this is going to be great, you know, you're scoring the film.

And there was another client there for a commercial we were doing for Marshall Field's, and that client heard what I was playing. And he was like, that's the music we've been looking for. And so this is like on a Thursday. And the next day we were in an editing studio. The music was being put to this big campaign for Marshall Field's. And they had not found the music that they wanted. And this sort of crazy, punky, synthy, poppy music that we did was perfect for them.

And that Sunday, I'm watching, and right in the middle of the Bears game, up comes the commercial for Marshall Field's with our music, no voiceover, just music and visuals for their new Vivere Italiano campaign. And I'm like, this is easy. I'm going to keep doing this.

We did slightly. Yeah, I think we got $750 for that one. I think it was $750. I have in my archives, I think I've got the invoice. But yeah, I just thought, well, let's just do this. How easy is that? Everything just fell into place. You know, I got the film score, got the commercial on TV. It's a commercial on TV with no voiceover, just music. And I'm like, oh, well, obviously we're geniuses and this is going to be an easy life. The "we" is me and Mike.

Back to Mike. It took me a while to convince him to quit his job. He actually had, at the time, two kids and a house and a mortgage. And I had one kid and an apartment and no equipment. Mike had a couple little businesses going. So for me to say, you should quit your job and let's just do this, that was not an easy decision for him.

So one of my strengths and weaknesses is, like, just believing the future is going to be better, believing that I'm going to accomplish whatever I put my mind to and everything's just going to fall into place. And all I got to do is convince some stick-in-the-mud like Mike that he's got to go along with me.

We got a couple other little gigs. I was still gripping while we were trying to do this music thing. Mike was still working at his printing house, where he worked as a printer. So I was working for Joe Sedelmaier, and Sedelmaier is the one who did the Where's the Beef commercials, the Federal Express.

This is a director who had used to work at an ad agency, and then he ended up doing some of the most iconic commercials ever out of Chicago. And I had gotten to be part of his crew. And so there was this day where we were doing a commercial for a chicken restaurant. If you know Joe, you should look up Joe Sedelmaier. He's got some just unbelievably funny classic commercials. He was a genius. If you've never seen the Where's the Beef series for Wendy's, you haven't. You're too young. You're so young.

Where's the beef? So we were doing this series of commercials for Mrs. Winner's restaurants, and I was a grip. Most of his commercials are, like, surreal parody kinds of worlds. So in normal chicken restaurants it's this nightmare thing, and then Mrs. Winner's, of course, is the great restaurant. So there was this nightmare set of a chicken restaurant with all these people standing in line, and there was a giant cutout wooden chicken with the menu on it. The menu rotated, so everybody in line was doing this, they were trying to read the menu. So it was just this funny, funny looking thing.

Well, I was the grip behind the scenes, rotating and pushing on the chicken. So I had this rhythm going. And then Joe was in front, the director, and to get sort of loosen up the room, he started going [inaudible], and that was the rhythm of the menu. And I'm like, oh, that is so funny. That little melody is hilarious. I wrote it down, went to the studio that night, recorded this hilarious version. I think it's hilarious still to this day. Recorded it, brought it in.

And so the next day, the way Joe worked was he would shoot on one day and then have the clients and everybody come in and see the dailies. But he always wanted it to be a little bit of a show. So the dailies would be with the clients in a dark theater, show the dailies, but he would have music playing so people would be loosened up. So he'd already chosen music. And I had this cassette, and I went into the editor behind the scenes and I said, put this in instead. And I remember the editor was like, oh, man, Joe doesn't like that kind of stuff. And I said, yeah, if you put this on loop, I think it will be really cool.

And so I thought, you know, what do I have to lose? I don't want to be a grip the rest of my life. That's a junction. Right. Do that.

You know, this happens to me every once in a while. Little opportunities come along and I just say, if I push through and take this chance, something good might happen. Now, a hundred bad things could happen, but how bad is it? That's always what I think. The worst possibility is not as bad as the best possibility, so I'm going to take a chance.

There's probably a part of my brain missing, whatever that fear part is. I'm looking around, I don't feel like a hole anywhere. It's just the way I've always been. I don't know how to explain it. Every situation I look at that seems important, I'll look at worst case, best case scenario, always. And I'm always convinced that it's going to probably fall somewhere in between. But I always want to judge what the worst and best is.

And it's like an intuitive thing. I call it dominoes falling. So I'm here, there's this whole line of dominoes, and then this is the result here. And for some reason I'm here and I just go, oh, that's where it's going to be. I don't see all the things, but I know that there will be a bunch of dominoes that will fall, and I'm convinced it will be in my favor.

Exactly. Well, actually it felt like that, because he loved his crew. So it was always a small crew. So he let the crew stand in the back of the theater. And we're talking a room not much bigger than this. And so, you know, I'm standing in the corner, it's all dark, and the thing comes out, and I'm standing there. All these takes of these people doing all this stuff, and it's just take after take of stuff that we're watching, the dailies. And everybody in the room just starts cracking up. And Joe's, of course, sitting in the main seat, and that music starts playing, and people are laughing, and he just shoots out of his chair and leaves the room.

And I'm like, okay, well. Go collect the [inaudible]. I'm out of here. And like 10 seconds later, he comes back in. He points at me and he goes, did you write that? I'm like, yeah, that's me. And he goes, okay, you're done being a grip. You're scoring the next three commercials.

No, no. At that point I don't even know if we... I think I had convinced Mike that we should just be, you know, him and me, Salvatore and me, O'Donnell. And I said, okay, well, we should just call ourselves O'Donnell Salvatore.

And he says, well, why not Salvatore O'Donnell? And I said, well, because. Alphabetic. It's not alphabetic. Number one is alphabetic. Number two, Salvatore O'Donnell. Is it Salvatore O'Donnell or is it Salvatore? It's hard.

Oh, no, no. I was a salesman my whole life. That's part of the deal. So Mike is like, yeah, you're right. Okay. And I'm like, yeah, I got to wave it out. Hey, good job. Good job right there. Okay.

Right. That's pretty much the story of my life. I can point to several different moments in my life where there's little nexus points where I see it, I can see what this could be, and then I push through. And to me, the worst possibility is not taking the chance and always regretting it. That actually would keep me up at night.

I was talking to an investment counselor one time and they were like, what's your tolerance for risk? And I'm like, oh, no, you don't want to ask me that. It's infinity. You should not ask me about my risk tolerance. I realized this back in, oh gosh, I think it was in the late '80s. I actually had this feeling. And I had just, you know, this tiny little profit sharing. We'd had a company now for almost 10 years. Not quite, no. It was probably about eight years. But anyway, I was putting money into some mutual funds or stocks or whatever. And Mike and I would compare, right? So I would say, look, I'm up $1.50 today. And he goes, oh, I'm only up $1.10. So I'm winning, you know. We had a chart of who's winning in our profit sharing. It's hilarious. I love that. Very competitive. But anyway, we had a two-person company. Nobody else.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I had this little bit of money in profit sharing. And I don't know why, I had this feeling something bad was going to happen. And it was one of those Black Monday things. And I sold all the stock that I had. It was in cash. And then the stock market went down like 60%. It was Black Monday. Everything went down. Everything was horrible. I think it was like 1987, '88. You should look it up. '87.

Oh, you're kidding. Okay. Well, so '87. So I was one of those guys who, total gut. I don't know why. I had gone into cash. So I was like, I am a genius. And then a couple days later, the stock market started bouncing back up, and I couldn't move because I was in cash. I thought, I don't know what to do.

And what kept me up at night was the fact that I had no risk. The risk was not actually being in. So when I finally realized that, I am much better just throwing something at it, seeing it go down to nothing and maybe it comes back up. I can sleep when the risk is at its peak. I can still go to sleep. When I can't sleep, I wake up in the middle of the night going, I'm in cash. I have no risk. It's horrible.

It's risk for me.

You know, here's one of the parts of my brain that's missing, is that part that would say, oh, you failed. The thing you were hoping for didn't turn out. Because even when that doesn't happen, number one, I'm like, well, that's not the end of the story. I never believe that that's the end of the story.

So, for example, my run for Congress, I was defeated in the primary. And I took a giant risk on that. And we can talk about that later, too. [inaudible] point now, suddenly, like, well, gosh, I'm actually friends with Governor Lombardo, I'm friends with Sam Brown, I'm friends with John Lee. I have these connections that I've made. Well, that's a win. I'm glad I did this, even though I failed at what I thought was going to be the cool thing. I see that there's another... the story keeps going. I can tell you tragedies. I can tell you things that failed, but I don't see them as the end of the story. I was like, well, the story keeps going.

Well, I got two. One would be when our studio burned in 1999. We had a gorgeous studio downtown that we'd been in business for, you know, 17 years.

That's right. There was a pool table? Oh, yeah. Are you a pool shark?

Oh, you're kidding.

You know, I always wanted a pool table. And Mike did too. So we got this place that was big enough, and we're like, wow, we're buying a pool table right here. Clients are going to come in. Every time you take a break, you just go out and play pool. It's going to be great.

Yes. So, no, it was Erie.

Yeah, that's right. You need better researchers.

Oh, we got you now. So there you go. Yeah, it was on Erie. And it was a great little building. And I mean, we'd had problems there. But when that thing burned to the ground, it had to feel like the darkest day possible. Like, this is the end of everything. We lost all the masters to so much work, years and decades of work. It just was devastating.

