going to do what we usually do i would just say is that at the at the outset we have some great desserts my wife went all out and donated again her chocolate mousse so but it's st come st serve this time gentleman every person for him self so we will get through the meeting quickly so we can all get to the dessert i want to thank everybody for being here again if anybody has to leave before the end please feel free to come and go just keep the noise down so we can continue the meeting i wa thank you good evening and welcome to the two thousand and eighteen annual meeting and dinner i'm like tim i'm the chairman of the board of directors of b m c and i'm glad to be here i'd like to recognize my i think it's appropriate that this week that this event is happening so close to thanksgiving because i think we have a lot to give thanks for in this community the collaboration that we have in this community is just an outstanding thing and i think the transparency in the quality of communication and engagement that we have in this community is one and so many of the people that are sitting here in this room you know are very important to that i'm really grateful to them but for all the work that the media center does and that you collective very i thought a very constructive partnership bringing different perspectives but working together and it was a privilege to serve with you and thank you for all you've done for this community thank you all for everything that you do well tonight we have an agenda full of fun facts food films and t v oh so please give us your undivided attention and make your time worthwhile we'd jeremy put together of the past year i really haven't seen it so it's going to be a surprise to me and to all of you so roll it  process now no quick fixes will be dealing with this for some time to go belmont is a traffic hell all right thank you frank once i heard joey's park has had rat issues in the past do you know anything about that but it's there are other things which are very important though to worry about it which is not the way to go you know but don't think too cautious because i think it probably will what about these huge voids in the univers expect dark matter there as well do in the atoms cannot move out to be truly they are constrained by some bonds yes there is a lot of confusion around the concept of time a lot of  dispute what is it about time that is such a problem time is a problem in the short answer is because no one knows what it is language of dolphins and language of birds and so on is there a difference between what we mean by human language and these other communication there is indeed mad science of north boston so if you think of like a watch you know me and i get everything good starts at the grassroots level so it's all about your family your kids it's all about belmont it's all about massachusetts it's all about all the states in the cities and not businesses were stepping up and understand in the climate change is the biggest challenge we have i think that needs to be more friendly to local forcing them to to focus in class and just take it seriously forcing them to focus in class i don't think you know she do you can't force someone to focus in class you can try and eliminate distractions but that doesn't always work right is a place where i can go where i feel safe i favorite thing i feel like step is that we work as a team we collaborate together we make into a project so if we have something that we wan and it's hard hard work and it's lonely work you know but it's it's what's in your soul you know in a small town outside of boston a young artist was just beginning his career in a to be sitting here today as a two time world marathon champion and well back where i'm a part of that and really you know it's it's always such an honor to represent our country and our state and especially my city about what that's our  identity we is greater than me you know it's not about me stats it's about we stats and the only we stat that matters is that we win but a little while since we've been here on the airwaves and you know since the duck boats just strolled through town once again through the streets of boston for it's been too long since we've had a victory parade in this city yeah the sports  wow there's a lot that i don't get to see but i'm so glad you put that together germy it's amazing what we did this year i had nearly thought about that but the variety and the number of different kinds of productions and age differences  so i want to thank the staff because really they do all the work and they know that thank you and they work well with some of our volunteers and board members as well who actually function like staff a lot of the time  what does the year ahead look like well let me just give you a short story you've all heard about the f c c proposed rulemaking which could not to bring everybody down but we have to look at the at the facts here which could if worst case scenario comes true would eliminate funding for hundreds of community t v stations across the country will it happen will it won't happen we're not sure but right now we're engaged in a fight to let the f c c know that we are against this rulemaking the town of belmont has sent a letter senators markey and senators warren have sent a letter against it our own board has a number of legislators have also and i'm asking all of you who if you have not filed comments to the f c c standing against this rule making to come see me afterwards i have a flyer i can share with you i'm happy to actually step you through the process it's very easy it takes about two minutes there are some comments on the website and i think if you want to know why we should be doing this let me just give you this little brief snapshot today we're living with all of the explosion with the internet and the development of the internet and the the amazing amounts of money that have gone into the development of the internet community television and community media are