#MaxFunDrive special – Amy Holden Jones

Knock, knock.

This is wild.

Who's there?

John is me, surprise.

Have a funny time.

Hello, Johnny Barney.

Oh, my gosh.

Someone replaces what I just did with the sound of an actual noisemaker.

Leave it in, because it's Max Fun Drive.

That sounds like a real noisemaker.

And you're just, I can tell that you're just making that noise with your hand and mouth.

Let Let me try.

That was really good.

That was really good.

It's the Max Fun Drive.

And Janet Varney, my friend and yours, just knocked on my door with an impromptu to have an impromptu Max Fun Drive party.

We've got noisemakers.

We've got...

A tuxedo made of streamers.

That's what I'm wearing.

Absolutely.

I'm tossing glitter around, Rip Torn, not Rip Torn style.

What's his name?

Who tossed the glitter around?

Ooh, not Poland.

Rip Taylor.

Rip Taylor.

That's not your fault.

Why do either of them have that name?

Rip Taylor, by the way,

guess what state he was born in?

I'm guessing Massachusetts isn't like that.

Okay, that's a Commonwealth.

That's a Commonwealth.

Which is a pretty good guess because Rip Torn was born in no state at all.

What?

Because he was born in our District of Columbia.

Aha!

January 13th, 1931, passed away.

R.I.P.

Literally your name.

Rip Taylor.

He knew that was RIP.

He spent his whole life knowing that was coming.

October 6th, 2019.

What if your tombstone was your name?

R.I.P.

Taylor.

Taylor seemed like a nice guy.

I wonder what his last name was.

Hey, we're having Max Fun because it's the Max Fun Drive.

And part of what makes the Max Fun Drive so special and fun is the fact that we get to say thank you to you, our listener members and supporters.

Thank you for being a member of Maximum Fun at maximumfun.org slash join.

And we have something very special for you in honor of the Max Fun Drive because it's not just about fund.

It's also about fun.

Yep.

We have a very fun episode.

with Amy Holden-Jones.

But before we talk about that.

Yes, John.

Janet Varney, tell us us what the Max Fun Drive is.

Well, the Max Fun Drive is the way in which we make what we make.

It's the way that we support the entire crew over at Max Fun HQ.

It is, as many of you may already know, a wonderful co-op.

It is a company that is owned, a little piece is owned by all the wonderful hearts and minds that work to make the network what it is, that support the podcasts, that make all of this go.

That is how this machine goes.

That's right.

It's the two weeks and only two weeks out of every year

when we, the hosts of Max Fun Podcasts, ask you, our beloved listeners, to consider how much this podcast means to you and to go over to maxfunfund.org slash join and consider making a monthly contribution.

That contribution makes you a Max Fund member.

As little as five bucks a month goes so far to help keep our show on the internet air as we celebrate the mottos and symbols and muffins and birds and junk of every state, Commonwealth, territory, and district in these United States.

And I just want to give a special shout-out, this Max FunDrive, to State Soil.

State Soil, you are the foundation upon which so many things are built and grown.

And that is a little bit about Max FunDrive as well.

Oh, here we go.

The foundation upon which all of these great podcasts are born and cultivated and sown and reaped.

It's possible because of our state state soil, Max Fun Drive.

It's true.

It's true.

You are our state soil

and you are our state seeds.

The theme of Max Fun Drive this year is spring break.

Spring is indeed a time of growth and renewal when the seeds that we have planted have started to sprout and the sprouting of your memberships is what keeps our podcast and all of the podcasts you love in the Maximum Fund Network going, as well as keeping all of our wonderful producers and editors and staff members gainfully employed with good health benefits.

And that includes our wonderful producers, Julian Burrell, and Laura Swisher.

We love them so much.

They are

very instrumental in the making of this podcast.

And I would also add that this is our first Max Fun Drive for ePluribus Motto, a podcast that was conceived.

in and around a Max Fun Drive a number of years ago because you and I had this conversation.

