#225 The Illustrated History of Bob Eckstein

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:29

All right, Sarah, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Oh, welcome, everybody to Episode 225 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back for what's sure to be the cartoonists classic conversation of all time. My guest today is Bob Eckstein, award winning writer illustrator New Yorker cartoonist and world's leading snowman expert. You heard me right world's leading snowman expert we're talking the history of snowman we're talking cartoons we're talking comedy this conversation is amazing honored to have one of the top humorous in the world with me to talk shop and that's coming up in just a few seconds and in these few seconds. I hope it's a reflection on the time you spent with episode 224 Lydia Cornell amazing conversation with Lydia of course the star have to close for comfort Sarah rush and she's been in so much more great conversation. Definitely check that out after your heart becomes full with all the snowman knowledge in the world, Bob Eckstein. It's a great one, and it's coming up right now. All right, everyone, I'm excited to introduce my next guest world famous cartoonist, New York Times best selling author, snowman expert, host of the popular podcast with a cartoon pad. You've seen my guests cartoons in Mad Magazine National Lampoon The New Yorker, Playboy, and a million other places. Welcome to the show, Bob Eckstein.

Bob Eckstein 2:13

Jeff, great to be here. How you doing?

Jeff Dwoskin 2:15

Good, how are you?

Bob Eckstein 2:16

Wonderful.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:17

I've been enjoying your work and your books and the work of others that you share in your books as well. It's such an interesting profession to me to be a professional humorist and cartoonist. How did you how did you find this path in life?

Bob Eckstein 2:34

You know, everything was by accident. And you know, you said profession, I never even considered a profession. I guess I felt like I've been just checking. I've been chasing paychecks. The jobs are also different. I started out. When I was a teenager, I had my first job. I was hired to work at a golf course. And I had to show up at the tee time around 5:30am. But I went down there, and the group of people who arranged the tee off, were joking around, and I was making them laugh. And I had his group of people who are my audience. And shortly afterwards, this golf cart came right rushing down, racing down from the clubhouse, and it was the owner of the golf course. And in front of everyone. He accused me of being on drugs and fired me in front of this group of people. And I promised myself then that I would never have a regular job after that. And I never really did. I went from there to go into to art school. I never finished high school. I just kind of started going to art college. And when I graduated, I was asked to join the faculty. So I've been teaching since I went to college, and that's over 40 years. So it's a long time I've been teaching, I've been doing writing and doing illustration, and doing other odds and ends. And somewhere along the line. I started doing cartoons, it was on a dare. And that was something that happened when a friend of mine who I'm going to be seeing soon, Sam gross, he's like the world's greatest living cartoonists. He kind of took me under his wing, and under dare asked me to submit to the New Yorker, and I put together some cartoons and the New Yorker bought the first cartoon that I drew. And from there, I got into that overworld and I've been meeting people who are people who I admire, and getting involved in projects, through friendships and trying to befriend people who I really, really admire.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:27

That's amazing. I have a question for ya, cartoon question. When you talk when you say cartoons, we're not talking about strips, right? We're talking about single panel cartoons for the most part, right? There's like

Bob Eckstein 4:39

little definitions, but I don't think in terms of like, you know, one being so different than the other. Usually it's just a story I'm trying to tell. So before we even did any cartoons, it was still a story I was trying to tell but in that time, I only knew how to tell it in my writing, or maybe graphically with a illustration. So now it's kind of grown into doing single gag Cartoons but still doesn't have to be. For instance, today, I was doing a piece for The New Yorker that's going to appear on the full page. And it's multi paneled, and I really don't divide it up, it's still just an idea, just trying to come up with something that's going to make people laugh and think in a different way, see things in a different way. And at some point, I had to make a decision. What's the best form for that? Should it just be written piece? Could it be a piece that's sort of encapsulated in a single panel? Or does it need a multi panel?

Jeff Dwoskin 5:29

I've been fascinated with single panel, fireside is what kind of got me for the most part. I think those cartoons and Gary Larson, like when I was younger, yeah, yeah. And I was always fascinated. So I was, what are the steps? Like, if you were to say that these are the, what's the word I'm looking for? These are sort of the bullet points to the perfect one panel, you know, where you're like, you have to write because I guess when I'm when I'm asking is like, if someone looks at your cartoon, and they go, I don't get it. I go, and then you point to the banana or whatever, and go, Oh, I get it now. Or you said this. And it was, is there a sort of like guidelines that were in someone looks at something like to be as successful one panel, you know, because brilliance to it. Right?

Bob Eckstein 6:12

Jeff? It sounds like you want to be a gag cartoonists, if there's no master class. And there isn't any set rules, the way to get from point A to B is different depending on each person. And actually, everyone's different way of getting to point A to B is going to be different. And that's what makes their cartoons or their voice unique. But there are some general things to know. And you brought it up yourself just now when you said, is there any type of rules,

Jeff Dwoskin 6:38

I'm coming at it from the idea of like, I'm a comedian. So if I write a joke, I have an idea of a structure to get where I want to go. And I know how I need the audience to react at a certain point. With multipanel. You're kind of telling a story, but with a single panel, it's a one shot, right? It's just it's a combination of that that one moment, so I was just

Bob Eckstein 6:56

yeah, let me let me try to give you a good answer for this. And that's what your example of talking about having to explain to banana part because that's a that's a key component to making a successful gag cartoon. There's always exceptions to the rules. But what you just explained was that moment in which the viewer is engaged, so the viewer now all of a sudden has to be a part of the cartoon, because they're having a eureka moment, or eureka moment, meaning that there's a moment in which in a very small thing that you're showing a 10 second glance, that he took them to piece it together, it's almost a little bit like a puzzle. So it's required their joke to be completed, because they said, aha, now you understand the joke that you were coming to. Because if there isn't a eureka moment, the category then becomes a very corny type of cartoon, or a word pawn, or somebody that is so obvious that there's no real satisfaction, and there's no eureka moment. So you want something that's a sort of a sweet spot. If you make it too much of a puzzle and too much time elapses in that cartoon for them to understand it, then you've lost your audience purchasing, it's actually subconsciously frustrated, and a joke goes over their head in the same way that you were performing on stage, if you did a joke that you felt was a little bit out of left field, you're gonna lose your audience, if you're doing a joke for the cartoon, or for the stage, it's the same thing. The joke is, is that you're kind of going into a familiar ground, you're doing something that you think everyone in the room can be familiar with, you're not too specific that you are keeping some people out of the joke, not to inside baseball, but then also you're not insulting their intelligence. And by doing something that's just a plain obvious joke. So there is a sweet spot of saying they are going to be involved in that eureka moment. And I have cartoons that really tried to do that. And that's just one goal. And just saying this, I could think of the ever rules, kind of I do subconsciously when I make a cartoon, because it kind of kind of spills out in my head as I'm talking about. But that comes the first one and the most important probably.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:56

So do you have? I'm just relating this to stand up? So do you have the same kind of does this play out for you ever? Where you're like you, you present a cartoon that you thought was the most brilliantly funny thing? And they just look in? And they're like, Yeah, Bob, we don't get this at all. And then the one that you thought was okay, though, that like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. We need more of these,

Bob Eckstein 9:19

okay, you're talking about is a humorous objective. And I have to tell you, it is to a certain extent, but there are such a thing as a good cartoon and a bad cartoon. There are such a thing as people being wrong. And people being right, there are no cartoons I've done that. I feel like no one's appreciated. And it's a good cartoon, those cartoons are appreciated, maybe the wrong person, I'm showing it to who has no experience in comedy, or you have a person who, in some cases, is a cartoon editor or humor editor, and they all know that they're bad. They're notoriously known for not having a good sense of humor. And that's a different case, though, what you're talking about, and when you said it's different on stage, it actually isn't what's weird. you're really talking about same thing as I approach how to write a Joe. For my birthday, I'm going to be speaking at a college on the entertainment for a banquet gonna be 1500 people, I'm doing an hour standup. The way I'm going to approach is the same way all these jokes, accessible other jokes, something that initially the setup is going to make people feel like they're along for the ride. And they're confident to go along with me. But at the same time, give as little information as possible. As you know, if you had a longer setup, unless you're Norm Macdonald, and that's part of the joke, and you have a technique, you really want to get to point A and B in the shortest distance and make that time lapse Be assured, it's possible that you do that either standing up with the proper words for your setup, or in a cartoon you provide only the information you think is needed to relay the joke. So enough for me to be guilty of a bad setup, we'll be adding information in a drawing that we don't need. I'm not trying to make you laugh. I'm just trying to get you to focus on the points. And that's because everything else is going to water it down. So if I can keep it simple as can be, there's a lot of cartoons who are that a great gift to doing. That example is Ed steed. He's a New Yorker cartoonist. He's very simplified. He doesn't add elements in the scene. Not necessary to Joe.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:16

Awesome. All right. Very cool. Do you remember what your first published cartoon was our first published joke?

Bob Eckstein 11:22

I do remember the New Yorker cartoon. Of course, the first joke, you have to give me a break is my first joke. So no, no, it's not my strongest feeling was a guy on stage. Ironically enough, it was a poet and it was hecklers. On poetry night, and in the audience. People were screaming out to this poor poet things like you know, you call that a metaphor. Like that. They were all there's all these different insults that would be perfect for a poet on stage hecklers. That's funny. I don't recall the insults, but you kind of get the gist of it. And you could come up with if you don't right now, I'm sure it kind of lends itself to everyone jumping in and thinking of a good insult for a poet.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:01

Bob, when you write the books that you've written, you've written quite a few. Where did these ideas come from cat focusing on cats and cat names.

