This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the Show Where You Can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:24] Tonya Pinkins: Today, I have a guest who is a colleague and a peer. And I got to know him when we were both elected officials on the union. Is that right?

[0:36] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah.

[0:37] Tonya Pinkins: And he is an actor, he's a director, he's a dramaturg. He is a dancer. He's a playwright. And um I saw on your website that you have the sonnet play. So join me in welcoming my guest today, Brian Myers Cooper. And maybe you can do a sonnet and explain to me what the sonnet plays are. There's a good opener.

[1:00] Brian Myers Cooper: Well, well, first of all, um, yeah, dancer was was a long time ago. And I don't I don't lay claim to that one anymore.

[1:07] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, you look like you were a dancer, though.

[1:08] Brian Myers Cooper: I I danced. Um, I'd never danced as well as the choreographers I worked with hoped that I would.

[1:14] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, that was me too.

[1:15] Brian Myers Cooper: Because I I just it was never my passion.

[1:17] Tonya Pinkins: But you have the line.

[1:18] Brian Myers Cooper: I did. I had a very good sense of it. And and so, you know, if you work with me, I I would uh I would come up with the goods, but um, but I I never really wanted to do that. And I and I knew that. I also knew my body wouldn't hold up, and I thought, well, that's not really the career I want.

[1:32] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I was like, you know, I came out of school, I had danced every day at Carnegie Mellon, and I went to like a couple of little dance gigs, and it was like they were always calling us boys and girls. And I was like, they you know these dancers, they work harder than everybody. They're called Boys and Girls Forever. I want to be the person out in front who the dancers make look good. Like they do all the work behind them, and the person in the front just smiles and moves from side to side.

[1:56] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, I I I found that I I just like storytelling. I like to tell the story. I like to even just my little piece of it. Uh and and while the dancing was was fun uh when I was young, um, I knew that that wasn't the storytelling that I was passionate about.

[2:13] Tonya Pinkins: So I was like, well, yeah, when when those roles, when the young, dumb blonde virgin roles sort of uh uh started.

[2:21] Brian Myers Cooper: Did you get the young dumb blonde virgin roles?

[2:23] Brian Myers Cooper: I made a career at the young dumb blonde virgin.

[2:26] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[2:26] Brian Myers Cooper: The Will Parkers of the world.

[2:28] Tonya Pinkins: Uh that was absolutely where are you from?

[2:31] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh I'm originally from Ohio.

[2:32] Tonya Pinkins: Ohio.

[2:33] Brian Myers Cooper: Southeastern corner of Ohio.

[2:35] Tonya Pinkins: The place of the clan originated.

[2:36] Brian Myers Cooper: Oh, lovely.

[2:37] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah.

[2:39] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, yeah.

[2:41] Tonya Pinkins: We yeah, we we they were right down the street, I'm sure. Actually, I had my my my cinematographer on my film that I made this year Red Pill. He said the clan had a church down the street from his house, and it's still there. And they like at one point, like you know, vandalized the school. But he's like, that's just like the neighborhood thing. Like Jeremy O'Hare said, you know, the plantations were down the road, and his dad would sing Dixie in the car. So, you know, this is just some for some people that's just home.

[3:07] Brian Myers Cooper: It's just home.

[3:09] Tonya Pinkins: Well, we didn't he has turned so red here. If you could see this red face.

[3:16] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, yeah.

[3:17] Tonya Pinkins: It's uh you know, I'm from a part of Ohio where we don't have cities. Like if Ohio is a box, there's a city in every corner and in the middle, but not in our corner, um, which is the lower lower right hand corner.

[3:28] Brian Myers Cooper: So, what did you live in?

[3:30] Tonya Pinkins: A town?

[3:30] Brian Myers Cooper: I I lived outside of a town.

[3:32] Brian Myers Cooper: I lived outside of a town that had less than about like 800 people. Um we lived on the farm outside of that. Uh so yeah, we we were out in the middle of nowhere.

[3:42] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, so yeah, speaking of speaking of, well, not the clan necessarily, but um, you know, that farm that I grew up next to uh was my grandmother's farm, uh, and her ancestors had homesteaded it, which means the government gave it to them after they stole it from the Indians.

