Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author, screenwriter, and columnist whose breakout novel
Speaker 1: Bright Lights Big City inspired a generation of New York
Speaker 1: writers and New Yorkers themselves. Jay McInerney is a prolific
Speaker 1: writer with eight novels under his belt. He adapted Bright
Speaker 1: Light's Big City into the feature films starring Michael J.
Speaker 2: Fox in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Mcinnerney has been awarded the Literary Lion by the New
Speaker 1: York Public Library and the James Beard MFK. Fisher Award
Speaker 1: for Distinguished Writing. In addition to his work as a novelist,
Speaker 1: mcinnerney has been the wine columnist for House and Garden,
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, and most recently, Town and Country Magazine.
Speaker 1: While his novels are synonymous with a glamorous even decade
Speaker 1: in New York, mcinnernie did not always live.
Speaker 2: In the city.
Speaker 1: He moved quite frequently during his childhood, and his upbringing
Speaker 1: place apart in his writing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, they are shaped by their childhood and also,
Speaker 3: you know, I think, in my case, especially by their
Speaker 3: early adulthood. You know, I was lucky to have had
Speaker 3: fairly happy childhood in terms of my relationship with my parents. However,
Speaker 3: I moved almost every year that I was growing up,
Speaker 3: and that that was difficult because every year I had
Speaker 3: to renegotiate social terrain. I had to like get in
Speaker 3: fights with kids from yeah, a little fresh set of bullies,
Speaker 3: and that undoubtedly marked me. It made me kind of
Speaker 3: socially adapt and fascible because I had to be. But
Speaker 3: it also made me somewhat withdrawn because I spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time, you know, in my room, reading reading
Speaker 3: books and writing silly little short stories.
Speaker 2: In terms of bright letsbig city.
Speaker 3: The thing that shaped me also was you know, it's
Speaker 3: either Hemingway or many people have said it since, including
Speaker 3: Gordon Wish, but he said that the best thing that
Speaker 3: can happen to he is the writer, is the worst
Speaker 3: thing that can happen to you that doesn't kill you.
Speaker 3: And in my case, I lost my dream job at
Speaker 3: the New Yorker, my fashion model wife dumped me in
Speaker 3: very short order, and then my mother died of cancer
Speaker 3: all within the space. She died a year I was
Speaker 3: about twenty five, And you know, I mean those are
Speaker 3: three really bad things to happen. But I think if
Speaker 3: those three things hadn't happened, I might have cruised through
Speaker 3: life fairly easily. I would have become a moderately good writer.
Speaker 3: But you know, my first book does have a lot
Speaker 3: of pain, and because there was a lot of bad
Speaker 3: things that happened to me in my early twenties, and
Speaker 3: that all went into the book. And even though I
Speaker 3: like to think and people tell me that it's a
Speaker 3: very funny book, and in many ways, there's also this
Speaker 3: underlying current of pain that courses through it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to read the book again because
Speaker 1: when I read the book, you're you're young, I'm young
Speaker 1: now sixty sexs. I'm like, I'm afraid to read it.
Speaker 1: I'm being laughing, I'm crying at the same time.
Speaker 3: I reread it recently because someone offered me a fair
Speaker 3: amount of money to use a quote out of it,
Speaker 3: and I didn't. I didn't recognize the quote, so I
Speaker 3: reread the book. What it turns out they took the
Speaker 3: quote out of the movie, luckily, but luckily I wrote
Speaker 3: the screenplay, so I still got the money.
Speaker 2: You still got.
Speaker 3: But rereading the book, I was kind of impressed, and
Speaker 3: I was also kind of daunted because I just thought
Speaker 3: I could only have written that book then. You know,
Speaker 3: I think there's a certain music of the spheres that
Speaker 3: you hear when you're in your twenties too, that you
Speaker 3: just that becomes inaudible later. That was a book of
Speaker 3: my twenties by Lepswick. City was pre internet, pre digital,
Speaker 3: pre you know. I mean sometimes I wonder how we
Speaker 3: found ourselves back then. You know, how do we find
Speaker 3: our friends? You know, it's just we meet them somewhere.
Speaker 2: You have a Yeah, you have a rendezvous and you
Speaker 2: hope that they show up.
Speaker 1: I guess, oh, I net working friends, I think is
Speaker 1: much smaller than Yeah, you didn't. You didn't have the
Speaker 1: facility to keep up with all those people, you know.
Speaker 1: I read that book years ago, and I was addicted
Speaker 1: to cocaine. I was a cocaine addict. I got forty
Speaker 1: years sober coming February. I don't talk about that much
Speaker 1: on the record, And when I read that book, I'm
Speaker 1: in that pain of lugging myself home at the four
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, trying to sleep.
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 3: When I think of it now, I just absolutely Shulder,
Speaker 3: and it's my friend friend friend of mine says, you know,
Speaker 3: he thinks everybody in life gets a bathtub full of
Speaker 3: cocaine and a swimming pool full of vodka, and after that,
Speaker 3: you better saw.
Speaker 2: That's your limit. That's pretty funny now.
Speaker 1: But when when you write as other people have observed, no,
Speaker 1: this is not my observation. You wrote it in the
Speaker 1: second person. People have commented about that a lot. Why
Speaker 1: what propelled.
Speaker 3: You, Well, what propelled me was the birth of the
Speaker 3: thing really is. So one night I was you recognize
Speaker 3: this type of night. It was like three thirty in
Speaker 3: the morning, and I was, God, I think I was.