But, you know, there were some things that could be done. And I had a friend who had a company that had access to a cherry picker. Our studio was on the third floor of this three-story building. And everything was burned out. The building had collapsed in the middle. But on the two ends of the building, we could see through these windows that there was still some stuff that maybe was salvageable. But the police and fire department had said nobody is allowed to go in. That's it. So he'd come over with a cherry picker. Drove it up. He hoisted me up through the top. I went into the building and I recovered a whole bunch of work that was on... oh, what were those? Jaz cartridges? Anybody remember? It was Jaz. Not the Zips. It was the next one. It was the ones that were almost a gigabyte.

And so we were able to salvage all this voice work we had done for this game we were working on. And it was the only copy, because everything else had melted. I was able to get that recovered, and we were able to publish that and finish working on it. And a bunch of the studios in Chicago, a bunch of the guys who owned jingle houses and recording studios in Chicago, came to our aid. They said, anything you and Mike need, you can record for free here. It was just an amazing little time in our lives to sort of dig ourselves out.

And it was during that period that we did the Halo music, the very first, 1999. It was right during that period, we had no studio anymore, and that's when the Halo gig came up. And I was able to write, and we were able to produce that music for Halo. So it happened right then.

It was a place that was owned by an editing company, Post Effects was the name of the company. And the guy who owned it, Mike Fayette, was really, really nice to us and took us in under his wing, because he saw the fire. His building and company was only a block away. So it was a lot of people who reached out to us and helped us out. But at that point then, it was sort of like, oh, this is interesting. It's no longer O'Donnell Salvatore. It's TotalAudio at Post Effects. So we were now a subsidiary of another company. And I knew that wasn't going to last. I didn't like that.

Mm-hmm. Oh, I see. Yeah, they gave us a place and helped us get our feet back.

No, I'd already been working... we'd already been working with Bungie.

Bungie did? Yes. No.

So this is back in, well, first of all, the game industry was another one of those nexus moments. What had happened is, over the years of doing commercials and jingles and TV spots, if you remember, so 1982, I'm like, I don't want to prostitute my art. And then I did. And then this is great. And built a company, several studios downtown Chicago. Clio Award winning, you know, whatever. We won the awards. We were doing national spots. We had a couple spots on Super Bowls. I mean, we were just like, this is great. We did "We Are Flintstones Kids," you know, which was a huge jingle at the time. Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean. So we were doing the real thing.

No, we did not do that.

No. Oh, we worked with the guy who was the Green Giant singer. His name was Len Dresslar. He was a bass singer. He was great. He sang on a couple of our commercials. He definitely had a low voice. I can't even do it. It was hilarious.

Yeah, yeah. We were successful. And at some point, in probably like 1990, we had a studio on Wabash, 405 North Wabash, which was on the 10th floor, looking right over the Sun-Times building and the river. Did you ever go over there?

Okay. It was a really nice studio. So we're at one of these jobs we're working on. It's late at night. The client's coming in the next morning, and we're trying to come up with what's going to happen. And we were scoring a commercial, and it had claymation. So it was a cool animated claymation thing. And there was this cat and a group of cats. I still have it. And they're doing this thing, and we're scoring every... it's an animated thing. And I remember this one cat puts his finger up, and I was cuing it with some flute flourish, and Mike thought it'd be better with a clarinet. I don't know what. So we were arguing about whether it should be a flute or a clarinet doing this little detail.

And of course the client was Tidy Cat. So they were arguing at two in the morning about the music for a cat litter commercial. And like a bolt of lightning hit me in the head, and like, I have prostituted my art.

I still do, yeah.

Sure, I'll give you my stuff. "Tidy Cat 3 with the power to absorb odors and deodorize for a fresh, clean scent, making Tidy Cat 3 the number one cat box filler in America. So whether you have one of these or lots of them, all you need is one of these. The Tidy Cat team clobbers cat box odor."

So, yeah, anyway, it was just one of those things where I'm like, what am I doing? We've been doing this for, like, whatever it is, 12 years now, and I'm just tired of the whole thing. The coolness of, like, my music is on during the Bears game, like that was the pinnacle. You can't get better than that. And then it's like a drug. It no longer gets you high, right? So yeah. Suddenly I realized, I think I got to do something different.

And within, I don't know, probably within that next year, our mutual friend Dick Staub had a son who was 18 at the time, Josh. And Dick says, you know, Josh is creative. He's going to go to school. He's going to go to the University of Washington. And he doesn't know exactly what he's going to do, but he's an artist and he's a musician. And man, it'd be great if you could show him your studio. I'm like, sure, Dick, I'd be happy to. Josh comes over to my studio in Chicago.

Yeah, that's true. A lot of people did.

So Josh comes over, and I'm showing him the gear and all this fun stuff and what we do. And he looks at one of my shelves that had stuff on it. And he goes, oh, do you like video games? 18-year-old kid, right? And I'm like, yeah, I love video games. I'm a big fan of video games. I have all these computer games on my shelf. He's looking, and he goes, oh yeah, you're like, Uninvited and this. He goes, I have friends that make video games, computer games. And I was like, well, that's cute. I didn't say that's cute, but in my head, he's 18. He's from Spokane, Washington. He's got friends in Spokane that make computer games.

He goes, I got a beta version of the game we're working on. I'm interning for him this summer. This was in '93, I think. '92, '93. And I said, oh, well, I've got a CD-ROM at my house, at my home studio. Well, I'll come over and show it to you if you want. I'm like, sure, that'd be great. So he comes over that night. I plug it in. Now, this is '93, so having a CD-ROM was a big deal. So I plugged it in and up... well, believe it or not, first, nothing came up. So he says, I got to call my friend.

So he calls his friend in Spokane. He goes, yeah, hi, Rand, it's Josh. I'm at a friend of my father's house. I'm trying to play a beta version of the game, and it's not working. And then I could tell the guy on the other side said, you got to type in this special code to flip a few bits in. You'll love this.

HyperCard. Yeah. So it was written in HyperCard, which is hilarious, but it was colorized. So in order to flip a color on and allow certain kinds of videos to play within HyperCard, you had to type in a few lines of code.

So he typed in the code, and up comes Myst. And I was like, I turned off all the lights, I turned up my speakers, I was just like, what is this? And then Josh just sat next to me and I just started playing. And, you know, two hours later, I look over at him and he's still there just watching me play. He said nothing. And I'm like, can I buy stock in your friend's company? And he goes, no, I don't think so. But I was like, no, Josh, you don't understand. This is going to be huge.

So that was another one of those nexus moments where I knew for an absolute fact that Myst was going to be huge. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I like computer games. I love computer games. I'm playing Nintendo. I'm a weirdo to my friends who are my age. Like, why are you playing these games? But I never thought computer games would have any attraction for me from a production or music standpoint until I saw Myst. And then I saw, oh, it's a sea change. Things have just leapt forward aesthetically.

No, because Nintendo was like, it was 8-bit, then maybe 16-bit at that time. But I just didn't... none of the music seemed interesting. None of the way audio and music was implemented in these video games seemed like it was going anyplace from a cinematic storytelling, you know, just high quality aesthetic. I just didn't see it yet.

Yes. It just didn't feel like... I mean, I was working with Chicago Symphony players and really good actors, to go way, way backwards and work on some chintzy kind of, from a production standpoint. Until I saw Myst, and then I just saw it, it just all opened up for me. I'm like, oh, this could be, this is the future. But then I actually thought I missed it. I'm too ensconced in my own business. This would be a huge risk, and they're already so far ahead of where I can't just jump in. How could I possibly hop on? I'd be grabbing onto the caboose of this train that's going 110 miles an hour.

I did anyways.

Yeah, '93. It was immersive. To me, it was the first. It was a sea change. And I'm not the only one who believes this. There's tons of people who, when Myst came out, they're just like, okay, this is the future. And it's an aesthetic. It's the idea that you can tell stories in a super immersive cinematic way where the player is immersed inside the game as a character, however that is. There's so many different ways of doing that, but this was the first one that I think really just drew the player inside that world, made the world seem very real, and then used all the production techniques of voice acting and great sound design and music that enhanced the emotional journey. And they had done everything. I think they did it just based on their own gut instincts of what they wanted and what they liked. And it was genius. It was an absolute leap. And I'm like, I get to see it at this early stage. [inaudible]. That's in '93.

I immediately said to Josh, after he said I couldn't buy stock, I said, can I meet your friends? Can I work with them? And he goes, oh yeah, I don't know. I mean, it was just like, yeah. So it took me years.

Yeah. So the next thing that happened, so this is like in, I don't know, July or something of '93. And I knew the game was coming out in the fall. And I would talk to everybody, like, there's this game coming out, it's just going to be huge. And of course, nobody believed me. But then Josh called me, like in September before the game came out. And he goes, yeah, Mr. O'Donnell. By the way, Josh is an Academy Award-winning animator, worked at Disney, worked with Lasseter. He's had an amazing career since. So that's the punchline to what I'm about to tell you.

So he's still 18. The son of my friend, Dick. And Josh says, yeah, I'm supposed to start at University of Washington, like, next week. But the guys at Cyan, Robyn and Rand Miller, have offered me a job at their studio. And I'm like, you're kidding me. I said, well, what sort of job? And they said, well, they want me to be art director for the next project. And I'm like, holy mackerel. That's amazing. And he says, but, you know, I've been accepted at University of Washington. And I'll disappoint my father. I'll disappoint my father and my mother.