Bob Eckstein 12:10

A lot of times the book ideas come from imagining going into the store, and what would I want to buy? That's not there? Is there a book somewhere that is not there that I think but of course, as have an interest in myself, too. If you could just humor me for a second, I'll tell you have, for instance, came up with my first book, The history of the snowman, walked into Barnes and Nobles. And I thought to myself, what's a good holiday book that's not here? And I thought to myself, well, there's no books, that's not religious, everything was denominational. What's a good nondenominational book that meant for Jewish people, Catholic people, for anyone, but for the holidays? Now, I'm Catholic. So I've always grown up a Christmas, but I always felt like other people were excluded. So is there something that we could kind of do together? And then I said, Well, there's no books about the history of snowmen as an art form, and it tied into another interest of mine, which is I've always loved Sherlock Holmes. And I thought it'd be great to have a mystery, but not a crime mystery where someone's getting killed. But just what one of life's great mysteries. I always say, like, who made the first joke, or who made the first sandwich? You know, that would be a great mystery. But no one did anything about the snowman. So it's there. But no one touched it yet. And I dove into it that for that reason, because no one else had had a book like that. And then I ended, I uncovered that the snowman had some good stories behind it, and had a rich history that was there. And at that time, I felt like I had found a winning lottery ticket that there was all these stories that could be told when you

Jeff Dwoskin 13:38

were kind enough to share all the books with me that you've done, or at least a good, a good bunch of them. The first one I picked up was the elements of stress. I bought the cat one complete book of cat names. And I saw the history of snowman and the history of the snowman. And that one really caught my attention. I think that was one of the first things I said, yeah, oh, can we just talk about snowman with you? But I assumed based on the other ones that the snowman was sort of a humorous joke book about the history of the snowman, especially after I read kind of the other ones. But no, no, the history of the snowman is a legit history of the snowman. It's fascinating how much detail and history that you found it was as a matter of fact, I went sometimes I do like little I try to do a little side research on the same topic. See what else I can come up with bring maybe a new thing to the table. But now, every time I Googled if something said here's some 10 facts about snowman. You were the source.

Bob Eckstein 14:37

Oh, well, if you if I wasn't the source, it was because it was stolen. I just got sent a clip from Israel where they had a whole TV show and they never credited me but they basically just lifted my whole book and that happens a lot. And then the way God only information was is I took it on very seriously. I traveled around the world for seven years going to Art Institute's and speak He was professors of cultural history at different institutions around the world with a dream team. I have all these people who had helped me, including the guy who's in the new documentary, who's that's very popular on Netflix, clunk on Earth, is it?

Jeff Dwoskin 15:13

Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Okay. So you see, she's hilarious. Yeah.

Bob Eckstein 15:18

Yeah. Do you know the guy Nigel Spivey?

Jeff Dwoskin 15:20

I don't, I've just seen her. I've just seen her.

Bob Eckstein 15:23

There's a really sexy guy on that she interviews on the episodes. And he's really great. And he helped me with the book. He's the world's leading archaeologist with him and me, we went through the theory of the prehistoric man make snowmen, and we had all these other, we had a whole panel of experts on the subject of prehistoric times. And we'd conjured up whether or not it was possible for snowman to be made in that time. And that's all documented in the book. And the book came out again later, as the illustrated history of the snowman, when I had more money to do it even more lush and make it more entertaining.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:59

Sorry to interrupt this snowball packed episode, but we have to take a quick break. I want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my amazing Conversation with Bob Eckstein, you want more snowman, we got more snowman coming atcha right now,

Bob Eckstein 16:21

the first book is a documentation of all my findings. And then I updated the book 10 years later and edited all this lush artwork, and now it's being made into a movie, or the script is being already finalized.

Jeff Dwoskin 16:34

Oh, yeah. Like, okay, so what is it? Is it like a national treasure title? Well, you know, what's, like, what's the vibe of the movie? Like, when did you write the script? And like, how did you adapt? I

Bob Eckstein 16:46

wrote the script. I have a studio, it's not clear yet what form it's going to take. And what we did was we tried to approach it in different ways to see what would be most wanted by the audience. One way is David Attenborough, parody those a lot like clunk on Earth, but so he's including humor, I always want to keep it real, the facts are there. But at the same time, that doesn't mean it has to be dry, it still can be served up in a humorous way. I feel that way about everything. There's a lot of things that I do that are based on fact, but I'm always trying to add an element of humor

Jeff Dwoskin 17:19

to it, I think a documentary or like a movie, like that's going to be documentary,

Bob Eckstein 17:23

it's going to be an hour, will it be a TV special or streaming only is not clear yet. It's still being you know, discussed and stuff. And we'll have to just see what happens with that. But but like you mentioned earlier, the element of stress, that book is based on facts that I thought would be helpful for people who are going through the pandemic, and having a hard time. And even though I tried to be funny in the book, and it's co written with my buddy, Michael Shaw, who's one of the funniest people in the world, and that's, that's my one skill is I collect and have as friends, the funniest people in the world, like, my friends are both people who are considered the funniest people. But that book when it came out, I heard from people in hospitals, or people who were suicidal, who said literally saved their life that that book picked them up and got them through a very difficult time. And they actually applied some of the principles that we explained in the book to handle stress.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:15