Speaker 3: I wasn't a club that no longer just obviously, but
Speaker 3: maybe the world. And I'd gone with a friend and
Speaker 3: he disappeared with a girl, and my girl had rejected me.
Speaker 3: And so I'm standing in front of the mirror in
Speaker 3: the bathroom and the coc is just run out, and
Speaker 3: I remember saying into the mirror, You're not the kind
Speaker 3: of guy who'd beat a place like this at this
Speaker 3: time of the morning, but here you are. And I
Speaker 3: was certainly try and you weren't that kind of guy
Speaker 3: I want. I was, no, but I told me something.
Speaker 3: I was a good Catholic boy. I didn't know what
Speaker 3: was I doing snorting coke at three thirty in the morning.
Speaker 3: So I finally made it home that night. I had
Speaker 3: to walk up to East fifth Street because I'd run
Speaker 3: out of money. And I wrote that very sentenced down
Speaker 3: on a scrap of paper and I stuck in the
Speaker 3: desk drawer and forgot about it. And about six months
Speaker 3: later I had submitted a story to George Plimpton at
Speaker 3: the Parish Rebume and he actually called me on the phone.
Speaker 3: And I'm not going to try and imitate him. You
Speaker 3: probably could be. He had this pretty fluty patrician boye
Speaker 3: hes d. He liked this story, but did I have
Speaker 3: anything else? So I go through my desk and I'm
Speaker 3: like going crazy, and everything I read that I had
Speaker 3: written in last year seemed like really imitative and derivative,
Speaker 3: like here was my Ambdie story, here was my Robert
Speaker 3: Stone story, here's my Raven Carver story. And then I
Speaker 3: came on this piece of paper. You're not the kind
Speaker 3: of guy whould be a place like this at this
Speaker 3: time in the morning, and I thought, wow, I said,
Speaker 3: you know, that's how we talked to ourselves. We talked
Speaker 3: to ourselves in the second person. We don't say I idiot,
Speaker 3: We say you idiot.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So that night I sat down, I wrote. I wrote
Speaker 3: the first chapter of Bright Lights, Big City, basically, and
Speaker 3: the next morning I called up George a Paris review office,
Speaker 3: and I said, I got one. I got one, and
Speaker 3: I sent it to them and they promptly published it.
Speaker 3: And I subsequently thought, you know that the story is
Speaker 3: not done. And I also it created a nice stir.
Speaker 3: I mean back when literary buzz was something other than
Speaker 3: on Instagram and it was real and yeah, and so
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, I should just keep going with
Speaker 3: the story, because I said to myself, this guy is
Speaker 3: in obvious pain. What's wrong with him? Something bad has
Speaker 3: happened to him, but it doesn't come into the particularly
Speaker 3: into the story. And so so I started writing a novel,
Speaker 3: which I finished and I finished the first draft in
Speaker 3: six weeks. And my editor was Gary Fisketjohn of Random House,
Speaker 3: and about halfway through my writing process, I told him
Speaker 3: I was writing a novel and he said, well, I
Speaker 3: hope to god it isn't in the second person, And
Speaker 3: that almost stopped me cold. So then I went back
Speaker 3: and I tried writing in the first and the third,
Speaker 3: and something just drained out of the story. It wasn't
Speaker 3: as funny, it wasn't as self conscious, and so I
Speaker 3: stuck with it. And there were one or two reviewers
Speaker 3: who thought I was crazy, but there were quite a
Speaker 3: few others that liked it, and it subsequently sold hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of copies, so I guess readers weren't put
Speaker 3: off by it.
Speaker 2: But the guy is for a good part of the book.
Speaker 3: The guy is high, he's like you know, so he's
Speaker 3: self conscious, he's in a slightly altered state.
Speaker 2: But he's in pain.
Speaker 1: In my mind, this is what I get from other
Speaker 1: things you've written and my sense of comments you've made
Speaker 1: in interviews. What I see about you is that the
Speaker 1: guy that has his pain, but it's always trying to
Speaker 1: overcome it. There's an emotional sturdiness to you as a person,
Speaker 1: and in the books there seems to be they don't
Speaker 1: stop fighting, they try not.
Speaker 2: To give up and succom It's not Bukowski.
Speaker 3: Well, I went through some crises this past year and
Speaker 3: my wife said to me fairly recently, she said, I
Speaker 3: can't believe I have upbeat and optimistic. You are a medalists,
Speaker 3: And I said, but what would be the point of
Speaker 3: letting it defeat you and being.
Speaker 2: Down being of the health issues? Yeah? Yeah, it's like, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I like to think I have a positive attitude
Speaker 3: even when it seems ridiculous. You just lose that additional
Speaker 3: peace of mind that you might preserve.
Speaker 1: You're writing and you're submitting, and it's journalism or whatever,
Speaker 1: you and essays and things. The guy that you're editor.
Speaker 1: How do you end up with him? You will him
Speaker 1: before bride lights? How do you get him?
Speaker 3: I met him at Williams College when we were both there,
Speaker 3: and we initially pursuing the same woman who was a
Speaker 3: Wellesley transfer student, and we had a big feud about that,
Speaker 3: you know, And the first time I ever really met him,
Speaker 3: he threw a cigarette into my.
Speaker 2: Beer piece, and so it was love.
