YouSaid · the spoken record

Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman

lines on the record: 48
first: 2018-12-24
most recent: 2018-12-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know what sometimes they do, or they'll say, you know, you sound so much like that David Seville character. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all he would be so proud, but also because my dad had a very limited attention span on things. I'm sure he would say What the hell are you guys doing 40 years later?”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, there's actually a really simple approach that we have. And this was right from the beginning because of our respect for one another. If Janice had a different point of view and she felt more strongly about it than I did, then I would defer to her. If conversely, I had a stronger feeling about it than she did, she would defer to me. But right now, because she's writing the shows and directing them and designing them and so forth, she really is the driving force of the show. And I'm thrilled, you know, to play a part with Alvin and Simon and Dave.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the economics of it wouldn't have been the frustration for us because once when we make a deal, we live by the deal. So that isn't the frustration for us. The frustration for us is wanting to tell a certain kind of story with reflecting certain kinds of scenes and dialogue and so forth for the characters that we have spent four decades with. honestly where the where the issue would be, not the how the economics break down.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, over a bit. No, no. Over a billion. Yeah, their box office is about a billion three hundred million. Wow. And if you include the DVD sales, it's over $2 billion in revenue.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the big marketing. I said, well, wait. I said, you told us that if you don't have it in writing, you don't have it. So that was a brutal lesson.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Felt like 12 years. In any event, we're all excited and want to now talk about the national plans that they're going to do. And this is a quote, and so it explains why David Crosses as Ian is that character. So the record executive tells Janice and me, well, we're not actually going to do the national...”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're recording and the album comes out and we are told by the record executive, Ross Janice, I want you guys to take the chipmunks on the road. These are the seven cities we want you to go to travel across the country to these seven cities and make this album a hit in these seven cities. And if you do that, we will give you a big national promotion. Great. Okay, we hit the road and I won't get into all of the crazy stuff that happens. But in any event, at the end of the tour, we in fact make the album a hit in each one of the seven cities. We come back to the record executive so excited after a pretty bruising couple of weeks.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll tell you one of the stories with our music situation was that in 1982 we are with a record company, and I won't go into the specifics of who or we're going to protect the guilty here.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, not totally, although, you know, you don't ever necessarily get the kind of deal that you want to have. But we were very clear that we would, as we have always been, be involved in every aspect.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, no, no, because two thousand one was really the end of it. The 2004 part was just, that's when the last payment that we had to make to them was actually done.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what we've realized is that logic does not play much of a part in any of that thing that's so strange to us because it's like, okay, hold on a minute. You have no interest in this. We are dedicating our entire lives to it. We should be able to find a way to separate this out and go on our merry way.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yum, it wasn't at all the kind of opportunity that we had hoped for. And finally, in 2000 and of 2001, we were able to go our separate way.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty much, yeah, pretty much. And so that's why we said to them, listen, we really want to do this, that, and the other. We've got a lot of opportunity, if not here at Universal. There's all kinds of interest outside so we can do folks in Japan want to put chipmunk stores together. Folks in Europe want us to make more serious. So we'll just do all of those things.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a combat. It was a dynamic. Yeah, no, it was a combination of it started out very excited and then as some of the folks who had brought us in would leave, then it'd be harder to get through to them. Then it would become no return calls. And yeah, it was just you felt very much like the orphaned child that was brought in to be the favorite son. And then all of a sudden you aren't.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They all left. And so now you are. Yeah, we wound up in a place that wasn't the same as we thought it was when we came in.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, and they were going to be also putting money into development and production of all of these different things. And then shortly after we signed that deal, all the folks who wanted to do that”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They bought a 25% share at that point in time. And that for the opportunity for what felt like a really exciting opportunity to grow the business in a much larger way felt like a great thing.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, we were going to be in their theme parks and that part actually did happen, but it was going to be this whole schmorgisborg of opportunity. And so for Janice and for me, that was like, oh my gosh, this sounds fantastic.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So one of the things that they wanted to do was create their own Mickey Mouse. And they had had Woody Woodpecker for years, but Woody didn't have the sort of resonance for generations the way Alvin did and certainly didn't the way Mickey Mouse did. And they had seen that when we had gone head to head, whether it was with Mickey Mouse in an album or a TV show or what have you that the Chipmunks not only held their own but did very, very well and usually came out on top. So Universal loved that, gee, Alvin could be our Mickey Mouse. And so the idea then was they were going to create an animation unit for us, and Janice and I were going to run that. We would, of course, not only do more chipmunk stuff, but a lot of other things that we had showed them that we could do.