It's a great book, actually, I read it on the plane, I was flying somewhere, and I kind of dove in and just moved right through it. It's it's easy to read, it's fun to read. And it's a days it's actually very useful. It covers some really good topics, but in a fun way that that just makes you want to keep reading sometimes, you know, a real book on stress, maybe,

Bob Eckstein 18:39

no, now, this book is easy. It's short. And because it's short, it's thin enough that it's useful. If you have like a wobbly table, you're out in with a couple of restaurants, you put it underneath the table to strain it out. It also is very cheap. That's one thing I do about my all my books is I make a point with my publisher to make an arrangement make them affordable, because more than anything else, I want people to read books, I want to encourage book buying, I try to help out bookstores, and I one really successful book footnotes from the world's greatest bookstores. That book was a two time New York Times bestseller. And that book was to help out bookstores, but it was also very affordable. And we try to make it very accessible to people.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:20

Can you go into that book? I would love to Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that book.

Bob Eckstein 19:24

That book was a was just a pleasure to do. What I did was I went around and talked to people who are bookstore owners, I understood then, like their plight, and I felt sorry for their situation, which is it's so hard right now to make a living selling books. It's hard to write books and to make a living and it's hard to illustrate books. I've been on that end and these bookstore owners and stuff I thought this could be like a love letter to bookstores. And when I deal with I collected stories from all the different people I met who had owned and ran a bookstore, and then I tried to glamorize their stories with these lush paintings I did and for me To get a chance to work like that, that's just a great opportunity. It's it goes back to the days when I was a painter, and gives me an opportunity again to just to go back to a first love, which was painting. And I'm doing it now with a book called The most fascinating museums. And I just went around for the last year going to museums, and now I'm painting the museums. But as for the bookstore, a book, I try to come up with unique experiences for the person who buys the book. This way, they don't feel like they could just buy it like on Kindle or something. Instead, they want that tactile experience. And in the case of the bookstore book, it opens up uniquely, like a garage door, the cover opens up the other direction, and then you turn to pages going the other way. And the whole experience is supposed to be sort of like a bucket list to encourage people to go to these bookstores. And they have little icons that introduce each of the bookstores that you check off if you visit them. And that's what's been happening the last 10 years or so people share with me photographs from all around the world when they go to one of these bookstores. And it's almost like every other day, I got a photograph with someone posing with the bookstore they went to and in one little small part, I feel like I'm helping out the situation for mom and pop shops that are really struggling with this big. I don't even want to say the word but this online store that's kind of changing everyone, Bob, that's

Jeff Dwoskin 21:20

awesome. And you know, it is these online stores as you say it was fine. I just I just recently went to a record show LP vinyl show. I love I miss going to record stores or music stores and I miss Yeah, I miss going to Barnes and Noble. They have everyone closed around me and all the borders and all that kind of stuff, borders, bookstores, you know, there's something about just being surrounded by those things and discovering things.

Bob Eckstein 21:48

Yeah. Jeff is like so much more exciting to listen to music when there was more components to it. I remember in I grew up in like the 80s and the 90s. And I used to love punk and new wave and seeing how the album cover would look by my favorite groups. And you don't even have an album cover now. But that was something that was like part of the purchase is so special as part of the experience.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:13

Yeah, that the art of that of the album was yeah, just I mean, when you think of like, Dark Side of the Moon or anything like that it's seared into your brain.

Bob Eckstein 22:23

You know, I gotta I got to share with you. I got myself an old LP player there. I had one of course, but I got a new one old fashioned, but brand new. So I could go back and play my vinyls, and I have a whole stack and I put on one of your recent guests. And I love your show. I've been listening to it. And I heard Dave Thomas and his LP, and I had the LP for the Mackenzie brothers from Second City Television. And I was just playing that by coincidence, and I didn't know that you had him on as a guest while I was playing the LP that the two incidents just happened.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:56

Oh, that's amazing. I am Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. I was excited because I've had Robert Klein on recently and I was at a record store and I bought almost every one of his albums they were selling in perfect condition for $1 each. I just like I'll take them all thank you very much.

Bob Eckstein 23:12

Robert Klein is the next door neighbor of a friend of mine who used to be my boss Bob man cough BOD man cough used to be the cartoon editor of the New Yorker, Robert Klein's his neighbor. And I met Robert Klein when I was doing the eulogy for my friend of my close friend, who was my writing partner, and Robert Klein is so kind and it brought back memories listening to your episode hearing his voice again. And reminder of his kindness. He came up to me at the funeral and said You killed I had tried to make the audience laugh because they were made up mostly of comedians in the first row was Gilbert Godfrey, and other people who were laughing and they weren't laughing because they were thought I was funny. They were probably laughing because they were trying to be supportive, realizing my pain. And this was Len Belzer who was the brother of Richard Belzer. And that's how I met Richard Belzer. And I've met other people in the business. I've been fortunate enough to be friends with my idols. Those people include people like Monty Python's Michael Palin and Larry Miller and and all these other comedians who have gotten a chance to know sir just branched out as well as famous cartoonist Michael Palin rhymes with Michael Maslin. Michael Madeline's, my favorite cartoonists him in mirror, have very close great friends. He's helped me with my career. And I learned early on in my career, I need to create a support group. And that support group has taught me how to be funny how to write how to conduct myself and just learn and another example of this is who I consider our generation's greatest humerus Jack handy, and Jack handy has been working with me and I'm working on with him in his next book. It's an honor It's a ride and I never would have guessed this would happen. But it's my one skill is that I had a chance to learn from the best.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:08

Oh my god, you just said that I, I mean, I remember, the thing to me now about zoning I live is that there's no there's no repeats like they don't they don't seem to really do the same characters over and over again and the same things over and over again. And when you said Jack handy, man deep thoughts from Jack Handey, I remember, you'd watched you turn on Saturday live and just hope I hope this episode has won. You know.