Speaker 3: I went over to try to fight him, and we
Speaker 3: were pulled off each other. And then somehow the next
Speaker 3: thing I knew we were friends. And we took a
Speaker 3: class on James Joyce's Ulysses together and that was sort
Speaker 3: of a bonding experience. And then I remember that I
Speaker 3: gave him one of the first hardcover books I ever
Speaker 3: bought was Raymond Carvers Will You Please Be Quiet?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 3: And I wanted so I was finished with it. I
Speaker 3: thought it was extraordinary, and I lent it to him,
Speaker 3: and it was kind of wonderful because he ended up
Speaker 3: being Raymond Carver's editor down the road. But in the
Speaker 3: meantime we became best friends. We when we graduated, we
Speaker 3: drove across the country together in a beat up Volkswagen
Speaker 3: and spent about three months on the road until we
Speaker 3: couldn't find work, and eventually parted, but he remained my
Speaker 3: best friend. And then he went to work for Random House.
Speaker 3: So he was the logical person to go to when
Speaker 3: I had a book to publish. He was ready to
Speaker 3: throw out if they all all my books so far,
Speaker 3: you know, And it was. It's an interesting relationship because
Speaker 3: on the one hand, it's great to have your best
Speaker 3: friend editing your work, and on the other hand, it
Speaker 3: makes for some tense kind of sibling rivalry, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: very honest, I mean, to the point that he would
Speaker 3: sometimes write in the margins like the exclamation mark and
Speaker 3: you know, just a little discouraging.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: But usually when I finished a book, he would come
Speaker 3: to wherever I was living and just camp out for
Speaker 3: about a week and we would just go over pretty
Speaker 3: much line by line, and sometimes we would fight terribly
Speaker 3: about about stuff. I mean, he wasn't sure by the
Speaker 3: second person at first, and I'm really glad I held
Speaker 3: my ground on that. And I have to say his
Speaker 3: name is Gary Fisk John by the way, But I
Speaker 3: have to say that the thing I give him credit
Speaker 3: for is that he always said in the end, it's
Speaker 3: your name on the book. So apparently I had the
Speaker 3: veto power, although it's hard sometimes not to feel like
Speaker 3: I was the naughty student and he was the teacher.
Speaker 1: I was contacted by Library of America to go to
Speaker 1: the synagogue on Fifth Avenue when Read had a presentation
Speaker 1: myself and two other people, John Rothman, and one of
Speaker 1: the to read from Roth's bibliography. So we go there
Speaker 1: and I get an email from Philip Roth. It says,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I'm really very pleased that you're
Speaker 1: doing this. So we go and do it and works
Speaker 1: pretty well. I mean, it's great stuff to read, and
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty good reader in public that way at
Speaker 1: that time where the accents are and he writes me
Speaker 1: again he says, I heard it went great, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: I'm very and so I stopped and I go, let
Speaker 1: me ask you a question. What do you think about
Speaker 1: me writing? I'm writing a memoir and I want to
Speaker 1: write it an the third person so I can protect
Speaker 1: some people, as I did in my divorce book. Roth
Speaker 1: writes me back, and he goes, first of all, and
Speaker 1: there was a capitalizations. Frampis first of all, there is
Speaker 1: no such thing as a memoir in the third person.
Speaker 1: You must put yourself out there. You spare no one,
Speaker 1: particularly yourself.
Speaker 2: And it goes on and on and oh he didn't,
Speaker 2: he didn't do it.
Speaker 1: But I have written books. I swear to God, this
Speaker 1: is funny. I'm not that I dwelled on this city point.
Speaker 1: I was even aware until now that I've written books.
Speaker 1: Why we write sentences in that second person. I did
Speaker 1: that for Runs, and I got attacked by the editors
Speaker 1: for that.
Speaker 3: It's an easy thing to fall into because it's a
Speaker 3: mode that we often use internally in conversation. And yeah,
Speaker 3: and in conversation, and sometimes I've seen it where other
Speaker 3: people will slide into the second person.
Speaker 2: When when they're writing.
Speaker 3: I got some grief for it at the time, not
Speaker 3: from regular readers, you know, from critics who wondered if
Speaker 3: it was a legitimate mode.
Speaker 1: But I'm being glib here somewhat when I say that
Speaker 1: your life obviously changes after that book.
Speaker 3: My life changed almost overnight. I mean, nothing happened overnight
Speaker 3: back then, because you know, when you publish a book,
Speaker 3: I mean, even a word of mouth takes time to spread.
Speaker 3: And it was a while before much was written about
Speaker 3: Bret Let's Big City. And very quickly it sold out
Speaker 3: its first printing, and it took about six seven weeks
Speaker 3: to reprint it, and we were afraid it might die then,
Speaker 3: because you know, that's a long time.
Speaker 2: People step at me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it did, and you know, and the second
Speaker 3: pretty sold out very quickly, and the thre and suddenly,
Speaker 3: you know, by three or four months after it was published,
Speaker 3: I was I was getting kind of New York.
Speaker 2: Famous, you know.
Speaker 3: And I remember, I mean one of the first indications
Speaker 3: I had of this was I was trying to get in.
Speaker 2: Remember the Palladium opened a long time ago, now dormitory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a bunch of us went to try and
Speaker 3: get in. It was a huge line, and I just said,
Speaker 3: oh the hell with this, my friend Morgan intric and said, no,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, and he manages to get up to
Speaker 3: the bouncer and he says, that's Jane mcinherney over there,
Speaker 3: And the bouncer immediately says, oh, well, why didn't you
Speaker 3: say so, come on in?
Speaker 2: And that was this way, mister man.
Speaker 3: That was the first time I thought, wow, maybe my
Speaker 3: life is changing, you know, and.
Speaker 2: Girls and all of it. Yeah, all of it, I mean,
Speaker 2: And it.
