Episode 552 - Bret Easton Ellis

Episode 552 • Released November 19, 2014 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:All right, let's do this.

00:00:10Marc:How are you?

00:00:10Marc:What the fuckers?

00:00:11Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:12Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:13Marc:What the fucker spaniels?

00:00:15Marc:Yeah, I think I made that one up.

00:00:17Marc:I think I did that one.

00:00:19Marc:Hi, I'm Mark Marin.

00:00:20Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:21Marc:Welcome to the show.

00:00:22Marc:I feel like every word is going to be my last word.

00:00:24Marc:I don't know why I'm not breathing properly right now.

00:00:26Marc:Perhaps it's because I'm holding my breath.

00:00:28Marc:It was weird.

00:00:29Marc:I sang last night in public again for, I don't know, I've done it a few times now, but I went out after the Trepany House show, rushed out, went over to the Baked Potato, where Brendan Small of Metalocalypse fame, he and Steve Agee do a little show there, like Monthly,

00:00:47Marc:uh, where comedians play some, you know, come up, do some jokes and then do a song.

00:00:53Marc:So of course I go there, you know, and Brendan and I are in touch.

00:00:55Marc:He's been on the show a couple of times.

00:00:57Marc:I've helped him sell his signature guitar with a Epiphone.

00:01:00Marc:And now he's got a Gibson Explorer, but pretty soon this is just going to be a music podcast.

00:01:05Marc:Not really.

00:01:06Marc:Um,

00:01:06Marc:Oh, by the way, the guest today, who's on the show today?

00:01:09Marc:Brett Easton Ellis.

00:01:10Marc:Uh-huh.

00:01:11Marc:I think there's a weird connection today because I'm going to do a little piece of a Mick Foley interview in a minute, too.

00:01:18Marc:I'll explain to you in a second.

00:01:19Marc:Let's talk about my future career as a musician.

00:01:22Marc:What was funny was that you go do a rehearsal with Brendan and the boys, and Dean Delray was also on the show.

00:01:30Marc:My buddy Dean Delray, Let There Be Talk is his podcast.

00:01:34Marc:He's a character.

00:01:35Marc:He's a rocker, real deal rocker.

00:01:37Marc:He did Let There Be Rock, and he sang it exactly like Bon Scott.

00:01:41Marc:Exactly.

00:01:42Marc:And I walk into that, and I get a little intimidated now because these guys can really play.

00:01:47Marc:But I plug in, and as a bedroom guitar player or a living room guitar player or a garage guitar player, i.e.

00:01:54Marc:a guitar player that does not generally play with other people, especially not professional musicians, I kind of want to jam.

00:02:00Marc:So I'm there.

00:02:01Marc:I'm cranking it up, getting a little feedback, noodling around, tuning my guitar.

00:02:06Marc:Brendan's like, you know, you don't have to have the volume up to tune it with the tuner.

00:02:09Marc:I'm like, wow, buzzkill.

00:02:11Marc:Buzzkill, Brendan.

00:02:12Marc:How about we just jam a little bit?

00:02:13Marc:Well, we really don't know how long we have this space.

00:02:15Marc:We've got a couple more songs to work out.

00:02:17Marc:Where's the fucking rock and roll heart?

00:02:20Marc:Let's waste four hours playing the same song over and over again.

00:02:24Marc:Come on.

00:02:25Marc:Maybe we'll get a couple of girls to hang out and listen to us play the same song over and over again.

00:02:30Marc:You know when you're in bands in high school, you'll always be a few friends hanging around, maybe a couple of girls smoking cigarettes, drinking a beer.

00:02:37Marc:And they just sit there and watch you stop and start and do the same song over and over again.

00:02:42Marc:Every band that I was in in high school, none of them ever played out.

00:02:44Marc:And we only knew four songs.

00:02:46Marc:But I got to say, I had a great time.

00:02:49Marc:And I'm not a guy that has a great time in general.

00:02:51Marc:The Trippany show was great.

00:02:53Marc:Audience had a nice time.

00:02:54Marc:And I ran over there with a gal.

00:02:57Marc:I ran over with the gal I'm dating.

00:02:59Marc:All right.

00:02:59Marc:It's out.

00:03:00Marc:It's out.

00:03:01Marc:No names, dating a gal, and she paints.

00:03:04Marc:She's a painter.

00:03:05Marc:She's a real deal painter.

00:03:07Marc:She makes a living painting.

00:03:09Marc:Whole other world, man.

00:03:10Marc:The art world, whole other world.

00:03:13Marc:I go to her studio.

00:03:14Marc:I look at what she's doing.

00:03:15Marc:I'm like, holy fuck, that's inside of you?

00:03:18Marc:There's a balance to it, man.

00:03:19Marc:Real artists that really do it.

00:03:21Marc:I mean, she makes a living selling paintings for reals.

00:03:25Marc:to know somebody or be with somebody and, and to be intimate with somebody who can paint, she's an abstract painter.

00:03:33Marc:And it's sort of like, you look at that fucking thing and it's like, that is finished, man.

00:03:37Marc:You know how to finish something and it looks finished.

00:03:40Marc:And in that form, that's not easy to do.

00:03:42Marc:That's some solid craft to, to, to hang out with somebody that does a completely different thing than me.

00:03:48Marc:That just like is fucking great at it.

00:03:52Marc:It's a little daunting.

00:03:53Marc:It's a little daunting.

00:03:54Marc:It's we're trying the she has her life.

00:03:56Marc:I have my life.

00:03:57Marc:And when we're together, we just have some nice time trying that as opposed to I'm up her ass.

00:04:02Marc:She's up my ass.

00:04:04Marc:And there's constant drama all the fucking time.

00:04:06Marc:And I'm yelling and apologizing more than doing anything else.

00:04:11Marc:anyway so she goes with me over to uh the baked potato and uh i don't know i just like it i don't think i'm going to change careers or anything but i think it's it's it's the hobby i need to engage in and just do it man i just it's like i always talk about playing so i still get some guys together and just go play i got a drummer there's a rehearsal space down the street

00:04:35Marc:Brendan was good too it was cool we had a moment where we were actually trading licks and then we were playing licks at the same time and I'm like next time around next time I do this Allman Brothers Skinnered but see there's part of me that doesn't want to be that guy like am I that guy am I the 50 year old guy who's like let's do some oldies

00:04:53Marc:Maybe I am.

00:04:54Marc:But if you go real old, then you just make it your own.

00:04:57Marc:Hard to make Skinner to your own.

00:04:58Marc:You can, but it's going to be ironic.

00:05:02Marc:There's no way around it.

00:05:04Marc:You're going to play Ernest Skinner.

00:05:05Marc:It's got to be the right room.

00:05:06Marc:I can play Ernest Skinner, but I don't know if I would.

00:05:09Marc:But I don't know.

00:05:10Marc:You go back to the blues, though.

00:05:12Marc:It's like, I'm going to own this fucking Jimmy Reed song.

00:05:14Marc:I'm going to own this Howlin' Wolf song.

00:05:16Marc:They made it to be worn.

00:05:19Marc:The blues were made to be worn.

00:05:22Marc:God damn it.

00:05:24Marc:Sometimes I like what I say.

00:05:27Marc:So occasionally I'll drink some tea with the artist lady.

00:05:31Marc:I'll sip some tea.

00:05:34Marc:Pow!

00:05:35Marc:Look out.

00:05:36Marc:Just shit my pants.

00:05:37Marc:Haven't done that in a while.

00:05:37Marc:Just coffee.coop.

00:05:38Marc:Interesting comedian conversation today.

00:05:40Marc:Occasionally I ask comics, you know, you do a bit and you're like, I know that somebody else is doing a bit on that, but is it like my bit?

00:05:47Marc:So I had to text Whitney Cummings today to clear up a discrepancy there might be between our squirting bits.

00:05:55Marc:Yeah, I've been sort of discussing squirting a bit on stage occasionally.

00:06:01Marc:It's not it's not a centerpiece bit.

00:06:03Marc:I don't do it all the time.

00:06:04Marc:I've been playing around with it for a while.

00:06:06Marc:But I remember that she did a piece on squirting.

00:06:09Marc:at the Oddball Fest dates we had.

00:06:11Marc:So I had to text Whitney.

00:06:12Marc:I'm like, hey, man, I need to talk to you about a joke.

00:06:15Marc:What's your squirting bit?

00:06:17Marc:And she texted me her squirting bit.

00:06:18Marc:And I texted her my squirting bit.

00:06:20Marc:And they were not the same at all.

00:06:22Marc:And I felt great.

00:06:22Marc:I'm like, so we're not crossing streams.

00:06:25Marc:Yeah, look at this kind of a pee joke with the squirting.

00:06:29Marc:All right, look, you guys.

00:06:32Marc:Here's what's weird.

00:06:34Marc:I used to host a morning show on Air America Radio back in 2004, 2005.

00:06:38Marc:And we did a live broadcast from a soul food restaurant in Harlem once.

00:06:43Marc:And Brett Easton Ellis was on that broadcast.

00:06:47Marc:And...

00:06:47Marc:Oddly, the other guest was Mick Foley.

00:06:49Marc:This is completely coincidental.

00:06:51Marc:Completely coincidental.

00:06:53Marc:Mick Foley, who's a friend of the show in a way because he used to do my radio show.

00:06:58Marc:I've guest hosted with Mick back in the day.

00:07:00Marc:We did some bits on the radio.

00:07:02Marc:He's a great guy.

00:07:03Marc:One of the great professional wrestlers.

00:07:06Marc:He stopped by because he's making the rounds promoting a new documentary he's in called I Am Santa Claus.

00:07:11Marc:And he's actually Santa Claus in the documentary, which is now available on DVD, Blu-ray and iTunes.

00:07:16Marc:We'll have a full episode with Mick in the near future.

00:07:20Marc:So here's a snippet of me and me and mankind.

00:07:28Guest:The movie's a Christmas movie.

00:07:30Guest:Well, it's a Santa Claus movie following Santas year-round, so it could be suitable.

00:07:38Guest:It's for anyone who likes movies.

00:07:39Guest:It's a year-round Santa movie.

00:07:42Guest:It's really for anyone who likes stories about complex characters.

00:07:46Guest:I think people will go back after they watch it the first time, and they'll probably re-watch the last 20 minutes every year.

00:07:55Guest:Because it's...

00:07:56Guest:It makes you feel good.

00:07:57Guest:Who directed it?

00:07:58Guest:Tommy Avalone.

00:07:59Guest:Yeah.

00:08:00Guest:He got in touch with me three years ago.

00:08:03Guest:Yeah.

00:08:03Guest:Seeing if I just want to be one of the ... A good documentary has some subplots going on.

00:08:09Guest:And he wanted to know if I would be the guy who wanted to give it a shot.

00:08:13Guest:Right.

00:08:14Guest:Really wanted to give ... And I dressed up before.

00:08:16Guest:Sure you have.

00:08:17Guest:You've done a lot of dressing up.

00:08:19Guest:Yeah.

00:08:19Guest:specifically like i'd been i'd been santa mick like for d snyder who's a friend of mine and i've done it for the you never wrestled as santa i did wrestle as santa you did and the funny thing is i wrestled in afghanistan as santa the idea was a good santa versus bad santa match with the good santa wearing you know the the fatigues um what was the bad

00:08:42Guest:Santa was supposed to be wearing like a grungy Santa outfit the problem was like I couldn't actually oh camo they don't wear fatigues anymore I couldn't fit into the camo so we inexplicably had the bad Santa no he dressed as one of the troops I was the good Santa with the huge outfit and we just cleaned it up a little bit and we had ourselves a you know like a ridiculous Santa match for the troop so you're familiar with the Santa outfit oh I love the Santa outfit but I'd never even thought about being the guy

00:09:12Guest:So Avalon calls you up and he wants you to do this thing.

00:09:15Guest:He wants to know, I'll try, you know, not just try it, but follow my progress.

00:09:18Guest:What was the pitch?

00:09:19Guest:He said he knew I'd, he was a director.

00:09:22Guest:He'd always had, always had a wrestler in one of his projects.

00:09:26Guest:You know, it was just a cameo.

00:09:27Guest:Right.

00:09:27Guest:He started this Santa thing.

00:09:29Guest:He grew up with wrestling.

00:09:30Guest:He's a wrestling guy.

00:09:30Guest:He grew up, yeah, huge wrestling fan.

00:09:32Guest:And he was wondering, how am I going to get a Santa?

00:09:35Guest:I mean, how am I going to get a wrestler in this Santa project?

00:09:38Guest:One of the guys pointed out, Mick Foley's like a year-round Christmas guy.

00:09:42Guest:He's got a room dedicated to Christmas year-round.

00:09:45Guest:Do you?

00:09:46Guest:Yeah, I do.

00:09:47Guest:Okay.

00:09:47Guest:I mean, when I moved back to Long Island in 2000, I moved into a house that needed a lot of work.

00:09:52Guest:He could have started anywhere, like bathroom, kitchen, bedroom.

00:09:57Guest:Yeah.

00:09:57Guest:And I was like, no, I want a Christmas room.

00:09:59Guest:Like, I want my own room.

00:10:01Marc:So he'd heard about that, and you were like, that's enough to compel the film.

