Interview: Nelson Franklin (Pt. 1)
The first time I met Nelson Franklin was in early 2011. It was during the Television Critics Association press tour, he was in the midst of promoting his new Fox series, Traffic Light, and since I was still living the good life—I was a full-time writer/editor with Bullz-Eye.com—I decided I wanted to interview all five leads of the sitcom. We had a nice chat, and we ended up following each other on Twitter and becoming Facebook friends.
As a result, it was a nice reunion when I had the chance to meet up with Nelson again in the summer of 2013 as one of the cast members of CBS’s The Millers. That, however, was the last time I saw him in person, so when one of you paid subscribers—you know who you are, you little dickens—suggested that I interview Nelson for That Thing They Did, not only did I figure I had a decent shot at making it happen, since we already knew each other at least in passing, but it was an opportunity to reconnect with someone I hadn’t interviewed in years.
Thankfully, Nelson was indeed up for the interview, and now you can enjoy Pt. 1 of that conversation…
It's been a long time! In fact, I was trying to think of the last time I talked to you, and I think it must've been when you were on The Millers, when we actually talked in person.
So that was, what, six or seven years ago or something crazy?
2013. So forever, basically.
Jesus. Well, it's good to see you again!
Same here! And I know you've been busy off-duty, so to speak, for the last little while.
[Laughs.] That's right. It's been a pretty slow year for me, career-wise, in 2022, but I have this one-year-old baby, so the universe is in balance!
I've got a 16-year-old daughter, so I have been there. It's just been awhile.
Man, it is just too much for me to comprehend, having a baby that can do anything, basically. Or a child, I should say, that's old enough to talk.
Well, just remember: any mistakes they make, they're all your fault.
Yeah, for sure. [Laughs.] So she's sixteen? Well, girls are smarter than boys, but...is she being, like, a surly teenager right now?
Yeah, but she's been ahead of the curve on that front for some time now.
[Laughs.] Got it.
Well, as I say it's good to talk to you, and like I was telling you, you really were a reader request. When I gave my paid subscribers the opportunity to pitch ideas for future interviews, your name came up, so I figured I'd reach out.
Awesome. I'm so happy to be here. I'm always happy to have a little chat. It's all good!
So I'll ask the obligatory secret-origin question. I know you've got a genetic predisposition toward show business, thanks to your father, but how did you find your way into a career in acting?
It's a cool thing. Yeah, my dad [Howard Franklin] is a screenwriter, or he was for many, many years. He's sort of pivoted now. He's not old, by any stretch, but he's of retirement age, and he's writing a novel right now. But anyway, I used to witness firsthand that he was a successful screenwriter for many years...and that does not necessarily mean that you got a ton of movies in theaters or that your name is on a bunch of films. He was writing constantly and being paid well, and he was very frustrated all the time. He'd write something, and then the studio would make him do a bunch of drafts until it was something else, or somebody would buy a script and then it would just go on a shelf for six years. Just all these heartbreaks, constantly. And I remember saying, "When I grow up, I don't want to be in show business. It's too much bullshit, and it's too much heartbreak." My dad seemed so bummed all the time with these things that he spent months working on that just turned into nothing, and it was just so sad. So I was dead set on just being in any job that had a weekly paycheck or whatever. I was, like, "That's what I've gotta do to avoid the heartbreak."
But I was very interested in the fine arts, and I really liked comics and I liked drawing them, and I liked painting and stuff. So I remember when I got into high school, into 9th grade, the way my high school worked was that the freshmen had sort of the worst priority when it came to choosing their electives, whereas the seniors had their first pick or whatever... And then, conveniently, by the time I was a senior, they reversed that system, because they realized the freshmen should have first pick, to get better acclimated to high school. But that's neither here nor there. [Laughs.] So I tried to get into the art class, the painting class, but it was full, so they dumped me into the next available class, which was drama by default. And I was horrified.