still the last bastion of noncommercial free speech platforms and community expression in the country if you go to facebook and pardon my personal opinion about this but if you look use facebook or twitter or instagram these behest of social media the best and the brightest of our country have developed these companies they make a lot of money they make a lot of money but today when you're on facebook whose mission is to create an open world and connect people and bring people close together you don't know if the person you're talking to on facebook actually exists or not you don't know if the news story you're reading is fake or not you don't twitter if you're engaging in a debate that's being promoted by a foreign government so i'm sure with all of these bright minds in silicon valley they can figure this out but right now think about that billions of people are engaging in what they think is a platform of free speech and it's the exact opposite our elections were influenced by this and we don't know now today how much more influencing that is it's going on community television which was started in forty years ago guess what never been hacked by the russians once ok when you watch community television they are real people talking about real issues about real news stories that's a huge difference and if you want to tell people about what's going on community television do that comparison our budget is point zero  point one percent of the budget of facebook and we're doing more for free speech and democracy then all of facebook think about that now is the time to tell the f c c what the real deal is and you'll be hearing from us more about telling your legislators to also tell the f c c what to do what what not to do let's put it that way  i can speak more about this later if any of you are members of a religious institution a church we have also letters you can write on behalf of your church in support of community media and so if you are members of organizations you have an organizational letter you can use all of this to lead to one thing that i think i'm proud of much of the staff achievements that have taken place this year of all the different programs of all the ways that my staff takes initiative they don't they don't wait to b s they just go ahead and they see something needs to be done they do it but one of the things that we're all proud of here this year a year later is an idea that people like todd loney ours was bugging me about for years and years and years and angela frenzy about having a new show here and we tried and we tried this year we succeeded it's a year now that we've been doing belmont journal hyper local weekly news show and it's a team but i think the st person in line who actually made this go is our news director she's a french journalist she brought her experience and her perspective from france and is always telling me we don't do it that way in france we don't do it it's better in france but i'll see if we can you know but she's right and i want to bring her up here today and bring the rest of the belmont journal team up here and that includes joanna juva lis my crowley and roger colton but the news director the one that keeps the train on time and keeps the program on a weekly basis is the outstanding frederick  jeff so it's difficult for me to true to say something after you so yeah so yes i'm really proud of so you know we spend all together because we are really a team and he's not just a time to have beem part about my journal was listening to fred say you've got two minutes to do this and two minutes and seven seconds is too long and one minute and forty eight seconds is  is too short so we spend a lot of time watching the clock but the thing about my journal is i'm relatively involved in town and yet despite that i learned so much about what's going on in the community of belmont through bein involved with the journal every week i come away having heard joanne or franklin or any of the stories that have  together so i think it is impossible here respective of your involvement in the community to not to not to watch the journal and learn something new about the town of them so frankly i'm still camera shy and you know when i when i think about my involvement in the show i think back to i think back to i've been with us for about a year i think we i think we all have and my involvement started with within the e mail that what's so amazing it seems as though anybody can just almost walk in off the street and get involved in something here and then walking off the street i sent an email st but but it really it really was that easy and i actually this is one of the more fun things that i get to do so so i'm just grateful to  for letting me do this and i i i hope that we're doing the community a service i think that frederick does a fantastic job as a journalist videographer a news and in conjunction with joanna and franklin and as producer of the program and she she really keeps us on our toes and and for frederick you don't see her on camera but she makes the program and i want to thank her right at this time we'd like to present a board service award to angelo frenzy and has been a member of b and c before the beginning and was instrumental in bringing b m c into existence has be supporter producer host and more recently board treasure and always moved away from belmont remains involved can't believe it's been as long as it's been thirteen years well i remember when the b m c got started and i was in the board at the time and we were negotiating with the various cable contract contracts with the various cable suppliers and so forth and the work that was done by the various people that got the thing going and it's really been a pleasure to be involved with b m c sitting here watching the video and thinking about how just how much the the organization has grown in the work that it's doing now compared to the work that was done originally growth opportunity and it's been a real pleasure to be involved in it although