00:10:06Guest:He thought it would be a nice little offshoot, you know, where he'd follow in four guys, you know, who, you know, some of them, you know, live for the six-week period.

00:10:16Guest:One of the guys needs it desperately, not only emotionally, but financially.

00:10:20Guest:And one of the guys, who's turned out to be a good friend of mine, after the filming,

00:10:24Guest:uh who appears in the uh i don't want to give away too much but uh he appears at my house on christmas eve and like creates christmas magic you know like oh yeah hollywood couldn't duplicate and he he legally changed his name to santa claus giving you some indication of his commitment and so i was just going to be the guy they follow to see you know it wasn't until the night before i

00:10:49Guest:I did my appearance as Santa at Santa's Village in Jefferson, New Hampshire, which is a place my mom and dad had taken me to in the late 60s.

00:10:59Guest:Really?

00:10:59Guest:Three and four, yeah.

00:11:00Guest:And I revisited it in 96 with my kids.

00:11:02Guest:We've been going every year since 96.

00:11:04Guest:Even when we lived in Florida, we would take our vacations to the White Mountains in New Hampshire for whatever deep-hidden psychological meaning someone wants to read into.

00:11:14Marc:Let's do it right now.

00:11:15Marc:All right.

00:11:16Marc:For closure.

00:11:17Guest:Yeah.

00:11:17Marc:You got your kids.

00:11:18Marc:You grew up with it.

00:11:19Marc:Here you go.

00:11:20Marc:It's a tradition.

00:11:21Guest:There you go, yeah.

00:11:21Guest:And I imagine that it was a way for me to escape to the best and happiest moments of my childhood.

00:11:27Guest:With your parents.

00:11:28Guest:It's like that suspension of disbelief.

00:11:30Guest:So even though somebody's buying a ticket...

00:11:32Guest:And hopefully appreciating what wrestling is instead of, you know, doubting it for what it's not.

00:11:38Guest:It's the same way with Santa.

00:11:39Guest:Like, we say Santa's for the kids, but it's really about bringing the adults back to a place where they were happiest.

00:11:46Guest:And when a guy looks good enough, you know, and when he embodies that spirit.

00:11:50Guest:And there are guys out there who believe they are touched by the spirit of the original St.

00:11:55Guest:Nicholas, and they're not crazy.

00:11:57Guest:They feel like they become that guy immediately.

00:11:59Guest:And then for adults, you know, in my case in the movie, I'm Santa Claus.

00:12:03Guest:You see me.

00:12:04Guest:It would be impossible to script a bigger smile than the one that I have at the end of this movie.

00:12:10Guest:It's like, you know, we did the extra commentary track.

00:12:14Guest:The director was like, your face looks like it's hurting your smiling face.

00:12:18Guest:So big.

00:12:18Guest:Yeah, it's a nice piece of film.

00:12:21Marc:It's good.

00:12:22Marc:For years, you provided adolescent, mostly men, with the outlet for their rage and frustration in a healthy way.

00:12:29Marc:And now you're bringing pure joy to the children.

00:12:32Marc:You're covering all your bases, Mick.

00:12:34Marc:Doing what I can, Mark.

00:12:35Marc:You're covering all your bases.

00:12:36Marc:So when your time comes...

00:12:39Marc:You'll just be a big yin-yang up there at the gate of whatever.

00:12:42Marc:I'm hoping so.

00:12:43Guest:I'm hoping so.

00:12:44Guest:Do you still go to New Hampshire with your family?

00:12:47Guest:Every year, yeah.

00:12:48Guest:Do all of them go?

00:12:48Guest:Not every year.

00:12:51Guest:But my daughter's 20.

00:12:52Guest:She still likes going.

00:12:53Guest:And then I'll reach out to the owner.

00:12:57Guest:This year I'll be like, can I do it?

00:12:58Guest:And so they'll let me... Are you going to be Santa?

00:13:01Guest:They'll let me do it for a few hours, yeah.

00:13:04Marc:You're not going into a ring acting crazy.

00:13:06Guest:Now you want to go into the ring and be Santa.

00:13:09Guest:I do, man.

00:13:09Guest:When you have that kid on your lap and he tugs on the beard and his eyes light up, yeah.

00:13:16Guest:Oh, really?

00:13:16Guest:When I'm in that role, when my kids are little, they go to Santa's Village and they say, that's Santa's helper.

00:13:22Guest:Right.

00:13:22Guest:I mean, I go out on a limb and say, I'm going to bleach the beard on the 24th.

00:13:27Guest:Yeah.

00:13:28Guest:And then I have a yak hair wig.

00:13:30Guest:I did try bleaching the hair and it just looked ridiculous, just orange and yellow.

00:13:34Guest:And then when I'm that guy, and I have a couple of good interactions, I feel it the same way I used to feel the wrestling characters.

00:13:41Guest:So no one can tell me I'm not the real Santa when I'm in that chair.

00:13:45Guest:Oh.

00:13:45Marc:Well, I congratulate you on this new, less risky role.

00:13:49Marc:This new, less risky character.

00:13:51Marc:Thank you, Mark.

00:13:57Marc:All right, that was Mick.

00:13:58Marc:Look forward to the full episode.

00:13:59Marc:Go grab that movie.

00:14:00Marc:It's a cute movie.

00:14:01Marc:A lot of heart.

00:14:02Marc:Old Mick's got a lot of heart.

00:14:05Marc:So, Brady Cinellis, what can I tell you about that?

00:14:07Marc:Intense dude, smart dude.

00:14:11Marc:The first time I read Less Than Zero, I had graduated college, and I decided I was going to take a train across country.

00:14:17Marc:I got on that train with Less Than Zero, Blue Movie by Terry Southern, Legs by William Kennedy.

00:14:24Marc:I'm like, gonna do some reading, gonna do some drinking, gonna get a sleeper car, I'm gonna be on the rails.

00:14:32Marc:Sweeper car at the level I got the sweeper car is basically a bathroom with a bed in it that's moving.

00:14:40Marc:And you can look at usually the worst part of a town traveling cross country.

00:14:45Marc:So I was on the train.

00:14:46Marc:I went from Boston to Chicago.

00:14:49Marc:Got a shoeshine.

00:14:50Marc:Went from Chicago to Memphis.

00:14:52Marc:Saw the Ducks at the Peabody Hotel.

00:14:54Marc:Went from Memphis to Austin.

00:14:56Marc:Met two girls on the train.

00:14:58Marc:Decided I had enough of this shit.

00:15:00Marc:I'm getting off in Austin and I'm flying Albuquerque.

00:15:02Marc:Fuck the train.

00:15:04Marc:I did read Less Than Zero, though.

00:15:06Marc:It's a fine memory.

00:15:07Marc:All right, let's talk to Brett Easton-Ellis.

00:15:12Marc:You make your own sandwich?

00:15:17Marc:Yeah.

00:15:17Marc:Good for you.

00:15:19Guest:Yeah.

00:15:20Marc:You made your own sandwich, brought it over.

00:15:22Guest:I don't know what people expect from me.

00:15:24Guest:What kind of person do you think I am?

00:15:26Guest:I do.

00:15:26Guest:I'm dining at a French restaurant for lunch and I'm like, you know, have a monocle and a cigarette holder.

00:15:31Guest:No, I made my own sandwich.

00:15:32Marc:Well, I mean, that's the idea that you landed on, so you must know that some people think that.

00:15:37Marc:I think there was a period in your life where you were living quite the urbane intellectual running about the town existence, right?

00:15:47Marc:Wasn't that your image at some point?

00:15:50Marc:Is it started?

00:15:51Marc:Sure.

00:15:52Guest:Are we doing this?

00:15:52Guest:Why not?

00:15:54Guest:Yeah, that was the image of me, wasn't it?

00:15:55Marc:Yeah.

00:15:56Guest:I mean, I see image.

00:15:57Guest:That's what what happened when I would be photographed or whatever.

00:16:00Guest:And I never felt that that my life was like that.

00:16:03Guest:I was a kid living in New York.

00:16:05Marc:But it was calculated.

00:16:07Marc:Right.

00:16:07Marc:I mean, you you know, you decided that you were going to appear this way.

00:16:12Guest:The look was calculated to a degree.

00:16:16Guest:There was the kind of idea that I had, this kind of empire I had, idea I had of the American male writer that I came of age.

00:16:24Marc:The New York version?

00:16:26Marc:You guys are coming off the tail of Plimpton, Mailer, Roth, the warriors of literature.

00:16:32Guest:Exactly.

00:16:33Guest:And they all dressed a certain way.

00:16:35Guest:I would see them at cocktail parties in the 50s or the 60s wearing suits and ties.

00:16:41Guest:And, you know, we wanted to emulate that look.

00:16:44Guest:And so, yes, to a degree, that was calculated until I could not hold the pose for any longer.

00:16:50Guest:You and Jay and who else?

00:16:52Guest:Basically, that was it.

00:16:53Guest:If we want to be real about it, they tried to turn it into this big group of people, and it just wasn't.

00:16:58Guest:It was a calculated thing that the media came up with.

00:17:01Guest:It didn't really exist.

00:17:02Guest:Jay was about 10 years older than me, and so I was really hanging out when I first moved to New York with my college friends.

00:17:09Guest:I mean, the people who just graduated from, you know, living in New York together.

00:17:12Marc:Where'd you go to school?

00:17:13Guest:I went to a very small college in Vermont called Bennington College.

00:17:17Marc:Everyone goes to Bennington!

00:17:19Marc:Do you know Mark Spitz, the writer for Spin?

00:17:22Marc:I know.

00:17:23Guest:I think he's younger than you.

00:17:24Guest:Of him, yeah.

00:17:25Marc:Tracy Katsky.

00:17:26Marc:That's a different generation, but everyone goes there.

00:17:29Guest:You're talking about Jonathan Latham.

00:17:30Guest:Donna Tartt.

00:17:31Guest:Yeah.

00:17:33Guest:They were your contemporary.

00:17:34Marc:They were my contemporaries, right.

00:17:35Marc:So these people that go to Bennington, they come, they're already, they're intellectual.

00:17:38Marc:You know, it's a groovy school.

00:17:40Guest:It's intellectual, but it's also, when I went, there was two classes.

00:17:47Guest:It was basically the new wave kids who were very sophisticated, and then there were the hippie kids.

00:17:54Guest:A lot of hippies at Bennington in the 80s.

00:17:56Guest:Sure.

00:17:57Guest:It was a very hippie school.

00:17:58Guest:And it's a really, really small school.

00:18:01Marc:Sure.

00:18:01Marc:So you have the avant-garde and the earthy people.

00:18:04Marc:Yeah, basically.

00:18:05Marc:The people that thought they were avant-garde and then the freaks.

00:18:08Marc:Yeah, and everyone's stoned.

00:18:10Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:18:10Marc:Everyone's on drugs.

00:18:11Marc:That's the one thing they had in common.

00:18:12Marc:Everyone's high.

00:18:13Guest:Yeah, my roommate was a complete hippie guy and our one bonding experience was over drugs.

00:18:19Marc:It's so funny because I had that too.

00:18:22Marc:My roommates, there was like three or four deadheads and me who had come out of Albuquerque thinking I was an arty guy.

00:18:28Marc:It was very interesting.

00:18:29Marc:There was something relaxing about them, wasn't there?

00:18:32Guest:Um, not necessarily for me.

00:18:35Guest:And I have to understand, I wasn't a relaxed guy anyway.

00:18:38Guest:So I really wasn't relaxed.

00:18:39Guest:It was hard for me to get relaxed.

00:18:41Guest:And my hippie roommate, who I had for about a year, I don't know, we kind of got on each other's nerves.

00:18:48Guest:And I can completely understand why, looking back.

00:18:52Guest:Yeah.

00:18:52Guest:Bennington is this tiny college and it's in the middle of nowhere.

00:18:58Guest:You only got 600 kids going there.

00:19:00Guest:600 kids go to this one college.

00:19:03Guest:And the freshman class is the biggest.

00:19:06Guest:The sophomore class is the smallest because Bennington has the highest attrition rate between freshman year and sophomore year.

00:19:12Guest:About half the class flees.

00:19:15Guest:Drugs are a bad thing.

00:19:16Guest:It's not drugs.

00:19:17Guest:It's the idea that Bennington wants you to create your own curriculum.

00:19:23Guest:It wants you to propose tutorials for yourself.

00:19:27Guest:And a lot of kids can't handle that.

00:19:29Guest:They want to be told what to do.

00:19:31Guest:And Bennington basically says, okay, you're here.

00:19:33Guest:We're giving you all these faculties.

00:19:35Guest:You can have all these great writing spaces, painting spaces, music spaces.

00:19:42Guest:Go to it.

00:19:43Guest:You're here.

00:19:43Guest:And a lot of kids just, they think it's going to be okay and they freeze.

00:19:47Marc:So they transfer out to more structured college.

00:19:49Marc:Much more structured college.

00:19:50Marc:What did you put yourself, what did you put together for yourself as your curriculum?

00:19:55Guest:A novel writing tutorial, a couple of music classes because I was a musician and I thought I was going to be a double major, a music major and a creative writing major.

00:20:04Guest:What did you play?

00:20:05Guest:I played keyboards, I played piano, I played guitar, I played bass.

00:20:09Marc:Really?

00:20:09Guest:Yeah.

00:20:10Guest:You do all that stuff?

00:20:10Marc:i did do all that stuff i really don't play that much anymore you let it all go kind of let it go not even not even as a hobby no not even as a hobby really what kind of music were you into then what was the big idea musically avant-garde art music or no no pop songs garage garage pop uh-huh that's what it was

00:20:29Guest:And so I was actually in a band with John Shanks, who's a huge music producer now, who's won a Grammy for being the producer of the year, I think, three years ago.

00:20:39Guest:Like, has produced everybody.

00:20:41Guest:And he was, when I was in high school, he and I had a band.

00:20:45Guest:In high school?

00:20:47Guest:I was 17 or 18.

00:20:49Marc:Where was this?

00:20:51Guest:Here in L.A.

00:20:52Guest:Where, in the Valley?

00:20:53Guest:Yeah, in the Valley.

00:20:54Okay.

00:20:54Guest:So you're a music guy.

00:20:57Guest:I was a music guy, yeah.

00:20:58Guest:And so I thought the band was going to... We got it together in 81, 82.

00:21:05Guest:And I thought I wasn't going to go to college.

00:21:07Guest:I thought I was going to stick with this band.

00:21:09Guest:I think it was called Line One.

00:21:11Guest:Line One.

00:21:12Guest:That's a good name.

00:21:14Guest:And I really thought, okay...

00:21:17Guest:screw college i know what i want to do i want to be a writer and i want to be a musician and um ultimately it just wasn't going to work that way it wasn't going to fly with my parents wasn't going to fly with my grandfather who was you know one was footing the bill for bennington and so i kind of like that you know prevailed and i shut the music dream down were you guys gigging were you out there playing were you laying tracks just we were laying tracks down but we were not we never played live anywhere

00:21:43Guest:We just didn't know really how to do that.

00:21:44Marc:I did that with my parents, too.

00:21:46Marc:Like, I don't want to go to college.

00:21:47Marc:And then, you know, ultimately, they didn't hardline me, but they were like, you want to think about this.

00:21:56Marc:You want to stay in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

00:21:57Marc:You want to be, what are you going to do?

00:22:00Marc:And I kind of freaked out, and I didn't have the grades to get into a good school, so I ended up going to a small kind of not great school.

00:22:08Guest:Well, how do you think I ended up at Bennington?

00:22:10Marc:Bennington doesn't even look at your grades.

00:22:11Marc:Seriously?

00:22:12Guest:Yeah, you don't even have to give SAT scores.

00:22:14Guest:So it's just a money thing.

00:22:16Guest:I think it's two things.

00:22:17Guest:I think it's a money thing, and I think it's...

00:22:21Guest:you submit samples i submitted samples of my writing not the music no not the music i just i just submitted writing samples and um my grades were bad in high school and my sat scores weren't great i had no interest in high school in anything other than writing yeah and then music i didn't have i just was just had no patience for anything else that i was doing when did you graduate high school 82

00:22:46Marc:So I graduated in 81.

00:22:47Marc:I'm a little older than you.

00:22:48Marc:We already established that on your show.

00:22:49Marc:I don't even remember.

00:22:50Marc:I think we did.

00:22:52Guest:So that's how you get in.

00:22:53Guest:And I think basically, I mean, I'm still very connected to the school now after a part of a long time of like, I disagreed with some of the stuff they did in the 90s.

00:23:01Guest:Like what?

00:23:01Guest:No, they had these sexual harassment things going on that were, and they fired a bunch of teachers and a large group

00:23:13Guest:A large population of my graduating class just shut down on the campus and didn't like the direction it was heading in.

00:23:20Guest:And so recently I've been much happier with the direction the college is going to do.

00:23:26Guest:And you're involved somehow?

00:23:27Guest:I'm involved.

00:23:28Guest:Really?

00:23:28Guest:After many years of not being involved, I'm seriously involved with Bennington.

00:23:31Guest:I just think it's a great place.

00:23:32Guest:And I think it's ultimately going to be the kind of school that is representative of where kids want to go.

00:23:40Guest:I think it's crazy now where you in order to get into a really good school.

00:23:45Guest:Yeah.

00:23:45Guest:You've got to be like a rocket scientist, a chef, a poet.

00:23:48Guest:You've got to have a 4.0.

00:23:50Guest:You've got to have all of these.

00:23:51Guest:Or some family connections.

00:23:52Guest:Yeah, or family connects.

00:23:53Guest:But you still, I mean, I don't even think that's going to help you at Stanford.

00:23:56Marc:But also, like, you know, how are you involved?

00:23:58Marc:Isn't that something that, like, the alum writer does?

00:24:02Marc:Do you go back?

00:24:02Marc:Do you teach for a few weeks?

00:24:04Marc:No.

00:24:05Marc:Are you on the board?

00:24:07Marc:I'm not on the board.

00:24:08Guest:You just call a guy and say, what's going on over there?

00:24:10Guest:They keep me posted, and sometimes they want me to tweet something.

00:24:14Guest:Oh.

00:24:14Guest:And they, I mean, I gradually got in the last two or three years back into, you know, being very pro-Bennington.

00:24:21Guest:And they have a new president who was just out here in L.A.

00:24:25Guest:And I hosted a couple of parties, fundraiser or whatever it was.

00:24:31Guest:And how are those parties?

00:24:33Marc:How's your Rolodex?

00:24:34Marc:Pretty good still?

00:24:36Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:24:37Guest:I mean, I'm just not that social anymore.

00:24:40Guest:I'm just not I just don't feel it.

00:24:41Guest:I mean, I prefer, you know, staying in.

00:24:44Guest:We're middle aged men.

00:24:45Guest:Right.

00:24:46Guest:And I just don't feel the need to... I mean, it really has to be enticing for me to go out at night, to call up an UberX and get myself someplace.

00:24:56Guest:It's just the idea of just staying at home and choosing a movie on Apple is pleasant.

00:25:05Marc:So you grew up here in the valley.

00:25:07Marc:In the valley.

00:25:08Marc:What town?

00:25:09Marc:Sherman Oaks.

00:25:10Marc:Are your folks still here?

00:25:11Guest:My dad is dead.

00:25:13Guest:My mom is still here in the house that I grew up in with my stepfather.

00:25:17Marc:So you go there?

00:25:18Guest:Went there last night.

00:25:20Marc:And the relationship is good?

00:25:22Marc:The relationship is really good.

00:25:23Guest:Yeah.

00:25:24Marc:So how did you grow up?

00:25:26Marc:I mean, what was your dad?

00:25:27Guest:What was his story?

00:25:28Guest:He was a real estate investment analyst.

00:25:31Guest:And he worked at Colwell Banker.

00:25:33Guest:And then he...

00:25:35Guest:Then had his own company, which was the Robert Ellis Company.

00:25:39Marc:Commercial real estate?

00:25:40Guest:Commercial real estate.

00:25:41Guest:But he also would, I guess, sell buildings.

00:25:45Guest:I mean, his big sale was the U.S.

00:25:47Guest:Steel Building, I think, in 82 or 83.

00:25:49Guest:And what his job basically was is that if someone wanted to buy a building...

00:25:55Guest:he would go in and check it out say this is what you should get this is what it's worth and he was kind of an agent in a way so you know if the building sold for this much then he would get like a 10 right sure sure and so he really made the bulk of his money in the early 80s mid 80s um and yeah that's what he did and but when i was a kid he was just he was in kind of like high-end real estate and you got siblings i have two younger sisters and

00:26:21Marc:Now, how complicated was that family thing?

00:26:24Marc:I say this because I know that I just get a feeling because of the tone that you're a fighter.

00:26:32Marc:And I recently had problems with my father that I just resolved that are cyclical.

00:26:39Marc:So how much did, and I find that people who are creative and certainly have a certain type of disposition are in conflict.

00:26:46Marc:I'm projecting all this onto you.

00:26:49Marc:You're absolutely right.

00:26:51Marc:That the sort of journey to find a better father

00:26:55Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:26:56Marc:It haunted me.

00:26:57Marc:It haunted me all my life.

00:26:59Marc:Like, what was the dynamic with you guys?

00:27:00Guest:I tuned out.

00:27:01Guest:I tuned out very young.

00:27:03Guest:Like, you shut down?

00:27:04Guest:I kind of shut down and lost myself in books and film and music.

00:27:08Guest:And that was just kind of my world.

00:27:09Guest:The dynamic in the house was, and I've written about this extensively in a novel I wrote called Lunar Park, where, you know, my dad was a problem.

00:27:17Guest:He was a problem.

00:27:18Guest:And for you or in general, in general, for everyone in the house.

00:27:24Guest:And he was a community of home.

00:27:25Guest:Yeah.

00:27:27Guest:And it just kind of like I guess couldn't really deal with the I want to say the negativity.

00:27:34Guest:What was the problem with I think he was just an unhappy man.

00:27:39Guest:But how did it manifest?

00:27:41Guest:Drinking.

00:27:42Guest:Oh.

00:27:43Guest:Drinking.

00:27:43Guest:Anger.

00:27:44Guest:Anger and drinking.

00:27:45Guest:Very angry.

00:27:46Guest:Yeah.

00:27:46Guest:Kick the dog once.

00:27:47Guest:That was really bad.

00:27:48Marc:A dog kicker.

00:27:49Guest:I know.

00:27:50Guest:Kick the dog.

00:27:50Guest:And that was just.

00:27:51Guest:Did he kick you?

00:27:52Guest:Didn't kick me.

00:27:54Guest:But there were a couple of scuffles.

00:27:56Guest:A couple of altercations.

00:27:57Guest:And drunkenness.

00:27:59Guest:Yeah.

00:28:00Guest:Yeah.

00:28:00Guest:And with drunkenness.

00:28:01Guest:So I kind of I just became very pragmatic in a way.

00:28:06Guest:I kind of had to shut down.

00:28:08Guest:I knew I was there until I was about 18.

00:28:10Guest:And I just learned to navigate where I learned to navigate around certain things.

00:28:15Guest:And one was his anger and his inability to, I don't know, to connect with his children.

00:28:25Guest:And, you know, we would have.

00:28:28Guest:Right.

00:28:29Guest:I mean, it wasn't like I. Yeah.

00:28:31Guest:I mean, and it would.

00:28:32Guest:And, you know, I have to say it is a really shitty thing for a guy to not have that.

00:28:38Marc:father no and i and i see how it has wrecked certain things in my life like what because like you like to have a father but but you know you know he's there he's not emotionally supportive because he's incapacitated for one reason or another whether it's narcissism drinking oh narcissism was a big big part sure so then you just boomer narcissism yeah horrendous yeah

00:28:58Marc:So then you're just left to your own devices to try to develop some sense of self that usually has no closure and you wander the world looking for that closure.

00:29:07Marc:And then you just, your whole life is spent reacting to this thing.

00:29:10Guest:And then you stop.

00:29:12Guest:And you have to stop.

00:29:12Guest:You get to a point where you just have to stop doing it.

00:29:15Guest:You hit a wall.

00:29:16Guest:You know, you just can't keep looking for that.

00:29:18Guest:And it's futile.

00:29:20Guest:It's ultimately futile.

00:29:21Guest:And so you just have to process it yourself.

00:29:23Guest:But, you know, and the other thing is that I've noticed that I see guys and it's not a lot of them, but I see guys who've had a really good relationship with their fathers.

00:29:32Guest:They're more together.

00:29:33Marc:of course if you're just more together even if you have one grounded parent that isn't either the you know the if they're not completely codependent like it's hard i think to have a good parent who's signed on to the bullshit of the bad one for a period like but like how did it incapacitate you emotionally specifically in terms of you just you just said like you know you as an adult you've looked at you know how what the effect of it is has been on your life

00:29:59Guest:Well, I think it's made a lot of my relationships with other males fraught with a kind of suspicion.

00:30:07Guest:It made my male relationships complicated in a way, more complicated than I think I initially thought they were until at a certain point I looked back and said, not everyone's your dad.

00:30:21Guest:Not everyone is your dad.

00:30:22Marc:That's right.

00:30:23Marc:Someone had to tell me that.

00:30:24Guest:Right.

00:30:24Guest:No, I know.

00:30:25Guest:Not everyone is your dad.

00:30:26Guest:And that is, yeah, that was a big moment.

00:30:29Guest:And then just dealing with it in therapy.

00:30:32Marc:Did you have that thing where, like, I find, like, I'm not even sure if when I was younger, maybe 15, 20 years ago, that I might have been effectively a borderline personality.

00:30:42Marc:I don't know.

00:30:42Marc:Like, because I know you grow out of that sometimes.

00:30:45Marc:But I found that, like, my emotional requirements of friends was too big.

00:30:51Marc:Oh, my God.

00:30:53Marc:Oh, my God.

00:30:54Marc:It's just like you pick one guy and it's like, well, you're the guy.

00:30:59Marc:You're it.

00:31:01Marc:And these people are like, what do you want from me?

00:31:03Guest:I don't understand what you do.

00:31:06Guest:Oh, God, this is bringing back so many shit, so much shit from my 20s.

00:31:11Guest:OK, I was exactly like that.

00:31:12Guest:It's the worst.

00:31:13Guest:But add on that I was also famous.

