Susan Olsen | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

In this wide-ranging conversation, Billy delves into Susan Olsen’s life before, during and after The Brady Bunch. They trace her path from six-year-old Gunsmoke guest to Cindy Brady, unpacking the Brady casting process, on-set dynamics, the short-lived Brady Bunch Variety Hour, and the realities of childhood fame—stage fright, typecasting, and why therapists still use Brady reruns with kids. They swap vintage-TV lore (Pat Boone, Don Ho, “fake Jan”), explore the show’s appeal to Gen X latch-key viewers, and discuss how those lessons inform Olsen’s work running a performing-arts school today Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  There are countless people that have come up to me and said, "That show literally saved my life."

• 0:35Billy Corgan?

  It makes warm my heart because I don't feel alone in this feeling.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you're not alone at all.

• 0:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, when you say fame to me, I know what it means. I mean, I really know that feeling of like, there's no manual. So then you're famous and the show's over. So what's your mindset?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  To some extent, I felt guilt.

• 0:51Billy Corgan?

  Guilt?

• 0:54Billy Corgan?

  Well, thank you so much for being here.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 0:59Billy Corgan?

  So I'm obsessed with Gunsmoke, so that's where I want to start.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I love it, yes.

• 1:04Billy Corgan?

  I'm obsessed with, I bought like every Gunsmoke episode ever. Like, it's like 800, it's like some, it's like something, you gotta be something wrong with you to watch them all. And I've watched a lot of them.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  It was on what, 20 years?

• 1:18Billy Corgan?

  Something like that. You know, one interesting thing about, that you, because you were on the show, was they debated for many years whether or not James Arness would get with the woman, whose name I can't think of, was played the proprietor of the saloon.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Oh, really? A kitty?

• 1:38Billy Corgan?

  Kitty.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39Billy Corgan?

  Because fans would always say, "Are Kitty and the marshal ever gonna get together?" And they made a decision, kinda like The Simpsons did, where they decided never age Bart. They made a decision that the secret of the show's success was that they never get together romantically.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:57Billy Corgan?

  They would hint at it.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  That was good.

• 1:59Billy Corgan?

  Like maybe a one night stand, but never together. And they believed that had to do with the longevity, that they never gave away.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  That's it, yes.

• 2:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Keep that tension.

• 2:08Billy Corgan?

  So, obviously you were very young when you were on the show, seven years old or so.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I was, well, on Gunsmoke, I was six for the first episode. And speaking of, you know, romantic relationships, the mother, the story is about a mother, a widow, with two children, and of course I was one of them. Festus is sweet on her.

• 2:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  And it played really well with the audience, so they did a second episode, and they were thinking about having him get hitched. And so, I might have been a regular on Gunsmoke.

• 2:49Billy Corgan?

  Abelia?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:51Billy Corgan?

  Was the episode one?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:53Billy Corgan?

  A Man Called Smith?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Yes. Earl Hallam played the father.

• 2:59Billy Corgan?

  So, the nerd in me wants to know what it would be like to be on a set like that. I mean, obviously you were a kid, but did you have a memory of like?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Oh, totally.

• 3:09Billy Corgan?

  Like this, because it was the whole, and I watched some of the scenes that you were in, it's like the whole city, you know, all the buildings and the carts going by with the horses and all that.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't see that until the second episode.

• 3:22Billy Corgan?

  Okay, maybe that's the clip that I saw.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  The first episode was all, like, took place at our house, and it was rural, and the second episode was especially fun because the kids were entering our animals in a fair. So, we had a goat, and then we had this adorable piglet named Thomas. And so, you know, I got to work with the piglet, and I have Ellie May Clampett syndrome, so I was over the moon about that.

• 3:59Billy Corgan?

  So is that, is that something you reflect on fondly? I mean, it's such a distant memory, but it must be kind of cool, you know?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I reflect very fondly. One of the most fond things is Ken Curtis, who played Festus.

• 4:11Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  And I don't know how many people know this, but he, he was also a big band singer.

• 4:20Billy Corgan?

  Did not know that.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he had a beautiful voice and.

• 4:25Billy Corgan?

  He had a kind of a melodious way of talking, which is interesting.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I, I think, I think musical instincts get used in everything you do. And, and my mom overheard him, because he would, he would pretty much stay in character. Yeah, yeah, that voice.

• 4:44Billy Corgan?

  Even, even with the cameras on?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, but when we'd rap, then like he's on the phone and my mom's, my mom's just thinking, gee, that man has a sexy voice and turns around, it's Festus. He was actually a really good looking man with a beautiful speaking voice, a beautiful singing voice, and I was enthralled with the fact that he could change so drastically. I thought, wow, that's a real actor. And he was so freaking nice. I mean, he was so sweet, considerate and, you know, praising, just a dream to work with.

• 5:26Billy Corgan?

  You know, James Arness was sort of handpicked almost by John Wayne.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 5:33Billy Corgan?

  John Wayne had a lot to do with the opening of Gunsmoke as a show. He kind of endorsed not only the show, but also endorsed James Arness. So he has got this, you know, this kind of magisterial presence and all that. That's what I love about the show. It's, it, it obviously is set in the old west, but has this kind of mythical quality that a lot of the great.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, bigger than life. And I didn't get to, I don't know if I even had a single scene with, with Arness.

• 5:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  But.

• 5:58Billy Corgan?

  I would think you would remember because he was a big guy.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I, because he wasn't on the set, I used to sit in his rocking chair.

• 6:09Billy Corgan?

  So I know your family had some tie to show business and your brother and stuff like that, but I mean, as a six-year-old, are you like, are you conscious like, I'm in show business?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, very much so.

• 6:22Billy Corgan?

  Can you walk me through that a little bit?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, OK, it's such a, it's so weird. There's four kids in the family and every one of us got discovered. It began with my brother Larry, who, he was 24 when I was born. So I mean, there's a big age gap, yeah. Yeah, and there's 10 years between, between he and my next brother, and then eight years between him and my sister. They were supposed to be done, but then I came along. Big surprise.

• 6:53Billy Corgan?

  The biggest of them all.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Well, as it turned out, but it began with my, my oldest brother, who, who looked like a cherub. He's a beautiful, beautiful child. And a lady pulled up their car, my mom and, and, and his name is Larry Joe, they were standing on a street corner, waiting to go across to have lunch.

• 7:16Billy Corgan?

  Like something out of a movie.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. I mean, I don't know how many people will believe it if I ever get off my butt in my, my memoirs. But so, so, you know, she pulls over the car, she hands mom her card and says, is this little boy in pictures? And she said, no.

• 7:35Billy Corgan?

  Pictures.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Pictures, moving pictures.

• 7:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, we'll go way back.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  And she goes, well, he should be, he's beautiful. And they're looking for a little boy just like this. Have him at Fox Studios tomorrow at 4 o'clock. My name is Lola Moore, and you know, this is my card, I'm an agent, and so, you know, take him on this audition, I think he'd be perfect. So, you know, mom goes to lunch, she's having lunch with her mother, and her mother says, oh, I've been praying for this.

• 8:06Billy Corgan?

  I wish I had a grandmother praying for me to be in movies.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, she was a good prayer. So she was thrilled, she's like, well, you know, this is an answer to a prayer, and you must take him. And mom goes home, tells my dad, my dad says, no way, no way.

• 8:27Billy Corgan?

  So no stage parenting here?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:30Billy Corgan?

  Strictly like something from the sky.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  My dad used to bribe me every season to quit Brady Bunch.

• 8:37Billy Corgan?

  We'll get there.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so he's like, no way, no, that's not happening. And mom goes, oh, come on. He's not a professional.

• 8:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  I'd love to see what the inside of a studio looks like.

• 8:49Billy Corgan?

  It sounds like a fun adventure, yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he goes, well, okay. So she goes and then my brother ends up walking out of the audition with the script in hand. And he has the part in a movie called Happy Land with Donna Michie and Frances D.

• 9:06Billy Corgan?

  Wow, okay. Not insignificant, yeah, yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yes, well, so he starts working. Well, 10 years go by and my next brother was born. And for lack of a babysitter or something, mom takes him on the subject. My brother Larry is working.

• 9:24Billy Corgan?