And I said, okay, Josh, here's the thing. What's the worst possible thing that could happen? So I said, you take this job and the whole thing blows up. And in a couple of years, you're back in college and you start two years late. I said, I'm telling you, by the time you're 28 years old, nobody cares how many years it took you to get through school. Absolutely nobody in the world will ever care. I said, what will you be working at at Cyan? He goes, well, we're going to be getting all this latest equipment, these Silicon Graphics machines and rendering. And I learned all this stuff and they really trust me. And I said, well, what's your major at University of Washington? He said, computer graphics. I'm like, okay, here's how this works. Universities and schools are at best five years behind technology. I said, if you take this job and things work out, you will be teaching these classes. You will be the guest lecturer, because you will be on the cutting edge of everything that's going to happen. You will never be on the cutting edge if you're in school.

And so he said, you know, thanks a lot, and hung up. Now, it's funny, I've talked to him since. I work with him all the time now with Dick [inaudible]. I'll say to him every once in a while, because his son is in the business, his son is a filmmaker, I'll say, you know, I'm responsible for your career. He goes, no, I'm responsible for your career. Because of course he went to Cyan, and then I kept the line of communication open and weaseled my way in until I was able to do Riven, the sequel to Myst. But that took three years. It took three years of weaseling, from '93 to '96. So in '93 I decided video games is where I need to go, and I wasn't able to do a thing until 1996.

What's that mean? Literally weaseling. Literally figuring out ways of trying to get myself in front of Robyn and Rand Miller. Calling, sending stuff, being a pest. To the point where there's a character in Riven.

Yes. There's a little frog in Riven that's very important to the sound of what that frog makes.

And this frog, they modeled after a frog that was sitting outside their studio in Spokane that kept annoying them.

So they modeled the frog, and they decided to call the frog a Ytram, Y-T-R-A-M, which is Marty spelled backwards.

So they had already designed the Ytram, and I was the annoying guy before I ever got the gig. So I still hadn't gotten the gig yet. And there was a point where Dick called me and said, hey, Robyn and Rand Miller are coming into Chicago. They're on a worldwide tour. I mean, they were so huge. They were going all over the world being interviewed. They were not working hard on the sequel. Why work on the sequel? They were the biggest selling computer game of all time for an entire decade, from '92 to 2002. '93 to 2003. I forget what it is. They just never stopped selling Myst. It was insane. And I might be overstating that. You should look back...

So the thing is that he said they're coming in, and Dick had a radio show, and they were friends with Dick. So Dick knew them too. But I still wasn't getting in. And so...

Yeah. I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know how annoying I was.

So he said, they're having a driver. We're having a driver pick them up at the airport. But if you want to be the driver...

So I said, absolutely. I'm picking them up. So I picked them up. I'd never met them before. I picked them up and they're like, I'm the driver. And we're driving. I'm like, okay, by the way, we're going to lunch near my studio before we do anything else. And you're going to see my studio. And they're like, wait, what? I said, yeah, I'm Marty O'Donnell. And they're like, oh my gosh, what? And so that is so perfect.

Yeah. I probably did have child locks on the car. I should have. But yeah, anyway, I was just determined. It's just like, look, no, you guys need me. Trust me. You are so close to you. You did everything sort of, you know, seat of the pants. You don't know stuff that you should know. You need me to be producing audio for your next game.

And so they saw the studio and they're like, oh my gosh. Yeah, this is, you know, they didn't have anything like that. They started off in a garage, then they started off in some other little place, and now they were building a really, really nice, unbelievably nice studio, and they just didn't know what to do with everything. But they totally understood art and game design. But their guy who was doing their audio, super talented guy, but they had no real experience doing top-level pro audio. So what I got from that was, okay, you come out and visit us and meet the team and sort of sell us.

So I put together a little reel of sound design and stuff and went out there. And they asked me to come to the... they were doing a shoot that day, and they go, yeah, Marty, meet us at the studio. We're doing a shoot, and we're testing to see how this whole system's going to work. And so it was a nice little... I mean, it's a video studio in Spokane. So I'm showing my, you know...

Yeah. But I mean, you know, I'd worked in L.A. and Chicago and New York and San Francisco. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, it was exactly the kind of studio you would expect. It's like they shoot industrials, talking heads, fake news kind of broadcast. Probably not much better than what we're doing right now.

So they're out there. They're shooting. And I'm looking at people running around. I know. No, now it's the cool way to go. But anyway, they're running around and they're trying to get lights. And what they have is, I see on the monitor, I see, you know, the cool Riven graphics. And then they're shooting a guy against the blue screen. But he doesn't look like he's in the environment. I'm looking at it, I'm like, yeah, the lighting's bad. I know lighting. And Robyn's looking at it, goes, no, that's not right, we need one of these little lights. And nobody can find the right kind of lights. They're doing this thing, they're not doing well, it's taking them forever, nobody's in charge at this point.

I'm still weaseling.

Probably a month. A month later.

Well, they asked me because of my chauffeuring and showing my studio. Very interesting. But it wasn't a done deal yet. So now I'm out, and so I'm staying with Robyn Miller, who's just a great guy. He was so much fun to be with. So we're sitting around that night and I'm playing him some music that I've done. He's really liking it. He's the musician. He's the guy who wrote the music for Riven and Myst. And so we're talking and he goes, well, what did you think of the shoot today? And I'm like, oh, well, you know, it was really interesting. I was a little confused, though. Who's your lighting director? He goes, what's a lighting director? And I said, well, I mean, you're the art director? He goes, well, what do you mean, art director? I'm like, who's the director? Who was the director on the set? I couldn't tell. He goes, what do you mean, director? I'm like, oh my gosh, no wonder. None of the people had a clue.

So I said, okay, well, here's how a crew works in normal film. And here's what a director does. Here's what art directors do. Gaffers and grips. This is why there's an actual list to a movie. And, you know, he was explaining to me, I said, now back up a little bit. How did you guys make Myst? And he goes, well, you know, we realized QuickTime was just coming out and you could put these little, you know, stamp-sized videos inside the game. And so we decided to shoot ourselves, in the church basement, against a blue towel. And we go be with blue towel, shoot ourselves, put it in the game, and it was really cool.

No. So I'm listening to that, I'm like, wow, that is really cool. And I said, so now you're doing the sequel, it's three years later. Just curious, how are you deciding your budget, and how are you deciding the production for the sequel? I mean, you've had all the success. And they're like, well, you know, we just figured whatever we spent on Myst, we'll just times it by three, and that's what we should spend on Riven. And I'm like, okay, so three blue towels. Yes, exactly. I said that, you know, and I knew at that moment he could just like say, get out of here, you son of a... but, you know, it was just so funny to me. It's just like, no, you guys are really thinking about this the wrong way.

Like, I got to tell you, what you're trying to do, which is have a completely computer graphic generated environment and put a human being in it using green screen or blue screen, which at the time I was like, you should be doing green screen anyway. I said, Robyn, this has already been figured out. You don't have to figure this out. There are studios that know how to do this. You just gotta... But you can't be thinking three times the Myst budget anymore. And saying three blue towels just sort of, like, oh, now he got it.

So the next day I'm in this big conference room of all the Myst... or, you know, the Cyan guys. And Robyn's like, okay, Marty's opened my eyes, we need an art director, we need a director, we need all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I'm the audio director. And I'm not the audio director. No, no. Everybody took a title. Everybody took a title that I said they needed.

Yeah, it's funny. I don't think I've told this story in this detail before.

I thought, okay, well, he's taking my advice for this and this and this. And, you know, he was going to be the director. And I'm like, oh, boy, you know, he shouldn't be the director because he's an art director. And for those of you in marketing, you know, how many art directors does it take to change a light bulb? A lot. Does it have to be a light bulb? Well, I'm thinking of flute and clarinet, right? So he got hit by a lightning bolt. So I was able to convince them that I... that, you know, me and my studio needed to be on their team. Mike and I worked on Riven.

You know, I think they just followed up and said, yeah, here's a bunch of stuff. Can you do some sound design and send it back to us? And, you know, and then we sent it back and they're like, oh, come on. All right.

Well, I think when I was at the studio and at that conference, they were like, yeah, Marty's probably going to do work for us. But at what level, they hadn't decided. And then when I showed them, they sent me some stuff. I think they sent me the... there was like a little globe thing that was a metallic sphere that you had to turn, and it had all this really cool stuff. You turned it and it clicked and had little puzzle mechanical pieces that came out. Super sort of steampunky looking thing. The sound design for that, because the guy who had up to that point did the Myst sound design, this will probably shock you. It shocked me at the time.

I said, you know, how did you do the sound for this? And he says, well, I'd looked at this, you know, the QuickTime video that needed sound, and I'd look at it a few times, and then I would go out with a microphone and do this thing in the driveway. And then, you know, we throw it in to see if it worked. I said, you were not ever working to picture. You didn't have, like, Pro Tools. You didn't have a machine that allowed you to have picture and sound. Like no...

Yeah. It just didn't exist for that level of what they were doing in game design and production. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. How do you keep things in sync? Well, you know, we just keep trying it until it gets lucky. I'm like, that was Myst. So it's like, okay, well, you cannot do the next level. Riven is now three years later. And in computer time, as you guys know, that's 100 years. It's 100 years. So you can't get away with that kind of production. You have to step it up. But you don't have to figure it out.