00:31:16Guest:You know, I was really well known.

00:31:18Guest:That is a horrible, toxic thing for me.

00:31:21Guest:But I'm kind of exaggerating that.

00:31:23Guest:I mean, I was also a good friend and I was a funny guy and I was, you know, I had a lot of friends and I wasn't an asshole.

00:31:29Guest:Right.

00:31:30Guest:But I know exactly what emotional requirement.

00:31:33Guest:Exactly.

00:31:33Guest:And that is what I was.

00:31:35Guest:I was searching for it.

00:31:36Guest:I needed it so badly.

00:31:38Guest:Yeah.

00:31:39Guest:I couldn't breathe if I didn't have it.

00:31:40Guest:Now, that doesn't manifest itself in terms of you going out with your friends and acting like a dick at all.

00:31:45Guest:It's much more subtle than that.

00:31:46Guest:Right.

00:31:47Guest:And more insidious in a way.

00:31:49Guest:Right.

00:31:49Guest:And you can do it while smiling and taking people out to dinner.

00:31:52Guest:Right.

00:31:52Guest:It's not like, you know, grabbing someone literally by the lapels and saying, I need this from here.

00:31:57Guest:You don't do that.

00:31:58Guest:No.

00:31:58Guest:So, yes, that was a huge requirement I had.

00:32:02Guest:And that's a huge regret, too.

00:32:04Guest:Because I know that it fucked up relationships I have with my male, a couple male friends.

00:32:08Guest:Right.

00:32:09Guest:That I just was...

00:32:10Guest:a massive problem that they were still attracted to and wanted to be friends with sure and we had this mind game yeah and they would start competing with me and being super competitive in a way that i i didn't understand it yeah and it was yes it was and and the fact that you're in your 20s yeah and it's just like craziness why i can't imagine that like well how old were you when lesson zero was was i was 21.

00:32:35Marc:So, I mean, that's crazy.

00:32:37Marc:It is ridiculous.

00:32:37Marc:That book was huge.

00:32:38Marc:And knowing you even now, the short amount of time I know you, I can't even imagine the insanity of that, of being lifted to that level and then being just sort of almost like, you know, it was almost like the New York press was like ready.

00:32:54Marc:The literary press was like, they're finally ready.

00:32:57Marc:They're here.

00:32:58Guest:It wasn't that nice.

00:33:02Guest:You know, this is the weird thing about it was about, you know, half of the reviews for that book were bad.

00:33:09Guest:And they really targeted Simon & Schuster, my publisher, as kind of, you know...

00:33:14Guest:What are you doing publishing some like 20 year old drug addicts diary?

00:33:20Guest:And, you know, they got a lot of flack for that.

00:33:21Guest:But again, you know, so the book, you know, for some for whatever reason, word of it was a word of mouth book because they only published about 5000 copies of the theme for their first edition.

00:33:31Guest:And not expecting it to do anything, not a penny for promotion.

00:33:34Guest:So they kind of just dumped it out there.

00:33:36Guest:And I was happy.

00:33:37Guest:I mean, I didn't care.

00:33:38Guest:5,000 copies?

00:33:39Guest:Awesome.

00:33:40Guest:And then I did a couple of promotional pieces for a couple newspapers.

00:33:44Guest:And then it kind of built.

00:33:45Guest:And it didn't really become a bestseller until about five months after it came out.

00:33:50Guest:It was a really slow build.

00:33:51Marc:But it seemed like the timing that once the press got hold of it and got hold of the idea of you in New York and maybe you and Jay and whatever was happening in the mid-'80s in New York, which wasn't great, was it?

00:34:04Marc:I mean, it was sort of like this weird post-disco unclear time.

00:34:09Marc:Completely, yes.

00:34:09Guest:That's actually, I was trying to figure out a way to put it.

00:34:12Marc:Looking for definition.

00:34:14Marc:Yeah, it was.

00:34:15Marc:And maybe you guys provided some of that juice.

00:34:18Marc:Yeah.

00:34:18Marc:You know, we might have.

00:34:21Marc:Wasn't Tam Majanowicz in that crew?

00:34:22Marc:Or was she before you guys?

00:34:23Guest:No, she was there too.

00:34:25Marc:Slaves in New York.

00:34:25Marc:So there was some vitality coming.

00:34:28Guest:But there were also a lot of, you know, there were editors and people who were very cool editors.

00:34:33Guest:Like the editor that discovered me, this young guy named Morgan Entrykin, who was like only about six or seven years older than me.

00:34:40Guest:And he had a choir that listened to originally.

00:34:42Guest:So he was out on the town, you know.

00:34:44Guest:Gary Fiskejohn, who was Jay's editor.

00:34:47Guest:So there was this group of literary people, and yeah, they were in fashion spreads.

00:34:54Guest:It was that, I mean, it's kind of hard to...

00:34:59Guest:I don't know, reimagine that for today?

00:35:01Marc:Well, no, because if you really think about it, there was a period where when you talk about the heroes that you guys were emulating or trying to sort of be the legacy of, there was a time, and I've talked about this before, where New York intellectuals defined a nice chunk of culture.

00:35:16Marc:And then it started to sort of contract.

00:35:19Marc:You know, certainly, you know, then, you know, the party times happen, the disco times happen.

00:35:23Marc:And I think that there was a struggling of the intelligentsia of New York to sort of hold on to that cultural relevance and also the city itself.

00:35:33Guest:You know, I didn't care.

00:35:34Guest:I know, but am I right?

00:35:37Guest:You were right about all of that.

00:35:38Guest:That is completely correct.

00:35:39Guest:That is an absolute correct reading of the time.

00:35:41Guest:I was 21 or 22.

00:35:43Guest:Who were these adults I was hanging out with?

00:35:46Guest:They were all 10 years older than me.

00:35:48Guest:I really had my own friends.

00:35:49Guest:And I never considered myself to be part of the intelligentsia.

00:35:52Guest:There was Susan Sontag.

00:35:54Guest:The real ones.

00:35:55Marc:I was just a pop culture.

00:35:58Marc:The people that you studied in college.

00:36:01Marc:You know, like Susan Sontag.

00:36:02Marc:There's always Susan Sontag.

00:36:03Marc:Right.

00:36:03Marc:Which is sort of like, I kind of understand you.

00:36:06Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:36:07Marc:But that's real intellectual stuff.

00:36:09Marc:Well, sure.

00:36:10Marc:I get it.

00:36:10Guest:Yes, I would be at parties and there would be Norman Mailer and Gay Talese and Kurt Vonnegut and John Didion and all of the literary luminaries that I grew up with.

00:36:19Guest:One of the awesome things about, you know, becoming well-known is that it does open that door for you to meet these people.

00:36:26Marc:And you're in parties with famous people looking uncomfortable.

00:36:29Guest:Yeah, right, right, right.

00:36:30Guest:Exactly.

00:36:30Guest:A bunch of famous people standing around not knowing what to do.

00:36:33Guest:But I think I was just kind of young enough to just not even let it overwhelm me or anything.

00:36:39Guest:Were you still detached?

00:36:40Guest:Or you were having fun?

00:36:41Guest:I was having fun.

00:36:42Guest:You weren't shut down.

00:36:43Guest:No.

00:36:44Guest:I had shut down in a different way.

00:36:46Guest:And that came about with the writing of American Psycho.

00:36:49Guest:And what that came out of, in a way, was...

00:36:52Guest:oh, I have to grow up, and I have to grow up in this miserable, yuppie, Reagan-era society.

00:36:57Guest:But there was a book in between them.

00:36:58Guest:Oh, yeah, there was a book.

00:36:59Guest:Yeah, I published a book.

00:37:00Guest:I had already been... I almost had finished The Rules of Attraction once Less Than Zero came out.

00:37:06Guest:So Less Than Zero came out in the summer of 85, and then I had finished... And that was sort of a sequel?

00:37:13Marc:You know, all the books are kind of linked.

00:37:15Guest:The characters appear in all different books.

00:37:17Marc:I read Less Than Zero on a train.

00:37:21Marc:I decided that after I think, I don't know, it must have been right when it fucking came out because it was like, I'm gonna take a train across country after college, so maybe it was 86.

00:37:33Marc:It was around that time and I got a stack of books.

00:37:35Marc:I had Legs by William Kennedy, Less Than Zero, Blue Movie by Terry Southern.

00:37:40Marc:I remember the books I chose to read, but when I read Less Than Zero, I was sort of an aspiring intellectual and I thought it was profound

00:37:49Marc:to me, the style of it, because I just plowed through the sound and the fury, and I thought that the lack of description was genius in a way, that these characters, you know, you really had to sort of hang on to the tone of their words and the actions, and you become part of that if you were to that age.

00:38:06Marc:So I thought it was a great book.

00:38:09Marc:It changed my mind about things.

00:38:12Guest:Thanks.

00:38:12Guest:I mean, to get back to that train thing, I used to do that.

00:38:16Guest:I used to take the train cross country with a bunch of books.

00:38:18Guest:I sometimes did that.

00:38:20Guest:I would take it from, you know, you'd stop in Chicago.

00:38:23Marc:Yeah.

00:38:23Marc:Change trains.

00:38:24Marc:From New York.

00:38:25Marc:Then you'd have to go down.

00:38:26Marc:If you were going all the way across, like in my recollection, in order to go all the way across, you couldn't just go straight up the top.

00:38:32Marc:Or maybe it was my choice because I went from Chicago to like Memphis and over.

00:38:37Marc:I don't know why I did that because I think I wanted to see Memphis and I had some romantic idea about the train.

00:38:42Guest:I did, too.

00:38:43Guest:And I still kept that romantic idea for a couple of years.

00:38:46Guest:I liked it.

00:38:47Guest:And I just preferred to not have anyone have any contact with me for three or four days.

00:38:54Guest:And there was something about that that was so soothing to me.

00:38:56Guest:Instead of flying cross-country or whatever, I just liked that.

00:38:59Guest:So it's so strange that you mentioned that because during that time, 86, 85, that was around the time where...

00:39:05Guest:after i started having immense regret and anxiety about being like a well-known person because the first year is fun yeah the first year is great and then you kind of have an anxiety attack in terms of like maybe this isn't so great well but also how do you how do you feed it how do you how do you maintain how do you live up to the expectations

00:39:24Guest:You ignore it.

00:39:25Guest:You just do whatever you have to do.

00:39:27Marc:You just do what you have to do.

00:39:28Marc:Oh, really?

00:39:29Marc:None of the anxiety was around that?

00:39:31Marc:Like, now I'm this guy, people are expecting things of me, and I got to... Okay, yes, that is true.

00:39:35Guest:That is where the anxiety stemmed from.

00:39:37Guest:But the only thing you can do about that is to just move on and do what you want to do.

00:39:41Guest:I mean, there's nothing you can... Right.

00:39:42Marc:Did you notice on the train, the one thing I remember about that train ride is that you realize that the whole sleeper car is really just like it's being in a bathroom.

00:39:49Right.

00:39:50Guest:Because, right, there's just the fold-down bed and then there's the toilet.

00:39:53Marc:Right.

00:39:54Marc:And then, like, when you're on the train, I remember that there was drama unfolding on the train.

00:39:59Marc:Like, there was a guy who was traveling with his kids and some woman who was traveling with her kids.

00:40:03Marc:And I sort of watched this relationship unfold as we moved cross-country.

00:40:07Marc:Because you're sort of limited to this train.

00:40:09Marc:And you get out, it stops for a minute for a soda.

00:40:11Marc:And I just saw them sort of become a couple.

00:40:14Marc:It was kind of interesting.

00:40:15Marc:Or you hang out in the bar car.

00:40:17Marc:Yeah, the bar car was there.

00:40:18Marc:I was drinking at the time.

00:40:19Marc:And then they really sold the car with the glass ceiling.

00:40:24Marc:It was just filthy.

00:40:25Marc:And the weird thing about the terrain is that you literally, what you see of America is the other side of the tracks.

00:40:29Marc:Like you're going through just wreckage.

00:40:32Guest:The worst parts of big cities.

00:40:33Guest:Exactly.

00:40:34Guest:Like these...

00:40:35Guest:you know parking lots you know fast food pieces of equipment that are rusting a lot of that but there was just something about it during that period of my life that i the isolation of it i i just really i really liked it all right so you're you're freaking out

00:40:50Guest:Yeah, I was freaking out about becoming a man in a society whose values I found reprehensible.

00:40:56Guest:But I still wanted to belong to the society.

00:40:58Guest:What do you do with that?

00:40:59Guest:I wanted to fit in, which is something that Patrick Bateman says at one time in American Psycho.

00:41:04Guest:But that really was a book that stemmed from me not wanting to be a part of the society, but also wanting to fit in, if that makes any sense.

00:41:13Guest:You're kind of trapped.

00:41:14Guest:What do you do?

00:41:15Guest:I mean, do you just go off into the woods and live in a cabin?

00:41:20Guest:How do you navigate through the society?

00:41:21Guest:How do you you want to interact with people?

00:41:23Guest:You want to engage, but you're you don't like the, you know, what we're the world.

00:41:30Marc:But see, the thing is, is that you sort of entered almost immediately out of college, a very, you know, high minded set in a very lofty sort of world, you know, to be kind of hanging out those parties.