  I see where this is going.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. A director or producer walks on the set, takes one look at my brother Chris, who is 14 months old and says, that baby, he has a mouth like Gene Tierney. I need a child to play Gene Tierney's son for this movie called The Iron Curtain.

• 9:46Billy Corgan?

  Gene Tierney, who was discovered standing in the like the Universal Tour line.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Really?

• 9:52Billy Corgan?

  Did you not know that?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  No, I did not.

• 9:54Billy Corgan?

  That's how she was 16, 17. They literally discovered her standing in the line.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, wow.

• 10:01Billy Corgan?

  And if I'm wrong, it's it might be Ava Gardner. But I'm pretty sure Gene Tierney was discovered the same way.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Well, and there's those drugs, drugstore.

• 10:11Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah, then Lana Turner and all that, yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  I mean, that's how it happened. That was how the magic happened back then. So he started.

• 10:18Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't want to.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And then then my sister came along. And of course, my dad was putting his foot down, saying, no, no, no, but my mom won. And so he started working.

• 10:27Billy Corgan?

  Your parents made some TV ready babies because.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  They did, they had cute kids. And my brother Chris is most known for, he played the child in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

• 10:38Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  With Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day.

• 10:41Billy Corgan?

  I don't remember that one.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Alfred Hitchcock.

• 10:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And he was the first person to record Que Sera Sera.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:51Billy Corgan?

  Good history.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then my sister comes along. She gets discovered to be in a commercial or something.

• 10:58Billy Corgan?

  This is like, it's almost too good to be true.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  I know, I know. Nobody, nobody will ever believe it.

• 11:03Billy Corgan?

  I believe you.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  And she was almost in The Sound of Music, but I came along, the big surprise package. And I don't know, my, my sister still says that she jinxed it because she didn't want to have to go to Europe when mom was having a baby. So anyway, so she didn't do that, but she did, she did several pilots for TV shows and one of them sold and she would have been on a TV show. But it was starring Anne Southern. And, and the sponsors, I think it was Colgate, told her to lose 10 pounds and she told them where to go and no more TV show. So my sister got really frustrated by that and said, I don't want to do this anymore.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  And so my mom, and in the meantime, I got in pick, you know, discovered to do like some commercial.

• 11:53Billy Corgan?

  You did a commercial when you were like a baby, right?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, 14 months.

• 11:56Billy Corgan?

  Do you know how much you made as a baby?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Probably $5. I mean, we got, we didn't get paid much on Brady Bunch.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  So anyway, my sister wants out. My brother Larry has gotten married and, you know, he's out of the business. Chris is out of the business and so mom takes me out and says, I'm going to have a normal life. Everything's going to be perfectly fine. I'll bake cookies, go to the PTA. And when I'm five years old in kindergarten, a talent scout from The Pat Boone Show. I mean, I'm, you know, and it's my, my grandmother all the, the whole world.

• 12:37Billy Corgan?

  Full disclosure, my father hated Pat Boone, but I just need to put that out there. Every time Pat Boone came on the screen, my father would go into a rage.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Really?

• 12:45Billy Corgan?

  He hated Pat Boone. It was like an obsession.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Wow. Well.

• 12:51Billy Corgan?

  You're just triggering a particular memory in my mind.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  I can kind of see that because.

• 12:56Billy Corgan?

  Because I, I, I like Pat Boone, you know.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  But he did these very tame versions of good songs.

• 13:02Billy Corgan?

  I think my father was a musician, so I think that's what set him off.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 13:06Billy Corgan?

  I think it was his version of Tootie Fruity that.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yes. I was thinking of that specifically. Yes. Okay.

• 13:13Billy Corgan?

  See, we got a good psychic thing going on, right?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do.

• 13:16Billy Corgan?

  Come on.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  We do. So anyway, I get picked to sing a song on the Pat Boone Show and

• 13:22Billy Corgan?

  You remember the song?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, "I'm a Believer" by The Monkees.

• 13:25Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. But

• 13:27Billy Corgan?

  Now, that's a good one.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I guess I got picked because I would do all the background instruments. Like, I'd try to sing those along with the lyrics. You know, we were trying desperately to find it now. And here's another psychic, well, maybe not a psychic thing, but a magical thing.

• 13:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  When it was supposed to come on. Well, I screwed up. I screwed up the lyrics. And I was devastated. I messed this up and Pat was saying, "Well, start over again." I'm like, "No, no, can't do that."

• 14:01Billy Corgan?

  It's live TV.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I didn't sing the song. And yeah, I'm just like, "Move along, Pat."

• 14:09Billy Corgan?

  We're on the borderline of trauma and sort of Andy Kaufman-esque, you know.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just like, "No, I don't get another chance."

• 14:17Billy Corgan?

  That's kind of a weird thing to ask a seven-year-old kid to sing "I'm a Believer."

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Well, I got picked because I sang it well.

• 14:24Billy Corgan?

  But it was kind of a tricky song.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  I wasn't at, I mean, that's what I did when they called me in. I was in kindergarten and they wanted to see cute kids.

• 14:31Billy Corgan?

  Did you have musical training?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:34Billy Corgan?

  Okay, just natural.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  No, but we all have. We all had a good year.

• 14:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, music tends to run in the family or not.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. And plus, I was doing all the doodly, doodly, doodly, doodly. So I guess it was really cute, but I'll never know.

• 14:51Billy Corgan?

  But you know what? It's, I do, as somebody who likes this stuff, it's amazing what they keep finding.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yes. I would love to find my sister's pilot for the TV show that she did because we don't have any film on her. You know, we've got plenty on me.

• 15:07Billy Corgan?

  Like, recently, there was something like a Like a Pink Floyd clip or something of them on TV in sixty seven that was considered forever lost.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 15:17Billy Corgan?

  And somebody found it and was able to kind of color correct it and

• 15:20Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 15:21Billy Corgan?

  So after fifty years, here's suddenly this clip, you know, so those things do

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Billy Corgan?

  tend to pop up.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I would love that because I produced a special called Brady Bunch Home Movies and we tried to find a lot of old things that we were told were definitely lost, but if they showed up, that would be great. So anyway, when I, I was mortified to see it on TV because I go home and my mom's going, why didn't you sing it?

• 15:46Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  You know, why didn't you start over again? So the day came for it to air and of course, we have to go over to my mother's friend's house and everybody's gathered around the TV and I'm just, I'm mortified.

• 15:59Billy Corgan?

  Mortified.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, please, God, let there be an earthquake or a fire or something. So I don't have to watch this. Well.

• 16:09Billy Corgan?

  There was an earthquake?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  No, but President Johnson came on and said that we, I think, I think we had invaded Cambodia.

• 16:18Billy Corgan?

  So you were saved?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:21Billy Corgan?

  But maybe that's why there are no copies exist.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  It could be, yeah.

• 16:24Billy Corgan?

  So it never aired?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because it wasn't live TV. It was, it was taped. But, so it never aired and I thought I was really powerful. I didn't, I didn't think I was responsible for the Vietnam War. Well, but I thought, wow, thank you, thanks. I didn't have to see it.

• 16:44Billy Corgan?

  So I'd be remiss to, recently I was in an Elvis doc that came out about Elvis's Comeback sixty eight special and I was friends with his daughter, Lisa Marie. So I love all things Elvis.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:59Billy Corgan?

  And I didn't know you, you had this uncredited moment in an Elvis film where you are singing.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. And you know, at the time.

• 17:09Billy Corgan?

  And it was his last film. It was kind of when it was getting really hot.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Oh, it was.

• 17:13Billy Corgan?

  You didn't know that?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know that. The original...

• 17:15Billy Corgan?

  Is it The Trouble with Girls?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yes, it was originally titled Shitakawa. And nobody knew what the Shitakawa was.

• 17:24Billy Corgan?

  I wonder why he went back to rock and roll.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  And it was actually, it's considered one of his better ones. And I was auditioning for a large role. And I would have had to sing and dance and all this stuff.

• 17:39Billy Corgan?

  Do you remember the auditions?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. And at the time, I wasn't a fan of Elvis.

• 17:44Billy Corgan?