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did well, but we didn't, at least in that initial, we didn't get our money back in those days because unfortunately we signed on with a distributor that was going to put X number of dollars into marketing and distribute. They spent less than $900,000 marketing the movie and including the prints and advertising. So it did okay, but it did not remotely get us our money back until many DVD sales later.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So wanted to make something we were really proud of, not just something that was successful, because the TV show was obviously tremendously successful, but we were never able to give it the kind of quality that we had hoped to do. So yes, you would think we would be set, but because we always wanted to do something, we'd also be proud of most of that money and made an animated feature, the Chipmunk Adventure, which came out in 87.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, first of all, it was very exciting, and it was just a number. I was always a kid, even when I was watching the prices right as a six-year-old, I knew what the dishwasher would go for or the, and my mom would always say, how do you know this? You've not bought dishwashers and things, but I always had a sense of what a price for something was going to be. So I had just set that price and I didn't change it until we got it. Janice and I”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of themselves said, No, we're not going to do that deal. And then a couple years later, we sold those rights for $25 million.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and this is one of the funny business stories and I found it interesting only because later on it turned out to be such a windfall that we did not know about. But they said, look, what's going to happen is that CBS Viacom is going to run your dad's old shows, the Alvin show, against us because now that you're bringing the Chipmunks back so successfully with the albums and the Christmas special and now the new series, you have to get Viacom to not do it on Saturday morning and we want you to offer them the syndication rights for the new series if they'll just not run up against us. And so Janice and I not knowing the value of syndication went to Viacom CBS and said, okay, if you just won't run against our new shows on NBC, we'll give you the syndication rights to our new series. And they very”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Six years We just walked away? We would have because what we said is look, we'll produce it. We'll make sure we get the financing together. We'll get a license fee from you. We brought in Kellogg, so Kellogg's was our sponsor. And Janice and I wrote the shows and then we produced it. And after the first season, they came to Janice and I said, okay, we'd like to expand it. Now we want you guys to do an hour, not a half an hour. And we just said we can't even make a half hour we're proud of. So we can't work any longer unless you make more than seven days in the week. So we're going to turn it down.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, because my dad had not only, as you mentioned, set that up, he was the first songwriter who not only owned the publishing, but also the master recordings. And that's what, interestingly, when we met Barry Gordy years later, he said, you know, I learned a very valuable thing when I was writing songs. I decided to found Motown because I wanted to own the master recordings the way your dad did. So my dad was really not only really this great mix of creativity, but also very, really smart about business. And so I knew that, as my dad had mentioned, there was creating wonderful product, but then there was holding on to the rights to that same thing.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are honestly always felt it was like our conversation with CBS when they said, well, we've already got Snoopy and Charlie Brown. We always thought that good shows or good characters can coexist. We didn't feel like we needed to go to war with anybody. We just wanted to create something that was unique to us.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right, and we were against Bugs Bunny on ABC and CBS who didn't want us. We had gone to them first because they said, why do we need the chipmunks? We've got Charlie Brown and Snoopy. And we said, well, you know, we could be, you know, you could have two. You could have Snoopy. Anyway, so we turned out to be against poor Charlie Brown and Snoopy. And the chipmunk... Series was a giant hit right from the beginning.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was always that sort of wonderful first series deal. So it was, it could be as long as five years, but it was one year at a time. And we got very little money for it back in those days. It was like $210,000 for a half hour of shows. So there wasn't much”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we were really very fortunate because some of the great animators from Warner Brothers, including Chuck Jones and Phil Monroe and Virgil Ross, and these guys who had done the greatest bugs bunny cartoons in the 40s and 50s were available and they weren't being used and Janice and I hired all of them to make the Christmas special at Chipmunk Christmas.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, but before that guy in 1981, Janice and I had been taking around a Christmas idea, Christmas special, from probably around 78 or so. So after Chipmunk Punk comes out and does so well, and then Urban Chipmunk, NBC said to us, hey, I know we told you we thought that was a terrible idea and we didn't like the chipmunks, but we now think with those two platinum albums, maybe that Christmas special is a good idea.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I will do that, but I want to also say that Janice was just wonderful as Theodore right from the beginning, and I was still so tied to what my dad had done, which was very clear. And when my dad did Alvin, it was, hello, Dave, how are you doing today? Very stilted and it didn't feel real bad. So Janice would say, Ross, you know what? Don't try and do an impersonation of your dad either as David Seville or as Alvin or Simon, you know, loosen him up, make it a little bit more your own. And so now, after all of these years, I've obviously gotten better. And so now Alvin is more fluid for me. And even though I have to talk more slowly, Dave, listen, okay, I know you're going to continue to talk about blah, blah, blah, whatever.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, right after that, as Janice mentioned, not only were the TV folks who we had gone to much more receptive and now interested, but it also gave us a chance to look at doing more music because obviously it had sold so well so we were approached to do not only a Christmas album but also and we thought, okay, what would be the furthest thing away from this album because we didn't want to do a repeat of that so Urban Cowboy had come out and we thought, you know what, let's go to Nashville and record Urban Chipmunk. So we took songs from Kenny Rogers and the whole bunch of the love a rainy night, thank God I'm a country boy. All of these different songs. But one of the things that Janice wanted to do in that album was now create some dialogue, some stories.