Episode 112 - The Villain with Geoff Moonen

Back in the day (we won’t say how far back), Case was a playwright with a fledgling theater company called JustASK Productions and he would write plays about nerd stuff. Here’s a monologue he did about the death of Superman, as read by Geoff Moonen, with a discussion about the New York Theatre Scene of the Aughts. BONUS: Stay tuned for the WORST DRESS REHEARSAL STORY EVER! You might think you have a worse one, but you are wrong.

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AI meeting summary:

●      The meeting encompassed a broad discussion on adapting superhero narratives for live performances, exploring theatrical elements like staging and blocking, and the complexities of heroism and character development within superhero stories. It delved into personal experiences with creating theatrical works inspired by comic book characters and different formats like audio-only performances versus staged productions. Participants shared anecdotes about producing superhero-themed plays and radio serials, focusing on artistic choices in translating iconic tales into theatrical renditions. The conversation emphasized the creative processes involved in crafting immersive storytelling experiences across various entertainment mediums.

●      It further revolved around the creative process behind a theatrical monologue inspired by **Lex Luthor** and **Superman**, exploring themes of villainy, self-perception, and power dynamics. Insights were shared on portraying superheroes in theatre and audio dramas, potential collaborations for future projects, and the significance of narrative podcasts and radio dramas. Participants discussed personal experiences related to voice acting, scriptwriting challenges, and ongoing projects, affirming their commitment to producing engaging content resonating with global audiences. The meeting showcased a deep appreciation for storytelling through various artistic avenues and celebrated creativity within the realm of entertainment media like video games.

Notes:

●      📌 **Discussion on Performance and Writing**

●      **Jeff Moonin** seeks feedback on performance and writing.

●      Emphasis on collaboration in creating beauty through various perspectives and experiences.

●      🎭 **Exploration of Voiceover Challenges**

●      Voiceover community discussions on starting points, acting focus, and challenges.

●      Emphasized importance of distance, volume, and interpretation in voiceover work.

●      🎙️ **Narrative Podcast Formats**

●      Highlighted the difference between in-person charisma and audio format in storytelling.

●      Mentioned the necessity of exploring concepts creatively within different mediums.

●      🎮 **Fun and Games Podcast**

●      Plans to discuss the history, trends, and community of video games.

●      Excitement expressed for the upcoming conversation on the podcast.

Action items:

●      **Case Aiken**

●      Redo the play in some capacity (03:03)

●      Work with Alan, the video editor, to put together a bald version of Jeff for an origin story (15:02)

●      Put all those up in animated forms at some point (1:15:12)

●      **Jeff Moonin**

●      Play Lex Luthor in an audio production of "The Villain" (03:06)

●      **Jeff**

●      Edit this down (57:29)

●      Get 15 minutes out of this (57:30)

Outline:

●      Chapter 1: Setting the Stage for Theater Productions (00:21 - 03:24)

●      00:43: Introduction to the original plan of having the user as the editor for the theater productions.

●      01:15: Discussion on the approach to getting things done efficiently.

●      02:36: Mention of past experiences with staged readings at a bar to raise funds and test scenes.

●      Chapter 2: Script Development and Collaboration (12:18 - 17:50)

●      12:25: User shares Jeff's audio and the full script with others for feedback.

●      14:37: User appreciates receiving feedback and plans for further editing by the video editor.

●      17:50: Exploring the process of developing full shows from written entries.

●      Chapter 3: Playwriting and Production Challenges (18:48 - 22:29)

●      19:50: Origin story of the theater production idea during a night out in Philadelphia.

●      20:48: Discussion on the challenges and perceptions associated with theater credits.

●      22:03: Planning and structuring a one-act play with multiple narratives.

●      Chapter 4: Rehearsals and Performance Preparations (23:57 - 33:11)

●      24:32: Description of a character's actions during scenes and rehearsals.

●      29:13: Emphasizing the adaptation and placement of various elements in the production.

●      32:21: Managing run-throughs and changeovers during rehearsals for a seamless performance.

●      Chapter 5: Exploring Different Storytelling Formats (41:04 - 48:54)

●      41:44: Anecdote about a talented artist's playwriting project during college.

●      44:23: Discussion on the evolution and impact of storytelling formats like comics and voice acting.

●      48:54: Delving into the challenges and nuances of voiceover performances in storytelling.

●      Chapter 6: Reflections on Audio Drama Production (57:20 - 1:17:55)

●      57:27: Analyzing the significance of repeated phrases and themes in dramatic dialogues.

●      1:00:40: Reflecting on the challenges and insights gained from revisiting past monologues.

●      1:04:27: Comparison of narrative podcasts and the unique storytelling aspects of radio dramas.

●      1:15:12: Invitation to collaborate on creating original audio drama content for certain POV.

Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Geoff Moonen
I've got. The email that you sent me was like, from. When did this thing first get sent out? Back in 2010. You know, got that. That is definitely one of those. Just like. Yeah, 2010. That didn't happen that long ago.

00:16
Case
Right?

00:17
Jmike
No, I know.

00:17
Case
Yeah.

00:20
Geoff Moonen
All right. Yeah.

00:21
Case
So let's get into the episode then.

00:24
Geoff Moonen
You.

00:36
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, J. Mike Falson.

00:43
Geoff Moonen
Hello.

00:43
Case
Hello.

00:43
Jmike
Welcome, everybody.

00:45
Case
Hey. So good to be chatting with you. It feels like such a long time because I had a baby, and it feels like time has become mush, as sometimes we are joined by our co host at large, Jeff Moonin.

01:00
Geoff Moonen
There's been so many episodes of this. I've been in so few, I'm almost ashamed that I still have that title.

01:06
Case
Yeah. But you know what? It's now, like, a little bit more apt because we have brought you back to the original plan, which is that you would be the editor.

01:13
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, no, that's fair. How do you get something done? You give it to someone who's already really busy, so you make the edit. The show want to be on the that. I guess I'm going to have to listen to it anyway.

01:26
Case
Yeah. Well, in this one, you're going to have quite the presence, because today we are continuing our conversation about the death and return of Superman. Mostly going into sort of, like, some side stuff that we kind of wanted to talk about, which is that way back when I had a theater company, I used to put on nights of staged readings at a bar where we would raise some money and people would get to try out scenes and stuff like that. And so I would usually write something to kind of put up in there. And I had a habit of writing stuff that was kind of superhero inspired. So one of those times, I put up a monologue called the Villain, which is about Lex Luthor killing Superman. And this was 2010, and we videotaped it at the time.

02:10
Case
But the audio quality is not great. It is up on Vimeo, and I think I've shared it on a YouTube channel. There might be a link in one of the playlists that we've got on the cpov media. But while the actor is great, it was a guy named Travis Strosenruder, who has gone on to be just a great actor in general. He does tons off Broadway stuff. Wonderful presence. And a guy I was really happy to work with. The quality of the footage is terrible. And also, it was a staged reading. It was like, at a bar.

02:39
Geoff Moonen
It's more for archival purposes than for any sort of showcase kind of thing, I guess. Yeah.

02:46
Case
And so at one point, I mentioned in one of these episodes, I referenced that play, and actually, someone in the comments was like, hey, do you have a link to that? I was like, I do, but I don't love it. So that started the kind of the ball rolling of like, oh, I kind of wanted to redo that in some capacities. So, Jeff, you are an incredible voice actor.

03:06
Geoff Moonen
Why, thank you.

03:06
Case
And I reached out to you because I also think of you as like, oh, it's my ginger voice actor. Would you like to play Lex Luthor in an audio production of the villain?

03:17
Geoff Moonen
And I didn't even have to shave my head to do, like. That's the best part about voice acting. Really?

03:21
Case
Yeah. So, yeah, we had you do that, and we reached out to our friend Katie de Mateus to do the opening narration, because I knew this was going to be a call where it was going to just be a bunch of guys talking. So it was nice to have at least some non Cisan voice in the crowd.

03:39
Geoff Moonen
Right?

03:39
Case
And I did a little bit of audio mixing. So, everyone, this is the villain.

03:45
Geoff Moonen
The villain by p case Aiken II first, a green light shines on stage.

03:53
Geoff Moonen
A man dressed in a cape in silhouette as he is illuminated solely by that light, staggers on stage and falls to his knees, then dies. Then another man, bald and clad in a business suit, walks on. He looks down at the body, takes the box, and covers the green light. Normal lights come up on stage.

04:24
Geoff Moonen
Well, here we are. For what it's worth, I'm sorry it had to happen like this. Actually, no, that's a lie. I take some small satisfaction at seeing you here, dead on the floor. I know that's a rather dark thing to say. That certainly changes the mood of the evening, but it took long enough after all years. And now here we are. You're down for the count, and I'm left standing. I'll bet you didn't see that coming. I did, though I never doubted it for a moment. From the second I put my mind to it, you were doomed. After all, how could you compete with someone of my brilliance? Bullets bouncing off your chest would only be enough for so long. It was just a matter of time now. I wanted this. Excuse me for taking some modicum of sadistic joy.

05:29
Geoff Moonen
But with each time you foiled my plans, halted my ambitions, or escaped my traps, my hatred for you grew and grew. Oh, I despised you with every fiber of my being? I think I have since were children. Or maybe not so hard to remember sometimes. Did we first clash as adults or boys? Feel as though I've hated you for as long as I can recall.

