Episode 562 - Larry Grobel
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:Mr. Fullers?
Marc:What the fuck abilities?
Marc:Merry Christmas.
Marc:Happy holidays.
Marc:I know if you're listening to this when it's released, which is Christmas morning, I believe you must need some relief.
Marc:You must need some distraction from something, whether it's family or the fact that you're alone or the fact that maybe you didn't get the presents you wanted or you're taking a walk or it's just one of those sad, quiet mornings.
Marc:Look, I get it, man.
Marc:There's part of me that really looks forward to the holidays in Los Angeles because it really quiets down here and you can drive with very little difficulty on the highways.
Marc:That's what I'm going to do today.
Marc:I'm just going to hit the highways and drive.
Marc:I'm going to drive the 110.
Marc:I'm going to just drive it up and down.
Marc:Then I'm going to drive down to the 101 and drive 10 miles in either direction.
Marc:Then I'm going to drive the 10 all the way to the beach and back.
Marc:With nobody on the highway.
Marc:That's my plan.
Marc:That's my gift to me for Christmas morning.
Marc:To drive on the LA freeways with no obstacles.
Marc:To drive on the highways of America like they were meant to be driven on.
Marc:With freedom.
Marc:Not with frustration.
Marc:Merry Christmas to me and my quiet highway drives.
Marc:Yeah, I'm going to probably do that.
Marc:I think that actually sounds like a great idea.
Marc:I don't know what you're up to.
Marc:I do hope the holidays are going well.
Marc:I hope that you're there amongst the wrapping and you've experienced some joy or you've maybe watched some of your children break the things you gave them already knowing they would break it.
Marc:Or perhaps they love what you gave them.
Marc:Or perhaps you're now feeling a weird pang of sadness that your gift was not received properly.
Marc:But the bottom line is this season is about opening your hearts.
Marc:Right?
Marc:I mean, isn't that what we're told?
Marc:Giving does not necessarily mean it has to be an object.
Marc:Right?
Marc:You get it, man, right?
Marc:You get it, right?
Marc:It's not about shopping.
Marc:It's about love, about an open heart, right?
Marc:Look, or else it's just another day.
Marc:It's vacation, whatever.
Marc:I can't even wrap my brain around what exactly it means.
Marc:I mean, I grew up with all this shit.
Marc:I grew up surrounded by Christmas trees and Christmas carols and red and green and gingerbread candies and Santa hats and all that shit.
Marc:I tell you, it's a lot more appealing than the Jewish version.
Marc:I mean, it's a lot more exciting with the lights.
Marc:We have a festival of lights, but for some reason, that festival of lights is not equal to the lights that are down on Koringa, which is a street a block and a half from me.
Marc:And these two houses where these Mexican folks live are just, they're in competition with the lighting and the holidays.
Marc:And whatever the Festival of Lights means, can't compete with those two houses down on Koringa and Highland Park.
Marc:That's what I'm telling you.
Marc:Much more exciting.
Marc:Less heavy, you know, the iconography and imagery of Christmas than that of Hanukkah.
Marc:Hanukkah, it was always like the eternal flames.
Marc:There were Maccabees involved.
Marc:There was an ancient battle.
Marc:You know, with Christmas, it was, you know, this wizard kid was born.
Marc:Some kings gave him some spices.
Marc:And everything was changed forever.
Marc:And that's why we have war.
Marc:So, Merry Christmas.
Marc:Oh, before I forget, I want to say that I put a bonus episode up on the WTF Premium.
Marc:So if you get the free app and upgrade to Premium, there's a bonus episode waiting there for you.
Marc:It's me taking a tour of a record-pressing plant, United Record Pressing in Nashville, and learning about vinyl.
Marc:I learned some things.
Marc:You could learn some things.
Marc:So go get the free app, upgrade to premium.
Marc:I'm going to be putting more bonus premium content up as I feel inspired to do so.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So today on the show, Larry Grobel is here.
Marc:Larry Grobel.
Marc:And I don't necessarily expect you to know him.
Marc:But he was the guy, I met him through a friend of mine.
Marc:He's the guy that did most of the big Playboy interviews back in the day.
Marc:This is a guy that has interviewed everybody.
Marc:Everybody.
Marc:The list is insane.
Marc:Here's, I'll give you a quick taste of the writers.
Marc:Sal Bellow, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Roger Ebert, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Alex Haley, Elmore Leonard, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates.
Marc:Bud Schulberg.
Marc:I mean, those are just writers, actors, all of them.
Marc:Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Warren Beatty, Marlon Brando, Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Sid Caesar, Nicolas Cage, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Jose Farrar, Henry Fonda, Harrison Ford, on and on and on.
Marc:Actresses.
Marc:Lucille Ball, Kim Basinger, Marilyn Chambers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:OK.
Marc:Joan Collins, Jane Fonda, Zaza Gabor, Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand.
Marc:Crazy.
Marc:This guy's interviewed everybody.
Marc:So I figure why not interview the interviewer?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Wouldn't you figure that?
Marc:And when I interviewed him in two parts.
Marc:What's interesting about Larry is he came to this gig much like I did.
Marc:It was not the plan, but that's what we ended up doing is talking to people.
Marc:He wanted to be a writer of a different type, and he also wanted to write novels, which he's writing now.
Marc:He's got an extensive bunch of books that you can find if you do a Google search on Larry Grobel.
Marc:It will take you to a place, LawrenceGrobel.com.
Marc:Go to Lawrence Grobel dot com.
Marc:And he's written a shitload of books.
Marc:He wrote a very important and the book on the Houston family, as in John Houston, Walter Houston, Angelica Houston and the son.
Marc:I forget his name.
Marc:He wrote a book on conversations with Brando.
Marc:He wrote a book on Al Pacino.
Marc:But the point is, is that when he was interviewing people, this would go over the course of weeks, maybe months for one interview.
Marc:I mean, he spent weeks and like months with Barbra Streisand.
Marc:He went to Brando's Island.
Marc:I mean, what you had to do back then, back in the old days, crazy.
Marc:So what I did to honor his style, whatever, for whatever it's worth, is that I did one interview and then I realized, well, he's got to come back just to try it his way.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That's how this is structured.
Marc:So right now we're going to talk to Lawrence Grobel, Larry Grobel, about his extensive career as an interviewer for Playboy magazine and other outlets.
Marc:And it's in two parts.
Guest:I was a little intimidated coming up on this interview.
Marc:Oh, please.
Marc:No, but like, you know, I look at, you know, you've interviewed everybody.
Marc:You were the guy.
Marc:No, but you were the guy that did the interviews of everybody.
Marc:How many did you primarily work for Playboy?
Guest:Not primarily, but people think that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it's been, I've done about 50 Playboy interviews and 50 television Playboy interviews, so about 100 total.
Marc:So the Playboy interviews were specifically the, like I was just recently interviewed by Playboy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But not the 20 questions thing.
Marc:You did the interviews, the Playboy interviews.
Marc:I did the big interviews, not the 20 questions.
Marc:Right.
Marc:20 questions.
Marc:I couldn't find a Wikipedia page on you.
Marc:I don't know how old you are.
Marc:You look like you're 50, but given who you've interviewed, unless you were interviewing when you were 12, you got to be older than that.
Marc:I'm older than that, yeah.
Marc:That's it?
Marc:That's it.
Guest:Fuck, man.
Guest:I don't get a number.
Guest:Oh, you want a number?
Guest:All right, guess again.
Guest:I won't be insulted.
Guest:62.
Guest:Okay, I'm a little older than that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:I know, and it's terrible because that's why you don't get work, because people think you're too fucking old.
Guest:You don't look old.
Guest:Well, what can I do?
Guest:You just see my wife.
Guest:She's Japanese.
Guest:She looks like she's like 35, 40 years old.
Guest:Thank God it went that way.
Guest:Thank God it went that way.
Marc:I didn't know where you were going with that.
Marc:I couldn't put it together when I saw you, when I met you, and I was like, how the fuck did that guy interview Marlon Brando at that time?
Marc:How did he interview John Huston?
Marc:How did he write a book on James Michener?
Marc:When did he do that?
Marc:When did that matter?
Guest:Look, I interviewed Lillian Gish, for God's sakes.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I did.
Guest:But she must have been 100.
Guest:She was pretty old.
Guest:She must have been in the 90s probably.
Marc:But I was intimidated because I'm hesitant to call myself an interviewer.
Marc:Oh, you are.
Marc:You're a very good interviewer.
Marc:Well, I appreciate that.
Marc:But when people tell me, it's like, what do you do?
Marc:How do you do interviews?
Marc:I'm like, I don't look at it that way.
Guest:Well, look, you and I, I mean, what you do, you've done four or 500 of these things.
Guest:So you already, and plus radio interviews you did before.
Guest:So you know how to do it.
Guest:You know how to talk to people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's really important.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I prepare probably more than anybody else.
Guest:For instance, this morning I got an email from you and it says, you know, do you have a list of your interviews that you've done?
Guest:And I went, oh man, I do, but it's in paper.
Guest:It's typewritten.
Guest:I don't have it in the computer.
Guest:So I got up and I typed it for you, you know, and I put it up.
Guest:You just typed all
Guest:this shit today?
Guest:Yeah, I did it all today.
Guest:But the point is, I have read your book a month or two ago.
Guest:I have watched your shows.
Guest:I have listened to some of those interviews you do.
Guest:And I prepared questions.
Guest:See, I write down actual questions.
Guest:For me?
Guest:For you.
Guest:And we're doing this for Saturday evening posts and this.
Guest:So I'm doing a three-question thing with you.
Guest:You're talking to me.
Guest:And we'll have a good time with it.
Guest:But I prepared all this because that's how I work.
Guest:I have 50 questions.
Guest:I need three.
Guest:But that's the proper way to work.
Guest:Well, it might be the proper, but people don't do it anymore.
Guest:I taught this thing.
Guest:I taught the art of the interview at UCLA.
Guest:And man, you don't realize when kids come in, they're 20, 22 years old, and they want to do this.
Guest:And I show them how I think you should do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's a 10-week intensive three hours a day course.
Guest:Is it a journalism course?
Guest:Well, I guess you'd call it that.
Guest:It was in the English department.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But it was, you know, I mean, a lot of the students I did ended up doing, you know, I had one of my assignments is I used to give them, go out and interview somebody who will help your career.
Guest:Because as a student, they'll talk to you.
Guest:As a journalist, they might not.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So pick, you know, you want to be a director?
Guest:Steven Spielberg.
Guest:Is that who you like?
Guest:You know, whoever it was.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Well, some do, but the most don't.
Guest:So one day, one of my students says to me, you have any good restaurants you want to recommend in New York?
Guest:I said, oh, you go to New York?
Guest:He says, yeah, I'm going just for the weekend.
Guest:What are you going to do there?
Guest:He says, I'm interviewing Tim Robbins.
Guest:I said, Tim Robbins, no kidding.
Guest:I said, what are you doing it for?
Guest:He says, this class.
Guest:I said, are you shitting me?
Guest:He said, yes.
Guest:I've been trying to get the Tim Robbins for Playboy for years.
Guest:And he says, no.
Guest:And he's going in doing it.
Guest:As a student.
Guest:Because Tim's a sucker.
Guest:And I said, sell the damn thing.
Guest:Get it out.
Guest:We'll find a magazine.
Guest:Is he tough to get?
Guest:Why?
Guest:He's a difficult interview?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I guess he's difficult to get.
Marc:I interviewed him once live, and I never posted it.
Marc:Because we did a live event.
Marc:I interviewed him in front of an audience.
Marc:It was sponsored by somebody else.
Marc:They asked me to do it.
Marc:He asked me to do it.
Marc:I knew him a bit when I was at Air America.
Marc:The two of them were involved.
Marc:And after we were done, he wanted me to take out this part that I thought was the best part of the interview.
Marc:And I just didn't publish it.
Guest:Well, you know, that's the thing.
Guest:I've had people ask me.
Guest:I had Brando come to my house.
Guest:I've had different people come and ask me to see this thing.
Guest:You know, Streisand fought to see it.
Guest:Brando did...
Guest:I don't like to show anything.
Guest:I think that's not journalism anymore.
Guest:Then you're being a secretary.
Guest:It used to be the early years of Playboy, they did give it to the person.
Guest:Sinatra, the interview, they gave it to him.
Guest:He redid it.
Marc:Because having him in the magazine was more important.
Guest:And the Paris Review still does that.
Guest:The interviews of the Paris Review are always given back to the author so he can go over it and re-fix it.
Guest:I never do that.
Marc:I let people...
Marc:If people want to sit on stuff or they want to take... Usually I have found that the only thing people ever want to take out of any of these shows... No, not money.
Marc:When they say shit about other people.
Marc:Oh, okay, yeah.
Guest:Like if it could be misconstrued or... Well, Dolly Parton once asked me, you know, and she said to me, and I said, Dolly, I really don't want to let you see it.
Guest:She says...
Guest:She said, just please, I promise you, I won't insist on anything.
Guest:And I really like Dolly.
Guest:So I brought the galley with me, and I said, Dolly, here's the galleys, but I can't change anything major because it's already in galley form.
Guest:She reads the whole thing, and she says, well, the only thing I'd ask you to do, if you don't mind, is where I talked about Elton John.
Guest:I said, I didn't want to be like Elton John.
Guest:Could you just put an an in front of Elton John?
Guest:And I said, like an Elton John.
Guest:I said, you got it, babe.
Guest:No problem with that.
Guest:I have no problem with that.
Marc:But what do you, I mean, how did you start out?
Marc:I mean, so you're in your 60s now and you look like you're 50, which is good.
Marc:But where, you come from Long Island?
Marc:Well, Brooklyn and Long Island.
Guest:I've been in Brooklyn for nine and a half years and Jericho, Long Island.
Guest:And what kind of, where'd you come from?
Guest:Your parents were first generation?
Guest:They were, yes, they came.
Guest:My grandparents were out of Russia and Poland.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:We're like the same person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go to Poland all the time now.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Since 2007, I'm on the camera image film festival.
Guest:That's a really good story if you want to hear it.
Guest:I will, that camera image film festival, which somehow or another you created.
Guest:You were responsible for it.
Guest:Yeah, I'm fucking responsible for it.
Guest:And it's 20 years, and it's among the 50 best film festivals in the country, but that's a story.
Marc:Yeah, but so, all right, so you grow up in Brooklyn and Jericho.
Marc:Now, how many siblings you got?
Marc:I got one sister, older.
Marc:Okay, so there's two of you.
Marc:And what's your father?
Guest:What were your parents?
Guest:My father was in the pharmaceutical business.
Guest:At first, he was a salesman, salesman, salesman, then he became vice president of one of the companies he worked for.
Guest:And that's when he moved to Jericho?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Jericho at the time we moved in 1956, the house cost $23,900.
Guest:I remember that, $23,900.
Guest:How is it now?
Guest:Is it in your family still?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:My father died.
Guest:My mother recently died, but she sold it.
Guest:She sold it for about $350,000, and now it's probably about $800,000 because Jericho's rated the top five schools in the country, the high school.
Marc:Oh, no kidding.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they're always highly rated, so that's kind of cool.
Guest:I had a great time in Jericho.
Guest:I mean, it was really, you had your bicycle, you got out and you did your things.
Guest:You had sex with the girls.
Guest:You were doing that in high school?
Guest:In high school, yeah.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:Yeah, it was good.
Guest:In what, in the 50s?
Guest:No, come on, 60s.
Guest:So it was starting to happen more.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The 60s were, you know, I sort of, I mean, like we didn't have any dope in high school.
Guest:That I didn't see till college.
Guest:I went to UCLA.
Guest:But in high school, it was still, you know, beer people drank.
Guest:When did you go to college?
Guest:What year?
Guest:64 to 68.
Guest:So you're right at the beginning of it.
Guest:Everything's changing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Actually, when I applied to college, I had applied to go to Berkeley.
Guest:And I got in.
Guest:And so I decided I'll make that decision.
Guest:Because nobody in my high school ever went further than Michigan.
Guest:So I thought, I'll go to California.
Guest:Yeah, why not?
Guest:And that was the year of Mario Savio and the free speech movement in Berkeley.
Guest:But at the last minute, I thought, hmm, I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Los Angeles.
Guest:And I thought, well, it'd be nice.
Guest:I'm going so far away.
Guest:I may not get back home for a year.
Guest:My parents didn't have that kind of money.
Guest:They said, if you go to California, you can't come home.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I thought maybe I'd get a home-cooked meal once in a while.
Guest:So I said, why don't I go to UCLA instead?
Guest:So at that time, they let me do it pretty easily.
Guest:I said, you know, last minute.
Guest:For what were you studying?
Guest:I was an English major.
Guest:I started in poli-sci the first year, but I thought it was all bullshit.
Guest:I worked for congressmen once.
Guest:Which congressman?
Guest:His name was Herbert Tenzer.
Guest:He helped him get in.
Guest:But Alec Lowenstein replaced him.
Guest:So he got assassinated.
Guest:But the congressman, that was just a real learning experience.
Guest:I was a writer for him when I was like 16 years old.
Guest:But we helped him get in.
Guest:The young people did door to door.
Guest:And we ended up in his office.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we used to meet with him.
Guest:He was the head of, I think, Barton's Candy.
Guest:And so he was an older man.
Guest:The Vietnam War was going on.
Guest:Johnson's president.
Guest:We used to meet him in the backyard, and we'd say, Congressman, now that you're here, you'll vote against the war.
Guest:Oh, he says, I don't think I can do that, boys.
Guest:I said, what are you talking about?
Guest:That's why we worked here.
Guest:He says, well...
Guest:The president seems to know what he's doing.
Guest:I just got here.
Guest:I said, look, you got to go.
Guest:He says, otherwise we're going to go work for somebody else to get you out of here in two years, which we did.
Guest:But we ended up going to Washington, did his office, and I got to look through his papers and file stuff.
Guest:And I got to see how he got the nomination.
Guest:And how he got the nomination was very interesting because at that time, the Democratic Party said...
Guest:whoever wants a nomination.
Guest:How much money can you put up yourself?
Guest:So one guy said he could put up 15 grand.
Guest:Another said he could put 20.
Guest:And Herbert Tens, I think, said he could do 30 or $35,000.
Guest:And that's how he got it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Think about it today.
Guest:But he bought it.
Guest:Basically bought the... It's a sad thing.
Marc:He still had to get elected.
Marc:When you're an idealist, and especially if you're a lefty idealist, it's a rough day or month or year when you get schooled on how it really works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a very difficult thing.
Guest:It's very mind-blowing.
Guest:Because I thought Brando really understood it.
Guest:Of all people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he was paranoid, but he had a right to be paranoid.
Guest:He said to me, you know...
Guest:I said, do you really think that they're watching you and all, you know, because it's the FBI.
Guest:Oh, I know they're watching me, he says, because I've taken Dennis, what's his name?
Guest:Hopper?
Guest:No, no, no, the Indian, the Indian.
Guest:Oh, right, right, right.
Guest:Anyway, there was Russell Means, and he brought them to his island.
Guest:He helped bail them out and all, Dennis Means, I think it was.
Guest:But he said that, he says, look, Larry, he says, at 12 o'clock at night, there are guys working on the phone lines.
Guest:He says, who works at 12 o'clock at night outside my house?
Guest:You know, he's up on the whole side.
Guest:Because he was a political activist for the indigenous people.
Marc:And that was a big deal.
Marc:And what year was that?
Marc:Was it Nixon?
Marc:It would have been Nixon.
Marc:Yes, it probably would have been Nixon in the 70s.
Marc:He looked at everybody.
Marc:Nixon was crazy.
Marc:And his abuses of power in terms of looking into people's business was, in retrospect, horrendous.
Guest:And he's very personal.
Marc:He took everything very personal.
Marc:John Lennon, he crushed.
Guest:Well, look at J. Edgar Hoover.
Guest:That's why he stayed in power for so long.
Guest:I mean, why was he the head of the FBI?
Guest:Because he had something on everybody.
Marc:Every president, he said it all.
Marc:That's how politics, that's how power worked.
Marc:How it works.
Marc:All right, so you go to UCLA, you're studying English.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So what do you want to be?
Guest:A writer.
Guest:I've always wanted to be a writer.
Guest:Since I was 15 years old, I won a Newsday American History contest when I was 15.
Guest:I had to write about America's Three Greatest Presidents.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got lucky.
Guest:I won.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the award was a watch, your name in the paper, and you get to meet the president of the United States, who was John F. Kennedy at the time, in June, at the end of the year.
Guest:So each month, two more winners would happen with different essays.
Guest:So there was a boy and a girl selected each month.
Guest:So there were 16 of us who ended up going to Washington.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And unfortunately, John Kennedy at the time is in Berlin giving his Ich bin ein Berliner speech.
Guest:I'm not a donor.
Guest:I am a donor.
Guest:I am a donor.
Guest:So they got us to meet Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General.
Guest:So we sat there and I got to meet Bobby Kennedy.
Guest:And you're 15, 16 years old?
Guest:Yeah, I was just 16 at that time.
Guest:I saw it writing paid, basically.
Guest:600 words, and I'm meeting the Attorney General of the United States and possibly the President.
Guest:Everybody, all of a sudden, people treated me differently in school.
Guest:They announced you over the PA thing.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:It's a big deal.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So, I still have the watch.
Guest:It's engraved.
Guest:It really was a nice one.
Marc:But was it always like you saw it as magazine or short pieces?
Marc:Never.
Marc:I always saw it myself.
Guest:Look, James Joyce was what influenced me.
Guest:You understood that?
Guest:As much as I could.
Guest:I mean, I've written a book called Beginning in Finnegan, which is all about the search for Finnegan's Wake.
Guest:It's a novel.
Guest:It's a fun thing to do.
Guest:So you want to be a novelist?
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to be a novelist.
Guest:My heroes were J.P.
Guest:Donleavy, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer.
Guest:I mean, the writers.
Guest:The heavyweights.
Guest:Yeah, and I had, you know, Dostoevsky I read when I was young, you know, so I knew what great literature was.
Marc:The hardest thing about Dostoevsky is remembering all the names.
Guest:The names, the names.
Guest:They keep changing, you know.
Guest:You got to keep going back.
Guest:You got to make a list for yourself.
Guest:Well, you know how this happened.
Guest:I mean, I had a friend named Paul, and his father was a very famous bird artist, Arthur Singer, and he did Birds of the World and Field Guide to North American Birds, and I grew up watching this.
Guest:So that wasn't my father who influenced me.
Guest:It was Arthur Singer and a pianist named Ted Harris.
Guest:The artists.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And because this is a guy who worked at home and he painted and he would get from the Museum of Natural History, he was the only person allowed to take out the stuffed birds.
Guest:He would have it in his house and I'd see these eagles and stuff and I'd watch him just draw them.
Guest:I'd go, wow, man.
Guest:The commitment.
Guest:Smoking his pipe, just living at home.
Guest:So, the life of an artist.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I really enjoyed seeing the life of the artist.
Marc:So, you go to UCLA and everything's changing in the world and you're laboring over James Joyce books.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Trying to correct the code.
Guest:Portrait the artist.
Guest:Yeah, well, that's a little easier, right?
Guest:Well, Ulysses is impossible.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Finnegan's Wake is impossible.
Guest:Finnegan's Wake is impossible.
Guest:Ulysses is possible.
Guest:It's possible?
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:But you need the guide.
Guest:You need the Anthony Burgess guide to Finnegan's Wake or something like that.
Marc:Yeah, it's like reading The Sound and the Fury with the Clance Burke's guide to what's going on.
Marc:Those stream of consciousness things.
Guest:Well, you know, I just started reading Nicholson Baker.
Guest:Have you ever read his work?
Guest:Very good writer.
Guest:Ready to recommend.
Guest:His first book called Mezzanine is a novel that is about a guy going up at Mezzanine, an escalator.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:The whole book, 168, it's on my page.
Guest:I've been curious about that book, so I got to know him.
Guest:I met him at a signing for something else, but I've read his later books.
Guest:I never read the early ones.
Guest:And I like the way his mind works, and he's very original.
Guest:So now I'm reading Mezzanine.
Guest:And he does a footnote, but a footnote that is four pages long about a phonograph needle and a groove.
Guest:And I'm going, this is wild.
Guest:How do you even read this?
Guest:Do you stop mid-sentence to go to the footnote?
Guest:Do you read it afterwards?
Guest:That's his thing, though, right?
Guest:Yeah, that's his.
Guest:David Foster Wallace did this, Infinite Jest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like Gertrude Stein.
Guest:I like interesting writing.
Guest:I like Thomas Pynchon.
Guest:I knew I could never... See, here's where it fucked me up, and this is why I went into journalism.
Guest:I always wanted to write.
Guest:I tried writing a novel.
Guest:I tried another one.
Guest:What do you mean you tried?
Guest:You finished it.
Guest:I wrote a novel, but I didn't give it to anybody.
Guest:I didn't think it was good enough.
Guest:It didn't compare to who I... I thought it was great when I wrote it, but then a couple of days later... How old were you?
Guest:17, 18, 19.
Guest:Was your first novel.
Guest:You wrote your first novel when you were 18 and you decided shit.
Guest:Yeah, shit.
Guest:I needed experience.
Guest:I said, I need experience.
Guest:So that's why I joined the Peace Corps.
Guest:And I went to Africa for three years.
Guest:To live the life that's something to write about.
Guest:But I wasn't going in the Army.
Guest:See, that's the other thing I did is I avoided the draft.
Guest:By going to the Peace Corps?
Guest:No, they wouldn't let you out like that by making a decision that if they took me, I was going to leave the country.
Marc:So you come back, you want to be a novelist, you got all this life experience.
Marc:You didn't write the memoir for years though, right?
Marc:Right.
Guest:I started writing this memoir.
Guest:See, the biggest problem I had is I have a lot of stories with famous people.
Guest:I mean, I've been with, you know, the Playboy interviews allowed me to spend 10 hours, 20 hours.
Marc:I'd go to- I know, but how does that-
Marc:But how quickly, because obviously, look, as a guy, like I talk to celebrities too, and you made a life out of it, but then I see after all is said and done, you self-publish novels, you write these other books, like right out of the gate, I'm like, well, where the hell did that dream die?
Guest:Yeah, the novels never died.
Guest:I'm still writing novels.
Guest:I'm writing one now.
Guest:But the thing is, what happened was, yes, you have to make a living somehow.
Guest:So when I went back, when I came back from Ghana,
Guest:I had a different perspective.
Guest:I spent seven months traveling around the world after I left Ghana, three years in Ghana, and then I'm traveling around India and East Africa and Korea, Hong Kong and Japan and all.
Guest:And I get back to the States, and I look at what everybody has, and I look at what people are doing, and I'm thinking, man, they don't realize...
Guest:This is the dream for every Ghanaian I knew.
Guest:They want to come to America.
Guest:They don't realize what it was like.
Guest:People are jumping out of airplanes, doing skydiving, that kind of stuff.
Guest:I said, no Ghanaian would do that.
Guest:That's insane.
Guest:Why would you risk your life once you got here?
Guest:So I had that perspective.
Guest:And he was able to use that perspective.
Guest:You appreciate the bare essentials.
Guest:I appreciated life in a different way.
Guest:And so when I went to Newsday, I said, look, I can write these articles.
Guest:I'll do stuff.
Guest:He said, well, what do you know about this?
Guest:What do you know about that?
Guest:I said, I can do it.
Guest:And anyway, I got a couple of assignments.
Guest:And one assignment about the history of aviation on Long Island led to me finding out people were building their own planes.
Guest:Some of them built it in their kitchen and had to knock down a back wall to get the plane out.
Guest:I mean, someone did it in an apartment in New York.
Guest:They built a plane.
Guest:It's insane what was happening.
Guest:Then I met a guy who was around Lindbergh's time, and he was fascinating.
Guest:He had a whole museum in his downstairs basement.
Guest:I met a woman learning how to fly.
Guest:And then gliders, going up in a glider.
Guest:So I went to the editor.
Guest:I said, Lee, besides this history, I could do this, this, this, this.
Guest:And they said, do it all.
Guest:We'll do a whole issue like this.
Guest:So I do.
Guest:I jump out of airplanes.
Guest:I go up in a glider.
Guest:I get sick.
Guest:I mean, the whole thing.
Guest:And I was doing this new journalism, basically, all from my point of view.
Guest:Like Gonzo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a concept type journal.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:And they were paying me 500 bucks an article.
Guest:I was living in my parents' basement.
Guest:I had just come back from, you know, I hadn't found a place yet.
Guest:And I'm writing like crazy.
Guest:Nine articles I hadn't gotten paid yet.
Guest:I didn't give a shit.
Guest:What are you, 20?
Guest:22, maybe.
Guest:21, 22.
Guest:Yeah, when I got it.
Guest:But you're living, you're doing things you would never have done.
Guest:I'm having a great time, yeah.
Guest:I'm doing transcendental meditation.
Guest:My girlfriend comes from Japan, you know, and she comes and we live together.
Guest:We got a place in Brooklyn.
Guest:She thinks I'm a dilettante because I keep getting into things for three weeks, you know.
Guest:TM, I started doing TM, phone rings, I can't answer the whole thing.
Guest:At the beginning.
Guest:And I write about it.
Guest:But that was the first wave of it.
Guest:Yes, but I still have that word and I still do it when I'm on a plane and it's starting to go a little bumpy.
Guest:Oh, so you locked in.
Guest:I lock into that.
Marc:But it's interesting.
Marc:So you come back from Ghana with this appreciation of sort of the extravagance of American culture.
Marc:But, you know, you get the gig and you're like, I'm going to do it all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I mean, I saw how to do martial arts, people doing that.
Guest:So I said, well, I'll take.
Guest:So I take these classes.
Guest:What is it, 1970, 69?
What?
Guest:I came back in 71, 72.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:72.
Guest:So in 72, 73 is when I'm doing all these crazy things.
Guest:I get strapped in a sulky to go around Roosevelt Raceway with the Trotters so I can write a story about that.
Guest:I go with people doing Demolition Derby.
Guest:I say, can I get in a car so I can feel what this is like?
Guest:And I'm doing all this crazy stuff.
Guest:And it's working.
Guest:And the articles are good.
Marc:They're publishing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So 72 is also like, you know, the 60s kind of like, you know, spread out into like just a complete change of the culture.
Marc:Everybody's a hippie.
Marc:Everybody's pushing the envelope.
Marc:Everyone's having, you know, relatively drugged out good time.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So that's the environment.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like the change had taken place.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And so, all right, so you're writing all these great articles.
Guest:And then I decide I want to just write my novel.
Guest:I just want to get into novels.
Guest:That's what I want to do.
Guest:So I'm going to move to California.
Guest:It's 1973.
Guest:A friend of mine who I knew in college becomes the director of Antioch College West, which is part of Antioch in Yellow Springs, Ohio, but it's out here in LA.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he writes me, he says to me, would you be my assistant director on this?
Guest:I said...
Guest:I'm not looking for a job, man.
Guest:I just want to come out and do this stuff.
Guest:He says, I think you could be really good at this.
Guest:I said, I'll do it part-time.
Guest:I'll do it half-time.
Guest:So I came out, and I started doing that for Antioch.
Guest:And then I started... The minute I got an apartment in West Hollywood, I got this place in a garage, over a garage.
Guest:And I get the phone installed.
Guest:The next day, Stan Green from Newsday, that I was writing all these articles, calls me up and says...
Guest:We figured out a way to get off Long Island.
Guest:I said, what do you mean?
Guest:He says, all our articles are based on Long Island, but if we want to do interviews with household names.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:He says, yeah, so how about we'll do the first one with Mae West?
Guest:I said, is she still alive?
Guest:And she goes, yeah.
Guest:I said, how do I get to her?
Guest:He says, we don't know.
Guest:You're the one in Hollywood.
Guest:So, I said, let me see what I can do.
Guest:So, I call up Paramount Pictures.
Guest:And they give me a name, a publicist, whatever.
Guest:And I get to Mae West.
Guest:And she agrees.
Guest:Because people knew Newsday.
Guest:So, they would agree to it.
Guest:So, I go to see Mae West.
Guest:I wear a sports jacket.
Guest:I go to a flower place.
Guest:First interview.
Guest:First interview with the celebrities with Mae West.
Guest:Besides this African, I did for African Arts Magazine when I was in Ghana.
Guest:Vincent Covey.
Guest:And I go to buy flowers and I said, well, this is good for Mae West.
Guest:And the guy says, oh, she doesn't like these flowers.
Guest:She likes these flowers.
Guest:Of course, they were the most expensive ones.
Guest:So I said, oh, he must know.
Guest:So I bought them.
Guest:Sucker.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she comes out and she's Mae West.
Guest:She's got the hair five inches high and the wig on and the high heel shoes like a Dolly Parton before Dolly Parton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We go to sit down, I take out my tape recorder, I put it on, and she goes, oh, no, no, no, you can't use that.
Guest:And this is my first.
Guest:I said, what do you mean?
Guest:She says, someone used that once, and they made a record out of it, because her voice was very famous.
Guest:I said, Ms.
Guest:West, I'll sign something that says I won't do that, but I wasn't, no, no, she absolutely insisted I can't record it.
Guest:So luckily, I had a pad with me, and she spoke slowly.
Guest:And so I was able, yeah, I'm writing everything and talking.
Guest:Okay, so that's my first one.
Guest:I come back.
Guest:What are you open with?
Guest:Oh, I don't remember then.
Guest:She was the richest woman in the United States.
Guest:She made the most money.
Guest:She made $480,000 in 1932 or something, more than anybody around.
Guest:So, you know, and then she got arrested, you know, because she did this very sexy show on Broadway.
Guest:And then the warden used to want her panties, that kind of stuff.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It was like all these little famous things.
Guest:So there was a lot to talk to Mae West about.
Guest:And she was in Myra Breckenwich, you know, so could talk about that and what have you.
Guest:So W.C.
Guest:Fields hated her.
Guest:She hated him because he was drinking all the time.
Guest:And also she had her secret was enemas and cocoa butter on her breasts.
Guest:I mean, all sorts of shit I can tell you about Mae West.
Guest:And she just volunteered this?
Guest:As I talked to her about it.
Guest:But Mae West was an interesting character.
Guest:But what happened was they get the article that I write and the editor calls me up and he says, Larry, I got this Mae West thing.
Guest:Listen.
Guest:The next time you do an interview, use that photographer.
Guest:Because he took a good picture for us.
Guest:I said, uh-huh.
Guest:Try to use him every time you do one of these.
Guest:I said, okay, Stan, what did you think of the interview?
Guest:Oh, that was fine.
Guest:He says, but that photographer.
Guest:So I realized right away what's important in life.
Guest:The picture.
Guest:I don't care about the words.
Guest:Who was the photographer?
Guest:Rick Meyer, the LA Times, he works for him.
Marc:Oh, you just called him?
Marc:How'd you get that guy?
Marc:Oh, he worked for the, well, they got him.
Guest:Oh, the news they got him.
Guest:The news they got him.
Guest:So that gets you rolling on this thing.
Guest:Then I said, so I did Warren Beatty.
Guest:I did Jane Fund.
Guest:I did Cher.
Guest:You know, a bunch of these people, Carol Burnett, Lucille Bull.
Guest:This is all in the early 70s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I said, you mean I can do anybody?
Guest:I said, how about Linus Pauling?
Guest:They said, okay.
Guest:I said, how about Henry Moore?
Guest:They said, okay.
Guest:J.P.
Guest:Donleavy.
Guest:They even said okay to that, although I was really surprised.
Guest:But what you find, though, is that there are only a number of artists, writers, people outside the entertainment business that are household names.
Guest:Very few.
Guest:And then you get back to your movie stars and TV stars.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I always fought for the writers.
Guest:I always wanted to talk to Norman Mailer and Truman Capote.
Guest:And you did.
Guest:I mean, you wrote your book with Truman Capote.
Guest:Yeah, James Michener.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, but that's how it started.
Guest:But they're more compelling, aren't they?
Guest:But you see, Mark, just to, I'm sorry, I didn't fully answer your question, but what happened was I started doing these things.
Guest:They started getting accepted.
Guest:They were interesting.
Guest:Elliot Gould was a real challenge.
Guest:I couldn't get through to him for a number of times because he was always a little bit stoned.
Guest:And I'm going, Elliot, you know.
Guest:And anyway, after five sessions, I send in the article.
Guest:And they came back to say, we can't use this.
Guest:It sounds too stoned.
Guest:That's the first rejection I've gotten.
Guest:And I refused to have a rejection.
Guest:So I said, let me go back.
Guest:Let me go back.
Guest:So I go back and I call Elliot.
Guest:And I said, listen, man, they think it sounded too stoned.
Guest:Let me come over.
Guest:So he says, okay, so I go over there.
Guest:And that day he has James Caan and these Playboy bunnies who are, the girl introduces me, says, hi, I'm the popcorn girl.
Guest:There was the cover of a Playboy with a woman holding popcorn with a hand down the popcorn thing.
Guest:She's the popcorn girl.
Guest:I mean, it's like, and Groucho Marx was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Groucho Marx.
Guest:Why didn't you just go like, I'm going to interview him?
Guest:Well, we went to his house.
Guest:To Groucho's house?
Guest:Billy and I went to Groucho's house.
Guest:So this is the mid-'70s in Hollywood, so it's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, a lot of crazy stuff going on.
Marc:Well, I mean, but when you, like, after meeting these people, I mean, because I've interviewed actors.
Marc:A lot of them, not great.
Marc:They're hard to interview, some of them.
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:Well, a lot of them don't have the education.
Guest:A lot of them are insecure.
Guest:Look, Al Pacino, you know, he didn't finish high school.
Guest:You know, I met him.
Guest:He was so nervous.
Guest:I get to his apartment and he's, you know, he says, you know, I see shifting like this.
Guest:So I said, Al, and I go to put on my tape recorder.
Guest:He says, no, no, don't put that on yet.
Guest:I said, listen.
Guest:Just put it on.
Guest:Once it's on, we can forget about it.
Guest:And he says, okay, you know best.
Guest:The reason I got to Al is because I did Brando.
Guest:This is all backwards now.
Guest:But he said he'll only do an interview with the guy who did Brando.
Guest:I became the guy who did Brando for many years.
Guest:Were you the only one or something?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Truman Capote did Brando during the making of Sayonara.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Brando got pissed off at that article and didn't talk to anybody for 25 years.
Guest:And you were the guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who sent you on that assignment?
Guest:Playboy.
Guest:That was because of Streisand.
Guest:I had done...
Guest:So I had been doing these news day interviews.
Guest:And then what happened was I started thinking, I'm only asking them 30 or 40 questions.
Guest:I'm only in there for about an hour or two at the most.
Guest:What if I could really go deeper in this?
Guest:What if I could really spend a day with you, two days?
Guest:I got curious about the form and the permission.
Guest:If they allow me to ask them anything, that's amazing.
Guest:I come in, I meet you, even on radio, we'll talk about things, but I'm not going to ask you about abortions you may have paid for or failures of sex or tax money you owed.
Guest:I'm not going to ask you that.
Guest:Those are important questions.
Guest:I don't know if they're important, but they may bring out something in you.
Guest:I'm giving you examples of things you would never ask even in an hour.
Guest:But if you get into conversations with somebody for days, weeks, or months, as I did with Streisand over nine months, you basically can ask almost anything, and you really get to know somebody.
Guest:Because you build a relationship.
Guest:You're building a relationship.
Guest:Are you still friends with her?
Guest:I wouldn't say friends.
Guest:I would say not friends.
Guest:I mean, if I see her, we talk, but I don't go to her house.
Guest:But you spent nine months with Barbra Streisand.
Guest:I spent nine months with him.
Guest:In the 70s?
Guest:That was my first Playboy interview, actually.
Guest:When I finally realized that interviewing in depth would be interesting, I said, how can I do a long interview?
Guest:Playboy was the only place to do that.
Guest:So I said, okay, let me interview you, Hefner, for Newsday.
Guest:Impress him, and he'll see what I can do.
Guest:That actually worked.
Guest:So now Playboy says, what are you working on?
Guest:I said, I'm trying to get to Barbra Streisand.
Guest:He said, if you can get to Streisand, we're interested.
Guest:So I got back in touch with Streisand's people, Lee Salters.
Guest:And I said, look, if you talk to me, Playboy covers the world.
Guest:They've got 19 publications around the world.
Guest:I can give a piece to Newsday.
Guest:350 people, magazines around the country will do that.
Guest:You can just talk to me and I'll saturate it.
Guest:I don't hear back from Streisand for months and months and months.
Guest:And then she gets pissed off at an article that Frank Pearson wrote in the New York Magazine called My Battles with John and Barbara.
Guest:So I get a call saying, Barbara Streisand wants to see you.
Guest:Todd Ayo Studios.
Guest:I said, okay, is this business or pleasure?
Guest:And they go, just get there.
Guest:They're really kind of curt.
Guest:So I go there.
Guest:And I'm outside waiting for her.
Guest:And it takes a little while.
Guest:And she finally comes out with her entourage of four or five people.
Guest:And she says, and she doesn't say hi or hello.
Guest:It comes right to me, nose to nose.
Guest:And she says, why does the press hate me?
Guest:First question right off the bat.
Guest:And I just took a step back, you know, and I said, I'll tell you why I hate you.
Guest:And I started to tell her, you know, you keep me waiting, you do this, you have to go through all your people.
Guest:Well, that's ballsy.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:But you see, I immediately recognized when I saw her that she reminded me of my sister, you know, this Jewish American princess.
Guest:So I was able to zero in on that.
Guest:You knew the language.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, the five people behind her go, I mean, they are shocked.
Guest:Nobody talks.
Guest:And this is when she's as big as you can be, you know, she's making a star as one at that time.
Guest:So she looks at me for a second.
Guest:She says, okay, come with me.
Guest:And we go in the room and she says, I have to watch the cut of A Star is Born sitting down next to me.
Guest:So we sit in these two leather chairs.
Guest:We're in this big studio.
Guest:We're the only people there.
Guest:And I'm going, God, please let me like this movie.
Guest:Let me like this movie.
Guest:And I watch this movie and I don't care for it.
Guest:And I know because I'm not a good actor.
Guest:You'll see it in my face.
Guest:And I'm thinking, what can I say, what can I say, what can I say?
Guest:And sure enough, the thing's over.
Guest:She turns to me and goes, well?
Guest:And I said, you're going to make a lot of money.
Guest:And that was enough.
Guest:And then John Peters comes, and he's going, who's this guy?
Guest:And he starts yelling, screaming.
Guest:She introduces me, and he backs away.
Guest:So then she says, OK, talk to my publicist, Lee.
Guest:We'll arrange something.
Guest:I said, no.
Guest:I'm not talking to your publicist.
Guest:I've been talking to your publicist for months and months, and I can't stand it anymore.
Guest:If you want to really do this, give me your phone number.
Guest:I'll call you directly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she goes to a pad, yellow pad, and she writes B and she writes her number.
Guest:She cuts off the piece like this and gives me a piece of paper this big with her number on it.
Guest:And I call her and I go to do it.
Guest:Finally, that took more months.
Guest:Now I finally get to do it.
Guest:I'm ready to see her, all set to go.
Guest:And she comes down the steps in her home in Holmby Hills and she gives me a paper.
Guest:I look at the paper.
Guest:What is this?
Guest:She says, just sign it and we can start.
Guest:And it says, dear Barbara, and I look on the second page and it's signed by me.
Guest:And it's a big letter saying, you have the right to terminate this interview at any time.
Guest:Once it's done, you will own the tapes, you will do this, blah, blah, blah, I'll make any change.
Guest:And I said, I'm not signing this.
Guest:She says, what are you talking about?
Guest:Everybody signs it.
Guest:I said, Barbara, I'm not a secretary.
Guest:I see myself as an artist the way you see yourself.
Guest:If you can look at me that way and accept what I do as an art, then we can do this.
Guest:Otherwise, forget it.
Guest:Now, I'm not just saying it.
Guest:I'm yelling.
Guest:And she's yelling back.
Guest:And we're sitting there with our fists like this, yelling at each other.
Guest:And I finally said, I'm not a fucking secretary.
Guest:So she...
Guest:She makes a determination.
Guest:And then she goes, all right, let's do it.
Guest:So we go in the other room to do it.
Guest:Phone rings.
Guest:It's her lawyer.
Guest:Did he sign?
Guest:She says, no, he didn't sign.
Guest:She hangs up.
Guest:Next one, it's John Peters.
Guest:Did he sign?
Guest:No, he didn't sign.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Then Marty Ehrlichman, the manager calls.
Guest:Did he sign?
Guest:Now this time Barbara's pissed off too.
Guest:So she says, no, he didn't sign here.
Guest:You talk to him.
Guest:And she gives me the phone.
Guest:I hear on the phone this yelling coming out, I don't want to fucking talk to him.
Guest:So I said, he don't want to talk to me.
Guest:I gave him back the phone.
Guest:So she takes the phone and she says, I'm doing it.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:She hangs up.
Guest:And then we go sit by the fireplace.
Guest:And within five minutes of me turning on the tape recorder, she starts talking about sex.
Guest:I had prepared hundreds of questions.
Guest:I don't have a single question on sex.
Guest:I never thought we'd get to sex.
Guest:Or if I warmed up maybe later.
Guest:I didn't write anything.
Guest:And I'm going, wow, what's she doing here?
Guest:And I realized it.
Guest:She was committing.
Guest:Because if I left, if all her lawyers and people told her, you can't do this anymore, she gave me material that I could use somewhere in the tabloid or something.
Guest:So that was interesting.
Guest:You thought she was at calculating?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Barbara is very, very, very intelligent.
Guest:Look, she told me a story.
Guest:One time I said, you know, Barbara, one thing I will show that's not right about you is everybody writes about how you're always late and you've got a problem.
Guest:You haven't been late with me the two or three times I was with her.
Guest:I was with her a lot.
Guest:After I told her that, she was late every time afterwards, every single time.
Guest:Late was part of her modus operandi.
Guest:But one day I'm waiting for her, and I'm in the living room, and I notice she's got all this, everything, Sarah Bernhardt letters, this, everything's beautiful, everything's expensive.
Guest:And then there are two Chinese pieces that look like coral, but they're made of wax.
Guest:It's like candles.
Guest:So I said to her one time, you know, Barbara, what I like, I said, you see all this real stuff about here, and then you see these candles, and they look real.
Guest:And she didn't say anything.
Guest:A couple of months later, I come by and she says, oh, take a look at what I got up there.
Guest:She got two real ones.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She was an interesting woman.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now you make this commitment to doing these long form interviews that you invest your life in.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, and Streisand was the first.
Guest:Streisand was the first of that ilk.
Guest:Nine months it lasted.
Guest:And Playboy kept saying, I wasn't even getting paid until I finished it.
Marc:But you call yourself an artist.
Marc:What was it you were after?
Marc:What defines the art of an interview?
Guest:Well, I think there's an art to biography.
Guest:I think there are some great biographies that have been written.
Guest:And I think the people, the writers, Leonel.
Guest:I can understand that.
Guest:But still, I mean.
Guest:But I was doing 30, you know.
Guest:30,000 word pieces that were being run in Playboy, that's 50 or 100,000 words that I'm actually doing.
Guest:I was really doing books on all these people, but never publishing them as books.
Guest:I never thought of it.
Guest:I never thought of doing them as books.
Marc:So the interviews were framed in... You didn't do question and answer in a standard way.
Marc:You would contextualize.
Marc:You would add paragraphs, setting up everything.
Marc:Because the biographer...
Guest:Yeah, but the biographer, that's like my Houston book.
Guest:I talked to John for hundreds of hours, and then you write a book.
Guest:So you're writing that.
Guest:Interviewing, it's a different kind of art form.
Marc:You can tell me honestly, like right now, I mean, well, you're writing a book on somebody with a career the size of John Houston.
Marc:I mean, I understand that, but to spend nine months with Barbra Streisand for a 30,000-word piece, you don't think you could have done that in a shorter time?
Marc:Was there some learning curve that you had, or did you just like building records?
Guest:relationships with these people here with barbara i said something that i you know this is you're very good mark you say you are good at doing this because that's a good question you know about that what you know but and it's interesting because there's an answer to it and the answer is the answer is because barbara um she would she would drive me crazy you know i mean because she just every time i saw her it was as she didn't trust me you know i mean i had to regain her trust every time what you're describing
Marc:is a relationship yes i mean ultimately it is a relationship absolutely but so what i'm saying is she i kept saying to barbara this is exhausting every time i come in here i have to reestablish you're like the sunshine boys you like it sounds like you you you you fight you argue well you created you you was a very familiar dynamic yeah you understood where she came from you understood the the language of you know middle class jewishness right you know she represented that to this culture right at that time and and you grew up in it right
Marc:So, you know, I'm just wondering, and it's obvious.
Marc:I mean, there must have been something you were getting out of it other than an article.
Guest:No, but I said to her, this is what I said to her, Barbara, let me make a deal with you.
Guest:I will not turn this into playboy until you and I both agree we're finished.
Guest:Because I can't take this distrust every time I see you.
Guest:Just trust me until the end.
Guest:And then distrust me if you don't.
Guest:But I give you my word on this.
Guest:Now, had I said that to anybody else I have ever interviewed, I would have been out of there within the hour.
Guest:They'd be finished.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Very nice to meet you.
Guest:Barbara wasn't that way.
Guest:Barbara took this interview as seriously as she took a movie, as she takes changing the tile in her pool.
Guest:She changed the tile.
Guest:I came there once.
Guest:She had three buckets full of chlorine.
Guest:And she says to me, Larry, which gray tile do you like the best?
Guest:And I looked, and they all looked the same to me.
Guest:I said, Barbara, their shades are varied.
Guest:I had to really look close.
Guest:And I realized, she said, I already took the tiles out of the pool once because I didn't like the way they looked.
Guest:And it's summer, and she wants to get it right this time.
Guest:This is an obsessed woman on a degree that you very rarely meet.
Guest:I know, but it's still funny to me that you're- So I had to do it.
Guest:I was committed to doing it until we finished.
Guest:I know, but it sounds like a movie.
Guest:It is a movie.
Guest:It is a movie.
Guest:I've written a movie called Conversations with Brando based on my getting to Brando.
Guest:And Streisand's in it.
Guest:It's a great movie.
Guest:I haven't seen it.
Guest:Because it hasn't been done yet.
Guest:I need somebody to do it.
Guest:Anthony Hopkins read it and loved it.
Guest:He wanted to play Brando.
Guest:And so did Rutger Hauer.
Guest:He met with me.
Guest:He says, if you ever want to do this, I'd like to do it.
Guest:They're too old for it.
Marc:But it's just interesting to me that you come out here, you're a kid from Long Island who's writing for Newsday.
Marc:You get this freak opportunity.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it becomes your life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's not...
Guest:My life is always a writer.
Guest:In my mind, I'm writing novels, and that's how I see things.
Guest:So this is an opportunity.
Guest:I love this life, man.
Guest:I mean, I was going into people's lives that you can't believe.
Guest:I'd see George C. Scott at his home, and I'd go to see Van Damme, and he's in his pool.
Guest:He says, get in the pool with me, and I put the tape recorder on my chest, because this is how I'd be getting into it.
Guest:So you're still jumping out of planes.
Guest:I'm still jumping out of planes.
Guest:And my whole life has been fun.
Guest:I've had a good time.
Guest:No, I get that.
Guest:And I've been able to get paid to do it.
Guest:But how much of it has to do with it?
Guest:And then I turn things into books and novels.
Marc:But the juice of being in proximity to this, what is the American equivalent of royalty on some level and extravagance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and sometimes incredible vapid shallowness.
Marc:And you're up against these major talents who you're the guy.
Marc:And when was the first time you realized that there's no there there?
Guest:I have never quite got to that point.
Guest:Brando said to me once,
Guest:When are you going to stop interviewing actors?
Guest:He says, because after a while.
Guest:And I said, the thing, Marlon, is that every one of these actors is different.
Guest:Everyone surprises me in some way.
Guest:See, when I used to go in, I was always very nervous.
Guest:And I had an image of what I was going to get into.
Guest:And I realized nobody was like they were.
Guest:Lucille Ball wanted to die.
Guest:Never.
Marc:And you always assume that I have that same issue.
Marc:It's like you have an idea of them.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they never like that.
Marc:No, because your idea is based on their public image.
Marc:How the fuck are you going to know?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So that's what I realized.
Guest:What was Lucille Ball like?
Guest:Lucille Ball was depressed.
Guest:You know, she, she, she, everybody had died.
Guest:All her friends.
Guest:She didn't care for, she didn't see her children.
Guest:She said, you know, she's like, I want to die.
Guest:She says, I just want to die.
Guest:I said, you know,
Guest:I wrote a poem about her called, I Love Lucy Doesn't Love Life.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:She had great legs, by the way.
Guest:She came down the stairs.
Guest:I couldn't believe it.
Guest:But everybody was different.
Guest:I mean, everybody surprised.
Guest:Sally Field tells me, never had a friend.
Guest:Never had friends.
Guest:I told that to Goldie Hawn.
Guest:I said, you know, Sally Field says she never had friends.
Guest:Goldie Hawn became a friend.
Guest:They became friends.
Guest:I mean, really, because I was interacting with a lot of these people.
Guest:But, you know, look, with Goldie and Kurt, we got to be friends with them, you know.
Guest:I mean, Al Pacino and I became very, very close, almost like brothers, you know, for over 30 years.
Guest:I mean, you know, and so, I mean, how does that happen?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know how.
Guest:I mean, I realize friendships are exhausting with stars.
Guest:So, I would, when I felt one that could, you know, I said, well, this potentially could lead to something, I backed away from it.
Guest:Because I didn't have the time.
Guest:Feels weird.
Guest:Well, because I don't have the time.
Guest:You know, you always, you know, if Al would call, I'd be on the phone with him for a long time.
Guest:Marlon, I would talk to Brando on the phone.
Guest:You know, we would just talk.
Guest:Well, how are you going to not?
Guest:Yeah, how could you not?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:How could you not?
Guest:But, you know, you don't get paid for these calls.
Guest:You're not their psychiatrist.
Guest:You know, you are their psychiatrist.
Guest:They've done, you know, basically, you're one of their therapists in a way.
Guest:But, and I didn't get paid for it.
Guest:So, what I've done, I write books about it.
Guest:I have a journal.
Guest:I have a journal that's got 20,000 pages, single spaced, since I started with Streisand, since 76.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Now, one day that journal, you know, part of my memoir that goes up to my time with Brando, it's called You Show Me Yours, that comes from, a lot of it comes from the journal.
Guest:But when you asked me earlier, I mean, talk about going all the way around in circles.
Guest:The memoir stops in 1980, but how did I get to write it?
Guest:Because I felt guilty.
Guest:I can't just write about my relationships with a lot of these people.
Guest:And I remember Truman Capote, how much problems he had with answered prayers.
Guest:And he said, what did they think I was, a jester, a court jester?
Guest:I'm a writer.
Guest:He hung out with all these people.
Guest:I was in that kind of position.
Guest:I was hanging out with these people.
Guest:I was going to their parties.
Guest:If he was taking a bath, I could go upstairs and I didn't have to knock.
Marc:But how do you get to a point where, I have to imagine there would have been some crisis of identity around- Yeah, that's a novel I wanted to write about a guy who loses his own identity because he folds into all the others.
Guest:You've got to be a chameleon to be an interviewer.
Marc:No, you've got to be a chameleon, but also, especially with the incredible neediness of some of these talents that you dealt with, is that it's very hard to fight the urge of becoming a lackey.
Guest:Yes, and I don't think I ever was, and that's why I've had fights with a lot of them.
Guest:I mean, I've had fights with a number of these people.
Guest:Those are fights for your autonomy.
Guest:Well, it's the idea of respect.
Guest:I mean, look, I go see Bobby Knight, and he's late at his house.
Guest:This is a big, big interview, Bob Knight, because this is after he got thrown out of the university and everything, and I'm surprised he's even talking to me.
Guest:And I go to see him.
Guest:And he's out hunting.
Guest:And I'm sitting there with his wife in his house.
Guest:And I'm waiting for hours.
Guest:And he finally comes in.
Guest:And he's not nice.
Guest:And he just goes, says, want to get something to eat?
Guest:I said, OK.
Guest:So we go to get something to eat.
Guest:He orders.
Guest:His wife orders.
Guest:I order.
Guest:In a cheap little Mexican restaurant.
Guest:He gets his food.
Guest:He eats it.
Guest:Doesn't wait.
Guest:She gets her food.
Guest:She's polite.
Guest:She starts to wait.
Guest:I said, no, go ahead.
Guest:My food came late.
Guest:Knight wants to leave.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like, what kind of treatment is this?
Guest:What kind of bullshit is this?
Guest:I've done this with Robert Mitchum where you walk in and he eats a sandwich, he eats his drink, he doesn't offer you anything.
Guest:They treat you sometimes like you're an encyclopedia salesman.
Guest:But also, how do you avoid- That's the challenge though.
Guest:The challenge is to get them from there to respect me and then to see how well prepared I am and then I'm in charge.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Respect you or at least use you as a vessel or at least have a comfort level to where, you know, it becomes an easy symbiotic thing.
Marc:You try.
Guest:With night, it never came easy.
Guest:He hit me.
Guest:He tried to throw me out of the car twice.
Guest:I mean, I mean, I had a lot of problems.
Marc:But how also do you get past the fact, I mean, obviously, if you're spending nine months with Barbra Streisand and you're going to Marlon Brando's Island and you're spending 100 hours with John Houston, you know, these are, well, Brando, well, Streisand too, but, you know.
Marc:And Houston, yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:One of the most interesting men in the world.
Marc:Yeah, but I could see that.
Marc:I could see spending 100 hours with John Huston, but if you were interested.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But there comes an issue when you're an interviewer, and that's your career, is that you've also got to fight the calculations of being used.
Marc:But you're aware of that.
Guest:You're aware of that going in.
Guest:Immediately.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I mean, the point is, what I try to do is get beyond all of that.
Guest:Get beyond being used.
Guest:Get them to talk about things they've never talked about before.
Guest:No, I get that.
Guest:And eventually it happens, but you need time.
Guest:The only way this works is if you need time.
Guest:I mean, you and I, I think, can cut through a lot of bullshit and talk very seriously because I think we both appreciate that.
Marc:But do you think you still need time now?
Marc:It's like everything moves so quickly.
Guest:No, no, but you don't get the time now.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:That's over.
Guest:But also people are more forthcoming now.
Guest:There's a different language.
Guest:They might be more forthcoming.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:No, I don't know if it's that much forthcoming.
Guest:I just think people don't say things because they do it on their own.
Guest:They get out what they need to get out.
Guest:through the internet, through their own websites, through these podcasts, through doing an hour here, half hour there, getting on TV.
Guest:The long interview that I did, I don't see that happening.
Guest:It'll happen in books.
Guest:If you get someone to really talk and wants to do a book, you'll be doing long interviews.
Guest:But even the Playboy interview is only 4,000 or 5,000 words at the most.
Guest:And it used to be 30,000 words.
Guest:So then how does that explain your compulsion to spend months with people?
Guest:It doesn't happen anymore.
Guest:That's gone.
Guest:I mean, we're talking about a part of my life where I did that.
Guest:And it was fun.
Guest:And I always said to myself, no matter how much money I ever made, no matter how successful I might be in other forms, I always would like to do two Playboy interviews a year because I liked doing it.
Guest:It gave me permission to enter a life that I can never get anywhere else.
Marc:So tell me about this.
Marc:time you spend with brando ultimately what you know like in any interview like i don't really know what i'm going to get right and i you know and i in my agenda is not to get necessarily something uh no one else has gotten or to get them to say something no one else has heard or they may not have said right but my goal because it's audio is to at least engage in authentic conversation and i think that resonates so like the the the emotional impact of what i do is different than like i can't look at what the look at what the look at this article you know brando said this right
Marc:Because you can feel what we're doing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's different.
Marc:It's different.
Marc:So after all is said and done, when you have this life, I mean, was it as simple as that?
Marc:You spend all this time with Martin Brennan on this island.
Marc:You're telling me all you wanted him to do was say something that hadn't been said before?
Marc:Or was there something you were looking for something?
Marc:You must have been looking for something.
Guest:Well, I'm looking for insight into the man.
Guest:Every interview I do is what I'm looking for is to show you what's beyond the superficial.
Marc:That's what I do.
Marc:But emotionally, and I know that's what you do, and you wait it out, and you wait it out, and you keep talking, and you keep talking, and obviously, even in an hour, eventually, people's guards drop in this situation.
Marc:Hopefully.
Marc:Yeah, hopefully.
Marc:But ultimately, you must have been on some journey as a guy that wanted to be a novelist, wanted to be an artist.
Marc:You had to justify this undertaking that you were involved with as art, which it is, and I like the biography framing of it.
Marc:I think that makes sense.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But what sort of truths did you ultimately... I mean, you got Robert De Niro, George C. Scott, Henry Fonda, Jerry Lewis, Steve Martin, Robin Williams.
Marc:Obviously, you're spending more time with some of these people than others.
Marc:And you've got this amazing list of writers that can't even go through all the names.
Marc:Some of these are probably shorter than others.
Marc:But it seems to me that John Huston, Truman Capote, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino were the guys that you did a lifetime's work with.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So after interviewing all these people...
Marc:You know, what do you find is the common thread once you get through all that, all the bullshit?
Marc:What do you find out about humanity?
Marc:If you're an artist, you know, what are your conclusions?
Guest:That's a very tough question, Mark, to answer.
Guest:You know, I mean, basically, summing up, I guess my answer would be, I've written books about all the people you just mentioned.
Guest:I've got a book out on, two books on, I've got three books on Pacino.
Guest:One is called, I Want You In My Movies, because I was on his movie for Wild Soundly.
Guest:I did a thing on it, and it's an e-book.
Guest:I did another book that's out that he did an introduction to, which is a collection of all the interviews I did with him.
Guest:And it's interesting to see the progression there of an interview that turns into a friendship, basically.
Guest:That's what that is.
Guest:And then I did a book called... Well, I'm saying it for the first time here, but I wrote a novel called Begin Again Finnegan.
Guest:And I took as the premise a relationship I have with someone like that as a novel.
Guest:And I said, what if a major star killed...
Guest:The woman, the mother of his children, accidentally or not accidentally.
Guest:What if he just did something wrong?
Guest:What would he do if he wants to get an alibi?
Guest:And I said, well, the best person to talk to do would be a person like me, a person he became friends with who is an interviewer.
Guest:And he could, because you could do an interview at any time of the day or night.
Guest:So what if he calls him, the star, and he calls him up, it's midnight, or one in the morning, and he says, I want to see you.
Guest:Okay, you know, I'll be over in a half hour.
Guest:Let me get dressed.
Guest:No, no, I'll come to you.
Guest:Why is he coming to him?
Guest:He doesn't know.
Guest:That's the premise.
Guest:That's the opening.
Guest:And then he comes and says, I did, so I killed her.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So this was a fear you had.
Guest:It's a scenario that has played through my mind.
Guest:I've played through a lot of scenarios.
Guest:You're a paranoid guy.
Guest:It's fiction.
Guest:I always say some of these things.
Guest:But I wrote a novel based on this.
Guest:It was really interesting and it explored...
Guest:me and my thoughts and whatever anyway there it is now but the premise of that novel about you right is is about you know being used yeah yeah not just yes yes exactly exactly being used being this guy's alibi and every fucking thing that goes wrong goes wrong to the guy not to him he's the star he's oj simpson he's gonna get off but this poor schnook who's done all this stuff he's gonna have a big town is filled with those poor schnooks the studios used to have i'm one of those schnooks man
Guest:That's the bottom line.
Guest:I'm one of those schnooks.
Guest:But I used my schnookiness to make a living out of it.
Guest:And for a while, I've made a fairly good living.
Guest:I mean, if you can get paid six figures to write for magazines, that's amazing.
Marc:So you spend all this time with Brando at a very odd time in his life.
Guest:He had just done Apocalypse Now, but I hadn't seen it yet.
Guest:It hadn't come out yet.
Guest:So you spent how long with him?
Guest:I was on his island for 10 days.
Guest:And then he came to my house afterwards.
Marc:Now, what did you come away with in terms of who he was as a man?
Guest:I liked him very much.
Guest:I saw him in a certain way as a hero.
Guest:Look, I read his book, which is a terrible... I mean, he was sleeping with every friend's wives and all that stuff.
Guest:I mean, he wasn't a good guy in a lot of... He wasn't good to his children.
Guest:His son called me up, Christian, once.
Guest:He wanted to write a book about his father because his father was so bad to him.
Guest:And I had a lot of conversation with Christian.
Guest:Then Christian died at 49 of pneumonia.
Guest:So I knew there were problems with a lot of what he did.
Guest:But I found him totally, totally interesting.
Guest:I mean, we would go on his island.
Guest:We would take long walks.
Guest:We would go out on the pier.
Guest:He would always have something like, if you had a straw here, how deep do you think you could take the straw?
Guest:How many feet before you couldn't suck up anything?
Guest:And he knew these answers.
Guest:Now, he's 35 feet, he would say.
Guest:Or a fly would be out in the boat with us.
Guest:And Cheyenne was there, the girl who ended up killing herself.
Guest:But she was eight at the time.
Guest:And Tehutu was 16.
Guest:And we'd be out on this boat.
Guest:And he'd say, how fast do you think we're going?
Guest:Or how fast do you think flies can fly?
Guest:And he says, well, they can only go about 15 miles an hour because that's what we're doing now.
Guest:And he would catch the flies, pop them in his mouth, look at the kid, open his mouth, and that would come to fly or something.
Guest:But he had a thing for your strength.
Guest:He says, Larry, let me see how strong you are.
Guest:And he would give me this thing, you know, and I would push and push, and the red button would go, you know, like a thermometer would go up to a certain point.
Guest:And then he'd give it to Tehutu, who's this kind of right in Tehutu, all the way to the top, you know.
Guest:And he was a games player.
Guest:He liked to play chess.
Guest:So I played chess.
Guest:I wasn't that good.
Guest:So he could beat me.
Guest:So then he would take a cardboard thing and put it between the pieces.
Guest:And he'd say, okay, you arrange your pieces your way.
Guest:I'll arrange mine this way.
Guest:And we'll play like that.
Guest:So we did that kind of stuff.
Guest:He was a practical joker.
Guest:One time, I go to have dinner.
Guest:Now, I'm the only person on the island besides his secretary, Caroline, and her kid, and Marlon, and the workers.
Guest:So the lunch, the gong goes off, you know, and I go there and I say, and I'm waiting 15 minutes, nobody shows up.
Guest:Marlon comes with her, with Caroline, and he says, what are you doing here, Larry?
Guest:I said, the gong went off, you know, it's a hollow out log.
Guest:So he says, oh yeah, it's for lunch.
Guest:So he turns to Carolyn and says, up you go.
Guest:He had made a bet with her.
Guest:He said the gong went off, she said it didn't.
Guest:Then the bet was that the loser had to stand in front of me on a table and pat their stomach, pat their head and rub their stomach and sing somewhere over the rainbow to me.
Guest:So she had to do it.
Guest:I would have loved her to loss.
Guest:If I would have known that bet, I would have said the other way, you know, Marlon doing it.
Guest:But he knew a sure thing, you know, he'd heard it.
Guest:So anyway, so she gets up and she just says somewhere over the rainbow and she does the first verse and gets down.
Guest:And it's kind of, it's funny for a second, but then it got a little embarrassing.
Guest:And then Marlon says, no, you didn't finish the song.
Guest:He made it go back up and do it.
Guest:So the cruelty was there.
Marc:It's interesting that in the face of all these, having dealt with some Hollywood personalities at different points in my life and being vulnerable and being sucked in by the charisma of certain people, because some people are almost mythic,
Marc:It sounds to me that what must have driven you at some point was some sort of selfish need to know that you stood outside these people.
Guest:That and the challenge to do something better than anyone has ever done before.
Guest:That was always a challenge for me.
Guest:But you must have had some spite for some of these people.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:No, I wouldn't use the word spite at all.
Guest:Only Robert Mitchum did I dislike.
Guest:and that was because he was an anti-Semite.
Guest:But, you know, other than that, I walked out on Mitchum.
Guest:But there was never a part of you that thought, like, you know, like, all right, so this is the big deal?
Guest:No, sure.
Guest:Charlie Sheen.
Guest:I went to his house once, right?
Guest:And I pull into the, it's a Malibu colony, and I pull in with my little, I had a Fiat, you know, and there's this beautiful black Mercedes and another one over there.
Guest:You know, and I'm looking, I say, what has he got to deserve this?
Guest:I'm driving this car.
Guest:You didn't ask that question a lot?
Guest:Just Charlie Sheen?
Guest:Probably.
Guest:Well, but, you know,
Guest:You sort of see this and you start wondering.
Guest:Freddie Prinze, I'm upstairs in his bedroom and I'm looking at the bookshelves.
Guest:We're talking in his bedroom and there's nothing on the book.
Guest:There's no books.
Guest:I said, Freddie, where's your books?
Guest:He says, I don't read books.
Guest:I said, really?
Guest:I said, I collect first editions.
Guest:You don't read books?
Guest:He says, what's the first edition?
Guest:Blew my mind.
Guest:So now I'm thinking, how do I reach this guy?
Guest:How do I get to him?
Guest:So I said, what do you collect?
Guest:Comic books and animation from the 50s or something.
Guest:Okay, let's talk about that.
Guest:So we'll go there.
Guest:You look for some kind of common ground.
Guest:Sure, I get it.
Guest:But some people are vapid.
Guest:Look, Chris O'Donnell, I interviewed him when he was 25 years old.
Guest:Before he, you know, he does the scent of a woman, but he's still new.
Guest:So I'm talking to him, and I'm asking him questions, and he would say, gee, you know, my father could answer that question.
Guest:That's kind of a philosophical question I don't think I can answer.
Guest:And I thought about that.
Guest:I said, you know, I'm talking to people who aren't fully developed yet.
Guest:That happens, sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I don't find that I have spite.
Marc:And what I've learned from talking to people is the human experience is what it is.
Marc:And people process what they're going to process.
Marc:And usually there's an amazing story of struggle there.
Marc:And I'm always moved by it.
Marc:But almost always, even if somebody's difficult.
Marc:But what's interesting to me in terms of how much you've done
Marc:Is that idea of, and I think it sounds like that novel sort of covers it, that, you know, really that, you know, who's got your back?
Guest:The only person who has your back is your wife and your kids.
Guest:Nobody else.
Guest:Nobody else.
Guest:Not even your friends.
Guest:I mean, my friends don't read my books.
Guest:You know, I mean, they want me to give it to them.
Guest:They don't want to buy them.
Guest:You know, I mean, this is the reality.
Guest:If I had a thin skin, I'd never be in this business.
Marc:But looking back at somebody like John Huston and knowing, knowing full well, I mean, that must have been an amazing experience with Truman Capote, with Marlon Brando, Al Pacino to a certain degree.
Marc:But Huston, I mean, you know, as time goes on, you know, that might be assigned in film classes.
Marc:Do you feel like there was a futility?
Marc:to this mountain of accomplishment.
Marc:And a lot of these people that you interviewed, just like I do, it's like you got down at a certain time.
Marc:And if they don't die, who the hell knows what's going to happen?
Guest:What did you capture?
Guest:What's the portrait?
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:That's what I think I did do.
Guest:I did capture them.
Guest:I mean, look, I wrote a book called The Art of the Interview about all this stuff.
Guest:How am I doing?
Guest:You're doing great.
Guest:But The Art of the Interview is used in journalism classes now.
Guest:But I've been told that I'm very unorthodox.
Guest:Well, look, you look for the personal in a lot of what you talk about.
Guest:And I think, you know, you talk, you ask about your parents, your subject's parents, where they go back to.
Guest:And that's, you know, these days you don't get that on television.
Guest:You don't get, you know, you don't get people looking for.
Guest:dimension a person let's say or you know or whatever you know whatever serious problems a person has the psychology of a person you know like Roy Fyerson was very good at this too he did this with sports figures they were the they're the hardest people in the world to interview sports figures and he was able to do that but he's not on the air anymore he doesn't have a show anymore nobody wants that you know I don't know if that's true that nobody wants they tell him that he's trying no I know that but they tell us all that yeah but that's but you do your own thing right you know you've created a niche all right well give me some pointers that I can make me better
Guest:Ah, well, I don't have any yet.
Guest:Let me ask you these questions, though.
Guest:If you could choose a choreopath and you had these three choice figures to compare yourself to, would it be Johnny Carson, Mark Twain, or Woody Allen?
Hmm.
Guest:Mark Twain.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:That's the one I would have chosen.
Guest:But that's very telling, isn't it?
Guest:I mean, you know, it's like, where do you want to go?
Guest:You know, you could be a talk show host.
Marc:I wish I had the discipline as a satirist that he had.
Marc:He's ultimately a writer, but he became an orator and was somebody who enjoyed speaking to crowds and doing a stand-up routine, basically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, he's an incredibly sophisticated thinker.
Marc:I think that if I have any fault now, it's that I've really sort of rationalized my need to stay specifically within existential predicaments, as opposed to sort of, you know, cast my eye on broader issues of political or cultural nature.
Guest:You know, John Heusen once said to me, he was telling me about this, if you think these people are cynical or whatever, he says, Mark Twain wrote a book, I think it's called The Mysterious Stranger.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he said, and as we talk about it, he says, Larry, let's go get that book.
Guest:I feel like reading it again.
Guest:We went to a store and got it.
Guest:I loved them, you know?
Yeah.
Marc:he says this is where you just want to you know but that was a different time where you know you know talents like john houston these guys who they were boxers they fought in the war the weird thing about the culture we live in is that when you were doing most of your writing you know there were three networks there was like four or five studios you know everybody was on the same page playboy had a tremendous amount of cachet you know on a literary level and everybody was there you know that the people that were interested the things that they were interested in there was a common ground there and there was a lot more yeah
Guest:I remember Barbara said, I said, how come you're doing Playboy?
Guest:She says, well, Playboy is the Bible.
Guest:I mean, that was the way they looked at the interview.
Marc:It's a very interesting time now.
Marc:There's no Bible.
Marc:There's no Bible, but also this idea that people don't want long-form stuff or in-depth things is that they've successfully leveled the adult attention span to something akin to a child.
Marc:And that's the way that they're going to feed it because the hunger for content is so extreme.
Marc:I get on stage and people are like,
Marc:Well, I already heard that story.
Marc:I'm like, you didn't hear it here.
Marc:You didn't hear it on stage.
Marc:I've told it two times in my life.
Marc:And already you want me to move on?
Marc:I'm not a machine.
Marc:I mean, so the credibility of authentic life experience or sharing on a human level has been diminished by this craving, almost an addictive-like craving for new content.
Marc:There was a time where people had lives.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And they did amazing, very prolific people that fought in wars, that did things in a dramatic way, that aggressively, like you said, whatever inspired you to join the Peace Corps to get some life experience, I mean, that had some credibility.
Marc:No one gives a fuck anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it doesn't add up to much for people today.
Marc:That life experience and wisdom gleaned from really living it, it doesn't have the premium it used to.
Guest:It doesn't, but thank goodness there's still a Peace Corps out there.
Guest:There's still people who are doing it.
Guest:No, no, I wasn't condescending the Peace Corps.
Guest:I was just saying that you're-
Guest:But it's true.
Guest:When I first started teaching at UCLA, it was 2001.
Guest:And for five years, I told them about the life of a freelancer.
Guest:This is the way to go.
Guest:If you can be a freelancer, not just a writer, freelance anything you do, you have your own hours, you're your own person, it's a great life.
Guest:The last few years, I couldn't do that anymore.
Guest:I couldn't talk about it because I saw everything was drying up.
Marc:I got to know great writers because it's drying up alongside of the printed industry.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:The whole book industry.
Guest:That's why I'm a dinosaur because I'm still writing books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's sort of like, oh.
Guest:Well, listen, I know you have a two o'clock, so we went over that.
Guest:So I appreciate it.
Guest:But I have more questions, too.
Guest:Well, let's continue this, because I do that.
Marc:So let's pick up where we left off and think about stuff.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:Okay, that was part one.
Marc:And then I stewed on it for a month before I did part two to do it his style.
Marc:So let's see if we get the full picture or let's see what happens.
Marc:Well, see, here's the interesting thing about, you know, what we chose to do here, which is I am sort of honoring your style of interview.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was my idea is that like I sat and talked to you last time and you told me that you would spend months with people.
Marc:And in my brain, I was like, what could you I mean, how is that going to you know what?
Marc:Like there's a couple of questions I have about that.
Marc:Is that I'm a guy that does an interview in an hour.
Marc:So what I have is I have the gift of audio is that, you know, you can sense emotion.
Marc:You can sense, you know, where someone's at.
Marc:You can hear their struggles.
Marc:You can hear their tone of voice.
Marc:So the portrait I'm creating is very specific to audio in a lot of ways because it's emotionally loaded.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you can't do that really in print without, you know, without elaborating.
Marc:So in the sense that unless you're going to every other line, you're going to say he said with weighted, you know, breath.
Marc:And it's still not going to be the same.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So the impact that I can have with an audio podcast in terms of who people are is easier.
Guest:It is easier, absolutely.
Guest:Look, a really good interview, and you look at some of the best, because their writers were really good.
Guest:Truman Capote really captured Marlon Brando in the way in the Duke and his domain.
Guest:Brando wouldn't talk to anybody for 25 years until I saw him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's a really good piece of writing.
Guest:I mean, if you look at that, so it's hard.
Guest:That's why the majority of interviews are dry.
Guest:They're not that interesting.
Guest:There are a handful that are really good because the writer has somehow figured out a way to bring you, the reader, into it.
Guest:So you get to feel the personality, get to feel the joke if it's a joke, the sarcasm if it's sarcasm.
Guest:Easier on radio because if I say a joke and I laugh, ha-ha, okay.
Guest:We know what that is.
Guest:But sometimes someone says something and it doesn't come off funny in print.
Marc:And also there's the issue of relevance.
Marc:Is that, you know, like, you know, like if I look at the list of interviews here, you know, dead.
Marc:But see, that's not necessarily an issue.
Marc:But, you know, we live in a time where they're really, you know, context in history is sort of been obliterated.
Marc:And certainly, you know, how much people are going to go, you know, dig up print interviews.
Marc:You know, again, I'm looking at sort of this list and I'm trying to sort of frame this.
Marc:And I know this was your job and you're very good at it.
Marc:And, you know, all of these interviews that you've done with all these people are available.
Marc:Whether people go to them or not, I don't know.
Marc:Really.
Marc:And I think that the books in terms of the history of film and the history of creativity, you know, these are important books or they would have been the books you spent your life writing, you know, about the Houstons.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're huge.
Marc:I mean, there's a resource there.
Marc:Obviously, it's limited to students of film and fans of that era in a way, so it's hard to figure out.
Guest:Well, listen, Mark, I do not write for an audience in my mind.
Guest:No, I know, but I'm talking about who is the audience.
Guest:Who is the audience?
Guest:I get that asked a lot.
Guest:A lot of times when I've just finished two novels and then the question becomes, who's the audience?
Guest:Before anybody even reads them, who's the audience?
Guest:That's an American publisher.
Yeah.
Guest:That's who asked that question.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to me, it's like, I'm just writing stories.
Guest:I guess my audience is me.
Guest:It would be people like me, people who went to college.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I just feel that...
Guest:My job is to put, you know, put it out the way I can.
Guest:I'm not a stand-up comedian.
Guest:I'm not an actor.
Guest:You know, so, you know, I don't have great talent.
Guest:I grew up, I watched Arthur Singer as the most important bird artist in America at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he died.
Guest:But he and Roger Torrey Peterson were the two.
Guest:And I grew up watching this guy draw his birds and being home smoking a pipe and just drawing.
Guest:And I saw my father driving into work and driving back at 7 o'clock tired.
Guest:And I said, hmm, do I want to do that or do I want to do this?
Guest:I want this.
Guest:But I don't have the talent to draw.
Guest:And I didn't have the musical ability.
Guest:I tried playing the piano for a while.
Guest:I just didn't have it.
Guest:So...
Guest:I found I could write, you know, I mean, I could write stuff.
Guest:And at 15 years old, I was writing stuff that was getting published.
Guest:So, okay, there was my into the creative freelance world.
Guest:And that's the path I chose.
Guest:And thank God, I have made it all my life fairly successfully as a freelance writer.
Guest:You can't do it anymore.
Marc:But the interesting thing is, is that now, you know, you've got this novel published in Poland, which we'll talk about.
Marc:But see, so that was the original idea.
Marc:So you're going to be a writer and you are a writer.
Marc:But now you spent your entire career talking to geniuses, many of them geniuses.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you were, you know, you sort of, you have the same thing I have.
Marc:You have the capacity to sort of connect symbiotically with a creative person, you know, build their trust, you know, however long it took you.
Marc:I think I can do it quicker.
Marc:If we were going to have a concert.
Marc:But, you know, some of these people you talk to must have had an impact.
Marc:Now, obviously, you know, you're a fanboy like I am.
Marc:And, you know, when you say Brando was our greatest actor, I mean, that's probably true.
Marc:But most people don't have a real context for Brando anymore.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:Even when he died, which is really sad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He didn't get the respect when he died.
Marc:Well, yeah, there's a lot of people that happens to.
Marc:It's not even that time passes them by.
Marc:Sometimes what they become later in life sort of starts to eat away at the myth of who they were.
Guest:Because I interviewed Lauren Bacall, and I did James Garner, and I did Robin.
Guest:So the three people who recently died, I said, gee, I was with all of them.
Guest:But Robin really caught the imagination of the world in a way that...
Guest:He was always there.
Marc:I mean, it's like weird that his energy, I mean, that's a career thing.
Marc:I mean, Robin almost didn't age, and I think recently he has, and obviously his career was in a different place when he decided to take his own life, but the truth of the matter is the energy of Robin Williams
Marc:It was almost primal in a way.
Marc:It was like archetypical.
Marc:It was sort of always this thing.
Marc:There was a vibration that he operated at no matter what.
Marc:But you talk to somebody like Miles Davis and you talk to somebody like Steve Martin or whoever, all these great people.
Marc:But someone like Miles Davis, I mean, you guys couldn't be more different.
Marc:and you couldn't come from a different world.
Marc:And he was this cryptic wizard and fairly opinionated and kind of wrong-minded in some ways about women and whatnot.
Marc:But I've dealt with that.
Marc:And ultimately, you just have to not argue with them and then let them unfold.
Marc:And that's the honesty of it.
Marc:But when you talk to these geniuses as somebody who secretly is harboring this desire to write a novel, what are you thinking?
Marc:What did you learn from them?
Guest:What I was thinking with Miles is...
Guest:Damn, I made one huge mistake by not asking him to write his biography, his autobiography.
Guest:I wanted to write him more.
Guest:I wanted to spend more time with him.
Guest:I mean, he was amazing.
Guest:The guy was amazing.
Guest:He sat there for three hours.
Guest:I have it all on video.
Guest:We did it for cable TV.
Guest:He spent the whole time, he was drawing.
Guest:He had all these colored pencils and stuff like this, and he would be drawing and stuff and never would look up.
Guest:and I'd ask him stuff, and the cameras were on him, and he's talking about race, and he's talking about feeling uncomfortable among whites, and he's talking about strangling a white man, all that shit, and it was great.
Guest:And he was kind of, he made me laugh, even though he was saying things like, I don't want to go to a movie, go see some white girl have fun in a movie, and he says, my wife can't get a job, and he's talking about Tisley Tyson.
Guest:Tisley Tyson, yeah.
Guest:I just found perhaps one of the, I mean, he is the Brando of the music world.
Guest:I mean, Miles Davis was really important, like Pavarotti was.
Guest:I mean, I've had a great life in talking to these people.
Guest:You keep wondering, what the fuck am I doing talking to these people?
Guest:Or why do I, what do I get out of it?
Guest:I get a lot out of it.
Guest:If I didn't get a lot of it, I wouldn't be doing it.
Guest:And I miss, I miss doing, I haven't done the Playboy interview in a few years because the editor doesn't like me anymore.
Guest:Same guy, new guy.
Guest:Same guy.
Guest:And it's a terrible situation.
Guest:My Facebook interview, they fucking, they got a fact wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I could see that, you know.
Guest:Their interviews haven't been that good lately.
Guest:But how do you just make up facts?
Guest:What happened to fact checking?
Guest:Good question.
Guest:Good question.
Guest:It used to be something you could rely on.
Guest:Nowadays, especially book publishing, they don't fact check.
Guest:I mean, I have books coming out and I see stuff, mistakes.
Guest:Oliver Stone called me up and said, you got my Academy of Wrong wrong, you know, who I got, which I got for.
Guest:I said, oh, God, I'm so sorry, Oliver.
Guest:But what?
Guest:That's a fact-checking thing that should have been done.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:But I can't rely on that.
Marc:Was there some through line to the creative spirit or to people that captured the public imagination that you were able to identify?
Guest:Well, I tried to... You know, I don't think that way.
Guest:So I don't... But you've had time to reflect, Larry.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, but...
Guest:But yes, look, I put a book out called Icons.
Guest:I took 15 of the people that I think are, that we can legitimately call icons.
Guest:Maybe not, what's her name?
Guest:Paltrow, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I put her in the book because I wrote about it and I just put Meryl Streep's in there, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Tom Waits.
Marc:You interviewed Tom?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:I can't get him either.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:I love Tom Waits.
Guest:So I wrote it.
Guest:I wrote an article as if, you know, and how to figure out how to write that one.
Guest:That's the only one I've ever written like that.
Marc:Without him talking to him.
Marc:So how did you do it?
Guest:Well, there's a thing called Esoteric Tours in L.A.
Guest:And I saw that one day I saw something in one of the L.A.
Guest:Weekly.
Guest:It said that they're going to do a Tom Waits tour, you know, where Tom grew up and what he did in L.A.
Guest:So I got in touch with them.
Guest:I said, listen, I'm interested in writing a piece on something.
Guest:And they said, oh, yeah, come on to that.
Guest:So I got on the bus and I go on this tour.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That gave me my idea to write the article.
Guest:So what, did you go to Cantor's?
Guest:Yeah, basically, you go past Cantor's.
Guest:You go to, on Hollywood in Las Palmas, there's a place.
Marc:So this is a tour based on Tom Waits' life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:And the guy who talks about it wrote a book about Tom Waits or something.
Guest:So he's on mic and he's talking about stuff.
Guest:So I said, okay, I can start a thing where I'm going to go do this.
Guest:And then I can have people on the bus arguing about his stuff.
Guest:And so I make up these people and I give you all my opinions about Tom Waits through their voices.
Guest:It was just so much fun to write.
Guest:And they liked it.
Guest:They put it on the cover, right?
Guest:And now I'm putting it out in my book.
Guest:Did you hear from Tom?
Guest:No.
Marc:Where can people get your books?
Guest:They got to go to Amazon.
Guest:And look under.
Guest:Lawrence Grobel.
Guest:Lawrence Grobel.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's it.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Still, I'm not getting the answer I want from you.
Marc:I know.
Marc:You keep getting my answer.
Marc:And I don't know why I can't get it to you.
Marc:The answer is that you're a creative guy that has taken this long to sort of manifest what you really wanted to do.
Marc:Because it wasn't a detour.
Marc:It was a living talking to creative people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was there anything you learned?
Right.
Guest:I learned how to live a life.
Guest:I've learned how to be a person.
Guest:I learned how to communicate with people.
Guest:There's no philosophical gems.
Guest:No.
Guest:There's no sort of like one of them.
Guest:Well, that's different.
Guest:You say, okay, what were the main things I learned from certain people?
Guest:I had four mentors, right, I would say.
Guest:Bernie Wolf was one of them.
Guest:He was a novelist.
Guest:He was at UCLA.
Guest:I got to be one-on-one with him for two or three years, so I never had to take a class.
Guest:And I gave him the ending of a novel called Lies at one time.
Guest:We used to meet in his place.
Guest:And we used to watch him smoke his cigars and all that.
Guest:And we talked about literature.
Guest:And he always had people over and stuff.
Guest:Alex Haley.
Guest:I remember when that book was coming out.
Guest:There was a lot to talk about that and stuff.
Guest:I lent him money while I was a student.
Guest:He never paid me back.
Guest:Then I once asked him for the money, and it was 500 bucks, and he gave me back 200.
Guest:And then I hired him once.
Guest:He fucked me over.
Guest:I hired him.
Guest:I hired him.
Guest:He's your hero.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:One of your heroes.
Guest:I've learned, man.
Guest:You learn that with certain people who they are, not necessarily what you're reading.
Guest:That's absolutely right.
Guest:I don't know if James Joyce and I would have been close friends.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But he probably was a real bastard.
Guest:But, you know, that's one thing you learned.
Marc:Sometimes, you know, the public image or the image that you have as somebody who is enamored or taken with them can very easily be diminished.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And it happens all the time.
Guest:Al Pacino and I, look, Al Pacino and I are very close for 30 years.
Guest:We had a falling out, you know, so now, okay, we're at a distance of each other.
Guest:And I realized that he cannot apologize.
Guest:It's because it's not in the stars gene to be able to apologize.
Guest:And I knew this for a long time about these people.
Guest:I learned this about stars.
Guest:They don't, you know, even no matter how wrong they may be.
Guest:And one time, Anthony Hopkins, who was going to do a script of mine, based on the conversation with Brando book, and he was excited about doing it.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And we even met.
Guest:And his agent at the time at CAA, he was going to be my agent.
Guest:Everything was really going nicely.
Guest:And all of a sudden, I get a call from the agent, Rick Nesita, saying, Tony's going to back out if he doesn't want to do that.
Guest:I said, why?
Guest:He says, he's afraid.
Guest:He's afraid to play Marlon.
Guest:I didn't believe it.
Guest:I said, this guy has played Picasso.
Guest:He's played Hitler.
Guest:He's played some of the presidents.
Guest:I mean, Nixon.
Guest:Hopkins is an amazing actor.
Guest:So I said, I don't think that's probably the reason, but okay.
Guest:And I felt bad.
Guest:I never showed it to anybody.
Guest:Pacino said to me, he'll come back.
Guest:Don't show it to anybody.
Guest:He'll come back.
Guest:So, I didn't do anything.
Guest:He goes off and does the Wolfman Hopkins and he comes back and then one day I'm home and I get a phone call.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anthony Hopkins.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, oh, hi, Tony, how are you?
Guest:And he goes, Larry, he says, listen, I did a terrible thing to you, a terrible thing.
Guest:I'm really, I'm just so sorry.
Guest:I said, you know, that I didn't call and I didn't tell you why.
Guest:I didn't want to do the Brando thing.
Guest:I just held you up and I led you on.
Guest:And I'm thinking, this is impossible, right?
Guest:It's impossible.
Guest:Anthony Hopkins cannot be apologized.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's against everything I have learned over the stars.
Guest:And then I'm thinking, he's interested in the script, but he doesn't want to say it because it's been over a year.
Guest:So I said, Anthony, I haven't shown it to anybody since.
Guest:Oh, no, no, I wasn't calling about that.
Guest:I wasn't calling you about that at all.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:But let me give you my cell number, and why don't we have lunch?
Guest:Let's get together.
Guest:I said, terrific.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he gives me the number and I wait a little while and I called him and we meet.
Guest:And it's all about Brando.
Guest:It's all about the script and all.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's, you know, a story you learn about, you know, apologies in a sense.
Guest:So I find that a sincere apology doesn't exist among stars.
Guest:That's one of the things I'm sorry to say, but, you know, it's a rare thing.
Marc:But also, doesn't that also put into question that sometimes, no matter how much time you spend with these people or no matter how much they reveal to you, it's not necessarily that you have an emotional relationship with that person.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I think I do.
Guest:And I often don't.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I'm fooled over and over again.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Goldie Hawn.
Guest:Goldie Hawn and I and Kurt Russell, because of Goldie, were very close, shared dinners.
Guest:We went to dinner at her house.
Guest:She would come to our house and everything.
Guest:And then what happened was, God, I'm telling you stories that I don't know if I'm actually talking out loud, I guess.
Right.
Guest:Entertainment Weekly asked me to do a cover story on Kurt Russell, and I did.
Guest:And Kurt and I had a great time.
Guest:We went out and flew in his plane.
Guest:And at one point, he gave me the controls.
Guest:He says, I'm going, I can't do this.
Guest:And he's laughing.
Guest:So we had a good relationship, and it's going to be a positive article about him, whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I write the article and I give it to Entertainment Weekly.
Guest:Now, Entertainment Weekly is part of Time Magazine, which means that they go through editors.
Guest:One, two, three, four, five editors sign off.
Guest:An editor who just signs off without putting his two cents in isn't making money, isn't doing his job.
Guest:His job is he's got to find something.
Guest:Five editors finding things throughout this story.
Guest:And it comes back, and then they send me the galleys.
Guest:And I looked at the story, and I said, this is not what I wrote.
Guest:I said, it's another story.
Guest:I don't want it.
Guest:I said, go back to what I wrote.
Guest:Show me why what I wrote is no good.
Guest:So they go back, okay, and we change things back and forth.
Guest:But this is timely because something's going on.
Guest:Okay, so now, I didn't see the second galley after that.
Guest:The article comes out.
Guest:And it's a decent article, but it cut out a lot of nice little things between us.
Guest:But on the second paragraph, it said that Kurt Russell, who's looking to become an A, is a B actor looking to become an A actor, something like that.
Guest:Terrible line.
Guest:I didn't write that.
Guest:I didn't write that whole paragraph.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I felt, oh, well, Kurt's going to call me up, ball me out, and I'll just have to tell him.
Guest:I didn't do it.
Guest:Well, instead what happened was we lost contact.
Guest:I never heard from them.
Guest:And then it was our time to have dinner.
Guest:I called her, you know, left a message, didn't call back.
Guest:I called again, didn't call back.
Guest:So I said, well, something's happened.
Guest:My wife says, we had stayed at their Malibu house once with our kids.
Guest:So you were real close.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I forgot the password to get in, so I had to, I mean, the people came and I said, and I think it was some kind of animal somewhere.
Guest:I got close enough that they said, okay.
Guest:So my wife was saying, maybe you just screwed up their alarm system and said they're mad at you.
Guest:I said, no, no, that doesn't make any sense because we got it.
Guest:So I said, maybe it was the article, but it's too petty.
Guest:It's only that one paragraph, right?
Guest:So...
Guest:I don't hear anything.
Guest:Then a couple, half a year go by maybe, Al Pacino, who did not know Goldie or Kurt, ran into them at the Oscars or the Emmys or whatever it was.
Guest:And he's just talking to them.
Guest:And he came back and we and I were having lunch.
Guest:He says, oh, I saw a good friend of yours.
Guest:He says, at the thing.
Guest:I said, well, yeah, it's Goldie and Kurt.
Guest:I said, well, they're not really friends anymore.
Guest:I said, what's the matter?
Guest:What happened?
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:I said, for some reason, they're not getting back to me.
Guest:So something went wrong, but I,
Guest:So, and it was Al who said, I want you to write.
Guest:He said, you can never leave something like this unexplained.
Guest:You have to come to a conclusion.
Guest:If you did something wrong, find out about it.
Guest:If you didn't, you know, whatever.
Guest:So I want you to write her one more time for me.
Guest:I said, I'm not doing it.
Guest:He says, no, write and say in the opening line, Al told me to write this or else I wouldn't be writing, whatever.
Guest:So that's what I did.
Guest:I wrote it one more time.
Guest:To Goldie.
Guest:To Goldie.
Guest:And Goldie writes me back and she says...
Guest:I have to tell you, she says that the person, she says, I thought that we had such a good relationship with my wife, my kids, the whole thing.
Guest:And then I saw that the article that you wrote and the person that you were writing about, Kurt, was not the person I was living with or the person I knew.
Guest:So if you could be so off on that, then I didn't know what to say.
Guest:So we just dropped back.
Guest:And I said, Goldie, I wrote back to her.
Guest:I said, Goldie, this is like a Guy de Maupassant story because it's like the necklace.
Guest:I said, I gave her, I sent the 17-page article that I had written in manuscript.
Guest:I sent it to her.
Guest:And I said, I want you to read the article.
Guest:And I also made a copy of the piece because I figured she'd probably have it.
Guest:I said, look at the two of them.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I do.
Guest:And the piece was really very favorable.
Guest:So anyway, she writes me back another note.
Guest:And she says, I'm down on my knees in apology.
Guest:I am so sorry.
Guest:She says, what you wrote is so beautiful.
Guest:And why don't you come for dinner?
Guest:And, you know, whatever.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I said to my wife, do you want to go?
Guest:She said, yeah, I'll go.
Guest:So we go.
Guest:And at that time, Kate wasn't acting yet.
Guest:She was so small.
Guest:She didn't sit around the table.
Guest:So we go.
Guest:And Kurt says, well, I guess we, he brings it up.
Guest:And I said, Kurt, let's have dinner first.
Guest:Let's have a nice dinner first.
Guest:Because I got a lot of things I want to talk about, too.
Guest:Because it's the nature of friendship.
Guest:To me, what it was, was I thought we were friends.
Guest:If I did something that upset you,
Guest:Why don't you call me on it?
Guest:That's what a friend would do.
Guest:Why did you write that?
Guest:And I would say, I didn't do it.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I had no control over that.
Guest:So we had a very nice evening.
Guest:We had that whole talk and everything.
Guest:But what really happened is we don't get together anymore.
Guest:Once it happens, it happens.
Guest:I ran into her somewhere else in front of CEA once, and we just hugged and kissed, and everything was terrific, but we haven't seen them.
Guest:I'd like to, but I haven't gone out of my way either.
Guest:Well, sometimes life gets in the way.
Guest:Here's a really interesting one.
Guest:Dolly Parton.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Donnelly and I got along famously.
Guest:We did a great, you know, they came out in Playboy in the 78 or so, what, 79.
Guest:One day, Playboy thought they could get to Charlie Manson, and they called me up, and they said, Larry, we want you to consider this.
Guest:We don't want to answer yet, but I want you to consider doing Charlie Manson.
Guest:I said immediately, why wouldn't I do it?
Guest:He says, well, you know, you live up in the hills where that happened.
Guest:You just had a baby.
Guest:And there are still some crazies out there in the members of the family.
Guest:So it might be something you want to discuss with your wife about doing first.
Guest:And that's interesting because I never would have thought of that.
Guest:I wanted to do EDM in once and nobody would let me because they thought that he would kill me.
Guest:So there I am thinking about it.
Guest:And I call all the guys I knew, said, you got to do it.
Guest:You got to do it.
Guest:Larry Schiller, who had gotten involved with Squeaky From once or something, he says, yeah.
Guest:I said, anything happened with you when you were involved?
Guest:He says, yeah, they blew up my mailbox.
Guest:I said, Larry, they blew up your mailboxes.
Guest:You went into the house.
Guest:This is where he is coming from, right?
Guest:So I'm thinking, okay, every woman I knew said, don't do it, right?
Guest:Stay away from the energy.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So on a Saturday night, I'm thinking about doing it.
Guest:You know, this is where my head's at.
Guest:I'm going to call on Monday.
Guest:Phone rings out of the complete blue because I don't have this kind of relationship with her, but it's Dolly Parton.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hey, guy, how you doing?
Guest:I was just thinking about you.
Guest:She goes, you know, I said, you know, what you been up to?
Guest:I said, Dolly, it's funny that you called now.
Guest:I said, I'm making a decision.
Guest:And what are you thinking about?
Guest:And I said, well, you know, they asked me to do Charlie Manson.
Guest:What?
Guest:She says, hold on, stop this thing.
Guest:If you see him, if you talk to him, if you have anything to do with him, I will never talk to you again.
Guest:That has nothing to do with your decision, she says.
Guest:I just want to tell you, be upfront about it.
Guest:That man has got bad energy, very evil.
Guest:You're very sensitive.
Guest:His evil will get on to you.
Guest:I don't want that to get to me.
Guest:I have nothing to do with you again.
Guest:So I said, God, Dolly, I think you just made up my mind for me.
Guest:So I said, I didn't do it.
Guest:But what happened?
Guest:I didn't see Dolly for three or four years.
Guest:And then I got an assignment from McCall's or something to do Dolly.
Guest:And I said, great.
Guest:So I meet her in a French restaurant.
Guest:And she hugs me.
Guest:It's like we're old friends.
Guest:I said, Dolly, I said...
Guest:Why haven't I talked to you in the last four years?
Guest:And she looked at me.
Guest:I said, it's Manson, isn't it?
Guest:She said, yes.
Guest:She says, just that you considered it put me off about you because you just even considered it.
Guest:I said, but I'm a writer.
Guest:This is an assignment.
Guest:I said, I would do Hitler.
Guest:I would do Mussolini if I had a chance to get to him.
Guest:But, you know, this is another thing.
Guest:Is this what I learned?
Guest:Yeah, I learned how to deal with people through life, but I'm never right about it.
Guest:I mean, everybody surprises me.
Guest:And that's another thing.
Guest:I used to really think, what was Warren Beatty like?
Guest:And so if they throw you, if they come in with somebody else, with a friend, or if just something else happened, it's a different person.
Guest:No, you can't do it.
Guest:So I've just realized that these people are different.
Guest:They're all individual.
Guest:They all have their own quirks.
Guest:Some of them are very depressed.
Guest:Some of them aren't.
Guest:My challenge is just to get to them.
Guest:The fact that I could get to Christopher Walken and to get to Linus Pauling or Joyce Carol Oates or Norman Mailer.
Guest:I mean, it's fascinating to me to try to get into their minds.
Marc:What's interesting, because that dynamic is that...
Marc:You know, they are who they are because of their work, but also because they've been celebrated somehow and they're cultural icons and they've done something amazing.
Marc:And I think that, you know, what drives me and that might drive you on some level is, yeah, it's compelling to be close to this power, but it probably reveals some fundamental insecurity on behalf of yourself.
Guest:No.
Guest:I don't feel insecure.
Guest:I accept the fact that they are more talented, let's say, in their field than I am.
Guest:But you want to be a writer.
Guest:I don't want to be a writer.
Marc:I am a writer.
Marc:I've been writing for 50-some years.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Marc:I didn't insult you.
Marc:That's not an insult.
Guest:That's okay.
Marc:No, you are a writer.
Marc:But I'm saying in this process, you know, you want to write novels.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And it's just in my mind, I know, you know, I know the thrill of being close to, you know, to famous people.
Marc:And, you know, no matter how much you want to humanize them, it's still daunting and it's still exciting.
Marc:And, you know, as a guy that's going to go in there and have this access and then sort of figure out where they're coming from and how they're doing and develop this relationship and where they are emotionally and why they are who they are.
Marc:That's a powerful position.
Guest:I guess it is, but I don't use the power.
Marc:I guess my point is that you have been hurt by the assumption that you had relationships.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And listen, but then I write about it.
Marc:The thing is that you survived through all this, and I think what's interesting is that it's a challenge now, but conversely, you're actually doing exactly what you wanted to do.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Finally, you've come to realize that.
Guest:I have been doing what I wanted to do my whole life.
Guest:I have always felt like somehow I've never worked.
Guest:I've worked hard, but I've never worked because I loved it.
Guest:I loved when I interviewed Mae West, my first love.
Guest:I loved when I got to Truman Capote.
Guest:Saul Bellow.
Guest:I'm going to talk to Saul Bellow.
Guest:I read this guy when I was in my life.
Guest:It's so wonderful.
Guest:You're doing it.
Guest:You don't hate it.
Guest:You love it.
Marc:I know, but see, there's still that thing like, I want to write and play music.
Marc:But you've written a book.
Marc:Well, that's different.
Marc:Music is a different story.
Marc:I want to be like, there's things I want to do in comedy.
Marc:There's some part about living your life through other people, even if it's interviewing.
Marc:As compelling as it is, that there's some part of you, and I can hear it in the way that you talk about your acceptance in this country, that now it's not the interviews that you want to be necessarily known for.
Marc:That was your job and you had a great time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But now you're writing books.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But you're on TV.
Guest:You're doing your show.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I can't believe every time I turn on your podcast, it says, hey, folks, I'm going to be in here, here, here, here.
Guest:I'm doing this.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:What the hell?
Guest:He's all over the place.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:He's in the magazines now.
Guest:For 25 years.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, hey, listen, it's taking me 40.
Marc:But you were making a good living before.
Guest:I'm making a decent living, yes.
Marc:All the way through it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not me so much.
Marc:So now, okay, so let's do business.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Marc:You all right?
Marc:So Lawrence Grobel is where they can get your books on Kindle.
Marc:Do you have a website?
Marc:I have a website, lawrencegrobel.com.
Marc:Because I think it's a tremendous resource.
Marc:And I have a lot of respect for what you've done and what you do.
Marc:I do.
Marc:And I'm glad that our friend Janine put us together because I wouldn't have thought of it.
Marc:And I was resistant at first.
Guest:I don't blame you.
Marc:This is great talking to you, Larry.
Marc:You too.
Marc:i guess i could go for weeks i could interview him again there i'm sure there's no end to the stories perhaps perhaps there's uh one day i'd get to the truth of whatever i was looking for with larry grobel which was you know how he really felt about having that proximity to celebrities like i i didn't feel like i got deep enough with him maybe that's why you got to interview somebody over and over again maybe not
Marc:So Merry Christmas to you and Happy Holidays.
Marc:I just put up a premium, a bonus episode.
Marc:On the WTF Premium app.
Marc:So you can go get the free app.
Marc:Upgrade to Premium.
Marc:Get that bonus episode where I took a tour of a vinyl pressing plant.
Marc:A record pressing plant.
Marc:Anyways.
Marc:Have a cookie.
Marc:Boomer lives!
you