  Sure. But can you just, because I love this stuff because I love old Hollywood. So what would be a typical audition on a picture like that? Do they have you, they talk to you a bit? Are you on camera? Like, just walk me through a little bit of the audition process.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Usually, they would spend some time talking to the child to get to know if they were brat or if they were nice.

• 18:07Billy Corgan?

  That makes sense.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And that's something that really needs to be done.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Then, you know, you would have your sides. You would have your scenes that you've memorized. And you want to be off book to impress them with how well you can memorize.

• 18:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And then, in a case like this, there was also a singing audition. So, and I remember...

• 18:36Speaker 01

  It was a Shirley Temple song, but not a real well-known one.

• 18:42Billy Corgan?

  Obscure Temple.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So, you know, my mother rehearsed me to death.

• 18:51Billy Corgan?

  Are you, by nature, competitive? Are you competitive in this frame set? Or are you just like having fun and it's a thing?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  It's fun. Yeah. I didn't get competitive until later when Jodie Foster was getting all the roles that I wanted.

• 19:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I get that.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And maybe, maybe a little before that because I, I definitely wanted a TV show, a series. I wanted a steady job and I was, you know, very saddened. I, I did an episode of a show called Julia.

• 19:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  With Diane Carroll, very, very ahead of its time show about a single mother, um, working as a nurse.

• 19:30Billy Corgan?

  This is pre Brady Bunch.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And I'm like, and I went, she was the nicest lady and she took me into her dressing room and said, you know, anytime you feel, because there were two other boys on the set. She said, you know, the boys are irritating you. You want any alone time, you can always come to my dressing room. And, and I'm looking around, she had all these posters for the show. All the posters had the two boys in them. I'm like, oh, they're not just guest stars like me. They're, they're on this show. Wow. And I went to my mother afterwards and she goes, they're series regulars. I mean, I want to be a series regular. I want a series. And so she goes, okay, well, you go home, call your, call your agent.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  And I did, I want theories. Okay.

• 20:18Billy Corgan?

  At seven?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Well, actually I was six because it was three days after my seventh birthday. We were in Las Vegas and vacationing and the agent called and said, she has an audition. I said, ah, we're on vacation. She said, well, this is for a series. Oh, okay.

• 20:37Billy Corgan?

  This is for Brady audition?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yes, this was Brady, yeah. But in the meantime, um, I guess I'd been praying a little too hard because there was talk of, um, gunsmoke and I was also up for nanny and the professor.

• 20:53Billy Corgan?

  I remember that show.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And my grandmother, my magical grandmother.

• 20:58Billy Corgan?

  Another unrequited sexual tension between the nanny and the professor.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, very much so. Yeah, I think that.

• 21:05Billy Corgan?

  Who was the professor? Was it Sebastian Cabot?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  No, no, he was, no, he was a.

• 21:10Billy Corgan?

  That was the other show.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Can't think of, yeah, he was kind of good looking guy.

• 21:15Billy Corgan?

  Was it Bill Bixby?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  No, not that good looking.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  He died young.

• 21:21Billy Corgan?

  A guy's doing a spit take. What are you talking about, Susan?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  No, he's no longer with us. So I was free to say that. Yeah, Juliet Mills was nanny. I don't remember. It was Richard something. But, um, but anyway, so my, my grandmother with her magical thinking comes to me. She goes, you know, whatever's best. And, and I sound very religious. I'm actually allergic to religion. But I believe a lot in God and I was taught to pray and you know, my prayers tended to come true.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  And, and so my grandma said, okay, now you have these three shows. And, um, whatever's best, God will, will have whatever's best happen, but it wouldn't hurt if you let him know which one you wanted most.

• 22:13Billy Corgan?

  So did you pick?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Well, it was really, I knew I didn't want nanny and the professor because there are only two other boys to play with. And, um, but gosh, Brady Bunch, there's five other kids. But Gunsmoke has horses.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Maybe Brady Bunch.

• 22:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 22:35Billy Corgan?

  Little did you know. So when you auditioned for Brady Bunch, was it Sherwood Schwartz?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Yes, Sherwood Schwartz, John Rich, who directed the first six episodes and,

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Arnold, Jack Arnold, who directed Creature from the Black Lagoon. That's, that's what I knew him for.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  To me, that was his claim to fame.

• 22:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's not a bad claim to fame.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:01Billy Corgan?

  If you're gonna go down.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:02Billy Corgan?

  I'll take it.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. There are a couple of other horror films that he, that he did, but he was a co, he was a producer on Brady Bunch and he had been a producer on Gilligan's Island, which Sherwood Schwartz had done. So I walk in, it's three days after my seventh birthday. They asked me how old I am and I, I told them that it had been my birthday and they all sang Happy Birthday to me. And I thought, well, okay.

• 23:30Billy Corgan?

  I like it here.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are, these are good people.

• 23:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And I never had to do any scenes. I never auditioned as an actor.

• 23:38Billy Corgan?

  They just wanted to see you.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  They wanted, and this was the genius of Sherwood. He rejected or resisted the network wanting to have a smart kid, stupid kid, a fat kid. And he said, no, I want to find six interesting kids and build the show around them.

• 23:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and, and knowing I was gonna talk to you, and I mean, I saw every episode like forty times. It was the nature of, of, of Chicago television at that time. You know, like most people in the seventies, we had the four stations.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:12Billy Corgan?

  And, you know, we'd be home from school and you guys were on like every day.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Billy Corgan?

  So we all saw those episodes, but I guess what I'm after is in watching some of the stuff again, just to kind of put myself back in the headspace. Because I don't, I feel it's not fair to sort of rely only on my memory.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Oh, God bless you.

• 24:34Billy Corgan?

  It's like, it also reconnects you to sort of the three dimensional experience.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 24:39Billy Corgan?

  Because time has a way of changing what you remember.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 24:42Billy Corgan?

  And the thing that really, really jumped out at me very, very starkly was the chemistry between the cast is just magical. It's, it's one of those things.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Billy Corgan?

  Um, I was lucky to talk to Mary Lou Henner in the, in the chair, in the chair where you are. Same thing, taxi, right? Just something about a certain cast.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:07Billy Corgan?

  There's, they have an, almost like a, they almost have a natural thing with each other. It's almost, and it's not family, so it makes it bizarre because it's like, how do you take strangers essentially? Put them in a hopper and, and suddenly it just kind of clicks. Bands are similar too.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:22Billy Corgan?

  Right? There's suddenly just, it's like, there's a rapport and you don't even know why.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, it's even more important with the band because, you know, you're improvising and...

• 25:32Billy Corgan?

  Well, but again...

• 25:33Speaker 01

  You're coming up with your own material and not doing the lines somebody else wrote.

• 25:36Billy Corgan?

  In my, in my, in my elder years here, I've, I've kind of come to this new conclusion that people watching anything, a show, I mean, a live show, a television show, I think they read body language more than they read what's actually being, hear what's actually being said. Something about the body language, I think, gives more information.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  And I'll take it a little further into woo woo.

• 26:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I love it.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  I think, I think that people are far more psychic than they realize and or than they're given credit for. And people will ask me an age old question, what made the Brady Bunch successful like?

• 26:16Billy Corgan?

  There's a new one.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I say, people are psychic and the love between us was genuine.

• 26:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  I mean, the only difference was we didn't fight as much as we did, as the characters did on the show.

• 26:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  We really got along.

• 26:32Billy Corgan?

  So I do want to talk about the Brady Bunch, but I'm, I'm interested in talking about a lot of other stuff. So

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 26:37Billy Corgan?

  So we're gonna, we're gonna, we'll do a little parlor trick here. So September 26, 1969 was the Brady premiere. And then the last show, where are we? My color card here was called The Hairbrained Scheme.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:55Billy Corgan?

  March 8, 1974. ABC cancels the show because ratings had gone down a bit.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 27:01Billy Corgan?

  And you had a five year run.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Well, we also had a five year contract that had to be renewed. And now we were asking

• 27:09Billy Corgan?

  See, that's the real story. That's the real story.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now we wanted to be paid.

• 27:12Billy Corgan?

  They blamed it on the ratings, but it's probably was a money thing. Bobby had a get rich scheme and Greg's hair turned orange.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 27:22Billy Corgan?

