Host and Creator Dino Tripodis

Tim Fulton 00:08Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: how much of ourselves should we put in our work? Today's guest, longtime host, writer, comedian, and filmmaker Dino Tripodis, has a creative journey that is uniquely his own, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Our conversation here takes on an eagle-eye view of his career path, the value of being a multi-hyphenate creator, his approach to creativity, and the importance of authenticity. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with host, actor, writer, director —

Dino Tripodis 01:11Filmmaker. Filmmaker. I would love to direct at some point. Creator. Creator, wow. Dino Tripodis. Creator sounds pretty good.

Dino Tripodis 01:24Good. Tim, how are you?

Tim Fulton 01:26I'm good. Full disclosure, before we get into things: you and I have known each other — I'm not going to say for how long, but since I was in high school. Yeah, I went to high school with your daughter. You did? And I remember, you could —

Dino Tripodis 01:44You could be my son. I am old enough —

Tim Fulton 01:45Young enough to be your son. Yeah, absolutely. How are you? What's going on? Good, son. How are you? Good. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How do you introduce yourself to the rare — I imagine — folks outside of Columbus that don't know you? How do you describe yourself?

Dino Tripodis 02:05How do I describe myself? Yeah, I joke when you say "the creator," but, you know, it's an interesting word. Simply stated, just a guy who loves to do just that. I love to create, whatever the medium might be. Twenty-four years in radio, and then a little break. And now I'm back. Have created various films, both short and feature-length. One, which we are currently engaged in, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Stand-up for a lot of years — I still get ideas for jokes. I still have a notebook, and I still write ideas, and I still perform. You know, I've got a couple of benefits coming up. I did something a couple of weeks ago. So I still like to keep my foot in stand-up. Love to write. And I call myself the reluctant actor as well. I did a horror film up in Meadville, Pennsylvania, a few months ago. A SAG project — SAG-AFTRA — a low-budget horror film called Pig Hill. And I got to play this really — completely out of my element — broad, loud, nasty character, Giovanni Vendetti, the king of Pig Hill. So it was a lot of fun. So sometimes, if you can draw me out of that shell, then I'll embrace it. But, you know, when I say, why don't you be in it? And, like, yeah, I'd rather write it and you do it.

Tim Fulton 03:38And there's a certain amount of, like — so again, full disclosure, your daughter and I went to theater school, a specialized, like, vocational theater program. And what I've since discovered, since not being in theater, is that I'm not necessarily interested in being the guy on stage, if it's not me on stage anymore. But there's almost — I now have an eight-year-old daughter, and you sort of see, as soon as you can convince them you are behind this veneer, whether that be a costume or makeup or whatever, the ability to take that on is a lot easier, right? And I don't know if, in your sort of — even in hosting — you walked in here today, and it was a little bit like, "Hey, how you doing?" Whereas when I see you in your home, it's always like, "Hey, what's going on? What are we working on?" And you're almost waiting for the microphone. I want to talk to you a little bit about your creative process and how you pull yourself out.

Dino Tripodis 04:48Well, when I walked in here, you know, this is your world. So I was walking in quietly and respectfully, because I don't know — other than, you know, who am I meeting and so forth and so on. So I try not to enter a room and be "on." I don't like to be on. But —

Tim Fulton 05:11We've both met those guys. Yes, right.

Dino Tripodis 05:16But I can definitely, when I see that — okay, now I gotta be on — I can, you know, this is what they want. I can switch it in. And I find that a lot in radio, with appearances, and radio, and definitely stand-up. You know, people have an expectation sometimes, and there's who you think you are and what you are, and what they think you are and what you are. And sometimes the two don't always mesh. So you've got to say, okay, well, they think I'm this way, and that's probably my fault.

Tim Fulton 05:50And it's kind of okay. It's okay to turn it on. It is an —

Dino Tripodis 05:54Extension of you. And it is an extension of you. So it's fine. Yes. And walking in here today — hey, you know, just coming into Tim's world, and let me guest on his podcast. He's not on my podcast, which we forgot to mention. The podcast, please — Whiskey Business.

Tim Fulton 06:08Yes. And how did you start it?

Dino Tripodis 06:12I just wanted to — I think doing a podcast would be fun. We've done it for now a little over seven years. So, you know, it was the time when there wasn't a million podcasts, but there were a decent amount of podcasts. And we still like to do it, and I love to do it. And we're not getting rich or famous off of it, but we are being satisfied creatively by doing it. We love to do it. And I think that's part of the fun of it. It's on the Evergreen Podcasts network now, out of Cleveland, the last couple of years. So that's helped boost our presence and get more subscribers. So, yeah, I still — we should do it weekly, very aggressive. But now we're doing about two a month, because everybody's so busy with every other thing that they've got going on.

