(Recorded July 2021) Marla Frazee’s an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator. She also the genius behind Boss Baby, the business-suit-wearing, hard-charging infant who changed Alec’s life. Marla Frazee says she tackles serious topics such as babies, birthday cake, boxer shorts, boys, and roller coasters. She’s been honored twice with the prestigious Caldecott medal. She’s written and illustrated A Couple Of Boys Have The Best Week Ever; Walk On!; and Santa Claus, The World’s Number One Toy Expert. She’s also illustrated books by other authors including All The World; The Seven Silly Eaters; Stars; and the New York Times bestselling Clementine series.
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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. One of my favorite parts of any day is reading bedtime stories with my kids, and I've come to treasure some of the books we read together. It takes a special talent to combine words and pictures that delight, inspire, and can be enjoyed again and again and again. My guest today, Marla Frasie, is one of those talents. She's an award winning children's book author and illustrator, and she wrote a book that's been particularly important in my life, Boss Baby, playing the business suit wearing hard charging infant has been the role of a lifetime. Marla Phrasie says she tackles serious topics in her work, such as baby's birthday, cake, boxer shorts, boys, and roller coasters. She's been honored twice with the Prestigious Call to Metal. Among the books she's written and illustrated are A Couple of Boys Have The Best Week Ever, Walk On and Santa Claus, The World's Number One Toy Expert. She's also illustrated books by other authors such as All the World, The Seven Silly Eaters, Stars and The New York Times best selling Clementine series. Marla Phrasey has always lived in Los Angeles, and she found her life's work early on. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up and write and illustrate children's books, and I always said I was going to do it, And then I went to art school. I went to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and I majored in illustration. And while I was there, I didn't really learn very much about publishing because it's on the West coast. Most of publishing is on the East Coast. At the time, no one taught children's book illustration, and so while I had certain skills, didn't really understand the component of writing stories with pictures. And I started as an illustrator, and I wanted to illustrate somebody else's manuscript. That was the easier path in um for me than writing and illustrating, and I thought I was ready, but as it turned out, I really had to learn what that meant, like how to write with pictures before I could get published. So that is what took me a long time. But I think the main components that really helped me kind of get to that point of a wanting to do it, and then you know, starting that path of trying to get published was you know, I loved reading, I loved drawing, and I love telling these stories. So it was kind of like I always have done those those things. Just a love of children's books throughout your own childhood was the foundation of this, of this whole idea. I remember what these books were like when I was a kid, and there was some really strange ones that I remember, like five of Chinese Brothers. Remember five Chinese brothers. I mean there was some really odd story that stayed with me and beyond uh sus and things like that which everybody knows, you know, go Dog Go and all that kind of stuff. And I was loved all of that. I remember I was in fifth grade when I became, you know, just addicted. I just couldn't stop reading The Phantom Told Booth. I was obsessed with Norton jer and The Phantom Told Booth and that book just, I mean literally changed my life. All this heavy literature when I was twelve and thirteen years old and I just couldn't stop reading. I was addicted to reading as as though I was a kid. And these children's books that made this stamp on me. I was obsessed with them. Now with you, you live in the basic area that you would school, and you haven't migrated very far from home, have you. I haven't. Actually, I've always lived in southern California my whole life, so yeah, somewhere around here when I grew up, Like the books that imprinted on me were I was pretty young. Those early books, like from when I was four or five six, those are the ones that made me want to do this, such as The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krause and Crockett Johnson, Blueberries for Sale by Robert McClaskey, Harold, and The Purple Crayon Where the Wild Things Are? Those classics were my childhood books. And I was lucky enough to have access to books. My mom had been an elementary school teacher, so we had some of these books, and we had a library in town and at my school as well, so you know, I just always loved to read. I was obsessed with Schultz as well. I mean, even when we were kids watching those TV shows and all the cartoon collection, the comic collections of Schultz. I studied those. I loved you, poured over them, brilliant. But when you're in school, and you go to art school to study prior to going there at the college level, had you been drawing for years and writing for years and and and trying your hand at this? What were your attempts prior to that, if any? Well a lot. Yeah, So I at home. I would come home from school and I would make little books, some of which were saved, so I still have some of them, and they really aren't exceptional in any way. Like I like, i'd like to go when I talked to kids, show them because look, you know, this is here's my beginnings. You can do this too. But when I was about well, I was in third grade, my best friend was in second grade, and she knew I wanted to be a children's book illustrator. So she said, her name is Lisa Gilden. We're still friends. I'll write it, you illustrate it. Let's get started. If this is what you want to do. It was almost like, if if this is what you want to do, I'll help you do it. So she wrote this book and I did the pictures, and then are we showed it to our teachers and they sent it to like the California State Fair, and then we lost interest. In it, we've you know, okay, it's somewhere, and then it won some award so in the state fair. So our school asked us if we would make another copy for the school library. So we tried to remember what it is that we had written in what I had drawn. We made another copy. But then it was in the library. So when we would go to our school elementary school library was on the shelf. And that was a big deal to me to walk into the school library and see it with all the books that I love so much. It was just right there in the library. I think that really cemented it for me. I just wanted to grow up and do that. Author and illustrator Marla Frasey. If you love hearing about the lives of illustrators, be sure to check out my conversation with New Yorker cartoonist Rob's Chest. When she started submitting her work, she was drawing very tiny, single paneled cartoons. I think in this sort of logical but sort a slightly insane way, I thought, if I just draw really small, nobody will get really angry with me. It was in April of seven eight I dropped off this portfolio of cartoons to the New Yorker. I didn't know how many cartoons. Who was the editor then, William Shaun. When I came back next week to pick them up, there was a note from him to come back and see him. Turned out I'd sold a cartoon and he told me to come back every week. So that's kind of what I've been doing. Here more of my conversation with Rob's Chaste and Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Marla Phrasie talks about what art school really taught her. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If you ask most adults, they'll say they can't draw. But if you ask most children, they'll say they're great at drawing and coloring. I know for me, when I was a kid, I was proud out of my caricature of Groucho Marks I drew on my bedroom wall. But I got discouraged when I saw how talented some of my classmates were. For Marla Frasy, that moment when someone decides they can't draw is a big loss. She wishes more kids were encouraged to keep going. I feel like it's not the child giving up as much as usually I think either they're feeling like, somehow you did that. These other friends of yours could draw better than you. I mean what you described about the Gratcho marks caricature. Every illustrator has that feeling like, oh my god, that drawing I did just happened. It's just right, and I can't do that again. It's a miracle, right. I mean, even after you know, drawing for as my job for so long, I still have that feeling when I do a particular sketch, I'll never be able to do that again. How do I retain that energy or that freedom, or you know, the spontaneity of that drawing. So that story aside for a second. You know, I think a lot of kids stop because they've heard some criticism about their drawing, or they're comparing themselves. But I feel like most of the people that go on to keep drawing do it for the same reason. The kids just do what they do. They're more relaxed and calmer through the process of drawing, as maybe a kid that goes on to do music is sort of a spe sports or whatever. But we do all start drawing. I mean, we all start by drawing, and we all start by grating pictures right. I was labeled early as as a kid that drew at what At what age did you know you had that gift? At what age did you begin even to see as we often do in the eyes of adults. Adults will look at you going wow. They're looking at each other going wow, Yeah, when did that happen to you? Well? I feel like I knew personally when I was a kid a garden. Something was different about the way I drew than my kindergarten colleagues. That's um. But we were supposed to draw this garden outside, and then we came in with our garden drawings and it was our little vegetable garden, and all the drawings of both the other kindergarteners were as if they were floating above the garden looking down at it, which wasn't the way we could see it. We couldn't fly, you know. I drew it the way I saw it, which was from the ground level. And I remember thinking this is different and weird, Like why do they all think they could fly above the vegetable garden to draw. I remember that that moment thinking they're wrong. You know, if you're going to draw what it looks like, that's not the way we saw it. So that was my first awareness that I think from looking at an outside control group, you know, like, oh, I'm seeing this differently. I remember in third grade, we were all painting at easels and we were supposed to paint the person. We were in pairs, so we would paint the kid and then we would switch roles and then they would paint us. So I was painting one of my classmates and by accident, my brush went into blue instead of whatever I was thinking was that I was painting her neck and it hit the blue by accident, and and my brush made like this big blue kind of mistake in my mind. And I remember my teacher stood behind me and said, I'll be right back, and came back in with like the I don't know if it was another teacher, I can't remember, but brought some other adult in and then they stood there and talked about how I had used this cool color to like paint the shadow under the neck of the and it was a mistake. And I'm listening to them thinking, I mean, now I know that they thought already I was sort of the school artist, you know, the class artist or whatever. It was a brilliant mistake. A brilliant mistake. Now, when you go to art school for college to study art, when you come in there, I'm assuming because you've been doing this for so long since kindergarten and and and people are recognizing you as you go along. What becomes the purpose of art school, like a professional art school. What did you lack that they taught you a lot? Art Center College of Design. One of the things that the school does this sort of inundates you as a student with so much work. It is so grueling and hard that you have to be nimble, fast. You have to prioritize, you have to produce. You can't be a perfectionist, you can't wait for inspiration. You just have to work. And actually doing that was probably the most important part of it. You just developed sort of a work ethic. That's to me the most important thing. There was all all these foundational classes like drawing and painting and color and typography, design, you know, all kinds of foundational things that also factored in, But I think the main component was just being able to produce. And by that you mean what being able to like, here's a problem, solve it and do it fast, Give me an example. Well, I was a commercial illustrator for a lot of years, so when I left, it was like advertising a lot of editorial illustrations, so you know, you were doing all kinds of our work. Yeah, toys and games and you know T shirt design like um McDonald's happy Meals boxes. I designed all the NFL team mascots for kids, so like each team had a child version of their mascot that was put onto T shirts and stuffed animals. So I was working on a lot of jobs that you know, I had nothing to do with children's books, but it was a chot. So your first children's book, you right, is what roller Coaster. It came out in two thousand one. So I had illustrated a number of books before that, but that was the first I was the author and illustrator of. You would illustrated other children's books. Other people were the authors of the book, and you do the illustrations. Once the first one that was published that you illustrated, it was called world Famous Muriel and the Magic Mystery. It was what I thought was my foot in the door, like it was hit. I had been out of school. I've been working as an illustrator. I thought, great, I have this first book, like, this is great, I'm finally in And then after that came out, it was five years to the second book. And that five year period was real frustrating because I thought, I, you know, I had broken into the field. And so my second book was called That Cookery. And then right after that I got the third book, which was called The Seven Silly Eaters by Marianne Hoberman, and that book is still in print, and that was really the book that was more at the foot in the door. How do animated children's movies come into your eyeline for the first time? Were you? Were you aware of them? Did you did you watch them? Did you enjoy them? Because for me, I'm going to get to this after you answer this question. For me, the portal into all that world with my kids has led me to watch some films that have just been staggeringly beautiful to me and wonderful to me. I mean, there's some of these movies are really they're so brilliantly done. What were animated films in your life? Did you? Were you aware of them? And did you watch them? I did, I'm you know, growing up in southern California. One of my friends um in our neighborhood. Her father worked at Disney and so somehow he had access to the films, and every time she had a birthday, we were invited over and he would show them in his house on a Super eight movie projector, and so we'd be in our pajamas and these movies at the time, I don't know if you remember, but they were sort of vaulted for maybe seven years at a time. I'm not sure about the exact schedule, but let's say Cinderella would come out, and then seven years later it would maybe be released again. So like they would, they would come out and then they would go away. But because of this access to these films with this friend who was in the neighborhood, we were seeing films that you know, maybe just wouldn't have hit at the age that we were interested in seeing. I mean, it was great, and I just remember how magical it was to see them in that way. You know. I also would see them when they would come out, if possible, in the theater. So I grew up with with that love of those movies that felt very personal and I just loved seeing them. My dad would teach what they used to call social studies, and his high school class he taught American government and economics. He taught a course called Contemporary Problems, and they would screen films in the field outside in the school on the projector on a screen. Then he'd bring the equipment home and he'd bring the films in the cans of film to the house and set it up on our backyard in the summertime and showed By Bye Birdie in our backyard with our neighbors. And we were never more popular. We were never This really guess at the beginning of my brothers and our introduction to the power of the movie business. Because we would watch Bye Bye Birdie. We probably watched it like four time. We watch it like four nights in a row. We had four screenings in my the theater, and we were We devoured all movies. We just couldn't get enough of movies. But with animated films, was there ever a discussion before a Boss Baby of any of your other books being made into animated features or animated programming. No, that came out of nowhere for me. But when I left Arts Center, I did work at Disney for a minute, and I thought that was going to be my career, like to work at Disney and do something in animation. I lasted six weeks, as it turned out, because I wasn't really trained and Disney animators typically know what they're doing when they get there, but I didn't. So I left six weeks after I got there, and then just became a freelance illustrator who thought I wanted to do children's books and that was sort of my path. But I always loved it, and I have a lot of books on animation, and I try and put a lot of sequential kind of illustrations in all my books, like it's it's sort of a a frozen animation, like each page is still and you turn the page to see the next bit of action. But I think of it as animation. So when we heard boss Baby had been you know, there was interest in optioning it, Like, I was blown away. I had no idea that that was you've gotten yourself into. Yeah, I mean I was very I was like, wow, that's that was very exciting. But I had no you know, I wasn't thinking about that. I wonder for you, when Boss Baby comes out for the first time, are you sitting there going, oh God, this is not what I had in mind at all. You know, I had seen Boss Baby emerge, So between the time it was optioned to the time I saw it as a finished film, I had seen it over those I think seven years, but I do remember seeing it was probably about six finished and I was with my agent. We were at DreamWorks and it was a screening with a lot of like the people who had worked on the film, and it was like the first time we were seeing anything from like a linear experience. And afterwards I needed to sort of check myself out of the world for a couple of hours. You know. Everybody who knew me were like calling on my cell wondering what I thought, like they wanted like an update, and I just I had to kind of separate for a while and just think about what it meant to have something that was so personal to me that came out of my head that was like my baby, and was now this other thing that was related, but it was different, and I had already kind of thought I had done that that seeing it it was sort of like I really needed to think about that for a while. And at the end of that period of time where I sort of took myself out of the world and then and then when I re entered, it was like I was so excited about it was like I kind of succeeded in separating my own creative vision for whatever I thought I was doing with the book and whatever I didn't think. I had expectations, like I think that the movie should be a certain way or not be a serta way. It was just that it was so big and full and its own thing, its own voice. It's so strongly what it is in all kinds of amazing ways that I just needed to serve accommodate to that, and I did, and I just find the whole thing to be just incredibly fun. Well when I when I go and do those movies. I did Madagascar too. I had a small part that I did Rise at the Guardians, which was not as successful as they hoped by any measure, but I had a lot of fun doing that piece for them. And then they came to me and said, you want to do Boss Baby, And I thought, Okay, I'll give it a world because I loved Tom McGrath. What Tom had the recipe, He knew how to put these films together. But when I go do the film, I go in there, and they take me on the little tour. We walk around this conference when we would they lay out the story as it was then and I go in and you know, the first day or two you're doing this, you have no idea what you're doing, like what's too much, what's not enough? You're holding back, but you got to go in there and give it everything you had. And I and it's very similar to another character I played on the show thirty Rock, where the guy is like, there's a public self and a privateself. There's boss Baby who's always bombasted and kind of commanding and intimidating people and and pushing people around. And then boss Baby who gets real and it's terrified and filled with fear and wants to be loved and begins to cave and get real. And the movie comes out. And I must say, my kids have watched the film many times, the first film, and we sat there and I would watch it, and every time I watched it, I saw something different that I didn't see. And and animated films are so dense. When you say to people you can do anything you want to in animation, the question that follows that statement is, well, what have you got can your imagination keep up with the technology. They're amazing. But the other thing I noticed is that the film is made for a certain demographics, so it's the little kids and the pace. I mean, I watched the second Boss Baby and I had a splitting headache when it was over. So fast paced, and you realize, this is what kids want. Kids want boom boom, boom boom. You know, I I completely agree about the pace. I mean, the first time I saw it was just like out of breath. But I have to go back to what you said about like you voicing Boss Baby. One of the early conversations I remember my agent and I had I think it was Damon Ross and Ramsey Nato, who's the producer, And Damon is the one who brought the book to DreamWorks. They knew that you were already attached, but they were like, who do you guys think should voice Boss Baby? Like if just high in the sky, who would you want? And Steve and I were both like Alec Baldwin And they're like, okay, well you know, besides Alec Baldwin, who else? And we're like, well, well, well we'll push together a list. And later we got on the phone together and we're like, well that that's who. I mean, who else? Anyway, You're yours are the heart and soul and anchor of that movie. And plus I have a little key chain that came in some sort of swag bag and the first movie, like all the screenings and your voice emits from it's in my compartment, so so occasionally if things joggle in there all of a sudden, I hear you. To me, it's the joy for me is because we all want to make animated content for our kids as actors and do that voice thing. But God, you really hope that you work with the right people. And when we did the first Boss Baby, thank God for Tom, I mean thank God for Tom. Yeah, he's amazing. I love the heart that both of the you know, the Boss Baby, Yes, and that's like the center of both of them. Just hearing him talk about how that came to be and how important that was to him. And I think it makes sort of like the the fast pace and all the stuff that's going on, it's almost coming at you so quickly. It it holds it all together always. And I think my books, at my picture books don't have necessarily a quality like that. But I do hope a child will be eat them again and again and go back to them over and over again. And that's always the hope, always that there's like an emotional center, like a heartbeat, you know that. And that was the thing about Boss Baby that was probably one of the hardest things to make sure was still there. As I worked on on that book. It was trickier than some of the other books that i've I've done. And I don't know if it's because, you know, I think comedy is trickier. It just is. So. In the little documentary I saw, the little four or five minute documentary of you, a lot of sweeping shots and tracking shots in your fortress of solitude there, your cabin, your studio, and lots of colored, beautifully sharpened It was like a commercial for pencils and beautiful cans or containers filled with bouquets of different colors of pencils. And I'm wondering, is that still it's hand drawing. You're not doing it with a computer at all? No, No, not at all. The computer stresses me out, you know, maybe my age, maybe my temperament. I just don't find it relaxing. I would rather do a piece over again than struggle with something technological that I don't understand some problem. Do most people who illustrate books these days do an old school away like you, Most are on computer? Yeah? Really, yeah, I think so, or some part of it might be on computer, Like they might do a lot of traditional drawing or painting and then scan that, put it into a program, and then work on it on the computer. I just don't. I just sort of do the whole thing on a piece of paper, which sometimes takes me longer than it probably should, depending on what I'm working on. I don't mind the time in I actually like it. It's what you need to do to do what you do correct. Yeah. Yeah, And when you're in the cabin, there is that where you go. I remember I think I might have mentioned this to you that different people in my life have told me about their parents Styron's children, Roth's intimates, Fever's children, when the mother would say, whatever you do, don't knock on the door of that room, or don't go out to the cabin, don't don't disturbed dad. There it is. There's the difference basis. Yeah, do you prefer concentration like any writer? Well, I'm still in the house in which my three sons were raised in. They're now grown up, so they're not here. But at the time that they were little, they all were in one bedroom of the house and I had my studio in one bedroom. And that worked until my oldest was probably about fourteen or something, and it was kind of like, they can't still be in one bedroom, the three three of them. And so what you do because I got four sons. Yeah, I'm seriously, what did you do? Yeah, Well, built this little cabin in the backyard, so I'm in it right now. Actually it's twelve by twelve by twelve six twelve high two and I love it. I still love it. But even when we built it in the backyard, they were still little young, but they just all of a sudden, I mean, it was good for all of us. It was good for them. It was good for me to have this sort of space between me being inside and helping with homework and doing the car put all that stuff, cooking whatever, and having my own, you know, space that they really respected it. They would come out, they like look through the door and to cand, you know, come in, and they it was also important for them to see that this was like a life that I had that was separate from them, and it was important to me, and they respected that. Did your children did all did three boys, as they became teenagers require their own rooms? We never had that space, so so they grew up together in the same room where you had two rooms for them. Well, then we had two rooms. So the oldest got his own room, and then when he went to college, then the second oldest took over that room. And so then they each then that's two had their own Number two and number three had their own room. Number one was gone. Yeah, I say, I say to my wife, and I'm terrified of this because I feel like my kid's got to have their own room or it's gonna be ma'am. You know what's funny the book I did, the Seven sal Eaters that I mentioned, it's seven kids that all live in this sort of cavenish house, and I illustrated their bedroom where they're all together. They're just all gamed together and in sort of an addict space. And so many kids have come up to me over all these years that this book has been out, and they're like, I love their bedroom. I wish I had a bedroom like this, And it's it's just I think there's something about it being sort of like Peter Pan, like you know, that idea that like kids are just in a big puppy pile together. It's an interesting emotional feeling that I think kids have when they talk to me about like wishing they had that, because you do they really I don't know, but they feel like they want that. Marla Phrasie, author of boss Baby. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back. Marla Phrasie talks about why she makes books for kids at the age just before they can read. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. For as long as stories have been told to children, there's been a tension between entertaining and educating them. Marla Phrasie's primary goal is to delight her readers, and while she's willing to challenge conventional norms along the way, she doesn't feel pressure from the industry to do so. Not in that way in my experience, although I know that the last few years there have been many, many conversations and rightly so about having more issues being covered and representation in children's books and stories. When I started to illustrate certain books that allowed for me to do this, I was really it was important for me to put you know, a lot of diversity and inclusion in the represented in the illustrations when I could. I think Boss Baby is a pretty good book to explain like why it wouldn't have worked then, because like, basically, Boss Baby is about what it's like when you have a new little creature in your house who's like the boss of you, who's getting all the attention, right, But it's also about sort of a patriarchal kind of system, and that's what I was started playing off of, in which case it had to be a white male boss. I mean, what's interesting. I did do a book, um, you know, after Boss Baby, called The Boss of Your Baby, in which you know, there's a little girl, that sibling that comes in and so plants the boss baby, and it was interesting to see the little girls, you know, Tabitha and Tina in the in this boss Baby family business. But basically, like this, the heart of the story in the film is still about Ted and Tim and their relationship, which is wonderful. And in the book, however, it was the subtext was sort of the patriarchal breaking apart of having this little girl boss come in and sort of get rid of the guy. Also just what happens when you have a little sibling. Another question about your writing is writing to delight children versus writing to educate them. Do you feel some compelling obligation in both areas. I don't feel any obligation to educate them at all. I feel a very strong obligation, however, to tell a story that means something to them and me. If I have something to say, if something means something to me, it's going to mean something to them, just because that's sort of where you kind of find the universal theme. But I really am so lucky that I get to work with children as my audience, because, especially as an illustrator who tells stories with pictures, sometimes in my books I'm writing the story too. Sometimes I'm illustrating somebody else's story. Sometimes I have wordless books that don't have any words. And so I think, well, children read pictures better than we do. They're way better at it than adults are. And and so when I know like, children are going to be looking at these pictures and they're going to be following the story. I know I can put in all kinds of levels of subtlety or secondary things that just adn't adult would miss, but kids will see it. And I also know that they will read the pictures at a much higher level of understanding than they could read words, Like at their age, they're better at reading pictures and they take it in differently. So I never think I wish I was telling stories to grown ups. You know, I really love the idea of telling stories to children at the age pretty much before they learn how to read. That's sort of my sweet spot. And I don't think they need to be educated. I think they just need stories to kind of identify with and look to to make sense of their world in a way to help them. Like, oh, I feel like that too. I think that's pretty much what I That's where I go when I'm trying to figure out if this, if whatever I'm working on is going to rest resonate. It's more about resonating with a child, like are they going to care? And then can I keep them in their attention? And once you have their attention, then you know you've kind of got them if you if I care about, you know, making sure that it makes sense, which is is sort more what I'm you know, whatever I'm trying to do. Does this make sense to them if they were to look at it, and so, you know, it's all on me if they can't understand what what I'm doing. I want to tell you my sindex story really quickly. I'm in an apartment building in New York, a very desirable building, beautiful building in the village, and I'm I'm on the verge of buying an apartment there. And uh, this is before I was married, and I wanted a decent size, and so the apartments on the floor there was a good size one two or three bedrooms, and then there were two apartments across the hall, which was probably the same apartment broken up into two apartments. And they show me the one apartment and I say, that's beautiful, and they said, but the woman who owns it, she's divorced, she's never here. She'll probably sell it to you. And I said, what about the other one across the hall from the main apartment, so to speak with the two smaller ones. He said, well, that's not on the market. I said, well, is there any way we could contact the owner? And she said, no, no, I'm not allowed to do that. I would not I would not recommend you do that, nor what I want to facilitate that. And then finally the time came when she said to me, I think there's an opportunity here for you to talk to the owner. I've spoken to him and he's very private and he has this apartment for many, many years, and he told me that he is prepared to discuss this with you theoretically. And it was Maury Sendeck and I get more Sindeck on the phone of his home in Connecticut, and I have one of the funniest conversations I've ever had with another person in my life. In the background, you hear a child screaming and being disciplined, and he's yelling at his mother. And I said, what's that sound in the background, because that's my housekeeper in a very elegant but he said, that's my housekeeper, Mr Baldwin, He said, my housekeeper. That's her child, his son who comes to work with her now. And then he said, Mr Baldwin, I I am a rather well known writer of children's books. I have a reputation for writing children's books. But the truth matter is I don't really like children at all, and I have no use for them, and I prefer when they're not around. Thing to say, then, I said, when we got to the business end of it, and he was so kind to me and so lovely, and he said to me that his partner had just died. And he said, in order to make this work with you, I'd have to go in there and go through everything. And he goes, and I'm not ready to do that. He said, I can't unpack my life with my partner. And when I'm ready to do that, I'll let you know. And then by then I found another apartment that I bought in a role just and then he died, Sendac, but he was when he said, he said, I just prefer when the children are not around. Yeah, that sounds very Sandac. And now have you noticed changes in parenting trends as they're reflected in themes and children's books? You know, I definitely think they are one of the things about children's books that's interesting. And send Doc was like amazing at this very thing, which is you can't really date his books you know, they're just as much of the moment now as when he did them, however many decades ago. Some of them timeless and when you look through them, you know, a bed like the Bedroom and where the Wild Things Are, for instance, is a very odd children's bedroom. It doesn't look it looks sort of like a hotel, a generic hotel room, Like there isn't anything in there that you think, oh, yeah, well that was from you know, it just looks. It kind of says what it needs to say. Bed table, you know, window cake. That sort of is My hope with my work is that it has a timelessness because like the kids that may read it now are going to grow up in hopefully shared the book what you want them to be sharing it with their kids. And so I've really tried very hard to not date the book so that it will resonate. Is there something you've written in the last several years that you wouldn't write again now? You wouldn't write it now? I don't, And I think it's I mean, I'm really proud of each of the books that I've done, and I feel like they are each a part of what I was going through when I did them, and so it's sort of a chunk of where I was in my life and what was going on in the world. And I mean in terms of like the pandemic. I am certain that books and everything parenting and education will be different, but how I don't I don't know how. I do know that the book on my drawing table right now, the one I've been working on this year, is different for me because it's sort of a and I know I couldn't have done it without having gone through the last year and a half. So it's just it just feels very gantically part of what we've all been through. Whether that resonates when the book finally comes out, whether we're going to be, you know, past, whatever the emotional issues are right now, who knows. But I know that in the making it, I kind of have to be feeling sort of a certain compulsion to do it right now. Whenever that right now is well, let me just say that I look forward to the possibility of Boss Baby three. Maybe we have an environmental theme, maybe we clean up the Amazon, maybe we do something to save the planet. I'm very grateful to be doing the two films. Has been one of the highlights of my career, and I owe a lot of that to you, So thank you, Thank you. Children's author and illustrator Marla Frasey. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue, and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing, is ought to you by iHeart Radio.