  I was, I was struck, just as a quick thing, and I want, do want to circle back, but I was impressed because here's just a partial list of people that were guest stars. Because I was struck by the idea that here you are, you know, between the ages of seven and 12. And, and here are these people floating through your life at a very young age. Desi Arnaz Jr., Davy Jones of the Monkees, Joe Namath, Imogen Coco, Vincent Price, Ken Berry, who obviously did a ton of Disney movies, Jackie Corgan.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:51Billy Corgan?

  Jim Backus from Gilligan, of course, and Mr. Magoo.

• 27:56Billy Corgan?

  Don Ho.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:59Billy Corgan?

  And Natalie Schaefer, who of course played Mrs. Mrs. Howell.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 28:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Were you conscious enough of the zeitgeist of the times to sort of say, be like, oh, my God, it's Don Ho?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yes, not Don Ho. I had no clue who he was, but I thought that his partner was really cute.

• 28:17Billy Corgan?

  Was it blowing bubbles?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, tiny bubbles.

• 28:20Billy Corgan?

  Tiny bubbles. Come on.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  And he sang the song Sweet Someone, but his friend, Sam Kapoo, I think his name was, was really cute. So it's like, oh, but Don was so nice. We went back. Um, we, we, we did a return to Hawaii for the Travel Channel.

• 28:43Billy Corgan?

  I, I remember that.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Really?

• 28:44Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Really? You're one of the five people that saw it. Wow.

• 28:48Billy Corgan?

  That's maybe why we're here together. It was meant to be. I was, I'm being rewarded.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  But Don was wonderful and he gave me a set of Mai Tai glasses, so.

• 28:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 29:01Billy Corgan?

  I just, I just think it's cool because I'd forgotten about the kind of the, the cross-cultural pollination that a show having a zeitgeist moment like The Brady Bunch did in those original series years. It gets into this like, it becomes a snapshot of the America that I remember.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Right, and we had the astronaut.

• 29:20Billy Corgan?

  Buzz Aldrin, maybe?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  No, it was, it was, it was another one. Shoot, I can't remember who. And I was aware kind of of him. Wow, he's.

• 29:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Joe Namath was adorable. So nice. And remains so nice.

• 29:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Okay, so jumping ahead, because before we circle back here. Um, 12 years old, you're famous and the show's over. So what's your mindset at that? And you're, by the way, you're, you're entering those wonderful awkward years that we all get to go through.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Well, surprising you should mention that. Um, I, I, to some extent, I felt guilt because.

• 30:08Billy Corgan?

  Wait, guilt?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I'd been praying for the show to be canceled.

• 30:12Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Because I was going through those awkward years.

• 30:16Billy Corgan?

  Is it because people were recognizing you and?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I, it's bad enough to go through your awkward stage and to feel really ugly, but doing it on national TV is not something I wanted to do.

• 30:32Billy Corgan?

  Let me ask you an aside question because I thought about this with you. And I've known a few other people. There are names that you and I would know, and so would anybody watching. But I don't want to talk about them in that context. But there's something about being that famous at a young age that sort of changes the temperature of a person's life. It's sort of, it becomes a thing. I was famous in my twenties and I still feel at times this weird.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  That's pretty young.

• 31:02Billy Corgan?

  Yes, it's, at the time I thought, oh my God, I'm old and this is too late. But I'm saying there's still that thing that happens, whether you're 40 or 50 or whatever, you're walking through an airport and somebody's like, they want to talk about something that happened 20, 30 years ago. So I have a hard time even imagining what that feels like to a young person who hasn't even had the time to kind of do their own version of it.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:25Billy Corgan?

  So what the question I would ask you is, is do you think it's right that children work at that level in the entertainment industry?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  It's, it's a difficult question because I actually teach children. And my attitude, and a lot of parents don't like this.

• 31:44Billy Corgan?

  Is it a school you have?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  It's, it's, um, it's a performing arts school.

• 31:49Billy Corgan?

  But can you tell us the name?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  It's Vibe Performing Arts in Santa Clarita. And it's mostly music. But we have acting classes, we do musicals, um, voice acting.

• 32:01Billy Corgan?

  So you're in constant contact not only with children, but also the parents who are entering this difficult phase of, I want my child to be successful, or even saying my child wants this, or whatever the rationalizations are, right? And there are talent, like yourself, there are children that are talented.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Oh, there are children where it would be cruel to not let them.

• 32:22Billy Corgan?

  So that's kind of where you land?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  It is because I fought for it. I had to fight my dad because once, you know, my dad thought working was bad enough. But then we were, we were going on concert tour, believe it or not.

• 32:37Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I forgot about that.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:38Billy Corgan?

  And you made albums too.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yes, we did. And there was, there was so much fame. And so me being gone a lot, like going on concert tour bothered dad. And he thought it was too unnatural a life for me. And the fame, you know, having people come up to us.

• 32:55Billy Corgan?

  That level of fame. I mean, that's, that's a level of fame even I don't understand.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  I, the first time I was mom.

• 33:03Billy Corgan?

  Am I wrong? I mean, everybody recognizes you, right?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, they did.

• 33:08Billy Corgan?

  Because back then, people watched, if you watched one of the four channels back then, I mean, everybody really knew who you were.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:15Billy Corgan?

  And by the way, with reruns, that, obviously you grew older, but I mean, you were still on tele, even, you haven't been off television, right? I mean, The Brady Bunch is one of those series that will never go off television.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Well, I hope not.

• 33:28Billy Corgan?

  Especially now with fast channels.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Well, I, and now, you know, streaming, um, yeah. I mean, hopefully it will always be around because I think it's always going to be good for kids. You know, what I thought made it so uncool when I was young. It's like, you know, now I'm a mother and it's like, oh, there's good stories. There are nice, nice morals and, you know, teaching ethics. And so I think, I think it's really, in fact, I, I tell my kids, my students, like, well, you should watch the show. I tell the parents, come on, make them watch. You don't, you have no idea how much it will help you in your parenting.

• 34:01Billy Corgan?

  Do you think though, there should be some, for lack of a better word, is there a limitation that she, I know they have labor laws, but I mean, is there, looking back, what would have helped you? More psychological support, more context? Maybe, maybe a mentor that had been a child star that could at least voice for you. I understand how you feel. Like, what do you think actually would have helped?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Um, I, I really didn't have any issues with it. I, I was born strange and I wanted a strange life and I fought so hard to keep.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  That can be deceiving. I, you know, I was creative. It, it seemed like the right thing for me. There were, there were aspects of it that I didn't like, but, um, but, like in dealing with parents, the wonderful thing is where I'm teaching now, it was different when I taught for a little bit in Hollywood. And there, all of the parents were very serious and they wanted their kids working. And it was like, ew.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Here, I'm like.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I had a parent come up to me and tell me that his daughter ordered in a restaurant with confidence, like he'd never seen before. And he thought it was from the acting classes. I said, it is.

• 35:26Billy Corgan?

  So the good outweighs the bad, you think?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. Now, but what I honestly say to the parents, because we do get agents to come in and the kids will get signed. And I say, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing some work, going to a set. They will find out that it's nowhere near as fun as they think. Where I get concerned is fame. Fame makes everything strange. And I think that when people are casting a TV show, and everything's so different now. But I used to say, if you're going to cast kids in a TV show, you want the TV show to be popular, you want it to be a hit.

• 36:10Billy Corgan?

  If you're gonna do it.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  So plan accordingly.

• 36:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, if you're gonna do it, of course, you want the best.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  So plan accordingly, and you audition those parents. You make sure that the parents have their heads on straight.

• 36:22Billy Corgan?

  That's interesting. Just because I look back at, and I've told this to people behind the scenes, people will ask, like, in the struggles that my band went through in the 90s, people will say, was there anybody that you guys could talk to? No. Was there anybody there who could give you good advice? No. In fact, they wanted us not to have good advice.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 36:46Billy Corgan?

  They wanted to manipulate and control the situation. So that's why I'm saying, maybe because I have young children, nine and six, I'm sensitive, you know, to this idea of like, what it must feel like to kind of...

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Billy Corgan?