i've moved to belmont north i'm still i'm still very much involved in belmont and will always be here so thank you very much good evening to my fellow bell what media members and special guests when i called you have to inform him i would not be able to attend this evening's annual meeting he in turn informed me that otavio would be receiving the volunteer of the year award since i knew i would not be in attendance i want to send a quick note of congratulations to somebody who is a terrific person as well as a volunteer somebody who is always willing to help  favorite story about octavio was we were getting ready to broadcast a basketball game out of danvers massachusetts and we were getting a humming sound on the audio so i called into the and he said i think i have a solution he went over or any unplugged the electrical connection from the wall reversed it and put it back in and guess what the home went away we only need to change the polarity of the system tabio here a great guy and a wonderful volunteer congratulations on your award this evening that for outstanding volunteerism resolute commitment and passion a dedication to community media and free speech if  our our producer of the year awards this year our st person really makes belmont feel like that word that we've been hearing all night which is community and that person is roger colton he is the host of community conversations he does a podcast that has also reached out into studio a his and a few episodes in studio a so he's really taken his time to learn a lot of new things here i b m c spread his wings and learn how to do new stuff he's interviewed everyone from town administrator to the belmont housing trust to all kinds of people in town he really makes belmont feel like a community in a show so i'd like to present our st producer of the year will nd because we already talked to the kids  it's interesting it does the community service you know any one of those would make it worth doing but when the three of those things come together it's an incredible experience and it is working with this the staff you know that the producers are going to give words tonight but it's the staff that really makes this happen so think thank you jane thank you jeff thank you f and the nd person i'm going to be presenting to tonight is someone who blows me away with her work like i crunched some numbers and she has done over two hundred hours of time between the editing room in the podcast room she is here all truth so i do a podcast so that i don't have to be on camera and so that i can edit it so it makes me sound smart but this is great thank you so much you guys have been wonderful like i had this idea  let me do a proud cast this will be fun and yeah you guys have really taught me how to do it and it's awesome and i look forward to yet another great year next year so thank you we decided this year that we would like to honor the contributions of three high school students who've really come in and made a difference here at the media center and who are bringing a lot of awareness  a lot of excitement a lot of enthusiasm and we hope it keeps up because you're going to be taking this place over soon ok just let me know when your graduation date is we'd like to honor the members of the humble high school podcast a humble political pod cast paul the user gilchrist and boy and george because he you three gentlemen would like to come up and there's also a gift certificate position because i don't think when we started this we expected to be here but now we're here and just really appreciative of everyone all the stuff a bill media center for giving us a chance and you know letting us do our thing thank  for quite a long time since at least four o'clock this afternoon know he's been here for many years and we have a special guest to talk i'm going to let you take it away from here and if you need some help moving stuff around we can do that let me know well thank you jeff thanks to the entire staff here at the b m c and congratulations to all of the tonight's award winners get b and c just continues to grow and amaze thank you to all the volunteers and members for coming here tonight and you know by again for those of you who don't know me perhaps they some number of calls we get on the time out for sports talk you might not know me but i've been a long time producer here but i'm very pleased to be join from by the way we should probably mention this upfront to this is a question and answer we're going to take questions afterwards after this interview so if you have any questions for for paul please start thinking of them out when you hear something  he's talking about that you might be interested in hearing more about it will take some questions afterward well let me start by saying that if i had to come up with a headline that best to penalize as possible goes as many interesting accomplishments i think i would go with kid makes good because paul has lived a large majority of his life here and belmonte graduated from belmont high school he has founded his own film and theater production company harborside films with a mission to create programming that is provocative relevant and universal in scope has served on the boards of several civic and community organizations including the belmont based national association of armenian studies and research the columbia university club of new england and is the president of the english speaking union of boston but one particular passion of posit nearest and dearest to my heart as a sports fan is his involvement with the bow sox club that is the official red sox booster club for which he served eight years on their board of directors he's still an active member and in fact as a result of that he's a been a guest on the  the show that i produce time out for sports talk and paul my st question to you which of course is very timely because i haven't had you on since this happened since that since the duck boats went down the streets of boston and i want to