On the video side, I hooked him up with a studio in San Francisco. We cast actors, helped cast real actors for them. At that point, Myst was Robyn Miller playing one of the guys, Rand Miller playing one of the other brothers, and then putting his glasses on, so now he was the dad. There's three characters in Myst and only two actors, and it's the brothers.

Yeah. If you go back to that very first moment where I was in the studio with Mike in 1982, and I'm looking at this gear, this is pre-MIDI. MIDI is the thing that allows musical instruments to talk to each other. So there was the drum machine, which is by Roland, called the 808, which is, if you look it up. And then there was this Prophet Pro-One. And the Pro-One had a little, what they call a sequencer, if you know about sequencing. And it was a little thing. You push the button, it's like you would hold the note down, push the button four times. Push it, you know, take your finger off, push it two times. That's an eighth note rest. So you could make this, you know, whatever it is. And then you program the drum machines, which had these buttons on it, you know, whatever, we're making a song.

And I'm like, well, this very first night I said to Mike, I said, is there a way to make the sequencer drive the drum machine so they're locked together? And he goes, oh yeah, I don't know of [inaudible] doing that. And so we looked on the back of the drum machine and it said clock out or clock in or something. And then on the sequencer, there was another port that said sync out or sync in, whatever it was. I'm like, well, gosh, if we could connect the sync out to the clock in or whatever, who knows what's going to happen? And he's like... we looked at it. It was like, this was, you know, this kind of plug and this was this other kind of plug.

What's the worst that could happen? And I said, well, he says, we can't connect them. I said, what if we, could we put this in someplace else and then connect that cable to that? He goes, well, I have a little amplifier. It was a little Sears amplifier. It was about this big. It had like two channels and two knobs on it. So you were able to go in on that and then out for quarter inch. And then we were able to put the signal in one channel here from the sequencer and bring it into the drum machine. And so we had it hooked up.

And so I hit the button, start the drum machine, and it just started flashing. So it was waiting for clock. I'm like, oh, this is great. It's waiting for this. So then we pushed the button on here, and it went. You know, the drum machine was going. It was like completely not syncing up at all. And Mike is sort of like, well, you know, we tried. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're close. This is actually talking to this. This is working. But it wasn't. And I've talked about this to technical people since because they're like, that should have never worked.

And so I said, wait a minute. Is this the volume knob for the output? He goes, yeah. So I started doing this with the volume knob. I started moving it slowly. It was like... I'm like, there it is. So we put a magic marker. Do we remember that volume? 7.2. It wasn't even digital. It was an analog knob. It was [inaudible].

So what it turns out it probably was, was that we distorted the signal until it became like a square wave that was readable. But it was in the right... the tempo's locked. And we probably did, I mean, that piece was, you know, one of those pieces was on the Bears game. What's the worst? [inaudible] that to that. So I think this leads back to your previous question about, like... I knew we were getting back. But it's like, you know, we were always on sort of this cutting edge of technology without really thinking about it. It was like, what's the cool thing that's coming out? Oh, you know, analog synths. Oh, we bought a Prophet-5. It's got five oscillators. Oh, let's get this new drum machine that's using samples.

And, you know, I had so many connections even back at... when I was at USC, I was getting my graduate degree. I was a TA. So this is years earlier, a couple of years earlier, before I ever got into the business. And the head of the department invited me to this dinner for the professors and the TAs. So it was like, we get to be with all the guys. Halsey Stevens, who's a professor emeritus who knew Béla Bartók. I mean, this in meeting [inaudible] my son. He's got a little studio over here. So I went over there, and this guy named Roger Linn had a studio. He was his son. And it was one of these old studios with shag carpeting up the wall and all this kind of stuff. And he had this cool-looking wooden-paneled machine. And it was the very first LinnDrum. This is, you look up LinnDrum, you'll see how seminal this was. L-I-N-N.

And he goes, yeah, this is this new drum machine I have. And this is before I even knew about the 808. This is a couple of years earlier. And I had seen, you know, fake drum things like on organs. And, you know, I was in a band and we were trying to do cool stuff. And none of that was any good. But he said, yeah, press this button. And I went, and it was just a perfect snare drum. Just suddenly playing back a snare. And kick and snare and hi-hats open and close. This is mind-blowing. And it was like, you know, $10,000. So there was no way I would have that.

So I'm at this early point. I'm meeting Roger Linn, who also ends up being friends with the guy who was in charge of Sequential Circuits, who made the Prophet. And the Prophet-5 was the first polyphonic synthesizer. So I sort of rubbed shoulders with those people and saw where the technology was going. We couldn't afford any of that technology when we started. We got the way cheap versions of all that stuff. But as we went through the '80s, we were always looking to see what the next cool thing was, trying to figure out how to use that technology to make money. It wasn't just technology for technology's sake. It was like, okay, what does this give us now?

So we ended up, just because we were there... You know, I'm calling it the weird chain of events. Roger Linn, back in 1980 or '79 or something, saw that EPROMs were coming out. So EPROMs for telephony. So for telephone calls, you can have these little EPROMs that would have digital audio on them. For like, please hang up, or whatever it is. I sold those. So there was this company in San Francisco that was making EPROMs for telephone people. And it was called E-mu Systems. And Roger went up there and said, I have a bunch of audio samples that I want you to burn custom EPROMs for me. So they did. He took them back, put them in his drum machine, and that's how he made his drum machine. And the E-mu guys were like, what the heck? And so then they decided to start doing that.

So the next thing that came out was what's called the Drumulator. E-mu made it. And then E-mu made the Emulator, and their history of what they ended up doing. So they ended up making the drum machines that we ended up buying, the SP-12, and these digital samples, and they were spectacular. They made what they were making because they were realizing that they should have noticed what Roger Linn was doing. So they got into the business, super, super successful. As a matter of fact, E-mu made the machine called the Proteus One, which is the entire soundtrack to Myst that Robyn Miller did. It comes from the E-mu Proteus One. So, I mean, I've been watching how technology just folds on itself for years, for decades.

Then at some point, I'm looking in a keyboard magazine and it's like, hey, do you want to make your SP-12 even better? Buy our drum samples. And so there was this little company that had a little mailing, mail-in for their drum samples. You can take our drum samples, put them in using a Commodore disk drive. With SCSI. Nobody's going to be interested in this because it's so old, old, old. There's a lot of Amiga people on there.

Yeah, the Amiga. So I looked at this ad, and I'm like, hey, Mike, instead of using the factory sounds that E-mu is making, we can put our own ones in or get some new ones, because you're always wanting to upgrade your stuff. So I called these guys up. So I call up Digidrums, talk to the guy. He's one of the owners. They were not super successful, right? They knew the E-mu guys. They're like, how come these E-mu guys are making drum machines? We're better. We're going to do this thing. And we're going to start sampling better than their samples. So they're sampling drums, and they sent us the stuff. And I'm like, this stuff is great.

You know, I remember talking to them on the phone, and I said, okay, you know, how'd you guys do these samples? And [inaudible] to release the program that we wrote for sampling. And we're calling it Sound Designer. And so Sound Designer 2 is coming out. And so we bought Sound Designer 2. They changed their name from Digidrums to Digidesign. Digidesign, of course, years later, makes Pro Tools, which is... So we were there at the early stages of game development, music development, technology, computers, the whole thing.

Which... who remembers that?

I don't know if it's certainly part of my DNA to not look at something and then just accept the way it's being done, to not only say, is there an easier way to do it, or something. Believe it or not, sometimes it's just the cool factor. This would be cooler. So let's try that.

Well, I mean, think about it. Like, I'm playing a bass line, and then, you know, maybe I'm playing it to a drum machine and I'm not really in sync very good. So I keep playing until I get as tight as possible. And what I saw, I was like, well, gosh, if I could make this drive that, it will be just the tightest rhythm groove you've ever heard. It's now called drum and bass. It's in acid house from Chicago. It's all based on the 808 and MIDI and all of these things. But for some reason, I'll tell you this.

That night I was talking to Robyn Miller. I was asking him, in the same way you're sort of talking to me, did you get to the point where you're doing Myst? How did you guys start this? He goes, oh, this goes back a number of years. He says, I was in Spokane trying to do art, and my brother was in Texas working at a bank, and this thing called HyperCard came out for the Mac. And Rand called Robyn. This is Robyn telling me the story. He said, my brother called me, said, hey, I got an idea for a children's book. I need you to do the artwork for me. And it's going to be a children's book that's on the Mac where you just click on the page and the page turns. And now there's the fuzzy bunny. And then there's words you read, and then you click next and it goes to the next page and there's a thing. But I need someone to be able to do the art.

And Robyn's like, yeah, I hate computers. So he had this little Mac, and it had a drawing program on it. And so his brother says, yeah, you got to draw a bunny. You got to draw a tree, whatever it was. He had a list of things he was supposed to draw. And then Robyn's like, yeah, I don't want to draw any of that. So he's messing with it. Didn't have a stylus. It was the mouse. Everything was drawn with a mouse. So he's learning how to draw with a mouse. He's hating it. But he starts to figure it out. And he draws this manhole. He made a really nice-looking manhole sitting in the sidewalk. And so that's what he drew.

And then he looked at it. And the interface for the drawing program inside of HyperCard looked like this. It was just a person's hand and finger. It was just this disembodied... So that's how you could push buttons and move your hand around. It was the cursor turned into this little finger. And he's looking at that, and he clicks on the manhole, and he goes, oh, I should be able to open that manhole and have the manhole cover slide over... down the manhole.

