Amazing Stories

And it just stuck with me ever since then.

And watching shows like Amazing Stories and being submersed in the Steven Spielberg world as a child of the 80s.

Certainly, every movie of his just blew my mind and just wanted me to know more about this world.

And as I got older, I started reading books about, you know, like Communion by Whitley Strieber and and really diving into to the paranormal world.

The only thing living-

But he ends up working with this film's director, William Dear, on an episode of Amazing Stories, which Spielberg wrote the story for, and then William Dear came in and developed that into the teleplay and also directed it.

And it's the one of the best episodes of Amazing Stories, in my opinion.

It's the, the one with the mummy.

Don't you settle-

And this- But Dad.

Yeah?

Maybe there's a chance you can- ... movie has that Spielberg Amazing Stories quality to it.

Uh, really, really understood.

He would use terms w- about light that we'd all just go, "Okay, he must mean, he must know what he's talking about," 'cause I'd never heard that word before, you know? And, uh, when light loses its tinatic value, and we'd never, we had never heard tinatic value, you know? Um, anyway, uh, he said, uh, Amazing Stories was coming up at Amblin, and he said, "You should meet Steven Spielberg because you're..." We had worked together, Alan and I, on several projects, and, uh, he said, "You're kind of inventive on the set, and in this whole new series is looking for inventive directors to take a story and, and, and run with it." Uh, and I thought, "Well, this is nice.

It's, uh, sounds like a, a dream come true if it ever was to happen." And, uh, ultimately, um, through my agent, I got a meeting, uh, on N- on Amazing Stories through Alan's, uh, recommendation, uh, with, with Steven, and this was quite a, a big thing.

I mean, I was gonna sit in a room and pitch my take on a story by Steven Spielberg in, uh, in one of the Amazing Stories, uh, sequences.

Uh, uh, at that time it was called, uh, Mummy Dearest, which I thought was odd because it was, the movie was just out a few years earlier, Mummy Dearest, and I thought when I, when I added to the story what I added, I thought that Mummy Daddy was a better title, you know, 'cause he was a mummy and he was also a daddy on that day.

Um, [clears throat] anyway, so I, I have this wonderful meeting at Amblin, uh, and I pitch my take on the story where I added the second mummy.

Okay.

All right.

Worked on David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone, which is a Stephen King property.

Toby Hooper's Life Force, Martin Scorsese's Amazing Stories, which we talked about recently, Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon, Chris Columbus's Adventures in Babysitting, John McTiernan's Die Hard.

Damn.

Francis Ford Coppola's Jack.

Henry Gilbert, currently blaming my gas on the dog.

And this month, we're looking at the Amazing Stories episode, Family Dog.

[blubbers]

Hey, Bob.

You can get 10% off if you sign up at the annual rate as well.

That's a pretty great deal.

But so yes, Family Dog and the TV show Amazing Stories.

I, I think, uh, to, to talk just a tiny bit more about our history, I do think I came upon this on, on, and when I looked at the programming for that night, I think I know what I watched right before it, which was ALF.

Dick Donner and Robert Zemeckis.

This was high budget, high profile, on a keel with the Spielberg's Amazing Stories kind of vibe, really.

So it ought to be.

It deserves to be more remembered.

It's kind of got me searching my own memories about Tales from the Crypt.

And I think that actually Tales from the Crypt has always, or was always, a little bit safe.

I think, you know, the more I think about it, even when I kind of think about some of the episodes that do pop out and visuals for episodes that stick out to my mind, I think that actually it was always closer to amazing stories than it was to an actual horror movie.

It may have been HBO, it may have been cable, but it's still very safe.

Yeah, I think it was called...

Amazing Stories.

Yeah.

What a great series.

And in the month of September, we're covering another important one.

We're covering the Amazing Stories episode, Family Dog.

That's right, it is the, basically Brad Bird's debut as an auteur, and this essentially was his calling card for the rest of his career in the few movies he was actually allowed to make.

But it all starts at Family Dog, not the bad television series they made later, but the original short that, uh, was part of Amazing Stories, and you can easily look that up online if you're trying to find it.

Archive.org, you can watch Amazing Stories and, uh, Family Dog there.

It's a really important animated short or TV special.

I think we had to drill it down to listeners so many times in the episode, but of like, The Simpsons didn't exist yet.