ask you your thoughts what you think of the red sox historic two thousand eight hundred season the culminated with them winning their th championship and maybe we can also tie that a little bit with your involvement how you got involved with the bo sox club you know my mother always said i my on my mother always said that christmas comes early to the deserving and the red sox certainly provided us with an early christmas gift and it's just fabulous and one of the reasons i got involved with the bo sox club is that with all the distractions that we have in our life and all the problems and the responsibilities we have the bo sox club the boston red sox are a great escape it gives you a sense of community with people who are  walks of life bostock's club has about six hundred active members we meet on a lunch and we meet once a month on luncheons we go to spring training together we celebrate the team's great victories and in some tases we revel in it disappointments because it's more conversation and so it's great because i enjoy it and the people around me enjoy it gives you a sense of community and that's what this group is all about anyway so it's always fun to be part of that group and he's a great rock contour a wonderfully accessible star he's very down to earth he's very satisfied at what he's doing as a red sox broadcaster he loves being around the team he's absolutely professional and he's a great storyteller so as a member of the both sox club we've had him luncheons on several occasions and i want to kasian i introduced him and spent some time with him in the green room before hand and had pictures with them and so forth and that to me was certainly a highlight of this year because he provides behind the scenes pitching tips you know why was curt schilling such a great success in two thousand and four why with the pitchers this year what was it about chris sale that made him special he actually breaks down the pitching techniques and gives you a sense of being in the room as he's talking to these other people and it gives you an incredibly intimate glimpse as to what the players are and why they're so special you know you talk about the club being such a community and that togetherness you know and of course that's what the pm sees all about two community media what do you think the purpose of the community media is in your mind well here's the other thing that i've been sort of concerned about certainly in the last ten to twelve years in increasing segmentation of thought in this  week just think about that now the movies of course cost ten dollars or zero dollars fifteen cents whatever it was in those days but the community leaders almost the national cultural leaders were the stars of that i remember talking to my my father about cary grant and my father in the one thousand nine hundred and thirty s and forty's became enamored of cary grant's acting style and the way he looked so my father would tie his tie like cary grant he would try to present himself going into a room like cary grant when he was nervous about something he would think how would cary grant handle this right so actually those were the role models in those days with the with the great hollywood stars in the early fifty's when the population of this country was about one hundred and fifty million what were people doing at nine pm on a monday night does anybody remember i love lucy it was the st great sitcom that was out there and lucille ball she was forty years old at the time she made the switch from going from the movies into television with desi arnaz who was the producer and chorus costar and five billion fifty five million people nine o'clock on monday nights would be watching i love lucy all right so now let's flash forward let's flash forward so now or in the two thousands and with digital television you have a division of media and culture there are digital television networks that few of you in this room have heard about if you haven't heard about vice television it tracks over twenty million people mostly young people ok there's vice news is vice celebrity news and so forth is part of the segmentation of our culture through media so one of the concerns i have is i amazon and the video streaming services you all know that when i was growing up there was only family television it was one television in the live in the living room there was no remotes so my sister marilyn and i would argue it sunday nights at eight o'clock because she wanted to watch ed sullivan i want to watch steve allen so i'd be going back and forth she'd switch it i'd switch it go back and forth right that's what it was like in those days and it was great and we all enjoyed it and we were all compatible about that but you had a sense of a national voice a national sense of culture through these type of television shows you don't have that anymore right now we're moving into an adam ization of culture and that's led by  media everybody seems to have their own television set and the number one viewing device let me see if i have it with me you got it i can pull it up i got it right here yeah this is the number one viewing device in the country now all right you can watch the b m c channels on it can you can watch anything you want on international television you can watch films on this so my nephew the other day he was watching t v and i said  colby i said what are you watching and he said well i'm watching a movie that you said is always one of the greatest movies of all time and i said well that's great i'm glad you're doing that what is that movie lawrence of arabia watching lawrence of arabia on this screen and they have no sense of comparison or no sense of context you all remember how great cinema scope was cinema scope was put into effect by the studios to compete with the television sets at those days and but now technology has gone almost to an extreme that there's almost a program for any like any situation anything that you want to address is a television show that will attract