Episode Summary
Holy story editor, Batman! 🦇 This episode, we sit down at LA Comic Con with the legendary Stan Berkowitz — the writer and story editor who helped shape Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Superman: The Animated Series. Stan takes us from his start in journalism to scripting superheroes, shares behind-the-scenes stories from the DCAU, and talks about his brand-new book Beyond the Bat: Secrets of a Superhero Scribe. Whether you’re a DC diehard, an aspiring writer, or just someone who knows the pain of losing Artax (😭), this episode is packed with nerdy gold.
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⏰ Timestamps and Topics
• [00:00] Intro – Capes, motherboxes, and Comic Conversations!
• [00:44] Live from LA Comic Con: welcoming Stan Berkowitz
• [01:11] Early career beginnings and writing roots
• [01:26] From Florida to LA: working on Superboy in 1990
• [01:46] Growing Up Geeky: Stan’s first fandom (George Reeves’ Superman)
• [More topics continue throughout: shaping Batman Beyond, crafting Justice League arcs, and writing Beyond the Bat]
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🗝️ Key Takeaways
• Stan Berkowitz’s career started in journalism before moving into live-action TV and then dominating superhero animation.
• He wrote for iconic series like Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Superman: The Animated Series.
• His new book, Beyond the Bat: Secrets of a Superhero Scribe, mixes memoir, behind-the-scenes tales, and writing wisdom.
• Stan’s first fandom? The George Reeves Superman — proving some fandoms really are forever.
• From LA roots to Emmy-winning scripts, Stan’s journey is a masterclass in creative longevity.
⸻
📣 Call to Action
If you loved this episode, don’t just keep it in your Batcave — share it with your nerd crew!
👉 Subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast app.
👉 Tag us with your thoughts using #DistanceNERDing on social media.
⸻
🔗 Links and Resources
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⸻
❓ Listener Questions
Got a question for a future guest? Want us to tackle your favorite fandom topic? Drop us a line on social media or at DistanceNERDing.com — your question might be featured on the next episode!
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00:00:00
Nerds, grab your capes and your utility belts, maybe even your
00:00:03
Mother Boxes, because today's guest is the mind behind some of
00:00:06
the greatest superhero stories ever told.
00:00:09
It's time for a. Comic conversation.
00:00:15
We had the absolute pleasure of talking with the legendary
00:00:18
writer and story editor Stan Berkowitz, the man who helped
00:00:21
shape Batman the Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice
00:00:24
League, and so many more. On top of that, he's just
00:00:27
released a brand new book called Beyond the Bat, Secrets of a
00:00:29
superhero Scribe, giving us a peek behind the curtain of
00:00:32
decades and comics and animation.
00:00:34
So fill up your utility belt, fire up the Batmobile, and get
00:00:37
ready to dive deep into the DCAU, because it's time for
00:00:41
another. Comic, Comic conversation all.
00:00:46
Right nerds, we've got another great guest for you coming from
00:00:49
LA Comic Con on today's Comic Conversation.
00:00:52
Today we have a long time TV writer and story editor whose
00:00:55
career began in journalism, moved into books and live action
00:00:58
TV, then rose to prominence as a writer, story editor on dozens
00:01:02
of animated superheroes series such as Batman The Animated
00:01:05
Series, Batman Beyond and Superman.
00:01:07
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show Stan
00:01:10
Berkowitz. Thank you.
00:01:11
Thank you. How's it going, Stan?
00:01:12
How's your show going? So far so good, I'm enjoying it
00:01:15
a lot. Awesome, awesome.
00:01:16
It's good that. Nice to be in my home city.
00:01:18
Right, right, right. I mean, you've moved around.
00:01:24
Not that much, not too. Much but like mostly been like.
00:01:27
Mostly LAII worked in Florida on a show called Superboy Yes, back
00:01:31
in 1990 and had to live there for a year.
00:01:33
But otherwise I'm here. I'm local, right?
00:01:37
I was born where we are right now.
00:01:39
I was born 2 miles from in a hospital on a Figueroa.
00:01:42
So we're in downtown LA. Your home was born.
00:01:46
Yeah, yeah. So we have a a segment on our
00:01:50
show called Growing Up Geeky. What did you geek out on when
00:01:52
you were a kid? Oh, Superman, the George Reeves
00:01:55
Superman, because that was that was my, my time era.
00:01:58
And to show my commitment to it many, many years later, long
00:02:02
after I was in the business and outgrown that, theoretically, I
00:02:07
got a job for the two actors who played Jimmy Olsen and Lois
00:02:11
Lane. They appeared on a a show called
00:02:14
Superboy, not as Jimmy and Lois, obviously, because they were
00:02:17
actually they were, they were past Medicare age, but but we
00:02:22
were able to use them in sporting roles on the show.
00:02:24
So I got to hire them. That's awesome.
00:02:27
Very, very happy that I was able to do that.
00:02:29
We chatted a little bit about the old show that they'd been on
00:02:31
and that it influenced me a lot. Those are awesome Easter eggs
00:02:35
when you go into a show and it's like, hey, we hired Lois and
00:02:38
Jimmy Olsen. Well, you're recognized, and
00:02:40
they were both recognizable. Easily recognizable.
00:02:43
Right. Like those are some of my
00:02:44
favorite Easter eggs in a lot of these shows when you get that
00:02:46
kind of cameo, you know, the same thing with with with Linda
00:02:50
in in Wonder Woman. Oh, when she shows up, she.
00:02:54
Shows up at the at the end of the second movie, Yeah.
00:02:57
And it's like, again, those are things that I love where it's
00:02:59
like, hey, here's the original. And the flash too.
00:03:01
Right, right, right, right, right.
00:03:02
You know he played his dad. What?
00:03:05
Yeah. Who played what?
00:03:07
Well, in the TV show, the Flash from the 80s plays his dad.
00:03:12
Oh, oh, John Wesley ship. John Wesley Ship.
00:03:13
He plays his. Course, got it, got it.
00:03:15
I was talking about the The Flash movie.
00:03:17
Oh yeah, where they? Went through all those different
00:03:19
worlds and right, right worlds. Again, like just those kind of.
00:03:22
Cage and all that. It's super.
00:03:24
Nicolas Cage 1 is the best just because you're not expecting
00:03:26
that, right? It's like that was something
00:03:28
that was a murmur and then became something like, now
00:03:30
that's Canon. It's amazing.
00:03:33
Oh, man, I, I, I was a big fan of the old cartoons.
00:03:38
I actually Fleischer. The Fleischer.
00:03:39
Yeah, the Mets Fleischer cartoons were amazing.
00:03:43
And to this day, that animation still holds up.
00:03:45
It's it's crazy. Well.
00:03:46
Because the rotoscoping. Right, right.
00:03:49
It's still, I mean, it still is, it really jumps off the screen
00:03:52
at you because of the natural, the naturalistic movements that
00:03:56
they were able to get through rotoscoping, right.
00:03:59
So very, very impressive work. I in fact, as a child I had
00:04:03
access to both Fleischer cartoons and Superman and I felt
00:04:09
that the the old George Reeves show was more child friendly
00:04:12
than the cartoons. Yeah, the Fleischer cartoons
00:04:14
scared me a little. Bit the Fleischer cartoons were
00:04:16
a little dark. If, if you really look at the
00:04:18
way Max Fleischer did everything, it was, it was very,
00:04:20
I mean, they, they were, they were fun, they were adventures
00:04:24
and everything like that. But just like, you know, the,
00:04:27
the idea of like there's a famous scene where he's being
00:04:29
shot at by a cannon and it's just deflecting off of his chest
00:04:32
and then he goes and ties the knot inside of the cannon, but
00:04:35
it's just he's being shot at, you know, and it's like for, for
00:04:39
stuff from back then, like that stuff is kind of he's kind of
00:04:42
kind of dark. I remember giant mummies.
00:04:46
Yeah. And I remember bird like men or
00:04:48
hawk like men, Right. And again, I'm, you know, as a
00:04:50
little kid, it's kind of scary, you know, they seem like
00:04:52
monsters, right. So yeah, I was, you know, when
00:04:55
I, whenever I watched the show, I'd kind of flinch, you know,
00:04:58
the cartoons, I'd flinch a little bit like.
00:05:01
Yeah, well, what scary thing is going to arise from the screen
00:05:05
right now? Right, right.
00:05:07
So let's jump into this. Your career started with
00:05:09
journalism in the 70s, writing for such publications as
00:05:11
Esquire, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News.
00:05:14
What in particular got you into writing film reviews?
00:05:17
So I know that was kind of a long time thing you did.
00:05:20
And then did you always want to work in showbiz news when you
00:05:23
got into journalism? Yes, I always wanted to work in
00:05:26
that. I started writing reviews in
00:05:30
college, movie reviews in college because I was just
00:05:35
interested in movies and nothing else in college really
00:05:39
interested me, right? And UCLA that I had where I,
00:05:42
it's my local college at, they happen to have a very good film
00:05:45
school, right? So more and more electives were
00:05:47
in the film department. I got encouragement from the
00:05:50
teachers. You know, sometimes you'd have
00:05:52
to do a paper, which would be a movie review, talk about the
00:05:54
movie we just showed you in class.
00:05:56
And. And the teachers seem to like
00:05:58
what I wrote. So that gave me the courage to
00:06:00
go to the college paper, show them samples.
00:06:04
And then they they started publishing my stuff.
00:06:07
Yeah. So educators were just
00:06:08
encouraging you to go. They were not urging.
00:06:10
Yeah, obviously I wanted to make movies, but right to.
00:06:13
Me. That's what everybody wants.
00:06:15
To do it take it takes a while to get into the business.
00:06:17
Right. Like you either want to make
00:06:18
movies or be in movies or or both.
00:06:20
Well. I didn't want to be in movies,
00:06:21
but I but I enjoyed making them. You know from from childhood,
00:06:24
right? You probably had the same
00:06:25
experience where you get a a video camera.
00:06:28
For me it was a film camera, obviously.
00:06:31
And you just bring your friends over and you start doing
00:06:33
stories, right? Yeah, I had VHS recorders when I
00:06:35
was growing up, so we had. Better you had you had sound.
00:06:38
Yeah, 'cause with the old film cameras, he didn't.
00:06:42
You probably saw the Charlie Sheen documentary where he shows
00:06:45
those Super 8 movies. Yeah.
00:06:47
Where? Where, you know, they're,
00:06:48
they're doing these violent things.
00:06:51
Yeah, I mean. The movies that he made with his
00:06:53
brother, yeah. Yeah, I'm that's the kind of
00:06:55
thing I was doing too. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:06:57
But before Charlie, because I'm I'm older than him.
00:07:01
Yeah, and I mean, like Charlie had access to stuff.
00:07:03
His dad was already doing things.
00:07:04
Like this too so. I mean, you would think that
00:07:06
they had. Access sound on the Super 8 too
00:07:08
I think. Yeah, I I think Super 8 had had
00:07:11
some. Some of them did.
00:07:13
Yeah, a lot of them didn't. But that was an expensive set up
00:07:15
back then. Yeah, it's prohibitive for most
00:07:17
of us. Yeah, those of us who weren't
00:07:19
raised by movie star fathers. Right.
00:07:22
We, we were more than that. I had VHS recorders in the late
00:07:26
80s, early 90s when they started becoming more prominent.
00:07:29
You know, my dad was really big on I want to record everything
00:07:31
we can. So yeah.
00:07:33
He's showing the kids growing up.
00:07:34
Right, right, right. So it's kind of transitioning a
00:07:39
little bit from there. You co-authored a book, an
00:07:41
industry book called the movie business that was considered an
00:07:44
industry. How to How did the impetus the
00:07:46
the impetus for this book come about?
00:07:48
Like what made you want to write?
00:07:49
Well, I'd been with another guy. I'd been writing stories about
00:07:53
how the entertainment business works inside stuff like where
00:07:56
does the money come from? How do you get a film off the
00:07:59
ground? All that stuff for mostly for
00:08:02
the Los Angeles Times entertainment section.
00:08:05
And we met an agent who said, hey, you know what?
00:08:09
You could compile these stories and make a book out of it.
00:08:12
And he was able to sell it to Random House or actually Vintage
00:08:16
Books. He sold that idea to them.
00:08:19
And then when we started working, we realized, well, we
00:08:21
can't really, you know, adapt these stories that we've already
00:08:25
done too easily. And we ended up writing all new
00:08:28
material. OK, Yeah.
00:08:30
For for the book and that the book came out I think in 1981.
00:08:33
1981, I think, yeah, I think I think the right like the
00:08:38
everything from what I was reading it was 1980 and then it
00:08:41
was released in 81. Yeah, the deal, the initial deal
00:08:43
was made in 79. We started writing for The Times
00:08:46
in 78. So it worked out.
00:08:49
It was, it was fun to to written that book.
00:08:52
Yeah. But eventually I and I really
00:08:55
wanted to be writing movies and it just took a long time and a
00:08:58
lot of a lot of speculative scripts.
00:09:00
Right, right. And I mean, like, you know, more
00:09:02
towards the 80s, you started getting into a lot of that.
00:09:04
I mean, when I was looking up some of the things we talked
00:09:06
about Superboy a little bit before, but also Dragnet, TJ
00:09:09
Hooker, like those are pretty big franchises to be writing
00:09:12
for. What was the experience writing
00:09:15
for shows on that level? It was real professional.
00:09:19
I mean, I had to quit my day job, you know, and go to work
00:09:21
full time and those shows become your life.
00:09:26
Here's a little story. I I happen to know a woman who
00:09:31
was an artist and she got a job designing the set for the Adult
00:09:38
Film Awards in 1985. And as part of her payment, she
00:09:43
got a bunch of free tickets to the Adult Film Awards, one of
00:09:46
which she gave to me. So it's a banquet, you know,
00:09:49
free dinner. I'll go.
00:09:50
Right. So I'm sitting next to a guy
00:09:52
roughly my age, complete stranger.
00:09:55
Hi. How are you?
00:09:56
What do you do? What do I do?
00:09:58
So he told me that he was the, the movie critic for an adult
00:10:04
magazine. So what he did all day was he
00:10:07
watched adult movies, pornography, right?
00:10:10
And then wrote reviews of it. Then he asked me what I did, and
00:10:12
I said, I I'm a story editor for TJ Hooker.
00:10:16
And immediately, without even thinking, he said, that's the
00:10:19
worst show on TV. So I paused, and instead of
00:10:24
saying to him, wait a minute, what did you do?
00:10:26
What did you say you do again? Right.
00:10:29
No. I thought, you know what?
00:10:30
I'm going to have to sit next to this guy for the whole dinner.
00:10:33
So I said, no, you're wrong. It's Matt Houston anyway.
00:10:36
Oh, yeah, you're right. It is.
00:10:38
Matt Houston is worse than TJ Hooker.
00:10:41
It's a good comeback. It's pretty good.
00:10:43
It took us a few seconds. Because because it's just taking
00:10:45
the focus off of what he thinks of TJ Hooker.
00:10:48
I mean, you know, everything's going to be subjective.
00:10:50
And Speaking of TJ Hooker, they're talking now about doing
00:10:53
a reboot. Reboot.
00:10:54
Yeah, they've they've been talking about it for a little
00:10:56
while now. I.
00:10:56
Have no idea what that's going to be like.
00:11:00
It's it's funny because when we talked about it on our main
00:11:02
show, I was talking about how, you know, everybody talks about
00:11:05
or everybody likes to bring up the the the famous cop jumping
00:11:09
over the hood of the car. You know, like a lot of people
00:11:11
don't know where that's from. And it's like, well, no, Shatner
00:11:13
did that and TJ Hooker. So now everybody does it.
00:11:15
Yeah. So it's like it's it's it's
00:11:18
great. And again, a lot of a lot of
00:11:20
times people don't understand where references come from.
00:11:22
And it's like, yeah, no, that's ATJ Hooker thing.
00:11:25
And I mean, you know, TJ Hooker has more that people appreciate
00:11:30
it more now than they did probably that did back back in
00:11:33
the 80s. Probably some nostalgia and the
00:11:36
concept of the show was that he he had been a street cop and
00:11:39
then he became an administrator and he just got tired of it,
00:11:42
didn't like it, and then went just wanted to the excitement of
00:11:45
being back on the street. That alone I think is going to
00:11:48
be a very good concept. It just depends on who they hire
00:11:53
for the cast, right? Because, yeah, the idea is he's
00:11:56
he's a mentor, like a father figure to to some young cops.
00:12:00
It's gonna be good. And I mean, it depends on the
00:12:02
way they do it, because if you look at the way they did Bel
00:12:04
Air, where it was a more serious take on the The Fresh Prince.
00:12:07
And it didn't last very long. Right.
00:12:09
It's like, you know, it depends on what direction they they go.
00:12:12
Do they keep it kind of like light hearted comedy like in the
00:12:16
with action kind of thing the way TJ Hooker was or?
00:12:19
There was no, there was no humor in TJ Hooker that I that I
00:12:21
recall. Maybe it was just scenes that
00:12:24
ended up being funny to me and stuff.
00:12:25
You were laughing. At yeah, but like, you know,
00:12:28
just taking a complete serious tone on, especially with the way
00:12:31
that like the, the the tonal shift has gone over over the
00:12:35
last 20 years, you know, where things are just kind of like
00:12:38
really, really intense now. I wonder if they'll make a joke
00:12:41
of it. I have no idea.
00:12:44
So moving into kind of jumping into the 90s a little bit, you
00:12:49
became a go to for some of the more story driven animated shows
00:12:51
such as Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond.
00:12:54
How did that differ from writing for live action?
00:12:57
Because now you're writing for animation like it was it?
00:12:59
Was it almost the same or? It's, it is almost the same.
00:13:02
What you have to do is make sure that the scenes are shorter, OK?
00:13:07
Because sometimes you know, you write a longer scene and it's a
00:13:09
little loose and you didn't really edit it that carefully.
00:13:13
Your actors will improvise a little bit.
00:13:15
They'll find little bits of business to do then to keep it
00:13:17
interesting. But you can't do that with
00:13:20
animation. So this seems to have to be
00:13:21
shorter. The dialogue has to be less
00:13:26
you're, you're, you're forced to be a little bit more terse with
00:13:29
the dialogue and otherwise it the rest of it depends on who
00:13:36
you're working for as the animators.
00:13:39
For example, I started animation with Spider Man, right?
00:13:42
And in Spider Man, the, the head animator was named Bob
00:13:44
Richardson and Bob wanted all of the action to be very, very
00:13:49
explicitly choreographed. So your scripts would run a
00:13:53
little long because you're doing that, that kind of choreography,
00:13:56
you know, in an action scene, a fight, you've, you had to
00:14:00
describe every punch. And then at Warner Brothers,
00:14:03
when I started on Superman, it was a little bit looser, you
00:14:06
know, where you could give the, the artist, the, the storyboard
00:14:09
guys a rough idea of what the action would be and they would
00:14:13
come up with something, right? Right, I, I always thought that
00:14:17
was interesting. I I heard Kevin Smith describing
00:14:21
his first experience writing for animation when he did Masters of
00:14:24
the Universe. Oh, really?
00:14:26
Yeah. And he was saying, you know,
00:14:28
when you when you write for a movie, because that's what he's
00:14:30
used to, you have to like describe the scene.
00:14:33
And he said and for Masters of the Universe, anytime he wanted
00:14:36
a fight scene, he would just write fighty fighty.
00:14:38
And he said the animation team would just go in, go in from
00:14:40
there. Well, that was their the way
00:14:42
they worked, right For me when I started it was, you know, be
00:14:45
explicit every punch, right. And then why is the script so
00:14:48
long? Well.
00:14:49
Well, I had to write this fight scene.
00:14:51
No, you don't. No, you did.
00:14:52
We did have to. I'm not sure it's just a
00:14:55
difference in. In, I think.
00:14:57
I think part of it was also the studio he was working with.
00:15:00
That studio was. Marvel.
00:15:01
Well, Marvel was for for me, it was Marvel.
00:15:03
Yeah, yeah. Spider Man yeah, that's OK.
00:15:05
I think that studio was more they're they're they're known
00:15:08
more for their intense fight scenes.
00:15:10
So they were like, hey, we're just going to let the animation
00:15:12
team do their thing with the fight scene.
00:15:14
It'll be in context with your script, but.
00:15:16
Well, in in live action, I remember, I guess there's a show
00:15:20
called Houston Nights and one of the writers had written a great
00:15:24
action movie called Coogan's Bluff.
00:15:25
His name was Herman Miller. So Herman was on the staff of
00:15:28
Houston Nights and I was looking forward to seeing, you know, how
00:15:31
in his script, what the fight, how the fight would be
00:15:34
choreographed and it just he just wrote fight to be
00:15:37
choreographed. So I was surprised by.
00:15:41
This and the stunt team just comes in and takes over.
00:15:43
At that point, yeah, that's exactly what happens.
00:15:45
You tell them roughly what what's supposed to happen.
00:15:49
You know, does the bad guy get away or does he, you know, is he
00:15:52
completely vanquished? And the stunt goes, oh, I'll
00:15:55
take care of it. We'll take it from here, right?
00:15:59
So to this day you've been recognized by the WGA for your
00:16:02
long service and contributions. Was that a moment that felt
00:16:04
surreal when they when they gave you that recognition?
00:16:07
Do you still have or suffer at all from imposter syndrome?
00:16:11
No, I've never had. It never had it.
00:16:15
No, I, I'm sorry, I I know what you're talking.
00:16:17
I know what you're talking about, but.
00:16:19
That's that's why I wrote it that way is because you know
00:16:21
some, some people don't. You know, some people don't have
00:16:23
imposter syndrome. The the WGA award, as I
00:16:26
mentioned, felt almost like a memorial service, like I'm dead,
00:16:31
but here's the corpse standing here, kind of a.
00:16:35
Well, I can see that. The awards are only given, it's
00:16:37
a lifetime award, so you only get one.
