Timecode Cowboys | Season Two | Ep. 1 | The Universal Backlot: Hollywood’s Factory Floor

In this S2 premiere episode, we explore the history, mythology, and everyday reality of Universal Studios Hollywood — not as a theme park, but as a working studio that’s been shaping Hollywood for more than a century.

We’re joined on a backlot field trip by special guests Ben Sommer (@ben.gordo), Director of Programmatic Partnerships at NBCUniversal, and Andrew Paz (@andybrand), co-founder of Big Time (@bigtimebigtimebigtimebigtime), bringing insider access and fresh perspective along for the ride.

In this episode, we cover:

• 🎞️ The birth of the studio tour and the chaos of silent-era filmmaking
• 🧠 Life inside the machine: soundstages, commissaries, parking politics, and daily studio rhythms
• 🦈 How Spielberg and Verna Fields saved Jaws when the shark wouldn’t work
• 🌍 Universal logo history, late-’90s DVD bumpers, and studio branding obsessions
• 🔥 Studio fires, lost archives, and preservation vs. reinvention

It’s a reset. A road trip. And a statement of intent for Season Two: fewer walls, more field trips, and a deeper connection to the places where film history is still being made.

🎬 Films & TV Shows Discussed:

• The Time Tunnel (1966)
• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964)
• How the West Was Won (1962)
• The Battle of the Bulge (1965)
• Grand Prix (1966)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Airport (1970)
• Columbo (1971)
• The Towering Inferno (1974)
• Earthquake (1974)
• Airport 1975 (1974)
• Jaws (1975)
• Midway (1976)
• Alien (1979)
• Apocalypse Now (1979)
• The Rockford Files (1974)
• Hart to Hart (1979)
• Jurassic Park (1993)
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
• The Mummy (1999)
• The Mummy Returns (2001)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000)
• Desperate Housewives (2004)
• The Artist (2011)
• Stranger Things (2016)

••Babylon (2022)

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 15 | TV PILOTS! (Season One Finale)

We’re closing the book on Season One — and doing it the only way we know how: by talking about the strange, high-stakes, half-forgotten corner of Hollywood history known as the TV pilot.

In this finale episode, Danny and his dad dig into the lost art of pilot season: rushed schedules, wild concepts, focus-group madness, and shows that almost were.

Drawing on decades of firsthand experience cutting pilots — some brilliant, some doomed — we trace how the system worked, why it collapsed, and what it says about how Hollywood used to gamble on ideas instead of algorithms.

Along the way, we veer into market testing, Nielsen ratings, backdoor pilots, pilot killers, soundtrack needle drops, and the eerie feeling of standing outside buildings where entire TV futures were once decided.

In this episode, we cover:

• 🎬 What a TV pilot actually is — and why most never made it to air
• 🧪 Focus groups, Nielsen diaries & the Preview House on Sunset Blvd
• ✂️ Inside the cutting room — brutal deadlines, unfinished episodes & sudden cancellations
• 📺 Standalone TV vs. serialized prestige — what we lost, what we gained
• 🤠 Personal war stories — the pilots that almost changed everything

More importantly, this episode also marks the end of Timecode Cowboys: Season One — and the beginning of a new era. New seasons, new collaborators, new music, and field-trip episodes exploring Hollywood’s past, present, and future are just over the horizon.

Cowboys out (for now).

🎬 Films and TV Shows discussed:

My Mother the Car (1965, TV)

Mister Ed (1961–1966, TV)

Star Trek (1966–1969, TV)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

The Last Run (1971)

Columbo (1971–2003, TV)

McCloud (1970–1977, TV)

The Name of the Game (1968–1971, TV)

The Rockford Files (1974–1980, TV)

Little House on the Prairie (1974–1983, TV)

The Twilight Zone (1959–1964, TV)

Hill Street Blues (1981–1987, TV)

St. Elsewhere (1982–1988, TV)

Star Wars (1977)

Doctor Who (1963–present, TV)

ER (1994–2009, TV)

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015, TV)

CSI: Miami (2002–2012, TV)

Century City (2004, TV)

Breaking Bad (2008–2013, TV)

The Dark Knight (2008)

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 14 | David P. Loughery: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

We’re back — and this week we literally walked off the 18th green, dropped our clubs, and hit record. Why?
Because David P. Loughery — screenwriter, mentor, raconteur, and honorary cowboy — loved two things with unadulterated devotion: classic movies … and golf!

