WEBVTT - Jay McInerney: The Consonant New York Writer 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.200 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:10.280 Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a New 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:15.920 York Times bestselling author, screenwriter, and columnist whose breakout novel 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.599 Bright Lights Big City inspired a generation of New York 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:24.720 writers and New Yorkers themselves. Jay McInerney is a prolific 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.920 writer with eight novels under his belt. He adapted Bright 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.559 Light's Big City into the feature films starring Michael J. 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:34.120 Fox in nineteen eighty eight. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.839 Mcinnerney has been awarded the Literary Lion by the New 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.839 York Public Library and the James Beard MFK. Fisher Award 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:47.480 for Distinguished Writing. In addition to his work as a novelist, 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.400 mcinnerney has been the wine columnist for House and Garden, 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:55.840 The Wall Street Journal, and most recently, Town and Country Magazine. 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.560 While his novels are synonymous with a glamorous even decade 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.240 in New York, mcinnernie did not always live. 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:03.640 In the city. 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.800 He moved quite frequently during his childhood, and his upbringing 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:09.560 place apart in his writing. 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.399 Yeah, absolutely, they are shaped by their childhood and also, 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.920 you know, I think, in my case, especially by their 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:19.480 early adulthood. You know, I was lucky to have had 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:24.600 fairly happy childhood in terms of my relationship with my parents. However, 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.000 I moved almost every year that I was growing up, 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.280 and that that was difficult because every year I had 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.440 to renegotiate social terrain. I had to like get in 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:38.280 fights with kids from yeah, a little fresh set of bullies, 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:43.160 and that undoubtedly marked me. It made me kind of 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.720 socially adapt and fascible because I had to be. But 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.720 it also made me somewhat withdrawn because I spent a 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.120 lot of time, you know, in my room, reading reading 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.720 books and writing silly little short stories. 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:57.880 In terms of bright letsbig city. 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.160 The thing that shaped me also was you know, it's 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.120 either Hemingway or many people have said it since, including 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:05.760 Gordon Wish, but he said that the best thing that 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:07.279 can happen to he is the writer, is the worst 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:09.799 thing that can happen to you that doesn't kill you. 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:14.240 And in my case, I lost my dream job at 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:18.200 the New Yorker, my fashion model wife dumped me in 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:22.400 very short order, and then my mother died of cancer 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:24.959 all within the space. She died a year I was 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.200 about twenty five, And you know, I mean those are 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.480 three really bad things to happen. But I think if 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.920 those three things hadn't happened, I might have cruised through 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:41.720 life fairly easily. I would have become a moderately good writer. 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:43.880 But you know, my first book does have a lot 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:45.399 of pain, and because there was a lot of bad 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.160 things that happened to me in my early twenties, and 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.080 that all went into the book. And even though I 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:52.880 like to think and people tell me that it's a 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.200 very funny book, and in many ways, there's also this 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.960 underlying current of pain that courses through it. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:01.959 You know, I'm going to read the book again because 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:04.360 when I read the book, you're you're young, I'm young 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.360 now sixty sexs. I'm like, I'm afraid to read it. 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.400 I'm being laughing, I'm crying at the same time. 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.720 I reread it recently because someone offered me a fair 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:14.760 amount of money to use a quote out of it, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.600 and I didn't. I didn't recognize the quote, so I 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:19.120 reread the book. What it turns out they took the 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.760 quote out of the movie, luckily, but luckily I wrote 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:24.320 the screenplay, so I still got the money. 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:26.720 You still got. 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:29.920 But rereading the book, I was kind of impressed, and 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:31.880 I was also kind of daunted because I just thought 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.400 I could only have written that book then. You know, 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.160 I think there's a certain music of the spheres that 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:38.800 you hear when you're in your twenties too, that you 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.240 just that becomes inaudible later. That was a book of 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.840 my twenties by Lepswick. City was pre internet, pre digital, 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:48.840 pre you know. I mean sometimes I wonder how we 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.400 found ourselves back then. You know, how do we find 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.760 our friends? You know, it's just we meet them somewhere. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:56.520 You have a Yeah, you have a rendezvous and you 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:58.080 hope that they show up. 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:00.960 I guess, oh, I net working friends, I think is 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.360 much smaller than Yeah, you didn't. You didn't have the 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.000 facility to keep up with all those people, you know. 