00:16:39
You only, you only have a chance to get one, right.
00:16:42
So it isn't like you know you're going to get an Oscar every
00:16:44
year. It's like this is it, this is a
00:16:46
culmination. It's.
00:16:47
Like, all right, you've done your work.
00:16:48
I'm like, I'm not done. But very importantly though, I,
00:16:50
I think that the award I got was for my efforts in helping to
00:16:54
unionize through the Writers Guild animation.
00:16:57
Because the, the animation that I've, I'm, I live in a union
00:17:02
home. I mean, I'm in, I've been in
00:17:03
three unions, Canada, the WGA and, and I, Otzi and my wife's
00:17:07
in SAG. So we're pro union.
00:17:10
There's no way around that. But my efforts were to get more
00:17:14
animation covered by the Writers Guild.
00:17:17
And we sometimes, occasionally a foreign country will approach,
00:17:21
not a country, but a foreign company will approach and, and
00:17:26
you're able to say to them, hey, can you make this WGA?
00:17:29
Because everybody's doing it and they'll, they'll be fooled into
00:17:32
thinking that they have to do it.
00:17:34
So I was happy that I was able to get some riders covered by
00:17:38
the riders. Yeah, no, that's good.
00:17:40
That's good work because I mean, like, you know, if, if, if you
00:17:43
can help others, you know, do it right.
00:17:46
And, and that that that is a very admirable thing to, to kind
00:17:49
of go on the behalf and make sure that other people who are
00:17:52
in your field are, are being recognized the way they should
00:17:54
be. And that was 15 years ago, and
00:17:56
there's still a lot of work to. Be.
00:17:57
Oh yeah, absolutely. In terms of organizing.
00:17:59
Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's across the industry is, is
00:18:02
there's still a lot of work to be done, but there has been
00:18:04
progress. So I mean, it's good.
00:18:07
So staying in that line, what was a moment that you said you
00:18:11
were able to say to yourself, man, I've, I've made it.
00:18:13
I'm doing what I want. I'm doing.
00:18:15
I'm still waiting for that I'm. Still waiting for that moment.
00:18:18
And I look back now, I mean, the book that I wrote Beyond the Bat
00:18:21
is about, you can tell if you read it, it's, it's written by
00:18:25
someone who's looking back, right?
00:18:27
Did I do the right thing here? Did I do the right thing there?
00:18:30
Did I make a mistake? Do I feel justified in what I've
00:18:33
done? Do I feel satisfied with what
00:18:34
I've done? And the answer is largely yes.
00:18:37
You know I made it to semi retirement, still doing a little
00:18:41
bit of work, right? And and you transition exactly
00:18:45
right into my next question here.
00:18:46
So last year you released Beyond the Bat, Secrets of the
00:18:48
Superhero Scribe. How's the reception for the book
00:18:51
been so far? Pretty good.
00:18:53
I mean, the reviews are good. They're mostly from my friends,
00:18:56
so if you happen to read it, please offer what you think.
00:19:00
Yeah. I'm I'm definitely going to read
00:19:02
it once I get a chance here. My my wife downloaded some
00:19:07
ChatGPT and we asked it to write a review of the book just to
00:19:12
see, you know, Yeah. And of course it's real
00:19:14
flattering. And then I thought, well, you
00:19:15
know what? ChatGPT write a negative review
00:19:19
of the book knowing that the thing couldn't have read it.
00:19:23
And it the review it wrote, I thought, yeah, there's makes
00:19:26
some good points here. I've I've I've started using
00:19:32
ChatGPT as a research assistant, but then I will I have to double
00:19:36
check the sources because. It makes up some stuff.
00:19:38
It does so like a lot of times I'll go OK, it says this, let me
00:19:41
go to the website. That website doesn't exist.
00:19:43
All right, X that out things like that.
00:19:45
You know, but I got I'm I'm it's it's it's with all the things
00:19:49
with AI. The one thing that I will give
00:19:51
it praise for is it at least will do I I call it better
00:19:56
Google because it at least will put things together for me.
00:19:59
So then I can like essentially point my research.
00:20:04
It's quick. It is.
00:20:06
And it can, it can do pictures. I have a friend who's doing a, a
00:20:10
children's book called Mudflap. And he used AI to do the
00:20:14
illustrations. And I thought the the torment he
00:20:19
went through with AI because you know, AI, he'll say to AI, OK,
00:20:23
this is a Gopher reading a book with glasses and it'll do an
00:20:27
image, but the Gopher won't have the glasses, right?
00:20:30
And then he'll say, OK, no, no, it's a Gopher with glasses.
00:20:33
And then it's a person with glasses and it's no, no, he
00:20:37
almost went crazy from doing. That yeah, yeah, I got well, I
00:20:40
have learned that I can't rely on ChatGPT to do everything for
00:20:43
me. Yeah, it's again.
00:20:44
Yeah, not yeah. Yeah, you know, I, I kind of
00:20:46
like the idea of when I do do it, it's hey, point me in the
00:20:50
right direction so I can like kind of focus my, my, my, my
00:20:53
research. And it does help out because
00:20:54
then now I'm not looking up like 30 different people that happen
00:20:58
to have a similar name to Stanberg, which or something
00:21:00
like that. And there are some.
00:21:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so your book itself, it
00:21:06
mixes memoir with with craft lessons, which which early
00:21:10
experiences like in your journalism, in your TV writing,
00:21:13
how how's that most changed how you how you wrote for for.
00:21:17
The early experiences. You mean like the early
00:21:20
experiences that went into? It one of my first jobs after
00:21:22
film school was working on the crew of a low budget film.