I had, like, two friends back then. I was playing Ultima Online, which was one of the early MMO RPGs, and I was very, very anti-social. I had, like, a 4.0 GPA. And I immediately came home, and I was, like, "Dad, you've gotta call the school. There's no way I can be in a drama class." I was so stupid. And he was, like, "I want you to tough it out for awhile and see what happens." And I was, like, "Are you kidding? There's a bunch of girls in there, and I have to do a scene with a girl? This is insane!" And wisely, he was, like, "Yeah, you gotta do it." And within two months, it was all I care about, basically. Because I was making more friends, I got invited to a party for the first time, I was talking to girls, the whole thing. It flipped my whole world on its head, and I got really into it. Not just because I did enjoy the work of doing it a lot, but also because it sort of made me a whole person. So I got very interested in that, and I never looked back. My grades dropped after that, because I was doing all the high school plays and musicals and stuff, and I had rehearsals late into the night. But I was much happier. And my parents, bafflingly, were supportive of it.
It's funny: so many people tell me that they first got into acting because of the girls, and here you were, horrified at the thought that you might have to do a scene with one.
Yep. [Laughs.] But I'm so glad I did it. And then I went to college for acting, too, which was insane. I went to NYU and went to Tisch, which is very expensive, and I was very, very lucky that my grandparents had a college fund for me. So basically my parents were, like, "Sure, go to acting school." There was a lot of trust there. But I'm glad I made it work!
Once you got into it, did you have visions of a life in the theater, or were you already thinking about being in front of the camera?
I wanted to be in front of the camera, for sure. I'm so glad that I went to an acting conservatory, because the particular one that I was in, at Tisch, we were only allowed to do classical work for two years. Just Shakespeare, Chekov... We got to do some Moliere, sometimes some Shepard, but for the most part it was just super classical acting training, and that's really good for your 10,000 hours. But because my dad had directed a couple of movies when I was, like, five and six years old, I knew how magical the set world feels, and I really wanted to be back there. When I was a little kid, he'd bring me around to visit a couple of days a week or something, and I was treated like a prince, obviously, because I'm the director's son, so the makeup guy would give me a bullet wound in my head or something. [Laughs.] Anything I wanted! And I loved the vibe, the village... So, yeah, I always wanted to do it. After I graduated, I stayed in New York for a little while and tried to make it work out there, but I very quickly came back so I could start being peoples' assistant and sort of get into that world.
Well, besides the makeup guy who gave you the bullet wound in the head, was there anyone else you met behind the scenes who really stood out to you?
Yeah, my dad directed this elephant movie with Bill Murray called Larger Than Life, which follows this unbelievable trend throughout cinematic history where two movies of the same kind will come out in the same year. And it was the second elephant movie of that year, so it kind of got lost in the mix. Operation: Dumbo Drop was the other movie, by the way.
I hope you didn't think that I didn't already know the other elephant movie.
Of course. [Laughs.] So anytime I would start talking about this movie, they'd be, like, "Yeah, Operation: Dumbo Drop! Your dad directed that?" I'm, like, "Nah, man, he did the other elephant one." But my dad had a strong relationship with Bill during the late '80s and early '90s, when he was sort of the biggest star in the world.
And your dad wrote Quick Change, too, right?
He wrote Quick Change, and he directed it with Bill. That was his first directing gig, and that was incredible. But that was a tough one for me to remember, because I think I was, like, four years old for that one. But I have a wonderful picture of me in my little PJs sitting on Jason Robards' lap.
Wow.
Yeah, it's incredible. But when my dad did the elephant movie, I was older, and I spent a lot of time with Bill. That movie was almost entirely shot on locations across the United States, because the premise is, like, Bill's on a road trip with this elephant. So he was always renting some incredible house in whatever state we were in, and then he'd have us stay there with him. It was incredible. And I was friendly with his sons from his first marriage. They were really cool kids. Luke and Homer were their names. And Homer... I'm sure you already know this, because you know a lot of trivia, but if you've ever seen Broken Flowers, the last shot of that movie is Homer, Bill's real son, in the back of that Volkswagen bug. So the mystery of "is it his son?" I guess since I knew the kid, I thought, "Yeah, maybe that's what [director Jim] Jarmusch intended." Or maybe not.
Anyway, my favorite set memory is definitely Larger Than Life, just watching Bill be popular and charm the shit out of everyone. Anytime we'd go a restaurant, everyone in the whole place was, like, "Wow..." It was an interesting time. But he was pretty good at keeping the vanity down. He loved it, but he also wasn't a total schmuck about the whole thing. [Laughs.]
I went online trying to figure out what your first film was, and I guess it was Berkeley, although I couldn't actually the film to confirm your presence in it. All I could find was the trailer, which you're not in.
