Finding Favorites with Leah Jones
Finding Favorites is where we learn about people’s favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. Every other week, host Leah Jones sits down with a guest to learn about how they found their favorite thing, why they love it and why they think other people will fall in love, too.
Episodes
Sunday Dec 25, 2022
Filmmaker Liz Nord recommends documentaries
Sunday Dec 25, 2022
Sunday Dec 25, 2022
New York-based filmmaker Liz Nord joined Leah to run down a list of documentaries for watching during winter break. Liz also talked to Leah about how she became a documentary filmmaker and obsessed with the art form.
Follow Liz online to find out when her documentary is streaming.
https://www.liznord.com/
Instagram @LizFilm
Show Notes
Music Box Theatre Chicago
Trembling Before G-d
Supersize Me
Street Level TV
Closed Captions at Sundance Now
Short of the Week
Omeleto
Op Docs
Albert and David Maysles
The Truffle Hunters
The Eagle Huntress
No Film School interview about The Eagle Huntress
The Mole Agent
Bad Axe (shortlisted for Oscars)
https://www.almaharel.com/film/bombaybeach
I Am Not Your Negro
Betsy West and Julie Cohen
Summer of Soul
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah.
Wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster and keep enjoying your favorite thing.
Liz Nord Documentaries_mixdown
1:17:42
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Leah Jones, Liz Nord
Liz Nord 00:00
Hi, my name is Liz Nord, and my Favorite Things are documentary films.
Announcer 00:05
Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.
Leah Jones 00:18
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things without using an algorithm. I'm so excited this afternoon I am with one of my OG go into Israel friends. I'm here today with Liz Nord. She is an Executive Producer, who started in the news and documentaries. She makes documentaries, podcasts, multimedia online content. Most recently, Liz worked at Sundance, and she's here today with us on finding favorites. Liz, how are you?
Liz Nord 00:58
Hi, Leah Jones. I'm so excited to be here.
Leah Jones 01:01
It's so good to be catching up with you. I was so thrilled when you send me your email. I'm like, How have I not had Liz on yet? You had a podcast before almost anyone I knew. And yeah, you I hadn't I didn't ask you to be on. That's on me.
Liz Nord 01:17
Well, yeah. So that your listeners know I literally I asked, I requested to be on the podcast. I'm a fan of both Leah and of the podcast. And I was like, I have favorite things. So here we are.
Leah Jones 01:32
I'm so happy. So we were doing a little catching up before I hit record. And just reflecting a little bit we met in I think the summer of 2007 at a conference in Israel. Is that right? Is it like did you go in 2007?
Liz Nord 01:48
Did you know I think I was like the year after you. It might have been 2008. So it's been a while.
Leah Jones 01:57
And at the time, your documentary age, were you still working on Jericho’s Echo in 2008? Or was it just
Liz Nord 02:05
No it has been out in world, which I think is why I was invited to this conference with Jewish artists and Jewish innovators people creating Jewish things in the world. And my film Jericho’s Echo was not specifically Jewish, but it was about Israeli punk rockers. And so it fit the bill.
Leah Jones 02:27
Yeah. So we met then we see each other at conferences. We see each other at conferences, weddings, funeral when
Liz Nord 02:38
Your dad has art shows in New York.
Leah Jones 02:40
When my dad has art shows in New York. Yes. We've got to get you guys out to Chicago.
Liz Nord 02:47
Absolutely. I really want to go to the Chicago Museum is the contemporary art museum. The one that's right downtown. I've been once before and I loved it so much.
Leah Jones 02:57
The Art Institute of Chicago, which is the mass of everything one.
Liz Nord 03:01
Like near the bean.
Leah Jones 03:05
And then there's also a Museum of Contemporary Art, which is stunning. But the Art Institute of Chicago is the one it's got, I always just got everything.
Liz Nord 03:18
Yeah, I was amazed by that museum. And I live in New York, it's not like I don't have access to culture. But yeah, love to come back. Also good food.
Leah Jones 03:26
We've got very good food in Chicago.
Liz Nord 03:29
Just like this season. Like coming in spring.
Leah Jones 03:33
Yeah. No, don't come in the winter. Don't come in the winter. It's a great spring summer visit, absolutely. No spoilers but we're going to be talking documentaries. But I'm curious as we head into winter, and this will most likely be a Christmas episode. Do you have any winter repeat movies? Like any winter traditions that that are movie related?
Liz Nord 04:01
Oh, I love that question. I mean, winter is like primetime for movies. And obviously often like holiday stuff comes out on the big screen, which I will say that everything, all the recommendations I'm going to make today I know we're gonna get to talk about some films, I tried to find things that are very contemporary and all available on streaming. But I still believe in person in theater, film going experience, especially for the blockbusters. So I usually do try to get to some of the like ones that come out between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year to have that communal big screen, big audio experience. So this year, it was Wakanda Forever, the New Black Panther film and I feel like the Black Panther cannon as it grows will be an annual viewing because they're just so lush, and beautiful. They're not really your typical comic book movies and they have kind of a deeper meaning. But I love all that stuff. And I will say that the Harry Potter films always make a good seasonal, you can watch several. They all have, almost all of them have a Christmas scene or a winter season because they go through the school year. So those are always fun. And I'm a total Star Wars geek. So I'll revisit the films. Have to say not like loving all the series so much, even though I'm excited that they exist in the world. But I will always go back to the films, especially the originals.
Leah Jones 05:38
Yeah. I'll tell you. I saw Wakanda Forever a couple weeks ago. And I went and saw it in 4DX. Have you done that?
Liz Nord 05:52
What even is that?
Leah Jones 05:54
So 3D, right, three dimensions. 4D fourth dimension. It's the fourth-dimension experience. The chair is a roller coaster. Every four chairs are connected. And they tilt forward and back side-to-side. They vibrate. There's like a fan behind you. So if there's a breeze going through the jungle, it's a little breeze on your neck. If a bullet goes by your face, they do this like really quick puff of air past your neck. So you feel the bullet go by. I went with my friend Ronnie, we had never gone before. We really didn't look into too much what 4DX was about. And we laughed hysterically through the whole movie, but the chairs….
Liz Nord 06:44
I feel like I'd be laughing the whole time. I wouldn't even be able to like..
Leah Jones 06:49
Don't do for the extra movie you want to emotionally connect to. So we felt very self-conscious being two white people in the middle of Black Panther : Wakanda Forever in Chicago as our chairs kept jolting us.
Liz Nord 07:06
Oh my god, you couldn't have been the only one’s, people must have been laughing.
Leah Jones 07:09
Luckily, it was a Tuesday or Thursday night. And it was it was there were only 10 of us maybe in the theater. And so we were all having our reactions. But I am very excited to see Avatar in 4DX themselves.
Liz Nord 07:24
That sounds like a good move for Avatar. For people that haven't seen Wakanda Forever is surprisingly emotional for a comic movie. Particularly because it's lead. The original Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, passed away between the first and second films and they honor him and his contribution to the film's right from the beginning. I mean, people in the theater when I thought were crying,
Leah Jones 07:52
Right, which is the appropriate emotion. But as his sister walks through the lab, and that first scene and your chair goes kaboom, kaboom with her steps. And your chair is moving with her steps. And you just start laughing from then. And it's not a laughing scene.
Liz Nord 08:12
No, I also feel not a great situation to have like popcorn on your lap.
Leah Jones 08:18
No, we did not. Thankfully, we did not get popcorn. There were people behind us who had like a soda. And I'm not kidding when I say I had to hold on for dear life to not get thrown out of the chairs at times.
Liz Nord 08:32
Oh my god. I don’t think, that's for me.
Leah Jones 08:36
I wish they would make like a 45-minute 4DX experience that was Star Wars battles.
Liz Nord 08:47
Like made for it that makes more sense. How they used to make films for the IMAX and they were so incredible in that environment. Now they just show regular films on IMAX, which always feels kind of weird to me.
Leah Jones 08:59
Yeah. So I'm not looking forward. That's how we're gonna see Avatar because otherwise I don't really care about seeing Avatar. But I have to say the 3D trailer for it before Wakanda Forever, it was a stunning use of 3D.
Liz Nord 09:16
I mean, that sounds pretty cool. And it's funny because like, we're talking about documentaries today. So I'm thinking about, what does this mean for a documentary? And I think what the documentaries that I really love are immersive, what they call immersive when you find yourself in this other world. But I don't know that like in a doc, you'd want to be as immersed as a 4DX experience. It's a funny to think about.
Leah Jones 09:42
I need more people to go, so I can talk to more people about how insane… I mean, you know the big fight on top of the ship in Wakanda Forever. Your chair punches you in the back. As they're like fighting on top, feeling fists in your back.
Liz Nord 10:00
Yeah, I feel like goodbye unless it's like a massage. But you know…
Leah Jones 10:04
It's more like a sharper image massage chair, but it's happening as punches are landing on the screen.
Liz Nord 10:13
Oh my gosh.
Leah Jones 10:15
So I need more people to go talk to me about this ridiculous. I don't think you need a chair that moves as a reason to go to the theater. I think you need to be with people. Like I think the value of…
Liz Nord 10:31
I like the comfy chairs now that we back there's a lot to be said for it.
Leah Jones 10:38
Yeah. I mean, I went and saw Jackass Forever in theaters twice. Just to make sure I see it but with people,
Liz Nord 10:46
I would like to maybe unpack that with you another time.
Leah Jones 10:48
Yeah. What I'll say about Jackass is that, it is possibly one of the greatest documentaries about male friendship ever made. How about that?
Liz Nord 10:59
That is not what I ever would have expected you to say so. I'm color me intrigued!
Leah Jones 11:03
That they are, I think it's especially Jackass Forever because at this point, they've been doing it for 20 years. Everyone involved in the fourth movie, the Jackass guys, if they weren't sober, they weren't invited back like band's not there because bands not sober. And they've supported each other through sobriety, and through finding other businesses, through starting families. And, and there's, I mean, there are there's drinking on it because there's younger people. But there's really you don't often see on film, men who have been friends with each other for 20 years, working and laughing together, punching each other in the nuts and hugging it out. Like I felt like it was a really positive portrayal of an evolved male friendship.
Liz Nord 12:05
That is really cool. I love hearing that. And like note to self, definitely don't see that movie in 4DX.
Leah Jones 12:14
Absolutely not.
Liz Nord 12:15
Not my nuts punched?
Leah Jones 12:18
No. So when you come to Chicago, I'll take you to a movie at the music box. Which is one of our house. Amazing theaters still has an organ player, so there's organs. Organ player before the Saturday matinees. And I went, it's 700 people in the house. So I went there sold out for RRR.
Liz Nord 12:43
Oh, I've heard such good things about that movie. It's like on the list. It’s on my Winter list.
Leah Jones 12:49
Yeah. So I think it was the most incredible, probably live theater experience I've ever had in my whole life.
Liz Nord 12:58
Wow. Because people were so into it.
Leah Jones 13:01
People were cheering, clapping. I would say that and everything everywhere all at once. Which I also saw in a big theater sold out.
Liz Nord 13:10
That was a great one to see in the theater. So wild. Those guys, the Daniels, the filmmakers are really interesting. I interviewed them once. I used to run a website called No Film School, like by filmmakers, for filmmakers, and so interviewed lots of filmmakers. And those guys, the directors are these kind of young goofy guys. And they've done amazing work. Always pushing the envelope like they did with this film. And yeah, it's always nice when filmmakers who seem good people are also doing well in the world, and their films are getting traction.
Leah Jones 13:48
Yeah, I'm glad to see that one getting the nominations. I think it deserved.
Liz Nord 13:53
Also, like Michelle Yeoh, she's just so rad. And the fact that she's now having big sort of second coming, even though she's been in the industry for what, like 40 years. Yeah, I mean, what a badass. I love her.
Leah Jones 14:06
Yeah, she's phenomenal. Yeah, I think our winter film traditions. Well, I'm Jewish. I'm the only converted, so my family is not Jewish. So when we go to my sister's home for Christmas, we watch Bad Santa, we watch elf Christmas vacation.
Liz Nord 14:31
I mean, I've seen them all. When you grow up Jewish in this country, you can't avoid Christmas. And some of them are really fun. I love I have a weak spot for Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.
Leah Jones 14:41
Yes. Yeah.
Liz Nord 14:43
I love Muppets.
Leah Jones 14:44
Yeah. And then my sister will play, she's gotten a really good Pandora station of like jazzy Christmas tune.
Liz Nord 14:54
Oh, can you send that to me?
Leah Jones 14:56
I will. Yeah.
Liz Nord 14:57
Do you love Christmas music as well? Much of what It was written by Jews. There's a documentary about it.
Leah Jones 15:02
Oh!
Leah Jones 15:16
Okay, Liz, as promised, we're here to talk about documentaries. But I wanted, and I know you have lots of great recommendations, which I am so excited for. But my first question is why documentaries? Do you remember seeing your first documentary? Or do you remember the first documentary that really punched you in the gut? And you're like, I got to know more about this?
Liz Nord 15:45
Oh, that's such a great question. I think like most people, although documentaries are much more prominent and available on all the streamers now. When I was a kid, I never would have told you, Oh, I want to grow up and go into documentary because I thought documentaries were historical, boring things on PBS, or like nature docs, which are fun to watch, but not a career path for me. And then it's just like true crime, none of that really appealed to me. But the idea of documentary filmmaking and filmmaking was always exciting. Or actually, the idea of filmmaking itself was exciting. And that's what I originally went to undergrad for. I ended up leaving that major, and funnily enough, like I said, later, running a website called No Film School, and I'm still No Film School. But it was a strong interest. And then I ended up becoming a graphic designer, and then came back to filmmaking. But part of what got me back to it was that I am one of those people that other people just talk to, like strangers all the time, tell me their stories. So there was this one moment, I remember pretty clearly on the bus in San Francisco, where I used to live and where I started my doc career. I was in my early 20s and this woman on the bus who I did not make eye contact with, really had no reason to talk to me. But sat next to me and started telling me in detail about her recent divorce. I thought, I need to do something with this. This happens to me all the time, enough that I should go some direction. I mean, clearly, there's some kind of calling, Even when I'm not trying, people are divulging their lives to me. So yeah, I guess I could have gone toward like sociology or therapy, psychiatry. But I was already in the media making business. And it was wait a minute what makes sense. Let’s put all this together. Let people talk to me. I'll just turn on a camera. And that's kind of really how I became a documentary filmmaker. And of course, once I started learning more about the practice, I also watched tons of films, and learned, Oh, my God, there's this whole massive world of independent documentary films that I have not had much access to previously. And I was like, oh, this is something really different! These are emotionally resonant, relevant, beautiful films that aren't formulaic historical docs, and I don't need to be dissing historical docs. I actually think, especially now, there's historical docs or docs that cover historical topics that are really fascinating. But I think it's not this male narrator are telling you, blah… blah… blah… you feel like your history class.
Leah Jones 18:51
I would say that women of our age, we're women in our40s.
Liz Nord 18:57
Wow, I didn't know you were going to be divulging our age.
Leah Jones 19:03
Yeah, unless we are plus or minus 10 years.
Liz Nord 19:06
Yes. Right. Yep. Women in are 30s or 40s.
Leah Jones 19:10
As women in are 40s. We were primed for that stretch of PBS where a documentary was the Ken Burns multipart sepia tone documentary.
Liz Nord 19:24
100%. That's what I'm talking about.
Leah Jones 19:28
And that's all we knew . So absolutely. Like once you learn there's more than Ken Burns, there's a whole world of more than him.
Liz Nord 19:36
A massive world. And so people who might not be as familiar with the field, understand kind of generally what I'm talking about is that when I say an independent film. There's this independent space where an independent filmmaker, meaning they're not necessarily tied to a studio, or anything like that. They've raised their own money or they've gotten financing outside of a streamer or studio so that they can follow their own whims and storytelling instincts. That's where a lot of films that I'm interested in, the people that I cover and work with, and promote and everything. But that's the space that we live in. And to go back to your other questions. So I started exploring the field, I took a couple of classes in San Francisco, at a place that no longer exists. But it was a wonderful organization called the Film Arts Foundation, where you could just show up and learn to use a camera without having to go to graduate school or anything. I started attending, getting involved in the local film scene in San Francisco, which was pretty robust at the time, and starting to attend the festivals. And a couple that do stand out in those early years, in terms of film experiences, where I was like, I want to do this. One was at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, probably in 2004ish. I made my first film in 2005. There was a film called Trembling Before God, which someone who's now a good friend Sandy Loski made and was pivotal doc about Orthodox Jews who are gay, coming out and/or figuring out how to navigate their worlds where that wasn't as acceptable of a lifestyle or wasn't acceptable at all. And I saw the film live with an audience at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. And in the film, itself one of the characters face is blurred, you can't see them, because it would be dangerous or uncomfortable. They couldn't really be on film recognizably. So we saw the film, it was really moving. And then that character, came out on stage first time publicly, showing her face and saying, I'm gay. And the audience went freaking bananas, understandably. And it was so moving. And so like, oh, this is what a documentary can be and can do. And I want to be part of that.
Leah Jones 22:07
And that it can be contemporary. It can be things of the moment, and not just 100 plus years ago, piecing together through archival footage,
Liz Nord 22:19
And that film followed these it's protagonists in their daily life, it's very present, very of the moment. So that was really cool. And other one was at South by Southwest, which became kind of my annual pilgrimage after the first year I went, which probably was 2005ish. And then I went 10, or somewhere between 10 and 15 more years after that. But the first year I was like this is so cool! Because I went and declared, I'm a filmmaker. I went to this film festival, film and media and everything festival and I was like, I too am a filmmaker. And I saw the premiere of Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me. I mean, the film is fine. It's debatable. People love it, they hate it. That festival happens in Austin, Texas. The crowds are super enthusiastic. They screen at this really cool movie theater called the Alamo Drafthouse that serves beer and everything while you're watching the films. And again the beauty of going to film festivals is that often the filmmaker is there. So saw the film, Morgan Spurlock shows up. Since then he's become very famous. But this was his first documentary of note. Again, audience was so wild. And that Austin crowd is so enthusiastic. And I just thought, wasn't as much about the content of the film. But I was like, oh, this is the rock star I want to be. I don't want to be I've never aspired to be in a band or whatever. But that's the Rockstar, I want to be. The one that shows their film to this rapidly enthusiastic crowd and gets to talk about it. And that film will then live on and have its own life and trajectory and influence in the world. That was super exciting to me.
Leah Jones 24:11
Wow. Those are two…. Somebody's ringing my doorbell.
Liz Nord 24:20
Like I heard a doorbell. Okay, so you were saying those are two, we talked about Super Size Me for that. And you said those are two really?
Leah Jones 24:30
Yeah. And then the doorbell rang and my brain went.. boom! I'm just thinking about I have also gotten to meet Sandy from Trembling Before God. I think I met him at maybe at the conversation. So we're Facebook friends, we're acquaintances, we're not friends. But certainly that piece resonated through the Jewish community continues to resonate. And then Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me, it was such a massive global sensation.