Their first game was called Manhole. It is a classic, and that's what it is. But what he figured out at that moment was an interface design for a graphical game that didn't depend on menus, like drop-down menus: open manhole. It was just point and click. He invented the point-and-click adventure at that moment. And when he told that to me, I got chills, because I'm like, he did not realize what he had invented. He had invented the point-and-click adventure. The idea that the environment you're looking at, I mean, think about how many websites and just everything you just assume.

Exactly. But you look at your iPhone, the idea of using your finger to click through things. I mean, it's just so... I'm telling you, in my opinion, he was the first one to actually [inaudible]. A little moment, click in his head. Now, for some reason, I think I have a certain ability or insight or something to kind of see those little seminal things. And if I'm not involved in it, at least I can sort of see it and realize it's important. And so it was at that moment I was like, yeah, I gotta work on Riven with these guys, because this guy Robyn is a genius without actually understanding how revolutionary what he's doing is.

And actually, what was nice is he called his brother Rand and said, hey, Rand, I didn't make the bunny or the tree or do any of that stuff. I made a manhole cover. I made a manhole cover. And now here's another image of it opened up. Can you animate between those? Is there a way to click on that and have it happen? And Rand was the one who was like, that's genius. That's what our game needs to be. Or that's what our story needs to be based on.

So Manhole, if you play Manhole now, you can still play it. It's just this sort of surreal Alice in Wonderland kind of point-and-click adventure. You go down the manhole and then this entire world opens up, and then you see some creature floating on a teacup. And then if you click on that, you're in the teacup and the whole world gets big, and then you end up on somebody's table. I mean, there's no point to the game at all. I remember Dick saying, wow, I played that Manhole game. What's the point? Like, Dick, it's genius. Don't you get it?

This is not even HP. This happened very, very long [inaudible], but no one did anything with it. Right? That's the thing. It's back there.

Yeah. And nobody, that's the thing, is like, if you've ever seen that, there was a TV series years ago called Connections. When you look at the history of different inventions, every invention comes out of nowhere. You know, the printing press came out of how they would make a squeeze liquid out of fabric. And somebody had to like say, oh, well, what if I took that machine that cranks down this thing? And, you know, I mean, and then wood carving and all these things came together. So you make all these connections. But somebody had to make the final connection. Gutenberg made that final printing press connection. But yeah, it's those kind of things that I think are... I love those moments. Like when I was a kid growing up...

Yes, absolutely. Well, I mean, he was a film director and also an actor and a radio personality. He's done so many different things, but he did his own film editing.

Bob O'Donnell. And he was a creative guy, but he was also, he knew how to direct and work with a crew. He produced, he knew how to produce, he got things done. So I was always a big admirer of everything my dad did. But he would also sit with me and we would analyze TV shows. So he would say, oh, you know, there's bad continuity there. What's continuity? And he would say, from this scene to that scene, this didn't happen. And that's out of sync. You know, the lighting is whatever. I got to the point where I could analyze certain things and still enjoy it.

But I was a little kid coming down and watching what my dad was watching. So I would come down the stairs and watch through the balusters there. And I wasn't supposed to watch it. My dad was watching The Twilight Zone. And of course I would have nightmares, and they're like, Bob, did you let Marty watch that show? Oh, I didn't know he was watching. Anyway, but I remember being such a fan of Rod Serling. But it was early television, right? The '50s. TV was a brand new medium.

And by the time I'm doing TV in the '80s, and I'm doing jingles and film scores and stuff like that, I'm like, you know, films kind of peaked in 1939 with Gone with the Wind. You know, Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz, like the same year. I mean, you just think about how great those things are. Ben-Hur in the '50s. And then these TV shows came out of nowhere, and all these pioneers in TV. And then TV is this established medium. And I remember sitting there thinking, I want to be a pioneer in a medium, not someone who's just working in a medium and crystallizing what's already good and just doing it a little bit better. So I was always like, what's the next cool thing to do?

Going back to cool, it's like I've just said, it's all been done. There's no new medium. And when I saw Myst, I'm like, that's it. That's the new medium. Game design and games are going to be the next huge thing. And I missed it. I thought, too... It's 120 miles an hour already. So I grabbed onto the caboose. And, you know, it's funny. My whole career in games is 30 years long now. And four...

Yeah, exactly. So 26. Exactly. I was just weaseling my way in. But it's so funny, because, you know, some people think I'm sort of, you know, a pioneer in the game industry. But I never thought of it that way, because by the time I saw that sort of aesthetic leap, I thought, it's been done. But what I didn't realize is how much more there was still to go. And so I'm, you know, music technology, game technology. One more thing I'll tell you.

I was waiting for it. I was waiting for it. So I got my master's in music composition at USC in 1982. I graduated. And I'm home. Marcy's pregnant, about to have our first child. I have no idea what I'm going to do next. I've got all these resumes out to all these schools around the country. But I'm looking around and I'm like, you know what? This computer thing, I think, is going to take off. And I know nothing about computers. Now you, years before, you already grew up on it. You were the thing. But I'm like, yeah, I don't know how it's going to intersect with what I do. But I know computers are important. And so I said to Marcy, I said, you know, I think computer is going to be a thing. 1982. So I went to the local community college, Pasadena City College, and I signed up for 14 units of computer science after I had my master's from USC.

At that point, let's see. 24. Maybe 24.

I'm not done. So I took Pasadena City College. And I was like, I just got to find out what is this stuff? So I took, you know, intro to computers. I took Fortran. I took COBOL. I even, one of the things they had you do is actually use punch cards. So I was at a machine using punch cards and feeding those in. And that's where you understand, like, every character in your code is important. You miss one character, you get one card out of order, program doesn't compile. Or you drop them. This is why you have a rubber band around them. So at that point, I got this sort of fundamental understanding about computers, and I really loved it.

And so the guy who was teaching Fortran, I forget this guy's name. He was a young guy. He probably couldn't have been more than maybe two years older than me, but he had spent his whole life in computer science. The first night of his class, he starts talking. And this is an intro to Fortran, right? This is Fortran 101, whatever it is, at a city college. And there's like 30 people sitting in the room. And at that point, I still looked relatively young. I look like I could have been an 18-year-old, like half the, or most of the room.

No.

Oh, excellent. All right, that makes sense. I was sort of using it like, I didn't want people to know I was like an adult taking a beginner's class. So I was just like, yeah, I kind of fit in here. You know, my hair is long. I still had a somewhat baby face. This is basically why I have this. Make sure people know I have a chin. So anyway, I'm sitting in this class and this guy starts talking, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I couldn't understand anything he was talking about. He was so [inaudible]. The language he was using, the words he was using, the concepts he was doing... [inaudible] class. I really thought this was going to be an intro class. So I took notes and was listening. And so that was like a Tuesday night. I came back on the Thursday night for the next class. And there were like 10 people in the class. 20 people dropped out.

I came back. And he's looking around and he's like, wow, I thought we had a lot more people. So I went up to him afterwards, and he was around my age, right? He was maybe a year or two older. And I said, look, I got to tell you, you know, I already have a master's from USC. I thought this was an intro class. He goes, it is an intro class. I said, well, you are talking above everybody's head. That's why nobody's here. He goes, oh, you're kidding. He was not a good teacher until he decided that he needed to start way back and explain all of his, you know, he was so into the jargon that it was on [inaudible]. Translate it if you didn't know the jargon.

And so I kept... he really depended on me. And then I was like, of course, I was his number one student. I did the best work. And now this is...

I was weaseling. But like, so this is like...

Yeah, exactly. So we became friends. I was his star student. He loved his programs. I did a scheduling system for airlines. I did some other thing. In COBOL? No, that was in COBOL. That's right. What did I do in Fortran?

But whatever, he liked what I was doing.

Miller was a COBOL programmer. He had a job during Y2K for a while. But anyway, this guy came to me at the end of the class, and he goes, “Look, you're a natural at programming. You really understand this stuff.” He says, “I just got headhunted. This is in Pasadena. He got headhunted by a Silicon Valley company.” He just said, it's a company in Silicon Valley that headhunted me. “And they said, do you know anybody else that's young and has aptitude and would come up there? And you know, you could probably do really good up there.”

And I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's the old prostitute in my heart. No, I'm a musician. I'm a composer. This is just a side.

The thing is, I've always wondered. There's a fork in the road that I didn't take. Like, what if we said, okay, was it Apple? Who was it that was headhunting?

Yeah. And so, in 1984, years later, now I'm doing jingles and stuff, the Super Bowl, and I see the 1984 Mac commercial. It was another one of those seminal moments where I'm like, yeah, Steve Jobs is a genius and this is the next big thing. And I just became a complete Apple believer from that point on. There were a lot of my friends who were like, no, Apple is a toy.

Really? The Apple I or II or something? The first one? Oh, the Apple II. Yeah, it had to be.

Yeah, John Rizzo. I know his name.

Oh, yeah, the Lisa. That was Steve's private—

Yeah, but, you know, by the way, the Silicon Valley company could have been some total loser startup that I would have just tried.

Oh, boy. Okay. This is not a good question.

Okay. Step one, I push my chair back. Step two, I stand up. Step three, I turn to the left.

It's going to take me a while to get to the garage.

Yeah. I learned COBOL, FORTRAN, and intuitive computers all at the same time. And I still remember the whole idea of an algorithm. I'm like, oh, I totally get this. And then you're looking at what shortcuts can I do? What modules can I make? Just repeat. And then you put that to a side. [inaudible] Like my brain just clicked.