My only hope is that this will turn into a weird Russian nesting doll of podcasts where from this maximum drive and Iplarva's motto, a new podcast will be born.

And then there will just be a podcast inside a podcast inside a podcast.

But we can't do any of that.

Well, that might be your only hope.

My only hope

is that the listeners hear our message and understand that we count on them for their support.

And that there is not only a great internal benefit to becoming a maximum fun member, which is the knowing that you are helping creators out in the way that they're asking to be helped and helping support our shows and so many others that you listen to.

But also, there's an additional bonus, literally the bonus content.

This podcast began as a challenge to the listener members.

If we reached a certain number of new members at that Max Fun Drive a few years ago, we would start this podcast and here we are doing it.

But that's not the only bonus that you get from becoming a member.

You also get access to that sweet, sweet bonus content library and your bonus content feed.

Boco, we call it.

Janet, isn't that correct?

Boco?

It's correct.

And this year we had a team of scientists do some actual testing, and they confirmed that the BOCO is 29% sweeter than the rest of the content.

Team of scientists.

A team of scientists did a series of, I can only assume, taste tests to understand the sweetness factor of each podcast and its bonus content.

the BONCO is very sweet indeed.

Now, if you become a Maximum Fund member by going to maximumfund.org/slash join,

you get immediate access to not only this year's, but hundreds of hours of audio from every show across the network in that bonus content feed.

But, Janet, because ePluribus Motto is, as you mentioned, such a new show,

we got no Boco, right?

No Boco at all.

Zero Co.

Do you think we have Zico?

Oh,

that's where you're wrong, my friend.

No, we already have five,

five pieces of bonus content with guests talking about the states we've highlighted in previous episodes.

This season, Julian Fellows, I mean, Julian Fellows, the Julian Fellows, Downton Abbey, creator of Downton Abbey and the Gilded Age.

Come on, discussing Rhode Island.

And we have Dimitri Pompeii from the MaxFun podcast, Euro Evangelists, talking about Virginia, the Commonwealth, and more.

Which brings us to this episode.

You get to enjoy our full conversation with Amy Holden-Jones, the writer of the film Mystic Pizza, which, as you probably know, is located in Mystic, Connecticut.

And was a seminal film for me as a young lady growing up because I absolutely loved the female roles in the movie and was very inspired by them.

And I can't say that that film may not have had a little effect on someone moving to Hollywood, California later in her life.

Now, this was originally a piece of Boco, but we wanted to give you a little taste.

We wanted to say thank you.

We wanted to give it to all of you future Max Fun members, just as a little sweet taste.

Turns out the rich Sandy Loam that's the rest of our Boco is being represented by this sweet little taste from Amy Holden-Jones.

So you're welcome in advance for this rich Sandy Loam of Boco.

And you know the way to show your appreciation for this preview Boco, Go to maximumfun.org slash join and become a member now to get the rest of all that BOCO that is waiting for you.

Other BOCO from our show and all the BOCO from all the other shows.

So much BOCO.

So keep following us on social media.

I'm at the JV Club on Instagram.

I am at John Hodgman on Instagram.

But in the meantime, go to maximumfun.org slash join now to get us started on the right note.

I apologize.

I'll never do that again.

Please join.

And now, here is the wonderful Amy Holden-Jones and me, Janet Varney.

Law!

That was a better note.

See, you know what you're doing.

I don't know.

Amy, I promise not to keep you for very long.

This was a beautiful gift that Laura gave me because Mystic Pizza is a very important film to me.

You've done a million wonderful things since then, certainly The Resident being a very special,

a very special show that sort of broke the medical mold of shows that we're used to seeing kind of the same stuff over and over again.

So I'm a fan, and

you are here because John Hodgman and I have been doing this podcast, e Pluribus Motto, in which we explore the mottos of various states.

