Interview: Jamie Morton Talks MY DAD WROTE A PORNO Live

Jamie Morton, co-creator of the popular podcast MY DAD WROTE A PORNO, is taking Rocky Flintstone's scintillating and rib tickling erotica novels on a world tour. Having read a portion of the Belinda Blinked saga to sell-out audiences from the Edinburgh fringe to Montreal's Just for Laughs comedy festival, Morton and his friends/co-creators, James Cooper and Alice Levine, are spreading the love all around North America at stops that include San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and New York City. Recently, we sat down with Morton to get the inside scoop on these live shows.

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Wow! MY DAD WROTE A PORNO is coming to the United States!

I know! It's so exciting.

Tell me about the popular podcast. What got you thinking that sitting down with your friends and reading your dad's book chapter by chapter would make a good podcast.

I never had it in my life plans to read my dad's pornography to the world, that's certainly true. But, my dad sent me the book initially. And, when I read it, it was so hilarious that I immediately took it to my friends. We were just in the pub, reading it like mates, and everyone was chipping in and saying little bits. The podcast kind of took shape right there and then. And, it was Alice [Levine] actually who was just obsessed with the book. She just talked very constantly after that pub session, and she said, "We should do something with it." We thought a podcast would be the best way to do it because people could listen to it with their headphones because there would be no need to listen to it blaring out necessarily. We had no expectation that it would be popular. We just knew that it made us laugh, and we hoped that it would make certain people as well too.

The podcast has this wonderful Mystery Science Theater quality to it because of the commentary you all add as you read the book. Is that what listeners are reacting to? What has their response been?

It's been amazing. People get really invested, not only in the world that my dad's sort of created but in ours as well. It's lovely! There is something really unique about podcasting as well in that it's so intimate people feel that they are really connected to you. People have told us some very personal stuff about themselves. Somebody got in touch to say that they lost their virginity because of the podcast, which was crazy. We were like, "Great! Ok! Awesome!" And, people are kind of so open to just in the street grabbing us and talking about sex. Which is actually really positive and healthy, I think.

Has you dad listened to the podcast? Has it informed his continued progress in writing the Belinda Blinked series?

Oh my God. Does he listen? He is the biggest MY DAD WROTE A PORNO fan in the world! He listens to it constantly. So much so that my mum banned it from the house. She's like, "You can listen to that in the garden shed where you do your writing. You cannot listen to it in the house." She has yet to listen to the show for pretty obvious reasons, I think. But, he doesn't let any of it affect him. He's still beautifully naïve, and he kinds of thinks that he's writing this on a plane above our understanding. He's like, "One day, you'll understand it, guys. It's kind of sweet that you think it's funny, but - actually - it's a piece of genius." Which it is, in a way! So, he loves it. I mean, we wouldn't do if he didn't, you know.

What is the experience like doing a live show?

Live shows are probably the most fun thing we do, actually, just because you get to experience this crazy world with like-minded people. You have a couple thousand people in an audience, and everyone has their own relationship with this book. So, when we're all together, it just the most raucous night out, and every one is just having a real laugh.

We wanted it to be more than just a live podcast. We wanted to make it into an actual live show, so there's video elements, audience participation, and Alice's amazing sort of TED Talk about the vagina to teach Rocky [Flintstone] how that all works. It's gone down so well in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand that we're really, really excited to be bringing it to the States. It's mad, yeah.

This TED Talk sounds like fun. So, are we going to have her demonstrating the lid?

Exactly! This is what you think the lid is. It's not the lid. Yes, it's brilliant.

You're doing the live show for three nights in New York. Are you doing a new chapter each night?

No. So, basically our live show is the same live show that we do every night. It's brilliant. It's basically this chapter that my dad wrote right at the start of this whole process, but he thought that it was too shit to put in the books. He thinks it's too bad for Rocky Flintstone, so you get an idea of how unbelievably crap-slash-brilliant it is. And it's all about Belinda taking the RSMs [Regional Sales Managers] on a team building away day, or like an away weekend to bond with the team, and it is absolutely hysterical. We read that, and then we kind of do what we do on the show: we talk about it with all these other moments happening around us.

I don't want you to give away too much, but what can you tell me about the audience participation element?

Because my dad is famous for writing scenes that just can't make sense physically-there are like three arms flying around, and like how does someone get their leg around someone's neck? There is this one passage in the chapter that is so mad, and we're like, "How is this even working?" So, we invite two people up on stage to play two of the characters to show how impossible this physicality is. It's a really fun bit in the show.

Awesome, and I hope that the stage is covered in leather tile.

Oh, I will demand it!

Good! So, I'm also imagining that there is a lot of blinking in the live show as well.

Absolutely, yeah. Just constant blinking.

And, lots of nodding.

Yeah.

I know that in the podcast you talk about your dad being inspired by E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey. Is that something he has since talked to you about, or has it since been clarified?

Yeah. Because my dad is so mad, he hasn't actually read any of the Fifty Shades books, which he still calls Fifty Colors of Grey. I'm like, "You know it's Fifty Shades, now, come on." He just doesn't care! She made loads of money and everyone was reading these books. He's like, "If she can do it, I can do it!" Turns out he can't clearly do it, but good to try. Why not?

Yeah, especially since hers started as Twilight fan fiction.

Yeah! And an E-book. So, kind of a similar trajectory. He was obviously taking notes avidly.

Smart business model.

Yeah.

I know that your dad's life in sale is also a part of the novels. Talk a little bit about that because I think it's so funny that the books are set in this corporate setting.

Well, he still thinks that part of the reason that the show is so successful is that people in sales listen to the show for tips. What are you talking about? No! "You have never worked in sales. Alice hasn't. James hasn't. You guys don't understand." And so, I think, as much as he was out to write a piece of erotica, he kind of gets bored with the sex really quickly and just wants to get back to the sales techniques and how we're going to offset this amount of the budget of the marketing plan. And, you're like, "What?!?!" He still thinks that they are as much good as a leadership manual as they are erotic novels for sure.

Naturally. Because we all get naked at our third interview.

I mean, yeah. That's just the way the world works.

With the name Rocky Flintstone, was your guess correct that your dad liked The Flintstones and Rocky?

No! That actually isn't it. He-this is how weird he is-he loves The Rockford Files. You know that show with James Garner? Apparently, Jim Rockford's dad in that series is called Rocky. Rocky Rockford, I guess. Which is weird. That's where Rocky came from. Who knew? That's certainly obscure. And, Flintstone. I think he must love The Flintstones, but he was a geologist. That was what his degree was. Maybe there is something in the fact that he's really into rocks. I mean, I don't really know. I think he just put two words together to be honest with you, but it's a great pen name.

It is. I think it's more fascinating than E.L. James.

Exactly.

Traveling with the show, do you get to feel a little bit like Belinda now?

Yeah! I mean next stop the Millennium Dome Building, and I cannot wait. We're going to be traveling all over the world. We are international sales directors of the podcast world now. We're basically following Belinda's footsteps!

Sounds great. Make sure your father keeps writing for more fodder for the podcast!

Oh, we can't stop him from writing. Don't you worry about that. He is continuing every day. He's inspired. What can I say?

He needs to be the J.K. Rowling of erotica.

I can see the books getting longer and longer by book. There will be Belinda Blinked 7 (Part 1) and then Belinda Blinked 7 (Part 2). Yeah, I can only imagine.

Catch the New York debut of MY DAD WROTE A PORNO at Town Hall from Wednesday, February 28 to Friday, March 2. For tickets and more information, please visit http://www.mydadwroteaporno.com/live/.

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