MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. Justin Halpern struck gold writing down of the outrageous profanity laced observations from his dad about life, love and oddball self-esteem. The twitter feed the and book based on the stuff his dad says, Rod the San Diego writer to the attention of Hollywood. Now he is just about to launch a second TV sitcom. He would never have exposed to all the stuff his dad says Woodstock for one sad fact, he broke up with his longtime girlfriend and that led Justin to examine the twists and turns of his romantic life which he does in his new book by Sunday girls. Justin is back at his old school San Diego State to talk about his career, come comedy, and the time it pays to visit your parents. Welcome to the show. I know it is not really stuff your dad says, but that is the closest I can come on radio. JUSTIN HALPERN: That's okay, I think people get it. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You started writing down your dad's scatological comments after a breakup, too. Was your dad like this growing up? JUSTIN HALPERN: Yeah, we grew up on a farm and Kentucky and went dad was a story proper and in the Navy and if you don't curse after those things you're never going to. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And what made you start writing this down? JUSTIN HALPERN: I was a writer at Maxim magazine but I was living at home with my father because I did not have, between houses and he would not consider sitting at the commuter work, situated come over and talk at me all day long and at some point I just decided I would take one thing he said each day and put it as my instant message status that my friends can see and one person said to put online. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Can you give some redacted quotes from your dad? JUSTIN HALPERN: Sure, I can give you a clean one. My favorite is where he said the parents only as good as the dumbest kid, if one win the Nobel prize but the other gets mugged by a hooker you failed. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Did he know what you were doing at the time? JUSTIN HALPERN: No, not at first, I really did not expect to do anything that wasn't really putting it up this I can make money out of money off that I just want to show my friends that I did not feel the need to say anything to them without exposing him to the public, but what became popular and I wanted to write a book about it, I said I should probably tell him and let him know. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What did he say when you told him? JUSTIN HALPERN: He did not care, there's this thing called Twitter and he said he knows what twitter is, and you start up the internet to get on Twitter and made that motion when you start up a car like you put keys in the ignition. I said I don't know how much he really know of this, I think I'm okay he doesn't really care what would people think. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Is your dad famous now? JUSTIN HALPERN: He never really leaves his neighborhood, everyone had to him before still those in, it's the same people and so I would say, occasionally someone will come up to him on the streets and hey you are that guy, but when you don't leave that often except for a couple square miles of your house, who are you going to run into? MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Where did you grow up in San Diego? JUSTIN HALPERN: Point Loma. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Is that where you started to suck at girls? JUSTIN HALPERN: Yes that is the epicenter of the sucking, I would like to think I sucked everywhere I went, and I live that home for the first couple of years of college and that is where I spent all my time. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: So your bad luck with girls started early? JUSTIN HALPERN: Not so much bad luck as when something happens that shouldn't happen, I was just bad with women, as most people are growing up, and so is just bad at that, it wasn't bad luck, I just was not good at it. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Give us an example. JUSTIN HALPERN: I mean, I remember the first time I tried to ask a girl out on a to a dance, I was like hey if you're doing anything in next week you you probably are, don't worry about all the skill, I didn't even get to the part where I said hey do you feel like going to the dance with me. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Do you think that you are particularly bad with girls, or do you think this is the same kind of embarrassment that most people go through? JUSTIN HALPERN: Unless you're like Matthew McConaughey you probably go through some version of this, I think that is what they want a book struck a nerve with people, it's only my story for that much more eccentric than someone else's, I think they are very relatable in terms of everybody's gone through it. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: But your dad is in this book too? JUSTIN HALPERN: I'm not stupid, I put my dad in this, he is the most entertaining part of my life. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I've heard he gives you some priceless romantic advice. JUSTIN HALPERN: He does, he has a very strange outlook on romance. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: There are so many million women that you can actually end up with, in a world of 6 billion people. JUSTIN HALPERN: His theory is that you could be happily married to 150 million different women and but he loves my mom is if she's the only person on earth so I don't know how much he actually believes that. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Some of the interactions that you talk about this book was a bit painful at the time all the other funny now, how difficult is that to turn stuff that is really hurtful at one point into something that is funny for everybody now? JUSTIN HALPERN: A lot of time has passed since the things occurred, and I would notice sometimes it would be writing something and sometimes it would be this recall of the feelings that I had what happened, and I would be like oh God, I don't know if I want to put that in the book, and ultimately I think it was you are really famous nobody wants to read your memoir and Monsieur Billy credibly honest so I would just put it in. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: So this is a memoir? JUSTIN HALPERN: Yes, both of my books are more or less just focusing on different aspects of my life. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: They just happen to be funny? JUSTIN HALPERN: Yeah. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Does your dad makes you laugh? JUSTIN HALPERN: I could use the funniest person I know, he gives me all the time, there's nothing if I'm ever feeling down or that had a bad day at work or something, I've always call him up because it's the most entertaining conversation you can have. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: A serious is he about the things that he says? Does he say them for a fact or is this really his. Philosophy on life? JUSTIN HALPERN: I think most of it his his philosophy but he knows what he's being funny, he is not oblivious to it, this is really the way he lives his life. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You are a writer and also a television major and graduate from SDSU, did you -- JUSTIN HALPERN: My dad calls SDSU Harvard without all the smart people. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That is good, you must have seen the potential of your dad comments right off the bat. JUSTIN HALPERN: I didn't really, I always thought he was funny, but I did not know that he and always think he was funny, when I was twenty-four give more well-adjusted and that is fine, it really did, I thought if you did know him you would think she was funny, it didn't occur to me that the general public would find the man that they didn't know to be so hilarious. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I've heard that there are some envious skulls that say that you would be where you are today without the funny out raises things your father say says, what is his response to that? JUSTIN HALPERN: They're absolutely right, I hundred percent MI would not be sitting here if I had started the twitter feed I would be working in a magazine like it was before, are struggling through screenwriting and trying to get a project bid, that is 100% true. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Where is the magic here? JUSTIN HALPERN: The magic in hearing these things and sitting at your computer and saying that is the funniest thing I've heard today, I think old let my friends know about it. Mostly I would just I admit to a friend and say she just sat down and went crazy on hold with her for an hour and this is one of the things that he said, he hates Wolf Blitzer. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: The twitter feed you can't count on and you have a best-selling book at Hollywood caught on and before you know it you have a sitcom starring William Shatner and your dad? JUSTIN HALPERN: They both are like silverback gorillas and they want to live a solitary life, they are both lovely peaceful but there are people that don't get especially does not love interacting with a lot of people, shutters and actors so is used to it, they have similar personalities but I think that show did not work and was terribly funny because it just didn't capture what makes my dad funny. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And in hindsight? JUSTIN HALPERN: It's a multi-camera, shot from a live studio audience and your writing and sparsely jokes, my dad is not a guy who tells jokes, he just has a point of view and expresses it in his very honest and we put that in a certain sense situation that is funny, but we have a guy and it feels like the character is just sitting on a stage for the spotlight with a glass of scotch in the cigar does not telling jokes, it reduces the character to these basic elements that are that enjoyable. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Is not situational anymore, just zingers. JUSTIN HALPERN: It just feels like one-liners. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Your new sitcom is on the air next month, Surviving Jack. Tell us about that. JUSTIN HALPERN: Is kind of like twenty years set in 1991 and it basically follows my life when I was a pre-teenager 14 to 15 years old, I guess it is a teenager that is my SDSU Depalma working, it basically follows this kid and his father who is my dad but at forty, when will my mom decided to go to law school so dad became the primary care caretaker, they were very put use the guy that worked all day and night and he cut back his hours to watch is in my mom is seventy was just like the first to give you a hug, it is like being tossed in cold water. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And most people know Christopher Maloney who plays your dad at forty. JUSTIN HALPERN: He investigated many a red crime. Maloney when I first met him, I remember feeling so intimidated by him in the same way that I used to feel about my dad, and I said this could work. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And what is your capacity of this new sitcom? As a change from the old one? JUSTIN HALPERN: Yeah the first show it was my first TV job, did not have a lot of control over what is going on and I should have, but then you can in the industry and since then I've worked on shows every year since then the last five years I've worked on other people shows this time I was the show runner of the show, and I are right higher the writing staff and be in a couple of guys with the show together. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: If this all goes down in flames, that is all you. JUSTIN HALPERN: I hate this one, it's all me. If you hit the last one that was on me too. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What you going to be telling the student that SDSU today? You are on campus and addressing them and telling them about how to succeed in Hollywood? JUSTIN HALPERN: I'm here to crush stream, no crush dreams, not telling the reality of what it is like an the business and the move to LA to produce pursue screenwriting by a waited tables until 2008 in that I got a job writing for magazines and then I sold my first feature-length screenplay and then announce that I broke into TV it's like an act of God, it's such luck to get in that way and I think it's just telling the kids that we are the world now that if you make a great people are going to see it, and ideas have been democratized in some respect. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That was different in the early 2000's when you're starting out? JUSTIN HALPERN: Jack, if you wanted to get seatbacks that you had to write a script and you had to send query letters to a agency and hope that they like your query letter and hope that they like your thing and it was much or difficult process, just cannot get out there. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And everything has changed now so this wide-open but it's harder to get that and get pics from all that stuff that is out there to actually bring them up to the level that you're on out. JUSTIN HALPERN: Stuff my dad says had started now, I don't know if it would've been successful but because I don't know if they would've been seen in such, but when I started it twitter was just kind of intimate in its infancy and people were curious about it, that was the first guy to use it this way. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I want to let everyone know that Justin will be speaking tonight at SDSU at 430 in the experimental theater, and your new book is I Suck at Girls and he is the producer of the upcoming TV's series surviving Jack, thank you so much for speaking with us. JUSTIN HALPERN: Thank you for having me.
Justin Halpern struck gold, writing down the outrageous, profanity-laced observations from his dad about life, love and oddball self-esteem. The Twitter feed, and sitcom "$#*! My Dad Says" brought the San Diego writer to the attention of Hollywood. Now's he's just about to launch his second TV sitcom.
But Halpern would never have been exposed to all the stuff his dad says, if it weren't for one sad fact. He broke-up with his long-time girlfriend. That life lesson led Justin Halpern to examine the twists and turns of his romantic life — which his does in his new book "I Suck At Girls."
Justin Halpern is back at his alma mater San Diego State to talk about his career, comedy and the times it pays to listen to your parents.
Halpern will be speaking at 4:30 Wednesday evening at SDSU's Experimental Theater to discuss screenwriting, comedy and his journey to Hollywood and post-film survival in Hollywood.