  Because when you say fame, I don't know how it would register to someone on the other side of these cameras, but when you say fame to me, I know what it means. I mean, I really know that feeling of like, yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff, and there's a lot of stuff that's like, there's no manual, there's no like, hey, here's the fame manual. Read page seven for what you're going through right now. And so then, to add that to a 12-year-old child going through puberty, going through all the stages of child development, that just seems like a really... Tough thing to navigate.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  But, and I think that was another reason why I wanted the show to end. Because.

• 37:37Billy Corgan?

  Back to your guilds.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and.

• 37:40Billy Corgan?

  You, you, you have a good prayer ability here. I want to talk to you after, I got some things I need to manifest. I'm going to put you in charge of my manifestation department.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  People ask, oh, it must have been so hard because you were so young. And I'm like, no, we had three age groups. We, you know, we had Maureen and Barry. We had Chris and Eve. We had me and Mike. And going through it as the youngest, so much easier. Because we had wisdom.

• 38:12Billy Corgan?

  You were the baby.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Wisdom, we, you know, we'd be concert tour, whatever. And, and like, to us, fame was a joke. It's like, there's all these people wanting to see us. Have they heard us? And, you know, I mean, it, our egos were not thriving on it. Whereas, you know, Maureen and Barry, they were, they were just becoming interested in sex. And suddenly, I mean, Barry's up on stage wearing his fringe and he's got all these girls screaming and.

• 38:46Billy Corgan?

  He is a handsome man. I have, I have.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And then there was Chris, who was such a late bloomer. And, but he, he was so popular with the girls that they made him sing a solo.

• 38:57Billy Corgan?

  Uh oh.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  And they actually had Maureen singing for him backstage, which doesn't make any sense.

• 39:03Billy Corgan?

  That's so bizarre.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because she sounds like, you know, a Minnie Mouse on helium. And, but the girls never heard because they were all screaming so much. Yeah. But Chris didn't like it. And, and, and he was so embarrassed by the fact that the girls would be screaming for him.

• 39:21Billy Corgan?

  Again, the word mortifying comes to mind.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he got over that though, eventually.

• 39:26Billy Corgan?

  I know there's some, I know there's some overlap here, but, okay. So, yeah, the Brady, the, the show's canceled and you, and you willed this into existence. No more Brady Bunch. It's your fault. Um, but you're still doing like animated voiceover work and.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Well, no, that, that pretty much, that ended when, when the show ended.

• 39:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I, I got the wrong information.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  We, the next thing, well, actually.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Boy, and this is a really, really lame tidbit, but we were still going to continue the music, but Barry wanted to do his own solo thing.

• 40:01Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  And Maureen wasn't into it. And Chris, Chris stopped, Chris quit before the show was canceled. We had a last appearance with Chris in Minnesota. And because he hated it. He, you know, he didn't feel like he could sing, and he was right. And, yeah, it was embarrassing to him. So, yeah, at the time, it was like, oh, you're breaking up the band. But I thoroughly understand. But anyway, so the Brady Three were going to go.

• 40:35Billy Corgan?

  The Brady Three?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:36Billy Corgan?

  That's got a kind of a ring to it.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Okay. Me, Mike, and Eve. And at that point, once again, I think I had power. Because we got this whole act done, and we had costumes, and I hated it. I thought it was horrible. I thought we were horrible. And I really didn't want to do it. And we got our booking agent, who was Andy Williams' brother, Don Williams. And we never booked a single show. And I, I was just like, this is great.

• 41:10Billy Corgan?

  He just, he couldn't book it, or he didn't book it, or?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I don't know what happened, but it was just, I was, please, please don't let them, don't let us have to go out and do this.

• 41:22Billy Corgan?

  It's, um, one of the things I love about this ability to have these conversations is, were you aware of the zeitgeist of the show at the time? I mean, obviously, there's the fame.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 41:36Billy Corgan?

  And what I mean by that is not that you didn't see 8,000 screaming kids in an auditorium somewhere.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:42Billy Corgan?

  But did you have any sense that this thing would endure?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the screaming kids didn't happen until we went out, you know, with the music. And so we had been kind of sheltered.

• 41:57Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  And, and growing up in Los Angeles, you know, everybody knows who you are, but, but they pretend like they don't care, which is great.

• 42:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I do, I do, I do find that out here. It's, it's an interesting thing that happens out here.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  And I love that. But so we didn't really know that we were that popular until we went out on the road. And I

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I never had a sense of it being cool until years later.

• 42:26Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Because to me, it wasn't cool. It and I I knew I wouldn't work until I turned 18 and then, you know, I got back in as an adult. And it was not, it did not seem to be a good thing on the resume.

• 42:43Billy Corgan?

  Well, what's interesting now to me is pretend that the Brady Bunch had just happened in this world. And then fast forward, like you'd be in a Netflix movie.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 42:53Billy Corgan?

  Because that level of fame and that level of personal name recognition.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:58Billy Corgan?

  Somebody would figure out to put you in some crazy movie or a comedy or because they would want you.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  The TVQ.

• 43:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:06Billy Corgan?

  Back then, it was like this weird millstone around people's necks, you know.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  It was. And also, you couldn't go from television to movies.

• 43:13Billy Corgan?

  It was verboten.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so to me.

• 43:15Billy Corgan?

  Remember Bruce, I think Bruce Willis, in my memory, was the first person that seemed to cross that barrier.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:22Billy Corgan?

  Where a big TV star into, I know Tom Hanks did it, but it was sort of slow. That's true. He got me there.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  But so, yeah, and when I, you know, I knew I wasn't going to work until I was 18 anyway. And what did you have available? Love Boat and Fantasy Island, which I refused to do.

• 43:43Billy Corgan?

  I wish you'd done Fantasy Island.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  I said, no, these are horrible shows. I'll have nothing to do with them.

• 43:49Billy Corgan?

  If you're bored sometime, there's these great interviews of Ricardo Montalban talking about how Herbie Villachez gets so, his ego gets so out of control that he starts insisting that his trailer be as big as Ricardo Montalban's.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. Oh, tortured little man.

• 44:06Billy Corgan?

  I wish you had inside intel for me on Fantasy Island. Sorry.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:12Billy Corgan?

  That's just my own.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  But I heard, I heard a lot about what was going on. Oh, yes, yes.

• 44:17Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  And the dressing rooms are rocking, don't come a-knocking.

• 44:22Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. Yes, everybody got around quite a bit.

• 44:28Billy Corgan?

  I'm just gonna leave that right there. Um, I know you've done a, is it, is it's a book? Or I can't, something about the variety hour.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yes, I, I.

• 44:40Billy Corgan?

  You did a book?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Well, I'm one of three contributors. I wrote the sidebars.

• 44:45Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  To, um.

• 44:46Billy Corgan?

  But it is a book, right? I'm not crazy.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yes, it is a book.

• 44:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay. I, I'm saying this lovingly, but it, it seems from a distance, a particular hell.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yes, especially at the time.

• 44:59Billy Corgan?

  I barely remember it, like, it's like a faint thousand feet away memory. But watching it, I went, watched the whole show.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Oh, did you?

• 45:08Billy Corgan?

  It was the one with Vincent Price.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Oh, well, he was so, he was so nice.

• 45:13Billy Corgan?

  Rip Torn?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Rip Taylor.

• 45:15Billy Corgan?

  Rip Taylor.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:16Billy Corgan?

  God bless you. Had the, I guess it was.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  The Hell to Pay.

• 45:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, right?

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Called it, yes.

• 45:22Billy Corgan?

  The Hell to Pay?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:24Billy Corgan?

  I love the seventies. But I'm watching this, okay, let me just, let me just, okay, first of all, I, I, I, I have copious notes on just this thing, so you have to take me through this. And I highly recommend it's on YouTube.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I, please.

• 45:39Billy Corgan?

  The Brady Bunch Variety, Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Just watch the show where Vincent Price is the host.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  See, I think that's one of the lesser ones. There is, there's just a sketch that I think everybody should, everybody should see.

• 45:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Called Christopher Columbus sketch.

• 45:54Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Because it's Robert Reed doing broad, broad comedy and happy as a clam. He was loving it, having a great time.

• 46:07Billy Corgan?

  But still, you go from this very, uh, successful series to now you're like in a, like a Vegas review or something. Is that fair?