Speaker 3: Was yeah, I mean, and for a relatively shy person
Speaker 3: who was just out of graduate school, it was kind of.
Speaker 1: How old when the book came out twenty seven.
Speaker 3: I'd been to graduate school, I'd spent two years in
Speaker 3: Japan teaching English.
Speaker 2: What did teaching English and Japan do to feed your
Speaker 2: career as a writer? If anything, just.
Speaker 3: Gave me time to write because I only had to
Speaker 3: teach you about ten hours a week. I mean, I
Speaker 3: was kind of fascinated by Japanese culture and so on.
Speaker 3: But there came a point where I realized that staying
Speaker 3: there was was not going to engage me in my
Speaker 3: own culture. It was going to, if anything, divorced me
Speaker 3: from my own culture. And so so at that point
Speaker 3: I moved back to New York with my girlfriend, who
Speaker 3: was a fashion model, and for me, everything was about
Speaker 3: New York was just so new and amazing, and it
Speaker 3: was almost like I was a foreigner coming to discover
Speaker 3: this new country, and I just found New York extraordinary,
Speaker 3: and I just thought I could write about this. I
Speaker 3: could write about New York. And not many people, you know,
Speaker 3: since I don't know since Sallenger, not that many people had.
Speaker 3: I remember Tom Wolf coming up to me in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six and he said, that was brilliant that you
Speaker 3: wrote about New York. He said, I'm going to do
Speaker 3: the same thing. And then, of course he wrote Bumpire
Speaker 3: of the Vanities, which turned out to be a pretty
Speaker 3: good book, and then there was a whole slow of
Speaker 3: New York novels. But I remember Jason Epstein, who was
Speaker 3: a vice president of Random House, who was kind enough
Speaker 3: to take my book on. He took me out to
Speaker 3: lunch and he said, first of all, nobody your age
Speaker 3: reads this is nineteen eighty three. And then he said,
Speaker 3: and secondly, nobody cares about New York.
Speaker 1: So he was He said, he wrote coming out of
Speaker 1: the seventies, which is yeah, he's likely New York.
Speaker 3: He said, he wrote a really good book, but he said,
Speaker 3: I just want to tamp down your expectations. And you know,
Speaker 3: allegedly nobody wants to read about New York. But three
Speaker 3: years later every other work was set in New York City.
Speaker 1: Author and columnist Jay mcinherney. If you enjoy conversations about
Speaker 1: the New York literary scene, check out my episode with
Speaker 1: Tina Brown.
Speaker 4: A great editor isn't an autocrat. I mean, you have
Speaker 4: to have a vision in the same way the director
Speaker 4: has to have a vision of a movie, and you
Speaker 4: have to have a worldview too. I mean, I knew
Speaker 4: what I wanted to do with Vanity Fair. I wanted
Speaker 4: to combine the elegance and glamour of the magazine, of
Speaker 4: the famous magazine in the twenties and thirties, with some
Speaker 4: of that narrative gristle of journalism that had then become
Speaker 4: the sort of defining feature of the great magazines of
Speaker 4: them the seventies and eighties, like Rolling Stone, like New
Speaker 4: York Magazine. So I wanted to modernize that formula.
Speaker 2: If you like.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Tina Brown, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the Break, JAYE
Speaker 1: mcinherney talks about his involvement in the film adaptation of
Speaker 1: Bright Lights, Big City and helping Michael J. Fox prepare
Speaker 1: for the role. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. The nineteen eighty eight film adaptation of Bright Lights,
Speaker 1: Big City starring Michael J. Fox, premiere to mixed reviews.
Speaker 1: I was curious about Jay mcinnerney's work on the film
Speaker 1: and how he felt about the portrayal of the main character,
Speaker 1: Jamie Conway, who was based on Jay himself.
Speaker 3: Michael and I get along tremendously well. In fact, we
Speaker 3: used to stay out till three. I don't know how
Speaker 3: I made it's this set every morning, because we used
Speaker 3: to stay out till three in the morning, doing snorting
Speaker 3: coke and doing all the stuff that you do in
Speaker 3: the method actors. I first learned when I was hanging
Speaker 3: out with Michael. First of all, the power of a persona,
Speaker 3: and his persona was Alex Keaton, and his millions of
Speaker 3: fans wanted him to be Alex Keaton, and they didn't
Speaker 3: want to see him with a koch straw up his nose.
Speaker 3: And my smaller legion of fans had no interest in
Speaker 3: seeing Alex Keaton playing me mirror. Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 3: had no interest. And so that that was there was
Speaker 3: a disconnect right there, getting from the start. And then
Speaker 3: also I think you know, I mean Sidney Pollack was
Speaker 3: the producer, and he once said to me, he said,
Speaker 3: why do all these people want to get into all
Speaker 3: these nightclubs? And I just said, oh man, we don't
Speaker 3: really understand what's going on here, do we. And and
Speaker 3: you know, the director, James Ridges, he was, you know,
Speaker 3: he was aging out at that point this kind of material.
Speaker 2: And Cowboys completely different kind of movie. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I mean, look, I wrote the screenplay, but
Speaker 3: honestly they shouldn't let me write write the screenplay because
Speaker 3: I didn't know that much about movies at the time.
Speaker 3: Screenplays are very different than, as you know, than novels.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like writing a novel is a hosting party.
Speaker 3: Write a screenplay is like catering party, you know, And
Speaker 3: you have to have a different language, and you have
Speaker 3: to realize that movies are made out of images, you know,
Speaker 3: they're not made out of words.
