Sam Mullins

Sam Mullins is the host and creator of Chameleon: Wild Boys. (In 2003, two half-starved brothers emerged from the wilderness, telling an incredible story of survival. A small Canadian community took them in. The only problem? The boys weren't who they said they were.) On Crime Writers On…, Kevin Flynn called Sam “the Canadian Dan Taberski.” New episodes drop every Tuesday. Follow Sam on Twitter here. Follow the show on Twitter here.

How did it feel to get Wild Boys into the world?
This was like a unique experience for me because I don't think I've ever  released something that I'm not done making, you know, because like when it dropped, I was still writing like the episodes seven and eight. It's a really weird thing. I suppose this is how sitcom writers felt back in the day where you're just writing week to week. The most exciting part for me has just been to see how many people from my hometown that I haven't spoken to since I graduated high school listen. The show is connecting me with people from my past.

What has the response been like?
What you need to know about our town, Vernon, is that our culture is a dead zone. Growing up there, there was never anything set there and you never get to see your town reflected back to you or even your region reflected back to you. Growing up in Vernon, if someone made something about Vernon, I can't even imagine how cool that would be. It's not a common thing.

What do you want people to know about Vernon?
To a certain extent, Vernon is a well-kept secret in Canada and even in British Columbia. It's kind of flying under the radar, and it's such a unique region and beautiful part of the world. I encourage people to look at pictures of Vernon online, it's kind of unlike any other place just geographically, geologically, and with the climate. It's a very unique place. The town itself is a really special, a really quiet place and truly place. I can't imagine a better place to grow up than Vernon. You have a ski resort and beautiful lakes that you can skate on in the winter and swim in, it’s in the sun, it's really safe and. I'm still very close with lots of people from there. 

What was it like to go back?
It's so funny because I associate all of my trips back to Vernon with like, you know, going home for Christmas, or I always go there to just like chill and eat my mom's cooking and just kind of take it easy. And it was so bizarre to go home, to have a sort of stressful reporting trip where I'm like hitting the pavements, trying to see if I can get ahold of people and, and all that. But it was really fun to be going all over town with my microphones. So many of the people that I needed to talk to have never really been interviewed for anything before. So it felt like a unique challenge to make people feel comfortable from the outset, so that we could get some good tape where it feels like it's just two people having a casual conversation.

How did you make people that aren't used to being interviewed feel comfortable on mic? Were people skeptical?
People were a little bit skeptical—they seemed baffled why I was so interested in this story. A lot of people I reached out to were like, ‘hasn't everything that could possibly be written about this already happened? Why?' These boys came and they lied and then they left. And what more do you need to know?’ So that was a hurdle, to convince people to talk to me, and that I'm trying to make something of value about our community. 

Where were you in the podcast process when you were interviewing them? Did you know this would be a show or was this at the very beginning?
My original plan was to make this podcast by myself. I said to myself, ‘I'm just gonna call some people and I'm gonna make this by myself and release it independently.’ So when I started trying to get access to the key players, they’d be like, ‘what type of thing is this for?’ And I'd say, ‘I'm just a nobody person that just wants to talk to you about this and make an independent podcast.’ And then when I partnered with Campside and Sony, I circled back to interview a lot of these people, the second time, they're like, ‘wait a second. I thought you were just making this by yourself.’ And I'm like, ‘I was, I was, but now there's a waiver instead of just me being on my own.’

When I circled back, I had a much clearer idea of the scope of it. When I was imagining making it by myself, I didn't think I was gonna make eight episodes. But as I started talking to people and understanding the story better, I realized I’d need a lot of help and a lot more runway than four episodes.

Did people recognize you when you were doing your reporting?
I knew a couple of the people but Tammy, I didn't know. My connection to her was that she was my prom date’s mom’s good friend.

That’s solid.
It's pretty good because my prom date’s mom always liked me. And she's like, yeah, he's a local guy and a nice boy. Tammy felt so negative about the first media go around with the story 17 years ago that she was really reluctant to revisit it. And I know that she had turned down other people who were sniffing around telling the story again seven years ago. It really feels like you can't tell the story without Tammy. She’s too crucial to the whole thing.

So then you're the perfect person to be telling this story because you have people’s trust.
If I wasn't from Vernon, I don't think I would've gotten these people.

The trailer was amazing. How was it made?
Our first couple drafts were not good, and then my editor, Karen, I've learned more from Karen than anyone in my entire life about storytelling and collecting tape and literally everything that you can learn. Karen did a pass of it and, and it was suddenly like, ‘oh, I get it now!’ And then we found more of the right clips to put in there. And then we found the right composer. He put some of his original tracks in there and it just elevated it more. We were really happy with how it came out, because with a few days to go before it was due, it was not in good shape. We knew this series warranted a really good trailer. We knew we had good enough tape and a good enough story that this should be a killer trailer. 

Do you listen to any podcasts? Were any of them inspiration for Wild Boys?
When we started the pandemic, I had one daughter, but now I have two, and there was a ton of stroller pushing time. I wasn't working so I was just devouring podcasts in a way that I never had in my life. The Ballad of Billy Balls, Wind of Change was like a light bulb moment for me. I really loved the Dolly one that Jad Abumrad did. I really loved Unfinished: Short Creek

Did you learn anything about yourself making the show?
The biggest thing that I learned is that when your brain absorbs a news story, you can carry around the wrong version of it for your whole life, from lack of curiosity. My whole life, I've been thinking that in regards to the story that it was like, these two California kids came to town and just tried to trick us all to have a laugh and then they left and they weren't even sorry. That's the story that was absorbed into my brain and that was not what happened. Something a lot more complicated and nuanced happened. And it made me think about what other stories or bouncing around my brain that I need to re-examine.

How did you get the bush boys to agree to speak on the podcast?
I will say that one of them was extremely easy to get and for the other one, it took a year of several moving parts to make it actually happen. I didn't know it was gonna happen until like 12 hours before it was happening. 

How did your comedy background help you with making a story?
My background's more in sketch. Sketch is very collaborative and it's very much like ‘let's all throw out ideas until we have the best idea.’ I get the sense that isn't like super common when you're writing a true crime thing. It's just like a joke, trying to find the right sentence, working, shopping it around. And comedy thrives on efficiency. I’m always thinking, ‘what is the most effective way I can convey this complicated set of like events? How can we keep this thing moving?’ That helped a lot in the scripting. 

Is there a show that you love that not a lot of people know about?
I really love Mike Birbiglia's podcast called Working It Out, where he has people on and they kind of go through their notebook and they take observations or feelings or ideas. And then they kind of try and find the nugget that makes it true. And then they try to write jokes around it. I love listening to that. It's a very soothing one.

And this is gonna be a really weird but my favorite podcast in the world is Co-Main Event. It feels like it they're making it specifically for me. It's a podcast about fighting and combat sports. It’s these two guys in Montana, one of them's a novelist and the other was a long time journalist and they are so funny and smart and they talk about very interesting things. They're always talking about fighter unions and stuff like that. I love it. It's funny. It's the only podcast that I listen to immediately when it drops every week.

Thanks, Sam!