Malcolm Gladwell

All of this started when we got a call from Angus Fletcher, saying a friend of his needed to speak to me.

It was urgent.

The friend had a story to tell, a story with so many layers, the friend said, that there was no way to do it justice in a single episode.

Two minimum.

For future reference, if you need to get my attention, this is the way to do it.

Okay.

Gary Angus Fletcher.

The gang is back together.

Right away, I hopped on a Zoom with the two of them.

If you are a longtime listener of Revisionist History, you will know the name Angus Fletcher.

He's an English professor at Ohio State and runs their narrative project.

I love Angus.

I think Angus is a genius.

Angus has been featured on more revisionist history episodes than anyone else.

Our three-part rewrite of The Little Mermaid, In Defense of Paw Patrol, and, and this is relevant to the story I'm about to tell you, we did a series of episodes a few years back called Development Hell.

where we interviewed screenwriters about their best idea that never made it to the screen.

And Angus came on to talk about an absolutely bananas sci-fi project he worked on with a good friend of his, the Hollywood screenwriter Gary Goldman.

And during that episode, I concluded that not only is Angus a genius, but Gary is a genius too.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Gary Goldman grew up in the South.