00:41:42Marc:It's very insulated.

00:41:43Marc:I mean, what value are you just by nature of being in that group?

00:41:46Marc:You were already operating against, I would imagine, some of the values that you had a problem with.

00:41:50Guest:with yeah but but actually i was with a lot i was with a lot of my friends who were my age again i want to stress we were 23 we were just out of college uh you know and so we were all kind of i don't want to call you say a united front but we talk about this a lot like jesus this is kind of like this is ridiculous our country is ridiculous

00:42:12Guest:This world we're about to enter into as men is ridiculous, and yet what other option is there?

00:42:19Guest:So it was kind of, you know, what really was the other option?

00:42:21Guest:It's not just New York society.

00:42:24Guest:I'm not just talking about the intelligentsia.

00:42:26Guest:I'm talking about the world, the world order in a way.

00:42:30Guest:And, okay, so this is what I have to do to be a man?

00:42:32Guest:This is what's expected of me, this kind of pose to fit in, right?

00:42:36Right.

00:42:36Guest:And then, you know, so American Psycho was kind of my exorcism of those, the anger and the hopelessness that I felt about that time.

00:42:45Guest:And then pretty much after I finished, I said, oh, okay, I can move on.

00:42:49Guest:And that's really how writing books has always been for me.

00:42:51Guest:There's a problem, there's something painful, something, some kind of drama in my life.

00:42:56Guest:And I really write the book to explore it, explore it.

00:43:01Guest:Yeah.

00:43:01Guest:And by the time I'm done with it,

00:43:03Guest:I've kind of like processed it in a way so that I feel better.

00:43:07Marc:But was that all cultural or were you dealing with childhood stuff as well?

00:43:12Marc:I mean, because that character, this sort of weird detachment but charm of it all was kind of disturbing.

00:43:19Guest:Yeah.

00:43:20Guest:You know, I don't know.

00:43:21Guest:I mean, how does how do you create a character?

00:43:24Guest:How does someone like that?

00:43:26Guest:And I've been thinking I was thinking about this guy, this kind of faceless yuppie moving in this world.

00:43:31Guest:I never had a clear vision of what he looked like.

00:43:33Guest:I knew he was a reflection of all of these things.

00:43:37Guest:He was obsessed with.

00:43:38Marc:But wasn't the romanticization of the stock market was around that time as well, right?

00:43:43Guest:It was.

00:43:44Guest:It was.

00:43:44Guest:Well, actually, I just moved to New York in 1987 and it was about five months before the crash, four or five months before the crash.

00:43:53Guest:And then, yeah, and I was I was writing American Psycho at that time.

00:43:57Guest:Right.

00:43:57Guest:And I had been hanging out with guys that I had been introduced to older guys who were working on Wall Street.

00:44:03Guest:um, from various friends of mine, their older brothers or whatever.

00:44:06Guest:And I would, I would go out with them thinking, okay, I'm going to find out how this all works.

00:44:11Guest:I'm going to find out what they really do.

00:44:12Guest:What are they really doing?

00:44:13Guest:Yeah.

00:44:14Guest:And they really weren't interested in that.

00:44:16Guest:They were interested in going out, socializing, nightclubs, high end restaurants, the Hamptons, spending money, um,

00:44:24Guest:And that really, this whole idea, and doing a lot of drugs, and this whole idea of the book that I was going to write about, I think slightly earnestly, like a New York novel about an unhappy guy on Wall Street.

00:44:36Guest:And I'm so glad that didn't happen.

00:44:38Guest:But, well, it is a somewhat earnest novel about an unhappy guy on Wall Street, but it's hallucinatory.

00:44:46Marc:It's crazy.

00:44:46Marc:How that unhappiness manifested itself became a little richer than the just basic unhappiness.

00:44:52Guest:Right.

00:44:53Guest:And and so, yeah.

00:44:54Guest:And so because of I just remember one night sitting in yet another super expensive restaurant and with these guys just talking about bragging about their tanning machines and their their who's got the best haircut and, you know, who's got the nicest summer place in the Hamptons.

00:45:12Guest:I it was so clear to me that this is a novel about a serial killer.

00:45:16Guest:I don't know how I made the connection.

00:45:18Guest:I said, this is a novel about a fucking serial killer.

00:45:21Guest:And that's really kind of how the genesis for American Psycho happened.

00:45:25Guest:And then creating Patrick Bateman.

00:45:27Guest:Patrick Bateman, a lot of people forget, had appeared in The Rules of Attraction.

00:45:34Guest:He is Sean Bateman's brother.

00:45:35Guest:Sean Bateman, if you've seen the movie Rules of Attraction, was played by James Van Der Beek.

00:45:40Guest:And so Sean Bateman, who's the main character in the Rules of Attraction, is having problems with – we kind of find out that his whole – everything he's told us about himself is kind of a lie.

00:45:53Guest:And as his life kind of crumbles in the last section of the book, it's revealed that, oh, he's not a farm kid.

00:45:59Guest:Oh, he's a rich kid.

00:45:59Guest:Oh, he's from New York City.

00:46:00Guest:Oh, his father has a ton of money.

00:46:02Guest:Oh, he has his asshole older brother, Patrick Bateman.

00:46:04Guest:Right.

00:46:05Guest:So Patrick Bateman's introduced in the last 30 pages of Rules of Attraction.

00:46:09Guest:And as I was working on American Psycho, I was thinking, who is this guy?

00:46:12Guest:And I thought, it's that guy at the end of Rules of Attraction.

00:46:17Guest:Why not?

00:46:18Guest:It's Patrick Bateman.

00:46:20Guest:And so that's kind of how it happened.

00:46:22Marc:Well, it's interesting, though, like that moment you had where this guy's a serial killer is that in in the midst of of being who you were, you know, among these people whose jobs they decided that, you know, what one does with their life is irrelevant other than to make enough money to be as extravagant as possible.

00:46:39Marc:And and that's what stockbrokers do.

00:46:42Marc:What's your job to make money?

00:46:43Marc:That's the job.

00:46:44Marc:So the detachment, when you were just describing it, of hearing them talk about that, the weird sort of emptiness of it all, why wouldn't they be talking about killing?

00:46:55Marc:Why wouldn't that be the next thing to find meaning?

00:46:57Marc:So you were almost in kind of like projecting a quest for meaning that could only end there.

00:47:03Guest:That's true.

00:47:04Guest:And I do think that the violence in American Psycho is Patrick Bateman's

00:47:07Guest:desire for something real, tangible, blood, flesh, death, instead of this kind of abstract world of brands and consumer items and bad pop music and clothing and strange food being served to you that cost $85 a plate.

00:47:29Guest:So anyway, so yeah, that's where that all came from.

00:47:32Guest:So were you happy with the film adaptation?

00:47:35No.

00:47:35Guest:The film adaptation was, you know, look, I never thought you could make that book into a movie ever.

00:47:42Guest:And I remember when the first person who was interested was David Cronenberg.

00:47:46Guest:So David Cronenberg and I met a couple of times.

00:47:48Guest:That would have been amazing.

00:47:49Guest:Well, David Cronenberg also was insistent on, like, the script needed to be only 70 pages long because it takes him two minutes to shoot a page.

00:47:57Guest:He wanted no scenes in restaurants, no scenes in nightclubs, and I don't want to shoot any of the violence.

00:48:02Marc:Why would that happen?

00:48:05Guest:So I went off and I rewrote.

00:48:06Guest:I wrote my own script and I was burnt out on the material anyway.

00:48:09Guest:And so I kind of did a pass that, you know, was kind of the greatest hits from the book, more or less.

00:48:14Guest:And he didn't like it.

00:48:15Guest:And so he hired another writer.

00:48:18Guest:That didn't work out.

00:48:19Guest:Ultimately, and it went through director Oliver Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio were going to do at one point.

00:48:24Guest:And it finally landed with Mary Herron and Guinevere Turner, who did the adaptation.

00:48:31Guest:And I thought, how are they going to do this?

00:48:33Guest:How are you going to do this book?

00:48:35Guest:Why would you do this book?

00:48:36Guest:Because it was conceived as a piece of a novel.

00:48:43Guest:It was conceived as a novel.

00:48:43Guest:It wasn't conceived as a script.

00:48:45Guest:It wasn't conceived as a movie.

00:48:46Guest:it is a novel thing.

00:48:47Guest:It's 400 pages in the mind of this guy.

00:48:50Guest:And he's a completely unreliable narrator.

00:48:52Guest:You don't know if some of these things happen or not.

00:48:54Guest:You don't even know if the murders happen, which to me is interesting.

00:48:57Guest:It's much more interesting not to know that than to definitely know that.

00:49:00Guest:Do you know it?

00:49:01Guest:I don't know it.

00:49:02Guest:No, I don't know it.

00:49:03Guest:Okay.

00:49:03Guest:Um, but so what the movie's going to do, what the movie's going to do is regardless, it's going to answer it.

00:49:11Guest:He's going to have done them because we're watching it happen.

00:49:14Guest:Uh,

00:49:15Guest:you're answering questions that aren't that interesting, I think.

00:49:20Guest:You're answering questions that the answers aren't that interesting.

00:49:24Guest:I guess that's what I meant.

00:49:25Guest:And so the movie is faithful to the book to a degree, I guess.

00:49:30Guest:I guess what a lot of people liked about it who hated the book is that it clarified the humor of the book.

00:49:35Guest:Because a lot of people just read that book straight and said, what the fuck is this?

00:49:38Guest:Are you kidding me?

00:49:39Guest:It caused trouble, didn't it?

00:49:40Guest:It's not funny.

00:49:40Guest:This is not funny.

00:49:42Guest:Murder's not funny.

00:49:43Guest:Yuppie, you know, and...

00:49:44Guest:People miss satire sometimes.

00:49:47Guest:And so that was a big problem with the anger.

00:49:49Marc:But it's interesting.

00:49:50Marc:So the movie was okay.

00:49:53Guest:The movie was fine.

00:49:53Guest:I just didn't think it needed to be made.

00:49:55Marc:But I think ultimately after watching the movie not too long ago, again, there are certain points where it's not clear whether he's really doing the murders.

00:50:02Marc:I mean, they're happening on screen.

00:50:04Marc:But the sort of weird...

00:50:07Marc:his ability to control his environment so specifically becomes dubious after a while.

00:50:11Marc:That, you know, could he really luck out that much in his ability to kill?

00:50:16Marc:No.

00:50:18Guest:Right.

00:50:19Guest:And there's, look, that's true of the book as well.

00:50:21Guest:Right.

00:50:21Guest:I mean, the descriptions in the book are kind of comic book outrageous.

00:50:25Guest:Right, right.

00:50:26Guest:It's like, you know, reading a Warren comic.

00:50:28Guest:Seeing how people are dismembered and, you know, and it's, you know, highly imaginative.

00:50:34Guest:But, um...

00:50:35Guest:Yeah, so the movie... Look, also what the movie did is it kind of like made... It gave the book kind of a second life.

00:50:43Guest:And, you know, as a writer, you're always kind of grateful for that.

00:50:47Guest:And it wasn't a hugely popular movie, but, you know, it did okay.

00:50:51Guest:And I think the most important thing it did was...

00:50:55Guest:And the movie's fine.

00:50:56Guest:Is that it clarified for people who were confused the intent of the novel, which was black satire.

00:51:03Marc:Right.

00:51:04Guest:And a lot of people just saw the book as like a listing of horrors, a catalog of horrors.

00:51:09Marc:Some people are so numb to the satire.

00:51:12Marc:They just can't cross the they can't make the jump of like, even if you tell them it's a dark comedy.

00:51:20Marc:It's like there's a lot of people died.

00:51:22Marc:Right.

00:51:22Marc:Yeah.

00:51:23Marc:No, I know.

00:51:24Guest:I know.

00:51:25Marc:I mean, I don't know that there's any other way to read that book.

00:51:28Guest:There is no other way to read that book.

00:51:29Guest:That's the only way.

00:51:30Guest:It was meant to be read that way.

00:51:32Guest:And I, you know, when I said earlier, my problems with the book now, about 20, 25 years after it was published, are...

00:51:39Guest:I sense a kind of earnestness in intent that I feel that there was still a remnant of that writer wanting to satirize the Wall Street guys and just show them how foolish they were.

00:51:53Guest:Yeah.

00:51:54Guest:Even though ultimately I don't think the book fully lands there, there are traces of that for me, and I wish it had been a little purer that I'd stay more focused on to what my aesthetic design for the book was.

00:52:08Guest:Taking those fuckers down a notch?

00:52:10Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:52:11Guest:And you're right.

00:52:12Guest:I mean, but I...

00:52:13Guest:But but in the end, it was just a very personal book.

00:52:16Guest:And it was really about three years.

00:52:17Guest:What I was going through, what I was fantasizing about my reactions to things.

00:52:21Guest:And then again, what happens is, you know, you you finish the book kind of relaxed.

00:52:28Marc:But anyway, you had gotten that morbid in your in your in your anger and in your mind and in your frustration.

00:52:35Guest:Not into, not into, not to the depths of Patrick Bateman.

00:52:40Guest:And I wasn't fantasizing about killing people necessarily.

00:52:44Guest:Though in my, probably in some horrible way, I was devouring everyone in sight.