Liz Nord 25:02
That's one of the ones that kind of put more modern documentaries on the map.
Leah Jones 25:05
Yeah. There's still a role for sometimes investigative, sometimes experiential, documentary making. But I don't know, I just love that those were theater experiences for you.
Liz Nord 25:24
Yeah. And also what I thought you were gonna say, when you said, when you were coming to films is that I think it also kind of proves my point, even though I do want to talk about more modern films. But just like those are part of a modern wave. And they're two totally different films in tone, in style and structure. And neither of them is what one might have historically expected when they heard the word documentary.
Leah Jones 25:48
So you go to South by Southwest, you stake your claim, I am a filmmaker. And then you make your first you are your first director, the first producer. Are you like on the crew have a document I know. I said, I wasn't gonna make you talk about your career the whole time. But I guess I've never gotten to ask you some of these questions. We've known each other so long, but I've never said, because I remember you literally carrying a camera. Wasn't the exact Zachary Tim, was he your camera guy on one of your Jerusalem movies?
Liz Nord 26:29
Oh, no, we never worked together. But we had people in common. And when I moved to New York, he was one of the first people that helped me get into the New York Film Scene as part of a collective called the Film Shop. But I don't think that's that relevant. But I was filming in Jerusalem, another project in Jerusalem, a few years later when we might have seen each other at the Union. So early in my career, I was taking those classes in San Francisco, I decided instead of going to grad school, I would buy a camera and make myself into a filmmaker. I always tell people this, because there's so much about believing and putting out there that you are doing this thing, whatever it is and echo have created a lot. And at that South by Southwest, I had already started making Derrick Rose Echo. So I really was in the process of making a film, but I made myself a business card. We used to do that. And it said, Liz Nord Filmmaker, and as soon as I put it on paper, and told people, it felt real and it became more real which is pretty cool. And I still need to remind myself of that. Sometimes 20 years into my career, I still get impostor syndrome. It happens. But when I really started before making a feature documentary, I was doing what is called Video Activism. So kind of documenting stuff that is happening in the community, was sort of an activist bent. And around that time was when the Iraq war was starting. And I lived in San Francisco, which is a very progressive place. And so we were doing, I was part of a group called Street Level TV. And we had a show on the cable access in San Francisco. I would go and film Iraq war protests, and things of that nature. So I started out pretty scrappy right out there, literally in the streets.
Leah Jones 28:33
I really didn’t know that. That's so cool.
Liz Nord 28:37
It was cool. Looking back on it. Yeah, it was a moment for sure. I think what's important to notice that it just wasn't so common then. You don't really need video activists anymore because everybody has a camera and is documenting whatever is going on around them. Thank goodness that, for example, police brutality has now come much more to light because people with cell phones have just exposed that. But at that time, cell phones didn't even have video cameras. It's amazing, because not that long ago. But so it took people like us to actually go out there with cameras and make sure to be noting this stuff.
Leah Jones 29:22
It was really important. Because everybody couldn't document. It's wild. Things have changed so much.
Liz Nord 29:31
And that's part of what's been so exciting about being in this field, is that it has just changed so rapidly and documentaries have become so much more ubiquitous and your listeners can go see all sorts of fascinating stuff that wasn't really out there before. If you didn't go to the art house or you weren't part of an educational institution that had a DVD. It's amazing.
Leah Jones 29:58
So I want to ask you about if you're going to a film festival, which I know you often do. How are you approaching the documentary slate? Assuming you're not a judge, are you looking for topics that you like? Are you looking for filmmakers you've heard of? How do you start to prioritize a festival slate?
Liz Nord 30:23
Well, that's a great question because I've been as an audience, and I've also been as press. And so it really had to study the programs and figure that out, how to navigate all that. But when I'm not going as press which of course, most people wouldn't be going, I actually love to be surprised. SAnd that's one of the amazing things, especially going to a festival like Sundance. Because Sundance happens in January. And that means eat, of course, it's the head of the year, it's also the head of the film gear. And it requires not all festivals do of course, but Sundance requires that you're having your films premiere. So that means if your film has played anywhere else, but at least in North America, it wouldn't be eligible for Sundance. So that means as audiences, you have this real gift of going to see films that you just haven't heard much about yet. And so I usually do a combination of at this point, I know so many filmmakers, which is another just great privilege. So I'll try to see films by people I know and to support them. And sometimes I just go blind, whatever let's just give this a shot. That's why we're here. And that's always really fun. And then I like to kind of look outside the box. There are some films that you know when you go to a festival are going to have distribution, or they're already, for example, a Netflix film. So you know it's going to be on Netflix, or it's such a big-name director that it'll definitely get out there to the public. So often look for the films by say a first-time filmmaker or just something slightly less obscure or that hasn't secured distribution yet. So that I can make sure to try to see that film when I get the chance.
Leah Jones 32:23
Because you're trying to see the things that you might not have another opportunity in theater to see.
Liz Nord 32:30
That's right. And while this whole conversation might not feel like super relevant to everyone because you can't necessarily go to film festivals, I would highly recommend that people seek out festivals in their area. Because film festivals are so ubiquitous now that there's often small local film festivals, almost everywhere. And especially because of the pandemic, a lot of the big festivals are now making some of the films available streaming. So Sundance this year, which is coming up in January, you can buy tickets to some of the premieres online, which is pretty freaking cool. If you're sitting in Idaho and would never get yourself to Sundance actually, it isn't that far from Sundance. But if you're sitting in Maine, and I couldn't get yourself to Sundance or didn't have really a reason to go to Sundance, you can see some of these films, which I think is really one of the silver linings, I guess of the pandemic. Obviously, I rather would have not had the pandemic but this is one of those outgrowths that is positive.
Leah Jones 33:34
Yeah, that some things have become more accessible.
Liz Nord 33:40
Yes, and literally more accessible. For example, Sundance again, never did closed captioning on the live screenings. So it cut out a whole audience that required a deaf audience, for example, that would require closed captioning. And now you can stream with closed captioning for premiere, which is pretty special.
Leah Jones 34:02
That is really special. Wow!
Leah Jones 34:17
Well, let's get into some of your recommendations. I know you've been working on the list. So when you started thinking about, I want to tell people to watch these documentaries. How do you categorize documentaries? Are you like these are shorts, these are long, these are men, these are like, how do you categorize it? Or are you just this is what I'm loving right now.
Liz Nord 34:45
That is a great question. I'm a category person, a kind of list organizing person. I guess that comes from my producing background. So I do categorize and I will say I'm glad you brought up shorts because I did not really include shorts on this list. Let me tell you, this is finding favorites right, so it's so hard to find my favorites. Guys I've seen like 9 billion documentaries and so already narrowing down Long's as I love that you say Long's, I think the appropriate term is feature length but long is awesome. I'm used to it from now on. So my list that I really came up with to talk about today are Long's, but I think shorts are a really fun way to get into doc's if you're listening to this, and you're, oh, yeah, I was one of those people that thought documentaries we're boring. Shorts are such a great way in and I really actually think it's kind of the golden age of the short documentary. And people can see shorts, of course online. And if you want things more curated, there are a lot of ways to see shorts that someone else has already gone through. And the great thing about a short is, if you don't like it, like it's going to be over soon. So there's sites, for example, New York Times Op Docs. I mean, that's so well curated. There's some that are less well known, like one called Short of the Week. It's a website and another one called Leto. I'll send you the links to share with everybody. But there's some amazing places where you can watch really high-quality documentary shorts, online.
Leah Jones 36:21
Cool. I know that sometimes in festivals, well, I don't think there's a sometimes because it's hard to move people. Moving bodies is complicated. They'll do a shorts block. So you'll go in and you'll watch 3 to 10 shorts.
Liz Nord 36:40
Yeah, that’s very common. And there's usually several blocks. I mean, imagine this, I know I keep talking about Sundance, but it's because that's where most recently I worked for the past four years. But they saw the shorts programmers there. They say that they watch every single submission, which is an incredible feat. Because there are almost 10,000 Short submissions a year. So that the ones that get through that gate, or whatever are like going to be pretty strong. But there's this kind of way I say it's a golden age of shorts, because there's just so many people making shorts now that the gear and the analogy is so much more accessible. That means there's a lot more crap out there. But it also means there's a lot greater stuff. And I'll make one other note too, because I think this episode is going to come out soon.
Leah Jones 37:32
Christmas morning. People will unwrap this on Christmas morning.
Liz Nord 37:39
So it's a perfect time to mention that also every year, the Oscars puts in I don't know who actually makes it but somebody makes on behalf of the Oscars, the Oscar nominated shorts programs in theaters across the country. I always have so much fun watching those. And then when you watch the Oscars, you actually know what the shorts are. So I would recommend that folks look in their local theaters for the Oscar nominated shorts programs. And there's usually the documentary one has its own screening. I love going to the best animated shorts nominations and the best live action shorts, as well. So that's always a fun thing to do in January and early February.
Leah Jones 38:23
Those are for sure available in Chicago. And you don't have to be in a major city. You just have to be in a town with a theater with somebody who loves movies, and still loves movies, and you'll get the chance to see.
Liz Nord 38:36
So to get back to your question.
Leah Jones 38:39
Tell me about your Longs.
Liz Nord 38:41
Yes, my Longs. So the way that I thought about categories was almost in opposition to the categories that we talked about earlier like the typical categories of historical, animal, true crime, those are categories, but there's all these other categories. And of course you could split out by gender, country, whatever, that's also really interesting. But my categories are and I think some of them are accepted in the industry as categories. So I ended coming up with a bunch of categories. I'm trying to figure out how to even narrow down to share with everyone because this could take all day. So I'm gonna start and we'll see where we get. But because we had talked about Trembling Before God and Super Size Me earlier, maybe I'll bring us up-to-date on some more kind of contemporary doc's that are in those general categories. So for example, Trembling Before God, it might feel all into the modern like observational or cinema verité category, and or the character centered doc, there's a lot of overlap between the two of those. But like cinema verité is the classic documentary mode if folks have heard of Albert Maysles, and the Maysles brothers and other really famous longtime documentarian, that's this idea of the quote unquote, Fly On The Wall. But more contemporary filmmakers have acknowledged that you're not really a Fly On The Wall. But being in the room, changes the room a little bit. So these are observational documentaries, meaning the cameras just turned on, and you're watching life. But just with a little more self-awareness by the filmmakers.
Leah Jones 40:52
And so does that mean that there's not like a voice over telling you, you as the viewer are learning the story based on the scenes that I mean, cinema verité. That's like true cinema verité?
Liz Nord 41:12
Yeah. Truth is what he was talking about, like documentaries are supposed to expose some kind of truth. But then that gets really muddy too. Because exactly like we said, well, there's a filmmaker in the room. Is everything really true? I will say that part of the reason I love documentaries and why they're favorites is because so often the story behind the scenes is just as interesting as the story in front of the camera. Of course, the audience doesn't always learn those but even though these are verité, they're meant to really feel true to life, and you're watching this thing unfold. They're usually hundreds of hours of footage taken for a 90-minute talk. So it is a true story that's unfolding before your eyes. But it has been very edited to create a compelling story out of all this mundane stuff that happens in life. So one of the ones I love was Oscar nominated a couple years ago, The Truffle Hunters. This was directed by two guys, Michael Dirac and Gregory Kershaw. And it's basically about men, old dudes in Italy, who are truffle hunters. They are searching, for their job is to go into the forests of Italy with their dogs. It's actually not boars or pigs that they use with their very sweet dogs and seek out truffles. And it's an example of why would I ever watch? That sounds so boring. But somehow the filmmakers have found these delightful characters and created these scenes that are just so beautiful to watch. And what's so amazing about dogs, that you get this really, really up close and intimate peek into a world you just never would have known about. And it's really funny and delightful. Like there's one guy in the film where his dog, his truffle hunting dog is really his BFF. He lives alone with the dog. He feeds the dog at the dinner table, they sit there every night, chatting away. And during the day, they go out and search for these extremely rare, extremely valuable truffles. It's just this little slice of life that is so delightful. And again these filmmakers just watch these guys. There's a little bit of voiceover sometimes it's common, where there's not a narrator, but the voiceover might come from the protagonists themselves. So they might be talking you through what they had done, or the song that you're watching. And you get to know them a little bit that way. But then that also crosses over to this kind of character-based documentary. So in The Truffle Hunters, they are characters and I would say is not a really PC word to use anymore in the dark world, their protagonist, their participants. So they like yes, we're watching their lives, but it's more about the scene and the situation and the lifestyle and their little stories and then their character center docs, which are really focusing on one person, and they're fascinating trajectory. So it's funny I did not realize this when I was making the list, but I'm having an old man moment, because one of the characters center docs that came to mind was another Oscar nominated doc by a female Chilean filmmaker, but actually know how to pronounce her name. It’s Maite Alberdi. She made this film called The Mole agent. Did you hear about this one? Okay, so again, another old guy story. So it is basically, this lonely old man is at home alone. And he gets this invitation or he sees a notice tacked up, I don't remember how he found out about it. But he basically found out that a local detective agency was looking for an elderly detective, to infiltrate a nursing home to see if they could find signs of abuse. To this guy, like try out, and he gets in, he gets the part. And he's trains as a secret agent. Basically, this whole new lease on life. But what happens without giving too much away, is that even though he's there as this like investigator, he also is an old person in this old person's residence. And everyone falls in love with him. And he becomes and some of them literally, I don't know, if you've ever been to an assisted living kind of place but there's often many more women than men, just from…
Leah Jones 46:09
I was at my great aunt's funeral and my uncle Jimmy could still drive and he was a charming man. And there were women who had been waiting since high school for him to be single again at the funeral with casseroles.
Liz Nord 46:22
As a side note, I also was that I visited my wonderful aunt, before she passed away, several times at one of these places, and I brought my boyfriend at the time with me once. And this older lady, basically hit on him by pulling up the bottom of her pants and showing off her ankle and was a sailor, whatever. I don't even know what you said. But my aunt was so horrified. And she called her a slut. Anyway so that's the thing. And so at this place, this guy becomes the most popular guy. And then the detective agency is don't forget to do your job. It's just this is one of those Stranger Than Fiction, half the time, you're watching and going is this made up? Is this scripted? And this can't be real. But it's real. And that's the kind of doc I really love. And again, the guy's just so charming. And it's such a funny premise, but also bittersweet. And I think that's the other thing about doc's why I love them so much is that because they're real life. If they're done well and reflect real life, they often have that bittersweet feeling because in real life, there's joy and pain. There's also joy and pain in docs, which is what I think real narrative films, fictional films are often trying to achieve. So yeah, should I keep going?
Leah Jones 48:00
Yes, you should keep going. I'm googling these as you're talking and they are all adorable old men.
Liz Nord 48:07
I know it's fun. I'm going to change track.
Leah Jones 48:12
Okay. Look, here's the thing, if it turns out that your favorite thing are adorable, old men in foreign countries, with funny hobbies or with interesting hobbies, that's fine.
Liz Nord 48:25
I am a daddy's girl and my dad is 91 so maybe it's a thing. But a different direction although there are old men and this next suggestion but they are not nice old men. So no funny enough now, I set this up like in such an opposite
Leah Jones 48:53
Like oh, now they're not as bad, they're not Nazis. They are bad guys. Well they're not Nazis.
Liz Nord 48:57
Yeah, that's true. But also the hilarious part about this would you have no way of knowing is that this category is feel good docs. The other I don’t want to say misconception because it’s a real thing that so many documentaries, especially today are like about very urgent and very dark social issues, that it’s critical that these films exist, and they often move the needle and create real social change and I’m 100% for it, and it’s just not for everyone. And in fact, it’s often not for me. I told you earlier, I love Star Wars and stuff I don't always want to watch the heaviest saddest thing in the world. So believe it or not, there are a whole bunch of feel-good inspirational documentaries. Again could go on all day, but the one I am going to talk about it's called The Eagle Huntress. And this one's on Disney. This is definitely easily accessible. The Director Otto Bell, my friend Stacy Reese is the producer. And this is a really cool dark part of author. What's cool about it, I would say is that not all documentaries are family appropriate. And this one is, as I mentioned it's a Disney film, so you can watch it with kids, although it's subtitled. So either you'll need to help little kids with that or your kids have to be old enough to read. But anyway, it is about a 13-year old girl. Aisholpan Nurgaiv is her name. And she comes from a very, they're in Kazakhstan in the mountains of Kazakhstan. She comes from 12 generations of Eagle Hunters. So this is like a big deal in the mountains. And no boys have ever left, excuse me, no girls have ever been trained as Eagle Hunters. But she's the only daughter, her dad's a champion Eagle Hunter. And she wants to be trained. And he says, yes. And the elders, this is where the bad men come in. The elders of the community are like no fucking way. That is not acceptable. And the dad is like, you know what we're gonna do this. And it's this amazing story of basically she becomes a total champion. She follows in her father's footsteps and becomes this badass Eagle Huntress. And again at 13 she's this little tiny girl. And eagles are big and scary and have claws. And hunting doesn't mean that they kill them. I mean, I won't get into all the logistics. But basically, she's getting these huge eagles to come and land on her arm while she's riding a horse. And the mission is crazy. It's amazing to watch. It's super heartwarming, especially for the daddy's girls out there. And it is beautifully shot. This is one of those stories where the behind the scenes is just as interesting which I actually didn't plan on plugging things, but I had interviewed the filmmaker. I can send you a link to the video from No Film School because they had to bring something I don't remember an absurd amount of gear 2000 pounds worth of gear on a helicopter to the mountains of Kazakhstan to get these incredible wintry mountain shots. In action shots requires a special type of attention to be able to capture again the eagle, the horse that it's not just like standing, pointing a camera at someone for an interview. So anyway, that one was just super fun and not necessarily expected.
Leah Jones 52:57
And I'm clicking through the photographs on IMDb
Liz Nord 53:01
Oh, do you see her? Do you see Aisholpan Nurgaiv?
Leah Jones 53:04
These eagles are half her size!
Liz Nord 53:06
This is what I'm saying. People have no idea how big a frigging eagle is.
Leah Jones 53:10
I guess it would say like half her height. But her torso is the size of an eagle they are. They could just say we're hunting you! They are huge.
Liz Nord 53:21
And that's why it's a challenge. And imagine their wingspan, turn them on their side. They're probably taller than she is. So that is a rad movie. You got a power situation. Should I keep going?
Leah Jones 53:38
Yes, yes. So these are so that I'm just clicking through the photographs. And the stills are just stunning.
Liz Nord 53:49
It's so beautifully shot. And it's also such a beautiful environment. And similar to The Truffle Hunters, most of us will never go there. We will never know what that world is. And here we get this totally into it. And it's funny you said that about the photographs, because if I recall correctly, the reason they even made the film is because the filmmaker saw a photograph of her with eagles, and was like, what is this?! The fun thing about being a documentary filmmaker is that real life is always happening. So you're constantly coming up with ideas are being fed ideas, because you just opened the newspaper and there's probably several potential films in there.