[3:58] Brian Myers Cooper: Got it.

[3:58] Tonya Pinkins: So, you know, in 1816. Uh so there's there's a whole there's a whole rabbit hole of privilege that goes along with with always having that that piece of land that was there. Uh it is not. That piece of land is not. Um my grandmother passed away some years ago, and uh and most of it was sold. Uh the little parcel around the house was not. My uncle lived in it for until he passed away about five or six years after that. Um, and then that was sold. So now none of that original uh parcel uh is in our family.

[4:35] Brian Myers Cooper: And my father's farm is next door.

[4:36] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, you're you grew up on a farm.

[4:37] Brian Myers Cooper: I grew up on a farm, yeah.

[4:38] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, what kind of farm?

[4:39] Brian Myers Cooper: Come on, beef farmers. We don't get to talk to people who come from that.

[4:42] Tonya Pinkins: Uh it was a beef farm.

[4:43] Brian Myers Cooper: Beet beef, beef, beef.

[4:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah, cows.

[4:47] Brian Myers Cooper: Okay.

[4:52] Tonya Pinkins: Did y'all get to eat beef or did y'all only get to eat?

[4:55] Brian Myers Cooper: We oh no, no, no. We we ate almost exclusively beef. My father did not like chicken unless it was Kentucky fried.

[5:02] Tonya Pinkins: Which was a rare treat because we lived in the middle of nowhere. There was no fast food.

[5:05] Brian Myers Cooper: But couldn't you just have some little chickens running around?

[5:08] Tonya Pinkins: No, no, no, no.

[5:09] Brian Myers Cooper: We didn't have we we did um we did trade beef for other things like uh a side of pigs, so you would you trade with other farmers and you would give them a uh side of beef and they would give you a side of uh pork and so we had sausage, that was a big thing, and bacon, but uh but really it was a beef farm and there was no fish and there was no chicken and yeah, and how many siblings?

[5:32] Tonya Pinkins: Uh one, my sister, younger.

[5:34] Brian Myers Cooper: And so what's the chores for beef farming kids?

[5:37] Tonya Pinkins: Uh so we grew up in far 4H. Uh in fact, I just saw I just saw this girl on um this young young girl, maybe uh 10, 11, 12, um, on the subway, and and on our backpack, she had a 4H patch. And I was like, is there a 4H still New York City?

[5:52] Brian Myers Cooper: And did you ask her?

[5:54] Tonya Pinkins: I didn't. I I didn't want to be like a pervert.

[5:56] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah.

[5:57] Tonya Pinkins: I'm sorry, but is there 4 H and you?

[6:00] Brian Myers Cooper: But 4 H was big where I came, where I came from. Uh and so you know, I've tell everybody what 4H is because people don't know what 4 H is it is a agricultural agricultural uh youth program. Um and uh much like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, uh, but for um agricultural rural kids, uh, and you could take uh you could take class or not uh you could take courses uh in oh god everything from cooking and macrame and and sewing uh and you know all sorts of uh domestic things um and also animal husbandry, so I had rabbits, I had uh I I showed pigs, that's a that's a that's a treat. My dairy, my dairy friends had their dairy cows, and I had steers as well.

[6:45] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, so uh did you ride any of them? Or didn't you ride in any of these steers?

[6:48] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh no, we didn't ride sears, no, no. Uh we had horses that we we used to to corral everything. I mean, you know, this is an ancient way of life that you're talking about now.

[6:57] Tonya Pinkins: It is, and I was it was just sort of brought back to me as I you know looked at this girl's patch, I was like, oh my god, that was a lifetime ago. I moved here in 1989, and I I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere, obviously.

[7:09] Brian Myers Cooper: Right.

[7:09] Tonya Pinkins: Um, and I'm like, wow. Um, like I it's it's almost like I'm rereading a book, this little fantasy novel that I read in 1985, something like that. Um, and I just happened to find it, and I was like, oh, let me let me see what that's about. And and I'm sort of remembering uh because it made an impact on me at the time because they were gay characters. Um it's a it's a trio of books got by uh an author uh named Diane Dwayne.