Tim Fulton 07:03Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing that I have told other people who are like, "I want to start a podcast, what do I need to know, or what do I need to do?" — and the biggest thing is, like, you can Google anything, everything, it's not difficult, but consistency is absolutely key. Maybe this is my mea culpa to my listeners, that I went dark from, like — the last episode was in like April, but really the last episode was like November of 2020 — to jump back in with all those city council candidates and the mayoral candidates. And now you, I think, will be the third episode after that, but only the second guest, trying to get back to it.

Dino Tripodis 07:51And not a candidate — and not a candidate, you're not running. You know, it's funny, over the length of time I've been in Columbus, I have been approached, uh-huh, at certain times for certain things. And I said, no. No, another story, another time. But, no, not my thing. Definitely not these days.

Tim Fulton 08:17What, political climate?

Dino Tripodis 08:19I mean, this political climate in general, yeah. So, you know, I can deal with the political climate on my own, and have my own opinions, and have my own thoughts, and get involved in my own debates. But to step into that role right now — and if that sounds like, "Well, you don't want to make a difference, you don't want to make a change?" Yeah, I do. That's why I don't want to do it now, because I find it seems virtually impossible to evoke any type of serious change right now. And things just — but I don't even know why we're going down this route.

Tim Fulton 08:56And we hope that it'll get better, of course. Yeah, of course. Let's go back a little bit — and we can talk about, because you've had, again, a multi-hyphenate sort of career range. But I think what most people know you for is your time at Sunny 95. It's the biggest amplifier that you've had, right?

Dino Tripodis 09:17For sure. Yeah, none of this other stuff, I would think, would have come into play if it weren't for Sunny 95. And that was a happy accident. And I've told you personally that story before. I was a stand-up comedian. I was a guest on the show. I would make frequent appearances there. And then one year — when I was living out in LA pursuing my stand-up career — they said, would you like to be the co-host with Bob Simpson, a guy who I had popped on the show with, who was hosting the show? And I said no, like three times. They finally wore me down, and I decided, you know what — speaking of my daughter, who was turning 13 years of age at the time — I thought this might be a good bet. On the road, living in LA, it might be a good year to come back and be closer to my daughter, work, add something to the resume. And when it doesn't work out, you know, okay, nice try, go back to LA, but I'll have this year of bonding with my kid. Because it was a contract, right? It was kind of a contract. Yes, it was a contract. But you know, the contracts, still to this day, are always in favor of the radio station. You sign a four-year contract, but if they want to dump you after year one or two, they can find cause. That's just the nature of the beast. And after the first year, this show didn't fly, that I was on. It was Bob Simpson and Company, and it was actually creatively a great show.

Tim Fulton 10:46It's just, you were not on the marquee, to be clear, as —

Dino Tripodis 10:49And Company. I was part of "and Company." You were the "and Company." I was part of the "and Company," and Bob was let go. And we were left — myself, Stacy McKay, Mike Elliott, who now is with iHeart and is a program director; he was our producer at the time, Clark Donnelly. And we all just said, you know what, they're probably gonna — that was in October, the following year, and I said, they're probably gonna get a new morning show in January. So let's just pretend like every show is our last one and have a blast. Okay. We did that. There was some chemistry there. The ratings went up. And in January, when we got pulled into the general manager's office, I was waiting for the "thank you for this — sorry, this experiment didn't work out." And then they offered a four-year contract for Dino and Stacy, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Tim Fulton 11:42And so then 23 more years of that? 24 —

Dino Tripodis 11:45More years, in different — and different, because Stacy left. Stacy got a surprise, you know, pregnancy — life — and she wasn't expecting that. And she took time off to do that, and then she left and went to another station, then came back. And then I left, and now I came back. And so, yeah, but this is definitely — this one, this is it. There's no more. Anybody leaves now is going to be gone. They're gone, gone, gone at this point. But yeah.

Tim Fulton 12:15And do you — I don't necessarily want to get into a conversation about the industry as a whole. And I'm going to have to figure out at some point — one of my first podcast interviews ever was with Johnny D.

Dino Tripodis 12:28I love —

Tim Fulton 12:29I do too — talking about what it's like being in that field. Because TV morning news and morning radio are not that different, are they?

Dino Tripodis 12:39Only in that, you know, you actually have to be presentable for morning TV. For morning radio, if you've done, you know, whatever you've done the night before, and you want to sleep an extra 20 minutes and roll out of bed and put on a hat and go, you can.

Tim Fulton 12:54Right, yeah. But there is this constant feeling of, like, "Oh, the hammer might just come down today." And I guess my question is, do you think the Columbus market is any different in terms of how it's dealt with, or what you think you dealt with?

Dino Tripodis 13:15I can't speak to television, but I can tell you, in respect to radio, it's one of the few markets where there seems to be a deep-seated loyalty. I mean, there are more longer-running entities of hosts in this market than I've seen in others. It's not uncommon for a gig in radio to last three or four years, and then something happens, and then they move on. You've got guys like Jerry Elliott, who have been at QFM for 30-plus years. Woody, who was at, you know, WNCI forever and a day. The Morning Zoo, Dave and Jimmy, longtime established entities. Myself, a 24-year run at Sunny. To have that many entities of a show, from a host perspective, last that long in some way, shape, or form is insane — and then, especially in one market, let alone, you know, to have one of those people be a long, long-standing entity is one thing, but to have, like, three and four different radio stations that have this longevity — it's nuts.