Speaker 1: I think Mammot taught me this, or I observe this
Speaker 1: about Mammoth, and he confirmed with me in whatever language,
Speaker 1: I'd done a few Mammot films I did.
Speaker 2: Glen Garry, obviously, I did the state name, remember that one.
Speaker 1: And when I was around him and you could talk
Speaker 1: to him, he's so intimidating. He's this amazing talent and
Speaker 1: you know, universally admired in the in the in the
Speaker 1: acting world, you know, in the acting world.
Speaker 2: And so, I mean, I really believe that only.
Speaker 1: On is probably one of the five best players I've
Speaker 1: ever read in my life for an actor.
Speaker 3: Well, Glenn Garry, Glenn Ross is not so shabby either.
Speaker 1: Well, no, but he won the Pulitzer Prize. That my
Speaker 1: scene wasn't even in there. So when he puts my
Speaker 1: scene in there, I called him and I go, why
Speaker 1: are you taking your Pulitzer Prize winning book and changing
Speaker 1: it for the movie business, Because because I never believe
Speaker 1: these guys had a criminal nature, I need someone to
Speaker 1: come in and turn the screws tighter so they commit
Speaker 1: a crime. And he said, I wrote this person that
Speaker 1: you're going to play to come in and to push
Speaker 1: them towards the criminality. Now he writes, Bob Enters, Bob,
Speaker 1: you're probably wondering why I called you well here today. No,
Speaker 1: his old idea was, what's the point in the screenplay
Speaker 1: of any stage directions, I'm going to describe the room
Speaker 1: because in the book, that's the only chance you're going
Speaker 1: to get see the room.
Speaker 2: If I tell you.
Speaker 1: What's in the room, if I accent something, if I
Speaker 1: accent their behavior, his hand shaking, he's scratching his crotch.
Speaker 1: Whatever you write, I'm responsible for that. And then a
Speaker 1: screenplay or a teleplay, it's a director's going to come
Speaker 1: in and just do whatever they want to do. And man,
Speaker 1: it's so spare in that way, so spare. When I
Speaker 1: saw that movie, I thought thought that those people lost
Speaker 1: that idea, Like there wasn't enough of the book and
Speaker 1: the kind of I don't want to say grit, but
Speaker 1: just the sense of the book in the movie.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think back to The Graduate because
Speaker 3: The Graduate actually was a very successful novel until my
Speaker 3: assault Mike Nichols get a hold of it, and Mike
Speaker 3: Nichols so kind of reinvented the book, you know, and
Speaker 3: he had this great underwater scenes, you know, in the
Speaker 3: swimming pool and you know, the scene in the closet
Speaker 3: I mean, but he found a visual language to interpret
Speaker 3: what was largely a novel of dialogue. And people don't
Speaker 3: even remember that there was a book called The Graduate Now,
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's not the worst thing in the
Speaker 3: world for me that Bright Lights the book is better
Speaker 3: than Bright Lights the movie. You know, I wonder if
Speaker 3: we'd had a Robert town as a screenwriter, and if
Speaker 3: we'd had Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise for a year
Speaker 3: was supposed to be the star. Tom Cruise came and
Speaker 3: spent three four days and nights with me, following me
Speaker 3: around so that he could model.
Speaker 2: The character on me. It was very weird. He kept
Speaker 2: calling me sir, which was very peculiar. I mean, I
Speaker 2: was like a year older than he was.
Speaker 3: But he finally, you know, it got delayed and he
Speaker 3: finally left to do Top Gun, which I think was
Speaker 3: a good career choice.
Speaker 2: Tom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so strange. He was such a such
Speaker 3: a polite, respectful kid, as I say, only a year
Speaker 3: younger than me. But you know, Michael, there was a
Speaker 3: mismatch there in the in the casting, I think, and
Speaker 3: uh not that Michael isn't a great actor, because he is,
Speaker 3: but taking on an iconic TV role and embodying it.
Speaker 3: It's it's really hard then to you know, to prode,
Speaker 3: to blame, to get the audiences have known what he was.
Speaker 1: Anyway, after you launch the book comes the imitators and
Speaker 1: or people say we're we're kind of I don't want to.
Speaker 2: See imitating or piggybacking.
Speaker 1: When but brettyston Ellis comes and does his book, which
Speaker 1: she said he put a character in there based on
Speaker 1: you in Lessons Are was that true?
Speaker 3: And later in one of his later books called Lunar Park,
Speaker 3: there's a character named Jay McInerney no like, who gets
Speaker 3: drunk and falls.
Speaker 2: Into the pool.
Speaker 3: Okay, well who starts cocop a Porsche you know? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I never did those two things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't. I doubt it. But Brent's book was.
Speaker 3: Very different than mine, and it was it was it
Speaker 3: was very dark, and it was very sort of His
Speaker 3: own was neolistic and his pros was really stripped down
Speaker 3: and bear His big influence was shown didion. And when
Speaker 3: I first read his novel before it came out, Morgan
Speaker 3: Intric and his editor were seeing to me, I'm going
Speaker 3: to promote this as the West Coast by lets big
Speaker 3: city and so at first I was inclined to not
Speaker 3: like the guy at all. But then we did a
Speaker 3: seminar together, and I read the book and I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, he's really talented, and we're doing two completely
Speaker 3: different things. Although it was very easy for the press
Speaker 3: to lump us together because young people drugs, you know,
Speaker 3: that kind of nightclubs, that kind of thing. But I
Speaker 3: befriended Brett in part because I wanted to warn him
Speaker 3: what was likely to come his way, in other words,
Speaker 3: that his life was going to be turned completely upside down.