[7:35] Brian Myers Cooper: Okay, and uh you know, sci-fi, and you know, it's it's lovely. But but in 1980, whatever, uh they were gay characters in this. It was very sexually free.

[7:44] Tonya Pinkins: Um Do you know the name of this book?

[7:46] Brian Myers Cooper: What was this book?

[7:47] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh the doorway into different things doorway into darkness, doorway into um, but uh but it yeah, it's a it's a trio. So I after all these years, I find this thing, and and I've you know, I downloaded on my Kindle and I'm reading it, and I'm and I'm really thinking, remembering reading it, sitting on the floor of this apartment in Atlanta where I was working two fast food jobs in the summer between uh two years of college and and um you know eating a Swanson's beef pot pie because one of the characters actually had a pot pie and an inn in this world anyway. It it I was like, wow, that was me. Like it seems like I'm remembering a character in an in another world.

[8:32] Tonya Pinkins: What's the religion where you raised?

[8:34] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh so I was raised in a Presbyterian church, very, very, very small Presbyterian church. I mean something about a thousand people, like everybody knew everybody in your one knew everyone, and and the church where I grew up in its heyday, it was it was I guess much bigger, but um, when I was there, if if there were 25 or 30 people at a at a service that was big, and and today my you know my mother still still goes there and and there are 15 um extant living members. Like actually just 15 members of the church, and that includes my sister and I, and we obviously are not regular um attenders.

[9:09] Brian Myers Cooper: So it is really it is very small.

[9:13] Tonya Pinkins: And you parents still alive?

[9:14] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh we lost my father uh in July.

[9:17] Tonya Pinkins: Oh I'm sorry.

[9:18] Brian Myers Cooper: Um thank you, thank you. Uh and uh but my mother still uh lives on the farm.

[9:24] Tonya Pinkins: You still got beef?

[9:25] Brian Myers Cooper: No, no, no. They don't uh they have for they retired from farming some time ago and they sold everything and they rent out the land uh to uh a lot of Amish farmers around.

[9:36] Tonya Pinkins: So the land is still farmed.

[9:38] Brian Myers Cooper: The land is still farmed.

[9:39] Tonya Pinkins: Um didn't have to succumb to fracking.

[9:41] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh no, it did do that too. Every that whole area is full of shale and it went to fracking. My father held out. Um, but in the scheme of things, the water table is the water table. So if your neighbors have done it, then you've done it, so you might as well get paid. So he held out and got paid more.

[9:59] Tonya Pinkins: Uh but uh, you know, it it's a real shame and I'm it's a real concern. Like I look at that land because I even though you know, was not mine, uh, and that was a whole trail of privilege for 200 years. Um, I you know, I have a connection to it, and I hate to see I hate to think of that just ruined. Um, and and I hope that it doesn't come to that.

[10:23] Tonya Pinkins: I hope it doesn't come to that. What is it? I mean, when you do you visit still, of course, right?

[10:27] Brian Myers Cooper: Oh, yes, a lot.

[10:28] Tonya Pinkins: So, what is the what is the biggest difference you notice from farm, you know, growing up in this farm place?

[10:33] Brian Myers Cooper: I think that there's times of the year when it's just full of green for the steer, and there must have been some farmers of other kinds of things other than steer, right?

[10:40] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, yeah.

[10:41] Brian Myers Cooper: But now you got fracking.

[10:43] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[10:44] Brian Myers Cooper: They strip it, right they strip the land it looks like chemotherapy um yeah they you know they it's it's tough to watch it they they don't really strip the land but but the infrastructure takes up so much space like the pipelines go you know flooding through this former pasture and that's like you know 50 yards wide that is just you know sort of no man's land with this huge infrastructure gash down the center of it uh and you know it's yeah it's sad it's sad to sad to see um but uh you know it it alighted in our county and there was no getting around it so um everyone everyone signed up for yeah the roulette I guess it's yeah yeah um and I can't I can't blame them um as you might imagine from you know like the church talk that you know there's no industry there's no infrastructure there's no railroads there's no there's no uh airports um so there's very little new industry going there there's no manufacturing the coal and steel jobs are gone so uh you know when they were offered when when the people there were offered a chance to cash in on something they took it yeah um and and as as much as I would love to judge them for that and say oh you're just you're you know this is what's killing us um I I can't I I can't right no no we we've forgotten that we are our brothers and sisters keepers and you know that we have to take care of everybody.