Tim Fulton 14:26Well, I don't know — there is a bite. Have you worked under, like, a new owner before? And there's been some consolidation of that market, right?

Dino Tripodis 14:41We are Saga Communications, right. We've always been Saga Communications. We've never been bought out by anybody. The CEO of our company, Ed Christian, who started the company, passed away last year. But, you know, the mantle has been picked up and taken and run with, to keep Saga Communications Saga. Columbus is one of their bigger markets for Saga Communications — Columbus, Milwaukee, Norfolk, Virginia. They don't have big stations in New York or Chicago, and they've done well with that, you know, being a middle-market radio station entity. Saga Communications is one of the few radio entities that's actually still trading well on the stock market. So there you go. They're doing something right.

Tim Fulton 15:34My background, at least from a journalism perspective, is in print. And there's been such a consolidation there, right. It's basically going to — at least for what we experienced here in Columbus, and I guess I had assumed maybe that there was some consolidation happening in the media in other forums. That is happening to an extent, right, like QFM got bought, so —

Dino Tripodis 15:59Well, we — when you say that in that respect —

Tim Fulton 16:01Yeah.

Dino Tripodis 16:02We bought QFM. Okay, so yeah, when you say that, in that respect, yes, we have picked up some smaller stations. QFM was one of our bigger purchases. We have QFM, Sunny 95, Rewind, and Mix. We have four stations. So in that respect, yes, there has been consolidation, and grabbing other entities to put into your bundle — for a better word — just like iHeart has, you know, this station, this station, this station, and this station. They're huge.

Tim Fulton 16:32Well, they're the beasts, right. I mean, they're the ones using Dave and Jimmy and disseminating their voice across market, right. Right. Do you think it's important — and I think I know the answer to this question already — do you think it's important to have local hosts, personalities, folks doing not only morning shows, but also just the content throughout the day?

Dino Tripodis 16:59Yeah, I do. I think, at the end of the day — which I hate that expression, but I'm gonna use it anyway — I think local is important. You know, let's be honest, people can get music wherever and however they want, anytime they want. So, especially in respect to morning shows, I still think there's a local element, but it's getting harder. I mean, with so many choices being out there, you've got to work a little harder and a little longer in order to keep yourself in the game. They have options. But some people still like identifying with a morning show. And some longtime listeners, who — they were very gracious when I left, and sad. They were even more gracious when I came back. And that amazed me. Because, you know, I've never understood people who thought that they were it. Okay, you know, sitting on top of a mountain, "I am the king." No. You go away, people forget you. And I've always believed that to be true. "You're gonna be here forever." No, no, I'm not, you know. I'm not the — there's no king. I just happen to be sitting on this particular throne for a little bit. But I could easily be knocked off and forgotten. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm just saying, it's the nature of the beast. They go, "Oh, he's gone. Ah, I'll never listen to radio again" — until next week, right? And the next person comes in, and they go, "I love the new guy, I love the new guy." And that's just the nature of the beast. So if you think that nobody can replace you — I hate that. "Nope, nobody else will replace me." Sure you can. Yeah, sure you can be replaced.

Tim Fulton 19:06Let's switch gears a little bit, still staying in the radio space. What time do you have to get up in the morning in order to do a morning show?

Dino Tripodis 19:14We used to start at five in the morning, and that was brutal. Now we start at six, which I know is only an hour difference, but it's amazingly different. I happen to live about, if I catch all the green lights, three and a half minutes from the station. So five and a half if I get a couple of reds. So, 4:15 — our first alarm goes off at 4:15. I can get up at 4:15, I have another one that goes off at 4:30, and then, you know, final warning, 4:45. If that's your rushing alarm — no, the rushing alarm is, there's a 12-minute drill. I've got it down to a 12-minute drill, all right? At 5 a.m., there's a 12-minute drill. I can go in, brush my teeth, wash my face, maybe not get a shower, but there's a 12-minute drill where I can gulp down an espresso coffee, boom, boom, boom, and be out the door by 5:15. There you go. Now, I don't like the 12-minute drill, but I know it's available to me. 4:45 is the cutoff as far as leisurely time, you know, a little more rushed. But there's a 12-minute drill.

Tim Fulton 20:30What else don't folks know about that process? They've seen at this point folks — video of folks sitting at a desk and doing their thing, and reading — I don't remember what they're called — but reading the interstitial, like the house ads and all the sponsorships and reading traffic. But what do you find that people are sort of surprised by when they hear about doing morning radio?