Speaker 3: I mean, it has actors a lot, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: usually happen to writers. And it did happen to me,
Speaker 3: and it did happen to him in a way that
Speaker 3: it hadn't since you know, Mailer and Capodi and Vidal,
Speaker 3: that generation. And I'm still good friends with Brett, and
Speaker 3: you know, in some ways, you know, we haven't experien
Speaker 3: it's in common that not many people have for that period.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Sure, author and columnist Jay McInerney. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: tell a friend and be sure to follow. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you'll get
Speaker 1: your podcasts When We Come Back. Jay McInerney details the
Speaker 1: story behind his screenplay for the nineteen ninety eight film Gia,
Speaker 1: which launched the career of one of the biggest stars
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, Angelina Jolee.
Speaker 2: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Ten years after the release of the film Bright Lights,
Speaker 1: Big City, Jay McInerney penned the screenplay for Gia, which
Speaker 1: launched the career of Angelina Jolia In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Despite having two of his scripts made into movies with
Speaker 1: big stars, mcinnernie chose not to continue with a career
Speaker 1: in screenwriting. I wanted to know if he was ever
Speaker 1: tempted at the time to move to Hollywood and pursue
Speaker 1: writing for film full time.
Speaker 3: So I did some specs screenplays, and I got my
Speaker 3: price up pretty high, and it was a nice way
Speaker 3: to make money. The only full length screenplay wrote that
Speaker 3: really got produced was Gea, which was what I remember.
Speaker 3: It's HBO's first movie. Because the HBO, remember, was just
Speaker 3: a recycling bin. Basically, they took like Red October and
Speaker 3: then they just put on TV and that was what
Speaker 3: they did. But then they came to me and they said, Hey,
Speaker 3: we've got this idea to make original movies, and how'd
Speaker 3: you like to do the first one about Gia Kuranci.
Speaker 3: And I just said, oh, this is perfect, like drugs
Speaker 3: eighties models.
Speaker 2: Let's call Jay McInerney. I mean, what else would you do? Right?
Speaker 3: And so I said to them, Look, I could write
Speaker 3: a good screenplay, I think, But I said, it's all
Speaker 3: going to depend on the casting. I said, you have
Speaker 3: to find a woman who is utterly charismatic. Because Gia
Speaker 3: never said anything memorable in her entire life. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's not a single line that anybody can remember that
Speaker 3: she said. But you know, luckily they cast it perfectly.
Speaker 3: I mean, Angelina Jolie was extraordinary, and she that was
Speaker 3: her big break.
Speaker 2: She made the movie, and he.
Speaker 1: Made the career of one of the biggest movie stars
Speaker 1: in history. But in that way that you've known, I
Speaker 1: mean as whether as friends or partners, if you will,
Speaker 1: You've known a lot of famous women. I used to
Speaker 1: know fleetingly Marla Hanson, right, I think it was after
Speaker 1: she was attacked.
Speaker 2: I knew after she was attacked.
Speaker 3: We went out together for four years. Well story, Marla
Speaker 3: Hanson was a small town girl, Texas, came to the
Speaker 3: city got some modeling jobs, and she got it and
Speaker 3: rented an apartment. The landlord was very invasive, and she
Speaker 3: kept turning down his advances and he fired finally high
Speaker 3: two men to slash her face. You know, I mean,
Speaker 3: so I talk about symbolism, you know, all the kind
Speaker 3: of mom a model whose faces slashed. And I met
Speaker 3: her after the attack as well. Keith McNally used to
Speaker 3: have these dinners at to Nelson. He said, you know,
Speaker 3: when he come to I think you'd really like this
Speaker 3: girl that's there. And I was kind of fascinated to
Speaker 3: meet Marla Hansome because she was she didn't really cover
Speaker 3: the post like seven times by then, and and everybody
Speaker 3: would liked Marlae because she said, you know, I'm undeterred
Speaker 3: and I'm going to keep modeling and I love New York.
Speaker 3: And so I found her well, first of all, I
Speaker 3: found her really good looking, and secondly, I found her face.
Speaker 3: Even afterwards she was she was very beautiful. And so
Speaker 3: we started dating after that, and and then unfortunately then
Speaker 3: I became more of a tabloid fixture because I was
Speaker 3: dating a tabloid fixture. We went about four weeks dodging
Speaker 3: the paparazzi, and then finally this, you know, one one
Speaker 3: of them said to me, look, j just give me
Speaker 3: a pictures. Put the five thousand dollars with you.
Speaker 2: Whatever it was. Then I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: I was dating a woman of this many many years ago,
Speaker 1: many years ago. I was dating a woman who was
Speaker 1: a very famous movie actress. And we're there and she
Speaker 1: was divorcing her husband, and she said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to hurt my husband's feelings. I really like him and
Speaker 1: we're friends and we're going to get divorced. And so
Speaker 1: when we leave this hotel, I'm going to go before
Speaker 1: you where you go before me?
Speaker 2: I want us walking out the hotel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it was the first time I was ever
Speaker 1: introduced to that, Like this kid from Massive People Long,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there going you want me to what you
Speaker 1: want me to go out ahead of you?
Speaker 2: Because oh I get, I get, I get, And I.
Speaker 1: Never knew that I did just sneak around because of
Speaker 1: who you are and the cameras and stuff, that's what
Speaker 1: we see.
Speaker 2: So we did that. I went at the back door
Speaker 2: and she went out the front door and got her picture.
