Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftst Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Robin Greene, an executive producer of The Sopranos,
Speaker 1: a writer for Rolling Stone, an author of the book
Speaker 1: The Only Girl.
Speaker 2: Why was the book called The Only Girl? Robin?
Speaker 3: I seem to be chronically the only girl. I was
Speaker 3: the only girl at Rolling Stone, not working there, but
Speaker 3: on the masthead with eight boys, you know, with Hunter
Speaker 3: and the Tim's you know, Tim k Hill, Tim Krause
Speaker 3: and all those, and David Felton and me. You know,
Speaker 3: there were like eleven guys and me on the masthead,
Speaker 3: just purely by accident, but there it was. And then,
Speaker 3: you know, I was the only girl on the on
Speaker 3: the paper at Brown too. I went to Brown University
Speaker 3: of Pembroke then, and they were all men there except me.
Speaker 3: I was the only female editor. Girls were just you know,
Speaker 3: they were meeting husbands, they weren't necessarily writing anything or
Speaker 3: anything like that. So I just seemed to find myself
Speaker 3: in that position. And it's also when a Sopranos too,
Speaker 3: it was mostly there were some girls that came through women,
Speaker 3: you know. Tony calem came on, wrote a script and
Speaker 3: a few other women later, but first, for years I
Speaker 3: was the only girl, so that it was a natural.
Speaker 2: Okay, is that more a comment on you or the
Speaker 2: other girls?
Speaker 3: Both? And probably me? You know, I don't I've never
Speaker 3: had like a real me too moment, you know, so
Speaker 3: maybe I just don't notice or something that that I'm
Speaker 3: a girl. I don't know. That's not really true, but
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's a good question.
Speaker 2: Well, growing up, were you always a guy's girl? Were
Speaker 2: you friends with the boys or friends with the girls?
Speaker 2: How did it work out?
Speaker 3: Girls? Definitely? Yeah, No, I was a teeny bopper and
Speaker 3: I had a girlfriends. I had three close girlfriends in Providence,
Speaker 3: Rhode Island. You know, the music was just starting to happen,
Speaker 3: so you know, there was dancing on the board walk
Speaker 3: at Scarborough and you know, sort of disgraceful bathing suits
Speaker 3: for the time and stuff like that. But I was
Speaker 3: definitely I had girlfriends. I did have girlfriends, and then yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess I started hanging out with guys, but not
Speaker 3: without the girls, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay. You know one thing that's clear in the book,
Speaker 2: which is your autobiography, is you make left field choices
Speaker 2: all the time, whereas today's kids seem to know what
Speaker 2: they're going to do, and I'm going by road. From
Speaker 2: a very young age, they see college as a trade school.
Speaker 2: They go to work for the bank, they go to
Speaker 2: work for Google. What'd your parents say about you? Constantly
Speaker 2: sing we have an ivy leave education, but I'm going
Speaker 2: with my boyfriend to Canada. You know I'm doing this.
Speaker 3: They were horror horrified because, excuse me, I have a
Speaker 3: little frog in my throat allergies from the autumn in
Speaker 3: the country. But I got out of Pembroke and I
Speaker 3: went immediately to Martha's Vineyard with a boyfriend, you know.
Speaker 3: With my college it which my Ivy League education. You know,
Speaker 3: I was the first generation to go to college. My
Speaker 3: grandparents were immigrants and they lived upstairs. It was their
Speaker 3: house we had. They owned the house. We went to
Speaker 3: the downstairs flat. But my parents didn't go to college
Speaker 3: for various reasons. They were very bright and funny. But I,
Speaker 3: you know, me and me and my brother were the
Speaker 3: ones that first went. It was very important for them
Speaker 3: for me to go to an Ivy League school because
Speaker 3: I had I had a free ride at full ride
Speaker 3: at Risdie. You know that is an art.
Speaker 2: School, Yeah, Road Island School Design.
Speaker 3: So I got my Yes, so I got my because
Speaker 3: I was a talented artist as a child, you know, girl.
Speaker 3: But they wanted and also they didn't think I could
Speaker 3: earn a living that way, and I had to take
Speaker 3: typing and things like that because that's what girls did.
Speaker 3: This was, you know, nineteen sixty three when I went
Speaker 3: to college, so you know, the expectations and girls and
Speaker 3: now they're like women are all my doctors practically, do
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Then it just wasn't so
Speaker 3: at all. But anyway, I graduated and I went with
Speaker 3: a boyfriend this sort of day class, a Greek American
Speaker 3: from Providence, and we went to Martha's Vineyard and my waitress,
Speaker 3: you know. So my parents were horrified whether that they
Speaker 3: they they never withdrew their love. You know, they were
Speaker 3: entertained by me. I brought home Jimmy Cliff's album and
Speaker 3: showed them the dance and took them. I think they
Speaker 3: took them to the movie Harder They Fall on, you know,
Speaker 3: Providence on Fair Street, and they dug it, you know,
Speaker 3: because so they were alive, you know, they used to
Speaker 3: go down to New York and see plays and things.
Speaker 3: So they sort of dug what happened to me, and
Speaker 3: they were tolerant, although they'd make fun of me a
Speaker 3: lot to their friend.
Speaker 2: Made fun of you. Tell us more about that, well.
Speaker 3: I mean they would say, Robin's looking for herself. She
Speaker 3: thinks now she's in California. Stuff like that, you know.
Speaker 3: Or once I had I had knitted. I was a
Speaker 3: knitter one winter and I knitted this scarf that I
Speaker 3: wore as a shawl in Berkeley. And it was the
Speaker 3: days in Berkeley dressing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I had this maddress floor length Indian dress was stunning,
Speaker 3: wraparound really and I looked great. You know, I had
Speaker 3: such a good figure as a girl. I didn't know it,
Speaker 3: but I did, And so I wore the you know,
Speaker 3: I was back in Providence visiting my family, and I
Speaker 3: wore the white nick shawl, and my mother took my
Speaker 3: grandmother's afghan that she had a crochet or something, you know,
Speaker 3: this white big afghan and mocking me war it to
Speaker 3: the cookout at the Barad's house. Do you understand, just
Speaker 3: making me?
Speaker 2: I understand?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, she was making fun of the hippie look
Speaker 3: and pearl Barad Ronnie's mother said to my mother, you're
Speaker 3: making yourself look bad. Robin looks beautiful. But so my
Speaker 3: mother was, Yeah, my mother was undermining my father was.
Speaker 3: You know, he would just light up when I came
Speaker 3: in the room, and she did too. Really they were great.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go sideways for a second. What did your
Speaker 2: brother do in his life?
Speaker 3: Oh God, thank God for Ronnie. He was two and
Speaker 3: a half, two years four months older, and he was
Speaker 3: kind of a real nerd. You know, I was the
Speaker 3: talented one, and he had no rhythm. You know, he
Speaker 3: wasn't good at piano hour. He was short, and then
Speaker 3: he kind of blossomed in college. He didn't get into
Speaker 3: hyvy league school. He went to u URI, you know.
Speaker 2: U Uri University of Island.
Speaker 3: It was an ivy league. He ended up by the well.
Speaker 3: So he ended up by the way teaching a medicine
Speaker 3: of all things. He's a neuroscientist, and he taught medicine
Speaker 3: at Dartmouth his entire life. So he had this ivy
Speaker 3: League experience. But the thing about him was he met
Speaker 3: his wife while he was just coming into himself in
Speaker 3: college in the biology lab. A friend of his parked
Speaker 3: or with him, because you know, while he had to
Speaker 3: go someplace on some weekend and you know, some kind
Speaker 3: of homecoming weekend or something. But he parked his girlfriend,
Speaker 3: Sue with Ronnie because he didn't consider Ronnie a threat.
Speaker 3: Ronnie ended up marrying her and they've been married since
Speaker 3: they were children, you know, and they have children. So
Speaker 3: my brother had this. He was a doctor, which was
Speaker 3: like god in the Jewish community, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: we were all sort of all of the people in Providence,
Speaker 3: especially in the Jewish community. I can't really speak for
Speaker 3: any others. It was kind of an upscale Jewish part
Speaker 3: of town. You know. The wasp fled when we moved
Speaker 3: in in the fifties. They fled out to Barrington and
Speaker 3: Bristol and stuff like that. But we were pawns in
Speaker 3: their game, as Dylan I guest said, you know, and
Speaker 3: so you know, it was important for you to be
Speaker 3: a doctor or go to an Ivy League school just
Speaker 3: to be in the sweepstakes, you know what I.
Speaker 2: Mean, amplify pawns in their game.
Speaker 3: Oh, isn't there like we were only pawns in their game.
Speaker 2: No, that's definitely a Dylan line, but that it applied
Speaker 2: to you in Providence because because.
Speaker 3: You know, well, my daughter's going to Pembroke, my daughter,
Speaker 3: my son is teaching at Dartmouth. Oh and where does
Speaker 3: your girl go? Oh? Well, should be you? Oh that's
Speaker 3: too bad, you know that sort of thing. There was
Speaker 3: a contest and we won, My brother I won. We
Speaker 3: were you know, we were the house. We didn't have
Speaker 3: as much money as everybody else in that house. But
Speaker 3: it was the smallest house in a good neighborhood, like
Speaker 3: in like Who's the Who's the writer, you know, Jane
Speaker 3: Austen or something novel, The smallest house in the nice neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And we lived there. But it was to our house
Speaker 3: that people came for fun. That's where the cocktails were happening,
Speaker 3: do you know what I mean, That's where they were.
Speaker 2: I grew up. I'm a little younger than you. But
Speaker 2: it's amazing the life our parents led relative to ours.
Speaker 2: It was like a floating party. They had a million friends.
Speaker 2: They weren't looking to become famous, but the lifestyle was
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. Where are you from.
Speaker 2: I'm from Connecticut. I'm from Fairfield, Connecticut, which is fifteen
Speaker 2: weeks from New York City. The most important thing that's
Speaker 2: you know New York media. But I have an older
Speaker 2: sister and a younger sister. We talk about it all
Speaker 2: the time. They had a million friends. They were having
Speaker 2: theme parties. How did your family end up in Providence?
Speaker 3: Well, my grandmother it's like the Bayflowership. She actually was
Speaker 3: born there, but no one else. Yeah, well that was one,
Speaker 3: but the others were you know. You know, my grandfather
Speaker 3: actually came from Russia. He was avoiding the draft, right,
Speaker 3: Nicholas right, right? Yeah, So he's a Russian immigrant nineteen
Speaker 3: seventeen draft dodger, and he came to Newark, Newark, New Jersey.
Speaker 3: It was a butcher and I think that he killed
Speaker 3: somebody there. Something happened and he had to get out,
Speaker 3: and he came up to Providence. I guess, you know
Speaker 3: Jewish people. That's how my grandmother came from Hungary and
Speaker 3: she came to Providence because somebody else had come to Providence,
Speaker 3: do you know what I mean? And she came illegally.
Speaker 2: Wait wait too them, I know because all my mother's
Speaker 2: family came to the Boston area. How did she come illegally?
Speaker 3: Oh? She said she was someone's daughter and she wasn't
Speaker 3: you know, I have actually she came with her with
Speaker 3: her comforter, her down comforter, you know, Hungarian down, Hungarian down, Yeah,
Speaker 3: a ghost down or something. My mother put it in
Speaker 3: her couch, the goost down, and then I have it
Speaker 3: in something here. I can't remember what exactly, but we
Speaker 3: kept that down going, you know. But she came. She
Speaker 3: had that's all she had. She has had a straw
Speaker 3: hamper with this down down comforter in it, and she
Speaker 3: was gorgeous. She was like six feet tall. My grandfather
Speaker 3: was this little crude Jewish barrel chested criminal. Really he
Speaker 3: was a bootlegger and he was a gangster. He was,
Speaker 3: you know, he had I think he had a gun,
Speaker 3: but you know there. I didn't put it together then,
Speaker 3: but later in life when I worked for Sopranos, I
Speaker 3: could see that's what he was, and I talked to
Speaker 3: my mother about it, and for sure, you know, they
Speaker 3: because she would live in many many places in Wickford,
Speaker 3: for instance, because that the boats would come in from Canada.
Speaker 3: So my grandfather, my little Jewish grandfather would go down
Speaker 3: there with his men and his gun and receive the
Speaker 3: barrels and protect the booze from you know, other gangsters.
Speaker 3: I guess they would try to take it and then
Speaker 3: they would actually make They had Gordon's gin labels and
Speaker 3: so they would bottle the illegal gin in this you know,
Speaker 3: these Gordon and put the Gordon and I drank Gordon's
Speaker 3: gin to this day, and so did my parents did
Speaker 3: so did your parents have cocktails and things?
Speaker 2: My father owned a liquor store. That's how he earned
Speaker 2: his living for a long time.
Speaker 3: That's what Grandpa did. After proefficient ended, he had a
Speaker 3: liquor store left to trade pictures, right.
Speaker 2: What about the other side of your family.
Speaker 3: Oh, they were kind of Jewish, you know, like Grandpa.
Speaker 3: They were both named Morris, but that Grandpa Morris green Grenawskamshire.
Speaker 3: At some point he was an immigrant, tall, handsome. He
Speaker 3: had a cap factory and they had cars and they
Speaker 3: were doing very well. And then my father's older brother
Speaker 3: got epilepsy. He had a grandma seizure. But he was
Speaker 3: giving the valedictorian speech at his high school and it
Speaker 3: was there was no Ti Lanton then, and so he
Speaker 3: was at Brown, which was very unusual for jew in
Speaker 3: those days. It was the twenties, I think, and he
Speaker 3: had to stop going to Brown because Brown University this
Speaker 3: is where I went because it was freaking everybody out.
Speaker 3: These seizures were so grotesque and scary. So he went
Speaker 3: home and the family kind of failed after that. So
Speaker 3: Dad stepped in. My charming, funny father, very talented performer,
Speaker 3: and he supported the family however he could. Oh, then
Speaker 3: he wanted to be in a stock market, but it
Speaker 3: was nineteen twenty nine. But still he was the funniest.
Speaker 3: You know. He loved people. He looked at people and
Speaker 3: he appreciated them, and he ended up his life in
Speaker 3: a happy job. He became a sales representative so he
Speaker 3: could go in his car and charm people with his
Speaker 3: sample cases. He was Willy Lowman, but without the Dan Draft.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're in Providence.
Speaker 3: We live in going.
Speaker 2: No, it is perfect, perfect, you're in.
Speaker 3: I get going. I don't shut up or something.
Speaker 2: No, no, perfect, keep rolling all right. There are fifty
Speaker 2: states in America. There are many institutions of higher learning.
Speaker 2: Your brother and your yourself just end up in Providence.
Speaker 2: You don't think, well, maybe I'll go to New York City,
Speaker 2: I'll go to New Haven, I'll go somewhere else.
Speaker 3: I means for college. Yeah, well no, I was scared
Speaker 3: and uh, number one and number two I didn't get
Speaker 3: into brandeis those pricks.
Speaker 2: It's kind of interesting to get especially by today's standards,
Speaker 2: because it's certainly reversed. Okay, many people there. The line
Speaker 2: of demarcation is when the Beatles hit basically January of
Speaker 2: sixty four. You were into music before that. For a
Speaker 2: lot of people are unaware of what it was like.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your interest in music then before the Beatles.
Speaker 3: Oh, man, well, definitely, you know, I guess the first
Speaker 3: thing I evers stole was Elvis Presley forty five, right,
Speaker 3: Elvis Presley must have been thirteen. And my friend Ronnie
Speaker 3: was a really talented singer, the one that killed herself.
Speaker 3: She was also named Ronnie. As a matter of fact.
Speaker 3: Her personality was so strong that we called my brother
Speaker 3: Ronnie Green differentiated because there was only one Ronnie. But
Speaker 3: she was my best friend. We were born two weeks apart,
Speaker 3: and we you know, it was the Watusi. It was
Speaker 3: all that kind of teeny bopper music. I know, the
Speaker 3: lyrics to like a million songs, those teeny bopper songs.
Speaker 3: And then oh then you know guys, the cool guys
Speaker 3: at Moses Brown there was this one guy, Joel'sas I think.
Speaker 2: Which is a private high school in the Rhode Island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's where the which you know, which those who
Speaker 3: could afford it, My friends, a lot of them went
Speaker 3: to the private school. It was a girls was Lincoln
Speaker 3: and the boys was Moses Brown and Wheeler. But Joel's
Speaker 3: Auce I think he still plays around. Have you ever
Speaker 3: heard that name?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Joelsas wrote too Long at the Fear, the
Speaker 2: opening song on the second side of the second Bonnie
Speaker 2: Right album. Loved that song.
Speaker 3: No, really, Joel.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful about Joel Sauce and musicians cos s Absolutely,
Speaker 2: I've heard from him a couple of times.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Well, I don't know if you'd remember me,
Speaker 3: but he went to Moses Brown and he was a
Speaker 3: friend of my boyfriend David Leech's, and so you know,
Speaker 3: he was the barefoot kid with a guitar, you see,
Speaker 3: And we would go to clubs and stuff, and I
Speaker 3: was at the first row of the Newport Jazz Festival
Speaker 3: with David. David was a huge music lover and of
Speaker 3: jazz and he you know, when I lived with him
Speaker 3: in Chicago. I can't remember exactly the details, but we
Speaker 3: saw like Mangus or somebody, you know, really important jazz people.
Speaker 3: I was so stoned all the time though. I just
Speaker 3: don't remember the details unfortunately, but I know we did
Speaker 3: go to clubs and black clubs and hear black musicians.
Speaker 3: But you know, he took me to the Newport Jazz Festival.
Speaker 3: We sat in the first row. You know.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're in college when the Beatles hit? How did
Speaker 2: you first hear the Beatles? Into? What impact did they
Speaker 2: have for you and your friends?
Speaker 3: Well? I didn't have any friends at college.
Speaker 2: But wait, let's just slow that you were living at
Speaker 2: home or living in the dorm.
Speaker 3: Oh, I lived well, first of all, they had this
Speaker 3: sort of dorm for townies, which I was that it was.
Speaker 3: It was just a shithole. Now it's the like Vegan dorm.
Speaker 3: You know. It was this old funky house, so they
Speaker 3: would they let the towny stay there. And then after
Speaker 3: a semester they let me. They gave me a room
Speaker 3: at the actual college with others, you know, with four
Speaker 3: three other girls. And the next year after that I
Speaker 3: had a single. I mean, I rose very quickly at
Speaker 3: the university, but I didn't have any friends really, and
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think music was. I know that
Speaker 3: my one friend, one girl I did know, was really
Speaker 3: into Dylan, but I wasn't at that point. But the
Speaker 3: Beatles definitely, you know. I just remember which album was
Speaker 3: Rubber Soul that was later, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rubber Soul was sixty five, So.
