Iconic Hollywood Gems Uncovered in LA | American Pickers

(upbeat music) MIKE: I love digging around LA. This has always been the epicenter for creativity. So much of the stuff out here is directly connected to the entertainment industry, whether it was what they were doing for a living, or what they were collecting to inspire them. or what they were collecting to inspire them. MIKE: Hey, you Donick?
DONICK: Hey. Yeah. MIKE: Hey, I’m Mike.
DONICK: Mike, nice to meet you. MIKE: You talked to Dani?
DONICK: Dani, right, right. MIKE: I’m gonna hit you with one of these, I mean, just because she said you had other stuff.
DONICK: Absolutely. Love it, yeah. Punk rock posters, all sorts of stuff. MIKE: Yeah. So what’s up, Simpsons, man?
DONICK: Simpsons, great run of the Simpsons. Super fun.
MIKE: No kidding, how many years?
DONICK: I was there Season 7 to 11. So almost five years.
MIKE: Get outta here.
DONICK: I’m a writer-producer-director working in Hollywood.
I’ve done a little bit of everything, you know, I got my start on the David Letterman Show, worked there for a long time; then I went to the Simpsons, worked on shows like Parks & Recreation, New Girl, Silicon Valley, Bored to Death. So a little bit of everything.
DONICK: We got a music room in here, and…
let me show you some guitars. MIKE: Okay.
DONICK: Yeah. Um… MIKE: Oh, yeah, it’s got a good vibe to it.
DONICK: We got lots of stuff in here, a lot of signed guitars.
MIKE: Wow… gosh…
MIKE: There’s walls full of art, the ceiling is full of art, there’s guitars everywhere. DONICK: Ceiling is this guy Steve Keen, he painted these.
He did some album covers, and I would buy these panels from him.
DONICK: I’m like, oh, that’s cool, a Pavement album, a Modern Lovers album.
MIKE: And all of a sudden, you had this many.
DONICK: Yeah. MIKE: Very cool, man.
MIKE: This room is obviously inspirational to him. I mean, Donick is a music guy just like I’m a motorcycle guy. When you walk into my house, I’ve got you know, 12 motorcycles are in the foyer, they’re in the dining room, they’re everywhere, because that’s what feeds my soul. MIKE: Love that Clash album. DONICK: Isn’t that great?
MIKE: Yeah, man. DONICK: Yeah.
MIKE: Sandinista! That was one of my favorite albums.
I mean, the Clash really flexed that creative muscle there.
They were more than just a punk band.
Mick Jones, Joe Strummer.
This was their opus, man, this was it.
DONICK: So yes, some great signed guitars on the walls.
DONICK: This is like one of my favorite things.
MIKE: No way, Mick Jones? DONICK: Mick Jones from the Clash there.
MIKE: Ah! DONICK: Elvis Costello here.
MIKE: Oh, wow… DONICK: This is one of my prized pieces, I did a cartoon called Lil’ Bush, where we shrank George Bush down.
DONICK: And… Iggy Pop played the voice of Little Rumsfeld, so Iggy would either fly out here, I’d go down to Miami and record with him.
And he graciously signed a guitar for me.
MIKE: “Throw them to the lions…” Oh, my gosh, man.
DONICK: Let me pull this out for you.
MIKE: Yeah, what do you got here?
DONICK: This is– MIKE: This must be the best one, you got it in a glass case. DONICK: This is a John Lee Hooker guitar, signed.
MIKE: No kidding. DONICK: He signed this, he passed away probably 15 years ago, I’m not even sure. But, I luckily stumbled upon this at one point.
DONICK: John Lee Hooker was a blues legend, songs like “Boom Boom”. They’re part of the DNA of every rock song that came after it.
This is a replica of the guitar he played by Epiphone.
So the guitar’s not super valuable itself, but the fact that he signed it is great.
MIKE: Would you sell that?
DONICK: That’s one… I could let go for sure.
MIKE: No kidding.
MIKE: You don’t need to know the complete history of Blues to know names like B.B. King, Robert Johnson, and John Lee Hooker. This really isn’t about the quality of the guitar, it’s more about the signature and the way it’s presented. MIKE: So what are you thinking on that?
DONICK: I assume something like this is around 1,500 bucks.
DONICK: You know, like at auction and you find the right fan for it.
MIKE: Mm-hmm. DONICK: Would you do like, $1,000- 1,200 or something on something like this or…
I mean, I’d love for it to have a good home.
MIKE: We have a store in Nashville. This would obviously be something easy to sell there.
We’re also close enough to Memphis.
DONICK: Yeah. MIKE: Where a lot of people are traveling the Americana Music Triangle, you know…
MIKE: So they’ll hit all of that. So…
I’ll tell you what, I mean, if it’s going towards a charity, if you do… 1,200 on it, I’d do it.
DONICK: Great. I’ll do it. MIKE: Alright, thank you.
DONICK: Alright. Find a good home, John Lee.
MIKE: So, so cool.
DONICK: As much as I love that, I’ve enjoyed it, and I have 25 other guitars now that I’ve accumulated. So he’ll find a good home for it, all good. I got plenty to share.
MIKE: Would it be weird if I asked if you had anything at all that’s Simpsons-related?
You know what I mean, like anything– DONICK: It’s not weird. You know– MIKE: Even the toys, the toys that were limited edition, you know, back then.
MIKE: We’re getting to know each other a little bit, we’ve got a rapport. I’ve been wanting to ask, can I see some Simpsons stuff? DONICK: I do in the basement, there’s a couple of boxes of like old scripts and storyboards and stuff that, I, like, I honestly haven’t looked at.
MIKE: Can I see any of that stuff?
DONICK: Yeah, we could dig some out.
DONICK: Why not? See if I can find you a box.
DONICK: This is the library. MIKE: Oh, man…
DONICK: There’s lots of fun stuff– MIKE: You got a Lambretta in your library!
DONICK: And enjoy the Lambretta.
MIKE: TV-175, nice.
MIKE: I love the fact that Donick has his scooter in the house. It shows that he’s looking at it as a piece of art. That’s the way I look at it too.
I got some Simpsons stuff. This is the box, got a couple of them, let’s see what this is.
MIKE: Okay, it looks like it, yeah.
DONICK: I was there Season 7 through 11.
MIKE: Wow. DONICK: So, this is a long time ago.
So this is what, for whatever reason, I ended up with having leftover from the Simpsons.
MIKE: Everybody knows the Simpsons. It is one of the longest running cartoons of all time. Bart Simpson is definitely up there with Mickey Mouse. I’m talking cartoon royalty. MIKE: “Production script number 5F03, Bart’s Star.” DONICK: Yeah, so Bart’s Star, that’s an episode I wrote.
Joe Namath made an appearance in that one.
This is based on, actually, in high school, I was on the football team, loved playing football.
Our coach made his son the quarterback.
And we’re all kind of like…
you’re making Scott the quarterback?
DONICK: Scott would agree.
And I thought, what a great idea for Homer, making Bart…
DONICK: He’s like, Bart’s the quarterback, even though Nelson’s really good.
DONICK: And so we did an episode about that.
MIKE: It’s so cool to see that Donick was plugging things from his life into the show. That’s what creative people do. DONICK: There’s one other thing, I didn’t really plow through this, but this is like, one more box of a few of these things.
DONICK: But these are storyboards.
MIKE: Wow… these are epic!
DONICK: But you can really see how the artists, they get the script and they go frame by frame… MIKE: Holy crap…
DONICK: …showing you how the jokes are going to play.
MIKE: And this is the episode you wrote.
DONICK: That’s one I wrote, yep. MIKE: Wow.
DONICK: The working materials, the scripts, the storyboards.
I put them in a box and filed them away.
And I haven’t really thought about them in 20 years.
This is history that’s fun to share.
It’s fun to look into that stuff, it definitely is time traveling.
MIKE: To see it broken down like this is incredible.
MIKE: What I love about this stuff is it’s his. I mean, people know him as a writer for the Simpsons. So even the storyboard alone has the notes on it, changing things. I mean, they’re very personalized, which is incredible. DONICK: Here’s what’s gonna blow your mind, now I’m seeing this. MIKE: Okay, what is it?
DONICK: These are pencil sketches.
MIKE: These are actual sketches, not copies.
DONICK: Yes. MIKE: Oh, wow…
DONICK: And you could see there’s a few– MIKE: So this is original art. DONICK: Yeah.
This is a scene they gave me afterwards, because at the time, I was big into collecting pre-Columbian art. And this is Homer, the joke was, eBay was a new thing, and he was buying lots of pre-Columbian art off of eBay.
MIKE: Yeah, yeah. DONICK: Which is like, the craziest thing.
DONICK: It was what I was doing…
(Mike laughing) DONICK: They were making fun of me for it, ’cause I was like, I just got luck– You could actually see a few of these pre-Columbian vases here.
I had 100 of these.
And everybody on the Simpsons was making fun of me for it.
We wrote a scene where Homer was like, “I’m gonna be rich!
I’m spending every cent on eBay buying pre-Columbian art!” DONICK: They’re like, you know it’s all fake.
So Homer went broke. That’s how he lost his money.