[12:19] Tonya Pinkins: It's just something that is not doesn't seem a value. Maybe it was never a value, but it's a value I hold dear.

[12:25] Brian Myers Cooper: So gay.

[12:26] Tonya Pinkins: Ohio.

[12:27] Brian Myers Cooper: Oh, gay Ohio in nineteen eighties.

[12:29] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[12:31] Brian Myers Cooper: To help me.

[12:32] Tonya Pinkins: Uh did you come out there or did you know that?

[12:34] Brian Myers Cooper: No, God no.

[12:35] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[12:39] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh I am. I've been with Orwell for 21 years.

[12:42] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[12:42] Brian Myers Cooper: So this is come on, this is a story here.

[12:44] Tonya Pinkins: I wanna know.

[12:45] Brian Myers Cooper: Gosh.

[12:46] Tonya Pinkins: Ohio.

[12:47] Brian Myers Cooper: Because yes, it's a hard thing. There's some people still in Ohio.

[12:49] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, there are a lot of people. I need to hear this story.

[12:58] Brian Myers Cooper: Um recently uh I posted on social media about my husband maybe our anniversary or something uh recently, because we had our anniversary in in January, or maybe it was his birthday. And there were comments, you know, lots of comments, um, from people I knew in high school, my first grade teacher.

[13:20] Brian Myers Cooper: Um commented. Yeah, like like uh and that's not unusual um for me to to post something about my my life, and I'm not certainly uh not shy about that. But you know, it it still strikes me as as um uh of as a paradox to what I knew back then or what I thought I knew back then, uh or what how I perceived my world that we all lived in together back then um versus uh the world that um they live in now and and many of these people still live in that same area and they all know and and and uh to see that kind of support, I'm like well, the I guess the world has taken a step or two forward um in in ways that I could never have imagined in nineteen eighty um because I was uh I was very closeted um uh my father was a very uh a very masculine horse riding farmer stock football player um uh he was a diesel mechanic working on engines the size of you know this apartment but you had to learn how to do that stuff too I I had to learn how to do a lot of things on uh uh make it right uh get it right figure it out don't ask for help um uh asking for help is weak that was you know, one of the sort of my daughter gets mad when I say figure it out figure it out figure it out um and uh and it was great because I learned how to be self-sufficient I learned how to figure things out I learned how to solve a puzzle um but I also learned that that needing other people um and working together uh was weak and or so it took me a long time to learn how to play well with others play well with others um or or to manage a team because I've I've been in that situation where I I'm in a leadership position and and I just for a very long time could never delegate effectively because I had to do it all I had to do it all I had to figure it out I had to get it right um and it all all fell on me and and when I let go of that it was like but you know growing up in that world being being gay was the worst thing you could you didn't you were in the closet though I was very much in the closet but I knew.

[13:31] Tonya Pinkins: Do you think your mom or your dad knew?

[13:31] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh if they knew they were willfully ignorant.

[13:31] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[13:31] Brian Myers Cooper: They were choosing like we gonna pretend we don't see that.

[15:46] Brian Myers Cooper: So they they can't they can't have missed the effeminate skinny scrawny um farm boy trolling baton um in the front yard.

[15:56] Tonya Pinkins: Did you do it better than your sister?

[15:58] Brian Myers Cooper: I would I did it better than everyone.

[16:01] Brian Myers Cooper: I was such a good twirler.

[16:03] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god.

[16:04] Brian Myers Cooper: But instead I played tuba in the marching band because we didn't have a drum major or any such thing because our band director would never have uh a pansy out front.

[16:15] Brian Myers Cooper: Um trotting in front of his band.

[16:18] Brian Myers Cooper: Um he actually said that to me.

[16:20] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, I'm so sorry.

[16:21] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah.

[16:22] Tonya Pinkins: No, uh, you know he said that to you.