Dino Tripodis 20:57When people come in — and we have guests that come and visit sometimes — they go through and they're always amazed that it's not scripted. You know, that what we're saying is not scripted. Like, "Oh, my gosh, you guys just —" And what I tell people all the time is, it's harder than you think to make it look and sound that easy. Okay, like, "Oh, what do you do? You talk for three and a half minutes, and then you play a song, and the job's easy?" Okay, well, you know what, you come in day in and day out and do it, you know, Monday through Friday, and come up with thoughts and ideas and be fresh and be original and continue to do that. Yeah. You go ahead.

Tim Fulton 21:47Also, you are pushing, right? So forgive me for folks who may not have been in Columbus very long and have not listened to Sunny 95. It is, in my head, the radio station that your mom listens to in the minivan, in terms of content most of the day.

Dino Tripodis 22:04Most of the day, but that's not necessarily true anymore. I mean, that was probably when you were in high school. Is it still called Hot AC? It's Adult Contemporary. Adult Contemporary, with a little bit of Hot AC in there. I mean, you know —

Tim Fulton 22:18We're playing — is Amy Grant still in?

Dino Tripodis 22:22She is not. That's a fair question. Because you're not going to hear — there was a Sunny at the time where Amy Grant and Celine Dion and Michael Bolton, that world, was Sunny. And it's gotten a little bit more progressive as far as the music.

Tim Fulton 22:39So it's not — but I will certainly, if I listen for an hour, I will hear Michelle Branch. No? Okay. No, that is a miss. Okay.

Dino Tripodis 22:50No, you will not. You will hear, if you listen for an hour, you will hear Miley Cyrus.

Tim Fulton 22:59Okay, but I'm hearing "Wrecking Ball." I'm not hearing "Flowers."

Dino Tripodis 23:05Actually, you're hearing "Flowers" a lot.

Dino Tripodis 23:09Because that gives the people what —

Dino Tripodis 23:10They want. Yeah. You hear that in rotation quite a bit. There was a throwback — a little bit of a throwback — on Sunny 95 in the last year or so, where Delilah came back. And Love Songs with Delilah came back at nighttime, and that was a staple at Sunny for a long time.

Tim Fulton 23:28I'm sorry, you just unlocked a core memory.

Dino Tripodis 23:32She's back at nighttime, broadcasting from the farm. She does it — I don't know, well, she's syndicated. Yes, syndicated.

Tim Fulton 23:40But was she gone for a time? We certainly weren't subscribed —

Dino Tripodis 23:46We suddenly weren't subscribing, God. And then she came back. So, okay, a little bit of a throwback to back in the day.

Tim Fulton 23:52Is the — Car Talk — adult contemporary? It's just, okay —

Dino Tripodis 23:59I'd lie.

Tim Fulton 24:03There you go. What I was trying to get to was, I have always been impressed with your ability to treat that audience in such a way that you're able to sort of walk up to the line, right? You're able to be like, "Hey, I might be your brother, I might be the guy you want to date," I'm a little bit — I'm saying things that you certainly aren't going to say, but I'm not offending you at all.

Dino Tripodis 24:34And it's the type of thing where, when you're walking up to the line, and the parents in the car, they're laughing because they get it, they know how close I've come to the line. And if there are children in the backseat, you know, they don't know that there's been a line, and they definitely don't know that something's been crossed. And if anything, they're saying, "Why are you laughing, Mom?"

Tim Fulton 24:53It's not even like the Shrek jokes, right? It's not even the "I'm saying something that goes over the kid's head." You're doing the ones that the 13-year-old gets.

Dino Tripodis 25:05That's what I tried to do. And, yeah, but I know what the line is. And, remarkably, I have not — it's a honed skill, the crux, right? And, you know, being fined or fired because I said the wrong thing. But, you know, nobody's more surprised than myself. I don't know, I gotta do something — I don't jinx myself, and tomorrow morning I'm gonna say the wrong thing, and I'm gonna be damaged.

Tim Fulton 25:39You walked me up to it. Talk a little bit about your other endeavors. We've talked about the podcast, we talked about Sunny. I do credit you with giving me an IMDb credit. How so? It was in — Funny Man.

Dino Tripodis 25:58Oh, my very first short film. That's right. Yes.

Tim Fulton 26:03I am in one of your films.

Dino Tripodis 26:05Oh, are you? Oh —

Tim Fulton 26:07You are — no, sorry. Oh, it's okay. You're not the only film that I'm in. I think you are actually my second and most recent credit — meaning I only have two credits on IMDb. But talk about, first of all, how you got into film, and where you find your sweet spot in it now.