Leah Jones 54:40
Oh my gosh, and she and her dad went to Telluride with their eagles. Oh, I didn't know that picture of them in front of the Telluride Film Festival banner, like Main Street. Telluride, the two of them just with their eagles and Main Street.
Liz Nord 54:57
Oh, that is too cool, and it makes some of his tally rides on Mountain Film Festival? That's funny.
Leah Jones 55:04
Okay, moving on. I'm watching this one tonight. I'm ordering Thai food and I'm watching The Eagle Huntress,
Liz Nord 55:11
Although a Mongolian restaurant in your area that might be more perfect. I love that you have to report back. And I should also just say it I'm sure people already expect this. But in all of these categories, I also had several recommendations. So I'm really working hard to just pick one.
Leah Jones 55:30
So and here's what I'll say. It's called Finding Favorites because it's a covered name, but it could have been called something you love. Because sometimes people really are worried about upsetting the things they didn't pick. Sometimes, because they know human beings who made the things they didn't pick, and sometimes it's because
Liz Nord 55:51
I'm talking to my filmmaker friends. I also loved your film, I promise.
Leah Jones 55:56
Yes, yes. So to all the filmmakers listening today, this is finding favorites. Calling something you love. So Liz loves you, even if she didn't name you, and you can come on my podcast in the future and rebuked her.
Liz Nord 56:16
What a great idea! I love that good documentary filmmakers always about the stories. Okay, so I want to bring up another category, because we talked earlier about the shifting of the times, and how so many more people have the opportunity to document life around them and their own lives now, and that there have always been personal documentaries. There's always been people telling their own story, or their family stories. But it's become so much more common in an era when we can constantly document ourselves. And even people our age our parents might have been VHS taping our lives. And so now someone could have had their whole life basically documented, and maybe make a film about it. And of course some of them are really self-indulgent. But many of them are really, really good. So one of them I want to talk about is coming out. I'm excited to talk about it, because it's making debut right now. It's out there right now. And it's actually in full transparency. I did give notes on a cut of this film. But I'm really proud because it's by a brand-new filmmaker, David Siev. And it's literally winning all the awards. It just won a Critics Choice Award last week. So the film, it's a weird one to say out loud. But it's called Bad Axe, not badass. Bad Axe. Which is the name of a town in Michigan, FYI. Oh, so this is a very American very timely story about this guy, David Steve's family. And they live in this rural Michigan town called Bad Axe. And they are Asian American. And they own a restaurant. And the pandemic comes. And as we all know, there was a huge rash of anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic. Because for a lot of reasons, but in part because it was we were touting this idea that it came from China and Trump was calling it the China Flu and there was a huge uptick in abusive incidents against Asian Americans. I mean, the irony is that we're so friggin ignorant in this country, like his family's not from China, they're from Cambodia. But it didn't matter. So they were Asian American, and they were on one hand facing all this flak from the community. And on the other hand, there were a lot of community members that hadn’t come to the restaurant for a long time and really came to support them. Because it was also regardless of their family background, just keeping a restaurant alive during the pandemic, when restaurants were closing left and right. And it was hard to get supplies and people didn't want to come eat in person. It's just like, what an incredible story that only this guy could have told. Because it's his family in this very unique situation. That also was indicative of what so many other people were going through. So I love that kind of doc to where it's a very specific story, but has a more universal or more widely understood kind of message. So it's just really this American family's story, and it's beautifully done. And again, people are really responding to it. So I'm excited. Also to have known this filmmaker in his early stages and see kind of where he's gonna go with his career. So anyway, it's out in theaters now.
Leah Jones 1:00:15
Well January 5, that it will be at the Gordon center in Lake Forest, Illinois at 7pm. So I searched it, and Google always wants to help you see something. So it immediately was showtimes in your Chicago. So it is showing. So people search it on Fandango and see if you can find it when it's coming to your town.
Liz Nord 1:00:36
For sure. I mean, that's exciting, too, because not all docs even get theatrical distribution. And if you can't see it, or if it's not in your town, this one, again, because of all the acclaim and momentum it has, we'll definitely be coming out on streaming. So that's that what I realized? It's funny because obviously, I'm a female filmmaker, I am very active in movements to raise up female bipoc filmmakers. And I even am like a really early kind of founding member of a group called Film Fee Towels, which is really for female directors. I have not talked about one female director yet. Like I said, it's like its guy day for me. But there are so many amazing female docs, female fronted docs out there. Oh, I didn't say my friend, Stacy produced Eagle Huntress, but that is she's not the director. So I will talk about one of my favorite filmmakers in general, but like her stuff is out there. So, this is for people that like something a little more unusual, this category is an up and coming. One, it's becoming much more like prevalent in the field. And it's called hybrid that comes from a lot of different things, but it's essentially like it comes from the idea of being a hybrid between a fictional and a documentary film. So what it is I told you earlier that I like to check out the films that are kind of like playing with form that are doing something a little different, that are maybe pushing the envelope and these are these are documentaries that are pushing the envelope where, it's asking the question, like, what is real what is documentary? Often, they're kind of poetic. So, this filmmaker she's an Israeli American filmmaker named Alma Har’el. She also directs fiction work, which I think informs some of this. But basically, she has made a couple of films that are like in this this world of this hybrid world worth mentioning and that are available are Bombay Beach, and Love True and apparently by the way, it was so she directed the film Honey Land, and that Honey Land, oh my gosh, Honey Boy. Now Honey Land is another film on my list. That's fun. Anyway, Honey Boy is a fictional account, but like, it's like hybrid in the other way. It's a fiction film, but it comes from the true story of like, Shia LaBeouf’s life. Shia LaBeouf, contacted her to work together after seeing Bombay Beach. Okay, it was like this is this is so fascinating. So, her first feature doc is called Bombay Beach. A more recent one is called Love True. And both of them are worth mentioning. Because basically, they're just like super creative in that. They are documentaries. They're kind of like the Verity style, you're watching people's lives unfold. But they break out into these constructed formats. In the middle of the film, when you're like totally not expecting it like what the hell is going on, which I kind of like. So in Bombay Beach, for example, there are dance numbers. So, it's not a film about dance and it's not a film about dancers. It's like if you've heard of what of the place Bombay Beach, it's like this super poor community in Southern California, that is like, on the shores of the Salton Sea, which is a man-made sea in the middle of the desert, actually, it's in Colorado or California. Anyway, it's a man-made sea that used to be this vacation destination. And now I have to say I love the description on IMDb. I wouldn't normally just read you the description but the IMDb description says that the Salton Sea used to be a beautiful destination vacation for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish. So anyway, she's just documenting the lives of these people that you know some people that live in this wild place, but in the middle of scenes of just like of their lives, there's like these breakout dance numbers that she worked on them with. She worked with them on and on. Guess it was a way to like express their internal dialogue and their thoughts and feelings. Like it's still documentary in that, like, you're still getting to know these real people in their real lives. But she's expressing who they are in a way that's constructed. And this sounds maybe a little bit esoteric, but I just find it so interesting. And the way she does it is like really, really cool. And in Love True, it's kind of similar. It's a movie about love. And she's following three love stories. And that love is very broadly defined. It's not necessarily a typical love story, but in that one, she used some devised theater, kind of like psychiatry techniques, and had the characters kind of recreate, theatrically recreate some of their own stories. So again, in the middle of what feels like a typical cinema Veritate documentary, it breaks out into these scenes where you're like, What the hell? Like you're kind of watching someone's dream happening on screen, starring them. She's just interesting. So I recommend checking her work.
Leah Jones 1:06:16
Also, her website is wild.
Liz Nord 1:06:19
Oh, I am in it. But I know she does a lot of weed.
Leah Jones 1:06:24
It's a lot of like, multi layered it's got a real Myspace vibe.
Liz Nord 1:06:24
Oh, fun Myspace. Wow!
Leah Jones 1:06:25
And also she could play Tori Amos in a movie.
Liz Nord 1:06:42
Yes, sidenote, she's gorgeous. Yeah like amazing skin. It's anyway.
Liz Nord 1:06:56
Can I do like two more?
Leah Jones 1:07:02
Two more to bring us home?
Liz Nord 1:07:06
So what I'm gonna do is because I'm thinking these are all kind of like, serious. I don't want to end on a total serious note. But I do want to bring up one more probably the most serious one that I have. And then we'll end with fun. How's that? Okay, so the other I think very like typical, oh, this is a documentary is a biopic like, it's a story about someone's life. And we've had these in pop culture to forever like you think of behind the music or something. Like I've been cool ones. I think the biopic has gotten much more creative in recent years and one that I really just loved and was so gutting just it's a hard watch, it's not a light watch, and it's not children appropriate. But it's called I Am Not Your Negro. And it's a 2016 documentary, actually made by a Haitian filmmaker, Raoul Peck. And what's so interesting about this is the subject is James Baldwin. If people don't know him, he's a very prolific American Black American writer and kind of civil rights activist. And before he died, he had an unfinished manuscript. About several other civil rights leaders who he was in the circles with in the social circles with Medgar Evers and Malcolm X and MLK, of these like, really pivotal figures in in civil rights in this country and he never finished the book. So, this filmmaker, I don't exactly know how he came upon the manuscript. But he essentially finished the book for James Baldwin, by creating this film. This film is like the film version realization from another creative of this other creative’s work, which in itself is like such an interesting concept. And he did this with just incredible archival footage, but also really beautiful graphics and this amazing kind of narration voiceover by Samuel L. Jackson. And it's just really lyrical and it's such an unusual, it's such a unique film that it's hard to describe, but it also is going through some of America's most challenging social moments. And then resonates so sharply still today, the issues that are covered, then it's just like, it feels so relevant, but it's also just an incredible watch.
Leah Jones 1:09:51
I remember when it came out, but I don't think I knew it was about James Baldwin. But I didn't hear any of that backstory about it? I guess I just thought it was a straight up biopic.
Liz Nord 1:10:08
Which is why I am bringing it up. And also people just want like fun and more standard, but holiday watch type. biopic. I really love the partnership. Also, these are friends but um, Julie Cohen and Betsy West, they have created this whole canon of documentaries about badass women. So probably a lot of people have heard of RBG the film RBG that got such a big a lot of attention about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Leah Jones 1:10:41
I saw that one. And I saw that one in the theaters where we're in the last row at the top of the theater because it was sold out.
Liz Nord 1:10:42
Oh, my gosh did you love it?
Leah Jones 1:10:45
Yeah, it was really interesting. That's when I mean, she was still alive when that came out. It was right.
Liz Nord 1:10:57
Yeah. I saw it premiered at Sundance, and she came. It was awesome. But anyway, they've also made these other films about like Julia Childs and civil rights activist Polly Murray and the most recent one is about Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Congresswoman who got shot. And they're just pretty serious. But they have this kind of women biopic genre going, and they're really good at it. So those are, just another sort of recommend on the completely opposite side of the spectrum. Up to wrap up on a fun note, I have to go full circle because my first doc Jericho’s Echo was a music documentary, like I said about the punk scene in Tel Aviv. And music talks are really my first love and I didn't really talk too much about them. Because that could have been a subset of Finding Favorites. We could have done a whole episode on music docs. So, I will just say, everybody knows what a music documentary is. There's tons out there. And they're so fun. And my bone to pick with music documentaries, the ones I don't like, or where the documentary doesn't meet the excitement of the music and the movement it's part of is more interesting than the documentary itself. There's a range. And there's a lot of those, but there are also so many good ones. One of the most recent, that has gotten tons of attention. It's on Hulu is Summer of Seoul.
Leah Jones 1:12:27
Okay, no.
Liz Nord 1:12:28
So, this is cool. This is the first feature directed by Questlove of the musician from The Roots and now he's like Mr. filmmaker he's got several projects in the works, apparently. But this is fascinating, because it is about the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. It was a series of concerts that happen in Harlem in New York City where I live in ’69. Around the same exact time Woodstock was going on. And it's kind of fascinating, because we haven't really heard about the rights. And yet it was a festival where some of the most influential musicians of our time played, but they were black, and just never got the traction even though of course, Jimi Hendrix and others played at Woodstock. But this was homegrown festival that was just incredible.
Leah Jones 1:13:24
Over the course of six weeks, it was the whole summer! That’s amazing.
Liz Nord 1:13:28
It was this ongoing series of concerts. And like all over the map, in terms of the types of music that were that were played, but this is one of those another kind of behind the scenes is so interesting. Essentially, somebody filmed it for public television. Nothing ever really came of it, the boxes sat in someone's basement, or somebody was cleaning up the typical story, they found these rolls of film are, Hey, what's this? And basically, essentially, ultimately, Questlove was handed this material. I bet you'll be interested in this. And he made this just film where you're holy shit this was pivotal cultural moment that we're finding out about now. 50 years later and some of the footage is just so amazing. And these artists that are so ubiquitous, now you're seeing them and they're really young days and you're seeing huge crowds, huge black crowds and Harlem, just loving it, loving the summer. We so often see about the social unrest of that time. So, it's really beautiful to see just people loving it and having a great time and it doesn't feel any kind of way other than this is beautiful and musical and soulful and fun. So that one is just a fun watch and an eye-opening watch as well. And then there’s a million music documentaries. So, I recommend kind of poking into that genre for people, it's another one of where if you haven't watched a lot of documentaries, it's a good entry point. It's an accessible kind of sub-genre.
Leah Jones 1:15:17
This is such you've given us such a good list of things to watch on winter break.
Liz Nord 1:15:22
I was so excited about that. And I'm so excited that we did this and that, you've given me so much time to chat about favorites, and I love it. You're one of my favorites. So, all works out well.
Leah Jones 1:15:35
I can't wait till I get to see you again. I gotta get to New York next year.
Liz Nord 1:15:39
One of us will get to the other place. Or maybe we should go meet in the Bahamas? I don't know.
Leah Jones 1:15:44
I mean, also that yeah, also the Bahamas.
Liz Nord 1:15:47
Anyway, so yeah. So, I will be happy to send you some links to these films and if the if the world demands it, if your crowd wants more recommendations, I can also send a list for the site.
Leah Jones 1:15:58
Amazing. Where can people find you on the internet?
Liz Nord 1:16:03
Oh, that's fun. I mean, I’m at liznord.com. That's probably the easiest way I'm really into photography, street photography, and no casual photography. It's a way to keep up my creative practice without having to make a film that takes five years. So, Instagram is a good place to find me and I'm just @ lizfilm.
Leah Jones 1:16:27
But thank you so much. This has been really a wonderful conversation.
Liz Nord 1:16:29
Thank you and happy holidays. Merry Christmas to all the listeners. Who are listening on Christmas.
Leah Jones 1:16:36
It's Merry Christmas. It's merry last night of hug I think it's last night of Hanukkah.
Liz Nord 1:16:41
Yeah, might be the night before but either way. Yes. Holiday season be merry and bright. Whatever you celebrate or even if you don't celebrate anything.
Leah Jones 1:16:52
This real perfect overlap of Christmas and Hanukkah this year ruined my Hanukkah party. Just traditionally the Saturday night of Hanukkah, but I have a big party. It's Christmas Eve. And it will be with my family. So. I don't, we’ll see if my sister allows me to cook latkes in her kitchen. I don't know.
Liz Nord 1:17:15
They do stink up the place but they’re so delicious. I'm gonna try cheddar latkes because this year just to make latkes more fattening.
Leah Jones 1:17:24
Beautiful. Beautiful.
Announcer 1:17:27
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
Terrence Gant loves Prog Rock and Twitter
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
Sunday Dec 18, 2022
Terry Gant, Chicago-based comic bookstore owner, joined Leah to talk about hospital husbands, Twitter and Prog Rock. He prescribes the musical journey for someone new to Prog Rock and ready to get a feel for symphonic Swedish death metal.
See Terry speaking at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Monday, December 19th, 2022, at the event Spiritual Awakenings.
Shop at Third Coast Comics online or in person.
Show Notes
Dream Theater
King's X
Galactic Cowboys
The Pineapple Thief
Nightwish
Riverside
Dark Tranquillity
Kamelot
Send in your best of 2022 voice memos to leahj77[@]gmail.com by December 30 to be included in the New Year's episode about the best of 2022!
Sunday Dec 11, 2022
S.E. Hinton with author Jen Michalski
Sunday Dec 11, 2022
Sunday Dec 11, 2022
Jen Michalski returns with a new short fiction collection (available for pre-order now) and how she found Outsiders by S.E. Hinton for the first time. We talk about S.E. Hinton's YA ouvre, the movies she inspired and the Outsider House Museum in Oklahoma.
Keep up with Jen Michalski online
http://jenmichalski.com/
https://twitter.com/MichalskiJen
https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/
https://twitter.com/jmwwjournal
Pre-order The Company of Strangers
Show Notes
Whoopi Goldberg Original Broadway Show Recording
Jackie and Laurie Show
The We Came to the End
Why middle grades still love The Outsiders
Rob Lowe on Armchair Expert (lots of Outsider talk)
Bright Lights, Big City
SEHinton.com/books
S.E. Hinton and the YA Debate (The New Yorker)
The Enduring Spell of ‘The Outsiders’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Why The Outsiders still matters 50 years later (Rolling Stone)
Alternate titles proposed for S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders. (slate.com)
Exclusive interview with S.E. Hinton - The Outsiders Fan Club (weebly.com)
The Outsider House
Wall of Voodoo
Betta Fish
Honoring teens sexual reality - Judy Blume
Debs Foundation
Poe House in Baltimore
https://www.hemingwayhome.com/our-cats
https://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com/
Our Cancers Dan O'brien
Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris
S.E. Hinton with Jen Michalski_mixdown
1:09:19
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Leah Jones, Jen Michalski
Jen Michalski 00:00
Hello, my name is Jen Michalski. And my favorite thing is S.E. Hinton.
Announcer 00:05
Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast. Where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.
Leah Jones 00:18
Hello and Welcome, to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things without using an algorithm. I am very excited tonight; Jen Michalski is back and she is the reason I have authors on this podcast. She changed the whole trajectory of finding favorites. And I'm thrilled that you're back. Jen, how are you doing?
Jen Michalski 00:46
Great. I'm so thrilled to be back as well. I've been waiting for weeks to do this. I'm so excited.
Leah Jones 00:51
And you're back because you have another book coming out.
Jen Michalski 00:55
I do. Yes.
Leah Jones 00:56
The Company Of Strangers.
Jen Michalski 00:59
It'll be out January 10th with Braddock Avenue Books, and it's a collection of short fiction.
Leah Jones 01:05
So they're short fiction, is it? Is it all COVID era writing, or is it like expand your career?