00:52:49Guest:Sure.

00:52:49Guest:I was devouring male people in sight.

00:52:51Guest:Like, you've got to do this for me.

00:52:53Guest:I'm eating you right now.

00:52:55Guest:Yeah.

00:52:55Guest:You know, I mean, ultimately, I mean, I knew that he was a serial killer.

00:52:59Guest:I knew that there were going to be murders.

00:53:01Guest:I knew that there was going to be violence.

00:53:02Guest:And I kind of left those chapters or spaces blank because I kind of didn't really know how to write them.

00:53:08Guest:And ultimately, I wrote those, it was about 10 pages of stuff interspersed throughout the book.

00:53:13Guest:It's not as much as you think.

00:53:14Guest:It might be very heavy.

00:53:16Guest:And I think that's why people imagine this is a complete, you know, catalog of horrors.

00:53:21Guest:But it's not that much.

00:53:22Marc:But I mean,

00:53:23Marc:But but personally, I mean, where were where were your frustrations leading like in your own life and relationships and that kind of stuff and whatever unresolved stuff about your father and all that stuff?

00:53:33Marc:Was this a like was the writing of that some sort of hitting of bottom for you?

00:53:40Guest:No, no.

00:53:42Guest:It was kind of like dealing with stuff.

00:53:44Guest:It wasn't hitting bottom at all.

00:53:46Guest:It was dealing with stuff.

00:53:47Guest:I felt I was at the bottom.

00:53:49Guest:And it was a way of elevating, getting myself out of it.

00:53:53Guest:And sure, I looked at a lot of the values of my father.

00:53:56Guest:I was thinking about that a lot.

00:53:59Guest:He died about a year after American Psycho came out.

00:54:01Guest:But before then, I was seen, especially in the 80s, when he had made a lot of money.

00:54:06Guest:I mean, I didn't grow up as a rich kid.

00:54:07Guest:I mean, I think people have this idea that I did.

00:54:09Guest:I grew up in Sherman Oaks.

00:54:11Guest:We were middle class.

00:54:15Guest:But when my father really did begin to make serious money in the 80s,

00:54:19Guest:There was a very different man.

00:54:23Guest:And, I mean, he really bought into the excess of that decade.

00:54:28Guest:And I have to admit that impacted me as well.

00:54:31Guest:And, you know, and then he also died $10 million in debt.

00:54:33Guest:So, you know, you have this...

00:54:35Guest:You kind of get that person.

00:54:37Marc:Yeah.

00:54:37Marc:And also there's that idea of like, you know, it's false rewards.

00:54:41Marc:I mean, you know, like after you grow up with a man who is fairly, you know, without conscience or empathy emotionally in terms of his own family.

00:54:49Marc:And all of a sudden now he's got a fortune.

00:54:51Marc:It's hard not to think like, where's the justice of that?

00:54:54Guest:No, I mean, it was just also, I mean, yes, the justice and that, but also just, you know, sadly kind of glamorous.

00:55:04Guest:I remember like, I mean, he really, you know, well, he lived it up.

00:55:10Marc:Yeah, he lived it up.

00:55:11Marc:And where were you with the, you know, I know that you're not necessarily as vague as you once were about your sexuality, but the mid 80s, you know, was a pretty wild time and a scary time.

00:55:21Marc:I mean, how much did that play into your frustration or your mindset?

00:55:24Marc:Yeah.

00:55:24Guest:Well, look, I'd always known I was gay from an early age.

00:55:28Guest:And to me, it's like the most boring thing possible.

00:55:30Guest:I was never ashamed of it.

00:55:32Guest:I never felt like I had to come out of anything.

00:55:33Guest:It was like, oh, shit, this is another thing I had to deal with.

00:55:36Guest:And it's really, and it's such a boring thing, too, because it's like, you know, sexuality is like the color of your eyes or whatever.

00:55:44Guest:It's just such a, nothing can be done about it.

00:55:47Guest:So I put that on my list, and I was like, okay, so this is what I got to do.

00:55:51Guest:Again, pragmatic.

00:55:53Guest:Got to navigate here a little bit, you know.

00:55:56Guest:But I would say that I never was in a kind of closet.

00:56:00Guest:I was in the glass closet, we call it, where people know, but you don't go around announcing it or saying anything about it.

00:56:07Guest:And the problem really was in the mid, well, after Less Than Zero came out, I never said I was straight or anything, but I would be coy about it because there was at that time, you know, a kind of ghettoization.

00:56:20Marc:Yeah.

00:56:20Guest:Yeah.

00:56:20Guest:of gay writers.

00:56:22Guest:You were automatically put over here.

00:56:23Guest:You were automatically reviewed here.

00:56:25Guest:And I just thought, you know, I don't want to do that.

00:56:27Guest:I've got enough, like, weird bisexual sex going on in this book.

00:56:30Guest:And I don't, what do I need to say?

00:56:31Guest:I'm not going to walk around with a girlfriend or anything.

00:56:33Guest:But the one thing that did happen was, you know, AIDS hit in about 83, 84.

00:56:37Guest:I first heard about it while I was at Bennington.

00:56:39Guest:And Bennington was a super promiscuous campus.

00:56:42Guest:I mean, I'm sure every campus is.

00:56:44Guest:But Bennington was even more ambisexual than most.

00:56:46Guest:Because it's smaller.

00:56:47Guest:Smaller.

00:56:48Guest:And the kind of male it attracts is all over the place.

00:56:53Guest:And understandably so pre-AIDS.

00:56:57Guest:Yeah.

00:56:57Guest:You know, there was a lot of experimentation.

00:57:00Guest:There was a lot of stuff going on.

00:57:01Guest:So when AIDS hit, we were kind of the last or I guess the first generation that closed the door.

00:57:08Guest:Right.

00:57:08Guest:The door was closed on us and we kind of survived.

00:57:11Guest:Right.

00:57:11Guest:You know, it was people who were older, not a lot older.

00:57:14Guest:I mean, I had a classmate of mine from high school who died of it in the 80s.

00:57:18Guest:But we kind of just got it.

00:57:20Guest:Okay, we can't do this.

00:57:20Guest:We can't do this.

00:57:21Guest:We're not going to do this.

00:57:22Guest:Let's get into a relationship or whatever.

00:57:26Guest:And so it really wasn't that wild a time.

00:57:29Guest:When I got to New York, you know, people were just scared.

00:57:33Guest:And so I immediately got into a relationship that lasted about seven years that was –

00:57:37Guest:Monogamous.

00:57:38Guest:Got you through.

00:57:39Guest:And got me through it.

00:57:40Guest:But it was, you know, the wild time had stopped.

00:57:44Guest:I never experienced it.

00:57:45Marc:I never saw it.

00:57:45Marc:Well, that's probably a good thing that it was just college wild time and not bathhouse wild time.

00:57:51Marc:You dodged a bullet.

00:57:52Marc:Right.

00:57:52Guest:No, that's true.

00:57:53Guest:But I also was never the kind of guy who would go to a bathhouse.

00:57:56Guest:It's not my kind of thing.

00:57:59Marc:Yeah, it's a little scary just to think about, kind of.

00:58:02Marc:I mean, it's exciting, I guess, but it's a little scary.

00:58:05Guest:I think the reality of it would be like a wake-up call.

00:58:09Guest:I think the reality of like, oh, this is what a bathhouse is really like.

00:58:12Guest:It's not like it is in a porno film or whatever.

00:58:14Guest:This is like, oh, okay.

00:58:17Guest:The body fascism in porn is, I don't think necessarily...

00:58:21Marc:carries over carries into the bathhouse yeah maybe i don't know it seems that there is a pretty high premium put on uh uh body fascism in the gay community oh yeah there definitely is yes and a big problem of you know gay shame and triggers and stuff like that but it's like if you let that you know i think it's hard to get old in a community that puts such a high premium on sex

00:58:47Guest:Well, isn't that kind of, oh, you mean just the gay community?

00:58:52Guest:But look, it's across the board, especially true for women as well.

00:58:55Guest:Very difficult for women.

00:58:56Guest:You become invisible after a certain age.

00:58:59Guest:Well, you know, I just, I know it's not politically correct to say it anymore, but man up, you know, that's really what I feel like.

00:59:07Guest:There was that ridiculous Facebook thing.

00:59:08Guest:Did you see that Facebook campaign to ban man up as a,

00:59:11Guest:because it's gender-specific.

00:59:14Guest:Really?

00:59:15Guest:Yeah, and it has, like, Justin Timberlake holding up a little thing.

00:59:17Guest:So do you ever say woman up?

00:59:19Guest:That's the kind of, like, you know... I don't know.

00:59:21Marc:I'm not sure where all this... I don't know where it takes language after a certain point if we're all...

00:59:27Marc:you know, so inherently hypersensitive of the impact of sort of established meanings of words or misunderstandings of words.

00:59:34Marc:I don't know where we end up language-wise.

00:59:36Marc:I don't know where it all ends up.

00:59:38Marc:Maybe it'll be interesting.

00:59:38Marc:I don't know.

00:59:39Marc:Will it be interesting or will it be boring?

00:59:41Marc:Will everybody be sort of, you know, half panicked about how they're addressing anything or what they say when they're angry, even if they're not, you know, if it's not coming from a negative place?

00:59:49Marc:I don't know.

00:59:50Guest:Well, it's, you know, well, it's considered...

00:59:53Guest:I kind of elitist now to have opinions that are negative.

00:59:58Guest:And I noticed that I just last night I tweeted something last night.

01:00:02Guest:Yeah, I had I was done with work.

01:00:05Guest:And so I told the boyfriend, let's just watch a movie or something.

01:00:09Guest:I'm not going to work anymore.

01:00:10Guest:And he said, sure, put him in a movie.

01:00:11Guest:And so for some random reason, I wanted to watch Marathon Man, the Dustin Hoffman movie.

01:00:15Guest:Why wouldn't you want to watch that?

01:00:16Guest:And yeah.

01:00:17Guest:And then I noticed, though, that he had already turned to his phone about 20 minutes in.

01:00:22Guest:He's younger than you.

01:00:24Guest:Yeah, he's about 27.

01:00:25Guest:And he said, yeah, I don't know about this.

01:00:28Guest:OK, let's watch.

01:00:29Guest:We haven't watched season four of Louis.

01:00:32Guest:Yeah.

01:00:32Guest:Let's start watching that.

01:00:34Guest:We're caught up, season three.

01:00:35Guest:Let's start watching season four.

01:00:36Guest:And what about that episode that got a lot of buzz on social media, the Fat Girl episode?

01:00:41Guest:And he says, sure, put it on.

01:00:43Guest:And he's a fan, too.

01:00:44Guest:And I'm a big fan of Louis and CK.

01:00:45Guest:But I watched the Fat Girl episode, and I kind of sank a little bit.

01:00:49Guest:I said, really?

01:00:50Guest:You're letting the Fat Girl just editorialize and this pity party that she's having in front of you, and you're not engaging with her at all?

01:00:58Guest:The camera's just slowly panning around her, and

01:01:00Guest:and you're letting her make this point that okay sure yeah we should all love the fat girl sure it's not fair whatever and i just kind of thought that episode tanked for me and so i i tweeted out uh something about the fat girl episode tanked and you know this is like the worst facebook thread or whatever and of course i was i was waiting here you go the barrage of there now true there is a 10 to 15 like an agreement like people go

01:01:26Guest:Yeah, you're right about that.

01:01:27Guest:Maybe they should have done that last scene differently.

01:01:30Guest:And then there was the barrage of, how dare you say that about Louis C.K.?

01:01:33Guest:You made the canyons.

01:01:35Guest:You made the canyons.

01:01:36Guest:And it's like, I'm just kind of used to that reactive thing that goes on in the culture without kind of placing things, remarks, opinions...

01:01:47Marc:tweets into a context i could never understand how people could get so upset about the delivery system is now limited context i mean like i was reading like last night i read some book uh by a woman named uh hodson chelsea hodson um it was called pity the animal to chapbook it's a small book it's more like a it's sort of an essay slash poetry it's not i don't know if you'd call poetry but you know that kind of fragmented cultural criticism she's bringing together um

01:02:12Marc:you know, the Marina Abramovich performance piece and some things from, you know, weird manuals of sales manuals and mannequin presentation manuals.

01:02:22Marc:It's one of those kind of high-minded, but, you know, clearly astute intellectual criticisms of women as objects and whatnot.

01:02:32Marc:But it'd been a long time since I kind of like engaged in that type of writing.

01:02:35Marc:And, you know, it's ironic that before I'm talking to you that there was a time where that stuff was important and the conversation around that stuff was important.

01:02:43Marc:I still think it probably is important.

01:02:44Marc:But that context of really following through with an earnest critique or a well-founded intellectual critique and following through with a reasonable discussion around the possibilities of the implications of what you're saying is just fucking gone.

01:02:59Marc:So if you're going to present it to the animals on Twitter, if you're going to say, here's some meat and expect anything different than a frenzy.

01:03:07Marc:And it's a shame because the sort of time it takes to process and have a reasonable conversation about aesthetics or sociopolitical meaning, it's very limited now.

01:03:18Marc:It's insulated.

01:03:19Marc:It's not going to happen on Twitter, really.