Dino Tripodis 26:30Yeah, that's fair. My very — boy, Funny Man was the first short film they ever did. And just to show you how naive — not stupid, but, you know — it's a 42-minute short film. That's not a short film. A short film is 15 minutes, 20 minutes. A 42-minute film — at that point, we just should have made a feature film and moved on. But I still liked Funny Man for some of the elements that are in it. I liked the story behind it. It was presented to me by someone else who gave me the story, and I said, I'll do this if you let me rework it a little bit. Because the concept was there. He wanted to do something about a comedian who was kind of in the throes of it and had missed that boat to big success, and was capitalizing on the other perks that the job would bring you, in respect to women and drinking and so forth and so on. So in that respect, I'm proud of it that way. And there's still a great scene in that film with Jennifer Schaaf and myself at the bar, talking about the definition of "the one," romantically speaking, which I honestly think — and you know me, Tim, I'm very critical of everything I do — I think that particular scene can hold up just about anywhere, as far as the dynamic between two people talking about love and "the one." I think it's by far one of my favorite scenes.

Tim Fulton 28:13What aspect of that, though? Are you talking about the writing?

Dino Tripodis 28:16The writing and the acting performances. Yeah, it was just the two things. You were fully in control? Yeah. And I didn't direct it — Mike McGregor directed that. But there's — when you're making film, there's a lot of deliberate "three lines and cut." And with this, this was literally one shot for eight minutes, you know. That's uncommon, where we didn't move and cut away from something else. And so it was very unique in that perspective. So you could actually feel like you were in that moment, in Funny Man. But yes, that was the very first film that I actually wrote and produced and put out there. The very first film I ever did, I thought would never come to the light of day. It was filmed in 1988. It was a horror film, and it's called Heartland of Darkness. And it languished in obscurity for 30-plus years. And then somebody finally got it together, because in the horror genre, there was a woman by the name of Linnea Quigley, called a Scream Queen. And this is the type of — they call them Satanic Panic films. There's a genre, there's a world. And this film fit in that world. And after 35 years, it was unearthed and brought out on Blu-ray and DVD and streaming, as we speak. And you can see a very young — young, in his 20s — Dino Tripodis. No, maybe 29. Yeah. It's not good. And yet — then again, you're always amazed, like, oh my god, this is the worst possible thing that could happen to me. And then you read these reviews from critics in that genre.

Tim Fulton 30:18In that genre, they're great.

Dino Tripodis 30:20They're complimenting you. And finally I'm like, you know, all I see is that there was this script, and at the time, nothing but earnest. You were in LA at the — no, no, it was shot here. It was shot in Granville. Ah, Granville. Granville doubled for Copperton, Ohio. Where there were a string of horrible Satanic murders. And so, yeah, I've dabbled with film, but then, and now, to where we are now. Four years ago, we did The Street Where We Live, which was a labor of love. Streaming now, as we speak, on Amazon and Tubi and a bunch of other things. Very proud of that movie. Won Best Feature at the Glass City Film Festival, up in — was it Detroit or Toledo? Toledo. Anyway. And it has been expanded to a bigger audience via YouTube — I think YouTube has something where they can get movies — and that expanded it to a whole new audience. Very proud of that film. I co-wrote it, produced it, and I'm in it, as an actor, reluctant actor. I play Ben. And I'm very proud of that film, which leads us to where we are now, with Down to the Felt, which is by far the most ambitious and biggest thing I've ever been involved with, as far as an independent film goes. That starts shooting in April of 2024. And we are currently raising the funds for it as we speak. We have a big fundraiser November the 15th at Central Grip, which is a great facility that is going to be part of our family — to start making the film. Will it be a shoot location? Well, their equipment, their people, their gear, their talents — I wouldn't ever know. They make movies, they make videos, they do projects. And, well, now the name Grip makes sense. So they're in the mix. That's where we're having the actual fundraiser on November the 15th. And it's for investors — for investors in the film. We are still looking for investors to finish off our $1.5 million budget. I've never had a $1.5 million budget. And this film initially was written with the idea of just to sell the screenplay and move on. So that was our plan. I wrote it during the pandemic, because we were so stifled creatively with nothing to do during the pandemic, that my friends Ralph Scott and John Kazbek brought this concept. I think their working title was Two-Minute Warning — talking about how the last two minutes in any game of sports is the most exciting, you know, football, Two-Minute Warning; the Kentucky Derby, two minutes; the last two minutes of a basketball game. You know, why bother watching an entire basketball game, it comes down to the last two minutes. And that was kind of the basic premise of this. And I liked the idea, because the initial character was a computer geek who got involved in some gambling issues. Once again, I don't know why I keep doing this, but I liked the idea. And we started changing it and adapting it to where we are now, which is still a compulsive gambler — but that's what he is, he is a compulsive gambler, and he is on a bad roll. In the beginning of the film, he loses the down payment on a house for him and his fiancée in a poker game. He gets fired from his job. He doubles down on a basketball bet, he loses that. You know, so now he's in deep, deep. And rather than take the chance of being killed by the mob, since he can't pay his debt, whatever the case might be, he has a happy accident, or meeting, with a psychotic but devout Jewish hitman. And the hilarity ensues. So it's a comedy — it's a dark comedy, there's comedy in it, a lot of action. It's called Down to the Felt. And in a drunken stupor — but not completely drunk — he makes a deal with the hitman: you kill me in two weeks, so I am legitimately dead and my mother can get my insurance money, but I want two weeks to take it down to the felt. This is what I got left in my kitty. I want two weeks to take a run at it. You know, if I win, yay, more money for me; if I lose, she still gets the insurance.