Jen Michalski 01:15
It's a mix. I mean, I actually I moved to Southern California three years ago, which spans the time I was last on your podcast, but some of that a few of the short stories in this collection were written here. Most of them were written in Baltimore, though. But the cover is really great. It's a cover of some surfers standing in front of a California sunset, and it was so weird, like we live, I guess about it's a 10-minute drive from the beach. We were coming home from the grocery store we were at a traffic light I just looked over, and these surfers were sitting there, kind of chatting. There was this beautiful sunset behind them. I just took the picture from the car and it turned out so good that I just wanted to be the book cover, even though, not all the stories were set in this area. I just felt like, because they were all just kind of standing in their own little thoughts. They weren't exactly talking to each other; they were all holding the boards, it kind of reminded me of a lot of the stories how people that we know are strangers, but then we also have these intimate connections with people we don't know! Our whole life is just sort of not really quite knowing what another person is thinking.
Leah Jones 02:30
When did this book become a sparkle in your eye?
Jen Michalski 02:37
Well, it makes short story collections, they take a long time to build because you just have to collect so many stories. And I think they started to play around with a collection even before I left Baltimore. They were different titles, and it just never felt quite cohesive. So you just put it aside, actually wrote a novel while we were here in Carlsbad during COVID. I'm still finalizing the draft of that to start sending out. But, I did finally write the last story in this collection is a Novella, and I wrote it here. It just felt like the right piece for this collection. The title came from one of the stories in the collection. I don't know, there's something that you finally know when you have the right combination of stories. But it does take several years to come about. So, a lot of this is pre COVID. But I was very active during COVID. Because we just didn't go anywhere for two years and we just moved here, so we had no friend bubble either. So we were it was just me and my partner and our dog. The perfect time to have your own writing residency. It's definitely changed a lot of how marketing has been, still everything's kind of online. I don't have as many I have yet to build, it took 10 – 12 years to build the connections. I had the writing community in Baltimore, and it's coming about even slower here because things are still not quite back to normal. But I think every industry has been changed by it. It's just something you have to go with the flow and that's life.
Leah Jones 04:29
Yeah, I think we've seen a significantly from… I mean, My day job is marketing and financial services, and very few of our teams are back to in person conferences. It's still a lot of webinars, a lot of the meetings that used to be required to be in person are all on Zoom. People aren't getting on planes anymore like they used to. So I see it in work, I see it at my synagogue; just where we've had people who when I understand haven't felt comfortable to come back in person or liked the balance that attending online events brought to their life without the commute in the city. Because of Chicago, the effort to get somewhere in Chicago sometimes can be 30 to 60 minutes to get somewhere in the city. I just seen people clinging and now that it's cold and the sunset today is at 4:19 p.m. The people ran outside during the summer and now they're coming back to online events.
Jen Michalski 05:46
Yeah, it's a strange thing, though. I joined a library book group here in Carlsbad when we moved here and we've been online the whole time. We actually met the other night and it's like this, is anyone interested in just not doing a meeting in person, but just meeting in person? Because I actually have never met any of you outside of these little squares, and you probably live 10 minutes away. And then some people were like ‘yeah’, and some people were like ‘uh’. I know that attendance to the book club is skyrocketed because people can just get on their computer in their pajamas and they don't have to. It can be a pain in the butt after work, make sure you're still dressed or take a shower or comb your hair and go out to talk about a book that you may not have finished reading, even an hour. So I get it. But it just felt weird, and I know people younger than us, their whole lives have been brought up this way. It's really just a little old, so we're just like, “Oh, my God, no everything is...”. I mean, I know, we've been sort of preparing for it with social media. But I just think about the old days when you're bowling league was social media, you'd go out once a week and that's how you get information and gossip and connection.
Leah Jones 07:04
Yeah, I've talked to friends about a friend of mine whose dad has passed away. But when her dad was alive, he was the one that would take her mom and they would go to the bar in a small-town Wisconsin, because that is where they saw their people, they caught up with people and how much of her mom's social life has suffered. Because she was never the one who had to take the initiative to go to the bar, because her husband would come home and say, “Alright, now let's go here, let's go there”, and how hard that can be to maintain.
Jen Michalski 07:42
Yeah, I love that story, though, that's great.
Leah Jones 07:45
You really have to think about is this activity outside of my home, worth the risk, worth the healthcare risk? Or the benefits I'm gonna get for it? The social benefits, which I think are significant. I think the benefits of seeing people in person are significant. Is that more important? Or how do I balance that with the risk to my physical health? I wish I could time travel 50 years and see the research about what this time did for us.
Jen Michalski 08:27
Hopefully we're still alive and 20 more, and we'll have some linking of how it's working out.
Leah Jones 08:34
For the launch of this collection will you have an opportunity to go back to Baltimore and celebrate with your folks in Baltimore? Or is it going to be mostly online events? How are you thinking about rolling things out?
Jen Michalski 08:50
It's mostly online last year, I went back to Baltimore, when “You'll Be Fine” came out. I am not doing it this year. Like I said, I've done a lot of just more interviews and I've written essays and done podcasts and things like that. It's actually felt really comfortable to me. This is someone who I used to host a reading series in Baltimore for many years and co-hosted one for years before that, so very accustomed to being on stage and being with people. But I don't know, I just as I've gotten older, the energy has gotten less for me to be able to get out and do that. Maybe that's why I identified with S.E. Hidden history because she's very reclusive and she never goes out and does any sort of events now. And part of it was she said, there was an article online about someone was like her handler when she was in Texas to do a book festival or something. She's just like because basically, I get asked the same four questions every time, so I can imagine there's this in their system. I love music and I was listening to Aisles a Mile (based on Google search it is Miles of Aisles), Joni Mitchell live album, because I just started collecting Vinyl a year ago. So I've just been on this spree. And I got that I was listening to it, and she was talking about how weird it is to play your greatest hits at these concerts. Because, if you are an artist, no one ever says to Vincent van Gogh to paint “The Starry Night”, again. I mean, sure, some people will do. But it's that we're so bound by what we've already done. Even when you see dance, if I'm going to see a band in concert, I'm going to see “X” this month, at the [Not audible[00:10:41]]. And so on a beach and I don't want to hear, I haven't even listened to their new album yet. But I definitely want to hear Los Angeles. I get it as bands, whatever entry point the fan has to your body of work as an artist, is what's important to them. And that your whole career usually.
Leah Jones 11:05
One of the podcasts I listen to is The Jackie and Laurie Show. It's Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin. They're both women in their mid-50s, who have been standup road comics for 30 plus years. And Laurie did monologue jokes for Conan O'Brien. But they have both been on the road for 30 years. And they talk about the business, the business of standup comedy, how the business of standup Comedy has changed for women over the last 30 years. And they talk a lot about the churn of comedy albums. How like first standup comic, it takes you, 8 to 10 years to have enough jokes for your first album. But then the culture and comedy are, once you've recorded an album, that's all trash, and you can't ever perform it live again. So by the time it goes on your album, it is the best, it's the best written, it's you've got the timing down, it's the best it could be. But then, because people can hear it whenever they want; comics believe well, then that's done, I can never perform it again. And it is the opposite of bands. And then they talk about how sometimes people will try to request their favorite jokes. And they're like, well, maybe people do want to hear the jokes they know. And that debate about like, do you want to always hear something new and unknown, and surprising, or sometimes you want to hear the greatest hits. I think it's interesting how it's different between mediums, media.
Jen Michalski 12:49
I would love to hear a comedian do their own. I mean, because there was certain comedy albums I listened to growing up like Whoopi Goldberg’s album, and I remember the characters she did like Fontaine and I listened to it so much, I could do the Fontaine or Joan Rivers, and I would actually be disappointed if I didn't get to hear some of those jokes; just because I grew up with them. But I totally get that and I remember a period where I went to see a lot of Lloyd Cole concerts and there was always a guy there was always request, Mr. Wrong, Mr. wrong and I couldn't see this falling boy call like I am, and requesting this song that I wonder how Lloyd felt about it because he never actually played the song
Leah Jones 13:51
So you brought her up, let's get into it. This time, the favorite thing that you want to talk about or one of your favorites is the author S.E. Hinton.
Jen Michalski 14:01
Yeah, it's funny because it's like a no, no. And writing books is to make your author or your character an author. And I've already done that in one book. And now I'm going to talk about authors on the podcast.
Leah Jones 14:13
I didn't know it was the rule.
Jen Michalski 14:15
Yeah, there was sort of an unspoken like, don't use writers in your writing because it's kind of Gaucher or whatever. But you know, they also tell you to write about what you know, so
Leah Jones 14:28
Right, we can't have both.
Jen Michalski 14:30
But yeah, S.E. Hinton was my first, I wouldn't say, literary an author, but she was like my gateway to writing novels or having feeling like an adult novel, adult age novel could appeal. To me, I just remember I guess it was like 82 or 83 and going into the North-Point library, every Saturday with my grandfather and we would just go to the white section I would read everything that was there like Lois, Duncan and Lois Lowry and read the whole Row of Nancy and yearbooks on summer, I have collected them over the years again. And I remember picking up this. I'm pretty sure I've read the book first before I saw it in 16 Magazine, because I was a huge consumer of teen magazines at that age as well.
Leah Jones 15:19
16 young and modern
Jen Michalski 15:23
So, Bob later, and I read the book, and I was thinking I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore. They weren't exactly great creatures. But there was definitely a subset of kids that were jean jackets, and smoked after school and rode their BMX bikes, and they were all tough.
Leah Jones 15:48
And the book is outsiders. Yeah, just checking.
Jen Michalski 15:54
And they were just like, I don't know, there was just this picture of, and I sent you the picture of the cover that I was in my library, to link to the podcast, but that cover, and this boy is looking so tough. And I guess I could just relate to Ponyboy he was thoughtful and literate, but also an outsider. It was we were definitely in a neighborhood that was blue collar middle class. So I felt like, there was something, there was still like a glimmer of like a romantic hope that you could be this thoughtful character in an area that was always just very coarse. For me, it was just getting called a lot of names a lot of fat names, or which names or this and that, and for someone who is overweight and questioning their sexuality in the 80s. It wasn't like, something I wanted to deal with. But I felt like I could relate to these characters. And I, it's interesting, because, well, apparently the book is based on a true story, S.E. Hinton when she went to high school in Tulsa, there were there were Greasers and socialism. A boy she was friends with him and he was a greaser gotten beaten up while he was walking home from school. And she was upset about it. And she went home and just started writing. And that was it. That became like the first or second chapter of the book when they get jumped later in the book. But yeah, it was marketed as an adult novel. There wasn't like a young adult market like there is today. The market is huge. Middle aged, middle grade, and you just have your own Barnes and Noble, right. So it wasn't selling but there was this like sub market that it was selling, and it was to kids, because teachers were teaching it in schools. And I wondered, what made teachers decide to teach it in schools other than the fact maybe there weren't books that really spoke to other. I don't know if they read The Catcher in the Rye, back then in the 60s. But I mean, we did in high school. To Kill a Mockingbird, but maybe they hadn't become what they were at that point in 1967, that they were in like the 80s and 90s when we read them. Tthat's actually how the movie was made. In 1980, the movie version of The Outsiders. In 1980, there was a librarian at the Lone Star school in Fresno. She wrote, the director, Francis Ford Coppola of all people, on behalf of her seventh and eighth grade students about adapting the outsiders. It was like 100 kids who have cosigned to this letter, and he was so touching. I have to do this for them. This is Francis Ford Coppola; this isn't some starting out director or this is a big deal. And I thought it was so cool that he just says, yeah, we got to do this. We got to find in a lot of the guys who were casted in The Outsiders, it was one of their first films. It was their springboard for greater fame, and you think about who was cast in The Outsiders movie?
Leah Jones 19:20
It’s really a who's who?
Jen Michalski 19:23
Yeah, of 80s. Matt Dillon and Patrick Swayze, Ralph Michihiro (on Google I could find Ralph Macchio), Rob Lowe. Oh, my God! Even Top Gun. Tom Cruise. Emilio Estevez. It was just huge. All of the guys that were and see Thomas how C. Thomas Howell was his debut role. I was reading back then they would all stay in the same hotel, but to get them in their roles like Francis Ford Coppola would give the guys who were playing the socials are the more of the upper, the better rooms. And they just try to create a sense of resentment or on cloud that he did that sort of method acting for them.
Leah Jones 20:17
I need to look for the show notes. I think it was Rob Lowe. It was either his interview on like Andy Richter’s three questions (as per Google Search, The Three Questions with Andy Richter)or Armchair Expert, where he talked about, because they are high school students, for the most par. Some of them knew each other, from the scene in LA, from the acting scene, and the stories from that set are phenomenal. Sometimes some camaraderie, some competition, and then they just all go on to have these incredible careers.
Jen Michalski 21:03
The staying power is amazing to me. Because I even bought the idea because it was recently on TCM and HBO Max is one of the movies to watch. And I was afraid to rewatch it. So it was not a lot of his age gracefully from our game. He didn't want to, and I was surprised that it's still stood up. And it took itself seriously, it wasn't corny. And I could see there was a lot of natural tension in the book, and Sen knew how to write a compelling scene that made you want to find out what happened to these boys and care about them. And then there's continued conflict. So it was really a good primer on how to write a novel. I don't think it's not like she went to a writing program, we were so inundated with Emma phase and this and that. But I mean, she really was able to find a natural piecing and conflict. And it just worked so well as I was impressed. And what I thought was funny is that, it seemed like the one of the most gut wrenching or just difficult parts was figuring out what to title it. I read an article in Slate, because I just thought she came up with The Outsiders. But she actually had called it a different sense of that was the original title. And that, I don't mind that, but it doesn't say it doesn't just off on the shelf, reading the spine doesn't really jump out to you. But some of the titles that the editors had suggested to her during this process were. And they have some copies, if you go to the Slate article, they have some copies of the letters correspondence between him or her editors. Some of the alternate titles were Northern Division Street, which that sounds it's very West Side Story sounding. The long-haired boys, very descriptive. The boys in blue jeans, and the leather jackets was another one. So at the last minute she came up with The Outsiders and that worked.
Leah Jones 23:27
Yeah. It's hard to imagine it under any of those names.
Jen Michalski 23:32
Yeah, I think I would just completely date itself and be irrelevant. So but yeah, I just thought it was going back to the movie watching that, and the title, I just felt like she was definitely influenced by products of her time to like rebel without a cause. So you probably were watching and West Side Story. And I think about that too, in my own writing. So I think about the things that influenced me when I was 13 or 14 in writing and when I was coming up in that age in at 45. Just starting to read more mature works, but also reading Sweet Valley High still because everyone likes that saccharin in their life. But I just remember the big authors then we're again the literary Brat Pack. So it was Bret Easton Ellis and Jamie Kinder, Kinder Nene. So Less Than Zero and Bright Lights, Big City. And I didn't know much about writing that and I just took this as gospel and I spent a little too many years writing books in first person and in second person and just these very bare deadpan observations, thinking that was the way to write. It wasn't until getting to college later and reading more widely that I was able to put that away. Although I actually just read an essay recently that will be out in the Cincinnati review because it just stuck with me. Reading Bright Lights Big City that young, I was talking to someone about my collection, and they made the observation and five of the stories a good third of the book had stories and second person. And how that's also sort of a no, no, like when you're writing. It just people don't really gravitate to it much. But I apparently have gravitated to it a lot.
Leah Jones 25:36
So first person is “I”, it's the voice is the point of view. Third person we know from Seinfeld is an omnipotent observer describing everything. Wait a second, I don't remember what second person narration…
Jen Michalski 25:59
Second person is when you get up in the morning, you don't or like the first line of Bright Lights Big City, you're not the type of guy who would find yourself in a place like this. I had written, like a bunch of stories like that. But I had to think on it for a while other than being influenced by this particular book, when I was growing up is this that. I guess just being like, a queer writer, was an interesting time in history and coming up in 2006 and 2007, there wasn't a lot of queer writing, and then it suddenly exploded especially in YA Middle grade. And all of a sudden, I'm 50 years old, and I never felt there was any wave to ride. Like it, somehow passed me over, because by the time it became sought after it was a little older and out of the crucial market, I don't know. But I still felt like the need to write second person, so people could see my side of the story, I guess. I guess you're so used to reading third person and first person and perspectives that aren't your own. For me, it was a way of easing people into a character that maybe we're all the sudden, you can't escape, because you're them.
Leah Jones 27:29
Second person can be so powerful. Somewhere behind me on my bookshelf it's a book about someone who survives round after round of layoffs at a marketing agency in the crash in 2002. Or in 2001-2002, the first, or the tech bubble crash 1999. Who knows which crash it was?! And I read that book. And at the time, I was nearing the end of my career at my first marketing agency. I was reading the book, it made me really envious of everybody in the book. The protagonist was surviving the layoffs. And I was feeling envy for the people in the book who were losing their jobs. And I was like, Oh, that's a hint that my job is not good for me. If reading this book and being put into the space of somebody in a place where everybody's losing their jobs, it makes me want to quit. I then took that advice forward. So I can see what you're saying that by easing people, in with second person and helping them try on an identity and live in a story as someone who is not themselves. Because I had a reaction so visceral that I resigned and started my own company. From One Night, One Novel.
Jen Michalski 29:08
Please, put that that novel title in the Book Notes as well, so I can…
Leah Jones 29:12
I will. I know it's five feet behind me, but I don't want to. I will put it in, it'll be in the notes. So is your essay coming out about writing in the SEC? Is it you reflecting on writing in the second person?
Jen Michalski 29:26
Yes. And yeah, it was just a lot of the issues we just discussed. And part of it was our Springboard was those influences, those inciting incidents you had as an impressionable young person. It really depends on what around and for me this particular books were on the table. B Dalton, I remember the Less Than Zero Hardback, How to Ever be with the Elvis Costello trust glasses with the red and blue lenses and I was taken by that. And that was part of the reason why I got the book. So with S.E. Hinton, probably being a zeitgeist of her time and just what was going on around her. But, she didn't always write about Greece Susan socials though, or socials. When I was a child, I thought it meant that I was reading it in the book, and I thought it was Socs, S. O. C. S. It's good to see the movie and ironed that out. So I was one of those kids had a big vocabulary, but had no idea how to pronounce the words because they just read them, and it's still to this day, sometimes if I'm going to talk, and I want to use a big word. I will go to Google and Google and listen to how it's pronounced just to make sure because I know I've mangled so many words in my life just by seeing on the page and learning them that way.
Leah Jones 31:02
I feel a lot of college was finding out what words I had been saying wrong in my head for my whole life at that point. Absolutely.
Jen Michalski 31:11
Yeah. And I had a roommate who pointed out every single one.
Leah Jones 31:17
That's exhausting.