I don't know if it's a musician thing or composer thing, but it just clicked very quickly. The main thing I'm happy that I took the computer science for wasn't so much that I wanted to be a programmer. It's just that I could argue with programmers.

Oh my gosh, that's funny.

'96. It's coming back. It's coming back. See, I remember watching the '68 Democratic Convention when I was like 13 years old. “The whole world is watching.” It was such a horrible thing. And then '96 was the next time.

And Dick said, “Hey, Marty, you want to be a roving reporter?” I'm like, yes. What's the worst that can happen? So I go, I got my jeans, I got my denim shirt on, whatever it was. And I put a tie on because I'm a reporter. But it was a Rush Limbaugh tie. Rush Limbaugh used to make ties. So I put a Rush Limbaugh tie on. Nobody recognized. Because back then, you remember, I looked like a former hippie.

So I'm walking around trying to interview everybody for Dick, and James Carville's there, and Mary Matalin is his wife, and she's the conservative. And I came up to her. I talked to Cokie Roberts and Dan Rather. I was interviewing politicians.

Yes, I did. Oh, he kicked me out because you ambushed me. “What's the frequency, Kenneth?” No, I didn't say that. I should have. Um, reference.

Somebody out there knows the reference. You'll see it. It's a great one. Anyway, I go up to, I talked to all these people and they were all really nice. As a matter of fact, George Stephanopoulos walked by with his cadre of people and I'm standing there and I'm like, “Hey, George, how you doing?” And he goes, “Hey, yeah.” Like he thought he should know me. Because I look like somebody. We're similar age, you know, had long floppy hair, he was young. So he looked at me like, oh, I'm sure I know that guy. I'm like, yeah, you don't know me.

But I go up to Mary Matalin. If you've ever seen her, she's hilarious. And she looks at me and she goes, “You're at the wrong convention, babe.” And I'm like, you know what I mean? I don't know that tie. And I flipped around and Rush Limbaugh's on it. She just laughed. So anyway.

My first foray? That wasn't my first. I did. Yes. And had a good time. I was also at the National Review Convention, which was in Washington, D.C. Dick took me to that. So I was sort of his assistant. And so we were sitting there at the National Review, it's a conservative Republican convention in '96. And the guest speaker was Bob Dole. Bob Dole running for president.

No, we're in the same generation. My hair is grayer, but other than that. Anyway, so at the end of Bob Dole speaking, I raised my hand. I wanted to ask a question. Questions for the audience. And I said, “Senator Dole, power runs into Washington, D.C. like water runs downhill. When you become president, what are you going to do to reverse the flow so power leaves Washington?”

And he said, “Well, I'm not sure I really understand the question. Oh, gosh. I've been working my whole life to get this power. Why would I give any of it up?” And I was like, and there it is. In a nutshell, the problem with politics.

'96. And I still voted for Bob Dole. I thought he was a great guy. But I'm like, nobody in politics understands Tolkien. It's the ring of power that corrupts everybody. Everybody gets corrupted by power.

Yeah, exactly. This is my domino here to my domino here, right? It goes like this. But Tolkien's here. [inaudible] into the fires of Mount Doom. Why? Because nobody can hold the ring of power. It corrupts you. You think you can grab the power and do the good. Everybody thinks they can do good with power. But actually, it's the power itself that will corrupt the person.

Yes. And so I realized that I'm in my little Tolkien-esque, C.S. Lewis world, and the politicians, nobody's there with me. So, of course, that was the last time I dabbled in politics. It was just fun because it was with my friend. But then it went off and eventually moved to Seattle and did Halo and did Destiny and worked with Paul McCartney and did all those things. But politics has always been something that's interesting to me.

Well, actually, pretty much nothing other than me sitting on the couch watching news and throwing my shoes at the TV. And basically, what's wrong with you people? You're all jerks. All these career politicians. But my daughter, Allison, who's lived in Las Vegas for 15 years, started a nonprofit over 12 years ago, which works for children whose parents are gone and are being raised by their relatives.

So she has this company called Foster Kinship. It helps these families navigate through all the bureaucratic crud that's thrown at them. And it's just a great, great thing. It's the one thing that is actually legitimately a good thing. Everything else in my life is like, this is cool. This makes money. This is this. But this is something that when I work with Allie or I try to help her out, I feel like, yeah, somebody's figured out how to do something that's actually good for society. And I feel like maybe I can help [inaudible] because I said, well, my daughter's Allison.

You're still the negative, but, oh, your wife is Marcy? Okay.

So anyway, by the way, that is not my theology.

Yes, I know. Okay. So Allie has, over the last few years, since we moved here three years ago, she would tell me about some of the political bureaucratic stuff she's working through. And she's been invited to go to D.C. and testify on behalf of family things. And she's much more connected. And so just four months ago, she said, “Hey, Dad, I met this guy. I know you've contributed to a few candidates. I met this guy who's running for state assembly here in Las Vegas. I think you'd like him. He seems like you. I'm on a board with him. He's a cool guy. You should talk to him.”

So I called this guy. His name is Raphael Arroyo. And he's absolutely salt of the earth. I love the guy. Young, running for state assembly. And, you know, we hit it off. And so I said, “Raphael, how can I help you? I contribute money. Is there something else I could do? I've got a career. I've got a studio. Just tell me how I can help.” And eventually he just said, “Well, I want you to meet the people I'm working with.”

So these people called me and they were running his campaign, but they also ran Governor Lombardo's campaign from two years ago. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. That's the one guy in Las Vegas, in Clark County, the state of Nevada, that as a Republican won a major seat. So I'm like, this is cool. And so I started talking to them a little bit. And after a few conversations, this guy said to me, after I said, “Well, what can I do? What really can I do?” and I'm thinking, you know, I'll write a little music, I'll record some voice thing, or I'll contribute money to somebody who needs to do something. And he says, “Have you ever considered running for Congress?”

And it hit me like, of course, no. But he said, and it was a long pause, by the way, he goes, “Well, you're not laughing.” So then I started laughing and I said, yeah, it's just crazy. And I said, the weird thing is that I used to tell my daughters, while they were growing up and I'm throwing shoes at the TV, that these career politicians are all jerks. That's not the way politics should be. These are not the people who should be in politics. They think of it as a career. It should be a civic duty. It should be the same as jury duty. And it should be called Congress duty.

And you should get a letter in the mail and it's like, it's your turn to go to Congress. And then you can do your two years and then go home. So I said, it should be called Congress duty. And every American citizen might be on the hook to serve in Congress. And that way we would, in my mind, we would get the greatest, instead of a bunch of lawyers or a bunch of CPAs or MBAs or whatever it is.

You'd hear, it would be random, just like jury of your peers. It'd be Congress of your peers. And so I never anticipated that that's something that could happen, but I sort of preached that. And so at that moment, when he said, “Have you ever considered running for Congress?” I thought, oh my gosh, this is my jury duty, Congress duty letter just came in the mail.

And I was like, dang it. I can't just say no. So I said, I'll get back to you. This was on a Friday. I prayed about it, talked to Marcy. And here's what, you've just met my wife. So this is funny. I asked her about it. And she says, “What? That's insane.” I'm like, yeah, I know it's insane. And then she goes, “It sounds like something you would do.”

—that could happen. So, yeah, I talked to Ally. Now, Ally, of course, was thrilled. “Dad, you'll have an in with all these politicians that I need you to pull strings for.” I'm like, well, wait, Ally, I'm not going to be a sock puppet for you. If I do this, it's going to be my own thing, but I will absolutely make sure that Foster Kinship gets all of the best stuff it can politically.

So I called the guy back and I said, “Okay, look, if I were to say yes to this,” his name is Jeremy, “so, Jeremy, if I would say yes, or if I wanted to just take the next step, what's the next step?” And he said, “Well, we want you to meet with the governor on Friday.” And I'm like, that's not a next step. That's like a giant leap. It's a leap. So, I mean, my dominoes thing, he's doing it. He had me go all the way to the governor of the state of Nevada.

And sure enough, that Friday, I'm sitting in a room with Joe Lombardo and we're talking and comparing notes and telling him about my political journey and my music journey. And he's telling me about his military and police background. Vegas, I mean, he was in charge of the investigation in the worst shooting of all time. The guy who shot out the thing. I mean, it's just fascinating. And he was very encouraging.

And after talking to him, I realized that these guys actually were serious. So I'm talking to Jeremy after that and I'm like, okay, it feels a little bit like a Hail Mary pass. It's late in the process. And he's like, yeah, it is late. It's a long shot, but we feel that you check a bunch of boxes that nobody else checks. But Marty, you have to understand how hard it is to find good people to run for office. And as soon as he said that, I was like, oh, that's the deal. That's why, if good people don't choose to do their duty, then the only people who end up being in Congress and politics are the bad people. [inaudible] was at the television. So at that moment, I thought, I can't say no to this, because then I will always wonder, was there some little thing I could have done by saying yes? So that's why.

I don't have this vision of being able to change the system or do anything like that. But the minimal thing that I thought I could take from whatever this experience is, is I will learn a little bit about how the sausage is actually made. I will open some doors I've never looked behind before. I will meet people I would never have met. I will see something about this process that is definitely a mystery to probably 99% of the people. And I did, and I would love to share some of the stuff I learned over the four months.