Speaker 1: Taken whatever, and you know my education from back then
Speaker 1: about how you try to manage your personal life in
Speaker 1: public like that.
Speaker 2: It's really tough.
Speaker 1: The ones I see that are the most successful movie stars,
Speaker 1: you don't know anything about them.
Speaker 2: You really don't the most I agree, But a little
Speaker 2: bit about that.
Speaker 1: By the way, we went to Barnes and Noble on
Speaker 1: seventeenth Street at Union Square, you know the area.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whatever macinn Earn do they have is in softcover. Is
Speaker 1: there any place I can get hardcover books of the books?
Speaker 2: Oh? I want Bright Lights, Big City.
Speaker 3: Well the problem is the only Right Lights was published
Speaker 3: in trade paperback, and I was upset about that. But
Speaker 3: my editor said, look, this is the this is the
Speaker 3: way to reach people your own age, she said, because
Speaker 3: hardcover books are expensive, which is true. I didn't buy
Speaker 3: many when I was back. I try to only buy
Speaker 3: hardcover now. Yeah me, oh, me too. So there's there's
Speaker 3: really no American hardcover by Latswig City. All the other
Speaker 3: books are in hardcover I want to get, But the
Speaker 3: problem is the publishers. They only do one run of
Speaker 3: hardcover and then it all goes into the So what
Speaker 3: are you working on now? I just sold a book
Speaker 3: to Kannaff, my longtime publisher, and it's called See You
Speaker 3: on the Other Side. I started writing it during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: and it's and it starts in the pandemic. But where
Speaker 3: the title came from was that I walking past a
Speaker 3: coffee shop at that time, and it was right after
Speaker 3: everything had been closed and someone had slapped a sign
Speaker 3: on the windows I'd see you on the other Side,
Speaker 3: meaning like, what week, two weeks will be out of
Speaker 3: this mass, except it was.
Speaker 2: More like a year and a half.
Speaker 3: And then one of the main characters in the books
Speaker 3: book dies at the end of the book, and I
Speaker 3: suddenly when I was rereading the books, I was searching
Speaker 3: for a title and I saw this that I had
Speaker 3: written this down about this sign. I thought, God, that's
Speaker 3: that's a good title for the book. The bad news
Speaker 3: is that it's it's the fourth novel in a series
Speaker 3: of novels about these characters, Kareen and Russell. Kareen and
Speaker 3: Russell Callaway, who when we first meet them, you really
Speaker 3: glamorous New York couple, not wealthy, but you know she's
Speaker 3: a stockbroker and he's an assistant editor, book editor, and
Speaker 3: he remains an editor throughout the series, but Brightest Falls
Speaker 3: was going to be a one off. And then the
Speaker 3: crisis in that book was the was the stock market crash,
Speaker 3: and Russell had actually tried to perform a leverage buyout
Speaker 3: on his publishing, you know, so that was that's kind
Speaker 3: of thing that happened in the eighties. And and then
Speaker 3: nine to eleven came along, and I just for live me.
Speaker 3: I couldn't think, how am I going to you know,
Speaker 3: take this into account as a writer. And then I finally,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, what if I just take these set
Speaker 3: of characters and just have them react to this event.
Speaker 3: And I really kind of like the characters, and you know,
Speaker 3: they're also going through marital crises and so on. And
Speaker 3: before I knew it, you know, I'd written a third one,
Speaker 3: which is set around the time of the crash of
Speaker 3: the two thousand and eight and Obamas and Obama's election,
Speaker 3: you know, very big deals. So this seems to be
Speaker 3: partly a way for me of following a relatively heavily
Speaker 3: married couple, which you know, someone who's been married four times.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like something that I am passing. I'm
Speaker 3: fascinated by it, but also registering the kind of crises
Speaker 3: that New York City has gone through in my lifetime.
Speaker 3: So this is the very last one for but it's
Speaker 3: now a tet trilogy.
Speaker 1: Well it's it's reminding me somewhat. I mean, are very
Speaker 1: distinctive writers. But and she reminded me someone of Richard
Speaker 1: Nelson's Apple Family Stories, those four plays he did where
Speaker 1: they were all seated around talking about AIDS and we cut.
Speaker 2: To nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's got these four tableaus and they're just
Speaker 1: talking about what's going on, and then their relationships and
Speaker 1: the wife goes on it gets to words and becomes
Speaker 1: a lesbian and her lesbian girlfriend comes into chapter four
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah. I mean, Richard Nelson, who I worship.
Speaker 1: I worship him. But where did you meet? And Annhurst
Speaker 1: is my wife. I met her in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: at a nightclub called MK. So she was with a
Speaker 1: friend of hers. I was sitting with Bretty Sinellis, Tama
Speaker 1: Jenowitz and.
Speaker 2: Myself of all things.
Speaker 3: I mean, we didn't hang out that much with Tama,
Speaker 3: but that night we were and this friend VERSI, you're
Speaker 3: gonna meet these guys.
Speaker 2: They're like the coolest.
Speaker 3: Guys in all of New York, and so In came
Speaker 3: over and introduced herself, and you know, I knew her
Speaker 3: last name.
Speaker 2: She's the granddaughter of William Randall. First.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh, and Marla Hanson was at the table as well,
Speaker 3: So I couldn't like flirt openly.
Speaker 2: My former girlfriend, my future yeah, yeah, my imitators.
Speaker 3: But we definitely hit it off and there was electricity
Speaker 3: there and so we just kind of stayed in touch.
Speaker 3: And when I broke up with Marla, finally a couple
Speaker 3: of years later, I called her up and I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's broke up in Marla.
Speaker 2: That's really sad.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking, like, yeah, not so sad, and
Speaker 3: she said, oh shit, And I said what she said,
Speaker 3: I just got engaged.
Speaker 2: And it was like, yeah, and we have a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have a brother.
Speaker 3: And it just kind of we just kept missing the boat,
Speaker 3: including on September tenth, two thousand and one, we had
Speaker 3: a date for the first time in many years.
Speaker 2: We were both free. So we have a date.
Speaker 3: We go to we got to a restaurant and so
Speaker 3: then I, you know, I invite her back to my
Speaker 3: apartment since we were downtown, and she says, tell you what.
Speaker 3: She said, let's not rush things. So let's do this
Speaker 3: again tomorrow. And she said, you might have it, you know,
Speaker 3: give me a data, maybe we'll have a different result.
Speaker 3: And I said, you're sure, sure, So so off she
Speaker 3: went uptown. I went downtown and the next morning was
Speaker 3: September eleventh, and she was trying to get to Long
Speaker 3: Island where her kids were. The phones weren't working, and
Speaker 3: you know, so it was another four or five years
Speaker 3: before we got together. But now we've been married seventeen
Speaker 3: years and long time, long time.
Speaker 1: But whenever I've met her, fleeting Lee, I don't know
Speaker 1: her that well, but whenever I've met her, what a lovely.
Speaker 2: Woman she has. So you're adding a tetralogy, you're putting
Speaker 2: the new.
Speaker 3: Additional latest, and that'll come out, I guess next year.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm just editing it at the moment with
Speaker 3: my new editor. His name is Errol McDonald, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm glad to be back in the game again.
Speaker 3: I also wrote a memoir during the pandemic. I showed
Speaker 3: it to my agent, who feels like it's about seventeen
Speaker 3: lawsuits waiting to happen.
Speaker 2: So we've we've got to free things that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean the funny thing is might
Speaker 1: be some tips on it.
Speaker 3: My story is about Mick Jagg and Carrie Fisher are
Speaker 3: no problem because they're famous, but it's it's like the
Speaker 3: wives and girlfriends and all and brothers and you know they.
Speaker 2: Can't wait to read it.
Speaker 3: Make sure you know those guys are Those guys might
Speaker 3: sue me, those girls might sue me.
Speaker 2: So it's going to come out at all or not.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, well as su as I published this novel,
Speaker 3: then I'll figure out and I'll figure out the memoir.
Speaker 2: But the first I mean, the people who have read
Speaker 2: it tell me it's really fun. A memoir from you.
Speaker 2: I'm dying to read.
Speaker 1: Last thing I'll say is in your books the word
Speaker 1: bright appears three times. Yeah, and you seem to me
Speaker 1: like a very buoyant person. We didn't even get into
Speaker 1: the fact that you were the wine columnist for the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: How did that happen? I mean, other than you being
Speaker 2: a fan of wine.
Speaker 3: Well, I started with you know, I just I love
Speaker 3: I mean, my friends know this. It's a hobby of mine.
Speaker 3: I love wine. And so my friend Dominque Browning took
Speaker 3: over her House in Garden magazine, and she wanted to
Speaker 3: have a wine column, but she thought wine writing was boring,
Speaker 3: so she she called me up and and I said, look,
Speaker 3: I don't know enough. I don't know enough to call him.
Speaker 3: And she said no, but that's just the way, she said,
Speaker 3: you're you're a good writer, and you get enthusiasm. She said,
Speaker 3: just write like your one chapter ahead of the textbook
Speaker 3: of the class in the textbook, and write like a
Speaker 3: novelist right about the characters who make women. And so
Speaker 3: so I did this for a few years, and House
Speaker 3: Garden eventually folded, and then the Wall Street Journal called
Speaker 3: me up and said, hey, you want to be our
Speaker 3: wine critic.
Speaker 2: Thought, well, we'll.
Speaker 3: Street Journal met it's but you know the conic why
Speaker 3: their cultural coverage is quite good. And yeah, so I
Speaker 3: did a lot of things about the journal. I did
Speaker 3: that for four years. I like a lot of things
Speaker 3: about the Journal too, not so much their editorial page.
Speaker 1: But well, as I said to some friends of mine,
Speaker 1: I would come across movies that I didn't feel somewhat
Speaker 1: needed to be remade or maybe them, here's an opportunity
Speaker 1: to take a story and tell the modern angle on
Speaker 1: that story Looking for Mister Goodbar was one I wanted
Speaker 1: to remake just to direct or produce or what you
Speaker 1: would say the female sexuality and how women are played
Speaker 1: with an exploited now or not, or how they do
Speaker 1: the exploiting whatever the female psychology is about sex and
Speaker 1: do mister Goodbar again and contemporize it. And the other
Speaker 1: movie that's Bernie to be remade is Bright Lights, Big City.
Speaker 3: Well it's it's supposedly in the works. But you know
Speaker 3: how these things work. You know, there maye when we're dead.
Speaker 3: There are fifty people who have to all agree at
Speaker 3: the same time, you know. But I have a conversation
Speaker 3: every month or two. It's gotta happen with the guys. Ready,
Speaker 3: I'm ready to We finally got to pay the lead role.
Speaker 2: Who is as seeking as you are seeking? You are
Speaker 2: seeking many things. Oh, I'll take that. I like that.
Speaker 1: My thanks to novelist, columnist and screenwriter Jay McInerney. This
Speaker 1: episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperry. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich, I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio