Of Nuldoids and Oidenoids

Russ Woody returned to Chico and Chico State, his alma mater, last week mainly to talk about his new illustrated novel, The Wheel of Nuldoid. For several minutes last Thursday (April 9), while speaking to John Grant’s screenwriting class, he did just that.

He described the tale as a “humor-fantasy” about a society of grumpy hobbit-like creatures—“disagreeable little shits,” he called them at one point—and their amiable counterparts the Oidenoids, all of whom live underground, and the three “unsuspecting humans” whose lives are turned upside down—literally—by the Bay Area earthquake of 1989. Here’s how the humans’ journey is described in Woody’s promotional material:

“Join them as they … make their way through the Region of Neither Norr, fall hundreds of miles through a giant tunnel-hole, cross the Plains of Low Weather and the Valley of Lop-sided Water, fly down the ancient slide of the Droiden Frobble Dynasty and scale the Great Big Canyon. They must retrieve and deliver a magic Crystal—the destruction of the world is hanging in the balance.”

Woody wrote the book, he told the students, because a few years ago, when his father was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, they had a conversation in which his father said his only regret in life was not spending more time with his son. The younger Woody then decided to suspend his successful 25-year career as a television producer and writer (he’s won an Emmy and a Golden Globe), stay home with his two boys, and write the novel he’d been kicking around in his head for 20 years or more.

It was a touching story, but the Chico State kids weren’t really interested. As soon as Woody asked, “What do you guys want to talk about?” they began barraging him with questions about television—particularly about how they could finagle themselves into the business and make scads of money writing scripts. They didn’t come right out and say they wanted to make scads of money, but in Hollywood who doesn’t?

If Woody was disappointed that they weren’t more interested in his book, he didn’t show it. Truth is, he’s a nice guy, friendly and down to earth and quick to crack a joke, not at all a puffed-up Hollywood type. He was wearing jeans and sneakers and a plaid shirt that looked like they were left over from his Chico State days. Though he’s on the north side of 50, he’s youthful looking and has all his hair, though it’s salt-and-peppery now.

He said his career got jump-started in Chico, thanks to a Hollywood producer named Martha Posner whom he met when she visited here. When you’re in LA, get in touch, she told him, and he did so, getting a job as a production assistant on the series Soap and Benson. The position is a glorified gofer, but it was a good way to get to know people—particularly writers, in his case—and the industry.

From there he moved on to Bosom Buddies, a job he got by sneaking onto the Paramount lot and hunting down the producer in charge of production assistants. He’s since written for and/or produced such shows as Murphy Brown, Becker, St. Elsewhere, Cybill, Hill Street Blues and many others.

His advice for the aspiring screenwriters was to pick a show they liked and write a script for it. Start with a “vomit draft,” he said, “because when you’re looking for a story, it’s best to just unload, to write crap at first.” And then, after numerous rewrites, start sending it out to agents, as many as possible. One of them may think it has promise.

His own passion, he said, has always been for comedy, and he talked about types of humor, such as “major-minor humor,” using the example of Abraham Lincoln shown wearing Ray-bans, and what he called “expectational humor.” He gave two examples of the latter: W.C. Fields’ line, “After four days in the hospital I finally took a turn for the nurse,” and a two-line Steve Martin bit:

Q: Do you mind if I smoke?

A: No. Do you mind if I fart?

Later, during an interview in the CN&R office, he talked about his book. He published and is marketing it himself, two activities he readily admits he knew nothing about. “I’m learning,” he said.

The marketing part includes one of the more elaborate press packets this newspaper has received. It’s a black-pleather folder on which a tattered cloth with an colorful image from the book has been glued, and inside are one-sheets containing Woody’s biography, his résumé, and laudatory blurbs from the likes of Martha Mason, Jeff Foxworthy and Ted Danson, who notes that The Wheel of Nuldoid is “without a doubt the funniest, finest, most comprehensive book ever written about the creatures of Nuldoid.”

There’s also a mini-CD of sample chapters, a tiny booklet of Norman Felchle’s illustrations and a disclaimer noting that “none of the vicious Fishing Worms (prevalent in the Region of Neither Norr) was harmed in the making of this attractive folder.”

It looks like the work of a top-flight marketing company, but actually Woody put it together himself. And lately, after much searching, he’s found a small distributor with ties to Barnes & Noble and Borders that’s willing to take on the book. Now he’s talking about how to promote it virally, on Facebook and Twitter and the other social networks.

If The Wheel of Nuldoid flops, it won’t be for lack of trying. And, apparently, it won’t faze Woody much, either. He’s got a new agent and will be returning to television work this summer.