Bob Eckstein 25:32

I'm lucky in so many way things happen by accident. And another example is a next door neighbor and I have become friends that we met by accident. We're living in the same neighborhood and we play tennis together. But he was a writer for Saturday Night Live. And now we're doing a piece together. And every people I ran into my accent include Alan ziebell. And we're to do something together, we keep talking about doing a project. I met Laraine Newman not long ago, and she is the person I learned that Richard Belzer passed away, there's all these kind of connections keep happening. And I think when you meet some of these people, they all know each other. And then you get a chance to meet people who are very talented. But they all have one thing in common. They all are super nice. These are really, really great people. And I think that there's talented people out there that you and I would know, but we don't hear about them, because they're not nice, and nobody wants to work with them. And you know, in this business, you have to work long hours, you have to be devoted, and you have to really put your shoulder to the wheel. And nobody wants to work with someone who's an asshole. And so that was one of the lessons. So true. So true. I find these people amazingly nice. I've met the sweetest people, Michael Palin, for instance, we were just talking, I was letting him know that I had been talking to the spam museum spam museums could be in my museum book. I didn't know there was a spam Museum. But the spam museums highlight is a recreation of the set of the spam sketch from Monty Python. Nice. So I told Michael, this, I sent him a painting of the room. And he wrote me back I didn't see it. Initially, I told him, he must have went straight to the spam folder. Which he got a great laugh. But then when he says to me, he goes, I saw your piece here, it was very funny. I mean, my goodness, getting a compliment for someone like that, even if he now maybe it wasn't the greatest piece. But him just saying that because of the kindness of his heart. He's building me up. And he's injecting encouragement to me. And I've learned that encouragement is so important, as I teach now in all these different schools from I teach around the world, from NYU, to South Korea, all different colleges, I always say encouragement, even a person's terrible, they're not going to get better without encouragement. So it's always good to say, Oh, this is good. Let's look at the good thing about this. And now let's work from there. So when I work with different things and collaborations, I never shoot down someone I first say, Oh, great. Let's see what we can do when prove

Jeff Dwoskin 28:02

it. You're so right about support groups. It's such a when I started doing the podcast, and even as a comedian, you started to realize that that new tribe based around sort of whatever creative worlds you're in, those are the people that are going to be the most supportive. And you're also right, the ones that aren't are the assholes, and who don't understand the concept that you need a support group.

Bob Eckstein 28:29

Yeah, I owe you two apologies. One I started going into I don't even know how this happened. But I really went into teacher mode because I we got talking about the nuts and bolts economy, and you can hear I'm passionate about it. I do enjoy this. And I like teach classes on just humor. I had a chance to do the humor conference, they started to do a humor conference where the teaching people to be funnier and stuff. And the other thing I have to apologize Well, the name dropping is free now I love it. I love it too. pretty astounding. But those are my best stories. I mean, I always feel like insecure that nobody wants to hear stories about me. They want to hear stories about to happen to me with someone who only people get to know so I kind of go guy

Jeff Dwoskin 29:07

named Dr. named Dr. All you want. I love it. My friends make fun of me when I have a friend part of the support systems that we're talking about. Right Carol? Very Nice Person and fellow podcaster. He would always tease me and he made a sound bite. He's really good with sounds and adding music and effects. And he sends it to me he actually sent it to my wife. So she goes Jeff Dwoskin named drop and it's like this. What an asshole is is really fine. And so he would that's how you know and when you're good friends you can you can raise each other. That's the whole best.

Bob Eckstein 29:38

Well, you know, I have a podcast so I feel like my guests. It's their responsibility to come to the show to come to the game prepared and have a story or two I had guests who just sit there and do nothing but the guys who are a little more experienced who have been on our shows, they know it's their responsibility, come on and deliver the goods I wanting to name drop a give me a Tom Hanks story. It's okay. I mean, I don't want to hear about how so many stories in the beginning. We all start off the same. We're all learning and stuff. So I am a little self conscious about hearing the same stories about I doodled when I was a kid, I was always interested in art, I want you to exciting things like how I didn't finish high school. That's exciting.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:21

That is exciting. Bob, Was there somebody who in a minute, we talked about support groups early on, that gave you that encouragement that pushed you forever in this direction?