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.760 I read that book years ago, and I was addicted 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.920 to cocaine. I was a cocaine addict. I got forty 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.240 years sober coming February. I don't talk about that much 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.400 on the record, And when I read that book, I'm 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.080 in that pain of lugging myself home at the four 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:21.039 o'clock in the morning, trying to sleep. 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:21.720 I couldn't. 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.000 When I think of it now, I just absolutely Shulder, 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.120 and it's my friend friend friend of mine says, you know, 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.800 he thinks everybody in life gets a bathtub full of 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.960 cocaine and a swimming pool full of vodka, and after that, 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:34.440 you better saw. 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:37.840 That's your limit. That's pretty funny now. 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.400 But when when you write as other people have observed, no, 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.080 this is not my observation. You wrote it in the 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:45.520 second person. People have commented about that a lot. Why 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:46.880 what propelled. 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.359 You, Well, what propelled me was the birth of the 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:53.440 thing really is. So one night I was you recognize 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:55.080 this type of night. It was like three thirty in 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:56.880 the morning, and I was, God, I think I was. 0:04:57.400 --> 0:04:59.359 I wasn't a club that no longer just obviously, but 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:03.400 maybe the world. And I'd gone with a friend and 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:07.200 he disappeared with a girl, and my girl had rejected me. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.599 And so I'm standing in front of the mirror in 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:14.479 the bathroom and the coc is just run out, and 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.800 I remember saying into the mirror, You're not the kind 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:19.440 of guy who'd beat a place like this at this 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:22.520 time of the morning, but here you are. And I 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:24.440 was certainly try and you weren't that kind of guy 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.280 I want. I was, no, but I told me something. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.120 I was a good Catholic boy. I didn't know what 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.760 was I doing snorting coke at three thirty in the morning. 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.080 So I finally made it home that night. I had 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.440 to walk up to East fifth Street because I'd run 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:42.160 out of money. And I wrote that very sentenced down 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.039 on a scrap of paper and I stuck in the 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.640 desk drawer and forgot about it. And about six months 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:50.440 later I had submitted a story to George Plimpton at 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.840 the Parish Rebume and he actually called me on the phone. 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:55.120 And I'm not going to try and imitate him. You 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.200 probably could be. He had this pretty fluty patrician boye 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:01.760 hes d. He liked this story, but did I have 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:05.280 anything else? So I go through my desk and I'm 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.120 like going crazy, and everything I read that I had 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.280 written in last year seemed like really imitative and derivative, 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.000 like here was my Ambdie story, here was my Robert 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:17.360 Stone story, here's my Raven Carver story. And then I 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.120 came on this piece of paper. You're not the kind 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:20.479 of guy whould be a place like this at this 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.400 time in the morning, and I thought, wow, I said, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:26.760 you know, that's how we talked to ourselves. We talked 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.560 to ourselves in the second person. We don't say I idiot, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:30.640 We say you idiot. 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:30.960 You know. 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.280 So that night I sat down, I wrote. I wrote 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:36.640 the first chapter of Bright Lights, Big City, basically, and 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.920 the next morning I called up George a Paris review office, 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.480 and I said, I got one. I got one, and 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:48.000 I sent it to them and they promptly published it. 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.520 And I subsequently thought, you know that the story is 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.200 not done. And I also it created a nice stir. 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.200 I mean back when literary buzz was something other than 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:00.480 on Instagram and it was real and yeah, and so 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:02.240 I thought, you know, I should just keep going with 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:04.960 the story, because I said to myself, this guy is 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:07.480 in obvious pain. What's wrong with him? Something bad has 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:09.800 happened to him, but it doesn't come into the particularly 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.920 into the story. And so so I started writing a novel, 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.200 which I finished and I finished the first draft in 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:22.480 six weeks. And my editor was Gary Fisketjohn of Random House, 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.240 and about halfway through my writing process, I told him 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:27.400 I was writing a novel and he said, well, I 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:29.360 hope to god it isn't in the second person, And 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.800 that almost stopped me cold. So then I went back 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.360 and I tried writing in the first and the third, 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:37.720 and something just drained out of the story. It wasn't 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.880 as funny, it wasn't as self conscious, and so I 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.040 stuck with it. And there were one or two reviewers 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.000 who thought I was crazy, but there were quite a 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:48.560 few others that liked it, and it subsequently sold hundreds 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.040 of thousands of copies, so I guess readers weren't put 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:51.600 off by it. 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:53.240 But the guy is for a good part of the book. 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.160 The guy is high, he's like you know, so he's 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.720 self conscious, he's in a slightly altered state. 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:00.960 But he's in pain. 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.240 In my mind, this is what I get from other 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:05.920 things you've written and my sense of comments you've made 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.920 in interviews. What I see about you is that the 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.760 guy that has his pain, but it's always trying to 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:16.320 overcome it. There's an emotional sturdiness to you as a person, 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:18.880 and in the books there seems to be they don't 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:20.320 stop fighting, they try not. 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.680 To give up and succom It's not Bukowski. 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.720 Well, I went through some crises this past year and 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.600 my wife said to me fairly recently, she said, I 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.080 can't believe I have upbeat and optimistic. You are a medalists, 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.280 And I said, but what would be the point of 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:36.600 letting it defeat you and being. 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.120 Down being of the health issues? Yeah? Yeah, it's like, you. 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:44.240 Know, I like to think I have a positive attitude 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:48.680 even when it seems ridiculous. You just lose that additional 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.199 peace of mind that you might preserve. 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.840 You're writing and you're submitting, and it's journalism or whatever, 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.920 you and essays and things. The guy that you're editor. 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.240 How do you end up with him? You will him 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:02.400 before bride lights? How do you get him? 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.040 I met him at Williams College when we were both there, 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:10.160 and we initially pursuing the same woman who was a 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:14.720 Wellesley transfer student, and we had a big feud about that, 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:17.000 you know, And the first time I ever really met him, 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:18.319 he threw a cigarette into my. 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.400 Beer piece, and so it was love. 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.959 I went over to try to fight him, and we 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:28.839 were pulled off each other. And then somehow the next 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.720 thing I knew we were friends. And we took a 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.920 class on James Joyce's Ulysses together and that was sort 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.440 of a bonding experience. And then I remember that I 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.240 gave him one of the first hardcover books I ever 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.520 bought was Raymond Carvers Will You Please Be Quiet? 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:44.840 Please? 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:47.640 And I wanted so I was finished with it. I 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:49.760 thought it was extraordinary, and I lent it to him, 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:52.440 and it was kind of wonderful because he ended up 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.720 being Raymond Carver's editor down the road. But in the 0:09:55.760 --> 0:10:00.839 meantime we became best friends. We when we graduated, we 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:03.640 drove across the country together in a beat up Volkswagen 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:06.280 and spent about three months on the road until we 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:11.080 couldn't find work, and eventually parted, but he remained my 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:12.960 best friend. And then he went to work for Random House. 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.480 So he was the logical person to go to when 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.199 I had a book to publish. He was ready to 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:20.440 throw out if they all all my books so far, 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:24.160 you know, And it was. It's an interesting relationship because 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:26.120 on the one hand, it's great to have your best 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:28.520 friend editing your work, and on the other hand, it 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:33.680 makes for some tense kind of sibling rivalry, you know, yeah, 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.240 very honest, I mean, to the point that he would 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.760 sometimes write in the margins like the exclamation mark and 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.920 you know, just a little discouraging. 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:43.280 I mean. 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.360 But usually when I finished a book, he would come 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.800 to wherever I was living and just camp out for 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.400 about a week and we would just go over pretty 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.120 much line by line, and sometimes we would fight terribly 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.600 about about stuff. I mean, he wasn't sure by the 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:58.920 second person at first, and I'm really glad I held 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.520 my ground on that. And I have to say his 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:03.680 name is Gary Fisk John by the way, But I 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:05.480 have to say that the thing I give him credit 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.040 for is that he always said in the end, it's 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.360 your name on the book. So apparently I had the 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.720 veto power, although it's hard sometimes not to feel like 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:16.480 I was the naughty student and he was the teacher. 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:19.640 I was contacted by Library of America to go to 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.800 the synagogue on Fifth Avenue when Read had a presentation 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.240 myself and two other people, John Rothman, and one of 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:29.400 the to read from Roth's bibliography. So we go there 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:31.839 and I get an email from Philip Roth. It says, 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:34.200 thank you so much. I'm really very pleased that you're 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:36.160 doing this. So we go and do it and works 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:38.560 pretty well. I mean, it's great stuff to read, and 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:40.839 I'm a pretty good reader in public that way at 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.560 that time where the accents are and he writes me 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:45.240 again he says, I heard it went great, Thank you 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:45.559 so much. 