Episode 30: Frank Santopadre

12/06/22 • 87 min

1 Listener

Frank Santopadre is a veteran comedy writer and the longtime co-host of “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast,” with the late, great Gilbert Gottfried. Prior to working with Gilbert, Frank helped to write jokes and supporting material for numerous awards shows (including the Daytime Emmys, the TV Land Awards, and the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize). He has also written comics for Bazooka Joe bubble gum, and mock ad copy, concepts, and character profiles for the Topps Company’s popular Wacky Packs and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards series.

Oh, and did we mention he also wrote for Mad and Cracked magazines? And the somewhat less zany The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, US Weekly, and Politico? Along the way, he has created comedy material for an eclectic line-up of celebrated personalities, including Bill Murray, Howard Stern, Sarah Silverman, Meryl Streep, Martin Short, and Ben Stiller, and briefly served as a staff writer on what he proudly calls “the worst sitcom in television history”—a forgettable show from the late ‘90s called “Lost on Earth,” hailed by The Los Angeles Times during its mercifully-brief run as “mirthless.”

Join us for a somewhat more mirth-filled hour, as we talk about what it was like to help give voice to one of the most singular voices in the annals of American comedy—a joyful burden Frank kinda, sorta shared with podcast host Daniel Paisner, who collaborated with Gilbert Gottfried on his 2011 memoir Rubber Balls and Liquor.

Learn more about Frank Santopadre, visit his official website, like his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. Tune into the final episode of “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast,” from Dec. 8 through Dec. 14. Proceeds from this ticketed event will help support Myotonic Dystrophy research.

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Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
The Thoughtful Bro podcast, hosted by Mark Cecil
Pop Literacy, hosted by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Kimberly Potts
Writer's Bone, hosted by Daniel Ford

Previous Episode

Episode 29: Jen Singer

Jen Singer is a ghostwriter, speechwriter, writing coach and developmental editor with a whole bunch of stories to tell. As a writing coach at TEDx Cambridge, one of the world’s largest independently-organized TED platforms, she has helped dozens of speakers get their stories “on their feet” in front of an audience. Whether writing for the page or the stage, she believes the message is the medium. “A good speech is a good performance,” she says, “but it starts with good writing.”

One of the original “mom bloggers,” Jen wrote on parenting issues for over fifteen years on www.mommasaid.net – a gig that led to a two-year stint as the author of the “Good Grief” blog for Good Housekeeping. Over the years, she has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Parents, Woman’s Day, and McSweeney’s, while writing several books of her own and launching her career as a book doctor and collaborator. Somewhere in there, coinciding with her own diagnosis of Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, she shifted her focus from parenting issues to medical issues – a shift that came about while she was blogging on potty training issues for Pull-Ups.

“June is National Potty-Training Month,” she recalls, “and I was in the hospital measuring my urine for my doctor...It was surreal.”

Jen saw the humor in that surreal moment, but she also saw opportunity, and she started working as a medical writer for NYU Langone Health, Northwell Health, Hospital for Special Surgery, and Weill Cornell Medicine. Her experience as a cancer survivor led her to write a series of e-books called "The Just Diagnosed Guides: What You Need to Know Now (without Googling it)," designed to help patients and families navigate the uncertainty that finds them after a difficult diagnosis.

In addition to her work with TEDx Cambridge, Jen also works as a writing coach and editor for Heroic Public Speaking, a leading public speaking training program, where she has worked with a wide range of clients, including CEOs, Olympic athletes, educators, fighter pilots, marketing experts, physicians, psychologists, Ivy League researchers and professors, and undercover FBI agents.

For more on Jen Singer, visit her official website, like her Facebook page, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
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Writer's Bone, hosted by Daniel Ford

Next Episode

Second Printing: Stevie Van Zandt

This episode originally aired April 12, 2022.

“Nobody should ever take a band for granted,” writes the justly-celebrated rocker, songwriter, actor, producer, activist and music impresario Steven Van Zandt in his wild ride of a memoir, Unrequited Infatuations: Odyssey of a Rock and Roll Consigliere (A Cautionary Tale). “Bands are miracles. They’re rarely perfect, but if a band has that magical chemistry, it should not be fucked with... Every great band is a matter of individual eccentricities blending in different ways with unpredictable, inconsistent, occasionally glorious results.”

Here at the As Told To office, we believe the same could be said for the pairing of subject and collaborator, and at the risk of putting our host and our guests out of business we humbly suggest that there are some artists who are meant to go it alone in the memoir-writing department. Little Steven, the shape-shifting guitarist of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes who helped to stamp the Jersey shore sound, is one of those artists. His memoir—published in September 2021 and due out in paperback in September 2022—puts a brilliant exclamation point on a singular career, and he does so in a deeply personal way.

“If this book was a song, you’d want to crank up the volume,” writes the noted film critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks. “It’s one of the best rock memoirs ever. It’s got soul, it’s got humor, it’s got some tough truths and some wild stories all wrapped up in battle scars and telling memories you’d usually need a backstage pass to catch... It’s so much fun you can dance to it.”

Indeed you can. We know. We tried. We suggest you do as well, but tune in to this episode first as a kind of palate cleanser and walk around in Little Steven’s shoes for a bit, as he talks about what it was like to roll up his sleeves and sit down to write about his coming of age in the music business, his political activism, his unlikely star turn in “The Sopranos,” his leap of faith in producing and starring in “Lilyhammer” (the first-ever show to stream on Netflix), his pioneering work as programming director and rock ‘n roll curator, and an activist streak that has lately led him to launch his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation and TeachRock, which seeks to re-imagine a new K-12 national curriculum that makes room in our schools for an interdisciplinary focus on the arts.

Oh, and by the way, check out Stevie’s late-career renaissance and the kick-ass new music he’s been putting out with Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul, including last year’s “Summer of Sorcery” live album and the expanded edition of “Soulfire Live!”—we’ve been playing those babies on repeat since Stevie agreed to this interview.

Chef’s recommendation: listen to author read his memoir in the audio edition of the book, available from our sponsor Libro.fm (code: ASTOLDTO).

Learn more about Stevie Van Zandt:

Website
Twitter: @StevieVanZandt
Facebook
Instagram: @Stevievanzandt | @littlesteven_ug

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