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, two things number one, what we came to realize is that there actually are no experts. You know, nobody really knows. And so I was just willing to put my belief above what other people were telling us. And Janice felt the same way. We thought they were good characters.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I knew we were right, I knew this was the perfect person for me and not to equate Janice with the chipmunks, but I honestly believe when you really believe in something so clearly, it's so clear for you as that was for me, I didn't care what anybody else said, we were going to make this happen if it took a year or if it took three decades.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, honestly, I didn't. I just felt well, I am going to show them they're wrong. I know this is going to work. Janice believes in it. There's two of us for goodness sakes. So, no, I was just more and more set on however long this took.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I would always say, Janice, write their names down. When we make this big, we're going to, when we see them again, we go, oh, now you want it? Well, we're not going to give it to you.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet well first we went to CBS because they had run the old shows, the Alvin shows, so that seemed like a natural place to go. And they said, listen, we thought we loved what your dad did. We thought it was great, but we think history has moved on and it had its wonderful time, and that's really over. So then we went to the music side of things. And I don't know if they had just spoken to the people at CVS, but they said, you know, that was a wonderful, wonderful character. And your dad had a great success. But we think that time has passed and you guys should move on to something else. You're young and capable and off you go.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had enlisted her on my impossible quest, my little Don Quixote fighting these little windmills to get the chipmunks back. Exactly.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was one of the shows that her folks let her see. So I now had another believer with me, and I said, Janet, I just want to see if we can do this for just a year to bring, you know, kind of a tribute to my dad. And then we'll go and do, you know, of course, all the other things that we're interested in doing.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, after my dad had passed away, I would go up into his office and just listen to the songs that he had done while watched the old TV shows that he had done, the Alvin show, and I just thought I didn't want the chipmunks to pass away as suddenly as my dad did, and I wanted to figure out some way to try and bring them back. So when I met Janice and she had loved the characters growing up”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Enrolled in law school. So I graduated three years later in 75, passed the bar, wasn't going to practice law, but wanted to know that with the music publishing and the things that I would hope to create later on, I wanted to know how to hold on to them as my dad had done.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, after my dad passed away and before he had passed away, he said, I really want to encourage you to go to law school. And I just hated that idea. But when he passed away, all of a sudden you saw the kind of folks coming out of the woodwork that would try and take whether it was music publishing from the family or wineries and vineyards that he had built up over the years. And I realized that my dad wanted me to go to law school, obviously not to become a lawyer, but basically to have a kind of a mental martial arts protection because he always had said, look, there's creating what you do and then there's continuing to own what you do. And those are tough things to do at both times unless you know how to protect yourself and contracts and so forth. So after he passed away, I immediately...”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100% no. You know, growing up, I didn't even want to go to the recording sessions. My dad would say, hey, do you want to come and see how we do this and what? I go, yeah, no, I got a big little league game here. So I'm going to not make it to that. But growing up, as I started to realize what kind of a career was I heading for, the only thing I was certain of while my dad was still alive was that I wasn't going to be involved with the chipmunks or what my dad had done not because I didn't love what he had created, but because they were such big shoes to fill that I didn't want to try and step into that.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what? He was all of that guy. He was bigger than life. He was sort of the Armenian version of Zorba the Greek. So all five, seven of him, but you always thought, and everyone who met him thought that he was 6'5". He just carried himself that way, but he was funny. He was incredibly creative. He loved music and really thought of himself as a musician. He loved songwriting and started writing songs when he was 16 years old, driving a truck in the vineyards of Fresno, and his first song was called Nuts to You. So from Nuts came little chipmunks.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A hundred percent it changed literally overnight first with witch doctor which was like march nineteen fifty eight and then of course the chipmunks were that November December 58. So we got a swimming pool. So I was much more impressed that we had a swimming pool than that my dad was on the Ed Sullivan show doing the witch doctor or Dick Clark's American bandstand or whatever. I remember he would always bring my brother and sister and I into his den and play whether it was witch doctor, the chipmunk song or whatever, and we loved when Alvin started talking back to our dad, we just fell in love with not just the song, but the audacity of that little character because we didn't really talk.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are told by the record executive Ross Janice, I want you guys to take the chipmunks on the road. We want you to take them. These are the seven cities we want you to go to and make this album a hit in these seven cities. And if you do that, we will give you a big national promotion. We hit the road, we in fact make the album a hit in each one of the seven cities. We come back to the record executive. The record executive tells Janice and me, well, we're not actually going to do the national release in the big marketing. I said, wait, I said, you told us that if you don't have it in writing, you don't have it.”
2018-12-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Chipmunks: Ross Bagdasarian Jr. & Janice Karman (2017) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT