Somebody was putting together an evening of stories about "hitting bottom." It started with stories about rock 'n' rollers hitting bottom, etc., etc., but I had read a book about a submarine rescue in 1939, off New Hampshire, and we went and scoured the nation until we found some survivors of that rescue, and we brought one of them to tell his own particular story of hitting rock bottom. So someone has an idea for a theme and the whole Moth community starts to think about that theme.

Do any evenings stand out as favorites?

My personal favorite was when I brought some of the storytellers who used to weave stories on Wanda's porch from Georgia. And so we brought Wanda up to New York and my old friend Larry Guinn who lives in a treehouse that he built for himself down here. And sort of a wide assortment of rednecks and crackers from the South. And we had an evening of Southern stories and it was blissfully pleasurable. And Wanda got a standing ovation. Everyone was in love with her. She told a story about growing up with her daddy. And we brought her back for another story. She fell in love with New York and everyone in New York fell in love with Wanda.

Will Wanda's appearance make it onto the TV show? And how did the TV show come about?

We shot it before TV days, but we're going to bring Wanda back. My friend Gabby, who has helped me from the very beginning, is also a producer and her friend Joanna was an executive at Trio. And Joanna has always loved the Moth. So it was very simple. They talked to us and it seemed like a great match. The thing that we loved about Trio was their determination from the very beginning not to change the Moth in any way. What they wanted to do was shoot these extraordinarily exciting evenings in New York City and try to capture the spirit of these evenings and the sort of wild and footloose spirit that prevails.

We wanted to work with Trio because we knew that they were new and they weren't going to try to impose some kind of vision upon us. They've been incredibly accepting of the Moth and all its vagaries. Because one of the things about the Moth is that while the stories can be incredibly exciting, they can also bomb. That's what makes the performances so riveting. Everyone up there is an amateur, and many of the people who come up, well, some of them have the impression that they are going to be great, and they become overconfident.

We've had some celebrities who automatically assumed that they were going to be smash hits. But, you know, people who do this realize there is nothing else like this in terms of the pure fear, pure terror. There's no script. There's no one to help you. If you start to falter, there's no host who's going to ask you a few questions and make you look good. It really is just you and 10 minutes. If you're not connecting with the audience, then it can become a very scary experience.

Have you ever seen someone unravel because they're not connecting with the audience?

Yes, and I wish I could say who it was. I can say that there was a big television celebrity who had sort of an interesting attitude coming in. You know, "I'm going to be a smash star here." And he started in on his story, and the audience felt that he was shallow, and they sensed his overconfidence, and they sensed his disdain for them, and they wouldn't laugh at his jokes, and there was a coldness that he picked up on. And finally toward the end of the story, he mumbled, "I don't know how to do this." It was a really interesting moment. But that is not so uncommon. It's happened several times.

What's more interesting is the people who are terrified, petrified, who have never, ever been up before a large group of people. But the story is some elemental story that they have to tell about who they are, and the Moth audience is the most generous audience in the world. So someone like Wanda, who teaches troubled kids in a school down here in Brunswick, Ga., who has never spoken in front of a large group of people before, she came up here and the audience embraced her and fell in love with her. We've had that happen many, many times. That's what makes the evenings electric and exciting.

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