01:03:21Marc:Twitter is all frenetic.

01:03:22Marc:Right.

01:03:23Marc:And in those moments, you don't realize, like, these are just idiots sitting at home.

01:03:29Marc:This is not some sort of structured debate on anything.

01:03:33Marc:Right.

01:03:33Marc:And you're dealing with a media platform that feeds on controversy.

01:03:38Marc:Right.

01:03:38Guest:You're right.

01:03:40Guest:But the overreaction to things is not only limited to Twitter.

01:03:46Guest:It really is part of what is going on kind of nationally.

01:03:50Guest:This lack of context for things is really as...

01:03:55Guest:Never been higher.

01:03:57Marc:No, it's horrible because there's no there's no sense of history anymore, you know, because of the Internet, which is the it is the collective unconscious.

01:04:05Marc:It has replaced, you know, any sort of organic idea of of genuine human community that nothing needs to happen.

01:04:13Marc:The time frame is no longer important.

01:04:16Marc:So if history is obliterated, there's no point of reference, no point of evolution, no point of sort of the gaining of wisdom.

01:04:23Marc:It's just everything happens in a now.

01:04:25Marc:It doesn't matter what part of the history you use to attack somebody else.

01:04:28Marc:And it's troubling that there's no context for Hitler anymore.

01:04:35Marc:To some kids, it's like, oh, the guy with the mustache, that kind of bothers me.

01:04:40Marc:Like last night when I was reading this woman, Chelsea Hodson's piece, I'm like, this kind of stuff used to be important to me to take the time to sort of engage in this and to really think through this stuff and to appreciate the poetry and the relevance of art and stuff like that.

01:04:58Marc:And it's just like, what am I doing now?

01:05:00Guest:You're looking at BuzzFeed, taking a test to see what kind of rainbow you are.

01:05:04Guest:That's what you're doing.

01:05:06Guest:I'm reacting.

01:05:07Guest:All you can do is react.

01:05:08Guest:All you can do is react.

01:05:09Guest:Yeah, that's true.

01:05:10Guest:Well, you know, look, I'm guilty of it as well.

01:05:12Guest:I mean, I have a Twitter feed and I go to it often and I throw out opinions.

01:05:17Guest:But I also, like, recommend books.

01:05:19Guest:I recommend books and I recommend obscure films or music that I like.

01:05:25Guest:But it's true.

01:05:26Guest:I'm you know, I can look at myself as part of that problem, too.

01:05:28Guest:I see things, I react to them and I put them out there.

01:05:32Guest:But when you say you got done with work for the day, what is your work day?

01:05:36Guest:I try to keep it on par with, you know, everyone else I know who has kind of a nine to five day job.

01:05:42Guest:What do you do?

01:05:43Guest:You write?

01:05:44Guest:I write.

01:05:45Guest:I do write.

01:05:46Guest:I get up in the morning and I have my morning routine and then I'm in my office.

01:05:50Guest:And then, which is part of my, it's in my condo.

01:05:53Guest:And so I'm in my office and then I take a break midday.

01:05:56Guest:And that break is, I never do lunches.

01:05:58Guest:I can't do business lunch.

01:05:59Guest:It drives me crazy.

01:06:00Guest:So I usually go to a movie or I go to the gym.

01:06:03Guest:And then I come back, and then I work until about six or seven, maybe later if I've got to finish a project.

01:06:09Guest:Now, it's true.

01:06:09Guest:If I'm under deadline on something, then I will work until 10 or something.

01:06:15Guest:But that's very rare.

01:06:17Guest:And that's my day.

01:06:18Guest:Do you know what you're writing?

01:06:21Guest:Oh, completely, yeah.

01:06:22Guest:Are you writing a novel?

01:06:25Guest:You know, I was thinking about that driving over here.

01:06:27Guest:And I was also thinking driving over here, God, how tough it is to just, like, make it in the world.

01:06:32Wow.

01:06:32Guest:Just survive.

01:06:33Guest:How do people do it?

01:06:35Guest:It's just like a day-to-day grind.

01:06:37Guest:But anyway.

01:06:38Marc:I know.

01:06:38Marc:I tweeted this morning, every day is a mountain.

01:06:42Marc:That was how I woke up.

01:06:44Guest:So we were on the same page.

01:06:45Guest:Well, yeah.

01:06:46Guest:But I'm just thinking like the usual stresses, the usual fears you kind of have early on in the day where you think...

01:06:52Guest:What's going to happen?

01:06:53Guest:I got to do that thing tomorrow.

01:06:55Guest:I got to do that.

01:06:55Guest:I got to finish this.

01:06:57Guest:And then it's just kind of like you're exhausted by it.

01:06:59Guest:And it just ultimately goes away.

01:07:01Guest:But I'm getting back to the work thing of the novel thing.

01:07:06Guest:I was working on a novel.

01:07:07Guest:I started a novel in January 2013.

01:07:11Guest:after working on scripts for a year, like 15 scripts I wrote.

01:07:15Guest:Did anything get made?

01:07:15Guest:Two movies got made.

01:07:18Marc:Which were they?

01:07:18Guest:One was a movie called Downer's Grove, which has not been released yet, and the other one was The Canyons.

01:07:23Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:07:26Guest:So I just kind of got hungry for writing prose, you know, rather than writing scripts.

01:07:31Guest:I mean, scripts are fun to write, but got hungry for writing descriptive kind of prose.

01:07:36Guest:Where it's just you.

01:07:37Marc:Yeah, where it's just me.

01:07:38Guest:Yeah, no one's going to rewrite it or whatever.

01:07:40Guest:And then I just got distracted again, and there's just a problem with this particular story that I want to do, and I'm just not... I just haven't found it yet.

01:07:47Guest:It's not necessarily writer's block.

01:07:49Guest:I just kind of can't figure out if I really want to tell this story.

01:07:54Guest:It's about something that happened to me in high school, and is it really?

01:07:57Guest:Is it a novella?

01:07:58Guest:Do I want to write another novella again?

01:08:00Guest:Because the last book I published was very short.

01:08:03Guest:So, yeah, that's where it is.

01:08:04Guest:So I don't know about the novel.

01:08:05Guest:It just...

01:08:06Guest:I have various projects that I'm working on now and I'm finishing.

01:08:09Marc:Well, tell me about Lunar Park a little bit and how that sort of put the rest this father stuff.

01:08:17Guest:Well, I was thinking about writing Lunar Park right after American Psycho was completed.

01:08:24Guest:And there were two books I wanted to write.

01:08:27Guest:One was kind of an homage to Stephen King, which is what Lunar Park ultimately became.

01:08:32Guest:And the other was kind of an homage to the international thriller.

01:08:35Guest:That book became Glamorama, which I got lost in for like eight years.

01:08:40Guest:It's an epic book.

01:08:41Guest:It kind of half works.

01:08:42Guest:I mean, it's my favorite of my books, but it's super divisive among fans.

01:08:46Guest:A lot of people just hate it.

01:08:47Guest:Equally enough, you know, people love it.

01:08:49Guest:But so...

01:08:50Guest:Lunar Park.

01:08:51Guest:I didn't feel old enough to approach the Stephen King book because I always knew it was going to be about an older man.

01:08:58Guest:And he was not going to be a writer at first.

01:09:02Guest:He was going to be like a political operator in Georgetown.

01:09:07Guest:So I went and said, OK, I know the world of glamour.

01:09:10Guest:I know the fashion scene in New York.

01:09:12Guest:I know the celebrity world.

01:09:14Guest:And it's kind of it.

01:09:15Guest:I kind of preceded Zoolander's about a young male model who becomes a terrorist.

01:09:20Guest:Yeah, gets gets folded into a terrorist cell.

01:09:23Guest:And so and so I knew that world at the time and I wanted to write that book.

01:09:31Guest:So I wrote that book.

01:09:33Guest:And then as I was finishing up Glamorama, then Lunar Park became much clearer to me.

01:09:38Guest:Like I knew it was going to be a lot more about a writer and then it was the writer was going to be me.

01:09:44Guest:And I knew it was going to deal a lot with my dad.

01:09:46Guest:And I knew it was going to deal a lot with my own career.

01:09:51Guest:And I was going to deal with American Psycho, which had been really haunting me in terms of what I was being defined as.

01:09:57Guest:And that's fine.

01:09:58Guest:Which was what exactly?

01:10:00Guest:The writer of American Psycho.

01:10:02Guest:That's it.

01:10:03Guest:The Ride of American Psychos.

01:10:05Guest:And that's fine, but I wanted to explore that, and I wanted to bring kind of Patrick Bateman figure back into the suburban setting.

01:10:10Guest:And so, and really, the over, you know, the driving...

01:10:19Guest:I don't know.

01:10:19Guest:The beating heart of Luna Park was really about finally resolving my issues with my father.

01:10:27Guest:Your expectations that were unmet.

01:10:29Guest:Yeah.

01:10:30Guest:And I felt because I was still angry with him about just the sheer carelessness of his life.

01:10:36Guest:And, you know, he really did put my mom in trouble because of the IRS and the debt.

01:10:40Guest:The divorce wasn't really

01:10:41Guest:It was so complicated.

01:10:44Guest:And it was so stressful to deal with the aftermath of that.

01:10:46Guest:I had to deal with it.

01:10:47Guest:I had to stand up and deal with this huge mess that my father was conscious of when he died.

01:10:53Guest:And there was a lot of unresolved feelings about him.

01:10:59Guest:And really in Lunar Park, and this sounds corny, but I just don't care.

01:11:03Guest:It just, you know, forgave him.

01:11:05Guest:And it just kind of lifts off you.

01:11:07Guest:And I remember writing the last month of that when I was writing.

01:11:10Guest:The book ends with this kind of, I don't know, this dream vision of my father as a boy growing up in northeastern Nevada.

01:11:18Guest:And it was just, you know, it just knocked me out writing this because it was just all about forgiveness.

01:11:25Guest:Just total forgiveness and just moving on.

01:11:29Guest:And... It's hard.

01:11:32Marc:Yeah.

01:11:33Marc:Real forgiveness is fucking... You know, it's like, you know, people, it's easy to pay lip service to forgiving, but Jesus Christ, to really let something go?

01:11:41Marc:I don't even know what exactly the inner mechanism is for that.

01:11:46Marc:Either it happens or it doesn't.

01:11:47Guest:Well, come on.

01:11:48Guest:Sometimes, look, sometimes not letting it go can drive you, can really drive you.

01:11:53Guest:Right.

01:11:53Guest:It gives you an energy.

01:11:54Guest:Right.

01:11:55Guest:Ultimately, I think it's a negative energy and you walk into walls and you kind of get lost in it.

01:12:01Marc:And it's just kind of a comedy of errors.

01:12:03Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:12:04Guest:There's no way that it ends well.

01:12:06Guest:And the only thing you can really do is to forgive people.

01:12:10Marc:There's no other way.

01:12:11Marc:But sometimes the only impetus for forgiving is just emotional exhaustion.

01:12:17Guest:You hit the wall.

01:12:19Marc:You hit the wall.

01:12:20Guest:I'm sick of feeling this way.

01:12:21Guest:You're sick of feeling this way.

01:12:22Guest:And what could I do with my dead father?

01:12:24Guest:Who was I going to talk to about it?

01:12:26Guest:Who wanted to listen to it anymore?

01:12:28Guest:Someone complained about their dead dad.

01:12:30Guest:And everyone has their dead dad stories.

01:12:32Guest:Everyone has their like, you know, oh, dad hit me.

01:12:35Guest:He was cold and remote.

01:12:37Guest:It was like, yeah, you know, whatever.

01:12:39Guest:Do you remember, though, the moment where it was released?

01:12:42Guest:Completely.

01:12:42Guest:I completely remember this.

01:12:44Guest:I was in my mom's house.

01:12:46Guest:Yeah.

01:12:47Guest:The house you grew up in.

01:12:49Guest:The house I grew up in.

01:12:51Guest:I was in my old room and I was staying there.

01:12:55Guest:I was in from New York.

01:12:58Guest:I was staying there.

01:13:00Guest:And I wanted to write a large portion of the last part of the book in that room.

01:13:08Guest:Whatever.

01:13:08Guest:Magic is magic.

01:13:10Guest:And I remember finally doing the pass and

01:13:15Guest:This must have been in September of 2004.

01:13:24Guest:September of 2004.

01:13:25Guest:And I just remember August of 2004, September of 2004.

01:13:27Guest:And I remember doing the final pass on the last two or three pages of the book.

01:13:33Guest:Literally.

01:13:35Guest:you know, feeling my chest unconstrict, relax.

01:13:41Guest:And it was just this huge, profound moment.

01:13:44Guest:Did you cry?

01:13:47Guest:I don't know if it got that kind of dramatic.

01:13:50Guest:I mean, I had cried writing part of some of the book.

01:13:52Guest:Some of the book was kind of moving to write, but ultimately, yeah, so I do remember that very clearly.

01:13:57Marc:And you just felt it go.

01:13:58Marc:I just felt it go.

01:13:59Marc:In the magic space that sort of was your fortress, your protection.

01:14:05Guest:Yeah.

01:14:05Guest:Interesting.

01:14:07Guest:And, yeah, and it just, I've never had, I don't think I've ever kind of bitched about my dad since then.

01:14:15Guest:Now, my sisters, on the other hand, still have unresolved, I think, feelings about their relationship with my dad, but still.

01:14:22Guest:But even then, I mean, I say that, but it's not as bad as it once was.

01:14:26Guest:But ultimately, you're right.

01:14:28Guest:You just have to get you just get to a point where it's not.

01:14:31Marc:Yeah.

01:14:31Marc:And hopefully shit fades.

01:14:33Marc:You know, I mean, like the one benefit of staying alive, you know, when you have enough heartbreak in your life is that hopefully if you don't commit to it and become bitter, it will fade a bit.

01:14:46Marc:You know, it has to.

01:14:47Guest:Right.

01:14:48Guest:And being embittered is sucks.

01:14:51Guest:It's not it's it's physically painful.

01:14:54Guest:No one likes it.

01:14:55Guest:And no one wants to be around it.

01:14:57Guest:And it's like, you know, and it's not really that hard to just like make the step over here.

01:15:05Guest:Right.

01:15:06Guest:It is.

01:15:06Guest:It's just a switch.

01:15:08Guest:It's a throwing of the switch and taking the hit.

01:15:10Guest:Right.

01:15:10Guest:I'm looking at it not as black, but as pink.

01:15:14Marc:It's a weird mixture of taking the hit and manning up simultaneously.

01:15:21Guest:Yes.

01:15:22Guest:Yes.

01:15:23Guest:That's exactly what it is.

01:15:24Marc:It's like, okay, I've been humbled, and now I'm going to man up to not be bitter.

01:15:30Right.

01:15:31Guest:I find life easier to move through that way.

01:15:33Guest:Yeah.

01:15:34Guest:I find it much easier to move through life that way.

01:15:36Marc:We're older.

01:15:37Marc:We're getting older.

01:15:38Marc:So, I mean, it's like you can't approach life with the same irresponsible, passionate anger that you did when you were in your 20s because it doesn't age well, really.

01:15:50Guest:No, but I think you can still be discerning.

01:15:55Guest:Sure.

01:15:55Guest:You can still be opinionated.

01:15:57Guest:Yeah.

01:15:58Guest:Yeah.

01:15:58Guest:You can still have a kind of dark view of things.

01:16:02Guest:Right, but you can't say, like, I'm fucked.

01:16:06Guest:I am in trouble.

01:16:07Guest:That looks ridiculous on anyone past a certain age.

01:16:11Guest:It's ridiculous.

01:16:12Guest:Exactly.

01:16:13Guest:Right.

01:16:14Guest:I mean, unless you're saying it, like, you know, kind of ironically or whatever.

01:16:17Guest:But, yeah, that doesn't work.

01:16:19Marc:Well, before we finish off, let's talk because we talked briefly on your show that, you know, like I seem to like not unlike my compulsion towards, you know, talking about the denial of death by Ernest Becker.

01:16:30Marc:You know, I found that your contextualization of the world we're living in is post empire was was very compelling to me.

01:16:37Marc:And I don't know why you don't write a longer piece about that.

01:16:41Guest:Yeah, the piece I wrote a couple years ago about Charlie Sheen, Empire vs. Post-Empire, or whatever we are.

01:16:51Guest:We're in a post-Empire world now.

01:16:53Guest:And post-Empire is kind of defined by transparency.

01:16:56Guest:That really was kind of the theory of just being yourself.

01:16:59Guest:And if that means it's Charlie Sheen in meltdown mode.

01:17:02Guest:Well, that's post Empire Empire is him in a tuxedo on the red carpet, faking answers to a news reporter.

01:17:09Marc:But I think that it speaks to not only this, the authenticity that comes with.

01:17:14Marc:with volatility and a lack of control or respect for the context of media, but also that transparency in that way also speaks to the tremendous lack of boundaries on all levels.

01:17:28Guest:Okay, yes, that example of Charlie Sheen does, but I see Jennifer Lawrence as post-Empire.

01:17:36Guest:I see an entire generation coming of age who,

01:17:38Marc:without the filters that especially I think I'm somewhere in the middle that especially see with my parents generation where everyone was kind of everything was kind of a mask everyone did follow kind of protocol but it was a much more intimate culture media yes that's true that's true too you know so you know really looking at the idea that if you think about it during your parents and my parents there was no internet there was four TV stations and that's including PBS right and there was maybe five movie studios that were really doing things right

01:18:05Marc:there was always an off the grid, there was always a fringe, there was always that, but now the tabloid and fringe has sort of taken over out of necessity, which is really the usurpation of what was that empire, the breaking open.

01:18:18Guest:Yeah, but also in that empire, you had a Norman Mailer, you had a Muhammad Ali,

01:18:23Guest:You even had, in terms of his evasions, Andy Warhol.

01:18:27Guest:You had people who seemed authentic.

01:18:30Guest:And I know people find that weird that I'm throwing Warhol out there, but I feel that he did do something.

01:18:36Guest:He had cultural relevance and defined something.

01:18:39Guest:And so there were certainly people who were, but for the most part, society branded them as loonies or crazies or people not... New York.

01:18:50Guest:Right, or New York.

01:18:52Guest:But I just see it as more kind of the norm in terms of celebrities.

01:18:56Guest:Sure, there's still the People magazine, Airbrush, cover story.

01:19:01Guest:But more or less, it's just how do you not... Don't you look kind of ridiculous if you're following these old-ass guidelines about presenting yourself in a way if it's not real?

01:19:14Guest:Why not just present your real self?

01:19:17Guest:Show the crack up.

01:19:18Guest:You know, be real.

01:19:21Guest:And I think that I mean, I especially, you know, I think that people respond to that kind of realness in a way that I don't know if we're ever going to be really able to go back to that.

01:19:35Guest:You know, the PR thing, the PR mistake.

01:19:38Guest:Well.

01:19:38Guest:You know, when Vanity Fair says, we're not dealing with PR people anymore.

01:19:41Guest:It was a big moment.

01:19:42Guest:We're not dealing with it.

01:19:43Guest:So if you want to have a profile done, come to us.

01:19:46Guest:We're not dealing with your PR people.

01:19:48Guest:And you can't approve it.

01:19:49Guest:Now, Vanity Fair still does puffy kind of celebrity covers.

01:19:53Guest:But, you know, that's been...

01:19:56Guest:and roaching into the culture.

01:19:58Marc:Well, I think it's just very interesting to see, sort of bouncing back on, or going back to what we were talking about before, is that what evolves out of this?

01:20:06Marc:Because I think that the risk of it, in the idea of post-empire, and I think that ultimately...

01:20:13Marc:The dominance of tabloid journalism, you know, certainly in predatory sort of media and that juice of like even Twitter, you know, implies something a little bizarre and a little disturbing about culture.

01:20:24Marc:And what, you know, where does the, who determines what the dialogue is?

01:20:29Marc:Is it just this frenetic mess of like, you know, waiting for somebody to pop or some controversy to unfold?

01:20:36Marc:What happens to the dialogue of culture?

01:20:38Marc:I don't know.

01:20:39Marc:Who's in charge of that?

01:20:41Guest:Who determines?

01:20:41Guest:Well, look, I was talking about this.

01:20:43Guest:Intellectually.

01:20:45Guest:You know, niche.

01:20:46Guest:Yeah.

01:20:46Guest:Niche.

01:20:47Guest:Yeah.

01:20:47Guest:Everything is niche.

01:20:48Guest:Right.

01:20:49Guest:Right.

01:20:49Guest:So it's it's findable.

01:20:52Guest:You just have to find your you just have to find it.

01:20:54Guest:And then, you know, it's like how I was feeling about, you know, talk a lot on my podcast.

01:21:01Guest:about loving movies and being a cinephile.

01:21:05Guest:And we're talking about how A.O.

01:21:07Guest:Scott published a piece in the New York Times in January about how, you know, being a cinephile is outdated.

01:21:14Guest:Movies aren't at the center of the conversation anymore.

01:21:18Guest:Video games are more relevant, in a way, to the conversation.

01:21:21Guest:The movies and television, certainly.

01:21:23Guest:And I kind of got, some of my friends and I kind of got desponded by that because we're making movies, we like movies.

01:21:29Guest:And then ultimately I was talking to Kevin Smith, and we were talking about this notion, and he said, you know what I felt?

01:21:34Guest:I got bummed out too, but you know what I felt?

01:21:36Guest:Fuck it.

01:21:37Guest:If I wanted to have a conversation about movies, I'll have a conversation about movies.

01:21:40Guest:It's a niche thing, but I can still do it.

01:21:44Guest:Why do we have to be interested in something that's at the center of the movie?

01:21:47Marc:But I think that that definition of the center, it seems to me that I didn't read A.O.

01:21:51Marc:Scott, his piece on it, but it's almost like you can't be an intellectual and then be some sort of apologist in order to keep up with current trends.

01:22:02Guest:Absolutely.

01:22:02Guest:You're completely correct.

01:22:04Guest:Yes.

01:22:05Guest:And that's what I was doing.

01:22:06Guest:I think I got tripped up a bit, you know, and no, I didn't get tripped up because I was depressed by it because I was still doing it.

01:22:12Guest:Right.

01:22:12Guest:And then I realized, fuck it, I am going to still do it.

01:22:14Guest:Yeah.

01:22:14Guest:But yeah, but you're absolutely correct.

01:22:17Marc:Because that's chasing that.

01:22:18Marc:Right.

01:22:18Marc:Because then you become exactly what we were talking about before somebody who does not respect context.

01:22:23Marc:or history exactly exactly which is ridiculous yeah you like that there's a desperation at the at the heart of even you know uh uh you know popular criticism like somebody like a.o scott not having not read the piece it's just sort of like don't dismiss that right that's how we got here and that's you know those things are masterpieces you can't just say like that's video games now

01:22:45Marc:Fuck that.

01:22:46Guest:Well, no.

01:22:46Guest:It was a lament.

01:22:47Guest:Right.

01:22:48Guest:It was definitely a lament because you're the film critic for The New York Times.

01:22:52Guest:You're automatically denigrating your own.

01:22:55Guest:But it's not denigration.

01:22:56Guest:It really is everything is a niche now.

01:22:58Guest:Niche or niche?

01:22:59Marc:Niche.

01:23:00Guest:Whatever.

01:23:01Guest:And so I feel that kind of brings an enormous amount of freedom in terms of like, you know, this whole idea of relevancy, relevancy, you know, that's the big put down, you know, well, they're not relevant.

01:23:14Guest:That's not a relevant thing.

01:23:16Guest:What in the hell is relevant anymore?

01:23:18Guest:That's right.

01:23:18Guest:What is relevant?

01:23:19Guest:What is posterity?

01:23:20Guest:What does it mean?

01:23:22Guest:When I hear people using relevancy as a put down, I think they just don't get it.

01:23:28Guest:That's gone, baby.

01:23:29Marc:That's gone.

01:23:30Marc:Find your people and be relevant to them.

01:23:33Marc:exactly yeah that's that's that's a way to do it but but see on some level you know to me that that feels like a surrender that like if the fight isn't to raise the bar and it's just to find your your choir then then what happens to the bar is there a bar or do we just sort of like well this is our fortress there's a lot of morons out there but they're not our problem let's watch this movie do you know i don't know

01:24:01Marc:That sounds... Now I'm depressed.

01:24:05Guest:No!

01:24:06Marc:No, I'm not depressed.

01:24:09Marc:You do the work you want to do, and it always comes down to that.

01:24:13Marc:You're always looking for people to like your work.

01:24:14Marc:You want the work to be received.

01:24:16Marc:And and the weird thing is, is that now you can sort of have a guarantee if you maintain some level of consistency with the people that like you, that your work will be received, you know, will be appreciated in as big a way that you want it to be or will have the impact.

01:24:31Marc:That's no longer important as long as you have your niche.

01:24:34Guest:Right.

01:24:35Guest:And you're doing what you want to do.

01:24:38Marc:Exactly.

01:24:39Marc:That's not depressing.

01:24:41Guest:So we're not depressed.

01:24:42Guest:I don't think surrendering is depressing either.

01:24:44Guest:I think surrendering is good.

01:24:46Guest:Sure.

01:24:46Guest:You have to.

01:24:47Guest:Yeah.

01:24:48Marc:A little bit.

01:24:48Marc:Right.

01:24:49Marc:Yes.

01:24:50Marc:Because eventually you're just windmills.

01:24:53Marc:You're fighting windmills.

01:24:55Marc:Yeah.

01:24:56Marc:All right.

01:24:56Marc:You want to eat the rest of your sandwich?

01:24:59Marc:Are we done?

01:25:00Marc:Yeah.

01:25:04Okay.

01:25:09Marc:I enjoy talking to that guy.

01:25:10Marc:He's an interesting guy, and I think he warmed up.

01:25:14Marc:I like that guy.

01:25:16Marc:I did his podcast, too.

01:25:18Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.

01:25:19Marc:WTFPod.com.

01:25:21Marc:WTFPod.com for all your WTF needs.

01:25:24Marc:You can get the app.

01:25:25Marc:I would recommend you get the app.

01:25:28Marc:I don't want you to get bored with my guitar playing because it's limited.

01:25:43Guest:Boomer Lives!