Speaker 3: When did they show up? Sixty four?
Speaker 2: They showed up in January of sixty four, and Rever
Speaker 2: Seoul was the end of sixty five. Then Revolver was
Speaker 2: sixty six, and Sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 3: Was Yeah, no, yeah, I remember, I want to hold
Speaker 3: your hand and all that. Sure, Yeah, I love it it, Okay?
Speaker 2: How come you had no friends? Usually people go to
Speaker 2: college and make friends.
Speaker 3: Hmm. It just wasn't my scene. I didn't like it
Speaker 3: very much the first year. I didn't the girls were
Speaker 3: too preppy or something. I just didn't attach. And I
Speaker 3: was very serious about school, you know, classes and things,
Speaker 3: and you know, I had this kind of you know,
Speaker 3: I wore jeans and black sweaters and black boots and
Speaker 3: had an art board and went down the hill to
Speaker 3: Rizdy to take courses. I was kind of a beatnik,
Speaker 3: and so I I just wasn't, you know, I think
Speaker 3: I went to a football game once and had a
Speaker 3: date once, you know, it went to a fraternity party.
Speaker 3: But I didn't like it. I just didn't like it. It
Speaker 3: wasn't my scene. And I kept my Providence friends and
Speaker 3: that actually led to you know, I was friends with
Speaker 3: my boyfriend David. One of his friends at Moses Brown
Speaker 3: was the Raymond Patriarch Junior. Raymond Patriarch Junior was the
Speaker 3: son of the head of the New England mafia, Raymond
Speaker 3: Patriarch Senior.
Speaker 2: So you know, they did a whole podcast about that.
Speaker 2: What do you mean about the patriarchis he did? Oh? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Oh my god?
Speaker 2: A few years ago. You know why my podcast Who
Speaker 2: Knows Why the people started doing there were multiple seasons
Speaker 2: about the Patriarch family. You did no, I mean I
Speaker 2: I listened to it. I didn't do it.
Speaker 3: Oh you didn't do it. But there was one yes, Ah,
Speaker 3: I say, well, you know, the Godfather book hadn't come
Speaker 3: out yet. The movie of course hadn't come out yet.
Speaker 3: But I was I didn't know my grandfather was a
Speaker 3: small time gangster. But I was just so fascinated and
Speaker 3: kind of excited by the whole scene, you know, because
Speaker 3: Raymond Junior, who's a friend of my boyfriend. You know,
Speaker 3: I got friends with his girlfriend, Rosemary Scanlon, and she
Speaker 3: lived near Brown. So I just escaped Brown and went
Speaker 3: and stayed with her down the hill with her and
Speaker 3: her roommate, you know, in one room or something. You know,
Speaker 3: she and ray Junior used to go into the closet
Speaker 3: and have sex in there, and I wrote about it.
Speaker 3: That was my first short story. Actually it was my
Speaker 3: second short story, but nobody you know, I wrote this
Speaker 3: pretty good short story that got me, you know, I
Speaker 3: became the editor of the literary magazine. And they read
Speaker 3: it at this huge convocation of blonde girls. Do you
Speaker 3: understand I was understand. I keep saying that to you,
Speaker 3: but you do understand. But I was alienated. I would
Speaker 3: say I was scared alienated. So I pretended and I
Speaker 3: guess maybe I was cool, you know, maybe I was hip.
Speaker 2: It's possible, okay, if they read it at this convocation.
Speaker 2: Did you envision yourself becoming a writer.
Speaker 3: Yes, But then there was this magazine contest that Mademoiselle
Speaker 3: magazine had a contest, so I entered it with this story,
Speaker 3: you know, and when they read it in front of
Speaker 3: three hundred people that it was an editor from the
Speaker 3: New Yorker that came up and read it. It wasn't
Speaker 3: some schmuck off the street, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it was really a big deal. So I sent
Speaker 3: it off to the the Mademoiselle contest and I didn't win,
Speaker 3: so I just gave it up as an idea.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Okay, you've had these high points in your career.
Speaker 2: Did Brown ever track you down after the fact to speak,
Speaker 2: to give money, to give an award or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yes, I can't remember the award, but I did go
Speaker 3: up there. Mitch was with me. I just remember it
Speaker 3: because of the traffic jam was terrible. But I, you know,
Speaker 3: I gave some kind of seminar and then the minute
Speaker 3: I had any money at all, I gave them ten
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. And that to me was just a lot
Speaker 3: of money because I come, you know, my family, my father,
Speaker 3: he lived in the future. There was debt, it was
Speaker 3: credit card debt. There was no money at all. But
Speaker 3: we lived very well somehow, you know, in the nice
Speaker 3: house with beautiful furniture, nice friends and all that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. And everyone knew, you know, we had no money.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. So ten thousand dollars was you know,
Speaker 3: that's what he made a year. My father made ten
Speaker 3: dollars a year in the fifties, Sure he did, And
Speaker 3: so I gave them. And then we went mentioned and
Speaker 3: I went to some event at the Goggenheim. And you know,
Speaker 3: now when we go to events at Iowa, we're a
Speaker 3: big deal because we give them. I don't even want
Speaker 3: to say how much, you know what.
Speaker 2: I mean, everything the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the.
Speaker 3: Iowa Writers Worship, but also the University of Iowa Public
Speaker 3: Institution because and a lot of it is because Brown
Speaker 3: was like, you know, fa fong gul. You know, I'll
Speaker 3: show you. And also they have a huge endowment. They
Speaker 3: didn't really need my ten thousand dollars, and they certainly don't.
Speaker 3: They don't need my money now either. But Iowa does
Speaker 3: you know, Irack can use it?
Speaker 2: Okay? When you went to Brown, did your father pay
Speaker 2: or did you get any help from Brown?
Speaker 3: I got a scholar ship from the state of one
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a year. The tuition was that it covered
Speaker 3: a intuition, and I think my father paid for the dorm.
Speaker 3: He did, he paid for the dorm I worked. Also,
Speaker 3: I worked in a factory in the summer. I worked
Speaker 3: at you know, I wasn't an intern somewhere with no pay.
Speaker 3: I was a waitress or I was working. I like
Speaker 3: to work. I like them. I like them. I like
Speaker 3: waitressing because you pick up the money off the table.
Speaker 3: Maybe you don't anymore, but I just like the cash
Speaker 3: aspect to it.
Speaker 2: Okay, you graduate from college, although you ultimately go to
Speaker 2: the vineyard. I think you said, what was your intention?
Speaker 2: What was your plan after graduating from college?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. We stayed on a vineyard till November.
Speaker 2: So, well that's way past the season.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is kind of past the season. And he
Speaker 3: became a cook, so we lived upstairs in the restaurant
Speaker 3: Louise Tate King. This kind of it was fun. And
Speaker 3: then we moved to Boston. I thought I would go
Speaker 3: into publishing, you know, so I did. I got a
Speaker 3: job at Houghton Mifflin. That's a big house in Boston,
Speaker 3: publishing house. And I got a job in the production department,
Speaker 3: like with like figures and spreadsheets and stuff. I don't
Speaker 3: even know what I was doing, but I took a
Speaker 3: detour and I went and I checked out the editorial
Speaker 3: department because that's sort of what I was aiming for.
Speaker 3: This was an entry level job, and it just looked
Speaker 3: like a drag. It looked like a drag, you know,
Speaker 3: I was it was. It was you know, sixty seven.
Speaker 3: It was you know, something was in the air, you know,
Speaker 3: and it was too like straight. The men didn't appeal
Speaker 3: to me. Nobody looked at me. Actually that was part
Speaker 3: of it. Those men, they didn't even look up from
Speaker 3: their desks, and they were all men behind those desks.
Speaker 3: So I think I left my boyfriend. He worked at
Speaker 3: a restaurant, managing a restaurant. I think I can't remember
Speaker 3: if I waited. No, I was at my hoton Mifflin.
Speaker 3: So he was working at the restaurant where I used
Speaker 3: to waitress years ago before that. But he cheated on me.
Speaker 3: He didn't come home one night, and he married that
Speaker 3: girl and had four children with her. So it was
Speaker 3: good for him because I didn't have good, pure intentions
Speaker 3: towards him. Men functioned in my life as kind of
Speaker 3: tickets out. I mean, I'm burying my soul to you
Speaker 3: a little bit. But that's how I went to Cali.
Speaker 3: I didn't go to California on my own. You know,
Speaker 3: A man took me to New Poor Jazz Festival. You know,
Speaker 3: a man put the headphones on my head and played
Speaker 3: the records and chose the records. And so I had
Speaker 3: music through men, and I had transportation through men. Or
Speaker 3: I wouldn't go to cities alone, you know, I would go.
Speaker 2: Well, was it more that you saw the opportunity or
Speaker 2: that you were fearful?
Speaker 3: Both? Although I did go to New York by myself,
Speaker 3: I did, No, that's bullshit. I went to New York
Speaker 3: by myself.
Speaker 2: I did, Okay, your boyfriend cheats on you. You're working
Speaker 2: it out, love Beflynn.
Speaker 3: Oh well, first I had an affair with a guy
Speaker 3: across the hall, and then I went home to Providence,
Speaker 3: and it was December. This all took place like a month,
Speaker 3: because then when you're young, time is very slow, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. A lot happens, like so much
Speaker 3: happened in just nineteen sixty seven. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: you probably experienced that. You're vaguely my general. I think
Speaker 3: you're my husband's generation. Actually, so you know, I don't
Speaker 3: think it was that much different. It's still Vietnam, and
Speaker 3: of Vietnam when you were coming up he wasted. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so time was slow, and so I went back to Providence.
Speaker 3: I played mel Brooks's two thousand year Old Man continually
Speaker 3: on my Hi Fi on my turntable for like a week,
Speaker 3: maybe more. You know, I just played that record over
Speaker 3: and over again. I can't tell you why. I don't
Speaker 3: have any idea, but then I was ready. I felt better. Oh,
Speaker 3: my parents had given me luggage as a graduation president.
Speaker 3: I guess that was their sense of humor. But it
Speaker 3: was also very useful, you know, this blue American tourist set.
Speaker 3: So I packed that up and I went down to
Speaker 3: the Martha Washington Hotel for Women because I had read
Speaker 3: about it in a book in Marjorie Morning Star. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is this That's what got me. You know, that's
Speaker 3: how sort of in cohateed and goalless. I was, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: i'll be like that, you know, I'll go to live
Speaker 3: in in New York. And I forgot the part about
Speaker 3: where she moves to Scarsdale and Mary's a doctor, you know,
Speaker 3: I just got to the New York part. And I
Speaker 3: went to New York and I rented one apartment and
Speaker 3: then another apartment. I was there again. It was just
Speaker 3: nine months, but it was a lifetime, you know. And
Speaker 3: I got a job. I went to a temp agency.
Speaker 3: I knew one person in New York, a girl that
Speaker 3: I did know at Brown Pembroke. She lived in the
Speaker 3: singles dorm next door to me, and she was the
Speaker 3: one that liked Dylan and she remained a figure in
Speaker 3: my life for a long time. But we don't, for
Speaker 3: one reason or another, speak anymore. I'll speak to her,
Speaker 3: but I think she's mad at me. But I knew
Speaker 3: her in New York. But I also, oh, I just
Speaker 3: remember some people came to a party that she gave
Speaker 3: me and I went home with them to Brooklyn. I
Speaker 3: knew this person later in life too, Vicky Robin and
Speaker 3: Mark Ledgerd. I think they were married at that point.
Speaker 3: Maybe anyway, I was at their house and they put
Speaker 3: on my head earphones and it was Frank Zappa right
Speaker 3: ime for that first record, and they said, you just
Speaker 3: got to listen to this, you know. I think they
Speaker 3: got me stoned, you know, and they made me listen
Speaker 3: to this thing, and that was life changing. You know
Speaker 3: what's this now? You know?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that first double album for weak out.
Speaker 2: You didn't try to call me in trouble coming every day.
Speaker 2: There was a subversiveness, a sense of humor, and an
Speaker 2: attitude that we rarely see, certainly in music or any
Speaker 2: mainstream movies. But okay, you're in New York. No was
Speaker 2: Susie Susie cream cheese shirt shirt?
Speaker 3: That was I remember. I can't remember what I ate
Speaker 3: for dinner, not any any dinner for for like five years.
Speaker 3: I was talking to my husband about that. Today. I
Speaker 3: can't remember what David and I ate, you know, oh
Speaker 3: we never cooked. We must have eaten something. But I
Speaker 3: remember Susie Kuzzy cream Cheese and all the words to
Speaker 3: all the songs because the music was so you know,
Speaker 3: David would come through town, he'd come through New York
Speaker 3: and take me to stuff. We went to the Fillmore East,
Speaker 3: so Janice Joplin, you know that was my girl music.
Speaker 3: That's what I liked.
Speaker 2: So you're in New York City and you get a job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got a job for work. I was well,
Speaker 3: I was sent on three. I wanted to be an
Speaker 3: editorial assistant because I had a liberal arts education and
Speaker 3: so and you know, writing was like I wouldn't even
Speaker 3: think about that. But they sent me to two advertising agencies,
Speaker 3: and they sent me to Marvel Comics. You know, I
Speaker 3: was the closest they came to a book and I
Speaker 3: was hired. I didn't like the advertising agency and one
Speaker 3: of them didn't like me, but they but Stanley hired me,
Speaker 3: and phlo Steinberg was leaving. She she liked me, and
Speaker 3: she introduced me to Stand and he took me on.
Speaker 3: So I was with him. I was his you know,
Speaker 3: his office was across the hall, like five feet away,
Speaker 3: and I would answer the phone, you know. And I
Speaker 3: was supposed to also communicate with fans, the fan club.
Speaker 3: You know. I didn't like comics, so I didn't really
Speaker 3: care what they said or but I suppose I did
Speaker 3: my job. I don't remember. Really. It was kind of stupid.
Speaker 3: But the people were nice, you know, they were square,
Speaker 3: they were really square, and New York was square, and
Speaker 3: I felt, again I didn't belong there. It was like
Speaker 3: at Pembroke. I just you know, felt alienated, I guess,
Speaker 3: but I wasn't unhappy. I just didn't It wasn't going
Speaker 3: to work for me. It wasn't what I wanted.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, is that a theme throughout your life that
Speaker 2: you're alienated or you still alien today.
Speaker 3: I think alienated's probably the wrong word. Just gosh, here
Speaker 3: I am supposed to be good with words. Just trying
Speaker 3: to find myself. My parents were right, you know, where
Speaker 3: did I fit in? Where do I belong? I saw
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone magazine and I thought, well, that looks like
Speaker 3: fun Boy. They're having fun out there on the Bay Area.
Speaker 2: Well before we get there, you're working for stan Lee.
Speaker 2: You go to Canada with your boyfriend and then you
Speaker 2: just never go back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was bad. And this nice little apartment
Speaker 3: on Bleeker Street, one room with like wal to well
Speaker 3: cockroaches but beams in the ceilings. I hung a swing,
Speaker 3: I had a fireplace. It was kind of cool. And
Speaker 3: my parents helped me furniture. We got a trundle bed
Speaker 3: and that was about it for furniture. But and I
Speaker 3: got a cat, and David came through and he wanted
Speaker 3: to go to Canada. And we went up to Canada
Speaker 3: and we had a weekend there was I had never
Speaker 3: been to a foreign country and they were like talking
Speaker 3: French and stuff in Montreal. It blew my mind. And
Speaker 3: you know that we stayed in a place that had
Speaker 3: a sink in the room, in the bedroom that was
Speaker 3: so exotic. And then it was time to go home.
Speaker 3: He had to go back to Chicago, to the University
Speaker 3: of Chicago where he was a student, and I had
Speaker 3: to go back to my job in New York. We
Speaker 3: went to the airport and they wouldn't take my check.
Speaker 3: Hit my check, they wouldn't take his check. He didn't
Speaker 3: want to use his father's credit card because his father
Speaker 3: would know that he had bought me a plane ticket somewhere,
Speaker 3: you know. So he said, well, you want to come
Speaker 3: with me? And so I said, yeah, I do want
Speaker 3: to go. So I went, I went. I guess. I
Speaker 3: called Stan on Monday. This was a Sunday, and I
Speaker 3: called on Monday from Chicago because I think it's very
Speaker 3: close to Montreal, Chicago, right and.
Speaker 2: Not really no, pretty far, but okay, like what.
Speaker 3: Like twelve hours Yeah, yeah, okay, So I called it,
Speaker 3: you know. So we drove and on Monday, when I
Speaker 3: was supposed to go to work, I called Stan and
Speaker 3: I told him I got hung up and I wasn't
Speaker 3: going to come to work. And he he just he said,
Speaker 3: because usually he just was very everything had an explanation point.
Speaker 3: He was very effusive, but he was like, you got
Speaker 3: hung up. What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And I just said, he said, you're not coming back
Speaker 3: at all? I said no. I called my parents and
Speaker 3: I told him I wasn't going back. And the cat was, Oh,
Speaker 3: the cat was with somebody else by the one friend
Speaker 3: I had, Tory, And would they pick up the cat
Speaker 3: and the bundle bed and take them back to Providence?
Speaker 3: And they did. That's the kind of parents they were.
Speaker 3: They I don't know, I don't know. They were very
Speaker 3: upset that I was living with David. What am I
Speaker 3: going to tell my friends? You know? That kind of thing.
Speaker 3: My mother said, because people didn't do that then at all.
Speaker 3: It was just starting I expose. But they did that.
Speaker 3: They were they were amused. I think I think it
Speaker 3: just they loved that I was living. That's the feeling. Listen.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't go into their heads.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: They never chastised me for they just went down. They
Speaker 3: borrowed a friend's car of station wagon, drove it three
Speaker 3: and a half hours to New York, picked up the
Speaker 3: trundle bed and the cat. These are Jews who now
Speaker 3: own a cat which was not done, and a black
Speaker 3: and white cat. They knew some tuty and they kept
Speaker 3: that cat and loved that cat.
Speaker 2: Did you go to Chicago? How do you end up
Speaker 2: in California?
Speaker 3: Well? I was there. David, my boyfriend from Providence, was
Speaker 3: a rich man's son, and he had just enough money
Speaker 3: to live. He had enough money to buy lapsing sou
Speaker 3: jong tea and pot and had a great car, you know,
Speaker 3: a Firebird convertible remember those. Of course, first cart had
Speaker 3: was even better. It was like a Chevy and pallet
Speaker 3: was red with you know, the back wings and things.
Speaker 3: A convertible just a tool around of that thing. But
Speaker 3: when we went out to California in the Firebird, but
Speaker 3: it was in Chicago the Firebird, I guess. We took
Speaker 3: the Firebird from Montreal down to Chicago. And that's a
Speaker 3: whole other story. Why he had to stay in school
Speaker 3: that winter because he was just pretending to go to
Speaker 3: graduate school. He used the money from graduate school to
Speaker 3: pay lawyers because putting some pot in my mailbox in
Speaker 3: New York City, he got arrested, was discovered, got arrested anyway,
Speaker 3: So he had to go back to Chicago and pretend
Speaker 3: to be going to graduate school, and I went with
Speaker 3: him and I got a job. I was George Schultz's secretary,
Speaker 3: you know who that is. I know, and David as
Speaker 3: a rich man's son who didn't work at all. Ever,
Speaker 3: he couldn't believe that I could go out in the
Speaker 3: morning and come home and have a job, you know,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't. I couldn't lead his life. It drove
Speaker 3: me nuts, you know, to do nothing. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to have my own money. I didn't have anything I had.
Speaker 3: He used to joke about me that all I had
Speaker 3: was a toothbrush and a pair of underpants, and that
Speaker 3: was true, you know, I had like two skirts. I
Speaker 3: didn't care. I just didn't care. I was just was
Speaker 3: I an alienator, a loner? I don't know. Oh, I
Speaker 3: won't tell my mother. I would tell my mother I'm
Speaker 3: not like the other girls, and she would say, what
Speaker 3: do you mean? Are you a lesbian? You know, because
Speaker 3: you know that was her I guess that was what
Speaker 3: she was afraid of, and maybe today I would have been,
Speaker 3: but I said, no, it's not that they're all. All
Speaker 3: they want is to get married. And I didn't want
Speaker 3: my mother's life. I didn't want to spend my life
Speaker 3: cooking dinner. I just didn't want to do it. So
Speaker 3: what is that is that alienation? Is that because there's
Speaker 3: a lot of.
Speaker 2: Things going on, it's the era alienation really could be separate.
Speaker 2: But how long are you in Chicago before you get to.
Speaker 3: Northern nine months?
Speaker 2: And then how do you end? What's the motivation for
Speaker 2: the two of you to move to California?
Speaker 3: Well, we didn't move to California. We got in the car. Well,
Speaker 3: we did move. We didn't have any He had stuff,
Speaker 3: actually had some things shipped out. I believe, yes, he
Speaker 3: did furniture did of anything. We got in the car.
Speaker 3: I think it took us six weeks to drive out
Speaker 3: to California. It was a six week drive, you know,
Speaker 3: it could take two days, but we went. That was
Speaker 3: the thing about David and about being with them, is
Speaker 3: that we went through Carbondale and grooved on the you know,
Speaker 3: waterfalls there, and then we went to New Mexico and
Speaker 3: stayed there for a week. And I had never camped,
Speaker 3: you know, out We camped in the Hemez Mountains. We
Speaker 3: grazed naked by a hot spring. There was a watercrest
Speaker 3: growing and we grazed, stoned out of her mind. So
Speaker 3: there was with another couple. There was no there was
Speaker 3: no sex with the other couple or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But we were just free. We were hippies. You know,
Speaker 3: I had never shot in the woods. I didn't know
Speaker 3: that was possible. It just you know, David was he's
Speaker 3: gone now. He died, you know, he died of a
Speaker 3: heart attack. But he he he was a philosopher, you know.
Speaker 3: It was a sad, unrealized human being who was nonetheless
Speaker 3: very interesting and fun and imaginative in terms of like
Speaker 3: he took the back roads. He took the back roads.
Speaker 3: And I went with him on the back roads in
Speaker 3: the car, in the in the in the Firebird convertible,
Speaker 3: and we stopped in New Mexico and and camped in
Speaker 3: the mountains and met, you know, people who had been drunk,
Speaker 3: you know, been heroin addicts actually, who had an opera
Speaker 3: house in Cirios outside of Santa Fe. It was just
Speaker 3: it was so exciting, all that shit, you know, because
Speaker 3: communes were happening, it was starting, you know. And then
Speaker 3: so we went to l A first because he because
Speaker 3: he knew some people in la We stayed at their
Speaker 3: house older people, you know, grown ups got I you know,
Speaker 3: was what was his name, Murray Golden. He directed television shows.
Speaker 3: And he said to me, what do you want in
Speaker 3: your life? And I told him, and it was exactly
Speaker 3: what happened. You know, I became a writer. I told
Speaker 3: him I wanted to be a writer. So I must
Speaker 3: have had it in my head, you know, I wrote
Speaker 3: my short stories were really good at Brown, So you know,
Speaker 3: I did have an idea that I would do that.
Speaker 3: And I told Murray, who no one had really asked me,
Speaker 3: I don't think, but you know he was. He was
Speaker 3: directing television shows, so that was you know, I didn't
Speaker 3: know you could do that, and I didn't know you
Speaker 3: could get a house like that, you know on mulhulland
Speaker 3: Drive and everything. That appealed to me a great deal.
Speaker 3: And I returned to it later at life. But meanwhile,
Speaker 3: David and I went up the coast, you know that
Speaker 3: Route one in California, which I'm sure you know right
Speaker 3: of course, of course, yeah, And we stopped in the
Speaker 3: woods right outside of Big Her and we pulled the
Speaker 3: car in to smoke a joint. You know, David was
Speaker 3: always smoking a joint, and it was beautiful, you know,
Speaker 3: was below with the redwoods in this little grove. And
Speaker 3: I found a four leaf clover and I'm here. I
Speaker 3: am moving to California and to find a four leaf
Speaker 3: clover and to be stoned at the same time. You know,
Speaker 3: what more could a girl want? You know, I was
Speaker 3: still alienated is the wrong word. But I was lost
Speaker 3: or shy or I could hardly speak. I didn't speak.
Speaker 3: I didn't speak. Now I don't shut up, But then
Speaker 3: I didn't talk. You know, David talked and he didn't
Speaker 3: talk much. He didn't really I want to talk. He
Speaker 3: wanted to groove. He wanted to eat Sarah leave palm
Speaker 3: cake and drink laugh saying sudjong tea and smoke pot
Speaker 3: and later cocaine. That's what happened to him. I'm digressing
Speaker 3: wildly here.
Speaker 2: You end up in the Bay Area.
Speaker 3: We drove, but he knew people in the Bay Area.
Speaker 3: He knew people. He did so and those and people
Speaker 3: came and stayed with us in a little apartment on
Speaker 3: University Avenue in Fox Court. Is really wonderful place, beautiful place.
Speaker 3: But you know it's just one room in a kitchen,
Speaker 3: but high enough to put a loft bed in, so
Speaker 3: David had a friend build it. You know, he didn't
Speaker 3: build it. He had a friend built the loft that
Speaker 3: we slept in. But I got a job down at
Speaker 3: his lordships in the Marena wearing a little tu two
Speaker 3: you know, waitressing, but wearing a tutu in a little
Speaker 3: push up bra and a little cap, you know, an
Speaker 3: apron like a servant. And I did that for a
Speaker 3: long time. You know. I learned how to make jewelry
Speaker 3: and belly dance. I took belly dance lesson. Sorry, what
Speaker 3: was the sixties? You know it was nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: How'd you end up at Rolling Stone?
Speaker 3: Well, my friend Tory, the one friend I had that
Speaker 3: loved Dylan and lived in the next room at a
Speaker 3: single weird girl's dorm, said what are you doing with
Speaker 3: your life? From? And you know, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: She was getting married, So, you know, she initiated a
Speaker 3: flurry of communication. She was on the ladder up in
Speaker 3: the publishing world, and she later became, you know, she
Speaker 3: was an agent in that segment of it, and she
Speaker 3: became she had her own agency at the end of things.
Speaker 3: But then she was working for a fellow named Alan Rinsler,
Speaker 3: and he had just come to found Straight Arrow Books,
Speaker 3: which was the book division of rolling Stone, and she said,
Speaker 3: at least go be around it. You know, you wanted
Speaker 3: to be in that world. Just go and talk to
Speaker 3: Alan and see if he's got anything for you to
Speaker 3: do in the office. So I did. I borrowed David's car,
Speaker 3: and I went across the water, you know, across the
Speaker 3: Bay Bridge, and parked the car on Third Street. Because
Speaker 3: rolling Stone was in this industrial area. I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is now, but it was in this brick
Speaker 3: you know, it had been some kind of factory or something.
Speaker 3: It was so cool. And I went up there and
Speaker 3: I walked out. Oh no, Alan said, I'll set up
Speaker 3: a meeting with Yawn Winner. Why don't you try writing?
Speaker 3: Have you ever thought of that? Tory said, you were
Speaker 3: a good writer. So that's how it happened. I mean
Speaker 3: that happens in life, right, It's not how it goes.
Speaker 3: But then when you get the chance, you have to
Speaker 3: be able to produce. That's what happened in time. You
Speaker 3: have to be half the goods as it were, you know,
Speaker 3: or have somebody at least put up with you until
Speaker 3: you proved you had the goods. So I went back
Speaker 3: to Berkeley, and you know, and I made a box
Speaker 3: to go into this. I made a box with all
Speaker 3: my life in it, you know, my my Marvel comic books,
Speaker 3: my magazine that I edited, the literary magazine from Brown
Speaker 3: that I had a story and all that kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and some cookies, and I sent it to Yan. Did
Speaker 3: I send it or drop it off or something? Anyway,
Speaker 3: I went in there to talk to y on winter
Speaker 3: and I left with an assignment. You know, I left
Speaker 3: with an assignment.
Speaker 2: Well, you know it's in the book. Did he just
Speaker 2: spontaneously say write something? Or did you have to convince them?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, he said he. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: think he was very impressed with the Brown thing. See,
Speaker 3: my parents were right. He was impressed. You know, he
Speaker 3: sort of got this prep school lockjaw tone when he
Speaker 3: spoke about it, very eastern sort of thing that you
Speaker 3: could see that he was impressed by that. So I
Speaker 3: think that got his attention. I don't think he cared
Speaker 3: about the box very much. And I don't think he
Speaker 3: cared about my long legs very much either. I mean,
Speaker 3: he came out later as gay, and so he just didn't.
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't approach me that way. You know,
Speaker 3: he didn't have any I didn't get a feeling that
Speaker 3: he looked at me as a female, which was fine.
Speaker 3: I wasn't that super aware of that sort of thing anyway.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I left. I left with an assignment because
Speaker 3: he said, you should write. Can you write something about
Speaker 3: Marvel Comics? I always said, what was it like to
Speaker 3: work at Marvel Comics? That's what he said, because that
Speaker 3: was in the box. That's how it started. He said,
Speaker 3: what was it like to work at Marvel Comics? So
Speaker 3: I said, I don't know. They were kind of square,
Speaker 3: you know. Whatever I said was interesting enough to him
Speaker 3: or funny enough that he thought, okay, you know, because
Speaker 3: he could see that I had been a writer and
Speaker 3: that I had been an editor and all this sort
Speaker 3: of thing. And I guess Alan and Rinsler told him
Speaker 3: that I was a good writer at Brown and so
Speaker 3: I left with an assignment, and I was just I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe it. You know. I drove home. I get home,
Speaker 3: David's there with this friend of his that's legally blind
Speaker 3: was his name. He's dead now too. But and this
Speaker 3: girl who didn't speak she was so stoned. The whole
Speaker 3: room was like full of you know, pot smoke. It
Speaker 3: was just like this cloud of pot smoke walking into
Speaker 3: the room. I was so excited to have this assignment.
Speaker 3: It was just like a amazing to me. But it
Speaker 3: was uncool to show any evidence of excitement. Do you understand?
Speaker 3: Absolutely it was not done to get to get an assignment.
Speaker 3: These people were just cooler than that or something. You know,
Speaker 3: work was not valued.
Speaker 2: You write this piece, it takes a long time to
Speaker 2: come out. Then you go to New Mexico to talk
Speaker 2: to David Hopper about the last David. Of course it's Dennis.
Speaker 2: That's the first thing that I remember reading that you wrote.
Speaker 2: So Hopper had just come off Easy Rider, he had
Speaker 2: Free Reign. Ultimately, the last movie was a disaster. No
Speaker 2: one knew what he was doing. Now there you go
Speaker 2: down to New Mexico and have an adventure, tell us
Speaker 2: about that, and you.
Speaker 3: Know it's a cult. It's a big cult movie. Now
Speaker 3: the last pictures I've ever seen a movie? No, I
Speaker 3: haven't either, No, and I didn't dig at me. You know,
Speaker 3: it was just well, if I had done another piece
Speaker 3: before that, I went and did a piece about the
Speaker 3: bee gees of just a little tiny piece. But this
Speaker 3: was my first assignment to get on a plane with
Speaker 3: Annie Leebervit. She was just starting off there the same
Speaker 3: as me, but a different type than me, well.
Speaker 2: Just a little bit slower because you go into the
Speaker 2: How would you describe her type?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, you know, she was an army brat. She
Speaker 3: was six feet tall. She wore like size eleven boots.
Speaker 3: She sort of strode through life very singular. But as
Speaker 3: an army brat, I think she was used to being
Speaker 3: in different situations. She didn't need to please anyone. She
Speaker 3: was just very unto herself, very contained. That was my
Speaker 3: experience of her. And I was just like probably needy,
Speaker 3: you know, emotional or just not not even emotional, just unexpressive, uptight, scared,
Speaker 3: But she was much more at ease. But I endured
Speaker 3: this very uncomfortable scene at Hopper's house. I was and
Speaker 3: I'd been in that sort of scene before where I
Speaker 3: was with a lot of really hip people and scared,
Speaker 3: mute practically, but bearing it just curious, and in this
Speaker 3: instance I was going to gain something from it because
Speaker 3: I was going to write about it. So I had
Speaker 3: my tape recorder Oh, it's one of those, he said,
Speaker 3: you know, and then he started really he was so stoned.
Speaker 3: I don't know what he was taking. They were passing
Speaker 3: run some sort of bag full of ground up mushrooms.
Speaker 3: You know. Everybody was just completely stoned. It was it
Speaker 3: was Kit Carson's movie and Larry Schiller. You know those guys, right,
Speaker 3: So that's who They were doing a documentary about Dennis
Speaker 3: Hopper's making of the Last movie. And Dennis Hopper was
Speaker 3: just really boring and boorish and and I've never really
Speaker 3: been around a Hollywood scene, and it was ugly and scary,
Speaker 3: and it was actually got so uncomfortable. What was it?
Speaker 3: I got so uncomfortable with it? Oh, I know that
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper. And and immensuacious is that the word? You know,
Speaker 3: the guy that kind of looked after him. They were
Speaker 3: just so cruel to this one guy who was down
Speaker 3: there was a junket, so there was all the cream
Speaker 3: of the underground press, but its representative Rolling Stone. I
Speaker 3: was like the cream de la creme, you know, And
Speaker 3: I just wished to witness an act of cruelty that
Speaker 3: they just were mean to this. I guess it was
Speaker 3: a pr guy about his girlfriend, and they did this
Speaker 3: joke in front of all the journalists, you know, like,
Speaker 3: can I ask you a favor? I just was wondering,
Speaker 3: Bill or whatever the kid's name was, if you would
Speaker 3: mind leaving your secretary girlfriend with me for the night.
Speaker 3: And he didn't know what to say, and he said,
Speaker 3: I don't know where is she? And he and Dennis
Speaker 3: Hopper said she's out there in her car getting her things.
Speaker 3: It was a done deal, you see, And so everyone
Speaker 3: laughed and I freaked out and I went out into
Speaker 3: the desert. I don't know how I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to get home, because he had he lived in
Speaker 3: free To Dodge's house. Isn't it the person and Mabel
Speaker 3: Dodge Freedom, Well, it was d H. Lawrence's house. That's
Speaker 3: where he lived when he lived in New Mexico with
Speaker 3: free To Dodge, Mabel Dodge something and so, you know,
Speaker 3: and as a literature major, I was just like really
Speaker 3: taken with that. But it was the opposite of that,
Speaker 3: or maybe it was like that. I don't know, But anyway,
Speaker 3: I was in the middle of nowhere and I went
Speaker 3: out into the desert at night, and Kit Carson followed
Speaker 3: me and he gave me a ride back to the motel.
Speaker 3: Annie had already left because she was smart. She could
Speaker 3: see she didn't have to do anything else. She'd already
Speaker 3: got her pictures. Although Larry Shuley was critical of her
Speaker 3: picture taking in that instance, she was just starting off
Speaker 3: in her career. But so she shared a motel room.
Speaker 3: She was back to the motel room. So he gave
Speaker 3: me a ride, and I just wrote about it. I
Speaker 3: wrote exactly what happened all of that that I've just
Speaker 3: told you and more, because you know, the pieces were
Speaker 3: you paid by the word, and they were from five
Speaker 3: thousand to ten thousand words, so you could get some money,
Speaker 3: you know, because it was ten cents a word. My
Speaker 3: price went up from five cents to ten cents a word.
Speaker 3: At that point, maybe you'd have a thousand dollars. But
Speaker 3: I never had that much money at once, so that
Speaker 3: was really something.
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of things. Did you live off the
Speaker 2: money you were making from Rolling Stone? Was it enough?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, you didn't need anything? Then? Remember and I
Speaker 3: broke up with my boyfriend David. I left, and it
Speaker 3: got a little room up in the hills in somebody's
Speaker 3: house to other people, you know, it wasn't hippie commune
Speaker 3: or anything. We just shared this really nice house, a funky, funky,
Speaker 3: funky house on a stream above the campus on tamil
Speaker 3: Pias Road. Really beautiful, I mean, in my room was beautiful.
Speaker 3: And up in that room, Kit Carson, who took me
Speaker 3: home that night, you know who took me back to
Speaker 3: the motel that night and dropped me off. He became
Speaker 3: a friend, and he was at Joan Didion's house in
Speaker 3: Malibu and he called me. He said, I have someone
Speaker 3: here who read your piece on Dennis Hopper and she
Speaker 3: wanted you to know how much she liked it. And
Speaker 3: you know, I had June Didions all, you know, I
Speaker 3: had her books, and it was just that was the
Speaker 3: most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. Really, that
Speaker 3: and that in the sopranos, right at the highlights.
Speaker 2: But your pieces were a little different from the standard
Speaker 2: fear and that you weren't sick a fantic, You were
Speaker 2: somewhat from a distance. You weren't buying into the bs.
Speaker 2: Would that be an accurate description.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Irony, you know, to be an ironist, I called
Speaker 3: it alienating. But isn't the writer always outside of things?
Speaker 3: Looking in always, you know, an observer. And so it's
Speaker 3: more that I was that kind of person. I was
Speaker 3: raised that way. You know. We didn't we didn't speak.
Speaker 3: We watched, we watched it, We took it all in.
Speaker 3: You know. I was an observer. I was an observer
Speaker 3: and so and it's not pleasant to be that person.
Speaker 3: You want to be part of things. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: the thing is Annie could really be part of things
Speaker 3: much later, to her detriment, because she became she went
Speaker 3: on the bus, if you know what I mean, And
Speaker 3: she came out of it okay, but for a while
Speaker 3: there she was lost in it. I could. I always
Speaker 3: had to be apart from it, and that was my thing.
Speaker 3: You know. Leon Winner and his book, you know, he
Speaker 3: had that book come out a while ago. Was it
Speaker 3: a memoir? I think it was, yeah, And I wasn't
Speaker 3: going to buy it, but I looked in the index.
Speaker 3: I wasn't, but he mentioned me twice, so I bought it,
Speaker 3: you know, and he called me relentless. So I guess
Speaker 3: that's what I was. You know.
Speaker 2: So, what are a couple of other things you wrote
Speaker 2: for Rolling Stone?
Speaker 3: Well, the Marvel piece became a cover that was a
Speaker 3: good piece, and I wrote, Uh, I just flew out
Speaker 3: of my head. Oh, I wrote, you know, I was
Speaker 3: in a book called the Mind Fuckers, along with the
Speaker 3: piece of David Felton and David Dalton's they wrote pieces
Speaker 3: on mel Lyman, uh and these gurus, you know, mel
Speaker 3: Lyman and Manson. But I wrote the you know, comic relief,
Speaker 3: ironic funny stuff, you know about Victor Bronco, who's like
Speaker 3: the Colonel Sanders of the Commune me I think that's
Speaker 3: what we called him. And so that was collected in
Speaker 3: a book called mind Fuckers, published by Straight or Oppress.
Speaker 3: But of course nobody could buy a book called mind Fuckers,
Speaker 3: and they disguised it on the cover with this kind
Speaker 3: of German type, so you couldn't even read it. You know.
Speaker 3: It's just like I know this guy out here now
Speaker 3: called Bob Lipsite. I get his name confused with yours.
Speaker 3: Do you know who he is. He's a sports the
Speaker 3: sports guy. Yeah, yeah, the sports writer. He's out here.
Speaker 3: It's Shelter Island, that's where I live now, and you know,
Speaker 3: among other places. But he wrote a book with Dick
Speaker 3: Gregory years ago called Nigger And yeah, now you know
Speaker 3: I can't even I have to hide it when the
Speaker 3: cleaning crew comes, you know what I mean, because I
Speaker 3: don't want to like of Knox anyone. Actually, it's just
Speaker 3: on the shelf. I don't think anyone notices it. I
Speaker 3: finally took it out and said, fuck it. You know
Speaker 3: that's what it's called them. But it's just you're not
Speaker 3: even supposed to say that word. It pains me to
Speaker 3: say it, so mind fuckers. Was that kind of bad mistake?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: But I got a call from England just the other
Speaker 3: day wanting to interview with me about that book. You know,
Speaker 3: it still has a life because then after we came
Speaker 3: out with that book, Jim Jones happened, and these these
Speaker 3: scors were a precursor to that. So it didn't surprise
Speaker 3: me at all. You know that Manson was pretty horrible,
Speaker 3: but you know, the others were not nearly as odious.
Speaker 3: And I did some other stuff too, but nothing. Oh,
Speaker 3: I did Black Sabbath. You know, they just sick me
Speaker 3: on things to be funny, and finally I did the
Speaker 3: Kennedy story.
Speaker 2: Well, before you get there, were you part of the
Speaker 2: roving club? Did you go into the office or were
Speaker 2: you separate?
Speaker 3: M you know, at one point, no, it was separate.
Speaker 3: But at one point Johan and that's why, you know,
Speaker 3: he he just wasn't sexist at all. He wanted me
Speaker 3: there and he he invited me to come to the
Speaker 3: editorial meeting, which was all those men, and he set
Speaker 3: up a desk and he brought the lamp himself, right,
Speaker 3: you know, outside of this, you know, in the in
Speaker 3: the bullpen with the secretary and stuff. But you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't have my own cubicle. And I mean David
Speaker 3: Felton was, you know, an editor there, and he only
Speaker 3: had a tiny cubicle. Nobody had these offices. Only Yahn
Speaker 3: had and it wasn't even that fancy either. But so
Speaker 3: I was there, but I didn't like it at the
Speaker 3: editorial meeting. I didn't like it. I don't like the
Speaker 3: table that exists in comedy in television. I just don't
Speaker 3: like that jockeying for attention and haha stuff. I just
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to make it in that context.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the other things you talk about was
Speaker 2: the sexual element. There were people were married but sleeping
Speaker 2: with other people. Was that the nature of Rolling Stone
Speaker 2: or was it just the times?
Speaker 3: I think it was the Times, don't you Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I'm talking to you. I don't know what were you doing. Look,
Speaker 3: you know, Jan gave me from I thought he would
Speaker 3: be my editor. You know, I don't know why I
Speaker 3: thought that, because he had because he was the one
Speaker 3: I talked to. But he gave me to David Felton
Speaker 3: across the way. He introduced me, and that was pretty
Speaker 3: much it. You know. But David Felton's family, his wife
Speaker 3: was down in Los Angeles, and so I, you know,
Speaker 3: I began to have a relationship, shall we say, with
Speaker 3: David Felton. I was a single myself, and he didn't
Speaker 3: seem to uh mind that he was cheating on this
Speaker 3: family or he just they were very separate. It was
Speaker 3: a very separate deal and I didn't really know than
Speaker 3: how sort of you know, he had substance problems with
Speaker 3: alcohol and stuff. I wasn't aware of that. I just
Speaker 3: wasn't aware of it. So you know that that got
Speaker 3: worse as time went on, and it did for a
Speaker 3: lot of people that I knew at that point. I
Speaker 3: was never for some reason, I'm just not that kind
Speaker 3: of an addict. Drugs were just not you know. I
Speaker 3: remember at one point in Mexico, I got a hold
Speaker 3: of a hundred vallium and I took them, you know,
Speaker 3: week after week. You know, so I did. I like Valium.
Speaker 3: Thank goodness, nobody offered me heroin. I probably would have
Speaker 3: loved it. But I just wasn't that cool. I just wasn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't really that. I wasn't that cool. I was
Speaker 3: I was, you know, valium cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, it ends Rolling Stone with the Kennedy story. Tell
Speaker 2: us that story.
Speaker 3: I guess it was Yon's idea that I should go
Speaker 3: and interview the children of Robert Kennedy. I don't think
Speaker 3: he said much more than that, but he wanted the Kennedys,
Speaker 3: you know, And if I had written this story, he
Speaker 3: wouldn't have been able to be friends with Jackie. So
Speaker 3: but it wasn't her kids. It was the other kids.
Speaker 3: But even still, you know, so I left the younger
Speaker 3: ones alone. I figured, you know, you can't be going
Speaker 3: after you know, elementary school children, but the ones in college,
Speaker 3: in the ones of college age, I did pursue. I
Speaker 3: don't even know what the idea was. I guess you wren't.
Speaker 3: And why he would send me, of all people, because
Speaker 3: of course I was going to find out like if
Speaker 3: they were you know, drugiaes or you know, I was
Speaker 3: going to get the dirt on them. They didn't particularly well.
Speaker 3: Joe actually Joe was a kid, Joe, right, the one
Speaker 3: who was in the accident that killed the girl. He
Speaker 3: was willing to be interviewed. And we met in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: and I knew it would be nervous, so I would.
Speaker 3: I had a tape recorder in my pocket book, and
Speaker 3: we went for a long walk all over in the
Speaker 3: hills of San Francisco, and we got to the marina
Speaker 3: and he turned to me and he said, do you sail?
Speaker 3: It was just it was perfect, you know, do I sail?
Speaker 3: You know, I have like fifty dollars you know, out sale.
Speaker 3: But that's who they were. They were, you know, very
Speaker 3: privileged kids ran amok in that place that they have
Speaker 3: on the is it the vineyard?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, in the cape.
Speaker 2: Hyanna's port was where.
Speaker 3: Uh, Hyena's port, right, that's where the house was. You know.
Speaker 3: They kind of ran wild around there. And then I
Speaker 3: got home, of course, and I was going to transcribe
Speaker 3: the tape, because that's what I did. I transcribed the
Speaker 3: tapes and I used things pretty much verbatim that I
Speaker 3: got from those tapes. But the tape was all traffic
Speaker 3: noise in the pounding against my leg of so I
Speaker 3: don't have it. All I remember is that he said,
Speaker 3: do you sail? And it was kind of opaque as
Speaker 3: a human being. And then I went to Harvard where
Speaker 3: the girl was what's her name, Catherine, Catherine, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 3: and yeah, Catherine Kennedy. And I waited her, you know,
Speaker 3: I accosted her in her dorm room hallway. It was
Speaker 3: so obnoxious. Oh god, I just cringe. And she was
Speaker 3: this patient she could be, and she finally said, look,
Speaker 3: I just can't do this, and she took me into
Speaker 3: her room. I forget. I just it was never really
Speaker 3: prepared very much for interviews. I just wanted to, you know,
Speaker 3: see what happened. I was kind of a slob, and so,
Speaker 3: you know, I just that was my m O. I
Speaker 3: just experienced, had the experience, and then I wrote about it.
Speaker 3: I wasn't a slab, that was what I did. And
Speaker 3: you know, I was kind of disarming, so people would
Speaker 3: just blab and that's that would be my modus OPERENDI
Speaker 3: but that it just seemed so kind of harm lesson
Speaker 3: at shy or something. So anyway, she got rid of me,
Speaker 3: and then I I cost it. I waited for Robert
Speaker 3: Kennedy Jr. Outside his dorm room. Now Robert Kennedy Junr.
Speaker 3: Is the one who's running for president.
Speaker 2: I know we're going to get to that.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe it. It's just who he became is so bizarre.
Speaker 3: That skin and that stutter or something. I don't know
Speaker 3: what happened to him. He just is like calcified in
Speaker 3: some way. He was just this like really handsome, tall
Speaker 3: hippie kid with long hair and jeans. And it was
Speaker 3: and here I was a writer for Rolling Stone, like
Speaker 3: you saw in Almost Famous, you know, kind of this
Speaker 3: loose girl with a short skirt. I don't remember what
Speaker 3: I was wearing, but probably something like that. I mean,
Speaker 3: my nickname it Marvel Comics was Legs, So you can
Speaker 3: kind of imagine what my feature, best feature was in
Speaker 3: those days. But we went down. He said, I have
Speaker 3: to meet a guy for you know, then we can talk.
Speaker 3: And so we went down to right off Harvard Square
Speaker 3: in front of the Hazen's Diner, to that corner there,
Speaker 3: and he scored some die lauded, which is you know,
Speaker 3: I had an operation recently and it gave me some
Speaker 3: of that stuff. It's very heavy. I don't know why
Speaker 3: anyone would take it recreationally, but people like that stuff.
Speaker 3: So we went back to his dorm room and he
Speaker 3: had this waterbed on the floor, and he had the
Speaker 3: bust of his father on the credenza, and he had
Speaker 3: falconry equipment on the wall. That's falconry equipment. What's that
Speaker 3: falconry equipment? You know what? Who? And so naturally I
Speaker 3: ended up spending the night and and this is really
Speaker 3: my I mean, my husband doesn't like any of the
Speaker 3: stuff about what happened when I was on the loose
Speaker 3: because I spent like five days with David Cassidy touring
Speaker 3: in New York and in Wayne and Maine, Lewiston, Maine,
Speaker 3: was at someplace in Maine. You know, it was just
Speaker 3: on my own. Nothing happened with David Cassidy. But maybe
Speaker 3: it happened with somebody else there, but maybe a roadie
Speaker 3: or something. But my husband really doesn't like this part
Speaker 3: of the book. It doesn't want to know about this stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, but let's let's let's zero what you did have
Speaker 2: sex with RFK Junior. I did, Okay, what was going
Speaker 2: through your mind?
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: I mean you're in a situation. Okay, yeah, and you
Speaker 2: know that on one hand, you're in this situation, haven't urged,
Speaker 2: but you also established you're an observer and you know
Speaker 2: this is compromising, So there's a choice involved. You're an
Speaker 2: intelligent person. You can't see so well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It just happened, yeah, kind of happened. But you were thinking.
Speaker 3: Now, I think that it was I frankly think in
Speaker 3: hindsight and even maybe at the time it was journalistic
Speaker 3: instinct that I would learn something about this clan and
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: Okay, But you did something, Okay, so then it's over.
Speaker 3: Do you I learned the source? I think of their
Speaker 3: of their general uh self, you know, confidence and cockiness,
Speaker 3: So what is it? Giant? You know? Remember this one
Speaker 3: person anyway? Just you know, you know what they say
Speaker 3: about Pete Davidson. I can't say it, you know, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: but I did the article, but maybe I don't even
Speaker 3: know if I did.
Speaker 2: You know, But did you see this as all? Because
Speaker 2: ultimately it does become an issue? You see this as
Speaker 2: all is a great story, but this is going to
Speaker 2: fuck up the article.
Speaker 3: You know. It wasn't just that. It wasn't just that
Speaker 3: it was everything that I had to say about those children,
Speaker 3: about the drug taking. It was assassin job. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to expose the that tragic family and these young people,
Speaker 3: these college aged people, to that kind of notice. It
Speaker 3: was really because I couldn't I have written about that.
Speaker 3: Maybe I did it so that I couldn't write about it.
Speaker 3: Maybe I did subconsciously. It's possible, but I don't think
Speaker 3: I was thinking that far ahead.
Speaker 2: But whatever happens there that ends up ending your tenure
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone. So why don't you tell us that?
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't write the story because I couldn't write
Speaker 3: the story without telling that. Right, Well, if I'm so honest,
Speaker 3: you know, if i'm you know, and that's what I think.
Speaker 3: I wanted the book to be honest, and it was
Speaker 3: for the most part. And there were things that I
Speaker 3: left out to protect myself, but not much, not much,
Speaker 3: but something some persons, just one big thing about me
Speaker 3: that I didn't want to talk is no, it is,
Speaker 3: It isn't it was. It was just because it was
Speaker 3: the reason that Annie. Annie didn't like it didn't like
Speaker 3: me because of it. But it just really that I
Speaker 3: had nose job when I was sixteen, And you know,
Speaker 3: I always thought I would write about it, because I
Speaker 3: didn't put it in the book because I didn't want
Speaker 3: because I was ashamed. I mean, now I'm telling you said,
Speaker 3: you go deep, this is it. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 2: Okay, As I say, I'm glad you told me, because
Speaker 2: one's imagined it should much wilder than that.
Speaker 3: No, No, it's really just it really is just that
Speaker 3: I was ashamed that. You know, my parents, they just
Speaker 3: was afraid that I looked like my father, do you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? My mother had this little nose.
Speaker 3: She was a model, you know, a fashion model and
Speaker 3: beautiful and beautiful, hungarian, little nose, straight nose, and I
Speaker 3: had my father's nose.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like Lilian's Hellman's nose anything, or Annie's nose,
Speaker 3: you know. But when Annie heard that, maybe she even
Speaker 3: asked me, she just lost respect for me, and it
Speaker 3: was fairly painful, and I didn't want to. I didn't
Speaker 3: put that in the book, and I felt.
Speaker 2: How old were you when you had your nose jobs?
Speaker 3: Sixteen? I just turned seventeen.
Speaker 2: Did it change your life at all?
Speaker 3: Probably? I think that who knows what would have happened
Speaker 3: if I had to suffer that note. Maybe I would
Speaker 3: have stayed in Providence and been a real writer, a
Speaker 3: fiction writer. Maybe I would have been really great. Do
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what you mean. But at this point,
Speaker 2: you know, I guess that you know. Now we live
Speaker 2: in the era of ozembic and you see these women
Speaker 2: who've lost a very significant amount of weight on TikTok
Speaker 2: and they say, you know, some express all this confidence,
Speaker 2: and people say they get plastic surgery for self confidence whatever. Well,
Speaker 2: people treat them differently. Did you find that people treat them?
Speaker 3: Yes? Absolutely, yes, I wanted you know, the doctor of
Speaker 3: my parents, who had no money, took me down to
Speaker 3: New York City and I had the most expensive nose
Speaker 3: job you could possibly buy, because they wanted it to
Speaker 3: be really good. And so was doctor ALFREDX, who invented
Speaker 3: the Afch method, and he had an office on Park
Speaker 3: Avenue and Australia Austrian accent, I guess our German as angels,
Speaker 3: tell me, why do you want to have this operation?
Speaker 3: He said? A sixteen year old girl, and I said
Speaker 3: I want to be pretty, you know. I mean if
Speaker 3: I had said I want to be an axe morder,
Speaker 3: he probably would have also done it. You know, I
Speaker 3: just looked kind of a thing is that It's like, well,
Speaker 3: don't you think you're pretty? You're perfectly I mean, any
Speaker 3: any mother or anybody, you know, anybody would say, well,
Speaker 3: you're beautiful the way you are. Isn't that what people
Speaker 3: say now, you know? And so I'll never know what
Speaker 3: I would have looked like, this is not my face.
Speaker 3: And you're like Marlo Thomas, you know, God bless her whatever,
Speaker 3: or you know that little nose doesn't change over time.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'll go on about this for an hour.
Speaker 3: You don't want me to, but it's a huge subject
Speaker 3: for me, and I always thought I would write about it,
Speaker 3: but I haven't.
Speaker 2: Wait. Wait, the huge subject is the nose job or
Speaker 2: cosmetic surgery.
Speaker 3: No, the nose job, cosmetic surgery. Who gives a ship?
Speaker 3: I mean, you have a facelift, God bless you know.
Speaker 3: It's just that when you go around fucking around with
Speaker 3: something like your nose, you change your face to the
Speaker 3: world and it's a damage that you can't undo. You
Speaker 3: and you don't. You don't. I didn't grow into myself.
Speaker 3: It was a way of escaping myself and my parents
Speaker 3: and my father colluded, he didn't, you know. And they
Speaker 3: did this in the advice of a friend of his,
Speaker 3: theirs from New York City, you know who. He said,
Speaker 3: Robin's so bright, but with that nose on her face,
Speaker 3: you know, she, you know, that will really be a
Speaker 3: hindrance for her. This radiologist, he was a doctor, you know,
Speaker 3: from New York City, a friend of theirs that moved
Speaker 3: to Providence, whose wife later committed suicide in the attic,
Speaker 3: you know, And because he was having an affair with
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, this is the person that my
Speaker 3: parents listened to. I didn't have like Annie had a
Speaker 3: spine enough, because I did. I wanted to be pretty.
Speaker 3: I wanted to look like Natalie, would you know?
Speaker 2: Okay, So just to be clear, the motivation for the
Speaker 2: nose job came from you or came from your parents.
Speaker 2: And if you could snap your fingers now, would you
Speaker 2: or would you have not gotten a nose job?
Speaker 3: I think that's an impossible question to answer, really, but no,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have if I had it to do over again. No,
Speaker 3: because I don't. I see pictures of myself and I
Speaker 3: feel like tender towards that person. She I don't look
Speaker 3: that bad. I don't think. I don't know I should.
Speaker 3: I have the pictures, I have my medical pictures. I
Speaker 3: don't have any straight ant on. I don't have frontal pictures,
Speaker 3: so I can't age them, which I would love to do.
Speaker 3: It probably look like you, you know, I would look
Speaker 3: more like what I was supposed to look like or something.
Speaker 3: I just think I did that girl a disservice.
Speaker 2: Okay, just staying on something you said with your husband
Speaker 2: disapproving of you commenting about your prior life, especially involving
Speaker 2: sexual activity. Yeah, this is not the nineteen fifties. Never
Speaker 2: mind the nineteen forties. We all have a sexual past.
Speaker 2: Everybody we've been involved with has had multiple partners. Except
Speaker 2: for one person. Everybody who I've had a relationship with
Speaker 2: had an abortion. I mean, this is in all our histories.
Speaker 2: Why do you think he is anxious about it?
Speaker 3: I just don't think he finds it very admirable that
Speaker 3: I that I was so loose, or he just doesn't
Speaker 3: like to hear about it, and he didn't like it
Speaker 3: to be so public and he he had. He aside
Speaker 3: from that, is not that engaged in the book, has
Speaker 3: never said about the writing or anything like that. Nothing.
Speaker 2: You've expressed numerous times your Jewish background. Your husband is
Speaker 2: not Jewish. Do you think a Jewish guy would react differently.
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I don't know. That's you know,
Speaker 3: this is yeah maybe maybe, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3: David was my Jewish guy, and he was really only
Speaker 3: half Jewish, the other half was Portuguese.
Speaker 2: So you had you know, you're someone who has had boyfriends,
Speaker 2: so all of your boyfriends were not Jewish, or just
Speaker 2: certain ones were and certain ones weren't.
Speaker 3: Well, David was my Jewish boyfriend. There was a pharmacist's son,
Speaker 3: Albert Toadman, who liked me at high school, who I
Speaker 3: could have had a future with as a pharmacist wife.
Speaker 3: He was Jewish, Albert Toba. But I didn't have that
Speaker 3: many boyfriends.
Speaker 2: I'm just talking. I'm not quantifying. It's just you referenced
Speaker 2: certain people. But didn't you get the message from the
Speaker 2: moment you grew up the how to marry a Jewish boy?
Speaker 3: Oh? Sure, well, you're not supposed to go outside the tribe.
Speaker 2: Okay, but let's put a bow on it. How does it?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, Mitch is very who was an
Speaker 3: odd choice for me off the you know, just off
Speaker 3: from left field, you know, a Catholic working you know,
Speaker 3: the father was a factory worker. But with whole backstory.
Speaker 3: But you know what was I going to say? Just oh,
Speaker 3: I know, and it's just a stupid story. My mother
Speaker 3: and I was telling you before about how we were
Speaker 3: all in like the ponds in their game and this
Speaker 3: kind of race to succeed. My mother was walking in
Speaker 3: Providence down to Wayland Square and she ran into the
Speaker 3: woman who said, and this was like in the nineties,
Speaker 3: maybe it was in the thousands, actually in the early
Speaker 3: two thousands, and Robin never married, did she? The woman said,
Speaker 3: And my mother said, well, actually she just got married
Speaker 3: last week, because I'm married. I married Mitch much much later,
Speaker 3: you know, I married I knew I met him in
Speaker 3: seventy seven or seventy six, I think maybe seventy six,
Speaker 3: and we married in two thousand and two or three.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a lot of stuff going there, but we
Speaker 2: got a time. Sorry, we'll get back to it. But
Speaker 2: how does it end with Yan and rolling stone.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, he was pissed off. You know. I didn't
Speaker 3: whack up much expenses, but there were some expenses, but
Speaker 3: nothing like one Hunter was or anything like that. But
Speaker 3: he wanted the piece. He wanted a piece. And we
Speaker 3: were in Israel. Jan was there with Max Polewski, who
Speaker 3: was dedicating a wing of the museum to his parents.
Speaker 3: Max was one of the people who funded the magazine
Speaker 3: at some point, wealthy and made money in computers early on.
Speaker 3: And we were at this nightclub. I slip with you
Speaker 3: on too, you know, so.
Speaker 2: But so.
Speaker 3: Or at this nightclub we went outside for a smoke
Speaker 3: and he said, are you going to give me the
Speaker 3: piece on the Kennedy's And I said, no, I guess not.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm not going to, you know. And he said, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to take you off the masthead And
Speaker 3: I said, okay, I mean I was ready to move on.
Speaker 3: You know, that's how I move on. I've noticed that
Speaker 3: pattern in my life. I don't I usually get fired.
Speaker 3: I've been fired most time, you know, like three or four,
Speaker 3: three times that I can remember at the moment I
Speaker 3: get fired.
Speaker 2: Okay, So then you go to the Iowa Writers'.
Speaker 3: Workshop, well, I devolved a little, you know, I wrote
Speaker 3: for different magazines. I hung around Berkeley for a couple
Speaker 3: of years after that, and I wrote an article for
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone after that. He you know, he would let
Speaker 3: me write for them. He just took me off the
Speaker 3: mast head. It was like the sergeant losing his stripes
Speaker 3: or something. But I wrote, you know, a piece on
Speaker 3: nitrous oxide that I just loved doing, and some other things.
Speaker 3: And I wrote for other magazines too, you know, and
Speaker 3: all that. But my personal life, you know, I was
Speaker 3: alone in the world. David had married, and David felt
Speaker 3: in my married lover, you know, that ended, and so
Speaker 3: I went to Ioway. It sounded cushy, you know, and
Speaker 3: it was also where I felt safe last. I felt
Speaker 3: good in college in a way work wise, do you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. It's a you know, just to
Speaker 3: go and read books. It's a good thing to do.
Speaker 3: So I started my life again. And when I met Mitch,
Speaker 3: I was his teacher. He was just out of the
Speaker 3: Vietnam War, and you know, he didn't go to the war,
Speaker 3: but he was in the army and the gi Bill
Speaker 3: and he came to my class and that's how I
Speaker 3: met him. In nineteen I think seventy six.
Speaker 2: Okay, But going to the Iowa Writer's Workshop good or bad?
Speaker 3: Oh? Good? Because because because I could start my life
Speaker 3: there again. I could start my life there again. That's
Speaker 3: all I mean. It was just a wonderful place to be.
Speaker 3: And you know, you know that there once was an
Speaker 3: ugly duckling with feathers all something in brown blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: and it's a swan. You know. I loved that movie.
Speaker 3: And I loved being around writers because then I did belong.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like being at Pembroke, where I didn't belong
Speaker 3: with all those blonde girls. At Iowa, everyone was fucked
Speaker 3: up or everyone was a writer. Everyone wanted to be
Speaker 3: a writer, so there was a commonality and a basis
Speaker 3: for conversation and hanging out and having you know, deep,
Speaker 3: deep kind of fun.
Speaker 2: You know, did you see The Girls arc about Can
Speaker 2: I guess the character's name was going to the Iowa
Speaker 2: Writer's Workshop?
Speaker 3: Oh? In The Girls? I guess, so yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: know if I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I mean, you go to the Iowa Writer's Workshop. It
Speaker 2: is probably the most difficult writing program to get into.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of the tearing a part of
Speaker 2: one's writing, and you end up with a certain style
Speaker 2: in many cases, which is not my favorite, where it's
Speaker 2: all about rewriting in the sense become very dense as
Speaker 2: to the paragraph. You know, you'd already had a history writing.
Speaker 2: Did you feel any constriction, feeling like you were shoehorned
Speaker 2: into a style you may not have liked?
Speaker 3: No, not at all. No I I no I.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: John Hawks was my teacher, and he actually had to
Speaker 3: pull a string to get me into Iowa because Alan
Speaker 3: Ganis thought my writing was thin. I heard later, But
Speaker 3: you know I rose there too. I became a teaching
Speaker 3: writing fellow. No. I wrote very conventional short stories, and
Speaker 3: I wrote just enough to get my MFA. I wasn't
Speaker 3: going to be a writer. I wasn't going to be
Speaker 3: that kind of writer. No, But you know, and there
Speaker 3: were teachers who were much more avant garde, like Riiseland Drexler,
Speaker 3: and they made fun of more conventional things. Not my stuff,
Speaker 3: but this guy, John Folsey's stuff. He wrote a conventional
Speaker 3: short story, which was the only thing. And now they
Speaker 3: published constantly in The New Yorker and everywhere else in books.
Speaker 3: But then to get something in the New York was huge,
Speaker 3: and John Falsey got something in the New Yorker and
Speaker 3: that's what brought him out to Hollywood. And he's the
Speaker 3: one who hired me in television years later. So I
Speaker 3: defended his short story in class against that kind of
Speaker 3: intrusion because I thought it was a really good short story.
Speaker 3: It wasn't really good short story, good enough to get
Speaker 3: into New Yorker and good enough to get him a
Speaker 3: life in the Hollywood, you know, career.
Speaker 2: So you ultimately leave Iowa, you come to la and
Speaker 2: once again you're doing the equivalent of like minimum wage jobs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what else was going to do? I didn't have
Speaker 3: any money. I went with Mitch again with a man.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to go by myself, you know, And yeah
Speaker 3: we got we didn't have any money. We had thirteen
Speaker 3: hundred dollars, I said, saved my money. I worked in
Speaker 3: a hospital in Iowa. I mean, even after Rolling Stone,
Speaker 3: I was waitressing mid you know, graveyard shift at the
Speaker 3: Copper Penny on University Avenue. But I didn't mind. I
Speaker 3: didn't mind.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, men, you know, if you listen to
Speaker 2: Deborah tan And, who wrote a definitive book about all this.
Speaker 2: You know, you just don't understand. Men tend to be
Speaker 2: more linear ascensions. So if a man has a big
Speaker 2: job and then, as you know, goes to a minimum
Speaker 2: wage job, their ego is crushed. But that was not
Speaker 2: your experience.
Speaker 3: No, because women aren't you know, especially my generation, we
Speaker 3: weren't expected. Nothing was expected of us, nothing to shut up,
Speaker 3: you know. But men were trained to They had to
Speaker 3: have the job and they had to support the family.
Speaker 3: And that's what a man did. So sure, you can't
Speaker 3: be fucking around. You got to go get a career.
Speaker 2: Okay, how do you ultimately get a job in television?
Speaker 3: Well, there were people that really sue it directly and
Speaker 3: this is their passion, and they write tempt they write
Speaker 3: spec scripts, and they go after it and they trust,
Speaker 3: you know, they work, and they get a job working
Speaker 3: on a show as a secretary or something like that,
Speaker 3: an assistant, and they worked their way. I just fell
Speaker 3: into it the same way I fell into Rolling Stone.
Speaker 3: John Folsey from Iowa had just created a show. I
Speaker 3: was writing. I was made this friend in la I
Speaker 3: was writing. You know, I had a job as a
Speaker 3: I finally got a job working for Harold Hayes, the
Speaker 3: great Esquire editor, a brilliant, wonderful, fantastic man, and he
Speaker 3: gave me. He took me in. You know, he liked
Speaker 3: something I wrote. I wrote him something as a kind
Speaker 3: of calling card, and they put it in the magazine
Speaker 3: and he hired me. It gave me a column. So
Speaker 3: I was working there as an editor at California Magazine
Speaker 3: and my friend Ruth Reischel took me in and she
Speaker 3: was the restaurant reviewer at the La Times, and she
Speaker 3: knew that I was a good writer because a friend
Speaker 3: of mine told her that, and she hired me to
Speaker 3: be a second string restaurant reviewer. So John Folsey, that
Speaker 3: I had known at Iowa, this is like seven or
Speaker 3: eight years after Mitch and I went to La he
Speaker 3: read one of my restaurant reviews told his partner in writing,
Speaker 3: Joshua Brand, she'd be good to write for our show.
Speaker 3: She's a really good writer because it was a show
Speaker 3: that was well, it was a show about a family
Speaker 3: who was that kind of conventional family story writing that
Speaker 3: I like to do. And so so it was because
Speaker 3: of that restaurant review that he brought me in and
Speaker 3: had josh meet me and They gave me a chance
Speaker 3: to write episode one of a show called Year in
Speaker 3: the Life with Richard Kylie and Sarah Jessica Parker at
Speaker 3: sixty years old, and you know, even Mary's sat was
Speaker 3: in the she was in the miniseries that won an Emmy.
Speaker 3: It was really, you know, the beginning of a kind
Speaker 3: of quality television. And so I got to I got
Speaker 3: to write the first episode of when it went to series,
Speaker 3: and it was terrible, and uh, John said, I know
Speaker 3: to Josh, I know she can do it. And they
Speaker 3: had me in and they said, we want updike. That's
Speaker 3: what we want the tone. And because I had a
Speaker 3: literature background, I knew what updyke was. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? I knew, I understand what they were
Speaker 3: asking of me. And so I was able to deliver
Speaker 3: an updike in with with that kind of humor. I
Speaker 3: gave them some dyke and ship and it was episode
Speaker 3: one a Year in the Life. And then I worked
Speaker 3: from then on. I went from you know Josh and John.
Speaker 2: Josh.
Speaker 3: John particularly was like, do you believe how much money?
Speaker 3: Or he was very I mean, I had a nice
Speaker 3: life without the money, you know, I had a nice
Speaker 3: little apartment and I had split up at that point
Speaker 3: for a while, but for years, but I had a
Speaker 3: nice little apartment. I loved my job with Harold Hayes,
Speaker 3: although he died and so then it became problematic. But
Speaker 3: the magazine became an unhappy place to be, or maybe
Speaker 3: he was fired before he died. But but I was
Speaker 3: happy in my life, you know, at forty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a year. But going from that to the kind of
Speaker 3: television money was a big, you know, big leap. I
Speaker 3: was forty forty years old by that, you know, and
Speaker 3: so you know, that was the beginning of the life
Speaker 3: that I have now.
Speaker 2: So where did it go? From that show?
Speaker 3: I was a year in the life was canceled after
Speaker 3: a year because the Networks was so stupid. They had
Speaker 3: they had a that was a winner, but it only
Speaker 3: lasted a year to replace it. I went from there to, oh,
Speaker 3: David Chase had a show called Almost Grown about music,
Speaker 3: and so I went and interviewed with David. And it
Speaker 3: was during the strike, and we had lunch and a
Speaker 3: Ventura Boulevard, you know, I was at this restaurant of
Speaker 3: Ventura Boulevard and David walks in and I think, oh fuck,
Speaker 3: he's like the most miserable looking person I've ever seen
Speaker 3: in my life, just so dour and oh Jesus. And
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there and there's no place to run, and
Speaker 3: he comes and he sits with me, and within ten
Speaker 3: minutes we were laughing so hard we had tears streaming
Speaker 3: down our cheeks. He was just like, so funny and
Speaker 3: so smart. It's just wonderful. So I went to work
Speaker 3: for him, and that show was canceled after fourteen episodes,
Speaker 3: but god, it was fun. You know, It's with Tim
Speaker 3: Daly and Eve Gordon, and it had musical cues. David
Speaker 3: was really into music. I mean, have you talked to
Speaker 3: him at all, He's not so into music. Music is
Speaker 3: such a big part of what he does all of
Speaker 3: the show, well sopranos, especially practical music. He likes to
Speaker 3: put practical music. It isn't like scores. So this was
Speaker 3: a show where musical cues brought this couple who was
Speaker 3: divorcing back to certain periods in their lives, and so
Speaker 3: you would go back into that period in the film,
Speaker 3: you know, flashbacks cued by music that was playing on
Speaker 3: the radio or wherever the music was playing. The character
Speaker 3: would start thinking about that time, and so you would
Speaker 3: have a whole plot at that time when they were
Speaker 3: happy maybe or stuff that happened back then with Eve
Speaker 3: and I can't remember the character's names, but Tim, Daly
Speaker 3: and Gordon, and then you would be back at the present,
Speaker 3: and that experience of going back with somehow inform on
Speaker 3: the present. It was a really good show. It's such
Speaker 3: a wonderful experience to work with him, to work with
Speaker 3: David and you know, and in his interviews he does
Speaker 3: say that it was a conversation we had that had
Speaker 3: a lot to do with his writing the Sopranos when
Speaker 3: we when I worked on that show, we became friends.
Speaker 2: Be a specific conversation, Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, his mother had come to visit him and
Speaker 3: he and also in interviews he also says that his
Speaker 3: wife has always told him he should write about his mother.
Speaker 3: So but he told them just recently, they're doing a documentary.
Speaker 3: Alex Gibney's doing a documentary for HBO, and he talked
Speaker 3: to me and Mitch and he told me that David
Speaker 3: had said that he referred to that conversation that we
Speaker 3: had in the office. We had this great office and
Speaker 3: a lot at universal, just me and this other guy
Speaker 3: and David would come over and hang out and I
Speaker 3: and his mother. He was complaining about his mother and
Speaker 3: I said, it's just so amazing to me. I see
Speaker 3: you take on these powerful men, these suits over in
Speaker 3: the Black Tower over there, and you just reduce them
Speaker 3: to you know, Gerbils and your mother. It just reduces
Speaker 3: you to to like a little Gerbil. And it's just
Speaker 3: it's such a dichotomy to me, just like it's you know.
Speaker 3: And so that is a germ of what Tony Soprano is.
Speaker 3: He had this gangster thing in the drawer, but it
Speaker 3: was about a powerful man who had mother issues. I suppose,
Speaker 3: you know, not mother issues so much just as a
Speaker 3: looney mother, you know, difficult mother.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that show only last year? Then what next?
Speaker 3: Well then, because in their wisdom, CBS gave me my
Speaker 3: own show. Here I am three years in the business,
Speaker 3: so they paired me with and my agent was Elliot Webb.
Speaker 3: You know who's the agent of Gary Trudeau. He was
Speaker 3: like Sid Kibbets in the cartoon script. That's that's was Elliott.
Speaker 3: He's still around somewhere, but Elliott. But I think, but
Speaker 3: they paired me with Doug Kramer, who had you know,
Speaker 3: he and Aaron Spelling did the Love Boat, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what am I doing with this guy? This is wrong,
Speaker 3: this is bad. He's like, come on, it's your own show.