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:45.760 Again. 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:47.440 I'm very and so I stopped and I go, let 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.040 me ask you a question. What do you think about 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.040 me writing? I'm writing a memoir and I want to 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:54.560 write it an the third person so I can protect 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:56.720 some people, as I did in my divorce book. Roth 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:58.679 writes me back, and he goes, first of all, and 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:02.000 there was a capitalizations. Frampis first of all, there is 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.040 no such thing as a memoir in the third person. 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:10.280 You must put yourself out there. You spare no one, 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:11.559 particularly yourself. 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.360 And it goes on and on and oh he didn't, 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:16.000 he didn't do it. 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:18.720 But I have written books. I swear to God, this 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:20.680 is funny. I'm not that I dwelled on this city point. 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.240 I was even aware until now that I've written books. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.960 Why we write sentences in that second person. I did 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.600 that for Runs, and I got attacked by the editors 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:29.800 for that. 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.520 It's an easy thing to fall into because it's a 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:37.600 mode that we often use internally in conversation. And yeah, 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.880 and in conversation, and sometimes I've seen it where other 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:44.040 people will slide into the second person. 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:44.920 When when they're writing. 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:47.400 I got some grief for it at the time, not 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.400 from regular readers, you know, from critics who wondered if 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.680 it was a legitimate mode. 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.040 But I'm being glib here somewhat when I say that 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.280 your life obviously changes after that book. 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:01.640 My life changed almost overnight. I mean, nothing happened overnight 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.280 back then, because you know, when you publish a book, 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.679 I mean, even a word of mouth takes time to spread. 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.320 And it was a while before much was written about 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.400 Bret Let's Big City. And very quickly it sold out 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:15.880 its first printing, and it took about six seven weeks 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.040 to reprint it, and we were afraid it might die then, 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.280 because you know, that's a long time. 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:22.800 People step at me. 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.120 Yeah, but it did, and you know, and the second 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.760 pretty sold out very quickly, and the thre and suddenly, 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.520 you know, by three or four months after it was published, 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:36.040 I was I was getting kind of New York. 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:36.600 Famous, you know. 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.880 And I remember, I mean one of the first indications 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.120 I had of this was I was trying to get in. 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.679 Remember the Palladium opened a long time ago, now dormitory. 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:48.600 Yeah, so a bunch of us went to try and 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.640 get in. It was a huge line, and I just said, 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.560 oh the hell with this, my friend Morgan intric and said, no, 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.120 wait a minute, and he manages to get up to 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.680 the bouncer and he says, that's Jane mcinherney over there, 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:03.240 And the bouncer immediately says, oh, well, why didn't you 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:04.080 say so, come on in? 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:05.800 And that was this way, mister man. 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:08.920 That was the first time I thought, wow, maybe my 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:10.720 life is changing, you know, and. 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.079 Girls and all of it. Yeah, all of it, I mean, 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:15.840 And it. 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:19.560 Was yeah, I mean, and for a relatively shy person 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:21.640 who was just out of graduate school, it was kind of. 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.800 How old when the book came out twenty seven. 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.600 I'd been to graduate school, I'd spent two years in 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:28.920 Japan teaching English. 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:31.400 What did teaching English and Japan do to feed your 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.320 career as a writer? If anything, just. 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:35.080 Gave me time to write because I only had to 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:37.600 teach you about ten hours a week. I mean, I 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.320 was kind of fascinated by Japanese culture and so on. 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:42.400 But there came a point where I realized that staying 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.440 there was was not going to engage me in my 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:47.800 own culture. It was going to, if anything, divorced me 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.640 from my own culture. And so so at that point 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.120 I moved back to New York with my girlfriend, who 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:57.880 was a fashion model, and for me, everything was about 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.840 New York was just so new and amazing, and it 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.640 was almost like I was a foreigner coming to discover 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.920 this new country, and I just found New York extraordinary, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.400 and I just thought I could write about this. I 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.320 could write about New York. And not many people, you know, 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:15.560 since I don't know since Sallenger, not that many people had. 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.400 I remember Tom Wolf coming up to me in nineteen 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:20.520 eighty six and he said, that was brilliant that you 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:21.960 wrote about New York. He said, I'm going to do 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:23.960 the same thing. And then, of course he wrote Bumpire 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.920 of the Vanities, which turned out to be a pretty 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:30.000 good book, and then there was a whole slow of 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:33.040 New York novels. But I remember Jason Epstein, who was 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.120 a vice president of Random House, who was kind enough 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.520 to take my book on. He took me out to 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:40.880 lunch and he said, first of all, nobody your age 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.760 reads this is nineteen eighty three. And then he said, 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:46.800 and secondly, nobody cares about New York. 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:49.680 So he was He said, he wrote coming out of 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:51.840 the seventies, which is yeah, he's likely New York. 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:53.760 He said, he wrote a really good book, but he said, 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:57.320 I just want to tamp down your expectations. And you know, 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.720 allegedly nobody wants to read about New York. But three 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:05.400 years later every other work was set in New York City. 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:12.440 Author and columnist Jay mcinherney. If you enjoy conversations about 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:16.080 the New York literary scene, check out my episode with 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:16.800 Tina Brown. 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.760 A great editor isn't an autocrat. I mean, you have 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:21.600 to have a vision in the same way the director 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:23.880 has to have a vision of a movie, and you 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:25.960 have to have a worldview too. I mean, I knew 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:27.960 what I wanted to do with Vanity Fair. I wanted 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.320 to combine the elegance and glamour of the magazine, of 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:34.520 the famous magazine in the twenties and thirties, with some 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:38.360 of that narrative gristle of journalism that had then become 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.920 the sort of defining feature of the great magazines of 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.840 them the seventies and eighties, like Rolling Stone, like New 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.680 York Magazine. So I wanted to modernize that formula. 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:48.160 If you like. 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.640 To hear more of my conversation with Tina Brown, go 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:58.160 to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the Break, JAYE 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.800 mcinherney talks about his involvement in the film adaptation of 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.640 Bright Lights, Big City and helping Michael J. Fox prepare 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:18.639 for the role. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:23.120 the Thing. The nineteen eighty eight film adaptation of Bright Lights, 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:27.280 Big City starring Michael J. Fox, premiere to mixed reviews. 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.120 I was curious about Jay mcinnerney's work on the film 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:34.160 and how he felt about the portrayal of the main character, 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.520 Jamie Conway, who was based on Jay himself. 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.359 Michael and I get along tremendously well. In fact, we 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:42.879 used to stay out till three. I don't know how 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:44.840 I made it's this set every morning, because we used 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:46.760 to stay out till three in the morning, doing snorting 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:48.919 coke and doing all the stuff that you do in 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.840 the method actors. I first learned when I was hanging 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.960 out with Michael. First of all, the power of a persona, 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:59.879 and his persona was Alex Keaton, and his millions of 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.240 fans wanted him to be Alex Keaton, and they didn't 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:05.520 want to see him with a koch straw up his nose. 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.520 And my smaller legion of fans had no interest in 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:14.359 seeing Alex Keaton playing me mirror. Yeah, I mean they 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.200 had no interest. And so that that was there was 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:21.040 a disconnect right there, getting from the start. And then 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:23.840 also I think you know, I mean Sidney Pollack was 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.280 the producer, and he once said to me, he said, 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:28.280 why do all these people want to get into all 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:30.800 these nightclubs? And I just said, oh man, we don't 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:33.800 really understand what's going on here, do we. And and 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:36.439 you know, the director, James Ridges, he was, you know, 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:40.720 he was aging out at that point this kind of material. 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:42.560 And Cowboys completely different kind of movie. Yeah. 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:44.920 Yeah, So I mean, look, I wrote the screenplay, but 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.119 honestly they shouldn't let me write write the screenplay because 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:50.520 I didn't know that much about movies at the time. 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:55.400 Screenplays are very different than, as you know, than novels. 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.200 You know, it's like writing a novel is a hosting party. 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:00.959 Write a screenplay is like catering party, you know, And 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:03.520 you have to have a different language, and you have 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:05.760 to realize that movies are made out of images, you know, 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:07.159 they're not made out of words. 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.280 I think Mammot taught me this, or I observe this 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.040