• 46:20Speaker 01

  I think there are several people on YouTube that have said, you know, I thought this was a bad acid trip that I had and I didn't realize it was real.

• 46:29Billy Corgan?

  And I've taken a lot of LSD, so I wouldn't want to put myself through that is what I'm trying to say. Okay, so let's walk through some of the finer points that I noticed with my discerning eye. First of all, in the opening credits, there's kind of this dancing going on with these people. I don't know.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  The croftet dancers, yes.

• 46:52Billy Corgan?

  Yes, there's a joke in there about crow's feet and the Brady father, he corrects himself. It's like a joke.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 47:00Billy Corgan?

  He calls them the crow's feet. He goes, oh, sorry, the croctet.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 47:04Billy Corgan?

  Anyway, so this is where it gets bizarre land and right out of the box. Okay, so there's this Vegas stuff going on and then they introduce you under your real names.

• 47:19Billy Corgan?

  You know, I mean, see in the opening credits, Florence Henderson and you get all.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 47:26Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  But we're still playing our characters.

• 47:28Billy Corgan?

  So, yes, so you're introduced in the opening credits on a variety show where you then you're playing.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yes, we're still playing a family.

• 47:37Billy Corgan?

  Family.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:38Billy Corgan?

  As if it's real. So just that alone is.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  So it's the Brady's from that sitcom now for God knows what reason have a variety show.

• 47:49Billy Corgan?

  By the way, by the way, put together by Sid and Marty Croft. Okay, you want to talk about acid trip. Okay, now we're, okay. Okay, first of all, canned music, did you tape in front of nobody like it sounds like, is anybody there?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Our grand finale, our final song, usually a medley, we had an audience for that.

• 48:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  But everything canned laughter, canned.

• 48:11Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 48:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay. On top of that, you have, correct me if I'm wrong, because this is the world you've inhabited for a long time, Fake Jan.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:22Billy Corgan?

  There's Fake Jan.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 48:23Billy Corgan?

  Can you explain who Fake Jan was?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Fake Jan is, um, and she was also parodied on The Simpsons. They had, because The Simpsons got a variety show.

• 48:33Billy Corgan?

  That's when you know you've made it.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:35Billy Corgan?

  Fake Jan. I didn't know there was a Fake Jan.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Well, there's a, there's a Christmas Cindy and there's a Fake Marcia.

• 48:41Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:43Billy Corgan?

  Get the heck out of here. Okay, but tell everyone who Fake Jan was.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Okay, Fake Jan, Eve Plum had done Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, this TV movie that was huge and just broke her image and she was off to the races. She's going to have a great career. And she was contractually signed to do the sequel, which was called Alexander, The Other Side of Dawn. And so they, they replaced her. And, um, and it's kind of sad because Eve is enough of a team player that it bothered her.

• 49:19Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  And even though I made, oh, gosh, the one time that Florence Henderson gave me a look that I'm, I'm still shocked that I didn't turn into a pillar of salt. Um, and if looks could kill. We were, they were all talking about Eve and, you know, what, what's she doing, what this and that. And I said, don't we all wish we had something better to do than this show?

• 49:42Billy Corgan?

  Wow. Wow.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Well, Susan.

• 49:46Billy Corgan?

  This is like, you're, you're 14-ish, around here.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Fifteen, yeah.

• 49:50Billy Corgan?

  Okay, good. Okay, carrying on. Uh, so you guys have an opening production number. You're doing some...

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Which is usually something from the 1700s.

• 50:01Billy Corgan?

  Because there's no publishing to pay, so it's free. You're wearing orange jumpsuits.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, the first one.

• 50:07Billy Corgan?

  There's a lot of bad dancing. I, no disrespect to your dancing ability. And then for some reason, there's a built-in pool in the studio.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:16Billy Corgan?

  So then it turns into this Bugsy Berkeley thing where the, where the Vegas dancers, who aren't connected to the family at all, the cro...

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Croftet.

• 50:24Billy Corgan?

  Croftet, sorry. Croftet, I'll remember that. So then they're diving in the water?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:29Billy Corgan?

  And then they're doing like the weird like...

• 50:30Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think what their name was when they were swimming.

• 50:32Billy Corgan?

  But, you know, they're doing like the weird water dancing.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and going through little hoops.

• 50:36Billy Corgan?

  And then they cut back to you guys doing your weird 1700 song.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Well, now remember.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Sidney and Marty Croft also had a show called The Donnie and Marie Show. And they had a skating rink. So they had the skating rink and we had the pool.

• 50:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay, and then if that's not enough for you LSD lovers, here comes H R Puff and Stuff.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:58Billy Corgan?

  Is part of the show.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:02Billy Corgan?

  But, okay. And then there's like this weird segment where you're all sitting on like a long bench and you're talking as Brady characters, but you have this natural rapport because you know each other so well. And then it goes out of there, like the bad can lines, like, I'm really mad at you, Peter.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:20Billy Corgan?

  And all this stuff. And then it goes to like a skit. Like a film skit.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:25Billy Corgan?

  Like a sitcom skit.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:26Billy Corgan?

  But not as well produced as The Brady Bunch.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Right. It's still videotaped. It's very obviously videotaped, but like, you know. But that's, see, that's The Brady's doing their variety show where they're doing skits. But then they have the at-home moments and now we're living at the beach. And Rip Taylor is our real estate agent. And he and Alice, boy, they hit it off. So she's, she's done with Sam the Butcher and she's.

• 51:56Billy Corgan?

  Oh, she's in love now.

• 51:59Billy Corgan?

  And despite this madness that I was watching at 6 a.m. this morning, the chemistry of you all is, is other than fake Jan, God bless her, the chemistry of all is totally intact.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:14Billy Corgan?

  There's so much money there to be had.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:16Billy Corgan?

  With you all, this, you have this incredible kind of weird. I don't even, it's like you really are a family somehow, or you became one.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And, and yet we never had to live together. So we didn't get on each other's nerves. And I, I, I think anytime that they get us together and let us be ourselves, like the HGTV show. It's, it's always good because we have that. It's the most unusual relationship. And then for us kids, we did grow up together.

• 52:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay, that, that makes a lot of sense.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  And we know, like, when I was producing my special Brady Bunch Home Movies, I, I started crying when I was pitching it. I said, we all know that there's only five other people on the planet that will ever really know what our childhoods were like. Yeah.

• 53:09Billy Corgan?

  That is fascinating.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  And if we, if one of us were to die, we would all lose a limb.

• 53:14Billy Corgan?

  See, everyone from the outside sees it outside in and you, you all see it inside, inside. It goes this way, not this way. That's fascinating. Okay, a few guests that appeared on the variety show. Donnie Marie, Tony Randall, Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett, Milton Burr.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:36Billy Corgan?

  Tina Turner. Uh, Charles, who, who I'm trying to interview.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:43Billy Corgan?

  You know, Charles?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  She's lovely, yes.

• 53:46Billy Corgan?

  I'd love to interview Charles. Uh, Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy, Red Fox. And believe it or not, a man I actually was in the studio with today, Paul Williams.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:57Billy Corgan?

  I wrote his song.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  See, he introduces the Christopher Columbus sketch.

• 54:01Billy Corgan?

  Okay, there is our kismet for the day. And here's a little factoid. So in doing my research, Robert Reed, Brady father, was born in the town that I live in, in Chicago. I had no idea. The other, only other famous person born in my town is Grace Lick of the Jefferson.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 54:22Billy Corgan?

  And he was born in the town I live in, which is Highland Park, Illinois.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 54:25Billy Corgan?

  It's one of those things when you, you know, you're doing something, you look and you go, wait, am I reading? Yeah.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Gosh, and that's not a common town.

• 54:33Billy Corgan?

  It's a, it's a bucolic suburb up the coast in, in Chicago.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And then was raised on a turkey farm.

• 54:40Billy Corgan?

  Did not know that.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Away from the city, yeah.

• 54:41Billy Corgan?

  Did not know that.

• 54:44Billy Corgan?

  Florence Henderson obviously had this kind of, I guess you would call a more obvious professional career, pre Brady, and, and hesitated taking the role for the fear that we talked about before, which is this idea of typecasting. And her resume is fairly impressive coming in. Oklahoma, Fanny, Sound of Music, but you know, like a touring cast, but still.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  She was Broadway.