00:21:26
And when you think of work, maybe not you, but when it when
00:21:30
I thought of work, at that time, I thought about my father, who
00:21:34
for my entire life and his most of his working life, he'd get up
00:21:38
in the morning, he'd go to work and then he'd come back and we'd
00:21:41
have dinner and that would be that.
00:21:43
So you, you're thinking in terms of a nine to five job.
00:21:45
But being on that one film crew, you realize, no, no, it's a 5 to
00:21:49
9 job. Yeah.
00:21:50
That's all you do all day. And I've, I've found that
00:21:54
occasionally when when people have broken that rule and it's
00:21:58
like, no, no, no, I've got to leave here at six O clock every
00:22:00
night. It is.
00:22:01
It's disaster for their careers. Yeah.
00:22:03
Once you take a job on a show or on a feature or something, that
00:22:07
is your whole life, right. With luck, you'll be able to
00:22:11
maybe have a Saturday night off or something.
00:22:13
Yeah, but I do remember, you know, working on New Year's Eve,
00:22:17
working on Christmas Eves, you know, and that's what you do.
00:22:21
Yeah, No, I I definitely get that both of us have regular
00:22:25
jobs, while all of us have regular jobs and we.
00:22:28
But are they they kind of like 9 to 5 where you have steady
00:22:31
hours? I work about 50 to 60 hours a
00:22:33
week, yeah. And then on top of that,
00:22:35
everything we do with this on this, and I do this because this
00:22:38
is my passion. I I enjoy doing this stuff.
00:22:39
So so yeah, no, I I get that. I definitely understand that.
00:22:44
My, my family's also very pro union.
00:22:46
Everybody's been in the union. You know, we, we work sign in
00:22:49
display on all that. So we tend to, we tend to be the
00:22:53
unions that set up shows like this.
00:22:54
Oh. Great.
00:22:54
Yeah. So going back to the book here
00:22:57
in Beyond the Bat, you mentioned working with big personalities
00:23:00
and I know you mentioned working with Stanley and and couple
00:23:03
people within the book. Were there any stories that
00:23:05
didn't make it into the book? Yeah, a bunch of them.
00:23:09
That's that scandalous stuff we were talking about before we
00:23:11
went on the micro. Yeah, yeah.
00:23:13
So. So we won't.
00:23:14
We won't help anybody. Very brief X-rated career.
00:23:17
Oh yeah, yeah. Actually, you gave us almost a
00:23:20
story about that earlier. Again, without names, that's
00:23:22
still a pretty good story. What?
00:23:28
What's been the best experience in in your entire journey as a
00:23:31
whole? I, I don't really well, you
00:23:36
know, winning Emmys was, was fun because that, that's sort of,
00:23:40
it's like a punctuation mark. It's like, OK, you, you guys did
00:23:43
good work and I was part of that team and I was very happy to, to
00:23:48
have won them. So that was nice.
00:23:51
But you know, and then personal stuff, getting married, you
00:23:53
know, having, having a long marriage, that's, that's very
00:23:57
important to me too. And and you know, and kind of
00:24:01
having enough money to sort of retire and not have to worry
00:24:03
about putting food on the table constantly.
00:24:07
So that having that, that element of security, again, part
00:24:11
of that came from the unions in form of pensions and and long
00:24:15
term healthcare, right. So.
00:24:18
It's been that. I mean, it sounds like it's been
00:24:20
a good journey for the most. Part yeah.
00:24:22
I didn't think it would be. I mean, if you'd asked me, if
00:24:24
you'd asked me when I was 25, I I would have been very
00:24:28
pessimistic. But but you know, you hang on
00:24:30
and and there's stories about friends always hanging on.
00:24:34
I have one friend who is an actor who is living in a camper
00:24:38
in a in a parking lot in on Hollywood Blvd. when he's 40.
00:24:42
And then all of a sudden, just everything started happening for
00:24:44
him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:46
I've heard so many stories about things like that, like. 40 and
00:24:49
40, you know what I'm thinking? No, no, no.
00:24:51
It's never. Good luck, pal.
00:24:52
It's not going to happen. And then he just continued.
00:24:55
There was no, there was no safety net, right?
00:24:58
And you know that expression. Let's burn the boat so we can't
00:25:01
retreat. So he had done both and.
00:25:04
I, I always think any time I hear those, these stories, and
00:25:06
especially when people are like, if you didn't make it in your
00:25:08
20s, you're not going to make it.
00:25:10
Harrison Ford was was was was not the youngest guy when he
00:25:14
when he broke the Star Wars. Let's see, he would have been
00:25:19
he. Was in his mid to late 30s.
00:25:21
Yeah. Yeah, you know it.
00:25:23
Seems a little different because sometimes actors don't really
00:25:27
come into their their appearance, their physical
00:25:30
appearance until they're a little older sometimes,
00:25:34
sometimes not, you know? Same thing.
00:25:36
I mean, Ryan Reynolds had a lot when he was younger, but he's
00:25:39
got a huge break right now. He was I think 36 when he went
00:25:42
really did Deadpool, you know, So it was the first movie, you
00:25:46
know, I. I wouldn't want to be a writer
00:25:48
starting out at 40. Yeah, a write a screenwriter.
00:25:51
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because people look at you and
00:25:54
go, yeah, what was wrong with what you were doing?
00:25:56
You know, for the last 20 years, probably a novelist.
00:26:01
Novelist could start young. When I was growing up, the the
00:26:05
first books that I read that didn't have pictures in them
00:26:09
that that I, you know, went out of my way to buy because I like
00:26:12
them, We're Ian Fleming books. Oh yes.
00:26:14
And Fleming famously started created James Bond at the age of
00:26:18
40. Right, based on his cousin.
00:26:21
Well, it's based on his own experiences too, right?
00:26:25
In World War 2, right? And a lot of it is based on a a
00:26:28
middle-aged man about to get married.
00:26:30
Think trying to find exciting stuff to think about.
00:26:34
Yeah, that's that's awesome. I I I I'm also a fan of Ian
00:26:39
Fleming in general. Have you read the books and the
00:26:41
original? Version I read the original
00:26:43
Casino Royale. With all the racial stuff in.
00:26:45
It Oh my God, yes. And and the prostitutes.
00:26:47
I, I tried, I tried to look past some of that stuff and look at
00:26:50
the actual writing on there. And I know again, some
00:26:52
screenwriters were good at doing that because there's two
00:26:54
versions of Casino Royale that came out and the second one was
00:26:57
a good. Oh, did you see the first one?
00:26:59
Oh. My God, worst movie ever made.
00:27:01
So it was, it was just, it was it.
00:27:04
I'm pretty sure that was intended to be a comedy, that
00:27:09
movie, just like it was. Laid there.
00:27:11
Yeah, it just, it wasn't serious at all.
00:27:14
There was no like, how, how do you make a movie that's that
00:27:17
unserious based on a franchise that's already out there, like
00:27:20
James? Bond They thought they were
00:27:21
making a parody of it that everybody would laugh at.
00:27:23
I guess. It wasn't funny.
00:27:26
They would have. They would have been better to
00:27:27
have just spent the the budget on having the film makers
00:27:31
because Orson Welles, Woody Allen, John Houston, Peter
00:27:36
Sellers, David Niven, all those people.
00:27:38
If you just sat around a lunch table and had them talk for two
00:27:41
hours, it would have been better movie I'd.
00:27:43
Been more entertaining, especially with all those
00:27:45
people. Oh man.
00:27:47
And again when they when they finally went and redid it for
00:27:50
for the update on the series like it was a serious take on
00:27:53
the on. The That was a good movie.
00:27:54
That was the best one that he said he.
00:27:56
Did Yeah. Easily one of my favorite
00:27:57
movies. So what have you learned about
00:28:03
yourself from from you and your 20s to all the way to now?
00:28:06
What have you learned about yourself that has you know what
00:28:08
has changed about you since you've gone down this path?
00:28:16
I I I don't know if other people would notice, though.
00:28:19
The the big changes that I think happen in a life are puberty.
00:28:27
Yeah, You know, when you when that happens, you know, maybe
00:28:35
marriage would be another one. And a change for me was went
00:28:40
from being poor to having money, right.
00:28:44
And, and what the way, the way I knew that I was no longer poor
00:28:49
was that I could afford to have a jacket that I could keep in my
00:28:53
car all the time. I didn't have to have it hanging
00:28:57
up in the closet because I had other another.
00:28:59
Jacket there, right? Right.
00:29:01
And the same was true for dental floss.
00:29:03
I could keep dental floss in my glove compartment and have a
00:29:07
second dental floss in my apartment.
00:29:10
So you kind of sense. Well, yeah, you know what?
00:29:12
Maybe I have some security here. Having security, I guess is.
00:29:16
And a lot of people never, never reached that stage, I don't
00:29:19
think. So before we jump into our wrap
00:29:22
up questions here, is there any project that you've ever wanted
00:29:26
to be a part of that you just were never, never able to get a
00:29:28
get on? So I would like to be part of
00:29:30
the next James Bond film. Nice.
00:29:31
And I don't think they should look for the next Sean Connery.
00:29:35
I think they should look for a 20 year old.
00:29:37
And I think the story should be becoming Bond or being Bond and
00:29:40
have it start probably in his second year of college.
00:29:44
I like that. I like that.
00:29:46
I I kind of felt like, you know, they, they brushed on that with
00:29:49
Casino Royale about like kind of like, OK, how you got double O
00:29:52
status, but I do like the idea of him coming up in MI 6 and,
00:29:56
you know, even be. Not even getting there.
00:29:57
Yeah. I mean, being a college student,
00:29:59
a guy who doesn't know where what he's going to be doing.
00:30:01
Right, that's that's. They're not going to do that.
00:30:03
I'm sure they'll be looking at, you know, they they won't be
00:30:05
able to find a 20 year old version of Sean Connery.
00:30:08
Yeah. And MGM is going to want to jump
00:30:10
up and get as much money as they can now that they have the right
00:30:12
the full rights. So for Amazon I mean.
00:30:15
Well, maybe you know what, now that I think about it, Maybe
00:30:18
Amazon should do like a limited series where he's 20 and, and,
00:30:25
you know, a college student not even thinking about the Secret
00:30:27
Service. And then get him to the point
00:30:30
where he joins and then do the feature films in the theaters
00:30:34
where he's, he is James Bond. Because that could be it's, it's
00:30:37
what's nice about that is that is something where you can talk
00:30:41
about formative years. What?
00:30:42
What kind of put? What formed him?
00:30:44
What? How does somebody become that?
00:30:46
Right? That's a big question.
00:30:48
Right. Like, how do you, how do you go
00:30:49
into the, the, the, the, the type of mind and, and get into
00:30:53
the form of thinking that James Bond has, by the time he's in
00:30:56
his, you know, 30s forties, becoming a, a double O status
00:31:00
agent, you know, things like that.
00:31:01
Like, yeah, like there's, there's got to be an entire
00:31:03
story that turns him into that person.
00:31:05
You know, how does he become the womanizing man that he is?