And we had a conversation in which he brought up Mystic Pizza, brought up the actual place, Mystic Pizza.

We mentioned the movie.

I did not get the chance to talk about how that movie emotionally ruined me in a great way when I was younger.

I think it had a huge influence on the idea for me of like great writing for younger women, women in general in film.

And so our producer Laura Swisher said, you know what?

You want to name drop Mystic Pizza.

I'm going to show up for that and I'm going to see if we can get Amy to come on and talk to us a little bit about Connecticut, which is actually sort of funny because you were just visiting Connecticut, right?

When you

incepted the idea for Mystic Pizza.

Yes, it was the early 80s.

And I was traveling with my husband, Michael Chapman, and he was a New Englander, and we were headed from New York City to Maine

to visit his parents who lived in Ellsworth.

And we were charting our route with the help of a book called Road Food, which still exists, which is

a guide to local take-out, drive-in, food for the people

all over the United States.

And we were not looking for pizza, actually.

We were looking for fried clams.

And the book waxed on rhisodically about clams at the sea swirl and Mystic, which still exists, by the way.

It's got a big soft cone, ice cream cone outside, but it has these great clams.

And as we were headed past it, Pat Tuit, we passed down Main Street and I saw the sign Mystic Pizza.

Pizza and I thought, wow, that's a great title.

What's the film?

And

that's how it sort of started.

Though in fact, I sort of knew what it was going to be because, though I didn't know the plot, of course,

there were endless films about young guys at the time and

no films from the point of view of women.

And

I took it upon myself to try to figure out what one would be.

And it happened that I knew the movie Diner very well because

I was an editor at the time, and

actually, in the 70s more, I was an editor.

And when I was,

they

offered me Diner to edit.

I couldn't do it for various reasons.

I had started directing, but loved the script.

And it was a coming-of-age story with the guys who met in the Diner and a lot about their relationship with women.

So when I saw the Sign Mystic Pizza, I thought, whoa,

this is a great setting for coming of age women.

Here's where they are, where they work.

And Mystic Pizza is a lot about a moment in your life where you either make your own life or

you join with a guy and absorb his life.

And I was trying to say, don't do that, you know, be yourself, among other things.

And so it was born from the title.

And I fussed around with it for several years after that and

wrote the screenplay.

So first of all, all, I want to have lightning bolt moments like that where I identify something and go, I can make something out of this.

Like, this is already speaking to me, and I'm just seeing these words for the first time, and it's already sort of building this.

I'm world building behind it.

Does that mean you didn't even go to Mystic Pizza?

Did you end up going to get

it?

We fell in love with it, and we did go to Mystic Pizza, but we fell in love with Mystic, and we actually bought a house there.

Oh, my gosh.

So, I did have a house in Mystic, which was amazingly stupid because we didn't even have enough money for a house in LA, but it was a lovely, it was a lovely house on High Street.

And

we would go regularly to the Mystic Pizza.

Okay, so, and was that within the same realm of time that you were working on the film, like you were working on writing the film?

So you sort of had that, you had the surroundings and environments?

Because one of the things that also really touched me when I saw it, and I've seen it many times since, is that sort of, and I feel like this was something that I mean you certainly still see it now but I think of certain iconic 80s films where you have young people sort of grappling with this blue-collar and elite clash of people, whether they're rich visitors coming in from, you know, in that sort of tourist vibe, or they're just on the other side of the track, so to speak.

And that's definitely something that comes into play of this like very rich, wonderful blue-collar world.

And then you have this sort of, and that's where we're rooted, but you have these hints and pinches all across the film of these folks who are sort of living a different life.

Is that something that you know came up for you?

Like, did you already have that in your mind because of the kind of diners of the world that were out there, or did that come from Mystic?

No, I had it in my mind, partially because we also used to go to Martha's Vineyard and actually ended up having a house there for many, many years.

And

the culture at that time in the 80s was remarkably similar.