From Dreamscape to Passenger 57, Money Train, The Three Musketeers, Lakeview Terrace, and The Intruder, David built the kind of career Hollywood rarely celebrates: steady, surprising, generous, and full of personality. A real craftsman. A real wit. A real one-of-one.

In this episode, we cover:

• 📝 Script stories from the trenches — Snipes, Quaid, Shatner & beyond
• 🎬 Notes swaps & mentorship — how David shaped Danny’s writing
• 🍸 Martinis, mini-malls & midnight noirs — David’s secret map of Los Angeles
• 😂 The quirks — the early arrivals, the BMW he wouldn’t drive on freeways, the Word docs saved “somewhere”
• 🧠 A master of genre — thrillers, western riffs, studio rewrites, and pure storytelling
• 💙 A friend who became family — and the voice still echoing in our writing

Here’s to David and the movies, the memories, and the punchlines he gifted us.

🎬 Films discussed:

Dreamscape (1984)
Heart to Hart (TV)
The Stepfather (1987)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Flashback (1990)
Passenger 57 (1992)
Money Train (1995)
Tom and Huck (1995)
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
Obsessed (2009)
Penthouse North (2013)
Nurse 3D (2013)
The Intruder (2019)

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 13 | Universal Monsters & Other Ghost Stories

Happy Halloween!!! On this, our oh so spooky number 13th episode, Danny and Alec dust off the silver nitrate and dive headfirst into Universal’s monster legacy - from Lon Chaney Jr.’s The Wolf Man (1941) to Abbott & Costello’s horror-comedy crossover, all the way to the haunted soundstage where Phantom of the Opera was filmed (and allegedly never fully dismantled).

Along the way, they wander through forgotten film reels, UCLA’s hidden vault in the hills of Santa Clarita, and a few attempted “phone-a-friend” sessions with none other than friend-of-the-pod Colin Smight (spoiler: he didn’t pick up!).

Plus: Dodgers in the World Series, Tiny Tim trauma, and a quick shoutout for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.

It’s a loose, spooky, cinephile séance — half Hollywood history, half family campfire. Join us!

🎬 Films discussed:
The Wolf Man (1941), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Exorcist (1973), Sunset Boulevard (1950), In a Lonely Place (1950), Bugonia (2025), One Battle After Another (2025)

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 12 | Judgment Day: The Future According to Cameron

This week marks a new era for Timecode Cowboys — cleaner lines, simpler frames, same father-son chaos. At the urging of our resident design whisperer Claire Smight, we’ve shed the visual noise and gone full refined minimalism — less clutter, more cinema. Fittingly, our topic couldn’t be more on theme: James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day — a film that redefined what “the future” looked like, both on-screen and off.

Danny and Al dive deep into Cameron’s visionary mix of analog grit and digital precision, unpacking how T2 still feels like the ultimate meditation on A.I., technology, and what it means to evolve — as artists, as humans, and now, apparently, as podcasters with better design taste.

Here’s what’s locked and loaded in this one:

🎬 Why T2 remains the gold standard for sequels (and possibly the greatest action movie ever made)

⚙️ How Cameron’s analog craft makes the digital revolution feel real

🦾 The birth of Skynet — and why the film’s warnings feel even more urgent today

🧩 Time travel, paradoxes, and the snake-eating-its-own-tail logic of the Terminator universe

💥 The genius of Linda Hamilton, the innocence of Joe Morton, and Arnold’s mechanical empathy

☢️ Cold War paranoia, nuclear nightmares, and sci-fi’s obsession with self-destruction

🧠 Plus: parallels between Cameron’s Skynet and the modern A.I. arms race

🎨 And a quick look at our own new aesthetic reboot — courtesy of Claire’s less-is-more design revolution

It’s part film school, part philosophy jam, and part nostalgic rewatch — a cinematic therapy session on what happens when machines learn too much and humans forget what made them human.