00:31:08
You know, he has to have bad experiences with women as as as
00:31:11
or good experiences with with, with women at a young age.
00:31:15
I would think that they would be throwing themselves at him from
00:31:18
from a young age where he never had to try and they were just
00:31:21
always there I would think. But again, that's just my
00:31:23
version that will never be made. You never know again.
00:31:27
I know Amazon said something about they want that.
00:31:30
They want to start doing a lot of like TV shows before movies
00:31:33
and stuff like that. So you never knew?
00:31:35
Marvel. I mean, that's Marvel, yeah.
00:31:37
They've used that model, right? Yeah, we'll see.
00:31:41
So let's jump into some wrap up questions here.
00:31:44
So I'm going to, I'm going to ask you the hardest question
00:31:47
that you're ever going to be asked in your life.
00:31:49
Are you ready for this? Yeah.
00:31:51
All right. What is your favorite kind of
00:31:53
Taco? Oh, we go on Taco Tuesdays.
00:31:56
It's the ground beef in the crispy shell.
00:32:00
OK, that's easy with all the with all the trimmings on it,
00:32:03
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:05
Yeah, that's that's not a hard question.
00:32:07
It's it's just it, it tease people up because then they're
00:32:09
like, oh man, hard. Oh, that's easy.
00:32:11
Come on, you know it's a. Hard shell with ground beef
00:32:13
because they don't give you ground beef in the in the soft
00:32:15
shell. Or at least the restaurants I go
00:32:17
to. So I can talk.
00:32:21
About a lot of different subjects.
00:32:24
What's some, what's some quick advice that you might have for
00:32:26
somebody trying to get into the industry?
00:32:28
So nothing like super crazy, but like, you know something you
00:32:30
wish you would have known when you're when you were coming up.
00:32:35
Well, no, I, I there, there is no new stuff I can give you.
00:32:38
Just don't be discouraged. Keep writing, make as many
00:32:42
friends and contacts as you can. There was a a kid who who goes
00:32:45
to Loyola Miramount who came by the booth today who was
00:32:51
interested in getting into business.
00:32:52
And I told him, you know, make as many friends as you can in
00:32:56
college because they're these are the people who are going to
00:32:59
end up hiring you or who you will end up hiring, right.
00:33:02
So make, make those contacts. But again, I knew all that.
00:33:06
It just took it took forever to to get it all to make it work.
00:33:10
Yeah. I mean, I it took from I
00:33:13
graduated when I was, I got my degree MFA at age 23 and I
00:33:18
didn't start making a full time living as a writer until I was
00:33:21
35 S 12 long years. Yeah, yeah.
00:33:27
So another question here. Who who would win in a fight?
00:33:32
Bruce Wayne in his prime or Terry McGinnis in him in his
00:33:37
prime? Well, I never wrote for Terry in
00:33:40
his prime, but Bruce, of course, Bruce, because he would have
00:33:43
used some psychological trick that Terry had not figured out.
00:33:46
Yeah. Yeah, because later on in the in
00:33:48
the entire series. And so when when they get into
00:33:50
Justice League, it turns out Terry is a semi clone of of
00:33:55
Bruce, you know, so it's like. I didn't write that.
00:33:58
Yeah, but it was interesting. They they expanded on it in the
00:34:01
comic books, but it was just kind of like it was, it was an
00:34:04
interesting thing, you know, and it kind of like throws a wrench
00:34:06
into this whole idea of Terry being independent of Bruce.
00:34:10
Yes, I know. Yeah.
00:34:13
So what's next for you? I've got a couple shows coming
00:34:15
up here. Well.
00:34:15
What's next is today we're talking here at the LA Comic
00:34:18
Con. Next week I'm going to be at the
00:34:19
Dallas Comic Con, and at the end of October I will be at a
00:34:24
Cincinnati Comic Con. I will always be in the booth of
00:34:30
James Fletcher's heroic Fine Art, where you can buy loads and
00:34:35
loads of cells and Alex Ross's work and all kinds of stuff.
00:34:40
So I'll be there along with Dan Reba in in both Dallas and
00:34:44
Cincinnati, and Dan illustrated the book.
00:34:46
I was going to say he illustrated the.
00:34:47
Book and Dan is a fine, fine artist and he'll be doing he'll
00:34:52
be doing artwork there while you wait.
00:34:54
You can go to him, get a Commission and he will draw you
00:34:57
something while you wait. So it's I I sit there watching
00:35:00
and, and utter awe of him. That is work.
00:35:02
And there'll be other people there, too, to be determined to
00:35:06
be announced. Yeah.
00:35:07
So Dallas and Cincinnati. All right, well, if you guys are
00:35:11
in Dallas or Cincinnati, make your way over and go and say hi
00:35:14
to Stan Berkowitz. Great.
00:35:15
Where can where can everybody follow you if they want to learn
00:35:18
more? Any social media or any website?
00:35:20
Facebook. Facebook.
00:35:22
Yeah, just Stan Berkowitz. Yeah.
00:35:24
All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen,
00:35:25
thank you for tuning into comic conversation again.
00:35:28
Thank you Stan for taking your time out of your day and talking
00:35:30
with me. Thank you.
00:35:31
It's a pleasure. Absolutely thank you and guys
00:35:33
remember keep nerding together. Well we hope you enjoyed this
00:35:36
weeks. Comic conversation.
00:35:41
This was the production of the Distance Nerding podcast and
00:35:44
Time for Tacos Media. For more content, follow us on
00:35:46
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok all
00:35:50
at Distance Nerding. If you enjoy our content, please
00:35:52
leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
00:35:55
you get your podcasts. Thanks and keep nerding
00:35:57
together.