It's not anymore.

And so I knew a lot.

Some of the young women from Mystic Pizza were actually based on people that I knew in Martha's Vineyard.

And in fact, the little bit about

the woman who lives with the local fisherman and he changes the name of the boat was an actual incident that happened on Martha's Vineyard.

But of course, the drawbridge is in the middle of Mystic, so it's all mixed up somewhat.

But most of it

is certainly made up.

But,

you know, the Portuguese vibe that exists also on Martha's Vineyard.

And

yeah, and I always knew there a mixture of the local people and the people who came in the summer.

So we were always people who came in the summer, but actually sometimes lived there through the fall and winter.

And even our kids were in school there for a while.

So we had a lot of friends who were locals.

And I'm

still to this day extremely fascinating by the dynamic of

the people who live there and the people people who come because the people who live there, at least on Martha's Vineyard, it may not be as true of mystic anymore, are fundamentally working class.

It's

during the winter not such a burgeoning economy as it is during the summer.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

Do you feel, as many people argue, that

there is something very special happening with the pizza in Connecticut, not just in New York?

And do you have a theory as to what it might be that makes a pizza so good, if you do feel that way?

I don't feel that way.

In fact,

I kind of feel the opposite

about the Mystic Pizza.

I know that

you guys feel that the thin crust pizza, the New Haven thing, that that's

way better.

And

I would say that that's highbrow pizza, thin crust pizza, and that it's more truly Italian.

And the mystic pizza is all-American, and it's less pure, it's less demure, if you will.

It's carbo and fat-loaded, and kind of an everyman pizza, more like America itself in some ways than the thin crust pizza is.

So it's got to stick to your ribs if you're going to go out there on the open sea and fish and battle the elements.

Yeah, I don't know if I have an opinion about it because I'm such a

western part of the United States person that I don't know that I've ever had one of those transformative pizza experiences anywhere I've been, including Chicago and New York.

And I know we're going to get angry letters for this, but

I love pizza.

I've never taken a bite of pizza in America and gone, you know what?

This is it.

This is pizza.

Everything else before this was not pizza.

This is pizza.

Well, I was honestly more interested in the girls who worked there than the pizza itself.

So

it was very good pizza.

We really liked it.

But, you know, you have to go to Sonoma Sonoma or someplace like that for the highbrow pizza these days.

So, yeah.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

You have your share absolutely in Sonoma.

I feel like flatbread, right?

Sometimes it moves into the flatbread territory.

I'll say one more thing about Mystic Pizza before I ask you a couple of other Connecticut thoughts.

And some of this is very jokey.

So if you don't feel like you have a catchy slogan prepared for Connecticut, I want you to know you're very much off the hook on that.

But the relationship with

Annabeth Gish's character, Kat,

has this just, and when I said it emotionally destroyed me, that's specifically the story I was thinking about because she has this very seemingly innocent and kind of sweet love story affair with this

dad.

And this is something that I think kind of from the outside, people, when they talk about like, oh, he slept with a nanny or whatever, there's this kind of dismissive air to it.

Um, and I think in many cases, the young woman ends up being the one that's sort of frowned upon, or, you know, like, ugh, she's, and she was so young.

And here we have, in your rendering of the story, this very bright, you know, accepted to Yale, wants to be an astronomer, young woman who is very much,

you know, seduced by this charming guy.

Just because he's not a skis, if you'll pardon the expression, doesn't mean that he's he's not, you know, acting like completely inappropriately.

And

he breaks her heart.

And I'm haunted by that.

It's so good.

But you feel for her.

And I feel like that wasn't happening as much.

Like, that's one of the things I think also sets the screenplay apart is that I just don't feel like we were coming at it from her perspective, from the young woman's perspective, a lot of the time.

And so I just love that.

And it wrecked me.

Well, you probably like my Nine to the Next movie, which I my previous movie, actually, which I wrote and directed Love Letters with Jamie Lee Curtis, because that's entirely what it's about.