Tim Fulton 35:02So — and certainly I'm not saying it's not an original story, but to picture it, it's some variation of Uncut Gems and Leaving Las Vegas, sure.

Dino Tripodis 35:13A little bit — I mean, you know, you draw from all kinds. Especially Mississippi Grind was another. A game of Rounders. There's comparisons galore. Lucky aces — I can't —

Tim Fulton 35:27I love Rounders, and it's much underappreciated.

Dino Tripodis 35:31So those are elements about it. But yeah, the characters are — and then he meets a woman. Scotty Thompson is on board, from NCIS and Grey's Anatomy and The Blacklist; she's done a ton of stuff. Sal Viscuso will be at our fundraiser. A lot of people — if I say Sal Viscuso, like, "Who?" A journeyman actor who has been around forever, starting with the '70s: The Taking of Pelham 123, and more recently Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, for his voice talents. He's been in Spaceballs. He's been a character actor on television forever. This show is before your time, but for anybody my age, as I said, there was a show called Soap on ABC back in the day. He was the priest on Soap. So he was a main character of that. And he was also the voice on the loudspeaker in M*A*S*H. No kidding? On the TV show, anytime you heard the loudspeaker announcements, that was him. And he also played several character roles on M*A*S*H throughout different seasons; he played different things. Well, certainly journeyman actor, right? Yeah, like I said, he's a guy who's been around since the '70s. He was part of our table read. We did this massive table read that Colin Douglas, our producer in LA, put together, with actors from New York, Atlanta, Chicago, LA. We all came together to this big Zoom read, because we, as the writers, wanted to hear what it sounded like. So Colin put this together. And it was Colin, by the way, who convinced us that "you guys shouldn't sell this, you should make this movie." Okay, now we're in too deep, we have to. But Sal was one of the actors on that Zoom read. And as soon as we got done with that script, he called Colin immediately and said, "I'm throwing my hat in the ring for Anthony." He plays Anthony, the bookie, in this film — the good book, I call him the good book. He's like a mentor to —

Tim Fulton 37:35The Jewish bookie with the heart of gold.

Dino Tripodis 37:37He's — an anti-Jewish hitman? No, just Jewish. The Jewish hitman does not have a heart of gold — a very devout Jew, who also has a death wish. But he can't kill himself, because if he does, he won't be able to be buried with the righteous. You see where this is going? So our lead has a death wish, the Jewish hitman has a death wish. He's open — he comes across a strong enough adversary to take him out, so that he can be buried with the righteous, but he can't kill himself. He could kill himself anytime, but he's not gonna be able to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. It's very, very conflicting.

Tim Fulton 38:09It's a film, right? It's supposed to be. Yeah. I guess my question is, hearing this — and this is a new thought, so apologies —

Dino Tripodis 38:17Apologies.

Tim Fulton 38:18Why do you keep writing yourself into movies?

Dino Tripodis 38:21Why do I keep writing myself into —

Tim Fulton 38:23The movies? Because — so, I'm not in this movie? Well, I know that. I'm sorry, I'm not — you're not writing yourself as an actor, right, but you're also not a computer geek. No. And you were like, "Let's make him a gambler," right? And, sorry, inside knowledge — you know how to gamble. Gamble, right? Yeah, you like to do that. Also, Funny Man, about a comedian who — you are successful in your own right, but you were not successful in, say, no comedy?

Dino Tripodis 38:52No. Funny Man is, like — yeah, that was like an inside purge, if you will, because there was an opportunity in stand-up to go to the next level. You know, I always make the comparison: when I did my first national TV appearance on Comic Strip Live, on Fox, you know who was on that show that night? I can tell you who is — I actually have no idea. I can tell you. Please. It was Dino Tripodis, uh-huh. Sarah Silverman. Louie C.K. And —

Tim Fulton 39:30Uh, and — I know Dave Attell, most people do, but Louie's, like, the least known of those.

Dino Tripodis 39:37Louie C.K., sir. So, men have gone on to amazing careers. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Fulton 39:41Dave Attell, to be clear, yeah, by all means.

Dino Tripodis 39:44And notoriety, and, yeah, some good things, some not-so-good things. And that was the choice I made when I decided to take that four-year contract with Sunny 95 and not go back to LA. And I remember to this day — here's a little insight that I haven't told a lot of people. The weekend before I was starting at Sunny 95, back in 1994, Bob Simpson, who was the host of the show, came out to the Funny Bone. At that point, comedically speaking, I was a well-oiled machine. I mean, I knew what I was doing, because that is a muscle, and you're doing it —

Tim Fulton 40:21On a regular basis, that you get into the muscle part of, like, right, hosting and —

Dino Tripodis 40:27But I was doing my show, headlining at the Funny Bone, the weekend before I started Sunny 95. And after the show, Bob Simpson comes up to me. And he says, "Don't do it." Don't do what? He says, "Don't take the job."

Tim Fulton 40:43Was he fired at that point? No, no, no, no. He hadn't even been fired yet.

Dino Tripodis 40:46We were starting our show. We were embarking on day one of the year that would be our show.

Tim Fulton 40:54And he tells you, from the jump, the start —

Dino Tripodis 40:57He tells me the Thursday after I've moved myself back to Columbus, Ohio, from LA, and I'm starting at Sunny — he tells me, "Don't do it. This is what you should be doing." And that has always been a crossroads for me. That was a choice that I made. I did take the job. And I did go back to LA on a regular basis and perform at the Comedy Store, my sets at the Improv, thinking that this experiment in radio wouldn't last. It did. So I made a conscious choice. I don't feel sorry —

Tim Fulton 41:31I don't feel sorry —

Dino Tripodis 41:32Don't feel sorry for me that I did that, that I did not become a complete comedic giant. It was my choice.

Tim Fulton 41:38No, but it's the, you know, the theory of core memories, of, like, things happen and you're like, "I'm always going to remember this." And you don't know that you will, right? But sometimes you do. You do. You will. And you drove home that night, after him seeing you, and you had a minute. I did. I did. You had a minute. And just to sort of, like — I think this context is kind of important here — you had come back, partly, let's say, all credit to Danielle, sure, call it 45% for your daughter, but 55% for, like, this is steadier and still perform, right? This — I've already made the choice to be in LA, I'm making the choice to be back.

Dino Tripodis 42:29And I didn't leave LA. I kept everything there. Exactly.

Tim Fulton 42:33There's all that. You've got that going, and there's this person saying — a person I assume you respect — saying, "Hey, don't come and do this." Yeah. And guess what, a year later, he was absolutely right. But then you, over the course of a couple of months, were able to convince the powers that be. I wasn't trying. Well, but you were saying, "F it," you are literally saying, like, whatever, I want to do my work —

Dino Tripodis 43:06It's just having fun, and — like, "This could be our last." And there's a result: that spontaneity and that enthusiasm carried through.

Tim Fulton 43:14And I guess the point I'm trying to get to here is that creativity finds a way. Right.

Dino Tripodis 43:20Like water, yeah, it always finds a way in it.

Tim Fulton 43:25Because I want to ask functional questions about, like, where's the 1.5 go? Like, is this — how much money? Or, sorry, is it about the amount of money that each actor gets, is this the production, is that guy in LA who's your producer getting a cut, and what are the potential payoffs for investors? All super important. Well, super —

Dino Tripodis 43:51Important for a podcast. There is a document and a pitch deck, and an explanation of the ROI, the return on investment, for anybody that does get invested in. We are seeking investors. We also have fiscal sponsorship with Wild Goose Creative, and so if people are looking to do a tax-deductible donation, that can come back to us, but also help themselves out as well. There's all kinds of options available. I want to go back around, because I took the very, very long way around to the question you asked, "Why do I put myself into these worlds?" One: there's a very simple rule of writing, which is, you know, write what you know, and then write who you know. And when I suggested we changed the world of this situation and put it into this gambling world, with different types of relationships — it's a world that I know. So when I write those words, or when we wrote those — but, you know, we all contributed. When you talk about it, we all contributed to the script, but there were certain parts that I got, "I got this." Yeah.

Tim Fulton 45:12So everybody — you didn't believe you could believably write a computer nerd who is —

Dino Tripodis 45:18I probably could have. Yeah, probably could — because it wasn't about his job. Okay, so much, because his job — this guy's day job that he gets fired from is working for a produce company. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 45:29But so you make sure — this is part of the writing process, right? Make sure, like, "Hey, does this technically check out, is this reasonable for this person to say in that opening scene where you see him not doing great at his job? Does that make sense?" Right, so that you're not making basically a shitty film that one part that folks can't get over.

Dino Tripodis 45:53Yeah, everything about it is very believable. The characters are very well drawn out. And that's the one thing that everybody has, fortunately — and thank you — that the dialogue seems authentic and real. It's what you want in a movie. It sounds like people talking, which is, I know, ridiculous to say. But you watch movies where —

Tim Fulton 46:24I constantly am watching — like, we're in the spooky season right now, right, and so I'm watching the Halloween movies, and I'm like, "That's bad acting." And I'm like, "That's bad writing," right? It's not like they're doing fine, but they're doing what they were sold.

Dino Tripodis 46:39And that's what everybody on the Zoom — when we did the Zoom read, all these actors were so complimentary. But they also said, "You guys made it easy, because the writing was so good." So, yeah, you're right, they do go hand in hand. You know, actors can do great things with good writing. And I am proud of this writing. And I want to mention John Kazbek and Ralph Scott. John is our director, he's going to be directing it. Ralph is producing it, and has written it, along with myself and John. Colin Douglas is our producer in LA. He's the one who changed our way of thinking, and has been remarkable. He's also an actor as well. He's been on a ton of stuff. In fact — I don't know when this drops, but he's on an episode of Quantum Leap, which is starting back up on NBC. He's upcoming —

Tim Fulton 47:32Is it a new episode? A new episode? Well, I'm an originalist.