Jen Michalski 31:18
Yeah, she also wrote a book called Tex, which was about a boy and I think also in Tulsa, who lives with his brother, there's a real absence of parents. Her books that I've discovered, she wrote that was then this is now which I think was the last of the four that she wrote for people and that was in maybe 71, or 72. But there was some drug use and that it's in psychedelics. And I was a little too young to understand identify or actually scared me a little bit. It was like, Go Ask Alice which scared the crap out of me. It did its job until I got to college and tried all those drugs. But, for a while I was definitely afraid of psychedelics and any sort of drug. She also wrote Rumble Fish, which was sort of like the outsiders also, a boy and his brother. She had this great thing with nicknames because in Rumble Fish, the main character is Ricky and his brother was the Motorcycle Boy, and The Outsiders, Ponyboy, Soda Pop. So there were some great names that she had. Rumble Fish was also directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It was really arthouse film. I remember seeing it in the 80s when it came out and it came it was in black and white, except for there were some Siamese fighting fish – betta fish in a pet store late and then the movie. And the only thing in color in the whole movie, these fish which is kind of wild. I think the brother is colorblind.
Leah Jones 33:09
I know I saw The Outsiders. I know I read it. But I don't think in Rumble Fish I was aware of, but I don't think I ever saw it or read it.
Jen Michalski 33:20
Well, it's probably one of those that will come out again and TCM like I said, it's a Coppola film. And it is very artsy. It was probably a little more than it needed to be. It was very high art. But it was also this, I think about all the things I was introduced to from other things like I knew that Stan Ridgway, Wall Obudu did the soundtrack or the title song for Rumble Fish. So I kind of got into him and his music through The Outsiders. I discovered who Robert Frost was and got to read his poems and I did buy a Betta fish after Rumble Fish. We had some in the household for many years. I remember discovering Oscar Wilde through Morrissey. So it's funny just how that sort of crossover either like you'd read about bands and music and books or you read about author, learn about authors through song lyrics. Was there anything that you were introduced to a band or a book when you were growing up that just ran with it and it just became part of your identity.
Leah Jones 34:37
I was given for my high school graduation, one of my close friends in high school was the Sunday night DJ on the college radio station. And he gave me a copy of The Stranger by Camus for graduation of a particular translation of it was like a new modern translation of The Stranger. And I do have gone on to collect translations of The Stranger. Because it's a pretty, it's a globally published book. So I have a few different English translations. One that I bought the Shakespeare book company in Paris, I bought a copy of The Stranger. But then I also bought a copy of it in French, from a random guy selling books on the banks of this Sand River in Paris. And I bought it in a copy in Argentina, a friend who went home to China bought me a copy of it. So that's kind of a book that I have a long relationship with.
Jen Michalski 35:49
So how many copies do you have now?
Leah Jones 35:52
Seven or eight?
Jen Michalski 35:53
Wow. Well, if I see any of my troubles, I'm going to send you.
Leah Jones 36:00
What I still need for all the times I've been to Israel; I haven't bought a copy of it yet in Hebrew. So that is high on my list. But I'm sure there are. I was very confused when my period started because pads in the 80s didn't have like a belt. And are you there? God, it's me, Margaret. She had the pads with a belt. I was very mentally prepared for the belt. And then there wasn't one. So I remember just like not being prepared because of what I had read in the book so many times. But Judy Blume actually went back and she has continuously revised the technology. And are you there? God, it's me, Margaret, to be like, what was actually available.
Jen Michalski 36:58
We're gonna have to do some research on that. I just remember that terrifying me reading about I was why is this happening? And then I think I got this the nine or the 311 school from a guy and my brother's friend, Paul; because my mother took me aside one Saturday morning. She's like, I want to talk about something. And I was okay, and she's like, I heard you talking to your brother. Wow, this is so dated. I heard you talking to your brother while you're playing Atari this morning. And you told him that when you got your period, it's when you peed red blood, as if there's any other color. If he peed red blood when he had a baby. And first I was I don't know, I didn't say that. And I still have no recollection of saying that. And then I knew she make it up. Because I couldn't see her making up something like that. But in your teen, you have these blackouts or something because you just do not remember things you said and I didn't say that. But, probably said all kinds of shit. We were playing Atari. I do not remember because and then she sat me down and told me how it really worked. And then a week later, I got it. I was like, God, she cursed me!
Leah Jones 38:16
She jinxed you!
Jen Michalski 38:19
Didn't she like it? But I got scared. I'm kinda can't imagine growing up in a family where he didn't talk about it at all. I've heard so many stories of girls they started bleeding all day, and I thought they were dying. I mean, can you imagine it. I'm glad for this public service that Judy Blume has done, but it just scared the crap out of me when I read it. But I think it's because we're probably both precocious and you're reading above our grade level. And we're probably reading things that we should have still been reading fifth grade, whatever.
Leah Jones 38:54
Once I started reading, my sister was a stronger reader earlier than I was. And then I might have told you this story on our last interview. I want a copy of Stuart Little as a prize for something at school and my twin sister read it first. She read it before me and I was like that is the last time you're reading one of my books before me. And then from then on, then really until the start of COVID, I was a reader. And then COVID broke my brain.
Jen Michalski 39:26
Does your sister collects any books?
Leah Jones 39:34
She reads a ton still. She reads a lot on the Libby app now. I did get her a copy of, they did a 50th anniversary release of Bunnicula. And it's like a red velvet cover. So I got her a copy of that. I don't know if she has other books she collects, but she'll text me when she hears this.
Jen Michalski 40:07
Yeah, because I want to know, I'm gonna put that in your notes too. The books that your sister may be collecting.
Leah Jones 40:13
Yeah
Leah Jones 40:27
And Then We Came To The End, that is the book about losing your job by Joshua Ferris.
Jen Michalski 40:39
Okay, I'm gonna look that up. I mean, look it up on living. That's the first place I'm going to look. Great, it's a great app. Yeah, I'm just so amazed that going back to The Outsiders that it just has so much cultural staying power. Because, I'm sure kids are reading it now have no idea what Greasers and socials are and I think I had some awareness just because in the 70s, when I was a child the 50s were seeing such a huge resurgence. So it was exposed to American Graffiti and Shannon on Happy Days, whereas kids are just, what's happy days? What's a greasy?
Leah Jones 41:15
Well in episode two of one division?
Jen Michalski 41:18
Oh, yeah, I guess they do kind of get sneak it in there. Right.
Leah Jones 41:22
They sneak it in there a little bit. Yeah.
Jen Michalski 41:25
I don't know if there's still reading it now. But I do know that you can there's merch that still on the internet that you can get stay gold Ponyboy. But then there are some people that really work were introduced to it late and it was surprising. I was reading, there's an article I think in the New York Times or New Yorker from Lena Durham, who was, I didn't learn about this book until I was in college. And it's because someone in one of my classes that I had a crush on told me to Stay Gold. But you can buy sweatshirts and T-shirts that have Stay Gold on them. And all these online Cafe press like stores. The coolest thing that I discovered about The Outsiders is that the house that they filmed in the movie, that the Curtis Brothers lived in. It's now a museum. It’s The Outsiders house in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I knew we were talking about bucket list earlier. And this is actually would be something on my bucket list. Because I think I've driven through Oklahoma was unremarkable on the way here to the West Coast. But if I ever get back, I'd like to stop and see The Outsiders house. There's just a lot of not seen photos from the movie from behind the scenes and things like that. What happened was, I think it was scheduled for demolition and there was a there's a hip hop artist named Danny Boy O'Connor. And he was a big fan or he is a big fan of the movie and the novel. And he bought the house in2016. And he was able to save it. And now you can, I think for $10 go and get a little tour and see all the rooms and see all the photos and stuff like that. I'm sure there's a gift shop there too. And I'm excited about that.
Leah Jones 43:28
I met my friends who have moved to Tulsa in the last couple of years. And it's I think for like a weekend; I think there's lots to do there. It seems like there's a good food scene, it seems like they're having an according to their Instagram; really enjoying how they moved from Chicago to Tulsa. And they’re really enjoying it. And there’s really kind of a, I think because it's so affordable. There is kind of some either, they're recruiting people, they're openly recruiting people to move to Oklahoma, to move to Tulsa, to change the environment. It's not quite the word I want –get more people there, get more things happening.
Jen Michalski 44:16
Yeah, I see that a lot on some of the politics forums. There's always a bunch of people who are just like, we need to get a bunch of progressive minded people to move to some of these states and try and make a dent. And I think it's slowly happening just because living in California, it's so expensive. And even any room in the Pacific Northwest, the West Coast has become completely unaffordable. But in all the people move to Texas, but then they have property taxes and laws that are not very good for people, queer people, and people of color.
Leah Jones 44:58
I think businesses moved to Texas because they were drawn in by the nose, either it's no sales tax or no income tax. So they recruited all these huge companies to move and Plano just became nothing but corporate campuses. There was an era in my life when I went to plan out all the time for different companies. And then I think all those people have finally realized that the politics of Texas is not South by Southwest. They just couldn't imagine what it was really like there. And at that state, I interviewed James Tallarico, for answering the call, which is volunteering I do with military vets who want to run for office. People who've done public service, who are trying to decide if they are running for office is their next way to serve the country. And James Tallarico is a state Representative, so he's at the State Level, outside of Austin, and their state legislature meets once every two years for six weeks. Because their constitution was written before airplanes. So you think about how long it would have taken to travel from the Panhandle to Austin to the Capitol and back, and how are you going to ask a farmer or rancher to do that more than once every two years. And the whole state is governed with these convening laws developed before airplanes. And that, to me, that boggles my mind. And it partially explains how they're so capable of gerrymandering and strangling the people of Texas because their legislature never meets.
Jen Michalski 47:10
Yeah. Absolutely.
Leah Jones 47:14
But I do think going to Tulsa to see The Outsider Museum would be really nice.
Jen Michalski 47:19
I'm totally think you can do that. Like you said, in a long weekend and when it maybe gets a little warmer too. But yeah, I was trying to think, are there any other literary places or things that I'd want to see turned into a museum and it's kind of hard. I know that the house in James Joyce's the dead is the street. There is a house in Dublin that his aunt's owned and it was the inspiration you can go see that. I don't know if they give tours or whether it's a private home, but so I would definitely do that. I wish there was a House of Leaves house, but how would that work, I don't know. But I would definitely go to Milwaukee to see anything liberated, surely related. But that's not a book but that's as far as I got. So I'd love to. If anyone else has any suggestions from books or gift shops; I would love to hear the trends. This isn't my favorite right now.
Leah Jones 48:29
So I just picked up a graphic novel biography of Eugene V. Debs. So Eugene V. Debs was a Socialist Presidential candidate from my hometown in Terre Haute, Indiana. So his house across the street from my elementary school, had murals in the attic depicting his life. I don't know if it was the house he was born in or the house that he ran his presidential campaigns from is still in Terre Haute, Indiana. And he wrote speech upon speech and pamphlet upon pamphlet. So I think that's a good House Museum to visit.
Jen Michalski 49:13
Oh, and of course, though, I mean, I'm from Baltimore. So the Edgar Allan Poe house in Baltimore is one as well.
Leah Jones 49:22
There's also an Edgar Allen House in Providence, Virginia.
Jen Michalski 49:27
Oh, it is there? Oh, yeah, that's right. I think I do remember that. And there's probably something in Philly too, sort of this rivalry like who gets to claim him?
Leah Jones 49:36
I feel it's cliche. But I wouldn't mind going to Key West to see the Polydactyl Cats.
Jen Michalski 49:50
Oh, yeah. You should go. Well, I did. It was a long time ago in college. I did see it, did go to the Ernest Hemingway house.
Leah Jones 49:56
But I don't know, there's not a Little House on the Prairie house. I don't think. Every wardrobe is the possibility of being the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wardrobe. Any freestanding wardrobe you have to check them all.
Jen Michalski 50:18
Well, I am not a huge Harry Potter fan as some people. So I don't know if there's a place in London, where he lived the suburb that he lived in, or there's not anything like that, right?
Leah Jones 50:31
You can go to the platform nine and three quarters in London. So they have it. They've got a photo setup. And then on September 1 at 12, o'clock noon, every year they put it on the board, and they do a train call for the Hogwarts Express, on the day when they would have gotten to school. I don't know why I know that. But I do. Because there's the Christmas Story house in Cleveland.
Jen Michalski 51:05
Oh, I don't know that. That was that existed, too.
Leah Jones 51:09
Yeah. And it's a house in a residential neighborhood. And they've bought a few of the houses nearby, so you can walk through the house where they filmed it. And then I think other houses have the gift shops available. And then there's just a ton of signs – “Not to park on the street”. Because it is a residential neighborhood and the people do want to have their life. And that house I think is for sale, it's on the market, that museum.
Jen Michalski 51:46
Yeah, I had a really great book a long time ago, that was basically all the different locations in San Francisco in the Bay Area. Where different scenes from Alfred Hitchcock movies had taken place. And it did remember going up to Bodega Bay for the day. We were out there lost and just looking around and seeing where the birds were flying.
Jen Michalski 52:22
But yeah, she wrote those four novels, she wrote one more for YA, it was called Taming The Star Runner in 1988. I had moved on by then. So never read it. It's not on Libby. So I couldn't read it with this podcast, but I'm gonna definitely try and look it up over spring break and see if I can just find a physical copy somewhere and see how it compares to the S.E. Hinton Canon as it were, The Outsiders that was then and this is now, Rumble Fish and Tex.
Leah Jones 52:57
I need to ask my sister. That Was Then This Is Now, I'm pretty sure we had. I think we had The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, and That Was Then This Is Now. But I don't think Tex and Taming the Star Runner; I don't think we had those.
Jen Michalski 53:16
Yeah, Tex was last of the four big ones. And that one was published in 79. And then there was a nine-year interval between Tex and Taming the Star Runner. But Tex action, all those four books, The Outsiders, That Was Then This Is Now, Rumble Fish and Tex are all made into films. I know we talked about The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, but Tex was also a film with Matt Dillon, who played a Dolly in The Outsiders. And then, That Was Then This Is Now, I don't think I saw it. And I don't think it was any of the sort of Brat Pack. It's as it was. But yeah, I don't think I saw them with any of that. She's had a great career. It would be lovely to have other novels adapted into movies. And one of them still being read [Not audible[00:54:21]] and taught in schools. But yeah, she was just a big part of my life as a reader and as a writer growing up and I owe a lot to her books and her perspective and her just writing a story that she wanted to write that she didn't see. I'm sure she was growing up reading things Gone With The Wind or whatever. Her name is Susie Hinton, and the editors obviously wanted her to publish as S.E. Hinton because I think that they were worried that people wouldn't believe a woman could write a man's perspective.
Leah Jones 55:08
Right? How could she write about teenage boys?
Jen Michalski 55:10
Right? [Overlapping of discussing not audible [00:55:12]]. But that helped me too, also write in both sexes and genders. And I mean, there's just a lot that I that I owe to her. She was sort of my gateway drug to writing in a lot of ways. The ways she pitches you Harriet the Spy, I could spend another podcast talking about that. It’s one of my favorites. That's a real character who is also very complicated and complex, and human and terribly unlikable at times and frustrating. And you never saw that sort of character and children's literature before. And she also did all those lovely illustrations in the book herself. S.E. Hinton she wrote a few other books, but they weren't quite as popular. There was one. I think it was a Long Secret that came out a few years later that was told from Beth Ellen's kind of point of view. I'm still omniscient, but it was more about my thumb, and it wasn't Harry, it was more of a minor character in this book. But yeah, sort of similarities. Last thing I'll say, I remember just getting that from my aunt. My aunt went on vacation to a beach town or something. It was Virginia Beach, and she went into a bookstore. She knew that I like to read. I was 10 or 11. And she was asking the clerk what were some good books for young girl to read. And my aunt was like, I don't know, 22 at that time, and this clerk, my aunt was explaining to me thought that she was asking for books for herself. She thought my aunt was like, I don't know. 17, 15. I don't know. It's just kind of strange. I always looked young. She had that rough Mattia sort of young glow about her. So the clerk at the store recommended. And this is what my brother and I got. Because my brother didn't really care about reading, even though he was an English major in college, and brought home the aforementioned Bunnicula, The Secret Garden and Harriet the Spy. So I have her to thank for my introduction to Harriet the Spy, and The Secret Garden. And this bookstore clerks know what they're talking about. Definitely ask them for suggestions.
Leah Jones 57:45
So if you had the opportunity to do a fireside chat with S.E. Hinton, and, you know she's tired of answering the same old, same old questions. Do you have some questions that you kind of teed up? Should you ever run into her in an airport or on a stage?
Jen Michalski 58:09
No, I haven't. I just, I would be a little embarrassed. Like, what do you ask? How do you ask that perfect question? I guess I would just ask her if she still writes on the side things that she doesn't want people to see. I think as a writer, you just never stop writing. So I can't imagine she's stopped even if she's been reclusive. I think she likes horses and has a horse farm or something. Or she still lives in Tulsa. She likes not being a celebrity. She likes being she said a resident.
Leah Jones 58:47
Yeah.
Jen Michalski 58:51
So I don't get that happens. I mean, it's just happening to a lot of authors are like that. I mean, in Baltimore, we have and Tyler, also very reclusive, but also, he's written what 10 novels or something about Baltimore. So it's just how I think it's how Hinton and Tyler and lots of writers, including myself, just connect with people, because it's hard. And I'll do it because I have no shame to strike up a conversation with someone in public in line. We're just it's not what we're good at that sort of likes, soft skill of like, the early promotion or putting ourselves out there. So it's just, it's always ironic to me that authors are responsible for so much of their promotion when they're just so bad at it because they just don't like to even talk about it.
Leah Jones 59:41
It's so the opposite of writing. I have benefited from the need of authors to go and do their own promotion because they truly after you came on, your publicist reached out and was like that was amazing. Can I introduce you to some other authors? And she introduced me to a whole bunch of them. And so I still have authors coming on to this day because you came on with your last book. So it's been really fun. I've met so many people, and I have been able to start reading again. Because really, that COVID just wiped it out for me.
Jen Michalski 1:00:24
Oh, I understand. Me too, they were years what it wasn't reading at all, like less than a book. And I think joining a book club helped. Because then you felt like you had a deadline, you read that extra chapter every night, even if you didn't want to. But it felt like using a muscle I hadn't used in a long time. Once I started reading, and finding books I really enjoyed; I became hungry again for more and having that experience and emotional connection. So yeah, I'm glad that you found your way back to it.