[16:24] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, like because you were like, hey, I get look what I can do with the twirling baton.

[16:27] Brian Myers Cooper: And he was like, I'm not having the bands up front.

[16:29] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, okay.

[16:30] Brian Myers Cooper: Yep.

[16:31] Brian Myers Cooper: Okay.

[16:32] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh and you know, that's that was the that was the world.

[16:32] Brian Myers Cooper: That was the world.

[16:36] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh so yeah, I didn't.

[16:38] Brian Myers Cooper: I I wasn't I wasn't looking to open any.

[16:41] Tonya Pinkins: But have you had your baton twirling moment in your whole career now? Have you gotten to do that twirling at a baton? Because I bet the skill is still there.

[16:48] Brian Myers Cooper: I once did a flaming, a flaming baton.

[16:51] Brian Myers Cooper: Um, no, and that's not a euphemism for anything.

[16:54] Brian Myers Cooper: That that is uh actually on fire um for a summer camp uh lighting of a bonfire.

[17:01] Brian Myers Cooper: So I came out uh it would you know screaming and whooping and as the I don't know the ghost or god of fire with my flaming baton, throwing it in the air and catching it and that was the night the lights went out in Georgia.

[17:19] Tonya Pinkins: Wow, that sounds fun.

[17:21] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, well, you know, it was the one moment I actually did it in front of people.

[17:25] Tonya Pinkins: I like that.

[17:26] Tonya Pinkins: Did you enjoy it?

[17:27] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh I was so it was exhilarating, I remember that.

[17:31] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, but I was also really, really nervous one that I would drop the damn thing.

[17:35] Brian Myers Cooper: Um and and you know, look foolish.

[17:38] Brian Myers Cooper: But also, um, you know, I'm twirling baton in front of a bunch of in front of a bunch of bunch of people instead of like just privately on my farm in the middle of nowhere where no one can see me except my parents who clear clearly clearly never put that equation together.

[17:52] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[17:53] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[17:54] Tonya Pinkins: So where was this that you did this flaming baton?

[17:56] Brian Myers Cooper: Georgia?

[17:57] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh no, it was a it was a summer camp, uh a 4 H a 4H back to 4 H uh summer camp.

[18:03] Brian Myers Cooper: Um uh back in back in Ohio.

[18:06] Brian Myers Cooper: I was a council, uh I was a counselor that year.

[18:08] Tonya Pinkins: And how was it received?

[18:11] Brian Myers Cooper: Um uh sort of underwhelmingly.

[18:13] Brian Myers Cooper: They were like, yay, okay, done.

[18:15] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh that was no fun.

[18:17] Brian Myers Cooper: It wasn't yeah, it was like, no, no, but um, I mean, what do you what do you expect? You're you're just lighting the fire the whole evening is a whole, you know, there's a whole evening of oh I just watched 2000 Maniacs.

[18:28] Tonya Pinkins: Have you ever seen that?

[18:29] Brian Myers Cooper: No.

[18:30] Brian Myers Cooper: I just heard of it.

[18:31] Brian Myers Cooper: It's Howard K Herschel Gordon Lewis, and it's this campy, he's like the king of splatter gor gore horror or something like that.

[18:41] Brian Myers Cooper: And it's this thing where these southern people lure these um northerners by their license plates to their town to celebrate the hundredth year of the Confederates losing the war and they torture and kill them.

[18:53] Tonya Pinkins: Oh fun.

[18:54] Tonya Pinkins: See, that's a summer camp.

[18:56] Tonya Pinkins: That's a summer camp I could get before.

[18:58] Brian Myers Cooper: They are the festivals.

[18:59] Brian Myers Cooper: They're like, You're the guest of honor.

[19:00] Brian Myers Cooper: Yeah, you gotta participate.

[19:02] Brian Myers Cooper: When's that when's that rock gonna fall?

[19:04] Brian Myers Cooper: You gotta tell us as we tie you down.

[19:11] Tonya Pinkins: Now I need to watch that.

[19:13] Brian Myers Cooper: It's crazy.

[19:14] Brian Myers Cooper: It's crazy.

[19:15] Brian Myers Cooper: They like chop off their body parts and barbecue them.