God, you know, there's this thing about IMDb... There's this whole group of student films that I participated in when I was at NYU, they're varying degrees of good and bad, and they all appear on my IMDb page, and I wanted them to take them down. They're online, and you can watch these things...and I'm defeating the purpose of my not wanting them on IMDb by telling you this. [Laughs.] But I got into it with the tech people at IMDb, who were, like, "You can't take this off of your IMDb page. You can't de-tag yourself from a project. The only way to do it is to reach out to the person who put it on IMDb and request that they take your name off the movie." And I'm, like, "I can't call John [Liang] and be, like, 'Hey, remember all those student films together? They're embarrassing, and you have to take them down.' It's too insulting."
But Berkeley... One of my oldest friends is this guy named Nick Roth, who's a writer now, and his father is this guy Bobby Roth. I've known Nick since I was four and used to sleep over at his house every weekend, and Bobby is a very hard-working TV director. He's done a ton of TV and, yes, he directed a cool indie film when I was... Jesus, I must've been in my late teens when I did that. But I'd love to see it, too! A bunch of my friends were in that movie, too, including Wade Allain-Marcus, who works now a bunch as a writer, and he was also on Insecure. But I think my first movie that I like to admit, however, was I Love You, Man.
Which is not a bad movie.
Oh, it's great! That is a classic Paul Rudd vehicle right there. And that was a great job where I worked on it for a week for, like, one minute of screen time or whatever. [Laughs.] But the point is, I got to work on a movie for a week and just sort of experience that with low stress, which is tremendous.
You're listed as "Sydney's Buddy #2." Do you remember who Syndey's first buddy was?
I think it was David Krumholtz.
You are correct.
[Laughs.] I'm surprised they didn't give him an actual credit name.
Interviewer's note: Depending on where you look up the information, the credits for Sydney's buddies are slightly different, and it turns out that there's also a third buddy, played by Ethan Smith. But whereas Wikipedia refers to Krumholtz as Sydney's buddy and Nelson as Sydney's second buddy, IMDb refers to Nelson and Smith as Sydney's buddies—no numbers—and refers to Krumholtz as Sydney's Buddy #3 and says that he's uncredited. Ultimately, I'm presuming that no one really cares, so I'm just going to move on.
I'll go with a reader request for this one, although it just happens to follow the chronological order: how was the experience of working on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World?
Oh, man, that was just a dream right there. It was amazing. I'm still friendly with Edgar [Wright] to this day - it must've been 12 years ago or something at this point, I can't remember - but Edgar is a perfectionist. Like, he'd be holding up the comic book next to the monitor to make sure the frame was identical to the comic book. He'd be, like, "We can't shoot this for half an hour. We need to move the light switch on the wall up two inches so it matches with this." [Laughs.] Just shit like that. But it was amazing, and the reason I mention the perfectionism is that I was there for, like, 34 days or something...and if you remember, I was in that movie for, like, two seconds!
Yeah, it's not a huge part.
No, but I made so many lifelong friends on that thing, including Bill Pope, the director of photography, who I just worked with again last week. I mean, that's like royalty right there. And Mike Cera and Brie [Larson] and Alison Pill... God, there's just so many people who, by nature of how this movie was shot, I had to just spend 12 hours a day sitting around in a room with these people and enjoying myself. So it was a really special job.
I also got in a lot of trouble at the beginning of that movie, and it scared the shit out of me. I thought my career was going to be over very quickly because... Edgar was doing a thing at the time where he had a blog where he'd post one picture a day from the production of that movie, and it was, like, "Day 1 of my 365 days of pictures," and it was just a picture of the title page of the script. And when I got the job on that movie a couple of months later, I posted a picture of the title page of the script on my Facebook...and within 10 minutes, my agent called me and was, like, "I'm hearing your posting script pages online. What's happening?" And I was, like, "Uh, just the title page!" And it all happened very quickly, but I was supposed to go up to Canada to do a table read, and they canceled my trip because they didn't know if I was fired or not! And then eventually, when they saw what I did, they were, like, "Oh, Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry," and Edgar gave me a big hug when I got up there. I mean, this was, like, my first big movie, and I was, like, "Oh, my God, I just fucked this up so fast..." But it was fine. Fortunately.
So I went back and looked at the first interview I ever did with you, which was for Traffic Light...
[Laughs.] Oh, wow!
...and you told me something at the time that I'd completely forgotten, mostly because I hadn't yet become a fan of the show you'd mentioned. You auditioned for Parks and Recreation, and it came down to you and Chris Pratt for the role of Andy Dwyer.
Yeah, it was actually a couple of us. It was myself, Chris Pratt, one of the Duplass brothers - I can't remember which one, I'm sorry! - and Nick Thune. And I remember thinking, like, "Oh, yeah, there's Nick Thune, there's a Duplass brother, and...Chris Pratt? Nobody knows who the hell this guy is!" Which was true, essentially. But thank God he got that job. It was an amazing process, by the way. I got to read with Rashida [Jones] in front of Amy Poehler and Mike [Schur] and all these guys. Of course, back then, I sort of didn't realize how important all these people were. And I played it so differently than Chris. I was playing it like he wasn't a stupid guy. I was just playing myself, like an intelligent person who was sort of mean and lazy, and that's the way I was what I was, making her pick up after me and cook for me and everything because I was a jerk. It didn't occur to me that if you play it like a dumb, sweet guy... I mean, what a better decision that was. Not only does it play funnier, but he was so much more likeable. It was a great lesson to learn. Good job, Chris Pratt, on figuring that one out. [Laughs.]
And I guess that also provided you with one of those rare experiences in Hollywood where someone says, "I'm going to find something for you," and then actually does. Isn't that what Greg Daniels did for you with The Office and playing the I.T. guy?
That was an interesting thing. [Hesitates.] Was Greg there? I didn't think I read for Greg, but I guess he was there. But here's the deal: I was on The Office before I tested for Parks and Rec. That was my first paid acting job, on The Office. I had a really quick bit where I told Pam to go to New York to graphic design school. That was the bumper of the episode, just the last 15-20 seconds. And then a few years later when they wanted this I.T. guy, they passed over me because they're, like, "You can't come back and be a different person in the same universe!" But then they read a bunch of people and they just offered it to me. After they read, like, 20 people, they were, like, "I guess just don't mention that you also did this other thing." [Laughs.] But it is conceivable that it would be the same person, right? I mean, shit, a guy who was a computer graphic design guy who then became an I.T. guy? I mean, that seems feasible to me.
I'll allow it.
Thank you. [Laughs.] Thank you so much.
And, of course, you were only on a handful of episodes of The Office, but you got that great parting scene in your final ep.
Yeah, that was incredible. Again, I was pretty young at this point, and essentially what happened was that I got on this show as a guest star, and it was my dream. That was sort of the biggest show in the country at that time, and I was, like, "I did it! I got on The Office! This is unbelievable!" However, when you're a guest star and you're just starting out, the money is, like, laughably bad. And that's okay! I know that's how it works: you work your way up the ladder, that was an early job for me, and I was making maybe a thousand bucks for my work on that.
So when pilot season rolled around, my agents were, like, "You've gotta go out." And when I got the pilot test for Traffic Light, I remember saying to my agent, "I can't do this, because it's going to mess up my Office work. I won't be able to be on The Office if I take this pilot." And they were, like, "Yes, we understand that, but also, you've done five episodes of The Office, and you've made $5,000. This is going to be a bigger deal for you, and you need to do this to establish yourself." And very sadly I said, "Okay, I will test for this pilot." And I got the job...and I was devastated, because I knew I was going to get kicked off The Office.
So I basically showed up to work on The Office at, like, 6 a.m....and they handed me that monologue where I flip everybody off. And I'm in the makeup chair, reading it, with a tear going my eye. "I can't believe it, I chose money over my favorite show..." And coincidentally, my friend Zach Woods showed up the same day. I went to college with Zach. He was in my year at NYU, but he wasn't in the acting program at all. He was just getting a regular degree. But he did a shitload of UCB and was so fucking funny that he just had an acting career after that! But I was, like, "Zach, what are you doing here?" "I'm your new boss!" Because he was playing Gabe. But that was also the same day I was leaving the show. It was like the changing of the guard of tall white guys.
There can be only one.
That's right. [Laughs.] I'll tell you the other thing about The Office, and that's that it was a dream to work on it because it's the same location in every episode. They don't have to light anything, because it's already there. They literally just bring the cameras in and shoot it. I mean, I was done by 11 am every day. It was insane.