It's about

the other woman having an affair with a married man.

And

same deal, both of them.

There have been so many movies made about, oh, the poor husband, he's torn between the girlfriend and the wife, and who gives a damn?

And no one had ever, and they'd done the wife too, but no one ever did the story of the other woman.

So,

and you know, also that that particular storyline embodies the theme.

It's like Jojo's is the reverse.

She's afraid to get married.

She doesn't want to lose her independence.

And Kat is the one who has

everything going for her in her life.

And if she threw it away for that guy, what I was saying beyond don't have an affair with a married man was, don't do that.

Yeah.

Go make your own life.

Don't take on the guy's life.

Absolutely.

And now, here, this is going to be the most awkward segue ever, but stay with me.

This is going to be very fun.

So here we have

this sort of revolution.

I think of it as being this revolutionary type of screenwriting that you're doing.

Very feminist,

wonderful.

We have the state of Connecticut who had the slogan that they immediately had to toss aside at some point.

Still revolutionary.

Just reminding everybody, we're still revolutionary.

It is a state that has tried on a lot of different slogans.

Now, a slogan being a little more commercial than the official state motto, the official state motto, key, translucent, sustenant.

He who transplanted still sustains.

John and I are not a huge fan of that motto,

especially when we bumped up against some really beautiful, very

just calm ones like Unity.

You know,

it's hard to turn your nose up at unity, but this Latin one's a little clunky.

Do you, in your experience of, of, of living in Connecticut and your experiences there and interacting with people, do you have any pitches for a good slogan for Connecticut?

Well, cheaper than New York, less stuck up than Massachusetts.

I mean,

that comes to mind.

I guess birthplace of Lyme isn't probably a good idea.

You know what?

Sometimes you got to lean in.

Isn't there a town called asbestos?

I mean, you don't don't choose, you don't necessarily choose your partner at the dance.

So I'm not.

Don't blame us for ticks.

I mean, I...

Exactly.

Where the ocean meets the sky would probably be my choice, but that might be somebody else's already.

I love it.

It's odd, but he who transplanted still sustains.

Oddly works for me because I was a transplant to Mystic Pizza, and it continues to sustain me

because you've made it real and relevant.

It's one of my most loved credits, and also I get those nice residual checks still.

But

there's even a musical now of Mystic Pizza.

I know.

And I've seen it, and it's really good.

And Alyssa Etheridge do, I mean,

she did a bunch of the songs, and it's so funny.

They were going to do that, and instead, they

use 80s songs.

Oh, okay.

and that's actually better because

it's really true to you know the ethos of the of the whole thing and sets it really in the 80s so yeah if it comes around to your town check it out I'm actually not a big musical lover I sometimes see the big ones that everybody loves and go eh meh but I'm not either I went to see this with like a thousand people and my family prepared to think, oh dear, and

it was spectacular.

We had a great time.

The audience on their feet and dancing.

It was great.

I got to see it.

I love a jukebox musical.

So, and especially if it's, to your point, like helps establish the story in the time that it belongs.

There's a lot of like emotion that comes along with the right songs.

Those are great, absolutely great new slogans.

And again, you've made the motto work for me.

That's impressive.

And then, do you have a sense of what the shape is?

Now, the shape, you can describe it as, you know, the literal kind of shape.

Sometimes when we have a really fun shape of a state, you can say something like, this looks like Goofy's profile.

I don't know that we can get there with the state of Connecticut, but does the shape call up anything for you?

Yes, it looks to me like half of a grilled cheese sandwich with one side nibbled off.

Yes.

Who nibbled off that side?

And did it happen in the kitchen before it came out to the table or did it happen at the table?

I don't know, but it's also stolid, and then it's got this stuff going on on the edges.

Yeah, it's nibbled.

It's nibbled.

Connecticut, it's been nibbled.

There's my pitch for the day.