👉 Saddle up, hit play, and join us for Episode 12: Judgment Day: The Future According to Cameron.

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🎧 Available wherever you pod!

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Timecode⏱️🤠Cowboys | Ep. 11 | The A.I. Frontier ☕🤖

This one starts with an espresso machine that refuses to cooperate… and ends with an existential conversation about the fate of art, energy, and humanity itself.

Welcome to Episode 11 — our most caffeinated deep dive yet — where we unpack the accelerating world of generative A.I., from the creative possibilities to the ecological costs nobody’s talking about.

Here’s what we stir up in this wide-ranging conversation:

🏌️ Morning golf, California fires, and the virtue of routine

🎞️ How A.I. video tools are reshaping filmmaking — and why consistency is still the hardest shot

⚙️ Data farms, water shortages, and the energy arms race powering the digital frontier

💥 The Three Mile Island reboot — and what it says about the new technocracy

🧠 The ethics, excitement, and unease of working with the machine

📽️ From 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Social Network, how cinema has been warning us all along

It’s part debate, part crash course in the future of creativity — an episode where curiosity meets caution, and the cowboys face the algorithmic horizon.

👉 Saddle up, pour a double, and join us for Episode 11: Espresso Yourself.🤠 Like, comment, and subscribe for more stories from the reel frontier!🎧 Available wherever you pod!

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Timecode A.I. West

Cowboys | Ep. 10 | Ten Gallons Deep: California Gold, Twilight Zones & The Wild

Our 10th episode! Ten rides in the can, and we’re celebrating the only way we know how — by

going completely off script. No guests, no notes, just a father-son free-for-all through film history,

memory, and the strange present tense we’re all living in.

Here’s what we wrangle in this milestone episode:

Grand Prix (1966) — split screens, speed, and the ghost of live TVA road trip to the Kern River & the volunteer museum preserving Western film history

A love letter to Huell Howser and the lost art of public-access wonder

Revisiting The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, and the haunted poetry of early television

A philosophical detour into A.I., art, and the uncanny future of filmmaking

Why A Christmas Carol is the original ghost story

The Luddite wars, ChatGPT’s “computational jellyfish,” and what’s next for the creative class

It’s part California postcard, part Twilight Zone rerun, part midnight symposium on where movies (and

maybe humanity) go from here.

Saddle up, pour a drink, and join us as we mark ten episodes of Timecode Cowboys — still out

here on the reel frontier.

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Available wherever you pod!

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 9 | Renaissance Man Robert Young III

This week we’re catching up with one of Danny’s oldest friends and collaborators — filmmaker, actor,

musician, and bona fide creative polymath Rob Young III — for a conversation that spans decades,

mediums, and mindsets.

From their first short film together (a teenage neo-noir called Bulletproof) to Rob’s latest political rock

opera Nixon King, this episode is a trip through the wild roads of DIY filmmaking, Detroit artistry, and

the strange freedom that comes from doing it all yourself.

Here’s what we cover in this cinematic hangout:

From CalArts to Harvard — the winding path of a multi-hyphenate storyteller

Working at Detroit Public Television and learning the craft from the inside out

The genesis of Nixon King, a rock opera where MLK meets Nixon behind bars

Collaborating with (pre-fame) Damien Chazelle and the power of early creative circles

Reimagining Batman, JFK, and other icons on his long-running YouTube channel

The raw genius and controversy of Last Tango in Paris — and the cost of creative risk

Why filmmaking is still the most democratic art form… and the hardest to sustain

From Detroit diners to CalArts casting calls, Episode 9 is an ode to persistence, friendship, and the

lifelong pursuit of making something—anything—worth remembering.

Saddle up, hit play, and join us for a ride with the one-man studio himself, Rob Young III.

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