Leah Jones 1:00:58
Yeah, I've been working on, I just finished listening to a Mike Nichols biography. Mike Nichols was in Nichols in May with Elaine May comedy duo of the 1950s. He was the Director of the Graduate; he won like seven Tony's for Best Director. And it's just I think within any cultural scene, there's the person who crosses a few boundaries and just seems like they know everyone. And Mike Nichols was active in or touching or responsible for so much Pop Theater and Movie culture that was created from like 1950 until his death in 2014. And he's almost like Forrest Gump. Because he's, after JFK was assassinated, he's one of the people that Jackieo will be seen on the town with because he's trustworthy and won't make a move and can talk to anyone, and we'll get her, he's just everywhere. And it was fascinating to me, because it also just shows how wealth and network and proximity is responsible for what makes it on the big screen. Oh, well, we rented this house in the Hamptons, next to Leonard Bernstein. And I got to know him swimming with our kids. Like, it's just all this stuff that was, it was wild and but engrossing to listen to. So that's like, the big story that I just finished listening to. And then I'm reading a book of poetry called Our Cancers by Dan O'Brien. His wife had breast cancer. And then almost as soon as she was in remission, he was diagnosed with I think colon cancer. And their daughter was a toddler. And so I'm testing the waters with it. What I might still be too close to my own experience to be reading cancer stuff right now, but it's really beautiful poetry.
Jen Michalski 1:03:30
Yeah, please send that one, too. Both of those actually, I'd love to take.
Leah Jones 1:03:35
The Company Of Strangers is coming out, you said January 10th. People can preorder now, which is very important. People could preorder it now and print it out and give it to somebody for Hanukkah or Christmas. And then tell them their book is on the way in January.
Jen Michalski 1:03:55
They could and I'm actually I bought like a big pile of vintage postcards, just off like eBay or something. Because I've always just loved old postcards and collecting them and for every person that pre orders a book I'm sending them a hand chosen postcard with a personal message of things. So I just get to share that my collection of postcards.
Leah Jones 1:04:23
I love that. How should people tell you they pre ordered a copy or is your…
Jen Michalski 1:04:29
Pre order from Braddock Avenue books. I have the list of the pre orders and the addresses and then as soon as pre orders close, I'm going to sit down and look at the list and start working on picking out postcards and writing them out to people who have ordered.
Leah Jones 1:04:51
Awesome. And where can people keep up with you online?
Jen Michalski 1:04:58
I'm on Twitter still. I joined high recently. I'm not sure if I'm going to stay there, we are all still looking for the backup plan for Twitter, but it seems to be a little stable, more stable now. So we'll see. And it's just, it's strange to been on Twitter for so long and built up so many friends and relationships then have to start over somewhere else. But, I mean, I guess we're all gonna, we all might have to do it. But at the same time, part of me is like, well, you know, if I don't catch on somewhere else, maybe that's okay. Maybe that's okay, too. That'll be few more hours of each day that I'll have to do something else. But yeah, thanks for asking. I am on Twitter @MichalskiJen one word.
Leah Jones 1:05:58
Yeah, on literary journal as well, right?
Jen Michalski 1:06:00
Yes, JMWW is and you can just do a search on that JMWW. We publish stellar republishing fiction, nonfiction, flash fiction, poetry, interviews. We have a couple of columns that run each month. And we're basically a weekly journal. Now we actually are. We used to do print anthologies for a while, and then I stopped. And we've recently teamed up with another publisher of Modern Times Publishing. And they are publishing a bunch of anthologies of different literary journalism that have been around. Earlier this year, they approached us and said, do you want to be the first anthology that we publish? So in 2023, we'll be back with a new anthology, and it's going to cover the best of maybe the last 10 years. It's going to be a pretty chunky book. But all our editors voted on the last 10 years of submissions. And we got all those together, and it's in the proof stages now. So we'll have that come out in 2023; sort of a big thank you to all of our contributors over the years.
Leah Jones 1:07:15
Nice. That's exciting. Well, Jen, thank you so much for coming back to talk about S.E. Hinton.
Jen Michalski 1:07:23
Thank you for having me. I always love talking to you. I always learn so much more from you than you probably learn from me, but I am just glad for the opportunity. You're so well, you're so well rounded and well versed in so many things.
Leah Jones 1:07:36
Or I appreciate I will take that in framing. I am like a sieve or a flypaper for trivia. I'm really good on trivia teams.
Jen Michalski 1:07:48
Good. I'm gonna remember that when I pull out my Trivial Pursuit, and I gonna have to Zoom you in as my partner.
Leah Jones 1:07:55
Oh, I used to keep a backup coffee copy of Trivial Pursuit in my car. When I lived in Colorado, in case I went to a party, and it wasn't fun enough. I'd be like, Hey, guys, I have a solution.
Jen Michalski 1:08:09
Oh, that's pretty intense.
Leah Jones 1:08:12
This was in 2001. 1999 to 2001, I would go to my car and get my copy of Trivial Pursuit. Just you know, in case we weren't having much fun.
Jen Michalski 1:08:21
Now did it live in it up? Because I have to say I had a similar impulse in college, but it was usually I was really drunk. And I was like, let's play Pink Floyd. And that was a party killer. But what did this have the opposite effect. I was alright, three hours of intense trivia.
Leah Jones 1:08:41
Sometimes they would let me, sometimes we would play and sometimes it was just a bit but I literally kept one of my copies of Trivial Pursuit on my car.
Jen Michalski 1:08:55
That's ballsy and awesome.
Leah Jones 1:09:00
Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
Jen Michalski 1:09:02
Thank you.
Announcer 1:09:04
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your Favorite Things.
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Letterkenny and Pirates with Kevin Alves
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Kevin Alves, a Chicago-based podcaster, performer and producer, joined Leah to talk about the Canadian shows Letterkenny with Shoresy before a deep dive into pirates.
Kevin also turns the table and gets Leah to tell the whole story of how Jason Mantzoukas recommended Finding Favorites to everyone at the Chicago Theater on erev Halloween.
Follow Kevin and Big Talk Podcasts online.
BigTalkChicago.com
Instagram Big Talk Podcasts
Show Notes
Squirmles
Letterkenny
Shoresy
Scooby-Doo! really did have a thing for pirates
Goonies
PirateSurgeon.com/
Pirate movie locations
Doughboys: Pirates Dinner Adventure
Treasure Island Pirate Battles in Vegas
Sterling Festival
The Pirates book series!
History of punch
Pirate health insurance
The Treachery of Leeks tote bag is now available, if you like niche fandom tote bags.
The West Wing Weekly Podcast
Fronds with Benefits: Jason Mantzoukas on Home Cooking
HDTGM
All of Hrishi Hirway's links
Sunday Nov 27, 2022
We loved Twitter with Monica Reida and John Morrison
Sunday Nov 27, 2022
Sunday Nov 27, 2022
Two guests for one topic - Monica Reida returns and John Morrison joins for the first time to talk with Leah about their shared love of Twitter. We talk about weird Twitter, Colonel Tribune Tweet-ups, Black Lives Matter, romance and so much more. As of today, Twitter still exists.
Part 1: Monica Reida
Elf Yourself
David Carr
Magic the Gathering
Gapersblock
Jewish Jerk of the Wrestling World
Television Without Pity
Abbott Elementary
Severance
Arcane
Twitter @monica_reida
Pillowfort
Mastodon @SentientCabbage@eldritch.cafe
Part 2: John Morrison (aka Local Celebrity)
Twitter is Ruling SXSW
Flickr Chicago Tweetups
ChicagoNow is Chicago history
Matt Ryd
Jess Godwin
Lindsay Ellis
Best Day on the Internet
Spiderman Turn Off the Dark
Twitter @spideyonbway
Subism.com/links
Sunday Nov 13, 2022
Jasmine Davila and Indoor Fun for Winter
Sunday Nov 13, 2022
Sunday Nov 13, 2022
Jasmine Davila is back and she's ready to talk about things to do inside during winter in Chicago. We talk about special movie events at the Music Box, jousting in the suburbs and vaginal steams at Korean spas.
Follow Jasmine online
https://twitter.com/jasmined
https://www.instagram.com/jasmined/
Show Notes
Music Box Theatre
the Logan Theatre
Medieval Times
Medieval Times union efforts
Namit Cafe
King Spa
Aire
Interview with director of RRR
RRR
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
Glengarry Glen Ross with Matthew David Brozik
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
Long Island-based author and humorist Matthew David Brozik is on Finding Favorites to talk about his favorite things - potato chips, sleeping and super heroes. More specifically, the last ten minutes of the 1992 movie Glengarry, Glen Ross. We also talk about REM, XTC and TMBG... and TLC.
Matthew's new book Odder Space is available on Amazon in print and digital (though he'd really rather you choose the print copy). Odder Space is a humorous upper middle grade sci-fi novel with awe-inspiring spaceships, belligerent aliens, phlazer battles, pseudoscientific gobbledygook, and an artificial intelligence with a serious morale problem... but also spunk, heart, and some important life lessons. Mostly it’s just a lot of fun.
Keep up with Matthew at IMDB.name
Show Links
Introduction to Finding Favorites for fans of Jason Mantzoukas
@HrishiHirway
HDTGM Podcast
Helix Mattress
Thuma bed frame
Comphy Sheets
Big Fig Mattress
Middle Grade vs Young Adult
18 Wheels on a Big Rig
18 Wheels in Roman Numerals
Glengarry, Glen Ross
David Mamet
The Usual Suspects
XTC
TLC
R U Talking REM to Me (podcast)
Matthew David Brozik_mixdown
1:25:24
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Leah Jones, Matthew David Brozik
Matthew David 00:00
Hello, my name is Matthew David Brozik and my favorite thing is, Glengarry Glen Ross.
Announcer 00:06
Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast, where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.
Leah Jones 00:19
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. It is Sunday, November 6, 2022. In a couple hours, I'll be sitting down with Matthew David Brozik to interview him about his new book, Odder Space and his favorite things. But in order to get this episode out before midnight, I thought I would record my introduction first. So I don't know what Matthew and I will have talked about. What a week it's been! Last Sunday, after I published my episode with Eden, I went to see; How Did This Get Made, Live. I talked about that a lot in the upfront last week that it was, how did this get live was back at the Chicago theater that I had seen Hrishikesh Hirway, and Jenny Owen Youngs earlier in the week at sleeping village, the tote bag, that joke, my reverse merging two celebrity podcasters and straight up celebrities. And when Jocelyn and I went to How Did This Get Made? We were in the third row, even with Jason Mantzoukas. And throughout the show he talked to me a few times, and ended the show by asking me the name on my podcast and recommending it to everyone, who was left in the Chicago theater as the night wound down. And I've spent the whole week recovering from that it was really exciting. And I don't know, if he'd actually got the tote bag or not? I guess it means enough to me that he knows it exists and probably saw a picture from Hrishi. I did get it on stage, thanks to my friend Jocelyn. When you listen to the Morbius episode, maybe you'll hear a little bit of that interaction. But I doubt it. You might hear my question. I think my question will probably make the episode but that's about it. But it was just really cool. I've been a big fan of, How Did This Get Made, for many years now, five or six years. I just have a really clear memory of being at a happy hour, after a leadership retreat at a previous employer, before I was laid off, which would have made me, I think 39 or 40 at the time. It's such a weird, clear memory, explaining How Did This Get Made and who Jason Mantzoukas wasn't what they knew him from, which at the time was mostly the league. Anyway, that happened, that was huge. I finally got the results of my ADHD evaluation, which I will take to the rest of my medical team and see what we can do with it. Essentially, I would have ADHD exclamation point, if I hadn't had the last two years of cancer, and the sarcoidosis diagnosis, because they can never separate out the impact of sarcoidosis on my brain from my current cognitive functioning. But essentially all signs point to ADHD, except for that 4 MRIs of my brain that point to sarcoidosis. So hopefully, I will get to try. I'll start working specifically on some ADHD interventions and maybe try some medication. But it was frustrating. It's such a good professional that I worked with to get this evaluation. But I am very frustrated that I continue to be someone who is considered a complex patient with complex medical history. When I'm like no, no, no, I was really good until I was like 39 and then you know like it's just been a hard few years but that doesn't mean it's complex forever, but it kind of does. So that's just frustrating hard to come to terms with. He also recommended that I find a health psychologist somewhere to start working through the trauma of the cancer diagnosis, even though it was stage one and it was an “easy” (you know, quote unquote easy) treatment that I still like clearly have a lot of anxiety left over from as I come out of this year and a year half of cancer treatment. I am going to try and go vote midterms are on Tuesday. So I have gone through all of the election mailers in my mailbox and found some of the most useful ones, made some notes on it. And I'm going to go vote in between recording this and then talking to Matthew later this afternoon. It was spring forward fall back. Most of the clocks in my house have changed. Some have not, some are now three hours off. I don't know, how they even got two hours off. I mean, it's just been, what a huge week. It's just been a big week, but also feels kind of like nothing has happened. It is finally fall weather in Chicago. Climate change has kept it a very warm fall. We had beautiful colors but because of it but 70 degrees and November was unsettling. So the incredible winds that we get rains, we got this weekend felt a little bit more appropriate to the season. I don't know with that. I am buying myself another T-shirt quilt because I am also recovering from bronchitis this week. But as part of that, they put me on steroids. And so I suddenly have a lot of energy that I haven't had in months. And so, I tackled my out-of-control shelves and dug out 16 T-shirts to turn into a T-shirt quilt, which opens up room for more appropriate clothing that I need to wear this winter. So I'm sending off T-shirts to memory stitch again. And I don't know, I guess, it's not a nothing happened week. It's a lot of things happen. With that, I hope that you get out and vote that you're voting for Democrats that you're voting in support of access to health care workers’ rights, unions, bodily autonomy, access to free devoting, access to the social safety net, increased taxes, wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster, get your flu shot, and keep enjoying your favorite things.
Leah Jones 08:00
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. Today, I am talking with Matthew David Brozik. Matthew and I have been online friends now for a very long time and have never actually spoken to each other. But we have a common, we've got one friend in common. I think only one. And that's how we know each other. But Dave, what Matthew? Are you doing this afternoon?
Matthew David 08:31
I'm doing very well. Thank you. I'm doing great. And I just want to mention that this is my first time as a podcast guest.
Leah Jones 08:40
What?
Matthew David 08:42
And yeah, I know. Can you believe that with a voice like this?
Leah Jones 08:43
Truly, with a voice like this. The Microphone?
Matthew David 08:47
Exactly. The microphone belongs to my wife. I had to dig it out of a closet. But where I put it, actually, I put it in the closet. So I was the only one, who knew where it was. And being very interesting, which…
Leah Jones 09:02
I will come to find out. I know that you're interesting on Facebook. And I know that you have stayed friends with Ronnie for longer than anyone should. So I suspect, you're funny and interesting.
Matthew David 09:17
I am, as is Ronnie and we'll talk about Ronnie in a minute because that's really, he's looking forward to that. It's not going to be interesting to anybody else in the world, but our mutual friends. So I just wanted to say because I've never been on a podcast and I assume this is going to be a nerve-racking experience. I poured myself a cocktail as one does, and I made sure to put in a generous amount of ice both so that I don't fall asleep in 20 minutes. And so that you hear the tinkling of ice cubes, right, but now I'm afraid, afraid might not be the word, concerned that the tinkling won't be sufficient, so please, would you add some ice tinkling in post. Just to make sure because that's the kind of podcast guest I want people to think of me as. That sounds more like applause.
Leah Jones 10:12
That was applause.
Matthew David 10:14
That was applause.
Leah Jones 10:15
I have cheering, clapping, laughing, drum rolls.
Matthew David 10:18
But no ice tinkling?
Leah Jones 10:20
No Ice tinkling.
Matthew David 10:21
All right, well.
Leah Jones 10:22
So, I'll see, what I can find.
Matthew David 10:24
I'll send you something, if need be.
Leah Jones 10:22
A clean sample.
Matthew David 10:31
Yes. Actual ice tinkle. Yes, I will. You know, the last time I sent someone tinkle. The feds showed up at my... Okay, so we're talking about, oh, so here's the other reason that I was nervous. I'm not actually but as your audience knows, probably better than I do. This is a show about favorites. And the conceit is brilliant. It's somewhat reactionary to algorithms. And the idea is an interesting and or available person comes on and recommends, suggests things that they like, and I sent you an initial list of things that I like. And I was then embarrassed by my list because I realized that so many of the things that I like are things that people already know about, and I felt wow, this is going to be awful. If I just recommend things to people, do you like Ghostbusters? Have you ever heard of that? Because or like, oh, what's
Leah Jones 11:37
It’s an independent film from the 80s. You would really say that, New York is the character in the movie.
Matthew David 11:44
There are four or five, six main characters, but also Manhattan is as much of a character in Ghostbusters, as it is in such other films as say, Manhattan. But, we're just without the luxury. So I started thinking about things that I like, and I realized, I really like a lot of things that everybody also likes. And I thought, wow, what a terrific guest I would be, if I just start recommending things like Star War.
Leah Jones 12:19
The Avengers, Star Wars
Matthew David 12:20
Do you like Spiderman?
Leah Jones 12:23
Have you ever heard [Not audible [00:12:25]]?
Matthew David 12:25
And then because I have problems and everything is a joke to me. I started thinking, what if I came on and really committed to this bit, where I just recommended things like money or potato chips. And I like just sincerely suggested, hey, do you guys have you heard of sleeping? It's amazing at the end of the day.
Leah Jones 12:50
Yeah. I could straight up talk to you for an hour about sleeping because one; What sheets are you using these days?
Matthew David 12:57
I think, they're all cotton maybe bamboo or we have a wide variety, we have eight pillows, there's two of us. The Mrs. and I, we have eight pillows, so eight pillowcases because you know we [Not audible[00:13:10]]
Leah Jones 13:10
Are they [Not audible] or are they acrylic like what like in Memory foam.
Matthew David 13:15
You know, it's I think we have one of everything. Like we definitely have and this isn't necessarily a recommendation but [Not audible] I will recently bought. No we bought a Helix mattress and I assume; I'm allowed to name names because we're Finding Favorites and I do like it very much. I don't know that I go out of my way to recommend it because I don't sleep on that many different mattresses especially now that I'm married. So you know, stick to the one that we have. But we did upgrade recently from a spring mattress to whatever this other kind is considered just no springs.
Leah Jones 13:52
I just got, I have a totally Instagram bed now. So I have the Thuma bed frame, which I am obsessed with. It's the one that is essentially Lincoln Logs, but like it's Japanese engineering, adult tinker toys. There are two screws in the whole thing. It's just well for the joints. Beautiful. I have the Big Fig Mattress, which is specifically a mattress for heavier people. I am obsessed with sheets from a company called Comphy. They make sheets for Spas. So it's meant to be like massage tables are meant to be washed all the time and every time you wash them they get softer.
Matthew David 14:41
Do you have a guest bedroom?
Leah Jones 14:42
Ideal.
Matthew David 14:43
Can I visit?
Leah Jones 14:44
You may.
Matthew David 14:45
Is it a fancy? Like I realized, it's not going to be as nice?
Leah Jones 14:48
Not as nice but they are quality sheets. I upgraded to like a bamboo, a bamboo sheet for that. And then I've got a really nice T-shirt quilt with like fleece on one side and T-shirt, which I think is a perfect quilt.
Matthew David 15:02
That sounds terrific. We don't have anything. This might be, why I don't sleep very well. And worrying about being interesting on a podcast.
