Welcome to Jughead’s Basement, sub genre Lowfi interviews with Hi Fi guests. Since my band podcasts take an incredibly long time to record, edit and produce, I have decided to explore a sub format where I perform interviews that are a bit more off the cuff, and the guests are encouraged to ask me questions too. These interviews incorporate all aspects of entertainment, not just music, but theatrical, film and Tv performers plus writers and behind the scenes folks.
I took a trip to Los Angeles to conduct my first 4 in these series, and each time, for different reasons my skills with a professional microphone bottomed out, and in each case I ended up with less than quality recording with some of the funniest smartest hard working entertainment people I know. I want the interviews to be spontaneous, so instead of trying to redo the interviews I decided to leave them as be, and do what I could to make them sound better.
This first episode is with Dino Stamatopolous, writer, producer and reluctant actor. You may have seen him as Starburns on the hit show Community. As a writer he is known for his work with Ben Stiller, Dana Carvy, Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, and the Mr. Show with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk… amongst others. He has also reached out into production with his company Starburns Industries with his writing friends and collaborators Dan Harmon, Joe Russo II, James Fino and Duke Jonhson Starburns Industries birthed Dino’s very own Morel Orel and Frankenhole, along with Dan’s Rick and Morty, and Charlie Kaufman’s oscar nominated animated film Anamolisa.
Dino is also the author of a Graphical novel called Trent: A light tragedy with music, which was originally performed in an earlier incarnation at the annoyance theater in 1990.
In 2004 my friend Steve Walker directed my play Four Clowns and a Bench in Los Angeles. The play was a success but the audiences still did not come. When Steve came back to Chicago to report on that status of the show he told me one of the highlights was on a night when there was only about 4 people in the audience, he heard strong supportive laughing from beginning to end. And the close of the play, this man named Dino Stamatopoulos stood up and gave it an ovation. I said that was cool, but had know idea who Dino was. We had gone to the same college, Columia College in Chicago, but I didn’t know the lore of the man. When I did a little searching I decided to send him a message and thank him for coming. He responded immediately and thanked me for the play. We have been in contact ever since.
The microphone problem in this interview had to do with me accidentally deleting all the audio files from his microphone while uploading them into my editing program. So it is fairly ironic when we joke about it being MY podcast, because little did we know at the time that MY iPhone used to record myself, placed in front of me, would be the only surviving audio recording
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