05:59
Geoff Moonen
But I'm not really sure how long.

06:00
Geoff Moonen
That is puzzling. Regardless, the why or the how long doesn't even matter. Maybe you wronged me, or maybe you just got in my way. But really, it's just that were always diametrically opposed. After all, you were the hero in all the tales, and I was the villain. Isn't that how the world sees you and me? You protected the people while I was your rival. They chose their allegiance to you, and thus I, as your antagonist, was made the heel. That's certainly how they'll see me now. I took their hero away from them, and so they'll hate me. At least for the present. History is written by the winners. And you lost the fools. They idolized you, and now you're gone. I don't blame them for adoring you. You were certainly a specimen. But they never noticed what it was doing to them.

07:17
Geoff Moonen
You were the one who should have known better. Didn't you ever notice that people wore their seatbelts less once you were around? How about all of those island villagers who felt safe living next to an active volcano? You were a hero who promoted unsafe behavior on their part, on the belief that you would be there to save them. You're like the little boy who helped the butterfly escape its cocoon, only to watch it, unprepared for the burdens of.

07:49
Geoff Moonen
Life fall to its death.

07:53
Geoff Moonen
You see, you were the little boy's idea of a hero. You were big and strong, impervious to pain. And, hell, you could fly. But that's the entire problem. You were a guardian and a protector. The ultimate big brother or parent. But you didn't inspire them. I think now we'll see that your presence made no lasting impact. The world is not a better place in your wake than it was before you arrived in that little rocket ship. Sure, some lives were spared, but how many more may now suffer because lessons of the past were not learned? The definition of a hero is one who takes upon a quest at his or her own risk with no thought of gain aside from the betterment of one's society. How brave were you to deflect a bullet that could never harm you?

08:58
Geoff Moonen
You were never risking your life or going out of your way to assist anyone. With your power of action, you could have reshaped the world for the better. But you didn't.

09:08
Geoff Moonen
You could have led mankind into a.

09:10
Geoff Moonen
New age, but you didn't. You saved kittens from trees, and you never had to work for anything. Your might came naturally. Whatever tragic background you might have had was thrust upon you with no real attachment. And then your life was one of a silver platter. Even in your secret life, you chose not to fulfill your promise. You could have inspired people as one of them, guided them to test themselves so that they could equal you. But instead, you reveled in mediocrity. Your mild mannered facade let people around you relax while you secretly used your augmented abilities to excel enough to be successful, but not so much as to be impressive. Didn't you ever understand how you were failing the world? You were a child superhero. A child doesn't understand the world. It doesn't know about sacrifice and moral dilemmas.

10:24
Geoff Moonen
Child can't do the hard thing and hurt someone good in order to better the world. You were a good person. But just by existing, you were ruining the world. I saw that. I am sorry it had to happen this way. You tried to be a good man. You just never understood that in this story. You were never the hero. I was. My purpose was to be your check and balance, to prevent you from going too far in stifling the people of this world. Someday, the rest of the world will understand this, too. You were a child's hero. But I am the adult hero, able to make the hard decisions to ultimately better the world. Don't you see then that in the story, you are the villain?

11:44
Geoff Moonen
And.

11:45
Case
Yeah, so that was the villain. So, Jeff, first off, wonderful job there. Like, just fucking bravo, man.

11:51
Geoff Moonen
Thank you very much. It's very fun material to play with. Honestly, I think if you talk to a lot of actors, they'll say that there is something so fun and freeing in playing any kind of villainous character. It's a chance to just go ham in whatever definition of the word you want to go.

12:10
Case
So, J Mike, when I had shared this with you, I think I shared, a long time ago, the actual script. But when were talking about it more close to this, I had Jeff already record it. And so I'd shared both Jeff's audio and then the full thing, the script. And then more recently, I shared, like, the mixed version.

12:25
Jmike
Yes.

12:25
Case
Which version did you actually listen to or read? First?

12:28
Jmike
I listened to the mixed version. I was like, I wonder what this. And I was like, all right, let's see how this goes. At first, I was like, I wonder who this villain could be. It's just called the villain. And then the moment Jeff started talking, I was like, this sounds like Lex Luthor. And the more he started talking, I was like, this is definitely Lex Luthor. This is definitely Lex Luthor standing over our Superman. I was like, oh, man, this is great. And then the maniacal laugh and the whole, it was me. I did this to you. Superman.

13:02
Geoff Moonen
You could know for certain he doesn't say Superman. He's heavily implied, legally.

13:07
Case
Distinct entity with a cape. Legally distinct.

13:12
Jmike
I was like, oh, man, this is great. Bravo. I was like, jeff needs to play Lex in the new Superman movie. Coming out in like two.

13:21
Geoff Moonen
Sure.

13:21
Jmike
Yes.

13:23
Geoff Moonen
I mean, it'd be fun. I've always seen myself as more of a riddler type. Just that kind.

13:28
Jmike
Lex does have red hair in a bunch of iterations.

13:31
Geoff Moonen
It's less the ginger part. I know. It is a big part of my identity. My home is called Ginger dome. I'm a redhead married to a redhead. But less the machiavellian manipulator of the whole chessboard and more just an asshole who thinks he is kind of thing. Which could be Lex Luthor, depending on your writing of. No.

13:51
Case
Yeah. I have to admit, in terms of how I would cast you, it would be like the Smallville Lex as opposed to the animated Series Lex.

13:59
Geoff Moonen
Oh, yeah. No, and definitely this was reading through this, like, don't be Clancy. But I mean, if you want to have that big presence anyway. Like somebody like Lex Luthor or anybody who fits the mold is very comfortable taking their time and filling a room, whatever that needs to be. So hopefully it wasn't too much of an impersonation and more of a spiritual idea.

14:24
Case
No, it was great.

14:25
Jmike
Wonderful.

14:26
Case
It sounded wonderfully like you playing Lex Luthor as opposed to you playing a person playing Lex Luthor.

14:30
Geoff Moonen
Yay. Also, for all y'all, this is the first time case and I have actually spoken words to each other about my performance here. We emailed, I recorded it, I sent it off. We've both been busy. So honestly, this is really nice. Thank you for getting to hear the notes.

14:46
Case
Look, the big thing was I wanted to do a new version of the villain that we would be able to put up there. And then we'll have Alan, our video editor, actually put together something of a. So expect to see on the certain POV. YouTube channel a bald version of Jeff.

15:02
Geoff Moonen
Oh, no.

15:03
Jmike
Your villain origin story. There we go. It's happening.

15:06
Case
Well, that might inspire you to be a villain.

15:08
Geoff Moonen
I suppose it will. I suppose it will.

15:10
Case
I mean, it was a lot of fun to listen to it out loud. It's.

15:14
Geoff Moonen
I can imagine.

15:15
Case
I mean, when we started this episode, were bringing up notes and the original email that I had sent because I just forwarded it to Jeff rather than, like, for whatever reason, it was just easier for me to type it into gmail search bar, rather look for it on my desktop.

15:28
Geoff Moonen
And I've attended and helped out at some of those shows as well. So it wasn't as if this was sort of like, this wasn't unearthing anything unknown in our friendship.

15:36
Case
That was the other part that I thought was going to be kind of fun about this. So, yeah, this is from 2010 that I first wrote this, or maybe even 2009 when I wrote it, but somewhere in that ballpark, because that was when I was actively putting on a lot of shows. And so we had this thing called one eight stands. It was at the Irish Rogue on 54th street in Hell's Kitchen in New York. And it was such a fun bar that they were really cool with us just doing a minimum to use their space upstairs on slow nights. So I think we usually did these on Sundays or Mondays, I want to say. I think Sundays. So they would just have a bartender up there.

16:11
Case
We just had to make sure that our tab hit a certain threshold and we could just use the space. So it was a lot of fun doing that kind of thing, because I would just get a fuck ton of wings and drink a bunch of beer and hang out with a lot of people. We'd pack that place super tight and just give people scripts and get them up on stage. And generally they would rehearse, like, maybe once beforehand, but no expectation of memorization. Stuff would being workshopped. Some of it would be, like, abridged, but it was a really fun way to get people in there. And eventually it turned into sort of a promotion beyond just like a promotion for our theater company. But we ran a contest later on where we would have the audience vote on their favorite entry.

16:49
Case
And so whoever wrote those entries, we would work with them and develop a full show of some form. And that became the play that we put on called anyone for a swing in threesome, where we all worked with writers who had contributed the scene that people really liked. And then we developed a new play that could all interconnect for a night of three one act plays.

17:08
Geoff Moonen
Yeah. And that was down at the crane.

17:10
Case
Yes, down at the Crane theater on East Fourth street. So we often did our shows on Monday night, like the full shows on Monday nights, because that was an easier time for us to get a slot for the one night stands. It was always like, here's a drinking event. And it was hard to be like, yeah, Monday night, come and just hit a shitload of beer for our drink minimum.

17:30
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, hit a minimum on a Monday.

17:32
Case
We're doing shots, guys.

17:33
Geoff Moonen
That's only for theater people. Like, that's your dark day, right? Which sometimes it's nice to have industry nights, but I don't think that was the intention.

17:43
Case
That wasn't going to happen for that. So it was good for us because even though Sunday is obviously still a work day, the next day it's different. Yeah, it's different because you can rest up the day before or, like, the day that you're leading into it, as opposed to getting off work and going and being like, yes, I'm going to have to go have a bunch of 20 something year old guys who think that they can produce theater. Twist my arm to buy x amount of food and drinks.

18:06
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, come to my black box show. Is it a bar? Which you'd think is better, but then there's a drink minimum.

18:15
Case
Yeah, man, I do miss that aspect of just being like, oh, we're in New York, and being able to say, like, I've got some time. I could put on a show and have it feel like, yeah, we're doing theater, guys.

18:28
Geoff Moonen
Because you were. Because were. Yeah, but also. Right, yeah. Now, I attended and helped out with some of the just ask stuff. Was this the only comic book monologue or comic book play reading or comic book inspired, I suppose, play reading that you ever wrote?

18:44
Case
No, the first show that I did. So the format that we originally conceived of, which was that myself and my friend Adam Sampter, were both very drunk in Philadelphia one night visiting a friend, and were both very frustrated with how we hadn't really had much traction in terms of doing any theater at that point. I'd been interning at Wicked, but I wasn't doing theater. I was selling T shirts. And I forget what he was doing at that point, but we had done a ton of theater in college. Like, he and I became friends co directing Joseph in the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. So theater was a big part of our relationship, and that's why we both were living in New York. Or at least it was for me.

19:23
Case
For him, it was because Scarsdale, and that was the natural place for him to sort of wind up after college. But I was like, hey, what if we just reach out to a theater and see if they'll do a door split. And I knew the owner of the crane, and so that was sort of how it started. They hooked us up, and we're. Yeah, yeah, you can do fucking Monday nights, whatever. And so we brought in a friend of ours, Matt Kagan. And that's where we get the just ask part. It was Aiken Sampter, and Kagan is the acronym there. And it was like, all right, cool. We'll each write a one act play and round robin direct it so that we get a playwright credit and we get a directorial credit.

19:55
Case
But it's not just us directing our own stuff so that we can kind of mix up the credits side of things.

20:02
Geoff Moonen
Right. And plenty of things happened at the crane. It wasn't the sort of thing where it was know I put on a show in my living room.

20:08
Case
Right, exactly. Although there are some fun things. My sister in law is in a theater troupe in Boston that is living room productions, and they literally just do it at people's living rooms, and they get, like, a huge crowd, these things, and do, like, musical. I saw her do newsies.

20:25
Geoff Moonen
Damn. And that's not to say that sort of a production is doomed to obscurity or failure or says anything about its quality, but if you're given, like, a CV or your resume or your credits, those without context don't instill much.

20:44
Case
Yeah, exactly. Like, there's a difference between renting out a space in New York and renting out a space anywhere else. In terms of, like, are you doing theater? I'm not pretending that I was doing a higher caliber. I am just saying that people just are biased.

20:56
Geoff Moonen
Oh, yeah. I mean, I also know from working theater festivals through college and my early 20s that a lot of times, for the people that are figuring out which shows are coming in, a lot of it was not necessarily the quality of the show, but it was more about, can they put on the show? Can we trust them to be left to their own devices to create a full production? And even if you'renting out the space and putting on the shows yourself, that shows the necessary. I'm not just dreaming, I'm doing it. Which, again, speaks volumes.

21:26
Case
Yeah. So it came to a thing of, all right, so how do we plan this out? And so we each wrote our respective one act plays, and later, we would come to the idea of, okay, we should definitely make sure that we can have cross casting for all of these. That became a big thing where it's like, okay, we'll have bit parts that were specifically for actors who were the big parts and the other ones. But for the first show, we didn't really have that in mind. And for me, when I was creating it, I knew that were going to have an issue getting rehearsal spaces and getting people together. Like, those are always the problem when you're doing any kind of show.

21:55
Case
And when we are doing absolutely zero budget theater with people who are doing this for free, we have to go with their schedules. So, for me, my big plan was, okay, I am going to write a show that is me sort of just, like, expositing about my thoughts about theater. At the time, I had seen a bunch off Broadway shows. I had seen some more avant garde shows. I had seen stuff, and I was just having kind of general feelings about theater that I kind of wanted to explore. And so I designed it as a show that had three narratives running through this one act piece. So I think it runs like, 20 ish, 25 minutes, maybe 30 at most. So I had three narratives going through it.

22:35
Case
And it was constructed to be different types of theatrical experiences, all kind of contributing to this larger motif of the thing. So the play was called sans deus, obviously in reference to Deus ex machina. And so my thought was going to be, it was a play about machines, and that the whole play would be actually subtly putting a machine together on stage. My thought was to have them put a Rube Goldberg machine from scene to scene within it, be putting pieces in play for some kind of thing to occur. And that did not happen. What did happen was that it became characters connecting string lights, like Christmas tree lights, but the ones that are, like, the tube versions all over stage.

23:14
Case
And then the final piece, when they flip the switch, turns into a floodlight that blinds the audience for a moment, and then the light goes out, and stage lights come up and they do their bows, which was a really cool way that my friend Matt Rogan, who was sort of the unofficial fourth member of the trio, kind of came up with it as a compromise to this, all because obviously being like, okay, yeah, we're going to set this car here, and it's going to roll over this. It wasn't going to happen. We've got some cubes, right? Exactly. But the lighting situation ended up being very cool because it ended up being looking like circuitry running along this black box theater that we could leave up throughout, because they were just, like, plugging it into spots throughout the whole thing.

23:50
Case
And then again, like, big floodlight at the end that blinds the audience, and they're in silhouette, and then it comes.

23:55
Geoff Moonen
Back up and bow.

23:56
Case
So that was a really cool thing. So the three structures was one character monologuing two characters plotting a murder, and then one person doing, like, kind of physical comedy. This was actually the only character that was kind of a crosscast thing because it was specifically, he's going to be just writing stuff on a chalkboard and then getting more and more insane as he goes. So each one of them was this descent into madness over the course of trying to work on some kind of machine concept. So the three stories, I forget what I called the physical one because there wasn't, like, a big thing to really latch onto. His catchphrase was just, of course, that was, like, literally his only line.

24:32
Case
Each scene, he would be like, of course, and then run off to go work on something after sketching some stuff, and of course, and keep on doing stuff. As he got more and more elaborate with it, he ran off. And the penultimate time he ran off, there was like an explosion sound. And then the next time he came on, he was, like, in charred clothing. And he wipes off everything from the chalkboard and just draws a marijuana leaf and goes, of course. And then bong grip sound plays in the dark. But then the monologuing character, which was sort of the bigger meteor role, opened with him just screaming with, like, a bloody stump. And then every time it would come back to him, he would have a more and more elaborate prosthetic that he was working on.

25:14
Case
And so the subheading for it, although it's never actually referred to anywhere, aside from the credit, he's listed as this character, was the monologues of Dr. Sinister Polaro. Now, this was, like, right after Dr. Horrible's sing along blog came out. So, like, there was a little bit of that on my mind, certainly the doctor part, of course, but the idea was. So he kept on working on this thing. My thought was that we could get, like one of those old, like, you know, the Terminator hands.

25:37
Geoff Moonen
Oh, yeah.

25:38
Case
I was hoping that we could find one of those. We did, and we ended up having a glove with metal pieces on it, and then it was like a hook, and then the glove. And then the penultimate scene was him having his actual hand, and he was like, it's so perfect, except it's not quite right. It doesn't quite feel like things when I touch them. It's all digital. Instead of analog. It's not life. And then the last one, he has this big, what we jokingly called the megabuster, which was like this big contraption on his arm that is like, it's an electromagnet. And the conclusion and his lines of the thing that ends the play is like, don't you see? I finally have the power to move you.

26:19
Case
And that's when he would, like, activate the last light, and that, again, flood the audience and blah, blah.

26:25
Geoff Moonen
Now I have to ask, for pun's sake. Was the hand he was making prosthetic or replacing? Was it his right hand?

26:32
Case
No, it's his left.

26:33
Geoff Moonen
Okay. Because. Sinister. So he's making the left hand. Yes. Okay. Either way, it's going for the lefty joke.

26:40
Case
Yeah, he was working on his left hand. And ultimately, the polaro part was the electromagnet at the end. So in my head, it was kind of like, this is the birth of a supervillain.

26:48
Geoff Moonen
I love that.

26:49
Case
So his story, that actor was Leo Goodman, who has been on another pass a couple of times. Very talented actor, ironically, when we're talking about, like, losing your left hand. So this is the show where we had what I have referred to as the worst dress rehearsal ever.

27:04
Geoff Moonen
Bold.

27:05
Case
And I think I told this on another pass one time, but we'll come back to this one pin in this.

27:11
Geoff Moonen
Right?

27:12
Case
All right. Because the story is fucking wild. The other story arc was a duo, and they were trying to plan a murder. And so the story arc was just called Cecil and Bob, which is, of course, a Simpsons reference to sideshow Bob and his brother Cecil, which was when David Hyde Pierce guested, because Kelsey, remember, was always sideshow Bob. So their idea was that they were going to commit a murder, and they didn't want to get caught. And so what they were going to do was build a Tesla coil in order to make it look like someone was struck by lightning. And so it follows them, kind of like going through it. And the character who played Bob is the one who goes, like, crazier and crazier, ultimately. No, actually, Cecil, pardon me, getting the names of a. This was 2008, so.

27:54
Case
Of a 15 year old play. I wrote that long ago.

27:57
Geoff Moonen
Come on. It was only 2008.

27:59
Case
Yeah. So the Cecil character goes increasingly crazy over the course of it, and at the very end, I believe he turns it on and kills himself by accident when he's trying to figure out how to use it. But again, the idea was that these machines are driving people to madness, and the only one who has a healthy response is the one who gives up and just decides to go get baked, which, I don't know, all the if, necessarily. That was, like, a big, profound statement I was trying to make. But again, it was just me kind of, like, expositing my thoughts about theater and everything. That was kind of just on my mind at the time. Yeah, it makes sense.

28:32
Geoff Moonen
That's kind of what you do. You put what you're feeling, you put what you're thinking out into the world, out into art, and out into interpretation to then be interpreted. Yeah.

28:41
Case
And so my thought was that monologues are super easy to practice because you can literally do it anywhere. There wasn't, like, very complicated choreography because it's just a guy kind of talking to the audience about the experience of working on each hand as it became more and more complex. And then a duo you can do in a living room, that's doable. And then the last one, there was barely any need for him to rehearse. Like, he was a bigger character in one of the other plays, so he could kind of talk through what he had to do. He had literally one line that he just said four times, so not a big deal. That was kind of my thought was like, yeah, you're not going to have to rent rehearsal space. You can kind of just do it as is.

29:16
Case
And my thoughts were like, the props are going to be relatively easy for us to figure out. There was some complexity that came from just us trying to do something that was kind of visually interesting. But the whole thought was like, yeah, string lights are pretty easy to get. As the adaptation of the original idea of like, yeah, it'll just be some random shit that you're just putting places. The idea was to build a machine on stage.

29:36
Geoff Moonen
It's all implied. It's stagecraft.

29:38
Case
That was one I was really happy with. I remember the monologues. I had, like, this desire to make fun of David mamet a lot. So he kept on saying, do you see? Do you see? Which I find as like a tick that mammoth characters often say. Again, I was just like, I had seen this one show in the east Village. I forget the name of it now because, again, 15 years ago. Fucking Christ. But it made me so mad because it was a play that was designed to make you feel like you had wasted your night. And I was so angry. I was like, I can make something that at least is interesting and not fucking painful, and I'm not joking when I say it. That was like, the idea.

30:17
Case
It's like your time was being taken away from you was the nature of this play. And it was like a mixed media thing. And it was interesting, but I was like, I could do this better.

30:28
Geoff Moonen
That definitely smacks up that sort of idea of, wouldn't that be cool? And conceptually, it's extremely cool. In practice, you are intentionally making your audience angry. And while art is a wonderful avenue for challenging preconceived notions and opening one's eyes and feelings in a presumably safer environment. That's first year film school shit.

30:54
Case
Kind of, yeah. And again, there was a lot of thought into it. I can't even remember the name of it. I'm really trying not to rag too much, but it was just, like, my impression, because I was new to New York, and I was taken to a couple of shows by some friends, and I had a long history of doing theater, but this sort of, like, more avant garde kind of theater. Not in total, but this one particular show really bothered me, so I was like, I can do better than that. So the worst dress rehearsal story. All right. So were allowed to use the space for a small number of rehearsals, including our dress rehearsal and our dress rehearsal.

31:32
Case
We had a big block of time, and it was the middle of the day on Sunday after Thanksgiving, and were opening the Monday after Thanksgiving. This was 2008, so this wasn't the crane. This was actually the bread room, which is now a drink bar at that location. But at the time, it was the smaller theater. It was, like, a 30 some seat theater, which, by the way. Oh, boy. When we realized, in order to cover our costs, we needed to have, like, 50 people a night, we got creative with our seating. That is all I will say. So were upstairs at the red room, and we needed to get through two run throughs in order to have some real time, because there were a lot of changeovers. Again, there were three one act plays, and it was all hands on deck.

32:14
Case
We couldn't even leave gels up. We could overnight for this particular one, but generally speaking, we couldn't leave gels up between performances. So we had to be very on point in terms of everything were doing, because it was a shared space and small show, and the fact that we had three one accent, we actually had a fairly large cast. And this is a big reason why we're like, oh, we need to not do that in the future. Because our dressing room was, like, so tight. We couldn't have everyone changing at once because it was just that small. Fortunately, were upstairs from a bar, so people who were done could go and get drinks downstairs. So middle of the day Sunday, we had been hearing a lot of noise because the first floor, the basement, is a comedy club.

32:51
Case
First floor is the Crane Theater, which is a pretty good size. It's a 99 seat off Broadway house. And then the second floor is the KGB bar, which is also where the bathrooms are. And then the red room was upstairs, and then above that was the owner Dennis's office. So we break from the first run through, and all the actors are sitting in the bleachers. We're starting to talk through our notes, and we hear a scream and the sound of breaking glass. And this was not a rehearsal style scream because we'd been hearing a lot of noise from downstairs, but this was not that kind of noise. And I am closest to the door, so I open the door, and I hear more of it, and I run downstairs, and I get to the second floor, which is where the sound is coming from.

33:33
Case
And the sound is coming from the women's restroom. And it's like a little hallway to that door. It's not shared with the men's room. It's around a corner kind of thing.

33:40
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, you kind of go around the corner from the stairs.

33:41
Case
So I come round the corner, and that is when I see a dude standing right there with blood gushing everywhere. And there is a woman hanging on his back, and she is screaming, help. Help. Call the police. At which point everything fucking freezes. So I remember distinctly being like, holy shit. Holy shit. And I look backwards, and everyone had kind of, like, come up behind me. And at this point I'm like, oh, my God. What the fuck? What the fuck? And I'm in this really narrow hallway, and I'm like, well, they've got the call the police part. Let's see what I can do on the helper part. And so I move in to try to engage with this guy, because what is going on is that his neck is slashed open and blood is squirting everywhere. He is holding this big shard of glass.

34:24
Case
And the women's restroom had, like, is it like french doors, like panels with glass kind of style? And he had punched out one of them and taken a shard of glass, and he was trying to cut his own throat open. What?

34:36
Geoff Moonen
Wow.

34:37
Case
So this girl is, like, trying to hold him back, and I move in to try to wrangle him down, but it's a super narrow hallway, and I was a lot skinnier then. I was probably at one of my lowest weights, which was, like, about 170 pounds. But I'm five nine. I'm not that big a guy, but I'm wide. My shoulders are wide, and no one was getting around me. It was not a scenario where I was going to get much backup until things had shifted around a little bit.

35:06
Geoff Moonen
Yeah.

35:06
Case
So I'm trying to get the shard of glass away from him, trying to see what's going on, because she's, like, trying to hold his arms back and she's trying to assist. There's at one point, and this is like the. One of those moments where you're like, this can't be real. But it did happen, I remember it and people have verified it, which is that I got him into, like a bear hug with him, his back to me, and I'm like, I got him. I got him. He actually said the phrase, you don't got me, and kicked back.

35:30
Case
And this is one of the only times I ever want to have in my life where I think, thank God the bars to the window are on the inside, because I slammed into the bars again on the inside, as opposed to going through the glass and then hitting the bars then, and having the glass, like, wedged into my back or coming off of a second story. Yeah, either of those would have been worse. So gut on them for the bars being on the inside there. But we continue to wrestle with this guy. One of the actors, Leo Goodman, Dr. Sinister, Polaro, is able to get in there once things have kind of shifted around and we're able to get him down on the ground.

36:03
Case
And then at one point, he bucks me off and I don't want to be like, oh, he was a big fucking guy, but he was like, over 6ft, six one, something like that. Not huge, but, like, bigger than me. He bucks me off and he takes the shard of glass and he deep into his neck and he goes down and both of us are just, like, fucking screaming because we're covered in blood. And this guy looks like he just died in front of us. And then he starts to get up and he starts to go for the shard of glass to pull it. And I grab his hand as he's grabbing the glass and, like, fling it up against the wall.

36:35
Case
And that's when the shard of glass goes right up my hand, my left hand, and we're leaning on him and I'm in this weird position where the women's restroom is right above me and full weight of my body is, like, resting on his arm. At this point, Leo's got him on the other side, and I'm, like, reaching up into the women's room and the paper towel dispenser is right there and I'm grabbing paper towels to cover up my hand, and that's roughly when the cops arrive and get them onto a stretcher bound up.

37:02
Geoff Moonen
Wow.

37:03
Case
And so we all go for a ride to Bellevue together, where I get a shitload of stitches into my hand, and the sharded glass went from my palm all the way along my index finger of my left hand. And it was weird. I was, like, 24 at the time, so I was still on my parents health insurance, and they weirdly had me in the kids section, but Leo was, like, 27, so were separated. It was really weird that they put us in the ambulance with the dude on the way over, and he was like, you should have let me die.

37:34
Geoff Moonen
Wow.

37:34
Case
Yeah. The girl told us a little bit more about it. So he was her ex boyfriend or, like, they had a thing, kind of. I remember weirdly, they were both from Maryland, which was, like, very strange. I was like, oh, shit, okay. But she was performing in a show that was at the crane, and he came to try to talk to her because it wasn't going well. And while they were talking, he was trying to win her back, I guess. I forget what he did in my head. I'm like, did he play her a song on a guitar? But I don't know if that's just me making up something right now or not.

38:03
Geoff Moonen
Some romantic gesture happens.

38:04
Case
Yeah, some gesture. And this conversation goes poorly. And he goes, you know what? You never love me. And that's when he punched the glass and that whole weird thing. Yeah. So crapped on the stitches, and because they were all along my finger, on my index finger, they burst later on. So I still have this giant scar from where the stitches burst because they just never were going to properly heal. It's a lot smaller than you would think based on how big the slash used to be. And you can kind of see some of the tissue lower down, but the only big scar area is, like, the middle digit. But I still have no feeling in my index finger, and the scar is super sensitive, but, yeah.

38:45
Geoff Moonen
So have you ever considered building a sinister prosthetic for that finger?

38:51
Case
I got really lucky that I have full movement still, which is great. Yeah.

38:56
Geoff Moonen
Wow.

38:58
Case
The next day, when we came for opening night of our fucking show, the cast was like, holy fuck, dude. It was, like, the most unifying experience I've ever had for cast. You know the expression bad dress rehearsal, great opening night, or good dress rehearsal, bad opening? Yeah, yeah, great opening night.

39:16
Geoff Moonen
Wow.

39:17
Jmike
Holy crap.

39:18
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, just wow.

39:20
Case
Yeah. Off Broadway theater, man.

39:22
Geoff Moonen
I mean, yeah, I could probably pull a bunch of weird incidents and stories and probably a bunch of them from the crane and under St. Mark's because I worked the frigid festival. A bunch of.

39:32
Case
Yeah, yeah.

39:33
Geoff Moonen
I could probably pull a bunch of stories to maybe equal that, but this isn't a competition. You already won. Wow.

39:43
Case
Yeah, it was wild ass night.

39:45
Geoff Moonen
I'm really glad you didn't let that guy do what he wanted there. Wow.

39:52
Jmike
Undercover superhero.

39:53
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, it was really weird, but yeah.

39:57
Case
So then I've had some other stuff that was kind of superhero inspired, but that was the biggest one where it's like, here's like a full one act play. There was other monologues I've written, and I had thoughts at one point of doing some kind of collection of stuff, but then the MCU became a lot bigger and superhero stuff became much more ubiquitous. And I might come back to it, but I'm not really doing a lot of theater these days, so I don't know when I would ever do it, and it's not the first thing I would really focus on.

40:27
Geoff Moonen
Yeah.

40:27
Case
I have a friend who is now actually doing pretty well as a playwright, will Lacker, who we became friends because he was doing also superhero themed theater. So more hats off to him because I think he's still doing some of those shows. If I was ever to write a show to go up on stage, I know what it would be. So I don't know when the next time I will put up a play of some kind, but the next one wouldn't be a superhero thing. Maybe a future one would be, but, yeah, it's funny.

40:54
Geoff Moonen
Did I ever tell you about the comic book play that I sort of co wrote in college?

40:58
Case
Maybe, but we've known each other for, like, almost 15 years now, so why don't you tell it for the audience?

41:04
Geoff Moonen
I'll keep details light because the framing on this was an idea off of someone I went to college with who is a very talented artist and was drawing comic books from when he was a little kid and had a character that he created and was writing a play about that character. And so I started first kind of giving notes and things like that, and then it just sort of snowballed into the wood thing where I was like 60 40 kind of way. I was the 40 being a co writer on it, just kind of giving production notes and pushing here and there. And for the senior project of our theater department, you put on a play. And we did that script.

41:47
Geoff Moonen
And I was reminded of it very recently because going through my stuff, we made programs for this show that was a comic book of the characters that my co writer had drawn. And my only ever stint as a comic book letterer, and I actually feel pretty good about how it turned out. And I will say that something about it that has stayed with me for a long time that I would love to play with, is it was, at its core, it was a comic book character speaking with his creator, and the creator trying to help the superhero through a slump because he had put away the mask due to tragedy that he was denying, and things had fallen apart, and the notion of what is free will and what is choice, and the book's being canceled, but it's not.

42:42
Geoff Moonen
And I was in the show as one of the two people who were there as readers of the comic. That kind of helped move some scene stuff along, and there was a little bit of a bit at the end where the titular superhero actually appears in our world, and there's a bit of a runoff there, which then leads to a big finale on it. And I really was absolutely taken and fascinated with the notion of how the medium of theater allows for that level of obfuscation. Any medium of storytelling has its strengths, weaknesses, and its infrastructure, just due to the nature of how it is made. And theater has string lights can be a diabolical machine. A green light can be kryptonite. Killing a superhero, you are already making leaps. One of my favorite plays is the 39 steps because of that.

43:36
Geoff Moonen
So when you have the notion of creator and character and reader and layers upon interacting with what is the in fiction medium, you can play with poking those holes, and I would love to revisit that someday. I would not want to revisit that character. It's not my character. But that notion of comic books and myth and superheroes and live theater, I think, is worth going back to superhero.

44:05
Case
Fiction, regardless if you consider it a genre or not. It's certainly a format of storytelling. And the fact that it has become so ubiquitously associated with comic books as a whole, where clearly it can bleed into anything else, like you can do Superman on animated show or in a movie. Superman is the big reason why comic book became a big thing. And in the 60s, particularly post the comics code, it became the sort of default kind of format for storytelling. And it's interesting to put it in the spots that are harder to conceive of, even if it's ones that, honestly, you can make work pretty well because there's way more suspension of disbelief when we're talking about a stage piece, right?

44:42
Geoff Moonen
There's already the idea of you can't cgi that, of course we're going to see the wires we are going to all say the wires aren't there, and there is a certain amount of suspension, pun intended, of disbelief. There. You got your Spider man. Turn off the dark. You've got your failed Superman musicals.

45:00
Case
Yep. At some point, we are going to talk about it's a bird, it's a plane. Superman on here.

45:05
Geoff Moonen
Oh, good.

45:06
Case
That is definitely happening. I had conversations about how we're going to do that episode because it's also a full musical. It's one that I want to do. Right, listeners, please.

45:17
Geoff Moonen
Oh, yeah. And I had a lot of fun thinking about superheroes and stagings and everything else for a while. I mean, I don't know if I've ever said this on the show. The theme for this podcast was for our college radio theater troupe, of which I was a founding member. And amongst the old horror scripts and things that we did, we also would do every show. The next script of a Superman radio serial. I was first in there as sort of the music director. It was just me and a little electric organ playing, diminished seven chords over things and just doing what have you, and a lot of it was just kind of improvisation. And the faculty director of theater troupe, he was like, I want you to compose a Superman theme.

46:04
Geoff Moonen
And we talked about it a little bit, and 80% of what the Men of Steel podcast theme is what immediately fell out of me. And that was composed of a Superman radio serial that I'm very happy it has a home here because I always wanted it to go somewhere, and this is just what it meant to be. But a lot of what you could get away with Superman in terms of a audio only medium versus something in theater where there are limitations, but there's also accepted limitations. I mean, kryptonite was created for the radio serial, if I'm not mistaken. It was a way to give the actor for Superman a bit of a vacation. And the green kryptonite renders Superman completely powerless. You can get effort, sounds, and cool.

46:46
Jmike
Superman can passed out for a couple of months.

46:49
Geoff Moonen
He could be out for the week. That's sort of a thing. And so it's interesting what gets developed and what comes from that.

46:55
Case
Yeah, I mean, we love the radio show here. It's been a while since we talked about it, but we did for quite a bit early in the show history, and we are someday going to come back to it because we had gotten very close to the Atom man story arc.

47:08
Geoff Moonen
We did Batman's big mystery.

47:10
Case
We did do that one recently. Yeah.

47:12
Geoff Moonen
God, it was fun.

47:14
Case
But we'll come back to it at some point and talk more about that. But, yeah, the audio format is so fun for doing these kind of stories because, again, suspension of disbelief. You're really here for it because you can do just sound effects and you're golden.

47:25
Geoff Moonen
You have your live Foley and you can have some fun with it. And, I mean, there again, kind of bringing it back to this current version of the monologue that you wrote that we featured here on this episode. It is theater and it is radio theater.

47:38
Case
Yeah. So I ended up adding a lot of musical effects and a little bit of a kryptonite radiation kind of effect for it because it occurred to me that having it on stage, you're there for the performance versus listening to just the audio. I was like, I should have some kind of thing, kind of going with it, some kind of scoring. And that was important to me just to make it as interesting as I could because the formats are different. Like, when you're in the room with a guy who's delivering a monologue, you're there with all the charisma and everything that person is giving.

48:06
Geoff Moonen
Absolutely.

48:07
Case
Versus, like, here's the audio format for it. Not to say that you lack that, it's just, it's the difference of the medium.

48:14
Geoff Moonen
But there is that same thing of having done both theatrical and voiceover acting. There is the staging and the blocking that is baked into a theatrical performance. One could take the script and take notes of exactly where the villain is walking. Is he looking at his fallen foe? Is he getting close? Does he ever touch him? Or does he only get so close? How loud, how far away, how close? All of those things are baked in, built in, and the audience sees that. And that brings you in. One of the fun challenges of voiceover in general is you need to do that. One of the big conversation pieces that happens in the voiceover community. It's like, I want to get started in voice acting. What do I do? How do I get started with that? First, focus on the acting. Everything else follows.

49:05
Geoff Moonen
And you need to be able to know, reading through this, where is the villain in this rendition? How close, how far? And that's just on the physical side of things that you have to imagine in theater of the mind. And so you're right. Those are the differences in the mediums, or one of many. And thank you for letting me pontificate pretentiously for a moment.

49:29
Case
Yeah, some thoughts now that, like, relistened to it. It's like, oh, right. Here were all the inspirations I had going into it. So obviously, the basic idea is an argument that Superman is a childish concept of heroism, which I think that there's more nuance to it, but I think there is a case you can make for it at the very least. It is like, here is a very simple and pure idea of a hero. And then I've articulated that I think the Silver Age is a lot of bringing in teenage angst into it all. Like, Marvel superheroes. Like, Spider man is like, yeah, that's Hulk. Those are a lot of times where it's like, here's the pressures you feel. It appeals to an adolescent audience in a different way.

50:06
Geoff Moonen
Right.

50:06
Case
And you get that conversation of adolescent power fantasies versus childish power fantasies. And so one of the big prompts for me, actually, was Grant Morrison in the Wildstorm. Whatever the event that they were doing to try to relaunch Wildstorm comics after the DC acquisition had a point where Spartan made a reference of, we're moving past being adolescent superheroes. And they were like, so what does that make us adults? And that became a cutaway for, like, a Spartan kissing a character, maybe zealot. I can't remember for sure, or voodoo. Doesn't matter. I always just thought that was a really interesting phrasing of that. I was like, well, what is the adult superhero? So that was one of the starting points on my ideas. Obviously, there's some references to Superman. Red sun in there, with the fewer people wearing seatbelts kind of concept.

50:50
Case
I always love that.

50:51
Geoff Moonen
Why not put the whole world in a bottle?

50:53
Case
Yeah, I thought that was a really fun idea right there. Like, that people would be reliant on Superman. So I kind of wanted to play with that. What version of Lex is this, even in this, you know, legally distinct lexing through Superman?

51:06
Geoff Moonen
Well, there's something I always enjoy about. I have not read Superman as exhaustively as both of y'all, but there is something I love about many different versions of Lex Luthor, which is how caught up does he get in his own worldview? And there is something to this monologue where you read it, and, yeah, it does explore that notion and that idea, and you don't necessarily need to agree with it, because it's right there in the title, the villain. And you're arguing about who is the villain, right. And we are conditioned to believe that it is the one standing monologuing to his fallen foe. But is it? Is it not? It's a good thought exercise on that. And so there have been so many other portrayals. Another one that I'm thinking of right now, because it's that whole and very red sun.

51:56
Geoff Moonen
Think of what I could have done for humanity if you just hadn't gotten in my way. I'm thinking of 52 when there was that whole part of DC where there was the year without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. After that, I believe it was the first one year later storyline with Superman up and away, where at some point Superman just outright says to him, you had a whole year without me. What did you do with that?

52:22
Case
Yeah. How do you explore that concept there? Like, what is the goal of Lex Luthor?

52:27
Geoff Moonen
Yeah. And this is absolutely just him imagining that you don't know whether he's right or wrong or if that's going to be how it is. This is just smugness.

52:35
Jmike
We kind of did it with, like, all star Superman, too, when he got the super serum for, like, was it 24 hours?

52:40
Geoff Moonen
I think, yeah, absolutely.

52:42
Jmike
And then he only realized what he could actually accomplish at the very end of the time he had with it.

52:48
Geoff Moonen
Yeah. He got so caught, he was like.

52:49
Jmike
No, I could have done so much. And he's like, yeah, you could have done this your entire life, but you chose not to, you jerk.

52:54
Case
Right.

52:55
Geoff Moonen
And that was him getting to say it as Superman as opposed to him arguing with him as Clark. And I think issue five, when he interviews him in the. Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's a wild thing. And one of the great things I love about comic book style mythology and superhero style mythology is the way that we take the small pieces of ourselves and just enlarge them into imax proportions of how many things do we say, oh, I could have done this, if only.

53:23
Case
Yeah. And then lastly, in terms of obvious inspirations that I can recall, was Superman 149, the death of Superman's story that Jerry Siegel did with Kurt Swan.

53:33
Geoff Moonen
I was going to ask, are those the comic pages you had attached in the email?

53:37
Case
Yes.

53:38
Geoff Moonen
Excellent.

53:39
Case
Yeah. So I had that issue in the greatest Superman stories ever told trade from way back when I was a kid. And that's, like, one of the big areas where I really got into the back lore of Superman. So that story had always been etched in my mind. And I thought it was such like a cool, brutal killing of Superman with just like, here's a kryptonite beam and without any MacGuffin or any Deus six machina to get you out, he's just dead. Like the death trap worked by Silver.

54:04
Geoff Moonen
Age standards, it's brutal. Just in general, it's brutal.

54:07
Case
Yeah. So that was like, kind of a big driver there. So, yeah, it was kind of like that circumstance. And then what is he saying? And I've realized since we've done this show, there have been a few times where Lex has gotten those kind of monologues in the comics. Like, he gets one in the world without Superman story arc when they get Superman back into his tomb after they recover him from Cadmus, where he's just like, gotcha. And he has, like, a little bit of a monologue there. But, yeah, I just kind of wanted to do something like that and to do it in a stage piece and have some fun with it. But now, 13 years later, it was like, oh, it's been a while. I still rather like it.

54:41
Geoff Moonen
It's a timeless version.

54:42
Case
I can hear the writing quirks that I did, and I know the inspirations I had. But also, I feel pretty good about the closing line. And I really loved your delivery of it being like, yeah, no, the title, you're the villain, was always an important part for me. That's how Lex Luthor sees Superman.

54:57
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, it's a fundamental piece. And for this kind of Lex Luthor, this archetype, that is absolutely how he sees it. He sees himself as the savior of humanity with a capital H and something very fun and stuff like this. To get, again, briefly pretentious.

55:13
Case
Oh, don't worry about getting briefly pretentious on this episode, because this is an episode where it's like, hey, let's all talk about this play I wrote 15 years ago.

55:21
Geoff Moonen
I'm just trying to be self aware as best I can. Best I can. When you have repeated phrases, it's always a matter of, why are we repeating this phrase? Is it madness? Then you can say it exactly the same way. If you're bringing it back and it's a thesis for the next topic, what is it? And it keeps coming back to, you were a child superhero. And hearing you say that concept of, like, what is a child superhero, what's a teen superhero? What's an adult superhero is very eye opening and refreshing on that in terms of. Because, again, you repeat these things in dramatic dialogue, which is always hyper realistic beyond the real because it's something you're stuck on, because it's a problem you've yet to solve or will never solve.

56:05
Geoff Moonen
But you keep coming at it one way or another, and that is the justification that he gives so that he can truly say that you're the villain. You are keeping everyone in a neotonous state, in a state of arrested development, unable to grow past. Will they grow past with me. Shut up. You're dead. I win.

56:30
Case
Because, like, the other side of it is, there is a spot for Lex Luthor to literally not contribute to the world, but just to prevent things from doing that. It's an argument to be made. I don't agree with it, but it is certainly one where you could make that case that humanity. It's the whole, like, humanity has to be able to fly for it to learn to fly themselves. Which I say in the fucking. It's just. It's crazy to be like, oh, yeah. These are a lot of my thoughts about a stance on Superman. Just, like, feeling out here, right?

57:02
Geoff Moonen
If this were to be developed into a full show, there'd have to be a lot more to it. But as far as the statement of intent, the beginnings of the exploration, so that the audience can continue, that's exactly what this is. It's what it needs to be. And I had a lot of fun with it, and I think it's a damn good example of it.

57:20
Case
I mean, we've been going for a little while on this one, and spending an hour and a half talking about an eight minute monologue is, if we want to talk about momentarily.

57:28
Geoff Moonen
I'll edit this down. Don't you worry. You're going to get 15 minutes out of this shit.

57:34
Case
So, j Mike, when you first listened to this, were there interesting takeaways for you? Again, were there things you didn't like? That's the other part of it. This is not just a everyone praise case's writing scenario.

57:45
Jmike
Like I said, I want Jeff to play Lex Luthor.

57:49
Geoff Moonen
Yay.

57:49
Jmike
In some variation of something soon. Make it happen. DC got nothing else better to do.

57:56
Geoff Moonen
I'll find other megalomaniacs to play. Just you wait. Yeah.

58:00
Jmike
I was like, this is a great version of, like, Luther, who is not like, you know, reasons.

58:05
Geoff Moonen
Reasons.

58:07
Jmike
This is great. I loved it. I don't have anything bad to say about it. I just wish it was a little longer. Thinking it's really. To really build into that mustache twirling, maniacal, laughter villain type archetype. But this is great. This is wonderful. I loved it.

58:24
Case
Cool.

58:24
Geoff Moonen
Thank you.

58:25
Case
Well done. And, Jeff, thank you so much for bringing this to life in a really new way.

58:30
Geoff Moonen
I've said it so many times because I mean it. This was so much goddamn fun. There is a great joy in getting to engage with this. And. Yeah, I do not agree with this monologue at all. It doesn't mean I can't have a lot of fun living it.

58:41
Case
Oh, yeah. Obviously, I have been hosting now for four and a half years a Superman podcast. Clearly, I like Superman and think that is a worthwhile thing to explore.

58:51
Geoff Moonen
Right? But that's not a disclaimer. That's just what I love about fiction and theater is you get to have those meditations and you get to have those moments of, would I ever want to do half the things I'd love to portray on stage? No. Is it fun to play? Yes. How many times have I died on stage? Several. How many times have I died in real life? None that I'm aware of. So, had fun dying on stage every time, though.

59:18
Jmike
Like, the whole drawn out death where.

59:21
Case
You'Re like.

59:24
Jmike
If I only had more time blur.

59:26
Geoff Moonen
More or less. I did a show once where I played android character that was a murder mystery dinner where I was the murder victim, and I also closed the show because a different model had shown up.

59:38
Jmike
I've seen things.

59:44
Case
Could be both lore and data in that episode, more or less. All right, well, I have been very excited to do this one, but at the same time, extremely nervous, because, again, talking about being pretentious, this is an eight minute monologue that I wrote a long time ago. Now we're in the age of reaction videos.

01:00:05
Geoff Moonen
This is fine.

01:00:06
Jmike
This is completely fine.

01:00:09
Case
Well, it's just one where it's like, well, I'm very happy to talk about it all. I'm very happy to revisit the whole thing just because it's just. Again, here were thoughts that were kind of just, like, milling about in my head at the time. And you know how there are some writers who literally can't look at their stuff without squirming? I have mixed responses because there's oftentimes wordplay. I find really. I get really excited about where it's like, oh, good, I'm reading a thing for someone who thinks, like, me. Oh, because it's me. Yay. And then there are elements where it's just like, oh, well, here I can see clearly the sources, and I can see all those kind of things.

01:00:45
Geoff Moonen
You can see the wires, right?

01:00:47
Case
Way better than I can for anything else, because it's remembering the wires. It's not even like seeing them for the first time.

01:00:54
Geoff Moonen
That's true.

01:00:55
Case
And then there are elements where it is like, oh, I would have done that differently, or things that would change, and I'm not sure what I would change if I were to do this completely from scratch. Like, I didn't rewrite this at all for you. Like, I just gave you literally the same script.

01:01:08
Geoff Moonen
No, I think that was important. Yeah.

01:01:10
Case
Like I said, I'm not sure what I would do different. I know what I would say about it differently, but I feel like that would be coming from the start as opposed to reworking the script that already exists, because this was very much like, here is a monologue from the perspective of a Lex Luthor that sees himself as a hero and has an articulated point about what that means. And not just the general, like, oh, but Superman's bad for, like, why does he think that? And what is he sort of exploring with those thoughts? And it was a lot of fun to do it this way. I did briefly think about reading it myself, and I'm really glad that we decided not to do that because it was a lot of fun to hear you do it.

01:01:49
Case
And the fact that you and I have known each other and done so many projects together over the years so that you're not coming in unaware of the context for what this was created.

01:01:58
Geoff Moonen
For was really helpful as well on my end, too. This is why we didn't have to have a ton of back and forth about this. There's trust.

01:02:06
Case
Yeah. And also, I'm really glad that you decided just to. Because initially I was like, oh, yeah, you can come on, and we can read it live on the podcast. I'm really glad that we didn't do it that way so that we could actually put some sound effects and stuff in there.

01:02:20
Geoff Moonen
Well, because, again, from what it sounds like, this episode exists because somebody wanted to see that original theatrical version of it. And so this is our best approximation of that, and this is that script. And so the new viewpoints. And in theater, it is very possible to be director, writer and lead actor. You shouldn't at the same time, right?

01:02:43
Case
Oh, God.

01:02:43
Geoff Moonen
You can wear many hats, but you shouldn't wear as few hats as possible, because collaboration creates beauty. It can, within reason. So I'm very happy to be a collaborator on this and bring my views and my self and my experiences through the lens that you have written and shaped. And now that we can put that out there for people to listen to it. Yeah, let's get some feedback on performance, on writing, on everything else. Let's go.

01:03:07
Case
Yeah, I mean, we at certain POV, have wanted to do more, like audio drama kind of stuff very early on, when reignite first joined the network, Frank and I got really into doing a project that didn't really get off the ground. I have a full radio script that at some point I want to do that. I filed off all the serial numbers for, but was originally a shadow beats Superman crossover with the concept of the Margot Lane Lois Lane connection, being that they were cousins. Because, of course, yeah, I would love to do that script at some point as an episode for the show or just as a standalone thing because I reworked it.

01:03:43
Case
So it was Wonder man, the original Superman Knockoff, the one that was released within two months of Superman coming out before any other Superman Knockoff had come out and immediately was suited copyright.

01:03:55
Geoff Moonen
Shut up, kid.

01:03:56
Case
Get out of here. Immediately suited to oblivion now in public domain, and the spider, which is also a public domain character who was a shadow knockoff fantastic from that same era. And I had, like, reworked it so it all kind of fit while at the same time being public domain so you don't get in as much trouble.

01:04:11
Geoff Moonen
Well, let's see if people want that. I mean, we could certainly make it either way.

01:04:15
Case
Yeah, I mean, you lose some of the really fun points, which is that I had gotten the verbatim openings for both because it was structured as an episode of each that bled directly into each other. So I think it was the shadow first and then Superman second. So it was like midway through, you get the opening narration for the other one. And that was just kind of like a fun exercise for it. I would love to actually put that up in some way. I've also thought, like, hey, maybe I should reach out to the people at Big Bang comics because I've had some very positive interactions with them because I've made videos on characters from there. And at the very least, Ultiman is like the classic Superman style.

01:04:50
Case
They don't really have a good shadow equivalent, but you could make one work and then it could still play nice with a property or go completely scratch, like completely original characters.

01:05:00
Geoff Moonen
Yeah. Because I think this is also a great time in entertainment for that. Think of all the good narrative podcasts that are out there. That is its own. When I was doing radio theater in college, podcasting existed, but were several years from stuff like, welcome to Nightvale, certainly.

01:05:19
Case
Yeah. Because it never really went away. Like the Doctor who stuff was going on, like, very, exactly. And I've always been a huge fan of old school radio shows. I used to buy all the collections of Sci-Fi shows and War of the world and obviously Superman, the shadow, the Saint, tons of great material existed back in the day and obviously TV kind of played a part in that. But the fact that audio became so big in the 2000s when we all realized that, hey, we're all multitasking like crazy, and it doesn't always have to be the same alt rock station playing the same music today that it did when I was in high school.

01:05:54
Jmike
You stopped that now.

01:05:55
Geoff Moonen
Okay. I have been listening to the NPR radio drama recordings of Star wars and the Empire Strikes back. I got these on cassette at a theater company's fire sale, and I didn't even have a cassette player. I finally got one in January, and so I now have a nice little cassette collection. And I realized, I remembered, oh, my God, I have Star wars. And by God, is it fun to listen to. It was produced, I think, back in 1981. The only movie actors, the only actors from the film that are in the cast are Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Anthony Daniels as I do it. Mark Hamill, voice acting. It was surprising in 1981, if nothing else.

01:06:44
Case
Well, and Anthony Daniels is going to be anything that gives him a paycheck to be C, three B.

01:06:49
Geoff Moonen
Absolutely, my man. Look, that is, I'm an actor not because I want to be famous, but because I can't do anything else. And I like to work, so I get it. But I have a little Walkman that if I'm cleaning up around the house on the weekend or something, I put that on the whole first tape. The first two episodes of the five and a half hour, 13 episode rendition of Star Wars a new hope doesn't even start at the movie. It's episode one. Side A is what happened to Luke on Tatooine, and side B is how did Leia end up being in the Tanta four, running from Darth Vader? You could do so much with it. And there was like, they're on several different planets. You don't have to worry about set pieces at all. Audio drama is beautiful.

01:07:36
Case
Absolutely. I mean, it's different. Obviously, there's things that you can do that you can't possibly do in a movie, and there's things that just don't look interesting that would be from a movie. Like fighting is very difficult to convey. You can't have good choreography at best. You can have interesting narrations and some probably good voice work to kind of make it work, but it's just a different thing.

01:07:58
Geoff Moonen
But that's comic books, too. You can have cool settings and you could do beautiful storytelling with it, but at the end, it's still static and you get that marvel method of, this is my thought bubble, and I'm going to narrate everything that's going on. Sounds you shouldn't know, that kind of feeling. And so you work with what you got. Yeah.

01:08:16
Case
Today, what we had was a script from 2010. Thank you. Thank you. But, yeah, that was Lex Luthor killing Superman and explaining why it was right. At least for know, I love the.

01:08:30
Geoff Moonen
Idea that some people, you go, how would they do that? Why would they do. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, you play the Batman Arkham games. You're like, look, I am living for here and Kevin Conroy, but why would Batman be narrating to himself all the time? You play Marvel Spider man. Yeah, Spider Man's got to be talking to himself all the time. Lex Luthor, he could monologue to no one. Yeah, will has. And will again.

01:08:56
Case
Now, that said, if we ever got, like, an actual Lex Luthor actor to do it, I would be very curious, like, if we ever got Clancy Brown, let's just put the cars on the table. If we ever got Clancy Brown to do this, I would be head over heels in love, but happy weeping as it stands. Again, Jeff, thank you. You did a fucking amazing job, especially because I gave you, like, no direction. I was like, here's the script. I can't even remember if I shared you the link for the original.

01:09:23
Geoff Moonen
I learned today an hour ago that there's a video.

01:09:26
Case
Yeah, it exists in the Internet, but.

01:09:28
Geoff Moonen
It'S the ephemera of it all.

01:09:30
Case
Well, and the ephemera is, like, theater part of it. Theater is not built to be a thing that lives on forever. Aside from as, like, oh, here's an archive of what was done.

01:09:38
Geoff Moonen
Yeah, filming theater is still a worthwhile archival process, but it is not the original thing.

01:09:44
Case
I am really glad with the performance you gave, and I really hope that what we have created is a thing that will have some lasting value.

01:09:52
Geoff Moonen
Agreed. I hope folks enjoy it.

01:09:54
Case
So, Jeff, you did us a huge favor coming on for this one and doing that part. But outside of being our wonderful editor these days, where can people find you? What have you got going on? Who the fuck is you?

01:10:08
Geoff Moonen
Who the fuck is me? Who is me is Jeff. Jeff Moonin. I can most easily and regularly be found podcasting. I am also part of the certain POV network on Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff@certainpov.com. I edit this show as well as several other shows on the certain POV network. And gum Jabbar for lore party. And you can find me on, usually, Twitter, but most social media you can find me at. Jeff makes noise, Geoff. And usually if I've got some other role or some other thing going, usually if it's something worth announcing, I announce it more often than not, the sort of voiceover work that I do is you call a service somewhere and you get the voicemail and it's like, we're very sorry that we can't answer your call right now.

01:10:54
Geoff Moonen
Like I said, I didn't do this to get famous. I like to work.

01:11:00
Case
J Mike, obviously you are the co host that is not at large. You are the co host at bay.

01:11:06
Jmike
I mean, I'm here at perpetuity.

01:11:10
Geoff Moonen
Yes, co host at Infinita.

01:11:13
Case
But what else have you got going on? Where can people find you? What have you got going on?

01:11:17
Jmike
Gosh, you can find me somewhere on the burning website formerly known as Twitter. But listening to this got me thinking, like, oh, man, those great days, we had people come on the show and do little voice lines for us. And scruffy. Oh, yeah, man, those were the days. Those were the days.

01:11:33
Geoff Moonen
Maybe one day, one of those was my spouse.

01:11:36
Case
That's true. Yeah. Who also, same logic that I had for casting you as Lex Luthor was, oh, it's a ginger. She was like, I'm not really like an actor. And I'm like, no, but it's not just that Sarah is a ginger, it's that Sarah actually just, it was one.

01:11:51
Geoff Moonen
Of those words like, just be yourself.

01:11:52
Case
Screams Mara Jade to me. Yeah. Like, because she's a martial artist and shockingly intimidating for how small of a person she is. And I was like, hey, yes, that's exactly the vibe I want for Amara Jade.

01:12:05
Geoff Moonen
She went from equity stage manager to now, like, chief of staff at tech startups. Yesterday she bullied a bus into changing its route. I'm not kidding.

01:12:15
Jmike
Small but mighty.

01:12:18
Geoff Moonen
Yes. On her desk is very nice calligraphy, though. She be but little.

01:12:22
Case
She is fierce. Yes. Anyway, yeah, scruffy. At some point we'll come back for the last of it, but as I mentioned at the top of the show, I just had a baby, so my brain has been mush.

01:12:33
Geoff Moonen
And congratulations.

01:12:34
Case
Thank you. She is great. She deserves a better dad than me. But it's wonderful as an addition to my life. But also it has made the concept of keeping any kind of schedule just a joke in terms of posting for any of the shows that I'm working on. It's just like, oh, yeah, it'll happen eventually. They'll go subtitle Fuck, man.

01:12:58
Geoff Moonen
You've lived 80 hours weeks for the last decade.

01:13:01
Jmike
Yeah, I know.

01:13:02
Case
And now I have a child on top of it.

01:13:05
Geoff Moonen
Yeah. What's up with that, man? Congratulations.

01:13:10
Case
Yeah, I know it's a problem I have, but yeah. So if people are wondering why my Twitter profile has been way less pronounced than it normally would be. There's that. So, yeah, in the meantime, you can find me on Twitter at case aiken. You can find me on Instagram if that's where you would prefer to find me, at Ketzel coatle five. And at most places, I'm going to use case Aiken just because that's my name and also easier to spell and not vaguely appropriate. And I do realize that because I am a very white person referencing an aztec deity. But it was my aim screen name from high school, and I was really into sun deities. I thought Casaclada was cool. I'm sorry, it's true. Also, brainiac five is where the five comes from, because again, such a giant nerd.

01:13:52
Case
But yeah, that's where you can find me. And you can find all of us at the cpov discord, where you can come talk to us directly. So that place is going to keep going at least as long as the government doesn't shut it down because of the Ukraine war leak, which I'm like, oh fuck, are they trying to shut down all of our social networks? Fuck, man.

01:14:10
Geoff Moonen
Right?

01:14:11
Case
But yeah, so discord, you can find the link over@certainpov.com where you can find tons of other great shows like Fun and games with Matt and Jeff. That's a really great time. You guys have been doing an incredible job, really ramping up your game since launching your Patreon. I was so glad that we did that stream together. I would love for us to do some more of those.

01:14:32
Geoff Moonen
Yes, absolutely.

01:14:33
Case
A lot of fun there. People should check out the fun and games YouTube channel where you've got the most recent episodes up. Obviously the same stuff as your podcast, but it's a great place where you can put up.

01:14:43
Geoff Moonen
That's how some people listen to podcast.

01:14:45
Case
It's a great spot for that. And if you want to see versions of these sidequest videos that you guys are doing in animated form, that is over at the certain POV YouTube channel where you will also find our Superman analog videos and clips of this, as well as another past and anything people want to put up. But there are a lot of projects I started that it's hard for me to keep up on, such as doing the case four videos that Maddie Limerick was doing. My goal is to get all those up in animated forms at some point, but it is just a lot. And everyone from certain point of view is welcome to put up stuff on the certain POV YouTube channel. It's just I am the only one who has, like, regular routines on that one, but anyone is welcome to.

01:15:21
Case
So just putting that back out there into the ether. But that channel has grown a lot. Like, we are almost to the thousand mark, which is when we actually can start monetizing shit, which would be amazing.

01:15:31
Geoff Moonen
Incredible.

01:15:32
Case
In the meantime, we're still, like, ads are being run because YouTube, even if you're like, this video is not demonetized. They still run ads, but we've got a lot of attention now. It's actually really cool. It's a lot of fun. I hope people continue to check all that out. Maybe this will help with that since it'll be original audio drama that we're putting up.

01:15:50
Geoff Moonen
Yeah. Very exciting.

01:15:52
Case
Looking forward to seeing what Alan puts together for that one. But again, Jeff, thank you for coming on this one. J Mike, thank you for letting me just subject you to. This is great. Next time, we are actually going to talk about the issue of Superman that kind of inspired this story arc. It is the last thing that we want to do in terms of talking about the death of Superman, because we have done so much death of Superman stuff. But we're going to talk about Superman 149, which is titled the Death of Superman. It's the Jerry Siegel Kurt Swan story that was done as an imaginary tale back in 1961. So it's a really cool issue. I can't wait for us to talk about it.

01:16:29
Case
It's been a while since I've read it, but this is the 30th anniversary of the death of Superman, the 90s version of the story. And so a lot of people have brought up this one as part of that conversation. So I'm looking forward to our conversation on that. We haven't booked our guest for it yet because we made the call to do that tonight, but that will be coming soon, and then we are going to be moving on from the death of Superman. And we've got a bunch of episodes already banked, so there shouldn't be any interruption in shows. And I'm excited for it all. But until next time, stay super man.

01:17:07
Geoff Moonen
Men of steel is a certain POV production.

01:17:10
Jmike
Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and case Aiken. The show is scored and edited by Jeff Moonin. And our logo and episode art is by case Aiken.

01:17:23
Geoff Moonen
Whoa.

01:17:24
Case
And we'll break and yada, yada lorm.

01:17:28
Geoff Moonen
Ipsum lorem. Ipsum lorm.

01:17:29
Case
Did that make sense as a fade in? I felt like. I was like, oh, here, that's a handoff to the thing. Okay, sorry. I'm so tired. Video games are a unique medium.

01:17:41
Geoff Moonen
They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality.

01:17:48
Case
But at the end of the day, video games are fun. Whatever fun is to you.

01:17:52
Geoff Moonen
I'm Jeff Moonan.

01:17:53
Case
And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon.

01:17:55
Geoff Moonen
And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games.

01:18:03
Case
We play and all the fun we find within them.

01:18:05
Geoff Moonen
And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us.

01:18:10
Case
Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff find us on certainpov.com or wherever.

01:18:15
Geoff Moonen
You get your podcasts and happy gaming certainpov.com.