Bob Eckstein 30:32

No, I hear this all the time from people that as they were growing up, their friends never said, Oh, you're funny, you should get into this, then that never happens. In my case, I was lucky, I had a teacher in college at Pratt Institute, a writing teacher, she changed my whole career because we had this creative writing class that began every class with her reading. Without her telling the class who wrote it, she read a piece of mine each morning. And she didn't tell anybody who was everyone. She's with one of the things, one of the homework assignments, and the class was laugh. And that was the most amazing encouragement. And I'd spent after that years trying to track her down to thank her in a way now I would like you know, just to make it clear how important you are to me, I finally did get a chance to find her and tell her how much she meant to me. And then I tried to carry that over those lessons, too, when I teach to make a difference with students.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:29

Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to give you a second to think of someone that changed your life. And we're back with Bob Eckstein, and some of the cool stuff he's done to help encourage others.

Bob Eckstein 31:41

So when it comes to extra things, like just little things like writing letters, recommendation and things like that, I realize how important these little things are. I take it really seriously, even when I'm teaching class, I try to make the experience special. My classes at NYU, it's not unusual for all of a sudden to get a knock on the door and have someone delivers like six pizza pies. Yeah, kick everyone's spirit up or another time say we're going to meet at this class. And unbeknownst to them, they show up in the classes at a comedy club in which I arranged with the manager to make it non alcoholic and allow everyone to get a front row seat at a real Comedy Club. That's amazing. And they they'll not forget that. And then that stays with them. As always about them too. I try to give them the chance to say who are you maybe you're in the wrong class? Well, let's find out why are you in the right class or in the wrong class? What's your voice? And we used to do different exercises like that to find that out. But all of these techniques and things like that come from teachers who first took me and had me have that experience myself and learn from it. A

Jeff Dwoskin 32:42

lot of people I talked to have that one moment, that teacher, parent, somebody that did something and the other important thing that you mentioned, which I you know, I always anytime it comes up, I like to remind everyone because I think it's a good reminder is to do what Bob did. And if somebody did something in your life that made a difference. Tell them

Bob Eckstein 33:03

you gotta be careful not to wait for it to be right next to you. I started going to therapy that just happened. It was because I was having a hard time with some things that happened in my in my career. And I'm gonna share this because I'm sure there's some people who are comedy geeks, who are totally understand. And that is around the time that Trump got elected. All these magazines, humor magazines all went under. I was a main guy at spy magazine. And then Mad Magazine folded National Lampoon folded Playboy folded, all these places went under, and I found myself all of a sudden on a raft somewhere. And I went to therapy. And we talked about who was the people who supported you and gave you encouragement. And I was asked if my parents did, or my family, and they didn't, then my therapist said, I want you to go back to your mom. And this is your homework, you got to sit down with your mother who's alive. My father passed away when he was young, and talk to your mom and asked her why she never encouraged me why she never thought I should be in the field of comedy. And she said, well, because you're never funny. She goes over and happy to give you that support. If I thought you had an ounce of talent, but you know, I guess we just don't I share the same sense of humor, because I love you as a son, but I don't really get you. And this is similar to our experiences. We have a family members, I asked I had gone to a cousin who does this professionally. And he says I you know, I really highly recommend you give it up. So the lesson here is you cannot put all your weight on your family. And I'm repeating this because this is wonderful friend of mine, Jane Freeman, who teaches writers and publishers in the business of writing. I took a workshop and one of the lessons she had was the exact same thing. And she had stories everyone had similar stories where their mom or their their brother and sister told him to give up and she'd said to me because they're the last people are going to read your book. Now. They love you and they'll give you a five star review on Amazon, but they didn't read the book. And that's a lesson I've learned. And it's up to you. But I found my people who do give me that encouragement. And I don't even know if they think that my work is strong, but they do it because they love other comedians and other cartoonists, and they do it because they just support the art,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:17

you bring up a lot of a lot of good points. And I think sometimes family can see us differently, because I think sometimes we're different around our family than we are around other people.

Bob Eckstein 35:29

Oh, yeah. The kitchen is the toughest room when we had dinner and I saw in the Richard Belzer had said that the kitchen was their toughest room, their parents never encouraged them. And I hear that for so many other comedians. Like

Jeff Dwoskin 35:41

my mom never got to see me do stand up just because she passed away before but my father was able to come see me do it, but at like the big comedy Castle, right. And so and then he then would they brag to his friends and bring all his friends to see me and stuff like that. But it was also I was, I don't think I would have ever gotten that from hanging out at dinner. Right? Yeah, he was able to see me as what I call my brother called onstage, Jeff, the different version of me goes on stage in front of 500 people fearless, right. And so you know, so that was he was able to say, All right, this I got it. Did you

Bob Eckstein 36:17

dad? Did you dad like you because he was given the validation. They seen your son make a room full of people happy?

Jeff Dwoskin 36:25

Oh, yeah. He loved that he would. He had like a book club. And like he would bring I would be at this club, like almost every March. That's wonderful. He would bring everyone you know, it was. Yeah, it was it was nice. It was nice. And yeah. So I had I had that. But when when you talk about like people reading your book and stuff, or your family, just giving you five stars, but not really reading your book, I just gave someone this advice. Like a couple of days ago, they were trying to get some five star reviews on their Apple podcast because they needed it to get somewhere else. Right. For some reason. It was a criteria to be something on it as a critic for something else. So I said to him, I said, DM everyone individually. I go, No one is going to respond to your Facebook post. I go I do it all the time. I was just up for this big Detroit magazine. Best of crickets, crickets. i You have to send personal notes to everyone. And then they'll do. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But if I had posted I won, I then I would have had 500 likes,

Bob Eckstein 37:23

Jeff, you find you ever give this any thought to your own, the way you frame your work, that you want to be competent, but not cocky. And when you're boastful, you are at risk of losing some of your audience because people are turned off that they want to know that you're getting good hands when you're on stage. They don't want to know that you are fully yourself. There's like a balance.

Jeff Dwoskin 37:46

That is true. Comedy can go on forever. And Eleanor.

Bob Eckstein 37:50

Oh my god. Yeah. I've made friends with Mark Schatz and he wrote comedy writing secrets. And he's the all into this. I went to his workshops, and he could pontificate for hours and talk about breaking it down and stuff. It's an endless hole, which is good. I mean, to make it sound negative. But you're right. It's it's impossible come to an end to put a bow on it. You're always constantly constantly turning into something else. There's another way of looking at it and to explore how we can be better or how can be seen in a different way.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:21

Totally. It's It's so interesting. Like I was telling someone I got advice early on the he said to me, Jeff, you need to pause more. I can't tell you where but when you find the pauses, your online persona is going to just become amazing. And and so eventually, like I did, you found them, I found out my phone number became really good at it. And then I was telling someone I go interestingly enough, I figured out this one joke wasn't working because I was pausing. And then if I ran right through it, boom, boom, boom, you know the rule of three. But if I ran through all three without the pause, then they didn't have time to think about what I just said. And then they laugh because they shouldn't have laughed.

Bob Eckstein 38:56

Oh, you mean they're laughing? Because I'm nervous, because I'm not sure what was funny

Jeff Dwoskin 39:01

while because sometimes if you don't have time to think about it, they'll let right you can you can hear something and laugh. But then if you give them a pause, and they realize oh, wait a minute, that was Jeff was crossing a line there. That was a little inappropriate. I shouldn't laugh in public at that. But I found just like if you go in and they change the pace of it, I could get the laugh. And then I told him I said like if you ever see me like the look on my face is because that's the favorite moment of my show. When I have laughing at this one thing where I they absolutely should not be alive. It was horrible. But I just said I but I set it in such a way they didn't realize it and then we moved on anyway. No,

Bob Eckstein 39:38

no, no, that's all good points. Because if you don't pause the audience feels like you're not in control. Right? Like you're rushing. You're talking I feel a little uncomfortable because we've gone five minutes now without me name dropping. There's another person who's super nice was Sarah Silverman had given me some advice on humor. And she says a few things she had said in one Give them was you have to embrace the silence is when you get to the point that you can embrace the silence. You kind of own the stage and people feel like you have control of the time passing. I'm not a performer. I only teach. And I do the talking and stuff like that, because it supports me. Because I like sharing my secrets, Marvin by no means I'm not a performer. I have to do with that on the page. But because I know so many comedians and they've shared their secrets, I feel like I do know stuff that I could you know, help. But by no means am I at your level, I do not go on stage. Sarah

Jeff Dwoskin 40:34

Silverman is absolutely 100% bragged I always joke, I go comedies, 99% confidence, right. And that's kind of like what and then you have to have some good material back it up. But it's all about calm competence can can make or break you. And that's kind of what she was saying. If you can stand there. If you say something, and it doesn't get an immediate laugh, and you just stop like you don't go write those though. Yeah, the other thing which I got advice once from someone from a comedian, Jim Wiggins, who got this advice from Phyllis Diller. So, you know, two degrees from Phyllis anyway. But it was that you have to stare at the audience, you have to make eye contact. And if you look at them direct while you're saying something, and you're controlling that silence, and you know that losing yourself, then they'll laugh it and he used to tell me he's like, Jeff, you may not get the laugh, but you'll get a laugh. And then that'll release other people's laughs and then in to me, it's like, it's almost like a video game. If you watch it, watch when you when you're on stage doing your presentation. If you stare someone, talk to them directly in the eyes, when you're doing a line, they'll laugh, and then that'll cause other people to laugh. But if you look above, they can sense that and it's like, if you're connecting with someone in that front row, then the people in the back and feel that as well. So it's it's really, it's a fascinating thing. I love being on stage. I don't do it as much as I used to because of this podcast. But it is a fascinating. Well, this is the stage. Yes, it is.