[19:17] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my gosh.

[19:18] Brian Myers Cooper: They put them in a barrel roll with nails in it, so they're rolling down the barrel with the nails in it.

[19:23] Brian Myers Cooper: It was crazy.

[19:25] Brian Myers Cooper: Someone just told me about that movie this week because they were like, that's kind of like your movie, isn't it, Tanya?

[19:29] Tonya Pinkins: I was like, kinda.

[19:30] Tonya Pinkins: Kind of.

[19:33] Tonya Pinkins: Red pill is kind of like that.

[19:36] Brian Myers Cooper: I cannot wait to see that, by the way.

[19:38] Tonya Pinkins: Me either.

[19:39] Tonya Pinkins: Are you still still in post-production still?

[19:42] Brian Myers Cooper: Still in post-production.

[19:43] Tonya Pinkins: I can't wait to see it too.

[19:48] Tonya Pinkins: Now, you were talking about leadership. So you were in the union for how many years?

[19:52] Brian Myers Cooper: I wasn't in there very long.

[19:53] Brian Myers Cooper: Okay, yeah.

[19:54] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh uh, I I started, I got involved when Patrick Quinn, who was the pres president of Actors Equity back in the late 90s, early 2000s.

[20:03] Tonya Pinkins: So 20 years?

[20:04] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh yeah, yeah.

[20:05] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh so yeah, I got I got I got pissed at him one day uh and and sent him a 3,000-word email um about it.

[20:13] Tonya Pinkins: Were there was there email 20 years ago?

[20:14] Brian Myers Cooper: There was in night, I swear to God.

[20:17] Brian Myers Cooper: In uh 2000 was when this happened.

[20:19] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh and it was an election year, and he had sent me this uh he had sent me um this uh propaganda uh and I sent him uh uh a very tersely worded um email about uh how I felt about that.

[20:33] Brian Myers Cooper: Um and he immediately within within a couple of hours had sent back like a twice as long email, very thoughtful um email to engage with me and and to explain his position uh more fully and um and to of course then say, hey, when you get back to New York, because I was on tour, uh you should join a committee.

[20:51] Brian Myers Cooper: Okay, because he saw that he saw that writing on the wall, and I did.

[20:56] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh I joined the off-Broadway committee, it was the first thing I did.

[20:59] Brian Myers Cooper: Um, and within a very short amount of time, I was I was on the negotiating teams for Off-Broadway and for Antic, which were even smaller than off-Broadway theaters, and I did that.

[21:10] Brian Myers Cooper: I did that uh for several years until I was elected to counsel um and uh continued that work as well as the council and the Eastern Regional Board work.

[21:20] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh and I'm still and I'm no longer on the council, but I I am uh still a trustee of our pension and health fund.

[21:26] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh yeah, I I have to say the people who do those jobs, people don't understand that this like they're full-time jobs and they're not paying full-time jobs who are the trustees figuring out how the insurance works, how the pensions work, how to invest it, people who are negotiating all those contracts, who are making sure people get paid, all of that is electeds and volunteers and it is unpaid.

[21:49] Tonya Pinkins: It's work.

[21:50] Brian Myers Cooper: A lot of work.

[21:50] Brian Myers Cooper: It is work.

[21:51] Brian Myers Cooper: There's a lot of preparation, there's a lot of and and there's a lot of uh for me, a lot of pressure, um, even more in on the trustee side than the than the um than the elected side, uh, because you know, if something is not perfect with the contract, of course, it's negotiated, right?

[22:07] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh so it's never gonna be perfect.

[22:09] Brian Myers Cooper: You know, everyone's gonna walk away just a little unhappy uh if you did your job.

[22:13] Brian Myers Cooper: Um but uh on the trustee side, this is this is people's lives.

[22:18] Brian Myers Cooper: This is their retirement, this is their health care now, this is when they're you know, uh people people depend on this for their life.

[22:25] Brian Myers Cooper: Um and uh so the the pressure I feel as a trustee to to be well informed, to to be prepared to uh to know what's happening um and to be responsive to that uh in a in a thoughtful and and fulsome way.