• 55:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, like, yeah, that's not, that's a, that's an elite crew of people.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:09Billy Corgan?

  That's not for the faint of heart to do those eight shows a week.

• 55:14Billy Corgan?

  We've talked about how you and the other kids in the cast sort of reacted to the pressures. In the case of the Brady father and the Brady mother, they're professional. You know, they have a career and obviously would look at it differently. Did you sense, did they feel boxed in by the whole thing? Or was it, because some people that I, that I've talked to, they default to, hey, a working actor is a, is a happy actor. And, you know, I just go on until there's no more job and then I go on to the next job.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's funny because there, there are those two different ways of looking at things. I'm friends with Eric Roberts, who will just work.

• 56:00Billy Corgan?

  He doesn't have this rep now? He's like the, he's like the most working actor ever or something. I saw an article recently where he, they said he literally will take anything and everything. And he's got, he's gained this rep as the, as the most working actor in Hollywood.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Okay. Yes, and, but I understand it. Once I got to know him a little, I mean, it's not like we're best friends. But he was trained at the Royal Academy in England. Now that is the British mindset. If you're not working, you're not acting. So you see a lot of British actors, they'll do, they'll do jobs that are beneath them. But they'll do it because they need to be working. Whereas an American actor will go, gee, if I take that, it might typecast me. Or, you know, I can't do TV because then I can't do movies or whatever. So being that Bob was educated at the Royal Academy as well.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  I would think that he was kind of of the mindset that he wanted to just keep working. I don't know that he felt.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know that any of them really felt that they were hemmed in. Because Florence, her first love was music. So she would go on to, well, she hosted some shows.

• 57:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, there's all these clips of her singing and...

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I mean, that was what she loved to do. She would do a Vegas act. And so it didn't really hamper her from doing those things. But I'm sure that Bob did not get the serious roles that he wanted.

• 57:35Billy Corgan?

  Sure. Not to project on you, because again, you know, it's television. But they're the adults that you're intimately around every day. And I'm not saying they took on the role of parents, but there's a surrogacy there.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yes, there is.

• 57:53Billy Corgan?

  How do you, now that you're a parent yourself and, you know, you've been blessed to have a longer life, how do you view how they... I say more interested in how they were with you. Like, do you look back fondly on?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Very much so, and this is why I'm teaching kids today. I want to pay it backward. Because I had at least three, many more, but at least three castmates who were wonderful. I remember Robert Reed talking to me about cartoons with the very same respect that he would discuss Shakespeare with one of his peers.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  I tended to speak like I was 40 years old when I was seven, and it was cute. But I often didn't get taken seriously, or I'd get laughed at. And Anne was always very good about, "Come here, honey." Because I'd be asking, "Are we going to... Are we going to cut at that point and pick it up later? Or are we going to go straight through?" And I'm seven, you know. And they'd all just laugh. And, "Come here, honey." We're gonna go straight through on this take. And then later on, when we do the close-ups, we'll blah, blah, blah. So, you know, and like, oh, come here. And she didn't like kids when she started the show.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  And I'd like, I'd like to think that we changed her. Just, oh, you know, who wants to be bothered with kids on a set? Most, most actors really don't, you know, they don't want to work with kids or animals. And of course, that's my favorite. But, you know, for me, it's, people were so good and so kind. Ken Curtis, playing Festus, so kind. My mother was, was very aware of who the good grownups were. And a person's value as an actor depended on how well they treated her kid. So Spencer Tracy was a schmuck. And Jimmy Stewart was only outshined by Robert Reed.

• 1:00:02Billy Corgan?

  I heard a myth when I was a kid that I might be loosely related to Spencer Tracy.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:00:07Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Quite an actor.

• 1:00:09Billy Corgan?

  Unconfirmed. I, I have a lot of rumors about my, my, my bloodline.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's a parlor game to do these types of things. But if you hadn't been an, an actor at such a young age, who do you think you would have turned out to be? You know, do you think you, would you have been the same person? Then by extension, what do you think you would have wanted to do with your life?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Um, I probably would have still gotten into art because that was the first thing I knew I could do. And it was always kind of a first love. But I have the feeling that I still would have loved film as like the ultimate medium because it involves.

• 1:00:54Billy Corgan?

  To make film or be in film?

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  To make film. I would have gone to film school, which is something I kind of wished that I had done.

• 1:01:00Billy Corgan?

  It's not too late.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  I'm 63.

• 1:01:05Billy Corgan?

  People are living a long time these days.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Billy Corgan?

  My grandmother lived 103.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Oh, well. The thing is, I was considering USC. And it just, it never. And I don't understand why it didn't click into my head because I was going to go into the drama department there. And then I went, why would I spend all that money? Because it's my money. I've got my trust fund. I'll go to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which is about a tenth of the price. Why it never occurred to me that what I really wanted to do was to go to film school at USC. That was the right place for film school.

• 1:01:44Billy Corgan?

  But is it just because you're in the expectation of I've done this, I've had success and?

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Kind of, and I think I was trying to please my mother. I think my mom really wanted me to be an actress. And it wasn't until I was 23 and I booked a gig. I went, oh, my God. I hate acting. I don't want to act.

• 1:02:04Billy Corgan?

  What was the gig?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  It was an episode of Divorce Court and I played a porn star who had incestuous relations with her brother. And.

• 1:02:14Billy Corgan?

  There's something really perverse about you being from a TV family.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Billy Corgan?

  Playing in another show. And yeah.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Billy Corgan?

  That's a bit of a weird meta take.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I had this little habit of going on auditions and just killing it. Doing a great first read and then, you know, as I got closer and closer to the role, I would self sabotage. And I didn't know that was what I was doing until I came out of the first audition with the script in my hand going, oh, I got it? Oh, no. And then I realized.

• 1:02:49Billy Corgan?

  What would be a form of self sabotage in that?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Um, just sucking, you know, just going back on the audition and not doing a good job. Yeah, and even being nervous and letting the nerves get to me.

• 1:03:01Billy Corgan?

  I mean, you've been on camera for.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I went through a period of time where I was really, really full of stage fright. Just filled with it. I was like 30. And did not, did not want to do it. Sonny Bono was very kind to me. Because I was going through all this stage fright. And before doing a skit that we had to do on this 70s celebration.

• 1:03:28Billy Corgan?

  Would you think that maybe would have been a result of kind of leftover? You know, because you know, it's like when you throw a kid into something early and they don't really know what they're being thrown into, they learn a certain bravado.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:40Billy Corgan?

  My son being okay with being on a roller coaster when he was five, now he doesn't want to.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yes. Johnny Osmond went through it too.

• 1:03:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  And I mean, he had been going on stage.

• 1:03:50Billy Corgan?

  He had a stage fright thing.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. He developed horrible anxiety. So, you know, it happens, but, um, but I, and, you know, I got home, I knew I had to do the gig, but I called my agent, I said, I want out, and I called my teacher. I was going to, I was taking classes with Harry Master George. It was a wonderful class to a lot of people that ended up winning Oscars. And I said, I, you know, this isn't for me.

• 1:04:20Billy Corgan?

  When you, when you, when you approach a subject that's so institutionally over observed, we've had the books, we've had the reunions, we've had the, you know, I mean, the VH1 look, whatever, you know, you're, you've, you've been in that thing for now, gosh. If the show ended in 72, would we 50, 50 something years of, of people talking about it, thinking about it, and obviously there were other things that happened, but I mean, the, the core original series is, is the thing that people focus on. It's where the memories lie.

• 1:04:56Billy Corgan?

  And not to be judge and jury, I found myself thinking like, okay, what is the value of this thing? I mean, I accept that it's a cultural institutional thing of American culture. Like, it belongs in the Smithsonian, it, and there's a, even down to Sherwood Shorts making the decision, it was a, two divorcees who had putting their families together. I was in the same situation, you know? So it was, it was familiar to our generation, you know, that was watching at home. But I started thinking like, what's the real takeaway here? Like? Like, I get it. I think it's cool. And in fact, I meant to tell you, I don't remember. Remember there was the, it was like, there was a play in Chicago that started, the Brady Bunch?

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. Real live Brady Bunch.

• 1:05:41Billy Corgan?

  Okay, that was two hours down from where I was working. So I knew all those people. And I was there, literally, when it started. They would come in the record shop where I was working. They would say, oh, we're gonna do this thing. So I went and saw some of the early performances. And I thought, this is so fun. And, but it took off, you know, it became like a thing.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  It was way fun. We had in LA, Chicago, and New York.

• 1:06:00Billy Corgan?

  Sure. So I mean, I was literally there at ground zero of this other weird variant.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  The Sellois, the sisters they started.

• 1:06:08Billy Corgan?

  But I guess what I'm trying to explain to you, artist to artist, is I'm sitting here thinking this morning, you know, 6 a.m., like, about the Brady Bunch. But it's like, why does this matter to me? And even for anybody watching, saying like, okay, but it's cool, but like, why are you talking about the Brady Bunch 50 years later? Like, how does it really register for some goth musician? And I, and I think I found the key, and I'm curious for your take, and maybe it's not that you would even recognize. I think so many kids of our generation were latchkey kids. And something about watching this fake family, which I know in its own way became a family,

• 1:06:52Billy Corgan?

  it was like, we wished we were in that family, because we didn't have that. And I'm sure you've heard variations of that. And it gives me chills thinking about it, because you're a little kid, you're nine years old, you're watching The Basement, or whatever, you're watching a rerun, whatever. And, you know, you think it's corny, and, you know, there's the famous episodes and all that stuff. It's, it's good fun. But I think the sustain in it is we recognize something that was really vital, that maybe even the show's producers and writers wouldn't even understood, that there was this whole generation of kids alone, in basements and in front of televisions like we were, going, well, gee, that looks a lot more fun than what's going on here.

• 1:07:35Billy Corgan?

  You know, whether we were, I like to make this joke, you know, we were abandoned by our baby boomer parents who were too busy doing yoga and cocaine. That's my joke. Well, you know, it was a very selfish generation.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Billy Corgan?

  And there's the, the term latchkey comes from the fact that we were, we'd come home to an empty house. That was normal, you know, it wasn't even a big deal.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:55Billy Corgan?

  So what becomes your parent? The television.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:58Billy Corgan?

  So on one hand, you have this idyllic, you know, like I said, Eric Estrada riding down the, you know, the hair blowing and everything looks so amazing and all of it, you know, even the, you remember like Battle of the Network Stars and all this like,

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, yeah.

• 1:08:11Billy Corgan?

  You know, there's the stars in reality playing.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Circus of the Stars. That was awesome.

• 1:08:17Billy Corgan?

  Now you're going deep.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Cause they really did cool stuff.

• 1:08:20Billy Corgan?

  Did you ever do any of those?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  No, I, I wasn't asked, but it was amazing to me because they would actually get good at these things that were dangerous.

• 1:08:30Billy Corgan?

  Anyway, my harp here is that I think that's why it's warm in my heart and why I wanted to talk to you because there's something there that's a lot more powerful than whether or not somebody likes the show or doesn't like the show.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Billy Corgan?

  Zeitgeist moments happen in our culture for reasons that are a lot more complicated than what it appears to be on the surface. So somehow you all kind of represented this happiness or this warm.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  And it was a need. It's an emotional need.

• 1:08:58Billy Corgan?

  Weird, right? And I, I, if I, I, it never would have crossed my mind unless I knew I was going to talk to you. I had to actually process it. I, I did go, um, and I, I've spent a couple of times with Barry and I've talked to Barry on the phone. Barry Williams, super sweet, what a, what a nice person and, and cool guy. But even then, hanging out with Barry, I, I was more struck in, in the case of Barry, like he seems to kind of like made peace with the whole thing. Like I literally was walking down the street with him and he's like, oh my God. You know what I mean?

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Billy Corgan?

  You know how that goes. It's like, it's not your real name, but that's who they think you are, right? But talking to you, I, I think it was like, it all kind of came back like, wow. I remember thinking like, gee, I wish I was in that house.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Billy Corgan?

  It looks a lot more fun and sweet and cool.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Well, that's why, um, because you're absolutely right. And, um, there are countless people that have come up to me and said, that show literally saved my life.

• 1:09:58Billy Corgan?

  That's such, I mean, it, it makes warm my heart because I don't feel alone in this feeling.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you're not alone at all. And, um,

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  When I first became really proud of the show is when I found out that child psychiatrists were using it. They were using episodes for kids that were coming from horrible abuse. And, you know, I would have thought, well, why would they want to see this perfectly good family? They do. They want to see somebody being happy. They want to see that there's hope.

• 1:10:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  And, and I realized, probably in my twenties, that the, the beauty of the show is that it was written from a child's perspective. I mean, Cindy loses her doll. Well, everybody cares. The whole house is up in arms about it. They have a mock trial for Bobby.

• 1:10:51Billy Corgan?

  If I lost something, they said, tough.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. You know, I'm dad's calling, you know, home from work. Well, did you find Cindy's doll? Yeah. And so it's a fantasy. It's not realistic, but that's the fantasy the kids want.

• 1:11:09Billy Corgan?

  But that's why those.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Who doesn't want that?

• 1:11:11Billy Corgan?

  But that's why those Disney movies are so powerful.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:13Billy Corgan?

  It's not about reality. It's about a destination. And when you don't have a destination, if somebody gives you one, you just like, it's like a water or something. It's like, give it to me. Okay. So last thing, uh, because your, your, your, your time in, in that show is, is so oft explored, but this is my indulgent question in that. So a few things. Where did you guys shoot the show? What, what, what lot?

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Paramount Studios.

• 1:11:41Billy Corgan?

  Okay, Paramount. What was a, what was a, obviously you're young, so there were probably some labor laws, but what was a normal week of shooting, you know?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Um, in the beginning, it was crazy. We were trying to do three, three shows, a show every three days. When things calmed down and we had a real rhythm, it was you got your, you got a script, a new script on Friday. You had the weekend to look it over, read it. Monday, there'd be the table read, start rehearsing, start filming Tuesday.

• 1:12:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  And so it would take a week. Yeah. Well, well, once we had the budget to put a little time into the shows and we had a week to film.

• 1:12:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, of course, we're also, we, we tried to film as much as we could during the summer so that we wouldn't have to go to school, but we had to go to school on set. We had to have three hours of school.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that can be rough. You know, the teachers, everybody's pretty kind and mindful. If, you know, if you had a difficult scene.

• 1:12:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  It's okay, the math test can wait. You know, you just, you just think about what you need to do.

• 1:12:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so last indulgent thing.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Oh, indulge all you want.

• 1:12:56Billy Corgan?

  No, but God bless you. So sometimes I have these dreams, right? And it's like I'm backstage somewhere with the band and, you know, it's like it's, there's an atmosphere. And so my version of the dream is, you know, somewhere in the ether, there's you at eight years old on that set. But you were actually there. It's not a dream, you know? So give me something of what it was like to be on that set. Did you think it like, like, I'm sort of fascinated where sometimes you go places and, you know, in your mind, it's one thing and then you see like the paint is scuffed.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:13:31Billy Corgan?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you saw our living room floor, it was cigarette butts all over the place.

• 1:13:36Billy Corgan?

  Right. That's kind of what I'm after is like you actually stood in this dream place.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Billy Corgan?

  This magical mid-modern, whatever it was with the staircase and the thing and.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  The AstroTurf lawn hurt. I was always wearing these short dresses, so I skinned my knees many times on that AstroTurf. And you mentioned that the house, one of the fun things about the house was being able to have people walk into the house. We, we redid it, you know, like built it with HGTV and watching people walk through those doors.

• 1:14:15Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's right. You guys.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Watching them turn into a nine-year-old. I don't care who they were. They instantly turned into a child and I thought we should do a talk show because it'd be like getting the guests drunk. We get them and they'll be all vulnerable and sweet and nice.

• 1:14:34Billy Corgan?

  That would be me. That would be me. Oh, thank you so much. I love talking to you.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:39Billy Corgan?

  So fun.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Anytime.

• 1:14:40Billy Corgan?

  Awesome.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Thank you.