But I didn't win. I didn't win in the primary. It was basically a four-way race, and the guy who came in first took 10,000 votes, and then three of us split the remaining 18,000 votes, so it was basically a second place split. But to a certain extent, I'm kind of happy that I didn't win, because I enjoy all the things I learned. I have some connections and I don't know where this is going to lead.

Like I said before, at this point now, a few weeks after losing, you could see that as the closed door, the end of that chapter, or you could see it as just, there's a new chapter. This is how this chapter ended, but the story is still continuing. So I don't know where this is going to lead. I don't know if I'm completely done with politics or if it just is going to move me in a different direction and I'll take what I learned and do something new. But what that is, I don't know yet.

And it's weird. I think that's a good insight that I've never thought about myself. But even if I say what's the worst that can happen, it's almost like the worst can't happen, because the worst never does happen. What actually happens is something that fails. But out of that failure, you get something you weren't expecting. You get this other knowledge. You get these other insights. You see another chapter opening up before you. So that's essentially, it's almost always like, yeah, the best always happens.

Tolkien, I've heard it called, you know, the most Christian book ever written or something like that, the most Catholic or whatever they say. And it has no direct allegorical symbolism. But if people don't think that that's coming from an extremely Christian spiritual, deeply spiritual point for that artist, the writer Tolkien, then they just don't understand what he was doing or what he was saying. And all of those are lessons, but he tells it in such a way, this is the way I put it now.

There is, and you've probably never read this author, his name is F.A. Hayek, H-A-Y-E-K. And he wrote a book that came out in 1948, maybe. It's been reprinted a zillion times. It is the foundational document, one of the foundational documents of the 20th century for conservatism economically. He's the Austrian School of Economics. He inspired William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman, all the conservative groups. They all go back to Hayek's, and the book is called The Road to Serfdom.

And if you read The Road to Serfdom, it is like the nonfiction version of Lord of the Rings. And if you think about it, Hayek and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were all British authors in London at the same time, lived through World War I, lived through World War II, those experiences. Hayek wrote a book that tells you in nonfiction terms the nature of human beings, and Tolkien gives it to you in fictional terms. So it's like they actually just go together so well. I'm probably one of the weirdos in the world that actually think Hayek and Tolkien are like the same thing.

Okay. But that's why, believe it or not, when I went to Washington, I was just there like a month and a half ago, and I was a guest speaker at the Heritage Foundation and Club for Growth, and I went to all these conservative places. When I got to the Heritage luncheon, there were a couple other people speaking before me and I'm like, yeah, I keep hearing the same things. But I got up in front of these people who, you know, are all conservatives, old and young. And I said, “Look, here's my political philosophy, if I was to wrap it up in a nutshell. It's Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, but the thing that actually really speaks to people is Tolkien. So I believe it's time to take the ring of power and throw it into the fires of Mount Doom.” And everybody clapped. I'm like, okay, good. You guys get it.

And somebody said, “If you get into Congress, what caucus will you be in?” And I'm like, I have no idea. I said, “I'll probably start my own caucus called the Fellowship of the Ring.” And they clapped again. Now, I didn't make it, but I still believe that the problem in Washington is that power will not leave Washington. The people who are there are so determined to hold on to power, and it's corrupted the whole system.

And the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers, if you read the Federalist Papers, it's all about protecting citizens from the tyrannical rule of governments and making sure power doesn't stay centrally located, but is diluted back out to the states. And we have 50 states that are being starved because most of the power is in Washington, D.C. And I believe the Heritage Foundation and a bunch of these other conservative groups completely agree that this has to happen. But they've been there so long, they're too comfortable.

I looked around this room and I'm like, you guys got a building. You guys have lunch every week at this place and you keep talking about the same things. I didn't say that at the time, but I was thinking in my head, everybody in Washington, regardless of where they are on the spectrum, they're comfortable. They have the parties they can go to. They have the buildings they can go to. They have the clubs they can go to. Nobody is saying, I shouldn't be here. This is Mordor. Mordor with the eye. The Capitol building looked like the eye of Sauron to me. It was lit up at night. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is it. I went through my Tolkien stage really heavy when I was in DC. I did simply walk into it though.

But see, that's one of the other things that C.S. Lewis discovered. He was a great writer of nonfiction works like Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man and these great things. At some point late in his life, in his 60s, he realized that he couldn't argue people into the kingdom. And he realized that his friend, Tolkien, and Lewis had already done some great storytelling. It wasn't like he wasn't a great— But then he decided, I'm going to do the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And that is, more people, I think, have been affected by those works than all of the other works Lewis has done.

Well, that's art. We're created in the image of God, and God's a creator. So we're, as Tolkien talks about, sub-creators. We don't create from nothing like God did. We create from stuff that we already have experienced. But it is still something we can't not do. We have to be creative as people. And you can't just receive all your information from these sort of rational, nonfiction, non-spiritual places. Human beings just don't thrive that way. They thrive because of music and art and story, and it's so powerful. I think it's the most powerful thing.

No, I mean, the functional nature. This is the problem with my Protestant life. I'd gotten so intellectual, I was so in my head about everything, that I'd forgotten how you have to include the heart, the whole self. And for me, at least, returning to Catholicism has brought a more holistic thing, which I needed. So I'm not saying everybody needs to be Catholic, but I think as Christians, especially, we can't just get, where is it written? And that's it? That's as far as you're going to go?

Where's the Holy Spirit? Where is some tradition? Where is the community? Where is worship as a group? Where is our history? Where does that fit in? It's like, it's on the page, it's these words, and these mean this. You can do that. I'm not saying that doesn't have merit. It's just not complete. It doesn't give you everything.

I think we talked about this earlier, not in this room, but why was Jesus telling parables? He was like the greatest storyteller. And what I love about some of his stories is, you see the apostles are like, yeah, what? We didn't get that. I mean, they just, it's in his Bible, and then he would explain it.

I think what I'm saying is that you are correct. I think that's who I've been. And I realized how valuable that was, especially as a composer, because when I compose music, I usually start from, okay, try to clear my mind and just play, just go into the playground. And when I do something that feels cool, when I do something that I like, when I do something that gives me a little emotional chill, I make a note. And then the next day I'll come back and look at the stuff I did. Now I put my analytical hat on and go, okay, that wasn't very good, but there is something there. What is there that I can work on and expand and make better? And now I'm using more of my left side of my brain.

But at some point you have to just, for me at least, you have to just be instinctual in your right side of your brain, playground, [inaudible] trying to judge everything you're doing while you're creating, because that just stifles creativity. But that doesn't mean you turn your brain off the whole time. You want to have the analytical side and the training you've had to recognize why something is good and how to make it better.

But all of those instinctual, left, right, holistic, heart, intuition side of my personality, I think I've done a pretty good job at that in my life, but I wasn't doing it in my spiritual life. I was just staying down the rational, analytical, where is it written, exegesis, you know, that kind of approach. And then I started realizing that wasn't enough. Of course. Like, duh. But it took me a while.

Well, you know, it's probably not a violent shift. So being a sort of lapsed Protestant, a Protestant is like, yeah, I'll just talk about faith with my friends who understand me. And this whole organized religion thing has failed so many times. I'm not going to bother with it. And I realized something was missing. Now, once again, my wife is the saint. So she's the one who realized that she needed to do something for herself. She went to the Catholic Church and spent quite a long time working through all these things. And she didn't grow up—

No, no. I went to Wheaton College. So I went to the Protestant Vatican, which, by the way, that joke doesn't work in Catholic churches. Number one, they don't know what Wheaton College is. You could have said Fullerton. That still wouldn't have worked. I'm not kidding.

Anyway, I saw her journey. I saw what she was doing. And so I thought, well, now she's Catholic. I went to when she entered into the Catholic Church. And I went to that ceremony. And one of her longtime Catholic friends was with her. And it was very moving. I liked it. And so I started going to services with her. You would then go up for communion, you know, for Eucharist. But one of the rules is that if you're not a Catholic, you shouldn't actually take communion. So you just go up and you do this and the priest blesses you and then you're done.

And it sort of hit me, this is how shallow I actually am. I'm like, gee, am I going to spend the rest of our married life going to church together and I can't take communion with my wife? So that was it.

That was just a decision. I'm like, well, maybe I should do this RCIA thing and see what Catholicism is actually all about and go ahead and make the deal.

RCIA is the... ooh, I should know. It's funny, RC does not stand for Roman... All right. That's okay. But whatever it stands for is the education of non-Catholics. You have to take this two-year educational program.

As a matter of fact, there's a podcast guy. I think he's written a book too. It's called RCIA for Catholics. His father, John something. Of course, it's John. But anyway, when I went to RCIA, and you're right, at least 80% of the room were what they considered to be cradle Catholics. People who grew up with the Catholic Church, had fallen away, but decided to come back. So they knew a lot of stuff, but they didn't know why certain things. And I was sitting there, and you'll laugh at this, because you grew up Protestant, right? Both of you?

Covenant church, I know. But, you know, the guy doing the class would say, okay, turn to Second Corinthians 2:12, and everybody else is like, they never cracked a Bible. But the fact that I knew my way around the Bible, I'm like, well, look, that's just a lot of Protestant churches. You do a thing called sword drills, and they're like, what are sword drills? It's like, well, the Bible is known as the sword. So you're doing drills. This is probably, they didn't do it.

But I mean, my Sunday school would be like, the teacher up front would throw out some reference. And the first kid that came up with it stood up and then that kid got to read it.

No. But I was a Bible quizzer. I was on an actual team in junior high.

You got candy?