Speaker 3: It's six in the summertime, it's a great opportunity, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. And it was just it was a disaster.
Speaker 3: You know, Doug Kramer had a much different sensibility than
Speaker 3: I did, and it just wasn't going to work. We did,
Speaker 3: We made six of these things. I think it was
Speaker 3: a short order like that for the summer and it
Speaker 3: just was a disaster for various reasons.
Speaker 2: Did it every hear? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did. My mother was like, what is this? What
Speaker 3: happened here? This isn't You're not here anywhere in This
Speaker 3: was awful, But there was one It just didn't work.
Speaker 3: And so the good news was that at the same time,
Speaker 3: Josh and John Folsey and Brand had created Northern Exposure
Speaker 3: as a summer show for CBS another and that show
Speaker 3: was going and because my show failed, I got to
Speaker 3: go on that show with them to see what I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I had the six in the Summer that
Speaker 3: was gone. They had a fall an order for you know,
Speaker 3: the coming season, and so they hired me to go
Speaker 3: on Northern Exposure and then I was there five years.
Speaker 3: I was there longer than Josh and John. You know.
Speaker 3: David Chase came on at one point when Josh and
Speaker 3: John went off to do commercials and movies and stuff.
Speaker 3: So that's really what happened to me. I mean, Northern
Speaker 3: Exposure was real. It was wonderful. And then I was
Speaker 3: having trouble at work and Mitch started we started seeing
Speaker 3: each other again, or really we started working together a
Speaker 3: little bit. I was having trouble and Mitch, you know,
Speaker 3: was a really good writer, and I remembered that from
Speaker 3: my days. He was my student. But I needed ideas.
Speaker 3: I needed to come in with ideas, and Mitch had
Speaker 3: three or I had two and I had one, but
Speaker 3: they all want Emmy's, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: They were really good ideas. It kind of saved my ass.
Speaker 3: At Northern Exposure. We started writing together, me and Mitch,
Speaker 3: and then of course one thing led to another. So
Speaker 3: we did that for five years.
Speaker 2: Okay, that show, David Chase took over the lead character changed.
Speaker 2: You were there in both halves. Yeah, it was very
Speaker 2: different as if you were. What was it like working
Speaker 2: for the show David?
Speaker 3: Well, David hated the show. He had been in another
Speaker 3: Josh and John show called I'll Fly Away, you know,
Speaker 3: very earnest civil rights drama with Sam Waterston, and he
Speaker 3: thought that nor the exposure was just awful. What are
Speaker 3: you saying that the characters parcticularly come out of the
Speaker 3: TV said it lick your face? You know? How was
Speaker 3: David's humor? But he came on the show anyway because
Speaker 3: it was his first really big payday. Frankly, I think
Speaker 3: I think that's my sense of it, and I think
Speaker 3: that's true. But you know, it's not unusual either. So
Speaker 3: it came on the show and that's what happened, and
Speaker 3: he wrecked as far as I was concerned. But I
Speaker 3: don't know. We did some fun stuff even in the
Speaker 3: last couple of years, so I didn't like it much.
Speaker 3: That's kind of what happened in the Sopranos too. It
Speaker 3: kind of ran out for me. I didn't really like
Speaker 3: what it became.
Speaker 2: How did it change? And what didn't you like?
Speaker 3: What the Sopranos are? Yeah, well, you know, when I started,
Speaker 3: Mitch and I were the first people brought on after
Speaker 3: the pilot. You know, David call. We had been working
Speaker 3: with him. He didn't know whether the show was going
Speaker 3: to go, and we had been working with him at
Speaker 3: his office, which was a garage of his house in
Speaker 3: Santa Monica, and developing some other shows and talking. We
Speaker 3: had read Sopranos. He had several drafts, one for the
Speaker 3: one for the networks, and one for you know, the
Speaker 3: not networks, and they were all they were all really
Speaker 3: good and really wonderful. And so David made the pilot
Speaker 3: for Sopranos, and and he aired the pilot. He paid
Speaker 3: for the you know, the show. I think it was
Speaker 3: on a Sony lot in Culver City, maybe, yeah, And
Speaker 3: so he you know, he had food and the lobby
Speaker 3: for you know, the Italian food, and every we all
Speaker 3: went to the show and it was the pilot was wonderful,
Speaker 3: it was great. Mitch and I were working at uh
Speaker 3: Party of five, which was not a good match for us,
Speaker 3: and David called one night and asked me and Mitch,
Speaker 3: if the show went, if we'd come and work on it.
Speaker 3: Because he knew us from Northern Exposure. He knew our
Speaker 3: writing and work, and he knew me from his own show,
Speaker 3: and so nothing happened. This was I think in the summertime,
Speaker 3: and then in December, was right before Christmas vacation. We
Speaker 3: were at work and we were getting notes from the
Speaker 3: bosses at Party of Five, notes on a script that
Speaker 3: we had written, and the secretary, which was which it
Speaker 3: was called an assistant, opened the door and said, there's
Speaker 3: a Tommy Soprano on the phone for you. That was
Speaker 3: Tony's name before the network made him change it, or
Speaker 3: maybe he anyway, he and the Amy and Chris, the
Speaker 3: bosses said you know somebody like that, and they knew
Speaker 3: from the name it was, and Mitch and I knew.
Speaker 3: At that point we were saved that we were going
Speaker 3: to get to go to New York and we're going
Speaker 3: to do this show. And they let us go from
Speaker 3: Party of Five because it was like we were going
Speaker 3: into nowhere. We took a half pay cut to go
Speaker 3: on the show. We did it for fun. We just
Speaker 3: did it for fun. We just loved it, and we
Speaker 3: went there. We made them. We wrote them all and
Speaker 3: filled them all and cast them all, and David edited
Speaker 3: them all and did the post before they aired. So
Speaker 3: we had this like pure experience of just this experience
Speaker 3: of doing something for fun. You know, it wasn't about
Speaker 3: the money. It was just about the show, and everyone
Speaker 3: felt that way. The crew used to wait for the
Speaker 3: scripts to come out to read the scripts. This is
Speaker 3: very unusual because they were so funny and so compelling
Speaker 3: and so interesting. Something was happening, but we didn't. So
Speaker 3: we get back and Elliott says to us, we get
Speaker 3: back to LA because this is all in New York
Speaker 3: and New Jersey. Elliott says, so, now you've had your
Speaker 3: little artistic experience, you have to have to get a
Speaker 3: real job. And so we did. We tried to get
Speaker 3: a job, you know, all these soulless, miserable interviews, and
Speaker 3: I don't think we took a job. I can't remember.
Speaker 3: But the the thing aired in a basement, a sub basement.
Speaker 3: There was our premiere in January, after the year that
Speaker 3: we spent making it. It was just really June to January.
Speaker 3: I guess it happens pretty fast television. In January, we
Speaker 3: had the premiere in the sub basement of Tower Records
Speaker 3: and Times Square. But you know, because Stevie van Zant
Speaker 3: was there, Bruce Springsteen was there, so it had a
Speaker 3: little Jewish going on a little buzz. It was exciting
Speaker 3: to have a premier in New York and so we
Speaker 3: watch it with people and they're coming out. We're in
Speaker 3: the lobby, like you know, you see this about Broadway shows.
Speaker 3: The people that are coming out. We invited friends to this.
Speaker 3: We liked it so much, and they were beaming friends.
Speaker 3: Ruth is one of them, My friend that gave me
Speaker 3: the job in LA She was then working in New
Speaker 3: York as the New York Times restaurant critic, editor of
Speaker 3: Gourmet or something, but she did all that. But anyway,
Speaker 3: they were beaming her and Michael and everyone was just like,
Speaker 3: loved this show, you know, and we knew from that moment.
Speaker 3: You know, we had our after party and John's pizza
Speaker 3: around the corner. It was like freezy coal that we
Speaker 3: slept around the corner and had pizza. It was very
Speaker 3: it was very nothing, you know, it was just a
Speaker 3: little little camp of us. You know, it was really something.
Speaker 3: And then that was that after that, right.
Speaker 2: Okay, many series. The pilot is the first episode. What
Speaker 2: happened with the pilot of the Sopranos, Well.
Speaker 3: That was the pilot that everyone saw on the Cellar.
Speaker 3: No one had seen it at that point.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the pilot was the first episode.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and then Liz and I came on the
Speaker 3: second episode and you know, stayed for six years.
Speaker 2: Okay, so at this point in time, Sex and the
Speaker 2: City had launched, but that had it really blew up
Speaker 2: after being after the Sopranos. Ultimately they'd had dream on
Speaker 2: new series on cable, premium cable. We're in not really
Speaker 2: a big deal. I remember getting an email from somebody saying,
Speaker 2: you got to watch this show, and this is it
Speaker 2: A and R guy in the music business, you know.
Speaker 2: And I recorded it back in the VHS did when
Speaker 2: I watched it when I woke up on a Saturday
Speaker 2: at like eleven o'clock, and as soon as it started
Speaker 2: off with the Alabama three track, It's like, wow, I'm
Speaker 2: hooked here, right And then, you know, the first year
Speaker 2: it was a big cult thing. You know, it grew
Speaker 2: over time, so everywhere you went said, don't go to
Speaker 2: the movies, watch the Sopranos. So what was the experience
Speaker 2: like from the inside once it aired.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it started at night in the basement.
Speaker 3: You know, it was wonderful. What's happened the reviews were spectacular.
Speaker 3: The one guy down in Florida, of course, I remember
Speaker 3: that one. They didn't like it, but everyone else just
Speaker 3: went nuts, you know that they called it. You know,
Speaker 3: I can't I'm tired. I guess Ballzakian something compared it
Speaker 3: to Ballsack or some shit. But it was wonderful. It
Speaker 3: was just, you know, it was wonderful to love something
Speaker 3: so much and have it responded to that way. We
Speaker 3: were all having so much fun. And David said at dinner,
Speaker 3: you know, we were out of dinner before it air,
Speaker 3: and he said, if this doesn't work, that's it for me.
Speaker 3: I'm out of television. He hated television. He wanted to
Speaker 3: be a movie writer. So and we just we really
Speaker 3: didn't know what was going to happen. And then that happened.
Speaker 3: But I always say, if Colin Bine had happened or
Speaker 3: shootings and that show had come out after that, people
Speaker 3: would have been disgusted by the show. That it's so
Speaker 3: much the Veltin Shop and it's so much what's going
Speaker 3: on that people had that it came at a time
Speaker 3: when it could be loved. I do believe that, I
Speaker 3: do believe that if there had been that kind of
Speaker 3: gun violence, you know, in January instead of April. It
Speaker 3: would have been a much different experience for people.
Speaker 2: Now you and Mitch are listed as executive producers. Is
Speaker 2: that from episode one?
Speaker 3: No, we started as I guess co executive producers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then we we were in a situation where we
Speaker 3: had to renew our contract I think every year, so
Speaker 3: you know, part of that negotiat would be beside the money,
Speaker 3: the title, you know, And then the negotiation wasn't going
Speaker 3: well I guess in the third year, maybe the second year,
Speaker 3: and we got a great offer NBC for a lot
Speaker 3: of money, and so HBO had to match that price
Speaker 3: and they did. You know, It's like a miracle. So
Speaker 3: so it was like that, you know, it was just
Speaker 3: was lucky and great. But mostly I have to tell
Speaker 3: you that it was so much fun in that writing room.
Speaker 3: It was fun when we read around the table, when
Speaker 3: the actors would come in for every episode and sit
Speaker 3: around the table. And the first episode, I guess it
Speaker 3: was the second episode, you know, after the pilot, Lorraine
Speaker 3: brack I said, look at us, We're all Italians. Because
Speaker 3: everybody was Italian except for Nancy Marshawan and me and
Speaker 3: Mitch you know, everyone was Italian. It was just it
Speaker 3: was great fun.
Speaker 2: Okay, if David Chase came up with the idea, he
Speaker 2: does the pilot, he brings you on board. Who comes
Speaker 2: up with the ideas for every episode? How do you
Speaker 2: decide who's going to write it? How involved are you
Speaker 2: in the overall direction of the show or are you
Speaker 2: just writing certain episodes.
Speaker 3: Well, it began with a bunch of There was me
Speaker 3: and Mitch and a bunch of people in la We met, well,
Speaker 3: Mitch and David and I met in a restaurant in
Speaker 3: the beginning before the offices opened up that we could
Speaker 3: all meet and and David was hiring writers, and he
Speaker 3: hired you know, television writers and people who were around
Speaker 3: to be at that table to see who could you know,
Speaker 3: who could work in the room the whole thing. It
Speaker 3: was in the editing suite of Oliver Stone's office in
Speaker 3: Santa Monica. I forget he had just an Nixon or something.
Speaker 3: And so we're back there and there's a lot of
Speaker 3: us around the table. Frank runs Zuli, who Mitch calls
Speaker 3: the mariner of the show because Frank had been you know,
Speaker 3: I think is it Whitey Bulger was he the Boston guy.
Speaker 3: But you know, Frank had been Spider, he had been
Speaker 3: that person in the Social Club in Boston, so he
Speaker 3: knew this world. And he's a crazy, fantastic writer. So
Speaker 3: he was around the table and there were a bunch
Speaker 3: of other writers, but it was me. It was just
Speaker 3: a few of us that went to New York with David.
Speaker 3: Frank couldn't go because he had four children in la
Speaker 3: and he didn't want to leave. But it was me
Speaker 3: and Mitch and a couple other writers. Not Terry Winter
Speaker 3: didn't come on until later. I think Jason Cahill was
Speaker 3: one of those original ones, and maybe there was another one.
Speaker 3: But you sit in a room, you start at ten
Speaker 3: in the morning. Lunch is brought in, really good lunches
Speaker 3: because David really likes to eat. So it would be
Speaker 3: like Viila Pacatta, you know, from the real Italian restaurant.
Speaker 3: And in Queens there was nobody out there and Queen's
Speaker 3: at that point, no buildings, nothing. The Silver Cup was
Speaker 3: a bread factory and that's where we had our offices,
Speaker 3: very modest to begin with and they became huge, but
Speaker 3: we just you're in the writing room, you're on the
Speaker 3: table and you're just David would have the arc of
Speaker 3: the season on the board, you know, he had he
Speaker 3: knew what the arc of that season was. That the
Speaker 3: first season would concern the mother and the plot against him,
Speaker 3: so we had that vague arc. But also each episode
Speaker 3: had to stand alone, David would say, like a little movie.
Speaker 3: So even though while you were serving the larger story
Speaker 3: and put pushing things in that direction, you'd still have
Speaker 3: to have a different episode every week, and you'd all
Speaker 3: you'd all work to develop ideas, you know, from your
Speaker 3: own experience, or you'd come up with ideas and pitch them.
Speaker 3: But not like in a comedy room where you're talking
Speaker 3: all the time and making jokes and jocking for attention.
Speaker 3: This was more a lot of sitting or a lot
Speaker 3: a lot of sitting around not talking. So when we
Speaker 3: had somebody finally Matt Weiner came in and I think
Speaker 3: the fourth or fifth year from comedy, he wouldn't shut
Speaker 3: up because he was used to that kind of atmosphere.
Speaker 3: But in our room, it was mostly sitting around until
Speaker 3: somebody said something that triggered some other thought from some
Speaker 3: other person. So it was a kind of organic creative process,
Speaker 3: and this would be every day from ten until seven
Speaker 3: in the room. You could go take a phone call
Speaker 3: or something, but that was it, you know, you had
Speaker 3: lunch at that table, and then at some point in
Speaker 3: talking about an episode, you'd have your three stories. That
Speaker 3: television is pretty much structured of A, B and C stories,
Speaker 3: and each story has like a certain number of beats
Speaker 3: in a more for HBO because there was no commercial,
Speaker 3: so we had actually fifty three or sixty pages, so
Speaker 3: say the A story would have twenty beats, beats meaning
Speaker 3: scenes that would tell the story. And so you'd have
Speaker 3: your story and you'd go to the board. David would
Speaker 3: usually go to the board with a piece of chalk.
Speaker 3: Is this what you're asking? Yes, yes, keep going this
Speaker 3: is this is the creative process. And so David would
Speaker 3: go to the board and he'd write down the beats
Speaker 3: of the story. He was really good at especially once
Speaker 3: you knew once like I could be specific about the
Speaker 3: college story because that was just such a I just
Speaker 3: remember that how that process when we came up with
Speaker 3: the college and I think that that happened in La
Speaker 3: who hadn't gone to New York yet when we did college. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's true. David had this idea that he
Speaker 3: wanted to send Tony on a college tour because that's
Speaker 3: a funny situation. Yeah, it was in LA. It's a
Speaker 3: funny situation to begin with, to have a gangster going
Speaker 3: to these you know, institutions of hire learning and all
Speaker 3: that with his daughter. So, but you needed something to happen,
Speaker 3: and you know, it couldn't just be that. There had
Speaker 3: to be something had to happen. You know, it couldn't
Speaker 3: just be driving around. I mean, you could get plenty
Speaker 3: of humor out of that, but you don't have a story.
Speaker 3: So Frank win Zouli said, Tony sees somebody that turned
Speaker 3: a rat, who's you know, who's in the witness protection
Speaker 3: program in New Hampshire. Boom, there's your story. Now you
Speaker 3: have your story. That's it. See you get it. And
Speaker 3: so once David knew and David said, you know, I yes,
Speaker 3: I was, Yes, that's what I was thinking. But you know,
Speaker 3: Frank is the one who said, because once somebody tells
Speaker 3: you something like that, it may may have been in
Speaker 3: your in the cloud up there, but that was it.
Speaker 3: That was the story, that was like what was going
Speaker 3: to happen, And the whole thing just fell in from there,
Speaker 3: and David went to the board like I think right
Speaker 3: then boom boo boom. He did all the beats of
Speaker 3: the story. And then there was another story. There was
Speaker 3: you know, what's her name? Carmela is at home with
Speaker 3: a little boy and she has that flirtation with the priest.
Speaker 3: So Mitch and I went home, and at home we
Speaker 3: wrote the beats to that story separate, you know, because
Speaker 3: we were going to do that. We did that story.
Speaker 3: It was David and I forget the name of another
Speaker 3: writer who didn't stay with the show, but he wrote
Speaker 3: the show with that person, and it's decided just like
Speaker 3: who's who's up, you know, it's like who's kind of
Speaker 3: turned it is? Who suited to the story? I think
Speaker 3: David would probably decide. He ran the show. It was
Speaker 3: very hands on kind of guy. He worked so hard,
Speaker 3: he was so good at it, and so Jim McManus,
Speaker 3: that's who it was. So he and David wrote College
Speaker 3: and that was the only show that HBO ever gave
Speaker 3: us a note on. That's how great it was to
Speaker 3: work with them, because you know, in the network somebody said,
Speaker 3: it's like being pecked to death by ducks, you know,
Speaker 3: they just pick it. Why does he do that?