Bob Eckstein 42:00

When I first started out, there was a guy who was doing comedy, who's a math teacher on the side. And I have to add that detail. There was a math teacher and he said, It's 90% delivery and attitude and 20% material. Yeah, it's about right, which is really great. Because he said 90% and 20%. And that's 120 10%. Right. And he was a math teacher,

Jeff Dwoskin 42:22

right? But it is accurate, regardless, because it's comedy. So it doesn't really follow the exact rules. So now let's talk snowman again for a few seconds and wrap it up. Because I want people to understand that some of the cool stuff in there. And there was a lot of great stuff. I loved the whole if you could spend a couple of minutes talking about how the snowman was used in advertising, selling booze, and then sort of worked its way into the whole advertising world as an as an icon. I found that just to be fascinating.

Bob Eckstein 42:56

Yeah, you're talking about what was initially I called the Dean Martin yours. And then I changed it to the WC field years which in which the snowman took on the persona of the biggest store at the time, WC field in the 1920s. And it became a very cheap, inexpensive way for advertisers in Madison Avenue avenue to advertise things that were like cigarettes, anything to do with anything with white stuff, you know, flour, the sugar, if they were selling cocaine, the snowman would have been the spokesperson, there was all these different things that the snowman was used as an icon. It's funny it's yeah, he transformed into different things before he became known as a child like activity. There was a time before the 1960s a snowman making wasn't necessarily for kids. It was already associated with smoking and womanizing or whatever. All the things that people admired at have Dean Martin, but WC Fields, people used to laugh at WC Fields being a total douche. He was mistreating people in his movies and everything and that got big laughs and that was accepted totally politically incorrect time and media. And then of course for Frosty the Snowman came on the scene and ruined his whole everything. It was all of a sudden became frivolous, and it became silly. But before that the snowman was something that was made by some of the greatest artists of our time polluting Michelangelo and Larkin Mead, one of the most important American sculptors made a snowman so nuts what I'm trying to uncover is that things look differently on the surface. When I was doing the book from the very beginning, I use as a template. Tim Burton's movie, Batman came out the same time I started the movie Batman when it came out. Everyone couldn't really get their hands around this idea that Batman one now is going to be a serious dark movie because all we knew was the campy TV show. But what made it so fascinating was the miscasting was turning it on its head. So they I had that in mind. And I have in a minute I do other things where I take something that's an innocent symbol, or something that we all take for granted and see if we could see another side of it. And what I did uncover was that the snowman had a history of sex and violence. There's always things like the miracle of 1511, and the massacre of 6090 these incidences in history that no one knew about that involve blood and sex and stuff like that, and snowmen.

Jeff Dwoskin 45:27

It's fascinating. And I encourage everyone to get the history of the snowman, there's because that's like 100th of the book right there, I

Bob Eckstein 45:34

would like to, I would like to, say, get the illustrated history of the snowman, because I took all the same material. And I put all my personal money into the illustrated history system. So now you can see all the pictures, and you can really enjoy the stories more because it's full color in this beautiful coffee table book. And I know people really enjoy it. It's so there's the history of something that's out of print and sold out. It's the illustrate history of snowmen that's available. Now that's more pretty. And it's it makes a nice gift I made sure it's affordable. And if you know someone in your life who does not deserve an expensive Christmas gift, or any type of gift, this is the gift to get them.

Jeff Dwoskin 46:13

All right, well get the illustrated history of the snowman. And if you want the out of print history of the snowman, I'm selling mine on eBay for $500 Now, I will never go I will never let it go. Awesome. This is so great hanging out with you, Bob, thank you so much for spending all this time with me.

Bob Eckstein 46:30

No thanks for putting up with me. I want to mention if people want to, and then that's sick, they didn't turn off the podcast by this time for me. I go on about talking about humor and talk about cartoons. And I answer your questions on my newsletter called The Bob on substack. And I really enjoyed it's free. And we go on about like how to be a better writer and heavy funnier. And it's not me giving the advice but I have on all these people who really know their stuff as guests and share their advice and it's a lot of fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:02

I'm a subscriber I encourage everyone to subscribe and there's the elements of stress we talked about everyone's a critic, the ultimate cartoon bug Complete Book of cat names. And then what's your what's your website? What's the website and where are you hanging out on social

Bob Eckstein 47:16

you could just go by my name on a the social things or you could go to my website Bob eckstein.com and it's spelled Bo d e c k st ein you can see all my different artwork and projects I love hearing from people I like helping people out when it comes to like you know they're doing a book and they're doing this and stuff and you know we share a lot of information because I feel like information definitely is power and people helped me I'm sure there's people out there right now listening to this who can help me and I can learn from them too.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:47

Let's all help each other big hug big hug. Thank you

Bob Eckstein 47:50

Jeff thanks so much.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:52

All right everyone, the amazing Bob Eckstein, if you love to laugh, definitely pick up one of his books. links in the show notes is a complete book of cat names. Of course, the illustrated history of the snowman, the elements of stress. Everyone's a critic, the ultimate cartoon book, all great reads, And of course, Bob's podcast, the cartoon pad plenty of opportunity to get Bob into your life. Well with the interview over you're already probably off buying all his books, I guess episode 225 is officially out of clothes. One more huge thank you to Bob Eckstein, and one huge thank you to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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