Nov. 12, 2024

From Hollywood Dreams to Historical Realities Neil Laird's Journey

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Join us on the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball as we dive into the fascinating world of documentary filmmaking with multi-award-winning executive producer Neil Laird. Discover Neil's journey from small-town Pennsylvania to becoming a veteran in historical documentaries, with over a thousand hours of television for networks like National Geographic, Discovery, and BBC. Learn about his transition into writing novels, where he creatively explores time travel and ancient history through a comedic lens. Neil also shares insights into the impact of streaming on the filmmaking industry and the importance of reinventing oneself at any age. Don't miss this inspiring conversation!
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by multi award winning executive movie producer, Neil Lehrer. Neil has a lot of experience in the movie, uh, producing field. He produces historical films and he's also a writer and he's produced, done work with Discovery, National Geographic and PBS and many others.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So we're going to be talking to him about his story and everything that he's up to and anything that he's got coming up. So, Neil, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Speaker B>Not at all. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Speaker B>Um, again, my name is Neil Laird and uh, to clarify, I do documentaries, not the fiction stuff out in Hollywood movies. So it's, I've always been fascinated by history and real world scenarios after a lot of traveling. So for the last 30 years I've probably made over a thousand hours of television for the places you mentioned. National Geographic, BBC, uh, Channel 4, Discovery, uh, History Channel, mostly dealing with, uh, travel, archaeology, mystery and history, engineering in space. That's always been sort of my happy place. So I've been doing that for 25 years. And then I transition now and I'm also writing novels, sort of comedic takes on my day job about a TV crew that, that time travels to the ancient past to make documentaries, to try to win Emmys. So that's where I am right now.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well, how did you get into the documentary making business?

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> Speaker B>I've always been fascinated by movies themselves. Always been fascinated. I grew up watching all the great epics, the Spartacus and the Lawrence of Arabias and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly when I was a kid. So. And I lived in a small town in western Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, you know, very pretty, isolated, a long way from Hollywood or Manhattan. But I always wanted to, thought I'd do movies, um, go into fiction filmmaking and you know, become a mega director kind of thing.

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> Speaker B>And I went to film school and got my Bachelor's of Art and came to New York and quickly find out it's not quite that easy. I was the guy holding a walkie talkie on some crappy horror film at two in the morning so that no one stole the grip truck. You know, you definitely have to be modest. You definitely have a thick skin.

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> Speaker B>And I had so much free time that between jobs and These crappy horror films that I started hanging out the New York Public Library because it was free and air conditioned and it was a place I could hang out until the phone rang for the next job. And then one day, I picked a book off the shelf. And I don't know what compelled me to do it, but it was about the rise of early civilizations, you know, cavemen and Neolithic times and cave art. And it's something I never got in my small Catholic school in Western Pennsylvania.

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> Speaker B>We just didn't get into that. So it was almost like a penny dropped. And this fascinating world opened up, and I figured I had the time to do it. So I vowed to teach myself, uh, history through books at the New York Public Library. That's exactly what I did.

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> Speaker B>And I read so many books about ancient history, mostly Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, that I became so bloody enamored with it. I said, I need to do more than just this. So I kind of dropped waiting for the next lousy film to call or not call. And I backpacked through the Middle east about eight or nine months.

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> Speaker B>Went from Syria to Jordan to Turkey to Iran, Israel, Egypt. Um, I don't know what else I missed in there, that whole region. And, uh, my head was in the clouds. My head was in the clouds. So when I came back, I resolved to find a way to get back there early and often and have someone else pay for my flight to do it instead. So I went back to documentary school and got my masters of Fine, uh, art in documentary production and made my thesis film about the great Sphinx in Egypt. Went over there, and through contacts I had, I clamored over the Sphinx and went to secret passages and watched them as they try to restore the Sphinx before it fell apart. And luckily was able to sell that to the Discovery Channel. And I've been doing those kind of shows ever since. That was 1996, 97. So I'm definitely a veteran in that world.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why do you feel like international travel has changed since the 35 years since you first done it?

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> Speaker B>Oh, exponentially it's changed. Uh, the world has caught up with it now, mind you, in the mid-90s. And so that too long ago for those of us of a certain age, but so much of the world has changed in terms of how we communicate, how we see things. You know, we paint a picture. When I first backpacked on that trip in 1991 or whatever, there was no Internet, certainly no phone. Um, if you had to make a call back to the States, you went to a little booth somewhere in downtown Delhi and paid like $6 an hour through a crackling speaker to talk to your parents and say you're still alive. And then the reverse charges, they get a bill for$79 for two minutes or whatever. And also too, you didn't have think about GPS didn't exist, at least in the. In in the consumer sense.