Well, like yourself, I'm sure, I really wish that Traffic Light had lasted longer. It was such a great comedy anyway, but my marriage was still in single digits at the time, so it was entertaining to see familiar-looking relationships playing out like that.
Yeah, I really loved that show, too. It was really well done for what it was. I mean, look, that was my first series, so when I look back on it, I'm, like, "Oh, my God, I could've been better." But that's what everybody says about everything they did early on. But I did like the show a lot. I thought it was really funny. I'm a big Bob Fisher fan, who created and wrote that. He's the Wedding Crashers guy, you know, and he's had a handful of other shows that've been on TV since then, and I think he's really funny and great. That was a really special thing. I did another pilot with him after Traffic Light. He sort of identified with my voice, and he was, like, "The way you do your performance is the way I imagine these words." I was a good main-character guy for him, which is a special relationship that not everyone gets to have.
There was actually a pilot I was going to ask about, although I don't know if it's that one and...I actually don't even have the title in front of me. But it revolved around a talent agency in the '80s.
Oh, yeah! That wasn't him, actually. That was Ted Griffin. It was called Gone Hollywood, and that was an incredible pilot, actually. It was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Jonathan Pryce's first show after Game of Thrones, and I was, like, "This is a fucking lock. How can they not pick this up?"
And Judd Hirsch!
Oh, I mean, can you believe these guys? It was amazing! I was there at work one day when Judd Hirsch fell down. He tripped and fell on the ground. You know, he's in his 80s! We're, like, "Oh, my God!" But he just hopped right back up and was, like, "Just pretend that didn't happen." "Okay, Judd." Wow. But it was a great gig, and I really liked working with Jeremy Shamos. He's a wonderful New York theater actor who flew out to New York to do this, and he was sort of bummed about it because he couldn't summer on the east coast. [Laughs.] But he was just tremendous, and I had a great time on that show. It was hugely stacked. Lola Kirke was in it as well, who I worked with on an indie film. I'm a big Lola Kirke fan. I love her, and I thought she was great in this as well. I was so bummed that didn't go. Dammit!
One of the features I do for this site is called Pilot Error, so that's why I was particularly curious about that.
Yeah, there was a stretch of time where I did a pilot every year for, like, 10 years...and none of those got picked up! [Laughs.] So many pilots... Some were bad, some were good. It just runs the gamut.
[In case you're like me and you were wondering about the pilot that Nelson mentioned that he did with Bob Fisher after Traffic Light, it was called Family Trap, and it starred Nelson and Mandy Moore as newlyweds, with co-stars Stockard Channing, Kurt Fuller, Erinn Hayes, Eva La Rue, and Majandra Delfino.]
I recently did an interview with Ray Wise tied to King Knight, a film you're also in.
Amazing. How'd you like it?
It was a really eccentric film, but I liked it.
King Knight was directed by one of my oldest friends, a guy named Richard Bates, Jr. I went to NYU with him - he was also in my year at NYU - and he's one of these guys who just... He directed six movies. He just did it. He didn't sit around. He wrote every single one of them, he secured financing himself. You can't be taught this, and if you can, they certainly didn't teach it at NYU. [Laughs.] I mean, I've really got to hand it to this guy. I did all of his student films, sometimes at great peril, and it was a lot of work, and I got sick many times. But we're still friends, and he has a part for me in every single one of his movies, and any time I'm not in one of his movies, it's because I had to say "no" for some reason. I was supposed to be in Suburban Gothic... I think I've done three of his six movies, and I'm a big fan of his. He's amazing.
Ray similarly said that he's been in as many of his films as he's been able to schedule and that he'll always say "yes" to him if he's asked.
Exactly. And that's great to hear that from him, because I worked with him again on a pilot that we wrapped, like, two weeks before the first lockdown started in 2020. I did a pilot that was written and directed by David Wain. Today's Special was one of my favorite pilots of all time...and also didn't get picked up, of course! But Ray Wise played my father in that. It was a David Wain slapstick-comedic soap opera. It was shot exactly like a soap opera, we shot four episodes in five days, just to demonstrate to the network that we could do an every-day soap opera.
It was going to be an every-day soap opera, with one episode every day, but a David Wain zany comedy. It was like a dream come true. Ray was my father, and he was, like, a billionaire, and I was a fortysomething guy who never moved out of the house because I'm a rich kid, and he's in a coma, and I'm trying to kill him so that I get the inheritance. Because right before he slips into his coma, he confides in me that he's going to take me out of his will because he's so ashamed of me. But then he's not able to do it because he's in a coma, so I'm, like, "We've gotta kill him so he can't do it!"
It was great. There's a scene where I'm in the hospital next to him, eating hospital steak and complaining about how shitty the steak is, and I start choking on it. And I spit up the piece of steak, and I'm, like, "That gives me an idea..." So while he's in a coma, I take a chunk of steak and press it into Ray Wise's unconscious mouth, and he starts to choke on this thing in the coma, but then he eats it and smiles. [Laughs.] It's just one weird-ass show. But he was really a great sport about all that kind of bullshit. Especially the King Knight stuff, where he played Merlin. That was great.
Yeah, I told him he might be the first-ever version of Merlin to drop the F-bomb.
Of course he is. [Laughs.]
I was just looking at the cast list for Today's Special, and I see at least two other people you've been teamed with before: Matt Walsh and Natalie Morales.
Yep. Both great people. Matt is one of the people I met early on. We had the same manager when I first started 15 years ago, and I've just known him for a long time. He's just the sweetest guy in the world. And Natalie, of course, is unbelievable. For Natalie, the pandemic was the opposite of what it was for everyone else. She sort of made the biggest strides in her career and is getting all these awards. She's, like, a serious director now. I mean, that's it. She's in. I'm very proud of her. She's incredible.
Of course, you worked with her on Abby's, and I talked to another one of your co-stars from that show recently: Neil Flynn. You'll be pleased to know that he's still very much Neil.
I'll put it to you this way: we've texted one time since Abby's went off the air. [Laughs.] He's a private person.
He is. And often a quiet one. I've long said that one of my greatest career accomplishments was doing a 45-minute interview with him for the A.V. Club. I've had people tell me, "We didn't even know he was capable of talking for 45 minutes."
I can't believe it, either. That's amazing. You should give yourself a pat on the back for that one. [Laughs.] The one story I always tell about Neil is that when we started shooting the show - it was, like, the first tape night - his agents had sent him a beautiful bottle of whiskey. It was, like, a $175 bottle of whiskey. And I saw him holding it, and I said, "Oh, my God! That's a great bottle!" I'm a whiskey fan, also. And he was, like, "I only drink Jack Daniels," and just handed me this $175 bottle. I still have some of it. I've been milking it for years! He's a simple man, Neil, but a good man.
He is. On both counts. So how was the Abby's experience? Because that was such a unique set, being outside like that.
It was great. You know, this was one of those things where I think we had a shot. It was a Mike Schur show, even though his hands were not on it very much, it was in his catalog, and I thought that was a great boon to us or whatever. But the main thing was that the show was picked up and then, while we were shooting the show, the president of the network switched over to a new person. Or people. I think it became two presidents or something, a partnership. I'm not exactly sure. I can't remember now. But they basically wiped the slate clean. There's a number of reasons why people would do that. It's, like, "What if the show's a big hit? We didn't bring it, so it doesn't reflect positively on us in any way." Their big thing was This is Us, which they dove into headfirst, and that became a titanic juggernaut of a show.
But Abby's was amazing. It was the first outdoor live-audience sitcom, which was weird as hell. But it worked. It did work. It got cold. Even though it's L.A. and it's the valley. But we were on top of a mountain, essentially. If you go to Universal Studios and you take the tram tour, it goes on Wisteria Lane, which is from Desperate Housewives. We shot on one of the houses on that street, so you drive right by Abby's, basically, every time you take that tour. But it's, like, way on top of a mountain, so it's freezing cold. And you know Burbank Airport? We'd have to stop every 20 minutes for an airplane. You could see them taking off, and you'd be, like, "Shit! We've got 18 minutes!" [Laughs.]
But after all was said and done, the cast was very, very cool. It wasn't just a bunch of movie stars, you know what I mean? It was a lot of well-cast, talented people. I'm friends with them all for life. It was a really great experience. And then the show was cancelled, and then no one could go inside anymore to see live-audience shows. And I'm, like, "Well, I'll bet you're kicking yourself in the butt for this one. You could've had a live audience that's outdoors!" We were ahead of the curve. So, yeah, I loved it. Plus, it was 10 minutes from my house, which is, like, living the dream.