MIKE: There’s Marge. DONICK: Marge is like, “Homer, all of that’s a scam, you know.” So this– MIKE: So this, look, you lay over it where she’s like, looking at him.
DONICK: So you start to get a sense of the spacing of the scene.
And this is literally based on my wife’s reaction to me buying pre-Columbian art.
MIKE: He’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I made a bad mistake.” DONICK: Yeah. We ended up cutting that scene, so this is like the remnant of…
MIKE: Wow. DONICK: That’s his pre-Columbian vase.
MIKE: So… would you sell any of this?
MIKE: Here I am, holding some of the original drawings for a series I’ve watched for decades.
DONICK: It’s pretty cool, it really is.
MIKE: It’s amazing, it’s incredible!
DONICK: Like, what would you be interested in?
MIKE: Oh, my gosh, I mean, anything that’s hand-drawn, a storyboard, a script.
I mean, come on, I mean, it’s like I’m blown away.
MIKE: This stuff is highly collectable. It’s very sought after. And to be standing here with the guy that wrote for the Simpsons, takes you over the top, man.
DONICK: Um… the only, like, literally here’s the only thing I’m thinking about. My son loves the Simpsons.
DONICK: This is like one of those areas where I’m like, I’d love to have him get a shot at some of this stuff and go like, what’s meaningful to him.
MIKE: Oh, my gosh, yeah, this was your work.
MIKE: This is a major part of your life’s work.
DONICK: Yes. So it’s not like, oh, I want to sell the box of stuff, but…
let’s put together like a nice packet.
Like, I think you could take a storyboards for an episode.
This is epic to have.
MIKE: So this is Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.
MIKE: And this is for “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.” DONICK: Oh, it’s one of the best episodes.
MIKE: Oh, is it? DONICK: It’s so good.
This is a legendary episode. And it is the writer’s room making fun of the process of TV and what executives want and why it’s all gone wrong. They introduce a character called Poochie to try and hip up everything.
(Mike laughs) DONICK: So a surfing dog with sunglasses and a baseball cap and that’s Poochie. So this is a big one in Simpsons lore and history. MIKE: Okay.
MIKE: And then you have the script for Itchy-Scratchy-Poochie?
DONICK: I don’t have a script, I was looking for that script, ’cause I was trying to put them together for you, but best I could do is like, here’s a “Bart’s Star”.
If it helps having my name and the notes in it, then that’s fun. MIKE: Oh, my gosh.
MIKE: Wow. DONICK: We got a couple drawings from this insane episode that’s really just a burn on me of using Homer to make fun of me.
DONICK: But that’s like a little bit of Simpson history for you to share it with Simpsons world.
MIKE: Are you kidding me? Oh, my gosh.
MIKE: So… what are you thinking on this?
DONICK: Well, I’m wondering… You know, I really don’t know the Simpsons collectables world and fan…
I know it’s big and I know they love stuff.
You know, part of what I’m doing is whatever you paid for these, taking some of that money, putting it back into Musack… MIKE: To charity.
DONICK: Turning it into guitars and stuff for kids.
So, I’ll throw a big number out, how about like 3,000 bucks?
MIKE: I mean, the documentation behind any show that is successful and has run as long as the Simpsons, is epic, because it’s touched generations.
DONICK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. MIKE: You know.
I’d love to bring this out into the collector hobby, man.
I’m not even gonna try to talk you down.
DONICK: I love it. MIKE: If you could sign the acts, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. DONICK: Sure.
MIKE: That would be epic. DONICK: 3,500. No, I’m kidding.
MIKE: Yeah. (laughs) DONICK: I know there’s a huge Simpsons fanbase out there that loves this stuff. I’m one of them.
So I know some fans would love these.
Let’s just put it all to Musack and make good things happen with it.
DONICK: You want just a little signature on here?
MIKE: Yeah, hell yeah.
MIKE: Donick is a collector of pop culture, but he’s also somebody that created it. And this is a major part of his legacy. But he understands pushing it out into the world is about all of us, not just him. MIKE: What a life, man. DONICK: Ah.
MIKE: Hey, I love the way you’re living, buddy.
MIKE: There are a lot of creative people that haven’t had the opportunity that Donick has had.
And he has taken his success, and turned it into so much more. I love the idea of this charity, and how it’s touched so many lives.
MIKE: Thank you, buddy. DONICK: Mike’s great. He didn’t walk around in bare feet and put his feet on the table. No, he’s got a sense of humor, he’s passionate about lots of different things, and he’s the kind of people you want to hang out with.
(honks horn) MIKE: See ya, buddy!
DONICK: See ya later, man!