I didn't. I lost out. But yeah, I mean, it was fun to sit there, and I think I was telling you this earlier, but we were going through the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed. And I'm like, yeah, that's the same creed I've said in every Protestant church I've ever been in. And I said, you know, this is the same creed that all the Protestants say. And the teacher and the other Catholics are like, what?

And so I realized at that point that Protestants believe this junk about Catholics. Catholics believe this junk. Like the two are not in sync at all. The difference between Catholics and Protestants is so cultural and misunderstandings. And it's almost just not worth even going into. So I really enjoyed it. So that's really cool.

Well, Allison had gotten her degrees and had gotten work in HR at Microsoft, and then she ended up getting hired to be in DCFS, you know, the children and family services kinds of things. Basically a caseworker. She moved to Las Vegas, a caseworker for children and families. And this is 15 years ago now. This is how we found out about it. She had a client, a case that came in, and it was horrific. Things can happen, especially in Las Vegas, that are really horrific. Husband, drug addict, gets out of prison, four kids, kills the wife in front of the kids. Either he killed himself or he was back in prison. I think he might have committed suicide. This gets dumped into Allie's lap. She's in her 20s now. So late 20s. And it's just horrific.

But she sees it from the government standpoint. And one of the things that she'll say is, if you're going to have somebody raise your kids, the government is—that's the last thing you want to see. The government is the final safety net. If you're all the way down where the government is raising the kids, that's the worst possible place. And she's a data person. She has a statistics degree and she knows how to read data and she really gets it. So she knows that's the worst thing, but she's in a system where you come in and you become a case and it becomes a government case, and then here's how you get into the foster system and all this stuff.

So these four kids are going to come into the foster system, and all four of them, I think they range from age eight to two. And these kids were all going to be broken up and sent to four different foster homes. But the great aunt came in, so almost the grandmother, but it was the sister of the grandmother, and said, I'm taking these kids. And the department basically is like, good. Now it's no longer a case for us because a relative is going to take care of the kids. They're off the books.

So Ali kept in touch with this woman, and this woman, of course, within the first week is calling her back saying, I can't have these kids in my house. It's too small. I need a new apartment. I'm able to get this new apartment that will be enough for these four kids to live with me, but it's $800 more than I have. I need $800. So Allie went back to the department saying, this woman can do this, but she needs another $800. And the response was, well, that means she's not capable. So we have to take the kids and split them up and put them in four foster homes. So Allie went out to the parking lot, called Marcy, my wife, in tears. And so we just was like, well, here, here's $800. Let me just make this work.

And so she saw that there was this gulf between what agencies do and what they're capable of doing and how the system works, and then what is the percentage of children who are being raised by their relatives. And I love the fact that J.D. Vance is now the new vice presidential nominee. He's a foster kinship. He was raised by his mama, his grandma. Because his mother was a drug addict and his father had abandoned the family. This is not an unusual thing. I'm sure people right now in the audience, there's probably, I don't know, 60% who were raised by their relatives. Don't ask Allie what the actual statistic is. It's a huge number.

And she was just like, okay, whatever, how can we get some of these government services and some of this money that's being [inaudible] to these things? How could we get people educated to know the right things to do, so the government doesn't penalize them? How do we make sure they have the right amount of space? How do we make sure they have the right supplies? How do they get education? And how do we get some of these funds to also come to foster kinship areas?

And so since that point, she started this nonprofit. 37 employees. They've serviced over 10,000 families. 18,000 children have gone through the system. So it's this amazing thing. In the last 12 years, it's hugely important. And she's got a system now that is, I call it franchisable, which she hates. But she has a system that could work in every state of the union. This can be taken to other places and people can use this model and make things happen for these really sort of forgotten people. And it cuts through all demographics. It's not rich or poor. It's not black and white. There's no racial component.

But she says she gets these wealthy aunts who come in and suddenly their two nieces and nephews are on their doorstep and they just don't know what to do. How do they get them registered for school? Oh, you're not the parent. You take them to the doctor. Oh, you're not the mother or father. Well, you can't sign off on this. So Ali has figured out all of these hurdles and helps people with all of that stuff.

So thanks for asking about that.

Okay. Well, we had done Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST and Reach. That's 10 years, a full decade of Halo games. All this music, I'd worked with all sorts of famous actors and musicians. And when we started working on a whole new project, the guy that I knew in Hollywood that used to help me get actors that I wanted, you know, Ron Perlman and Keith David and Nathan Fillion, Katie Sackhoff, all these different people, he called me up and he said, “Marty, we're sitting in the office. We're thinking, who should you work with next? Wouldn't it be cool? So we're brainstorming who you should work with next. Paul McCartney next.”

I'm like, Paul McCartney? I'm like, well, yeah, of course. Now, how are you going to make that happen? Who do you know? “Oh, we don't know anybody.”

And I'm like, oh, okay. So you just pulled this out of the air and you think it would be cool. And so I said, yeah, well, good luck with that. So two months later, I'm at GDC. I'm doing a keynote address. And his name is Lev, Lev Chepelsky. And he's straight out of Hollywood. Everything about Lev is pure Hollywood. It's great. He's just so much fun. So that means there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on. There's just a lot of BS.

But Lev comes up to me just before I'm on the stage. And he's down here, and he sort of pulls on my, you know, what? He goes, “Marty, I got you a meeting. A meeting with Paul McCartney. I'll talk to you after your speech.” And then this guy goes, and now it's, “Marty O'Donnell to do the blah, blah, blah.” And I'm like, if you could have called, like, after— After you told me this, my whole brain was just scrambled. Oh, no idea what I said at that thing.

So afterwards, yeah, I got a meeting. Come back two weeks from now, come down. What I remember doing was I got this whole presentation ready for Paul McCartney, and I was told he's coming in at the end of the day. He's coming to the office. We've got a screen set up, a computer. You can show him stuff. He's got 10 minutes. So he's like, you're the last guy at the end of the day, 10 minutes, and then that's it. So make your pitch. I'm like, okay.

So I get on the plane. I'm flying from Seattle to LA. And I remember thinking, wow, I really arrived because somebody bought a plane ticket for [inaudible]. Now, I'm sure he's not going to show up, but I can say there was a point in time where I was going to meet with Paul McCartney. That's how hot I am.

He didn't show up, but hey, you didn't get an invitation to speak. I didn't. No, okay. Yeah, it could happen. So we get there. I set everything up and the day is dragging on. And then sure enough, it's like, okay, I'm expecting a call any minute. Yeah, Paul just can't make it. He's tired, whatever. And nope, he shows up. He comes in, he comes through the door. “Well, here I am.” And I'm like, yes, you are. It's actually you.

So he sat down. I sort of gave him my spiel. He asked questions. We started talking. And it was like two hours later, hour and a half. I forget how long it was. And I'm like, okay, this has gotten way past the 10-minute stage. This is good. And so now it's wrapping up, and working with me and working on games. So I stood up to shake his hand and he just comes over like you and he gives me this big hug. And I'm like, okay, this is a good first date. It just worked out. It's a good sign.

So, yeah, we ended up working together for like two years after that, different places. Abbey Road twice, which is, you know, Abbey Road. So, yeah, I have many Paul McCartney stories. It was just getting over that and then finding out he actually wanted to work with me. And he said, well, I have a phone message I'll share with you. When I was working with him, I knew he could call at any moment, but his number was always blocked, so every time I'd see “Blocked,” it was Paul. So I had my ringer on all the time. But I was in the shower, I came out, I missed a call from Blocked. I'm like, oh no. So I listened to the message. It's the only message he ever left, because I always picked up the phone. And he was like, “Hello, Monty, this is Paul calling from England.”

Yeah. Paul from England. And I'm like, yeah, that Paul. Oh, I thought it was my other friend, Paul. I don't think he understands how iconically recognizable his voice is. But he's just a sweet guy. He's a regular person. We had a great time. And it was once in a lifetime. So, yeah.

Paul here calling from England. Just to let you know that I've had a chance to listen to the piece you sent back and I really like it. I think it's really cool. I think it's a good direction and I like what you've done with it. You put a few of the constituents together and I think it works very well. So there you go. I was just hoping to say that in person to you, but I said it to your machine. So consider this as being in person. All right. See you. Bye-bye.

I probably have had five hugs from Paul.

That's right. Sorry, two hands. Two hands, not two fingers. Almost six. I should have asked for one more. But yeah, that was good.

Oh my gosh, I hope not.

Don't be afraid. Do not be afraid. There is nothing you should fear. Failure is your friend. And you'll never be successful at anything if you have fear. So I think fearlessness is just really important. I teach these kids when they come over and I throw them in the pool and stuff. And of course, grandma and the mom are always like, “Pop-pop, don't make the kids swim,” or whatever. It's just like, I just feel like there's so much fear, and fear just freezes you in positions.

And then the worst thing that you can have happen to you is not failure, it's regret. I think regret is the thing that will stay with you forever, at least for me. That's my experience. So I never want to say, wow, I had a chance to do X, but I was afraid and I didn't do it. I mean, when you think about it, it's almost always after you dive in the cold pool and you get used to it, that's not so bad. What was I afraid of? It's always in hindsight, if you've done the thing, you go, what was I afraid of? So that's what I would say.

Great. It's a blast for me too. Thanks, guys. Thanks. See ya.

I did.

I will say one last thing. Be nice to the goose.

You can look it up, or, yeah, I can explain it, but be nice to the goose.

I will. Sounds good.