Speaker 2: Why did they?
Speaker 3: Why does that nothing from HBO? They just they gave
Speaker 3: all the money you wanted, and they gave permission. But
Speaker 3: they didn't want Tony to kill this guy because that
Speaker 3: was a big step for the star of the show
Speaker 3: to go to commit murder. So David did it was
Speaker 3: the only time, you know, it was the only note.
Speaker 3: But David heard it, and he made a scene where
Speaker 3: that the rat that Tony's going to kill almost gets
Speaker 3: a beat on Tony to kill him. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, So that you know that this is
Speaker 3: a dangerous guy who spotted Tony. So now Tony kind
Speaker 3: of has no choice or something. You know. I can't
Speaker 3: remember if Tony knew the guy was trying to kill him,
Speaker 3: but the audience did. I can't remember that part. But
Speaker 3: that's the process, you know. And and you know the
Speaker 3: show where it wasn't the first year, but the show
Speaker 3: where where Paulie and and as Michael Imperial is Christopher Peons. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Pine Barrens there in the woods. You know, we held
Speaker 3: that that episode for a year because it didn't find
Speaker 3: the place in the season somehow. What was I going
Speaker 3: to say about it. Oh, you know, we all broke
Speaker 3: that story in the room, you know, so you could
Speaker 3: sit there and now you know, you're sitting there with
Speaker 3: these really funny people, really funny smart people, what fun
Speaker 3: and you're trying to think what could happen out there
Speaker 3: in the woods, you know, and you know, you know
Speaker 3: Christopher loses a shoe and then he makes a sho
Speaker 3: He's going to make a shoe out of a carpet.
Speaker 3: But it's that kind of creative stuff where you go
Speaker 3: like fiction writing, where you actually go into the scene,
Speaker 3: you know, and you're there playing really seeing what's there,
Speaker 3: what you can fuck around with, you know, and you
Speaker 3: could do anything on that show. You know. I remember
Speaker 3: when you know, when Ralphie killed the stripper. I remember
Speaker 3: that process, you know, and that was like, we needed
Speaker 3: a story where Ralphie has to do you know, we
Speaker 3: had to get rid of you know, Ralfie was going
Speaker 3: to die one way or the other, so he has
Speaker 3: to do something just oh, I know, David didn't want
Speaker 3: any like cuddly gangsters. He wanted these people to be shits,
Speaker 3: you know. So so then you know, so somebody says, well,
Speaker 3: Ralphie kills a dog, kills a stripper's dog, and we're like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't. You can't be killing a dog on television,
Speaker 3: just so you lose the audience with that. So Mick says, well,
Speaker 3: what about if he kills the stripper. Oh, that's fine,
Speaker 3: you know, you can kill the stripper. I mean, frankly,
Speaker 3: I don't think in today's PC atmosphere, I don't know
Speaker 3: if anything ever got out about the conversations in that room.
Speaker 3: You know, there were no governors on any of our motors,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Everyone got to play and
Speaker 3: and and just be their worst. It's fun, you know.
Speaker 3: It was funny because you could say anything, and but
Speaker 3: you did edit yourself. You know, you didn't kill a dog,
Speaker 3: although later we did kill a dog. And then House
Speaker 3: of Cards or whatever that show was, they really killed
Speaker 3: a dog. So I guess that tampoo went too.
Speaker 2: It's still a rough one. But let's stay with the
Speaker 2: Pine Bearings, which was a phenomenal episode. Always bothered me
Speaker 2: that the Russian never reappeared.
Speaker 3: The worst part about that episode was that at one
Speaker 3: point the director, and I think it was Colder who
Speaker 3: directed it, maybe not, I can't remember who directed it,
Speaker 3: but he did a shot that was a point of
Speaker 3: view from a tree looking down. Do you understand he
Speaker 3: put a camera up looking down that gave the impression
Speaker 3: that it was from the point of view of the
Speaker 3: Russian and that the Russian had lived, which was just wrong.
Speaker 3: It was just a really wrong. It really bumped. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not critical about much, but I remember thinking, this
Speaker 3: is a mistake. He should not have stayed in the picture,
Speaker 3: because it's kind of absurd to think that the guy
Speaker 3: would reappear. You know, he was shot in the head.
Speaker 2: I say, that's what I think.
Speaker 3: It's hilarious show.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the episodes were pretty fleshed out before someone
Speaker 2: went away and wrote them.
Speaker 3: Oh god, yes, you break them. You have okay, you
Speaker 3: want to know what really happens. So there's like an
Speaker 3: A story of B story, C story, sometimes a D story.
Speaker 3: You take the beats, you type them up. Somebody types
Speaker 3: them up right. Then she or he brings the type
Speaker 3: of beats into the into the conference room where we
Speaker 3: sit our entire lives away, and I take a scissor
Speaker 3: me because I like to do this, I cut each
Speaker 3: piece of paper so that now there are strips which
Speaker 3: each other beats. So now I have to marry like
Speaker 3: forty pieces of paper together in order, you know, to
Speaker 3: make an arc, to make a shape of a story.
Speaker 3: But I was good at that. I like to I'm
Speaker 3: good at structure, do you know what I mean? And
Speaker 3: everything was already done so, and then you have all
Speaker 3: the little strips of paper arranged in the proper order,
Speaker 3: you know, one, two, three, four by sixt seventy eight,
Speaker 3: you know, like that, You take some scotch tape. This
Speaker 3: is very technical, and you lay it over the pieces
Speaker 3: of paper so that they're all, you know, together, and
Speaker 3: then you can give them back to the assistant so
Speaker 3: that he can type them up. And that's your outline, right,
Speaker 3: very very it's.
Speaker 2: Pretty fleshed out before you write it.
Speaker 3: Oh completely, yes, But that's that's only half the story.
Speaker 3: It still takes three weeks to do the script because
Speaker 3: you have to think about how to serve the scene
Speaker 3: that you've said is going to happen. In other words,
Speaker 3: you know, you know what's you know what the point
Speaker 3: of the scene is, but you don't know the dialogue.
Speaker 3: You don't know what I mean, you know lots of
Speaker 3: things about it, but you still have to write it.
Speaker 3: Not being very articulate, but no, I get it.
Speaker 2: Okay, the writer's room are you are the people writing
Speaker 2: scripts while the writer's room still takes place?
Speaker 3: Or yes, you take your outline and you go home,
Speaker 3: and then after you finish the script, you go with
Speaker 3: your script. Well, Mitch and I would split up and
Speaker 3: he would one of us would stay in the room,
Speaker 3: but one of us would would participate in costume in
Speaker 3: all of the meetings that go with each episode. You
Speaker 3: meet with costumes, you meet with, set design, you meet with.
Speaker 3: Casting is like huge. It takes a lot of time
Speaker 3: and it's the most fun probably of anything on earth.
Speaker 3: So you cast your show and David is there through
Speaker 3: it all. So when something important is going on, like
Speaker 3: those meetings, he will leave the story room and go
Speaker 3: and participate in the meeting with the writer and you know,
Speaker 3: the chief of that department, whatever the department is, like costumes,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Let me be very specific. If there are ten episodes,
Speaker 2: let's say, are all ten episodes laid out, and then
Speaker 2: everybody retweets and writes in this process, So people are
Speaker 2: still working out episodes while somebody's back home right in it?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean you're up against it all
Speaker 3: the time. You know, it takes like probably I can't remember,
Speaker 3: it's like five weeks to go from the story room
Speaker 3: to filming. But it's a you know, it's a demanding situation.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons David would take so long
Speaker 3: between seasons. You know, you go off to France and
Speaker 3: rest because because you're up against it all the time,
Speaker 3: you know, and also sopranos. You know, we were in
Speaker 3: Silver Cup, we were in Queen's We had to load
Speaker 3: you know, we filmed half the time. I'm in New Jersey.
Speaker 3: You had to load the trucks up, take them through Manhattan,
Speaker 3: then go through a tunnel over a bridge into New
Speaker 3: Jersey and be set up to film at six in
Speaker 3: the morning. So you're filming till midnight. You're lucky if
Speaker 3: you get six hours. It goes like that. You know,
Speaker 3: it was just your life. It's your life for those months.
Speaker 3: But you're not always on the set, meaning me, you're
Speaker 3: in the story room a lot, and you get really
Speaker 3: sick of that. You're glad to go on the set,
Speaker 3: and you get really sick of that, You're glad to
Speaker 3: go back in this story room and.
Speaker 2: Being an executive producer is that just the title and
Speaker 2: compensation or did it actually mean anything?
Speaker 3: Well, being a title and compensation is very meaningful, But it.
Speaker 2: Didn't change your responsibilities, is my point.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know everybody in that room pretty much
Speaker 3: at the end, wasn't exactly because you know, I think
Speaker 3: Terry became one and Matt probably two. You know, there
Speaker 3: were only few people in the room, you know, the
Speaker 3: people that came with us from LA, they didn't stay.
Speaker 3: It was me and then Terry came. It was me
Speaker 3: and Mitch and David. Me and mentioned David and Terry.
Speaker 3: And maybe sometimes there would be freelance writers who'd come,
Speaker 3: and sometimes there would be writers, and maybe there were
Speaker 3: writers who were more there. I can't remember, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a long time ago. But you know, I don't
Speaker 3: want to hurt anyone's feelings. You know, when Frank would
Speaker 3: weigh in from LA, but he was only there for
Speaker 3: the first two or three years. But there weren't many
Speaker 3: people in the room. No, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, So how does it end for you and Mitch
Speaker 2: with the sopranos.
Speaker 3: As per usual? I guess it's my charming, massive aggressive way.
Speaker 3: I just became disaffected. I didn't like what was happening
Speaker 3: in the room anymore. I didn't like all the gangster stuff.
Speaker 3: The thing became so much about gangsters and so much
Speaker 3: about silly guide jokes, and and Matt and David would
Speaker 3: talk about French foreign films until I just wanted to
Speaker 3: just scream, and I just wasn't enjoying myself. But rather
Speaker 3: than you know, David had this meeting after after season
Speaker 3: five where he called us all out on a Sunday.
Speaker 3: We went, we went of to uh it wasn't Matt
Speaker 3: wasn't there, but it was Terry Winter and Me and Mitch,
Speaker 3: David and his wife was there with him. He called
Speaker 3: us there on Sunday to have a meeting and he said,
Speaker 3: does anyone have it? Because does anyone have it in
Speaker 3: them to continue? Or have we done it? Because of
Speaker 3: HBO is backed up to the money truck to David's house.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. They're just good to do anything,
Speaker 3: and so do you how do you all feel? And
Speaker 3: Terry Winter's arm shoots up and it's like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: can do it. And once that happens, you know, and
Speaker 3: you're sitting there and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: I really don't want to do this anymore. But how
Speaker 3: can I leave this? You know, how can I leave
Speaker 3: this show that I love, the money that I love.
Speaker 3: I just didn't. I didn't have the I didn't say,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm done. I didn't. I stayed, but
Speaker 3: I was done. And you know, that's a lesson that
Speaker 3: I probably won't pay attention to if it ever happens again,
Speaker 3: I'll do the same thing because I wanted to stay,
Speaker 3: but I but I really I don't think my heart
Speaker 3: was in it. And I just was not part of
Speaker 3: it anymore. The David had it started to kind of
Speaker 3: hate on me. I'd seen it happen with other people,
Speaker 3: but I think I brought a lot of it on myself.
Speaker 3: So that's what happened. It was just personal and it
Speaker 3: was just icky, and oh he brought these other people
Speaker 3: on that we'd worked with before. It just felt the
Speaker 3: tenor of the thing was changing. It wasn't very happy,
Speaker 3: and that is one thing that you don't want in
Speaker 3: your life. And it's me when I'm not happy. And
Speaker 3: so he fired me. He didn't fire Mitch, but he
Speaker 3: fired me.
Speaker 2: But Mitch left with you.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Mitch wasn't gonna State without me.
Speaker 2: But this was the final season, correct.
Speaker 3: Well, the season was split up in a couple of
Speaker 3: pieces because it was six it was season six. There
Speaker 3: were six seasons. But you know, I think the last
Speaker 3: part of the sixth season is what I missed, you know,
Speaker 3: the last six episodes or something. Yeah, David was afraid
Speaker 3: that I was going to sue him or something, you
Speaker 3: were going to You're going to hit him because you know,
Speaker 3: I said to him, I've seen you have this problem,
Speaker 3: you know, with a couple of women on the show,
Speaker 3: and he slammed the table so hard. I jumped and said,
Speaker 3: this has nothing to do with your being a woman.
Speaker 3: And I think it just occurred to me at that
Speaker 3: moment that he had probably talked to his HBO about
Speaker 3: this and they wanted to not be sued, you know,
Speaker 3: for you know, and I had said something about him
Speaker 3: and women. But I you know, I wasn't going to sue.
Speaker 3: I was just wanted to get out of there. I
Speaker 3: was devastating. Mitch and I it was awful to take
Speaker 3: our box and leave, you know, a few meager belongings
Speaker 3: and leave. I mean, what David said was that I
Speaker 3: couldn't didn't get the show that our writing was no
Speaker 3: good and forward anymore, and he didn't like it. That's
Speaker 3: that was the basis on which he fired me. And
Speaker 3: so we left and we went We felt really bad,
Speaker 3: you know, relieved bad, and we went to Gettysburg because
Speaker 3: Mitch is like a history major and he's been to
Speaker 3: all of the president's houses and stuff, and we knew
Speaker 3: if we went to Gettysburg that they would have had
Speaker 3: it worse than us Gettysburg. So that's I love Mitch
Speaker 3: for that. You know, He's taken me all kinds of
Speaker 3: places where I would never have gone for good reasons
Speaker 3: that he took me there. But anyway, that's what we
Speaker 3: did the weekend that we were fired. And you know, David,
Speaker 3: I didn't I would see him on the picket line
Speaker 3: or something and turned my back on him and just
Speaker 3: you know, act like drama queen. But fourteen years later
Speaker 3: he called me on the phone. Do you know who
Speaker 3: this is? Yes, I know who it is, And he
Speaker 3: wanted to tell me that he'd been reading some of
Speaker 3: the almost grown scripts and he just wanted to tell me,
Speaker 3: you know that I'd written fourteen years before or whatever
Speaker 3: it was, and he just wanted to tell me what
Speaker 3: a good writer he thought I was. So it was
Speaker 3: his way of making them you know, Amend's or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it was. I haven't talked to
Speaker 3: him since, but that's how that's how it ended. And
Speaker 3: Mitch said, you know, it's really remarkable that he called you.
Speaker 3: It's actually kind of a victory for you in a way.
Speaker 3: He said, just don't be a jerk about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the final season, you work on the first half,
Speaker 2: you don't work on the second half. Do you watch
Speaker 2: the second half? It is too painful to watch?
Speaker 3: It isn't painful. I just I was sick of it.
Speaker 3: I was sick of the gangsters running over heads, popping
Speaker 3: like melons. I just didn't like that part of it.
Speaker 3: I like the family part, and that had part had
Speaker 3: pretty much played out. By then, We've done everything we could.
Speaker 3: You know that great episode where they get the house
Speaker 3: in New Jersey, This happens Lee's house. We don't all
Speaker 3: the family stuff. It was over for me.
Speaker 2: Okay, then I have to ask. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: things is when Meadows being punished and Tony says, well,
Speaker 2: you know, why don't you come up with the idea
Speaker 2: just take away my gas credit card, and then she
Speaker 2: gets on the phone and tells her friend, Oh, man,
Speaker 2: I got them. So I got my parents so snowed.
Speaker 2: I just love that.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that. That's so funny.
Speaker 2: So it was the family stuff that made it great.
Speaker 2: But you did eventually watch the final episodes.
Speaker 3: I did. I watched the end of it. I just
Speaker 3: watched that last scene.
Speaker 2: I think, I don't really care, but I got to ask,
Speaker 2: what did you think the last scene represented.
Speaker 3: About Tony's future? Yeah, it was my idea that we
Speaker 3: should always live with anxiety in Tony's stomach. That's that
Speaker 3: was my feeling, and I would have maybe represented it differently,
Speaker 3: but I think that I think the effect that it
Speaker 3: had on me when I watched that last scene is
Speaker 3: that you just feel that anxiety, that constant terror that
Speaker 3: he felt the character. And you know, when I describe
Speaker 3: what happened to me there, the atmosphere had become toxic
Speaker 3: in some way. You know that the show, I don't
Speaker 3: think it did Jim that many favors either the character.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're done. How long are you depressed and licking
Speaker 2: your wounds till you do whatever?
Speaker 3: Well? Ah, I know we have a couple houses now three.
Speaker 3: Actually we created a show called Blue Bloods, and we
Speaker 3: had been pitched many things in many shows, because when
Speaker 3: you call off a show like Sopranos, I'm sorry if
Speaker 3: the sound is weird, my voice is so from all right,
Speaker 3: everybody wants you, you know, even though you've been fired.
Speaker 3: People got over that very quickly. But so we had
Speaker 3: lots of things that we could have done. We could
Speaker 3: have done the Americans, we could have run that show,
Speaker 3: or maybe we could have We were kind of offered
Speaker 3: to look at it. It looked too hard to me,
Speaker 3: you know, it looked like I couldn't be so hard.
Speaker 3: I couldn't wrap my hand around it. But friends went
Speaker 3: to work on it was a wonderful show. But we
Speaker 3: were pitched the show. Elliott called and he said, just
Speaker 3: listen to this pitch. You'll hate it. Just do me
Speaker 3: a favor. I owe this person a favor. Just listen.
Speaker 3: And it was Leonard Goldberg, who was also part of
Speaker 3: that like you know our in spelling world. But Leonard
Speaker 3: gets on the phone and we were in our living
Speaker 3: room in New York City, me and Mitch because we
Speaker 3: moved to New York by then. Do the Sopranos, and
Speaker 3: we lived there. We stayed and he pictures us this
Speaker 3: family drama that's a cop show, and he kind of
Speaker 3: had it. It was like a thirty second pitch and
Speaker 3: Mitch and I just looked at each other and said
Speaker 3: and called Elliott and said tell him we'll do it,
Speaker 3: because we knew we could do it. We knew how
Speaker 3: to do it, we saw it, we knew it was
Speaker 3: a good idea. I don't know why nobody thought of
Speaker 3: that it sooner, because it's a great idea and we
Speaker 3: knew we could do it. I went on, you know,
Speaker 3: I would the press tours. I would say things like
Speaker 3: to just infuriate David. Probably. I got tired of writing
Speaker 3: the anti hero and I wanted to see what it
Speaker 3: was to be a hero. And that was kind of true.