Leah Jones 15:13
So I guess, what I'm saying is even if you'd come to me with sleep and potato chips, I have a potato chip, I tried last night. I think, I threw the bag away. But it is a new, it's Lay's. And it is the shape of a checks. But it is big.
Matthew David 15:32
It's like square? Like a pillow? Gotcha.
Leah Jones 15:36
A potato chip. So it's like a potato chip Poof. It's like only the ridges woven together into a salty poof. It is amazing.
Matthew David 15:45
Anyway, yeah. So it sounds like you live a very pillow rich life.
Leah Jones 15:50
Pillow rich life, snack rich life, Lot of candy. I do what I can.
Matthew David 15:56
You like candy? And have you heard of Halloween?
Leah Jones 16:01
Do I have a second podcast called Candy Chat Chicago.
Matthew David 16:05
Oh, that's right. You know what, and Ronnie, who we still have not explained to anyone mentioned that to me when I told him. So as soon as you invited me. I immediately then emailed Ronnie. And you don't let's not tell anybody who Ronnie is. Let's just get go and just let them try to figure it out. And, I said, oh, so Leah asked me to be on our podcast. And I'm really excited. And he said which one? And I was like, I Okay, you lost me. And he said, I assume it's the Finding Favorites, unless it's the candy one. So that's how I immediately knew that you had a second podcast. I mean, most people, and I don't know, if you know this, but I did some research. Most people don't even have one podcast. Although we're getting to that point where I guess on your typical person, does have one.
Leah Jones 16:57
You, typical person has a podcast that stops at six episodes.
Matthew David 17:02
What number is this? Seven?
Leah Jones 17:05
Seven.
Matthew David 17:06
Okay.
Leah Jones 17:08
Number Seven, 137 something like that. In the range.
Matthew David 17:13
That is impressive. I am impressed. Color me impressed.
Leah Jones 17:17
So Matthew, you have a book just launched?
Matthew David 17:22
I do under launch.
Leah Jones 17:23
Odder space.
Matthew David 17:23
I shouldn't talk over you.
Leah Jones 17:27
It's fine.
Matthew David 17:28
You're pushing my book, and I'm speaking over you.
Leah Jones 17:33
So you've just launched Odder Space. And it is an upper grade sci-fi adventure, upper middle grade. It’s different than, why?
Matthew David 17:43
It is. And maybe, I shouldn't confess that I'm fairly new to this age range. As far as writing, I'm not new to the actual age range, because I am in my late 40s. So I passed through these ages.
Leah Jones 17:56
You survived them.
Matthew David 17:57
I did. But I used to, and still do write for adults, I don't write adult literature. But I didn't write for the younger set, as we might say. But a good friend of mine, who does write for middle grade students, twisted my arm and got me to start writing for younger readers. And so I learned very quickly what the gradations are there, and YA is probably what most people are most familiar with. Because the A and YA, obviously is adult and young adult novels are fairly popular with adult readers as well. And they tend to be at least one serious theme, whether it be death or disease or sexuality. And I have no interest in any of those things. I have no interest in death, or dying, or sexuality, just in my actual life, not just reading about them. So I aimed a little lower, not in terms of quality, clearly, well, not clearly. But in terms of grade and reading level, not coincidentally, because my daughter is now 10 and I wrote a first children's novel two years ago, and she was my main audience. So that was solidly middle grade, which is a little younger than YA and tends to be defined by not having anything serious, not having any adult.
Leah Jones 19:34
Not having a dark theme or heavy life lesson.
Matthew David 19:37
But they are chapter books that typically are geared toward the middle grade sets, a figure middle school or like fifth grade to seventh grade and then upper middle grade would be, just shift that up one or two years. And the rule of thumb, which again, I learned a couple of years ago is that younger readers tend to prefer their protagonists about a year older than they are. So I didn't necessarily set out to write an upper middle grade novel with Odder Space, I think, I first decided the age of the protagonist. And he is a 13 year old boy. At this point, as we sit here, and I reminisce about the past couple of years of writing this book, I don't remember why I decided that he would be 13. But it seemed that I needed him to be in a certain place at a certain time, and the certain places outer space on a spaceship.
Leah Jones 20:45
In time reference
Matthew David 20:47
Exactly right. Yes, that, you know, that's what's missing. That'll be in the sequel. God willing. And so then once I determined that he was going to be 13, then I realized, okay, this is firmly upper middle grade. So I'm saying 9 to 13 is the audience but, most of my read, I mean, all of my first readers are adults. They're my friends, including Ronnie. The aforementioned and soon to be mentioned again, many times, Ronnie, who has read the book, at least twice. And so my readers have been, again, adults, but and then my daughter read a proof. And she stayed up reading it. She didn't originally find it very interesting in manuscript form. But then I got a proof of the book, asked her to read it, it felt like a book that may have made a difference, just the size, instead of reading a manuscript on 8 and a half by 11, cheap white paper, she was holding a paperback. And I was very flattered. When early the next morning, she burst into my bedroom, which we were talking about earlier, you and I, your audience will recall, there's a bed with sheets. And actually she burst into the room and she said, Dad, your book is great. And I said, get out of my room. I'm trying to sleep. And I said, No, thank you. That's really wonderful, that means so much to me. I said, did you read the whole thing? She said, I couldn't put it down. I read the whole thing. I stayed up. And I read it. And I didn't even want to put it down to go to the bathroom. And I said being a good parent. I said, well, you know, you should put a book down and go to the bathroom if you need to. And she said, Oh, I went to the bathroom. I just took the book with me.
Leah Jones 22:48
That is the ultimate compliment.
Matthew David 22:51
It is. It really is. And then I said okay, you hold on to that copy. And please, just don't put that on a shelf and put it back on the communal, don't put it back. Exactly. Keep that off the coffee table in the living room. So Odder Space is an upper middle grade sci-fi book. It's humorous. It is very much in the general Star Trek vein in that the all of the action or most of the action takes place on a spaceship. And we were joking earlier about the New York City being as much of a character and as any Star Trek fan knows the Starship Enterprise or other ships are a character and Odder Space takes it a little further in that the ship called the Amity because the powers that be didn't want to call it the starship friendship, because that would sound ridiculous. So they called it the starship Amity has a personality. It has an artificial intelligence on board named MANI it's an acronym MANI - Mail Automated Networked Interface. And MANI is very much a character with a personality and a problem. Manny is very sad. So that was really the genesis of this book. I was thinking about classic science fiction adventures like Star Trek, like Star Wars, like Battlestar Galactica, like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I made a list of what made each of them unique. What was the driving force of each of them and they were all slightly different? And I realized that there was a sort of an opening for a different approach, which is, what if a crew were on a spaceship and the ship itself were their biggest problem? And that led me to the idea of an artificial intelligence that just doesn't want to do its job anymore? And I was thinking, why would that be? And I don't want to give anything away. And I'm not going to, but essentially, just before the opening of the book, there's a catastrophe that really depresses the AI on the ship. And that leads to, well, I want to say hilarity and also other things. And that's the premise of the book. And I decided to write it.
Leah Jones 25:14
It's an AI that has a different goals than How(couldn’t understand the movie name) from 2001?
Matthew David 25:20
Yes, in fact, again, without going into too much detail, you might even say a completely different goal, because How(couldn’t understand the movie name) entire goal was self-preservation. And this is an AI that basically has given up and doesn't want to go on. He has suffered a loss, that only he really feels it in a way that none of the humans on board feel and he just doesn't want to go on. And, the only one who really connects with him is the main character Jeremy, who goes by his nickname Jerm, which is a bit ironic because his mother is the doctor on the ship. And just circling back to the Star Trek, I had an immediate reservation, of course, because the kid on Star Trek The Next Generation, Wesley Crusher, played by Wil Wheaton was the female ship doctor's son. And that's the exact scenario that we have here. And I wondered, hey, is that going to be to derivative? And then ultimately, I said, you know, what? It's fine. And chances are most 9 to 13 year old readers these days. We're not watching Star Trek The Next Generation, and just won't make the Westlake Crusher connection.
Leah Jones 26:46
And if their parents read it and catch a nod to it, great. Something they recognize.
Matthew David 26:52
And in fact, there are plenty of I don't want to say Easter Eggs, but there are plenty of nods to Star Trek and other classic sci-fi properties in there. There's a very central key piece of equipment onboard the Amity, called a spectrometer. And it's a mass spectrometer and one of the problems is that they haven't worked out all the Kirk's in the mass spectrometer yet. So there's a great deal of wordplay, that it's okay, if the primary audience isn't going to get but spell check certainly didn't get the jokes. But the adults will and I encourage children of all ages, adults of all ages to read well, maybe not children of all ages, but anyone, eight, nine and up, I think they'll get a real kick out of it. And I loved writing it. I'm extraordinarily proud of the book. And I'm excited. I really hope people get to read it. I hope they just do and love it as much as I do.
Leah Jones 28:01
Amazing. So it is available now. People can order it on Amazon. It's also available on Kindle, but they should order the print copy.
Matthew David 28:10
Oh, absolutely. I don't love eBooks. And I'm very glad that Amazon's publishing platform allows now paperback books. And a lot of work went into the book not just writing it but the cover design. The interior was designed. It's a beautiful little book.
Leah Jones 28:32
What chapter headings, did you settle on. Ronnie and I were talking about.
Matthew David 28:37
Oh, numbers. So this was my daughter's actual contribution to the book. I had originally written them out as words, chapter one, chapter two all the way to chapter 20. And hadn't given that a lot of thought even though with each manuscript that I write, I do think about what kind of chapter headings I want. Sometimes they'll be actual names of chapters, sometimes it's just numbers. And this time I had written it out and I don't think I really thought about it until I got the first proof and thought this is an opportunity to maybe, Mary, the chapter headings a little bit more to the to the substance, especially because it was in a nicer font. And I realized, there's nothing special about just writing out Chapter 1, Chapter 20. So I noodle around and I asked my daughter, and I asked Ronnie and some other friends and we had almost settled on spelling out the word chapter and writing the number in numerals. And then my daughter, an actual certified genius. I certified her. I'm certified as a genius certifier. It's a kind of a loop, but she said well, why not just the numbers and is like giant embarrassing light bulb went off over my head and I was like, that is the way to go. But 01,…. So really emphasize that binary computer. And speaking of binary, there was a moment where I very briefly considered putting the numbers in binary and just zeros and ones and then I realized this is that's a bridge too far. So I stopped that probably would have been off putting. There's a time and a place. Actually, Roman numerals would be hilarious. Just completely anachronistic. Just absurd.
Leah Jones 30:33
I inexplicably have you know that song, there's 123456 wheels on a big rig. And then it's like count by twos. There's 2 4 6 8 10 12
Matthew David 30:46
I do not know.
Leah Jones 30:50
So there's a verse of that song.
Matthew David 30:52
That's Pearl Jam?
Leah Jones 30:54
It's Pearl Jam. Covered also by the Beatles.
Matthew David 30:59
Pearl Jam covered by the Beatles. I don't like the way it usually goes. But okay.
Leah Jones 31:03
While it was interesting. And there's one verse of it. It's like Roman numerals. How many wheels on a big rig I IV, VI, VI, VI X X that like, and that is a how I can count to 18 in Roman numerals.
Matthew David 31:20
That's I'm going to have to look up that. So if you can write Beatles, how's that Spelled? B E A T. It's wordplay right?.
Leah Jones 31:31
B E E D Valley, the Beatles
Matthew David 31:35
I'll have to look up that song. See if you can find it and make it like the tag to this.
Leah Jones 31:43
So Odder space available now. People can find out more information on IMDB dot name.
31:50
Matthew David 31:49
Don't go to IMDB.com because I've never been in a movie But with a voice like this. But yes, so IMDb dot name, my own personal and spend some time there, noodle around. There's all sorts of short story, short humor pieces, no videos of cats? I don't like that..
Leah Jones 32:12
Early when we like met, you had published a book called Taking IV Seriously, which you no longer make available?
Matthew David 32:20
Yes.
Leah Jones 32:23
Why? Copyright problem?
Matthew David 32:25
No, it's entirely. [Not Audible] You know what I forgotten about?
Leah Jones 32:32
Honestly, My basic understanding of copyright. Copyright, Infringement, patent law comes from that book. In a previous life, you were a copyright attorney, right?
Matthew David 32:45
Yes, I practiced for a decade and decided to then become a copywriter. Which is very confusing to people who meet me. And it's why I just don't like meeting people anymore. Because I have to explain, because if they've heard even a little bit about me, then I'm already, we're already into deep. They say so you used to be a lawyer. And you did copyright law. And now you're a copywriter. And what's the difference? And I say, who looks really interesting, that guy over there. And when they when they look, I just run usually toward the bar. But yes, I published a novella, it was the first thing that I published. It was the first longer piece of fiction that I wrote, longer than any short story, but not quite novel length. And I like it very much. And it was something I labored on for about 10 years. And I had started, when I was in Law school. And I think, I never quite cracked it. I never quite solved it. And even though I released it, I reached a point or there came a time when it was no longer being purchased. And I think I released it maybe seven, eight years ago, I don't honestly don't remember at this point. And maybe even longer than that. It maybe, it was 10 years ago. But as was with most things that had a shelf life. And once it reached the point that whoever was going to buy it had bought it. I started thinking this is not necessarily what I want to be representing me anymore, because I had written more and better and longer things. And it bugged me a little bit that it wasn't quite as long as maybe it could or should have been. And I just figured you know, what I can because it was self-published, I can just sort of take it down. And I did and that's not to say that I wouldn't put it back at some point. But it just felt like okay, I'm better represented by everything that I've written and released since then, and there have been a few things. I think, I've got five or six books available. And one of which is a novella intentionally; Danger with a Hard G.
Leah Jones 35:18
Harrison Bennett Novella.
Matthew David 35:20
Yes. Harrison Bennett Novella, the main character is Harrison Dangar Bennett, hence the danger with a Hard G. Something else. Another thing I had a hell of a great time writing. And, but that was intentionally a novella. I just wanted to write a short, tight, sort of comic, hardboiled mystery novel. And I did and there was never a battle for page length or word count. And I never felt like, oh, this is coming in too short. If anything, I tried very hard to keep it to novella length, just get in and get out, make the jokes, hit those beats. And I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of everything that I've released. But something about IV, I just figured you know, what, maybe I'd like to not take it back. If given the opportunity, I wouldn't go to people's homes and deleted off their Kindle. And that one, in fact, I only released as an eBook. There is no paperback version of that. So I would have to break into people's homes and access their devices. And that's time consuming, honestly.
Leah Jones 36:32
It is, but it gives you the chance to travel the country, travel the world,
Matthew David 36:36
The world? Exactly.
Leah Jones 36:40
According to my inbox that I apparently never clean out, taking IV seriously, was released on September 5, 2013.
Matthew David 36:49
Okay, so 50 years ago. What did you say? 2013?
Leah Jones 36:56
2013, Labor Day.
Matthew David 36:58
Life lifetime ago. That was like, I wasn't, still practicing Law. Maybe I was, I don't know. But at least for at least, four jobs ago. Four copywriting jobs ago.
Matthew David 37:26
So do you want to hear about any of my favorites?
Leah Jones 37:26
Yeah, I was just about to ask you.
Matthew David 37:29
I should let you be in charge. You drive this train.
Leah Jones 37:31
I will do the job of hosting. How about that? I just for the record, the first list you sent me was not like, so common. Words and writing, comedians and jokes. Glen Glengarry Glen Ross, Ecstasy the band and Back to the future. So, other than writing, writing has been pretty well covered because they do interview a lot of authors.
Matthew David 37:58
How dare you?
Leah Jones 37:59
I know. How dare, they're constantly be authors, with books to promote who also have favorite things they want to talk about. But then you're like, okay, in addition to boring things like Star Wars and Ghostbusters, you've got Jeeves and Wooster, The Adult Short Stories of Roald Dahl, Bands with Letters For Names, English Madrigals, The Last 10 Minutes Of Glengarry Glen Ross and really clever comedians,
Matthew David 38:28
Can I ask you have you seen Glengarry Glen Ross? Like are you familiar with the film?
Leah Jones 38:32
I think, Glengarry Glen Ross is like always be selling and shut up and drink the coffee. Right? Like they're angry and they're [Not audible]
Matthew David 38:41
Both wrong. Well, I mean, you were close, but everybody listening is laughing now.
Leah Jones 38:47
Always be closing?
Matthew David 38:48
Always be closing. Excellent. And put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers. But yes, you're familiar enough to make everybody who loves this film cringe and that was excellent. But wait, have you seen it? Or are you just, my voice is cracked.
Leah Jones 39:11
I don't know, if I've seen it or if I just know, it from movie podcasts and Tumblr.
Matthew David 39:15
Wow! We're here now. This is the moment. Glengarry Glen Ross is originally a play by David Mamet. It was successful as a play and mounted, I believe originally both in London and New York, I think first one than the other, and was then fairly quickly adapted into a film, which David Mamet then wrote the screenplay for and the original play. The play is just 2 acts three scenes per act, two locations. The movie is essentially those same two locations with others sprinkled in. He fleshed it out. Added much more dialogue, more characters and famously added Alec Baldwin's character who is a representative of the head office that these salesmen work for, who is sent to their office one night to give them a very abusive, motivational talk.
Leah Jones 40:23
Is he Glengarry Glen Ross?
Matthew David 40:26
No. I hate the title.
Leah Jones 40:31
It’s so hard to say.
Matthew David 40:32
It is. Yes.
Leah Jones 40:33
Glen Garry Glen Ross, Glen Ross.
Matthew David 40:38
No. It's one. Glen Garry is one word. And then Glen Ross, two words, and they refer to two different land. So the salesmen are in the business of selling land, mainly and Florida and Arizona, basically just crappy land that they're selling to unsuspecting. It's like a boiler room operation of selling land. And that's just not worth what they're claiming it is. And Glengarry Farms is one of the parcels or one of the sets of land that they used to sell. And that's referred to at one point, and then, or Glen Ross farms and then Glengarry. Glen Garry is the new set of leads that they got, I literally watched this movie again two days ago, and I'm confused. But the new leads, the Glengarry leads is, what the movie is really all about. They're the new hot leads, the people who might be interested in purchasing land, and the salesmen all want to get their hands on these leads, but they're not allowed, because they're not good enough. So those leads will only go to the closers. And these guys are not. So I hate the title of this movie. And if I ever met David Mamet, and David, if you're listening, please email me. And explain to me why you couldn't have named this play, your play anything else? Or the joke among the actors, I understand was that they used to refer to it as death of a fucking salesman, because there is so much cursing in this. I once brought the DVD with me to work, when I was working on a weekend and I figured, you know what, I'll just, I'll keep this on. I was really just at the office on call more than anything. And I figured, I'll just have this play in the background, and I must have forgotten, how much cursing is there and I didn't have headphones on and just like within the first 30 seconds, I realized, Oh, nope, nope, nope. can't play this at work.