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> Speaker B>So it was both exhilarating and terrifying. When I look back, I kind of surprised that I pulled it off, considering how far I went.

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> Speaker B>I wandered into Iran on my own. This was without a gps, without a. I did have back. They had the Lonely Planet guidebooks and a few of those things, but those are often out of date. The next day you show up at a hotel and they said, oh, that closed three years ago, so you had to wing it.

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> Speaker B>And boy, do I kind of miss that because in a way, you have to survive on your wits. One of the great gifts of foreign travel, particularly off the beaten path backpacker travel, for me anyways, was I saw myself in a way I wouldn't see myself back here in the States. I'm out of myself. The Neil Laird that's so comfortable walking around New York or Pittsburgh or Chicago is not the same. When you're in downtown Tehran or a small village in Syria, or you're trying to negotiate a cab ride somewhere in the Sudan border, you all the, all the strengths and weaknesses of your personality come out and you have to rely on that and you have to trust people. You have to be on guard. And all of these things come to you that today you can just google and saying, how much is a camel ride in Egypt? Or like you can get an Uber anywhere in Cairo, you just could do so while convenience has certainly made life a lot easier back then because you had to do it all yourself, I learned so much about myself and about how to negotiate and deal with other people. I think one of the great gifts of all that travel is I, uh. You listen to people, you can find out who people are around the world and try to find a common connection that you necessarily don't have to do here. Now when I travel, if I'm sitting in an airport or I'm sitting in a small cafe somewhere in Europe or anywhere else, people aren't talking, they're on their phone, they're looking down, they're not communicating. So it's a lot harder to even break through that bubble. Now when I was traveling on my own through places like Myanmar and really off the beaten place, if people saw someone sitting there alone, except for your lonely Plan a guidebook usually had nothing to do unless you had a paperback. People would come up to you and talk to you. They would take you on board. I met so many wonderful lifelong friends that way that now I find you don't have to do that. You can be talking to your friend back in Pittsburgh while you're sitting there in downtown Mandalay, Burma. So, yes, the world has gotten much more convenient and much more connected, but a great deal is lost in terms of that adventure travel. And I've been trying to dip back into that river ever since. I think that's why I travel so much still as both a filmmaker and on holiday, is because I, uh, want to experience a bit of that high that I felt when I first kind of discovered I was outside of myself and I was on my own. It's a wonderful feeling.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, talk about how streaming has. Has changed the game for what you do as a filmmaker.

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> Speaker B>Yeah, I mean, that's mostly. I mean, it's. I would say it's negative for those of us on the inside. It's wonderful for the consumer because now, of course, everything is being consolidated. But I was a Discovery channel exec for 12 years, and I lost my job last year partially because of the streaming, because I work for Science Channel, a small network where we would make a couple hundred hours in any given time, you know, three or four nights a week.

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> Speaker B>Now all that history programming is consolidated on max in one in, you know, maybe three or four hours a month, as opposed to 30 or 40 hours a week of new material. So that means there's less production. That means you don't need the execs. And mostly for the people on the field, all my friends who are in production, it means they're not getting green, that they're not getting the jobs, because there's a lot less to go around for those people. So production companies have closed. People are scrambling to get a job. They can. They will work for half the rate. They're just happy if they get a job, mostly because there's so much less going on. And unfortunately, the stuff that I do, they call it factual here or in the UK M which is more so the harder science ones. I don't do the reality shows or the dating shows.

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> Speaker B>I do the ones that kind of deal with science or history and that kind of stuff. And those are.

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> Speaker B>They always rate less than the Love Islands or that kind of stuff. So therefore, those are the first things to go. So the stuff that was my bread and butter, my passion, that took me back to that first shoot in the Sphinx in 1996. Those are barely made anymore, so so many people are pivoting out of the business. And it's one of the reasons why I've embraced the novel writing so much. I did that while I was still working in the field, and I'm still working. I'm still writing and doing shows for History Channel the People. But I saw the writing on the wall. So I transitioned to another form of storytelling that I always wanted to do, and that was fiction, something I couldn't do in the nonfiction world because everything has to be footnoted. And when you're working for National Geographic, you got to have six references for every line somebody says. When you write fiction, and in my case, fantasy fiction, because it's time travel, I can finally make stuff up. I can't tell you how much fun that is to still talk about the history that I know, but I can have fun with it. I can play with it.

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> Speaker B>The concept of my book series, two of which are out Primetime Travelers and Primetime Pompeii, which just came out on November 11th.

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> Speaker B>It's about a TV crew that finds a way to travel to the ancient past. And in each book, they go back. First time in ancient Egypt, second book to Pompeii on the eve of the eruption. And I know those places so well. I've shot a dozen films in both those locations. I know them intimately. So it would have bring that. That truthfulness about the eruption of Pompeii and what happened hour to hour. But then, then, then weave it into a fun adventure story that's more Indiana Jones than it is Nova, and it's wonderfully liberating.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, sounds like you definitely got a lot going on. And, you know, tell us about some of the films, you know, that you produced or, you know, some of the writings that you want to highlight for the listeners.

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> Speaker B>Um, well, I think that. I think that the Prime Time series, as I mentioned, is something that I'm so excited about pursuing, because now I realize that I can go on and on with this. The book that I'm writing now is Prime Time Troy, and they go back to ancient Troy, this time in the war. And one thing that I include in all of them and something I couldn't do in, uh, my nonfiction world, or at least not the degree, is that I'm gay. And while that hasn't stopped me from working in these networks because they're very open and very liberal, it certainly has in terms of what we can add into the shows, what we can discuss in the documentaries we do, because, of course, it's much more broadly broadcast. So therefore, you have to make sure that, quote, unquote, no one's offended or you're getting it in other communities. But in my books, I wanted to talk about strong queer characters that are often erased in history. So each of my books focuses on real life LGBTQ people that lived in the ancient past. Some are real.

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> Speaker B>Like in the current book, I'm talking about Achilles and Patroclus. Now, of course, they're mythological characters, but if you know your Iliad, you know who Achilles is, and, and Patroclus was, by all intents and purposes, lover during the Trojan War. And his death is what caused Achilles to finally rise up and take down Hector and bring down Troy. So it's a love story. The end of the day, illegally, is a love story. And people don't see it quite that way because homophobia has been erased. In my current book that just came out, Prime Time, uh, Pompeii, I wanted to create fictional characters about the ancient Roman world.

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> Speaker B>And when I was there, either on a shoot or on holiday, I can't remember where. Have you been to Pompeii?

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>No, I've never been there.

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> Speaker B>Oh, you must put on your list. So it's remarkable because, of course, if the viewers don't know the 101 Pompeii is a city outside of Naples in southern Italy, or in 79 AD, a, ah, huge eruption from Vesuvius came down and buried it in 60ft of ash. And it happened so quickly and so completely that it preserved the city. It is one of the most beautifully preserved cities in all of the world, from the ancient world, because it, the painting is still fresh on the wall. Um, the buildings lost their roofs because they're wooden, but they still have these gorgeous courtyards and things that are all preserved because they were basically frozen in time. And what makes it even more dramatic is the plaster casts which are seen when you get there as soon as you walk in the, uh, gate. And plaster casts are this amazing aberration of history where when they started digging Pompeii, which has been a couple hundred years now, they came across these hollowed out, um, cavities in the earth as they were digging down. And they found out that they had. What they were, was the, the empty space of where people died. Their bodies were burnt mostly, but they froze so quickly that they are caught in the moment of their final death of death. Throws people arms in the air, running, holding caches of coins, holding boxes holding babies. They're literally frozen in time.

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> Speaker B>So when they poured plaster in it and they opened it up, you could see a plaster cast of these people down to their teeth and their expressions, holding their baby and holding their gold coins. It is absolutely fascinating. And we get this intimate glimpse into them. And there was one, uh, plaster cast, um, two people that totally intrigued me and has for years. And they became the basis of this new book. And they long recalled the two maidens, and they call them that because it is two people tightly holding each other in embrace, and one has their other's head on the one's chest, and they're being held. It's very intimate. It's a very loving moment.

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> Speaker B>And clearly this is how they died. And they went out holding each other and comforting each other. They call the two maidens because they assumed it must have been a mother and a child, that a mother was holding it. But yet, if you look at it, they're both the same size, and you can't determine sex.

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> Speaker B>So finally, two or three years ago, they did CAT scans and, um, DNA testing on the bones and things that were preserved. And a couple fascinating things emerged. One was that they're both men. And DNA proves that they're not m.

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> Speaker B>They're not related, so they're not brothers, they're not father and son, and they're both between 20 and 35 years old. Now, we don't know what all this means, but when I'm standing there looking at them and in the amphitheater gate where they're presented rather rudely, I think, in the gift shop, to me, it seems like a gay couple. They're holding each other at the very end, though we'll never know. We can't document behavior straight on after 2,000 years. But I use that. Them, this, um, these two men, these two embracing lovers, I'll call them, as the basis for the primetime Pompeii. So the crew goes back to find out the identity of these two people, who they were, can they find them, were they lovers, and how did they die? So that's total fiction. Yet I base it as much as I can on the eruption of Pompeii.

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> Speaker B>But I'm able to have fun and create these characters. And I based them on these two men called the vitti that owned one of the richest villas. And this is. You can see this when you go there.

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> Speaker B>Um, and they were wine merchants, and they were two of the richest people in Pompeii. Uh, and they're also freed, which is interesting. So back In Roman times, of course, slavery was endemic. But you could win your freedom. And what seemed to happen here was the wine owner, the vineyard owner trusted these two young men who were not related, um, to take over his business. And he made them freedom and he gave them their, uh, freedom when he died. And they went on to become two of the richest men in Pompeii. Now we haven't found their bodies, we don't know what happened, but their villa is sumptuous. So I connected that bit of history with these two embracing lovers. And to find out, are these the people that we're talking about or is it somebody else? So that's kind of the first clue you have. So again, I try to, I try to weave in as much history as I can. When I can, when I can organically add anything that is a queer history, I wove it in. But I still, at the end of the day, want to make a rip roaring adventure about a feckless, uh, TV crew that's charging through the ancient world with cameras and drones. So it's very comedic as well. And again, it's been a very liberating thing to do because I can blend all my different storytelling styles into one.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, what else are you working on that you might have upcoming that the listeners need to be aware of?

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> Speaker B>The books? I'm starting to think of the lion's share right now. I'm still working in television and working for several History channel shows.

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> Speaker B>One, uh, called, uh, Holy Marvels, which explores ancient artifacts like the Ark and the True Cross and if they're true or not.

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> Speaker B>Um, and one thing I've been doing, I'm doing a lot of, um, um, and this podcast certainly, uh, reflects that. A lot of speaking and outreach roles, doing a lot of cruise ship lectures and things where I go and I talk to people about changing careers in mid age because I'm in my 50s and I didn't write my first novel till after 50. And one thing I tell people is don't be afraid to reinvent yourself. It's never too late to do that.

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> Speaker B>I did, I did it not just because I knew that streaming was going to, uh, erase the games in television. I did it because I was getting restless and I had to be a bit fearless and try something different. And if I didn't, I would regret it on my days. And it's not like I'm wealthy beyond words writing or anything.

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> Speaker B>One day I, I may be so. But I'm so glad that I took that jump and tried to do it because it's so easy to talk yourself out of that, particularly as you get older and you say, ah, uh, it's too late. I shouldn't know when I was 30, not when I'm 50. And it's just not true. Sometimes you're much better at it then, and you have a thicker skin and all that stuff when you're older. So any listener that has any desire to try something different, change careers or travel. Once you travel, your eyes open up and you'll never want to go back. You get what they call itchy feet, and all you want to do is get back on a plane and see something else. It's never too late for that.

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> Speaker B>So that's really why I do these things now with all the outreach and the speaking and the lectures and the writing and the podcast, because I kind of want to get that word out. Not just about, um, reinventing yourself, but also to any, uh, people that want to talk about their own background. Minorities, not just queer life, but any minority is like, there is now a niche out there. Things are so fragmented now. But it's a wonderful thing where you write a book. You can write it purely about Latin fantasy or about whatever, Syrian fantasy. There are so many ways to slice the pie that everybody has an identity that they may not know that they can really shine at. And there's a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of blowback where people say, stay in your lane, only write what you want. And that is true in terms of the marketing world, in terms of the big world. But if you just want to create stuff that is truly your own with your own voice, there's not a better time to do it than now.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, so everybody can keep up with everything that you up to, though I should. Contact info.

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> Speaker B>Contact info and neolaire.com and my books are available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

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> Speaker B>So we just punch in my name on Amazon, um, either Neil Laird or Primetime Travelers or Primetime Pompeii. It'll pop up and then you can buy the book or download it or if you have Quindo Unlimited, doesn't cost anything. I don't know when this airs, but right now, because the Primetime Pompeii book comes out, the first book I'm offering only $0.99, so you can pick up the first one for under a buck and then catch up and where the characters are. And, um, that's where I am.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>We'll close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about, that you would like to touch on any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

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> Speaker B>I think. No, just that. I think I just reiterate. If there's something you really, really want to do, whether it be a travel or writing or make a film or don't be afraid to put yourself out there. There's an audience for you. You'll be surprised how many people want to hear what you have to say.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, just get out there.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Get this shit out there as well. Follow Rate Review Share this to as many people as possible.

00:22:01.194 --> 00:22:18.555
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Jump on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a Review Follow Us Share the Show if you have any guests or Suggestion Topics Curtis Jackson 1978 at att.net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Neil, thank you for all that you do.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>And thank you for joining us.

00:22:20.250 --> 00:22:21.894
> Speaker B>My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>until next time, uh, stay focused on Living the dream.

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> Speaker B>Dream.