Amy, thank you so much for joining us and for contributing to our little podcast about state mottos.

You've legitimized us in a way we don't deserve.

But is there any place people can find you?

Is there anything you're working on now?

Anything you'd like to point people towards to celebrate in your amazing career?

Well, I think that, you know, The Resident is actually more alive than it ever was on Fox because it's on Netflix, Hulu, Apple Plus, and no, Disney Plus, sorry, sorry, Disney,

and doing very well there.

And

I would say, if you haven't seen The Resident, see The Resident because I'm very proud of it.

But, I mean, there's so many, there's all those movies, and most people know them.

And

I'm pretty proud of them because the really good ones hold up, and an awful lot of movies from the past don't.

I mean, Slumper Party Massacre, for example, which is the only slasher written, directed by women, and is hilariously funny and very scary, and still has fan groups all over the country.

I'm sure.

That's a kick.

And

a decent proposal, Beethoven.

I'm still, you know, proud of a lot of them.

I have several.

I have a spec script I truly love, which is a crime story

set in the world of Medicare fraud in Florida with a con artist pretending to be a doctor and the lead, but it's not set up.

And

a medical show that's a,

well, I better not say it, somebody will steal it.

But

unfortunately, the way the state of our business is, you can't sell anything right now.

It's like trying to sell your house in a down market.

So

after working solidly from the age of 21, so when I worked on my very first feature till now, it hasn't been so bad to

live in the moment and be rather than do.

So I'm not unhappy where I am.

And

it's the bad side of streamers is you don't get the residual money and you don't get the syndication money, but the good side is that so many people do see your work, even work from the past.

And

that's a marvelous thing.

I hope to get to Connecticut again soon.

And I always hope to get to Maine.

I love Maine.

So, Massachusetts, both of them.

And I'm about to have Martha's Vineyard.

So,

lovely.

Can't wait to hear your ones on those two.

This is a fun idea.

We've been having a very good time.

I was listening to our rough cut thinking, boy, I hope people just don't all think we're just shitting on each individual state because we truly are.

We are so charmed by so much of the stuff that we discover.

But there's a lot of goofy stuff baked into state symbols and state mottos.

So we've been trying to celebrate it with love

and not just be, you know, sort of looking down our noses because

Connecticut has a very strong history in the arts.

You know, it has artists' colonies and writers' colonies, and many famous writers live there, and famous artists live there.

And

it has that going for it.

I mean, it is the home of Mark Twain, after all.

I mean, enough said.

Absolutely.

Yeah,

I have so many things I love about Connecticut.

Now, this conversation,

enabling this conversation, is definitely one of them.

Amy, thank you so much for your time.

And everybody, listen, maybe I'll get you on my other podcast at some point to talk about your youth because I do a podcast about people's teenage years for the same network.

But

you are, again, one of those people who you just kept asking questions and you just kept putting yourself in rooms with people and they saw you for you and you've had this amazing career.

It's just very inspiring.

So I encourage anybody if this is part of this is still being used for this interview, check out just

your whole history is like such a journey and such an amazing adventure.

And each piece of it is like remarkable in its own right for these very unique reasons.

So thank you again.

You're terribly kind.

And I'm sure that your life is going to be far beyond and very excelling.

You're in the heart of the newest technology now.

Mine is the 20th century technology.

Yours is the 21st.

All right.

I hope everyone heard that.

Hollywood, 110 degrees or whatever it is.

All right, everyone.

Now that you have heard that wonderful and delicious first taste of bonus content, remember there are more state and Commonwealth-centric conversations waiting for you in the BoCo feed.

And there's only one way to get it.

And all the rest of that wonderful bonus content from across a network and that way is to go to a website.

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Maximum Fun.org slash join to become a Max Fun member now with a recurring monthly contribution that makes sense for you.

Yeah, you don't need to sing it.

Just type it in.

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And that's beautiful.

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