[22:41] Brian Myers Cooper: It's it it's uh it's exciting work, um, but but I but I take it really seriously because it is clearly a very serious matter for the everyone involved.

[22:52] Tonya Pinkins: You're still talking like an elected Brian.

[22:53] Brian Myers Cooper: I know elected again i'm like i'm like i care.

[22:57] Tonya Pinkins: You do care.

[22:57] Tonya Pinkins: I can tell you care.

[22:58] Tonya Pinkins: I have a question for you, Brian this is putting you on the spot but i'm gonna do it we were on a negotiating committee yeah we were uh I was always okay my job at that in the in those negotiations I I was leading that negotiation I put that team together um and and we had a really ambitious uh set of numbers and and proposals we put forth um a very focused set of proposals um the very first being salary period salaries need to go up a lot in this in this uh in this arena because they have been stagnant for decades um and this was the the one opportunity we had to move that so my job was to dance that dance for the six months it took us to get that contract we started negotiations in June the contract didn't expire till November which means we had to go on the longest first date without putting out for I don't know if you can say that you can say it truly truly we we needed to be at the table and engaged for all of that time.

[24:05] Brian Myers Cooper: Okay whatever time it was going to take a lot a lot of foreplay it was the well and and but what it meant was uh you know keeping the team motivated and moving forward um always moving forward uh uh but sticking to our guns and and and and keeping everyone focused on what the goal was which was maybe yes you know we may not we may not be meeting in July and August or even September um but that doesn't mean we're not moving forward because I know, but I'm like, I'm trying to see if you're playing playing a poker hand with me right now.

[24:35] Brian Myers Cooper: Because I would have put my money on the table that you had to be the person who voted with me not to accept that shitty deal.

[24:42] Brian Myers Cooper: It was not it was not that's right.

[24:43] Brian Myers Cooper: It was at the very, very end, and they had not given us the money we wanted.

[24:48] Tonya Pinkins: Uh yeah.

[24:49] Brian Myers Cooper: Um, although we did get just a hell of a lot of money.

[24:54] Brian Myers Cooper: We got a hell of a money.

[24:55] Brian Myers Cooper: And we got a hell of a lot more money.

[24:56] Tonya Pinkins: Right before we got that hell of a lot of money.

[24:58] Brian Myers Cooper: Wasn't you, huh, Brian?

[24:59] Brian Myers Cooper: Uh no.

[25:01] Brian Myers Cooper: At that point, at that point, I was I was aiming high.

[25:05] Brian Myers Cooper: Um, but uh we had we're gonna be.

[25:08] Brian Myers Cooper: It actually was the day of the uh the day after the election.

[25:15] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins. That was part one of my conversation with my colleague Brian Myers Cooper.

[25:24] Tonya Pinkins: You was kind, you was smart, you is important, you is dead.

[25:30] Tonya Pinkins: Tonya Pinkins's horror film Red Pill brings African American perspective to progressive movement.

[25:39] Tonya Pinkins: We are a majority in this country, and we're gonna win the election.

[25:48] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know what the red pill is?

[25:50] Tonya Pinkins: A red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside.

[25:59] Tonya Pinkins: This place is spooky.

[26:00] Tonya Pinkins: Some people like to live dangerously.

[26:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, why are you so jumpy tonight?

[26:06] Tonya Pinkins: You know what, guys? I'm gonna go back tomorrow.

[26:09] Tonya Pinkins: Did you hear about the creature woman that attacked a father and son hunting down here?

[26:13] Tonya Pinkins: I don't see the case.

[26:15] Tonya Pinkins: This place creeps me out.

[26:20] Tonya Pinkins: I think we should call the sheriff's office.

[26:37] Tonya Pinkins: The only people missing or dead are brown people.

[26:43] Tonya Pinkins: They're after all of us.

[26:47] Tonya Pinkins: What do we do, Amelia?

[26:49] Tonya Pinkins: We die.

[26:51] Tonya Pinkins: But we take some of them with us.

[26:55] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, I'm Tonya Pinkins, and I would love to hear from you. You can text me at 917-724-8998. Tell me what you're up to, and I'll let you know what I'm up to. Text me.