Speaker 3: I mean, my problem was that the hero turned out
Speaker 3: to be Tom Sellick, and then when we got him
Speaker 3: to come back to television to be on the show,
Speaker 3: it very quickly became his show, not my show, ye,
Speaker 3: and that that was untenable for me.
Speaker 2: And when you move on from there, so.
Speaker 3: We were fired from there too. So we were fired
Speaker 3: after a year because I couldn't get along with Tom
Speaker 3: But by then we owned a piece of the show
Speaker 3: because by then, you know, writer could do that, right.
Speaker 3: So that's so the show is in its fourteenth year.
Speaker 3: We have created by credit. God bless Leonard Goldberg, who's
Speaker 3: now you know, he's dead. What's a nice way to
Speaker 3: saying it. He's passed on, right, He's dead, he's gone.
Speaker 2: But so.
Speaker 3: He gave us created by credit because we did create it.
Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't that nailed down in terms of
Speaker 3: what city or any of that stuff, but it was
Speaker 3: his idea. But we so we and we owned a
Speaker 3: piece of it. Still we enjoy the benefits of having started,
Speaker 3: having created the show. And you know, we sold our
Speaker 3: ownership position and bought this house and the one in
Speaker 3: Saint John.
Speaker 2: And where's the third house?
Speaker 3: I have a little apartment in the city.
Speaker 2: And then you're off of that show? Do you say
Speaker 2: you're done? What do you do?
Speaker 3: Oh? I wrote my book? Okay, oh no, Because a
Speaker 3: girl that I knew back then had become a literary agent.
Speaker 3: I had lunch with her and she said, you're not
Speaker 3: doing anything. This is what you should do. She worked
Speaker 3: at Rolling Stone in the office then in the old days.
Speaker 3: So she said you know, and so that's what happened.
Speaker 3: I wrote the book, and I loved the book, and
Speaker 3: I felt just about it what you felt about So
Speaker 3: it was so wonderful to read what you had written.
Speaker 3: It meant everything to me.
Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing about it is I get anxious
Speaker 2: before doing these, and occasionally it involves a book that
Speaker 2: I've read month, two months, three months before, and I
Speaker 2: have to ski, you know, I skim the book just
Speaker 2: out of anxiety. And I was thinking about it with
Speaker 2: your book, and I said, I don't I remember everything
Speaker 2: in the book like it really had that much impact
Speaker 2: upon me. And there was similar sensibility, similar alienation. I
Speaker 2: don't have children this week go on and on forever.
Speaker 2: But okay, let's stay with the Sopranos for a minute.
Speaker 2: You know, we've just had the strike, et cetera. When
Speaker 2: you do something that's network television, there's all kinds of
Speaker 2: residuals involved. At this point with something like HBO and
Speaker 2: the Sopranos, is there any ongoing compensation?
Speaker 3: Oh sure, yeah, yeah, just those green envelopes come and
Speaker 3: just cheers you right up. You know, sure, you know,
Speaker 3: we get residuals, We got foreign sales, We've got royalties. Royalty,
Speaker 3: oh you know, royalties. You know, we make a living
Speaker 3: this way. You know, it keeps it keeps this thing going.
Speaker 3: As much says, it costs a lot of money to
Speaker 3: have money, you know. So yeah, we have these houses.
Speaker 3: They're not you know, they're they're just they're they're wonderful
Speaker 3: each they're wonderful places. All three of them were wonderful.
Speaker 3: So yeah, but now you know, I'm miserable because I'm
Speaker 3: not working.
Speaker 2: So there you go, and there's any plans.
Speaker 3: To work, Well, you got me thinking about it again.
Speaker 3: You know, I got to you know, people have wanted
Speaker 3: to adapt the book into some kind of TV or
Speaker 3: dramatic form. And somebody gave me a call about it
Speaker 3: from your what you wrote, but I don't see it.
Speaker 2: I don't see it either.
Speaker 3: Oh good, oh good, thank you, because I you know,
Speaker 3: if somebody tried and it was so stupid, it was this.
Speaker 3: I mean, she's she's a wonderful girl. Who who tried?
Speaker 3: But you know she'd have this writer and basically writers
Speaker 3: like running around with a notepad or recording device. There's
Speaker 3: nothing dramatic there. It's not like you know, this person
Speaker 3: wanted me to watch Daisy Jones and the six do
Speaker 3: something like that. Well, that'd be fine, but that's you know,
Speaker 3: that's got the advantage of having performance, you know, music
Speaker 3: in it. So no matter what you think of it,
Speaker 3: at least it had something.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a tough question because it veers on sexism,
Speaker 2: and I will be criticized. But what about thinking about
Speaker 2: having children something you ever wanted, something you missed, something
Speaker 2: you never wanted.
Speaker 3: My strength tried to get me to confront this when
Speaker 3: I was forty, and I just couldn't do it. I
Speaker 3: just couldn't confront it. Even I'm sorry, I don't have children.
Speaker 3: I have a niece and nephew who fulfilled that for
Speaker 3: me and have children of their own, so I get
Speaker 3: all the pleasure of that. I don't know who. Somebody
Speaker 3: was saying they don't know who's going to take care
Speaker 3: of them when they're old. I don't really care, you
Speaker 3: know about that. So it's just I'm sorry I didn't.
Speaker 3: You know, people really seem to go nuts over it
Speaker 3: and love it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I saw John Legend on Voice last night, and you
Speaker 3: know he said he never cried much until he had children,
Speaker 3: you know, because there's so much love there, and I'm
Speaker 3: sorry I missed that. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I
Speaker 3: wish Yeah, I regret.
Speaker 2: Are you a big consumer of films or television at
Speaker 2: this point?
Speaker 3: I watched The Voice. I've watched The Voice. I like
Speaker 3: the I like to see those singers. I just don't,
Speaker 3: you know. And you'd think I'd get sick of it,
Speaker 3: but I just don't. I love the I love the coaches.
Speaker 3: I love how they coach. It's like really watching a
Speaker 3: creative process. I really enjoyed. There was this other show
Speaker 3: about people would come and pitch their songs. I loved
Speaker 3: that show. I wish they would come and do it again.
Speaker 3: It was another reality show. I forget the name of it.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of funny because that's not a show
Speaker 2: you made.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't watch Blue Blood's either, you know, I just.
Speaker 2: You know it's funny. Mary kay Place told me the
Speaker 2: same thing. She watches The Voice, too, So maybe there's
Speaker 2: some element there.
Speaker 3: Oh I knew I liked that woman. Yeah, I do
Speaker 3: love it. But I don't think I want to write
Speaker 3: another television show. I don't know what to do. Frankly,
Speaker 3: I don't. It's horrible. Actually, these periods in my life.
Speaker 3: I mean I've had follow periods, but this one takes long,
Speaker 3: long one.
Speaker 2: So what eats up your time?
Speaker 3: Well, we have a country house now, so I've become
Speaker 3: you know, in the summertime, I did a lot of weading.
Speaker 3: That's w E E D I en G. The rest
Speaker 3: is reading, watching shitty television and no just reading weading,
Speaker 3: just nothing.
Speaker 2: What do you read right now?
Speaker 3: I'm into David Sedaris, who's a great companion, and I
Speaker 3: read a wonderful novel recently. I don't read fiction anymore much.
Speaker 3: I just don't care about it. So it depends. I
Speaker 3: was reading the Bokov's memoir, you know, I picked that up.
Speaker 3: I had a library library full of books here that
Speaker 3: I haven't read, so I'll just pick one up and
Speaker 3: read it. Whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Now, you have the three houses, you have a husband,
Speaker 2: We had you know, COVID, which made everything different. But
Speaker 2: how social are you at this point in your life.
Speaker 3: Compared to watch? Compared to you, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, are you the type of person who's emailing
Speaker 2: and calling friends all the time going out?
Speaker 3: Are you more of a homebody? And it's like I'm
Speaker 3: a homebody. We have a lot of friends when we
Speaker 3: go to the city. We can't go to the city
Speaker 3: much because our dog is seventeen and a half plus,
Speaker 3: so we really are stuck here in the country with him,
Speaker 3: cleaning up after him and taking care of him, and
Speaker 3: we can't travel. We can't go to Paris, we can't
Speaker 3: do any of that stuff. So we're just basically here
Speaker 3: on Shelter Island. We have really good friends here that
Speaker 3: we've made. We bought the house right before COVID, and
Speaker 3: right we bought the house in Saint John right before COVID.
Speaker 3: It's just lucked out that way, so we spent COVID
Speaker 3: in both places, which was perfect because and you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: so we've just been out here in the country and
Speaker 3: I sold the place in the city and got a
Speaker 3: smaller place in the city. But we can't go there
Speaker 3: because it's the dog. Can't be there. It's too hard
Speaker 3: to have him there.
Speaker 2: One point of cleanup. And it's funny we're talking about
Speaker 2: the dog. You sold your interest in Blue Bloods. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a big thing in the music business. You
Speaker 2: sold your interest. Did you sell it back to the
Speaker 2: owners or to a party?
Speaker 3: No owners?
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 3: God? Yeah, I think with CBS, right. I think they
Speaker 3: came to somebody at ICM with an offer. We don't
Speaker 3: have children, and so you know, it would have been
Speaker 3: a very valuable thing to you know, it's a lot
Speaker 3: of points less because I got fired after the first year.
Speaker 3: We would have a few more if I hadn't, but
Speaker 3: a significant amount and if it would have been a
Speaker 3: great thing to leave. But we just decided to take
Speaker 3: the money. And it's good we did because of COVID,
Speaker 3: because if COVID had happened, the networks, you know, they
Speaker 3: would have said, like they would have said, oh, we're
Speaker 3: not making any money now, there's no money. They wouldn't
Speaker 3: even give you the dribs and drags that they had
Speaker 3: to start giving us. So this was enough money so
Speaker 3: that we could change that would be meaningful. In other words,
Speaker 3: we could buy a summer house, which was meant to be,
Speaker 3: and we could buy the place we'd been renting for years,
Speaker 3: a very modest house in Saint John, but beautiful. You know,
Speaker 3: we're renting it. And so it just happened that people
Speaker 3: who were we rented it from, we're selling it. So
Speaker 3: we bought it. You know, it's nothing, it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's not like a manner in Scotland or something. You know,
Speaker 3: none of it is very grand, but it's just pretty great,
Speaker 3: you know. But still you have I've been painting, you know,
Speaker 3: I started life as a kind of artist. So I've
Speaker 3: been painting. So I have a painting studio. But this
Speaker 3: summer I came down with a case of cancer. So
Speaker 3: I really spent August and September dealing with that. So
Speaker 3: that was a surprise. You know, I'm seventy eight years old,
Speaker 3: so there was no reason that I would for me
Speaker 3: to think that I would escape this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But they found, quite by accident, a small leision on
Speaker 3: my lung, in my lung which turned out after a
Speaker 3: biopsy to be cancer. I have a wonderful doctor at
Speaker 3: Mount Sinai, and he went in there and took it out.
Speaker 3: But still it was major surgery. And I had never
Speaker 3: had an experience like this, and so I look at myself.
Speaker 3: I'm so pale. I couldn't swim or anything, do you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. It really wiped me out. So
Speaker 3: I did paint. I'm not quite back, so I may
Speaker 3: paint again. I may. I have a studio here with
Speaker 3: you know, the paints and the easel in it. I
Speaker 3: might put right, I moved some of the furniture from
Speaker 3: New York City, and I might get a couch and
Speaker 3: go up there with my computer, you know, write something.
Speaker 3: But I just don't know what to write.
Speaker 2: Get.
Speaker 3: I was going to write about my nose job, but
Speaker 3: just said so dreadful. I just.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't talk about what you feel internally.
Speaker 2: But I have not read that book.
Speaker 3: Which book, the nose job book. You know, a friend
Speaker 3: out here is a psychoanalyst and he, you know, he
Speaker 3: has these patients, women you know, have had, has a
Speaker 3: couple of them, and they come to him and obviously
Speaker 3: they have nose jobs. But he can't b broach the subject.
Speaker 3: But they don't bring it up. So it is like
Speaker 3: this weird subject. And I wrote my thesis actually at
Speaker 3: IOWA is titled straight Nose, and it was a story
Speaker 3: about my nose job. But it's so self pitying and yucky.
Speaker 3: I just don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not telling you what to do, and
Speaker 2: I can't read about.
Speaker 3: But I wish you would, would you could.
Speaker 2: You well believe me, I got that instinct. I can
Speaker 2: tell you what to do all day long. But the
Speaker 2: point is, people have plastics. You know, it's one thing
Speaker 2: if you're in an accident or something. People who have
Speaker 2: elective surgery, cosmetic surgery, they are always hourly positive about it.
Speaker 2: Always they say they gave them confidence, the results were good.
Speaker 2: You never you might hear someone say I got a
Speaker 2: bad nose job, bad boob job, whatever, you do. Hear
Speaker 2: those stories, but everyone says how great it is. Not
Speaker 2: to mention the fact that people get older and then
Speaker 2: they go on a run of plastic surgery, just like
Speaker 2: people go on a run of tattoos. So the questions
Speaker 2: you raise have never been raised in public, you know.
Speaker 2: So for me, that's a fascinating subject. Having had family
Speaker 2: members who got those jobs. Believe me, I've heard their story.
Speaker 2: They have never expressed any regret. If anything, they tell
Speaker 2: other people to get one.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're mentally healthy human beings.
Speaker 2: Nobody's mentally healthy.
Speaker 3: Do you have to think of that? No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: If I had a daughter and I have counsels, one
Speaker 3: person specifically, do not want she got a nose job,
Speaker 3: and now she's so ordinary, you know, and she was
Speaker 3: so young when she got it. She's going off to college.
Speaker 3: You know, she wanted to be pretty. And you know
Speaker 3: you look at like Piedro Amaldebobar. However, you say it
Speaker 3: that woman in the Spanish movies with this sernazola, you
Speaker 3: know that's your face.
Speaker 2: How about the woman in Fouda. First season of Fouda?
Speaker 3: Can I watch that?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know what kind of show you like?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 2: Just Fauta is great. It's an action show, very visceral,
Speaker 2: and every season is good. If I'm talking about the
Speaker 2: best shows on streaming television, you know you're talking about
Speaker 2: Happy Valley, but the latest season wasn't as good as
Speaker 2: the early stuff. You're talking about the French show The
Speaker 2: Bureau the Fota is great, but later than that. And
Speaker 2: you know, the conventional wisdom is the Danes in these
Speaker 2: relas make the best television, and I would pretty much
Speaker 2: agree with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, we went to Copenhagen and did a show
Speaker 3: with somebody there. You know, we tried to do the
Speaker 3: American version, so we had that deal. We did do that,
Speaker 3: and you know, they support their artists over there. All
Speaker 3: of the artists over there want to come to La experience.
Speaker 2: You know, there's this phenomenal show on Netflix. They just
Speaker 2: put out a prequel. Did you watch under Cover on Netflix?
Speaker 3: Now? Should I see? You know?
Speaker 2: As I say, this is a little difficult because it
Speaker 2: veers on your past history in that it is a
Speaker 2: dope dealer. It's a Belgian show, Belgian Dutch collaboration. But
Speaker 2: the lead actor is unique. I mean Tony Soprano evidenced
Speaker 2: and intelligence. This guy does not. This guy streetsmart It's
Speaker 2: far from dumb, and it's slow and it's tense, whereas
Speaker 2: the Soprano's more action. So you start by watching Undercover.
Speaker 2: There are three seasons of Undercover, Okay, Then there is
Speaker 2: a prequel movie called Ferry fe r r y, then
Speaker 2: two weeks ago or you know, whenever it's people listen
Speaker 2: to this. At the beginning of November, they launched a
Speaker 2: prequel series called Ferry The Series. But it turns me
Speaker 2: on is in Hens City anxiety. You rarely get that
Speaker 2: in television. Have you seen the Bureau? No, the Bureau,
Speaker 2: the Bureau. I mean you got to pay for some channel,
Speaker 2: I forget. No, we got a lot of stuff, but
Speaker 2: this is one of those unique channels. I don't know
Speaker 2: whether it's Mega Hurtz or Sundance now or something. But
Speaker 2: and this is a legendary show. But at times it's quiet.
Speaker 2: It's so intense. And in this latest series of Ferry,
Speaker 2: there are a couple of episodes that are so intense
Speaker 2: and they don't do the obvious thing. It's it's really good.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've written all this down.
Speaker 2: You know, I could go on and on streaming television.
Speaker 2: I do not find film satisfying anymore. It's, you know, forget.
Speaker 3: The do what do you watch? I just watching my
Speaker 3: gizmo in bed. Mitch. Mitch has a big TV down here,
Speaker 3: but I do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know, just you know, we got a Samsung
Speaker 2: television in two thousand and seven that was astoundingly good.
Speaker 2: And four years ago my girlfriend, who watches a lot
Speaker 2: of televisions, I want to get a new TV, said no,
Speaker 2: this TV is so good. Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: We got this TV that is the standard, the one
Speaker 2: that everybody has at Hollywood. This lgo led mind blowing, wow,
Speaker 2: mind blowing.
Speaker 3: It's like not in a week goes by. When Mitch
Speaker 3: just says it wants a new TV, It's like, get it.
Speaker 2: Quest Now there's a Sony. You know, now there's a
Speaker 2: it used to be forever that was the standard and
Speaker 2: that's what everybody has. There's a competitive Sony now. But
Speaker 2: the differences are you know, when you watch in four K,
Speaker 2: which is only you know, a six percent difference, it's
Speaker 2: just mind blowing. I mean, as I say, I didn't
Speaker 2: want a new TV. You know, it's under two thousand
Speaker 2: dollars if you want sixty five or less if you
Speaker 2: want to. It's like anything. When you go to like
Speaker 2: seventy five, you pay an extra grand, but of course
Speaker 2: get the biggest size you can. I watch a certain
Speaker 2: amount of stuff on the iPad too. I find it
Speaker 2: very intimate. But then you know, these screens are big
Speaker 2: enough that it's like watching the movie. That's all it is.
Speaker 2: But I'm hearing from people all day long. There's so
Speaker 2: many opportunities. But to sit in front of the flat
Speaker 2: screen and get this is another thing makes me crazy.
Speaker 2: The week by week stuff. It's just fucking insane to
Speaker 2: marinate in a series. I just probably the thing I
Speaker 2: like to do most other than go skiing.
Speaker 3: Skiing.
Speaker 2: It is a separate conversation, Robin, I think it is.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna get very far talking.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna let the audience off. The look so
Speaker 2: Rob and I want to thank you so much for
Speaker 2: taking your time to talk to me and my audience.
Speaker 3: Well, it's been really fun.
Speaker 2: Until next time. This is Bob left sids