00:00:00 Speaker 1: We've got authored Dave Wedge in studio and this is strange the way that's happened. 00:00:04 Speaker 2: Okay, So your buddy who is the chef and recently and said you need to connect with a Boston author named Dave Wedge, and you got you write about true crime, and we love true crime. Here we just came off the heels of the Karen Reid trial. And I know that you're working on a Karen Reid book. But people if they don't know Dave Wedge. Dave Wedge wrote Boston Strong with Casey Sherman, which was turned into Patriots Day starring Mark Wahlberg. 00:00:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Casey and I wrote that book back in twenty fourteen. I was a reporter at the Boston Herald for fourteen years and led the Herald's coverage when that all happened. I was out there in Watertown that night, in the middle of the. 00:00:43 Speaker 1: Night, and you were there when they were searching for the guy on the boat. 00:00:46 Speaker 3: I got sent out as soon as Sean Collier got shot, and over at MIT, I get sent out, and as I was on my way there, I get diverted from there to Watertown because we heard on the scanner of the bombs wow in the shootout, so I was stuck out there. Actually was actually trapped in the crime scene and I got stuck out there through the nine. 00:01:04 Speaker 1: You were that close. 00:01:05 Speaker 3: I was in the crimes so what was going down? 00:01:07 Speaker 1: That must have been a crazy time because they were looking for the guy, right, They were everywhere. And then all of a sudden, the story popped from Mit and the MIT cop was shot, and then you hear it, you're running out. 00:01:19 Speaker 3: It was it was not sign. My son, who's now twelve, was two weeks old and my wife, Jessica has had the baby on maternity leave, and I came home after covering the bombings all day and then we heard the shooting of Sean Collier on the TV. When I finally sat down, I was trying to help with the baby finally, and I said, you know, this doesn't happen. Something's wrong, and I kind of knew right away it had to be connected. Then I got sent out. 00:01:42 Speaker 1: So God, I've seen the movie five or sixteens. So they get to the scene at the boat, Like I'm getting hills now just thinking about it. 00:01:48 Speaker 3: It's amazing that more police officers weren't killed in that it was. It was really an incredibly intense moment. Wow, what made you write the book? Well, as I said, I've been a reporter for fourteen years. I was always wanted to do a book. I was a report of twenty years. Actually. I had a few opportunities with a couple other stories over the years, but nothing that really jumped out at me and made me say, you know what, I want to dedicate a year or two of my life to this. But when the bombings happened, I knew someone was going to do it. I knew there'd probably be a bunch of books, and I was like, you know what, I'm in the middle of it. I have access to all these people. I know I can do a good job on it. In Casey's an amazing writer, he had just come off The Finest Hours, which is a beautiful booking movie, and he's a friend, so I knew we would do a great job together. So it was kind of a no brainer for me to jump. 00:02:30 Speaker 1: In now, at least a couple of seconds ago, mention, Karen Reid is your Karen read book, the one they're talking about the big film. 00:02:37 Speaker 3: Unfortunately, No, that's Karen Reid herself with her attorney Alan Jackson. But this is another one. I was thinking about doing a book on the Karen Read case way back before the first trial when it all first started happening, and I kind of tabled it to write this book that just came out about marvelous Marvin Hagler. When the second trial came up, I jumped back in after I finished this one, and I've been working on my can reybook for the past six months, seven months. 00:03:02 Speaker 2: It seems like in Boston we have a lot of true crime stories. 00:03:06 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's you know, it's there's so many great stories in the world where a culture of storytellers just humans in general. But in Boston we're really good at telling stories and a lot of really incredible stories come out of it. And the bombing is a great example. You know, there was books about the terrorist. You know, there's books about different people in Wahburn, But we wrote the story about the survivors and how they overcame and that redemption moment and some of the survivors that lost limbs and then ran the marathon the next year. You know, that's that's what they Patten Strong is and that's why we wrote it, you. 00:03:37 Speaker 1: Know, were you happy with the way the movie came out. 00:03:40 Speaker 3: I think it's a great movie. You know, it's they did they did. When it first came out, it was raw, so it was a little like, you know, I wasn't sure, but I watched it for the ten year anniversary last year, and I think it's held up well. I think it captured the spirit of what happened. I think Mark Wahlberg did a great job, and Peteburg's. 00:03:56 Speaker 2: A great filming Did they have you on the set? 00:03:58 Speaker 3: We were on set a good amount. Yeah, And you know, we didn't write the script, but you know, they kept us in the loop and we worked with them to make sure things were write and accurate. And you know, I couldn't say better things about Pete Burg and Mark Wahlberg, the wonderful d with is amazingly talented, very talented. And that was a difficult story at a difficult time. Remember the FBI. There was things the FBI didn't want out, like there was moments where Pete had to actually meet with the FBI to clear stuff. It was a it was a difficult, difficult movie to make, and we were in a time where again it was very raw. 00:04:29 Speaker 1: Now with the Karen Read book. Will you have talks with Karen Read? 00:04:32 Speaker 3: I have met with Karen a couple of times before the first trial. I've talked to Alan Jackson many times. But you know, they're going to do their own book. So I'm going to skate my lane and write my book, and my book will be the definitive story of what happened in the case from all sides. 00:04:47 Speaker 2: So Dave has a new book out. It's called Blood and Hate, the marvelous Marvin Hagler story about the boxer. But the biggest thing is is that it's been optioned by actor Sam Rockwell, who was just in The White Lotus. 00:04:59 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:05:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, So this book is kind of my labor of love. It's my love letter to the city I grew up in, Brockton. It's my eighth book, and again it's one that I kind of thought about doing for a few years, and then I finally did it after I finished my last book, which was about bikers and cops and stuff, a true crime book called Writing with Evil. I wanted to write this book with Marvin when he was alive, but after he passed away, I was like, you know what, this guy's legacy has never really been secured. A lot of people think of Marvin Hagler, they think, oh, he lost to sugar Y Len and then disappeared. But to me, Marvin's story is this story, which is him escaping Newark as a little boy, fighting the corruption in the seventies and eighties in the box and they're winning this fight in London in nineteen eighty against a guy that was backed by a white power group and he was pelted with bottles after he won the fight. And that's what the story is about. 00:05:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, at least it was telling me that in the Marvin story. I wasn't to realize this because we would have Marvin on the show a lot. You don't write out of Brockton. Yeah, world Chap. But he dealt with a lot of racism. 00:05:57 Speaker 3: He did in that fight specifically, And it was nineteen eighty and the guy he fought was a guy named Alan Minter, and he was from London and he was the great White Hope and there was a white power group that loved the guy. They backed him was called the National Front. Before the fight, Marvin and Alan had a press conference and Alan said at that press conference that no black man will ever take my title, no imagine saying that today, Oh, viral doesn't even describe it. There was no viral back then, but it stuck. It caused a wound, and Alan Miner paid for that comment. 00:06:26 Speaker 1: Now, Dave a little bit earlier on the show, I told Marvin Hagler story that I had from an old Kiss concert and I'm not sure you'll find it in the book though. 00:06:35 Speaker 2: When he was back, you missed that start. Yeah, he was. 00:06:40 Speaker 3: He was a man about town. You know a lot of people. The beautiful thing about this book is I'm out doing events all the time now and book signings, and it's wonderful to hear people like you come up from, you know, from people in their you know, forties and fifties at New Marvin sieties. Even they spent time with them. They hung out with him and went to his fights. And we call him the fifth Franchise in Brockton because he was as big as the Patriots. 00:07:03 Speaker 2: Red Sox back in the day. 00:07:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, I loved him in this region, justin you had your hand in there. 00:07:08 Speaker 2: Joe Rogan, you know, one of the biggest podcasters in the world, grew up in Boston. 00:07:12 Speaker 3: He was a big Marvin. 00:07:13 Speaker 4: Fan when I was a kid growing up in Boston. Hagler was the middleweight champion of the world and I used to see they used to have video of him running. They played it on the news. He was running on the There was the dunes, sand dunes and kate Cot in the winter, freezing cold with a hoodie on, running screaming war. It's amazing. Marvin Hagler made you want to just get out of your house and go running in the snow. 00:07:34 Speaker 3: He has the picture. 00:07:40 Speaker 1: In the snow. 00:07:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know Rogan. Rogan loves Hagler because he knows great great it's when he says it, you know. 00:07:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, And he was. 00:07:48 Speaker 3: The thing about Marvin again was you know, to me, he embodies the spirit of where I grew up. You know, Brockton, It's resilience, it's overcoming adversity. He wasn't an insider in the boxing game. He wasn't with Dawn King of Outside. And so were his trainers, the local trainers, and they fought against that very corrupt machine. And there's there's some great stuff in the book. I could talk about it all day, but suffice to say, Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neil had to step in to help Marvin while his title shot. That's how corrupt it was. 00:08:16 Speaker 1: And the most ripped person I've ever seen in my life. And that's before all the crazy stuff that people are. 00:08:23 Speaker 2: You know, this is going to be another great movie. 00:08:25 Speaker 3: I think so, you know. And Sam Rockwell optioned the rights to it, as you said, and I've been working with him and we've actually brought on Rosie Perez as a and uh, Sam wants to play Goodie Petronelli and hit me great at it because Goody was such a quirky yeah, you know, wearing headbands and yeah, see dressed up in the seventies, garb. You know, I'm so happy you guys have me in. I love the show. Fellow Milton night Lee, Billy, I love your work. 00:08:52 Speaker 1: Been following you for years, so thank you, thank you very much. And you could be one of the best dressed writers. I mean that with the greatest. 00:08:59 Speaker 2: Respect I got. 00:09:00 Speaker 3: Thank my wife for them. 00:09:01 Speaker 1: Who are you wearing? By the way, never mind forget I have