you and you can do it on this thing you can do some other things as well so that's a concern that i have and one of the great things about community access television like what you all doing here is that it gives you a sense of community it gives you a sense of a community voice it gives you a sense of being acknowledged and respected for your opinion and i mean that's a blessing because everybody seems to be going to their separate corners not communicating with each other not being involved in dialogue and discussion and political advocacy everybody is and also the other thing i find because i just i speak speak on college campuses some time and emerson and and what have you on media and there seems to be concerns about this whole idea of political correctness in which young people in particular do not like to see or hear ideas that are adversarial to their own they feel that those ideas are offensive insulting shouldn't be heard they should be put into a closet somewhere and one of the things i found as being a member of creative teams in theater film even radio is that friction full environment in which people have competing viewpoints is better than a frictionless environment and so i know i'm going on and on but those are some of the thoughts and we could discuss more of them during q and a if you like sure well you know even to elaborate on some of the some of your together and mrs hornsby in the th grade she was to me an extraordinary influence on my understanding of literature english protocol what i mean by protocol and you know you might remember this she would actually call us up in the front of the class and say this is how you introduce as a younger person to an older person this is how you introduce a woman to a man you don't have that anymore but she gave me a sense of what it is to be a mature individual who's responsible and accountable for themselves aside from  resonated with me still resonates with me because i'm working on a hemingway project now hemingway play and she said that ernest hemingway said that all literature began with mark twain's huckleberry finn and she would give examples of that and she said this is a book you should read every five years because you read it this year and you'll get meaning from it from the context of who you are at thirteen years old but you read it when you're a senior in high school you'll see other things and read it when you're graduating from college and so i've read the book five times each time now at the age of thirty five i said well i've got captured the majority of it you know they say but she was fabulous and you know the other thing is i used to speak out in class sometimes i didn't raise my hand i just gave the answer so she would say now paul you're going to have to stay after class and i would smile inwardly because the idea of staying after class with miss cutting was the highlight of my day because i had a chance to have one on one conversation with her so after about the th or th time in a period of a month i'm staying after class she said why are you always staying after class aren't you involved shouldn't you be getting home or playing the field i said miss cutting i said this is my social life is talking to you on a one on one basis and anyway so those are two of the teachers that stood out my mind there was also mr myers meyers we call monk myers and so forth a taskmaster again and i don't know how i ended up i ended up in an honors history class with him and he was tough he was tough and he practiced a so craddick approach because he would try to bring out differences among the students and he was interested in you acting as an advocate for your own point of view engaging in debate and i mean that was not done i don't know if it's still being done i hope it is but he was he was extraordinary and you know that the teaching of history today which is something i've been involved in i love reading biographies and histories it's all about storytelling if you are involved in reading of history you were involved in understanding what storytelling is all about you know they say in history that the  point of view of the victor and the point of view of the winner of history is what you read about well there's other points of view as well and howard zinn has written about this and from boston university and i got to know howard on the lecture circuit know other words your way to kind of pass some of your learnings on to young or well you know i don't know i've always been envious of people who knew from an early age what they wanted to be i had friends of mine who knew they wanted to be a mechanical engineer they wanted to be a doctor like their father or they wanted to be a teacher or a lawyer i never knew i never knew the only thing i knew is that i like to read and i like to write and i like to talk about things and you never know where that leads i mean i was never a great fan of algebra and you know the physical sciences i like to read and i like to write and i like to talk and  so what do you do with this sort of thing so i graduated from northeastern university my undergraduate was in political science and economics and i said what am i going to do and i'm going to be drafted in the service and now i should i should do think about graduate school so i and sixty five i think it was and i got accepted at the law and i got accepted at columbia columbia business school graduate school of business and they think about columbia which i was attracted to i also got accepted into the graduate school of international affairs and in those days there was a three year program between you could get a master in international affairs and also and but anyway i didn't like the students around me i didn't like the environment so i ended up in columbia and i love new york and i love new york and the great thing about new york it goes back to what i said earlier it's a friction full environment and there's so much that you can learn from meeting with diverse people and being in situations that you otherwise would not encounter and i encountered all of those in new york city when i was at columbia i started an entertainment newspaper called night sounds and i did that for two and a half three years and that was essential a for college students and the entertainment opportunities in new york city and so forth and then from there i had a situation in the air force and i was on  vaccine and i wrote about that and and that led me to new york magazine in the early days and then i started my own another newspaper and i continued with that etc and then i eventually ended up in international management education and  did some produce seminars conferences workshops training programs and we marketed them in twelve countries of the world the company i was with at the time and that was a tremendous international experience but again what was i drawing upon i was drawing upon ability to write and was drawing upon ability to read and i love communicating with people different than me and that drew upon that for management education and then i was recruited by a lecturer company to come up to boston and had this up as a president  and for four years we produced somewhere in the area of one thousand five hundred dollars to two thousand lecture programs each year for college students for corporations trade shows and the company made money by essentially marketing personalities for on a rhythm and then we would take twenty or thirty percent and what i did is i brought in international diplomats such as helmut schmidt from germany and staying staying from france and  d wilson and james callaghan from great britain these were prime ministers and so forth i brought in a sports person i was like jim palmer but jim palmer on the lecture circuit and then in the mid eighty's i got a call i've been in the company three or four years and i developed a relationship with kevin kelly the boston globe theatre person and he said i'm at the ritz hotel with somebody you should meet and she said he says i can't keep up with her any longer and i said what do you mean he says we just come over here so he introduced me to joan fontaine and she was so much in her cups at that time she for the next forty five min she kept calling me kevan she thought she was still kevin kelly but i was talking to her about joining the lecture circuit and she sa i can't do it but there's somebody that you might have an interest in doing and i said well who is that she says cary grant back to circle tears and so i got involved with cary grant got him on the lecture circuit not just myself there were other people as well and then later james to it and they gave me insight into the film industry and film personalities and dealing with agents and managers and so forth so after i left american program bureau i got involved in film producing and i produced a couple of feature films out of puerto rico in the late ninety's and then from there i went into theater producing and that's essentially what i'm doing today well you also you came full circle with steve allen too because he was involved  stations of the oxford union yeah that running series story that i yeah that was really a highlight i mean being with steve allen he was just coming out of cancer at that time cancer therapy and he was a little bit weak and but he still had his wit about him and if you recall steve allen from not only the eight o'clock show on sunday nights but also the late night show he was so funny and so quick on his feet and brilliant and and being with him  when they're developing their memory and i tell them if you learn this you can learn anything in your whole life and they would say well paul what is that and i said what's a memory game repeat after me gold one through eleven hen two ducks three squawking g quo with the quake of the quippy all at the same time i learned that from from steve allen wow all right but i have i have literally thought i still remember and i learned that about i don't know when i was in the th or th grade and i have taught that t if not hundreds of kids and they passed it on and it gives them so much confidence in their ability to handle the english language and to have a memory and concentrate and i said you can do that you can do anything in the rest of your life and i don't really helps well i want to talk a little bit about harborside films as well but i i want to see if there's any questions in the audience right now for paw anybody have any questions we do have a microphone too if anyone has any well that's ok there you go with a r york and boston and downlinked on to college campuses public affairs programming for the for the most part and we would do this twenty by twenty foot screens i work with another company and we'd fill gymnasiums with the screens the public affairs programming and then we would have tremendous rock concerts from the who are grateful dead down and american express was behind this and also was the other so that was video events international but then as i was moving into feature film producer i wanted to name a different name that i thought was more relevant to feature film producing and my office was at faneuil hall i felt by the ocean and so  involve ones based on the life of tip o'neill according to tip and then tonya nancy a rock opera yeah these are want to talk a little bit about both of those well dick flavin the poet laureate of the boston red sox a long time friend of mine in fact he's the one who motivated me to get on the bow sox but board years later in two thousand and eight he came to me and he says paul he said as you know i was a press secretary for kevin the mayor w white kevin white and he said i used to write funny jokes for ted kennedy and tip o'neill and he said i got to know them all very well and it's all part of the sort of the irish mafia as he used to call it and he said the tip is passed away and he had a great profound influence on my life so i've written a play on a life and times of tip o'neill and essentially from the point of view of tip having and spending an evening with you in your living room the type of stories and anecdotes that he would tell and he said but the play doesn't have a real shape to it yet and he said i don't know who would play the part so we worked together over six months and interestingly enough  k had a relationship with lenny clarke the comedian and we tried out lenny in the part and did a stage reading and the end of the evening we dick and i both said it's all in a clock and no tip o'ne know lenny clocks a great guy but he couldn't carry out the part so we we search for somebody who could play it and and dick found out a gentleman named ken howard and so we went out to the west coast spent some time with ken howard and we both felt he had the great size star the white shadow back white shadow he's an emmy award winning actor tony award winning actor you might remember him in seven hundred and seventy six playing thomas jefferson  st rate actor big guy so we didn't really know how committed he might be to playing the part given his other opportunities in television and film so a few weeks later dick said look at this photograph that was sent to me  ken howard and the photograph essentially was ken howard dressed up in full make up with tips bulbous nose and tips hair he looked like tip o'neil so i went to replumb bardot who's the artistic director of new rep and i had an introduction through him and the most s in theater had just been built and it was a fabulous showcase most of you i think are familiar with the new re and i sold rick on the idea of ken howard and tip o'neill and he said well let's let's get them together so we had ken howard in a meeting with with rick dick and myself and the meeting went very well and we continued our conversation i made the financial deal with him and we played six weeks or maybe it was seven weeks in june and july of two thousand and eight and we were sold out almost every performance and great reviews standing ovation ken how it was just remarkable in the role some of you may have seen him in the role and later on that year later on actually in two thousand and nine we won the ernie award int tonight not international international reviewers of new england award for the best new play in new england and we were also nominated by the eliot norton awards to be one of the best plays so this really established us and then the course of learning you know by relationship with canon my relationship with dick and ric lombardo i learned the nuts and bolts of producing for the theater which is very different than producing television which i've done a lot of and producing films and then a friend of mine had written a book called celebrities in disgrace elizabeth searle a marvelous writer from arlington massachusetts and she'd written a book celebrities in disgrace and she was always taken with the tonya harding nancy kerrigan saga of the ninety four olympics now entering our th year by the way that so over a course of a number of permutations we put together this production and had the debut at oberon theatre in cambridge i met diane paulus and she suggested the oberon and she helped oversee the production and so we produced and we had a marvelous marvelous series of interactive totally  performances great reviews and they cast us to come back in july and again great success and on the basis of that we fashioned the play more took it to los angeles for some performances and then we took it to the two thousand and fifteen new york music theater festival and which is an international festival some of the best new plays new musicals and a lot of the producers go there and investors  interested in theatre and so forth and we were nominated for one of the best productions of that year's festival and we got more publicity than anybody else and on the basis of that other people would start calling us and say if you thought about taking it to san francisco at dallas or chicago so is taking it to a few other cities and now we were thinking of doing a feature film on the production with a gun but with a company called sound stage musicals and we're doing what they call a launch party in new york in february in which we're launching the cd which was recorded from some of the top broadway voices and we're looking at doing a perhaps a pre broadway run down the road so we'll see how everything goes well again we have  know the producers to get in contact with me because they want to use some of the material but we couldn't come to any negotiation on that and the film that you're talking about was called tanya and it was a very good film in fact allison janney who played the mother of tanya was nominated then won an academy award for best supporting actress and this film was made for eleven million dollars in gross about eighty million dollars and because of the success of that film there's actually been more interest in our musical and so we're going to try to play upon that a little bit and the other questions are well there's certainly so much more i could talk to you about paul but i getting some of the wrap up signs from myself into to be very frank i don't watch much television at night because i watch so much television during the day that i do a lot of reading at night i do film scripts and plays and just reading sort of refreshes me and rejuvenates me whereas i think television is too much a passive in some ways and it's not good for your brain so i try to stimulate myself in other ways but it's a pleasure to be here and all you folks are doing such great work and i look forward to your great contributions down the road thank you ok well i want to st of all say thanks to all the volunteers who have helped out and done things throughout the year they make me center what it is i want to say thank you to jeff and the staff and all the volunteers who did all the hard work to make this meeting happen and i want to thank you for attending and i look forward to seeing you next year and that's the end of our meeting thank you