Dino Tripodis 47:37But I want to watch it, because Colin's in it. Yeah. So he's great. And he was the first one that said — you know, with the script, he read it as a favor. He and Ralph were friends for years, and he read it as a favor, and, you know, "Okay, I'm gonna read it, because that's Ralphie." And then he read it, like, "We're okay." Yeah.

Tim Fulton 48:05But isn't a little bit — sorry, I don't know what a script sells for. Do you have a concept of that?

Dino Tripodis 48:10That can sell for anything, from, you know —

Tim Fulton 48:13What's the low end? Like, "Hey, we're taking" — not even taking control of it, but, like, "Yes, we intend to produce this at some point." That's the —

Dino Tripodis 48:21That's the point. That's the funny thing about scripts. I've got friends who are screenwriters that live here locally, who have sold the same script repeatedly. Because a studio will take a script, and they will buy it, and they will option it, and then it expires. And so somebody else can take that — that writer, that screenwriter, can sell that script again.

Tim Fulton 48:41What are they selling that script for? No, sorry — the script that your friends have written, just as an example. Not this one, Down to the Felt, but a script that they have sold. I don't know what a script — I don't know.

Dino Tripodis 48:56I don't know what they've made, but they've managed to pay the rent or the mortgage and stay comfortable, there you go, by selling certain scripts. And some scripts have been purchased by studios because they don't want the script out there — because they simply have a very similar type of project that maybe isn't as good of a script, or as good a film. So they buy this film —

Tim Fulton 49:21And they can incorporate some things in if they want, they just want it off the market. Okay.

Dino Tripodis 49:26They don't want anybody else to make this script, because they have a film just like this. So there's all kinds of fun. And that was the goal — let's just write this great script, and sell it, and then we'll start — we have other ideas in the pipeline, which we do. But now we're making a movie. So in April, we're going to shoot for 24 to 27 days, and see what the hell happens.

Tim Fulton 49:45There you go. I have so many more questions about, I know, that production process.

Dino Tripodis 49:50I do too, and I want to be a little bit of a whore, if I can be, please, for just a moment, and hang on a second and tell people, if they are interested in being a part of this fundraising event, you can go to info@bigdealpictures.com.

Tim Fulton 50:10I end every interview by asking two questions. Sure. And this is going to diverge hugely, I hope, from what we've talked about. What do you think Columbus is doing well, and what do you think Columbus is not doing so well?

Dino Tripodis 50:26I think they're doing an excellent job in continuing to grow, culturally, creatively, and socially. I think this is a great place to live, having been here since, you know — cemented back here since 1994 — and able to watch the growth, and watch it not only grow, but not necessarily stagnate. You know, when something does seem to be a little sluggish, you don't see them giving up on it just yet. You see neighborhoods over the years that were dismissed and then seemingly written off, being rejuvenated and brought back to life. So that's what I think Columbus continues to do great on a regular basis: grow and prosper. And if something burns down to the ashes, don't just leave it ashes — something rises, some sort of nice Ohio Phoenix rises from its ashes. And I think it's great.

Tim Fulton 51:39What is it not doing so well?

Dino Tripodis 51:41What is it not doing so well? Winning any hockey games.

Tim Fulton 51:53Fair. That's fair.

Dino Tripodis 51:56They're not — that's the Blue Jackets. No, that's one particular entity. The Blue Jackets — I had tickets for 10 years, season tickets for 10 years, on the club level. I languished, you know, and I still go from time to time. But, yeah, it's frustrating when you see a new team, like the Knights in Vegas, that have been in hockey for an hour and they have a Stanley Cup. Yeah. So what — what was the original question? I get — what is —

Tim Fulton 52:29What is Columbus not doing so well, as a community, as a city?

Dino Tripodis 52:37Mm-hmm. Not doing so well. Boy, that's a tough one for me, because there's things that I bitch about — yeah, you know, our infrastructure — but then I also see them attempting to fix that. The one thing I really would like to see them do better and really get on is a rail system. I would like to see that rail system come to be. I would like to get on a train and go to Cleveland, or Cincinnati, or even Chicago, from here. I would like to see that rail system come to be, because I've heard talk about it for decades upon decades. And that's the one thing that I haven't seen come to fruition. Do it before I die. Let me get on a train. Let me go choo-choo before it's all said and done. All right.

Tim Fulton 53:35Dino, thank you. Tim, thank you. Let me record that one more time because of that. Dino, thank you.

Dino Tripodis 53:42Tim, thank you. Thank you.

Tim Fulton 53:55Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite filmmaker. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Phil Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.