Leah Jones 43:00
Not even on a weekend.
Matthew David 43:02
No, Or at night, but it is. It is. I really, I want you to watch this movie. Tonight. And it just hit a streaming service. With most movies, it comes they come and go off streaming services, and I of course have the DVD, which I didn't buy recently, but and I burned it onto or I ripped it in, it's on my computer. So it goes where I go most part. So I can always just fire up Glengarry Glen Ross. But I think it's on Hulu. So it is so wonderful.
Leah Jones 43:45
Really incredible cast.
Matthew David 43:46
Oh, the cast is phenomenal. And the one problematic thing about it. And this is beyond the scope of this podcast, I'm sure but what's his name? Spacey. Kevin Spacey plays a major role. And I love this movie. And as it happens, one of my other favorite movies is the usual suspects also starring Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey in recent years has become problematic. And it always raises the question well, what do you do when you love something that involves or was produced by someone who
Leah Jones 44:22
You later that find out as trash.
Matthew David 44:24
Allegedly trash. We’re talking about a lot of different people.
Leah Jones 44:30
You are Attorney, use the word allegedly.
Matthew David 44:32
No, but I'm saying we don't. Right now we're talking about Kevin Spacey. But it could be anybody. It could be Michael Jackson. It can be what do you do? And do you have a moral obligation to not watch a movie with Kevin Spacey? Do you have an obligation one way or the other to not listen to Michael Jackson's music and I'm of the mind that I know that it's out there. You're not sending money to this person. You're perfect personal, Kevin Spacey is not getting any more money from Glengarry Glen Ross. That's not the way it works. But regardless, there's something out there, I don't think a consumer needs to deprive themselves of the joy of consuming product. I'm not going to deny myself the sheer joy of watching Glengarry Glen Ross, once a week or whatever it is, because Kevin Spacey might be, on our shitless right now. It's for me and I love this movie. I'm going to watch it. But as it happens, two of my favorite movies star Kevin Spacey. He's not one of my favorite actors, as it happens, but he is into my favorite films and I really I like him very much, but I'm not going to go so far as to recommend Kevin Spacey to anybody on this podcast. But as it happens, he's in this film, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin - who is amazing, Ed Harris. Every person in this movie is fantastic. There's one woman, but she's just in the background, is very much a man movie. It's just angry, frustrated, cursing men.
Leah Jones 46:27
1992
Matthew David 46:28
Yeah, it is It stands the test of time, but it's very dated. In that it's men selling land by cold calling prospects. And the play actually took place in the early 80s, I believe. So they needed to even move up the timing when they filmed it. So there's a lot of phone calls, there are payphones in the movie. It's very much a product of its time. But the characterizations and the frustrations and the motivations are timeless. Basically just people having a really shitty two days, partly of their own making.
Leah Jones 47:13
And then but specifically, you love the last 10 minutes. We confirmly go into the spoilers on this movie is, 1992 to 2002. So it's almost 30 years.
Matthew David 47:28
If you haven't seen it.
Leah Jones 47:31
That’s impossible because I went and graduated high school in 1995, which was no more than 15 years ago. How 1992 was 30 years ago.
Matthew David 47:41
Yeah, the math doesn't line up. But let's not worry about that, right now. The main conflict of the movie is that these salesmen are having these new leads sort of dangled before them. And they're all having a hard time making sales and closing sales, and they're all afraid that they're going to lose their job. Ed Harris's character is probably the angriest of all of them. And he essentially decides that he and one of the other salesmen should burglarize their office and steal these new leads and make it look like random burglary. And they're going to take these new leads, and they're going to sell them to a competitor, who will then also hire them. So there's a bit of a twist in the movie because you see and hear Ed Harris's character, Dave Moss, enlisting Alan Arking’s character, George to go in with him on this. And that's one of the major scenes and that's one of the three scenes of Act One of the play, essentially their conversation in which Dave convinces or tries to convince George to be his partner in this burglary. And the second half of the play is the following morning when it becomes apparent that the office has been burglarized, and the leads have been stolen. So now it's a mystery, who did it because you know that the only thing you do know is that it Harris's character, didn't do it, but you don't know who did it. And you have a lot of reason to suspect that Alan Arking’s character, didn't do it. Throughout the movie, Jack Lemmon’s character, Shelley, The Machine Levene is very, very dismissive and abusive of Kevin Spacey, his character who is the office manager. And this is just an incredible performance by Jack Lemmon. It's just you watch this and you can't believe that any of these men are acting like this is beyond acting. It's like the way you felt, watching Heath Ledger play the Joker. There's a moment when everybody else feels like an actor, but they're acting with the Joker. Every actor, every person in Glengarry Glen Ross is a real person, you forget that, you know these people from other movies, they are their characters and it's completely immersive. And there's a moment at the very end of the movie in essentially the last 10 minutes and it may be even later than that, when Jack Lemmon has just paraded Kevin Spacey’s character and he's just given him shit for ruining Al Pacino’s sell. And he says, he has this throwaway line. He says, you should know if you're going to make something up, you'd better be sure that it helps. And Kevin Spacey is just kind of not even listening to Jack Lemmon. He's kind of just looking off to the side. And then, in this incredible moment of acting, he just refocuses his eyes. He just looks from the floor to Jack Lemmon who's in the distance and he's kind of like looking right past the viewer. And you see, it clicks in his mind. He realizes that Jack Lemons character that Shelley just said the wrong thing and revealed all and it all falls into place into Kevin Spacey’s character mind. And he realizes that the only way Jack Lemmon character would know that Kevin Spacey’s character had made something up, was if he had robbed the office. And he just looks up and he says, How do you know I made it up. And then there's this immediate switch in Jack Lemons character's whole demeanor. And he gets completely flustered and says what are you talking about? And Kevin Spacey very slowly and very deliberately says, how do you know, I made it up? And then he spells out exactly for Shelley where all the pieces fit and, and explains exactly why the only way Shelley would know that he had just made something up was if he had been in the office last night, robbing the place and it just turns the entire movie on his head. And everything just it's a mystery solved. It gives me chills every time. And even in the play a few years ago, I picked up a copy of the play as a book. And I keep it in my bedroom and I will read it just every so often, if I'm not watching the movie, I'm reading the play and that moment still gets me it clearly, it doesn't have the same effect as just words on a page. As watching Kevin Spacey delivered these lines and Jack Lemmon but in a movie that's just an hour and a half or two hours of just phenomenal performances. This moment is just the top of the mountain. Sometimes this is bizarre, but sometimes I will just watch those 10 minutes. Yeah, I will just watch that end of the movie.
Leah Jones 53:51
I don't think that's a weird.
Matthew David 53:52
Good and also are you familiar with Ghostbusters?
Matthew David 54:09
And we're back.
Leah Jones 54:10
And we're back.
Matthew David 54:11
Should we tell people about Ronnie now?
Leah Jones 54:14
We will. But before we get there, I would like to time travel. What was your first interaction with this movie or play? Did you see it in the theater?
Matthew David 54:25
I don't remember.
Leah Jones 54:26
It just always was.
Matthew David 054:28
Yeah, but I think, it wasn't because when you reminded me just now of when it came out? I definitely did not see it. Then. What do you say? 1992. I was, I had just begun college. And I don't remember, I have no idea and I also don't know, why I would have seen it. It doesn't seem like the kind of movie that I would have been interested in for a long time. It very well might have been a recommendation from a friend. I probably had no idea who David Mamet was. And I had never read any of his other plays. I recently, probably at the beginning of the pandemic, read all of his plays. Okay, at least a lot of them. I went to the library and grabbed everything I could. I'm sorry, David. I got them at the library.
Leah Jones 55:22
Authors from what I see love libraries.
Matthew David 55:25
Yes libraries are terrific. So, David Mamet's not making any money off of me. But the only other movie of his, that I've seen, I think is the Spanish Prisoner. Although I believe, he wrote a movie that most people don't know that he wrote. Except, I don't remember, what it was. So you're looking it up now. I can hear you typing.
Leah Jones 55:48
The Untouchables. The Postman Rings. Wag the dog, Hannibal.
Matthew David 55:54
David Mamet very accomplished writer, playwriter, screenwriter. And but I did not see it when it first came out. And I don't think, I ever saw him in the theater. And so, I do not know. And it would be nice. It would be fun for me to remember. Or maybe have my memory jogged and know why I first saw it but I think, I loved it as soon as I saw it, it was unlike, it still is unlike almost any other movie out there. It's all everybody talks about how it's all dialogue. It's just all talking and it's very in that regard is very different from most movies today, at least that that are wildly popular. There's no special effects.
Leah Jones 56:40
Right, it’s not even like multiple set pieces.
Matthew David 56:45
It's it takes place in a Chinese restaurant, in an office. And again, a lot of it on pay phones. And the dialogue as much as David Mamet is known for his dialogue, the dialogue is not realistic. People don't talk the way David Mamet characters talk, but it's so much fun to watch them and listen to them talk the way they do. That it doesn't matter. I mean, we watch movies all the time.
Leah Jones 57:17
[Not Audible] and Sherman Palladino, You don't always want to watch shows with people talking the way you talk. Sometimes you want to watch elevated wordplay and like highly structured. Like, I am big pentameter. You want to watch things with rhythm and vocabulary that you don't grasp in everyday life.
Matthew David 57:40
Absolutely. And there's a lot of crosstalk, especially in scenes with Ed Harris and Alan Arkin. There's, a terrific scene with him at a Donut shop and a coffee shop. And Alan Arkin, he's very much a secondary character. He stills the scene, his speech pattern steals the scene, the way he keeps trying to, I guess, get a word in edgewise with Ed Harris, but he doesn't really have anything to say. So he's just delivering these half lines or these single words at a time. And it's very well done and very specialized. I think that's not the word, I would have chosen. But it's very specialized dialogue and ends very virtuosic.
Leah Jones 58:40
Precise.
Matthew David 58:41
It is.
Leah Jones 58:41
David Mamet is not going to, I think, allow people to riff on his word.
Matthew David 58:48
I don't think there was much improvising, going on is very strict. But because it serves a purpose. You really you can't break like, each character is very, very well defined, and the way they talk and what they're, what they're talking about, and their motivations, and I think you can't stray far from that. And also, it's clear, if you read the play that it's, he clearly took what he had written, translated it and then flushed it out with more of the same. Fortunately, it's so good that more of the same is more of a good thing.
Leah Jones 59:25
Did you know that he wrote a Torah commentary with Rabbi Kushner of the wicked son?
Matthew David 59:33
I did not. Maybe I did. But like so many things that were touching upon I forgotten.
Leah Jones 59:39
Right. So Ronnie, who we have mentioned, people who listen to the podcast regularly have heard about because he accompanied me on many of the shenanigans of having cancer. He was often along for the ride.
Matthew David 59:57
I knew that.
Leah Jones 59:58
He was my original hospital husband, which is people that took me to the hospital. Any man who went with me to the hospital was immediately turned into my husband by the nurses. And any woman who took me to the hospital was not immediately upgraded to wife. So it was just funny. So I made people that said, today's hospital husband, so that they could claim the role, that they were.
Matthew David 1:00:31
I know that while this was nothing that Ronnie would ever want to do. I know that it was something that he was proud to be able to do and glad to be able to do for you. Even if nobody wants to have to do that. And you probably, can't do better than Ronnie, which is not to disparage any of your other husbands or hospital sisters or what have you. But…
Leah Jones 1:00:56
My hospital husbands and Sister Wives.
Matthew David 1:00:59
So I know, Ronnie and I went to college together and I've known Ronnie for 27 years. And I may officially make this the last time that I say this, because it's getting a bit old. But Ronnie and I did not like each other, when we first met. And we reminisce about this. And I think as the years have gone by, especially the most recent years, I think both gotten a little tired of remembering that we didn't like each other when we first met. So we've been very much moving the emphasis from that mutual dislike to how good friends we are. How do I want to say that? What good friends, we are now. And Ronnie is, this may be where Ronnie finds out about this. But Ronnie is one of my best friends. Ronnie would be anyone's best friend. And the problem was, when we first met, he was probably the best friend of the guy that I want it to be my best friend. So we were essentially competing for the attentions of a mutual friend.
Leah Jones 1:02:15
Have you now ousted the middle guy? And now you're just friends with each other.
Matthew David 1:02:19
No, we're all friends. But Ronnie and I probably do keep in touch more. But the three of us are all very good friends. And in fact, the three of us got together last summer with two other friends, two female friends of ours, five of us got together. Not this past summer, but the summer before, they all came out to Long Island where I am. It was very convenient for me. Not so much for them. But you know,
Leah Jones 1:02:43
You are the person who lives on an island.
Matthew David 1:02:47
I live in an island and island of 6 million but still. We all got an Airbnb, and Ronnie's brother happened to be in the neighborhood. So it worked out very well for Ronnie. Ronnie got to see friends and family. And we all got to see Ronnie and yes, that mutual friend. We've all been friends for 27 years since we started college and Ronnie and our friend Brad were two of my first friends in college and I don't remember when the shift took place because again, we're not we're not focusing on that.
Leah Jones 1:03:19
You are not focusing on that, I have heard stories of pun competition. Like a pun. Pun off maybe. And I don't know, if that means might just be the life, that might just be the story of your friendship. Is there a lot of puns, lot of work.
Matthew David 1:03:35
There are. There is a lot of wordplay and Ronnie and I make a lot of puns, a lot of wordplay in our emails, in our chats, and texts and Ronnie calls me every year on my birthday. He is the only person besides my mom. Ronnie does that. He's a caller.
Leah Jones 1:03:55
He has a caller and he is a birthday…
Matthew David 1:03:57
No, he's excellent at remembering birthdays. And I think this year might be the first time, I didn't let it go to voicemail. Because I felt, he finally earned it. He'd been calling me so many years and I've been just pretending not to be near my phone for so long. This podcast might be the end of our friendship as it turns out, we had a good run, Ronnie. We had a really good run. So but Ronnie is great. And at some point, Ronnie became someone that I would send every new thing that I've written to. He is one of my first readers. And he's an excellent first reader. In fact, just to loop back a little bit, Ronnie was at first didn't want to but then realized, he had to point out a problem with an earlier version of Odder Space. There was something a bit sensitive, that the details aren't important, but he was on the fence about whether to bring it up or not. And I'm glad he did, because it's a much better book for not just blowing past it, but hanging a lantern or putting a hat on this topic. And that's the only thing that might be considered, one of those more serious things. But it's still, it doesn't elevate it to any territory. But there's a little bit of a life slash history lesson that it's not dwelt upon, but it is touched upon. And it was, Ronnie, and another one of our friends from that group of five who really made me think about it. And it was a little eye opening because I was kind of treating something a little flippantly. And I was glad that they didn't take offense. But they said, hey, someone could, and maybe don't present it this way. And it was fairly easy. Not that I wouldn't have done it, if it weren't easy, but it was the the solution presented itself pretty readily take this and turn it into a learning moment. And I was very, I still am really grateful that he did not say anything for fear of like bugging me. I mean, he probably remembered Hey, this guy used to hate me. So what's the worst that could happen now?
Leah Jones 1:06:43
It's always a risk.
Matthew David 1:06:45
I don't think, we're going to move backward. So Ronnie is a great guy. I strongly recommend Ronnie to everyone. So Glengarry Glen Ross, and then call Ronnie at 1888, Ronnie.
Leah Jones 1:07:05
It's my birthday. . He will always call on your birthday.
Matthew David 1:07:15
I'd love to tell something embarrassing about Ronnie, but I don't know anything embarrassing about Ronnie. I don't know that he's ever shared anything embarrassing about him. He probably must have. But I probably filter that out and I just think of it only glowing terms.
Leah Jones 1:07:42
I think the other thing to wrap it up that I'm curious about and we're going to hold some that you're going to come back. Are you excited? Bands with Letters for names specifically REM ecstasy and TMGB ?
Matthew David 1:08:00
They Might Be Giants. So one, that's a little bit of a cheat because we call them TMBG. But really, it's They Might Be Giants. So the rule of three, you got to have a third. But I don't specifically like bands with names that are letters. It just happens that three of my favorite bands. And it has been this way for a long time, our REM, XTC, and They Might Be Giants. And again, nobody needs me to tell them about any of these bands. If you're going to go discover REM because of me telling you then there's a problem. That said, if you are not familiar with REM, XTC, or They Might Be Giants, please do check them out. And I will say this
Leah Jones 1:08:51
I am very much realizing XTC is [Not Audible]. Who is a female Hip Hop band, I thought it was?
Matthew David 1:08:58
The female hip hop at TLC? I'm a fan of TLC, but not in the way.
Leah Jones 1:09:06
Now I just want you to go into my brain and replace XTC with TLC and see how what an interesting mix of music it was, when it was REM, TLC and They Might Be Giants, as your top three bands, on everything we knew already about Mamet and just how confused that was.
Matthew David 1:09:27
Which is not to say that we don't sometimes ask Alexa to play TLC, which I might actually just have inadvertently done by saying that. Fortunately, I'm far enough away from the speaker that you won't hear them but no, XTC was a band from the late 70s, well into the early 90s, which started out as five guys and gradually was whittled down to two. Most people, if they know anything about XTC know the songs Making Plans for Nigel, which was probably their biggest hit, although I don't think it was their best song, and Dear God, or The Ballad of Peter Pumpkin Head or the Mayor of Simpleton. Okay, Leah, you have a lot of work to do. You might need to take tomorrow off from work.
Leah Jones 1:10:25
Okay, here's Making Plans for Nigel.
Matthew David 1:10:28
Yes.
Leah Jones 1:10:37
So in 2016, it ranked 143 on pitchforks list of the 200 best songs of the 1970s. So did it have a maybe a second?
Matthew David 1:10:53
I don't know that XTC had a resurgence. They've pretty much been defunct since, I want to say, very early 2000s. And they're not coming back. Again, by the end, it was just two of them. And I'm pretty sure that the two of them don't speak anymore. But the engine behind the XTC was always, a man named Andy Partridge. I believe he turns 70. In fact, there was just an article in The Guardian, I think it was an interview with him catching up with him and what
Leah Jones 1:11:34
November 11th was his birthday. He'll be 69.
Matthew David 1:11:37
So he will be 70 next year. Andy Partridge is the main songwriter and the lead singer and he is just a gift. And he's got some, I don't know, there was something about his politics a few years ago that got him into a little bit of trouble and I've kind of turned a blind eye deaf ear to what his politics are. I don't know for certain that they're not in line with mine. And I don't want to know. I confess to being willfully ignorant. Because I simply do not want to have to be unhappy with the man, I think is the greatest songwriter that we've ever had, was the greatest modern day English songwriter. I don't know many others in other languages, but
Leah Jones 1:12:38
He has Synesthesia , which is always interesting to talk to people about.
Matthew David 1:12:42
Yes. I can't speak to his Synesthesia. It sounds kind of purple to me. But Ronnie, you'll appreciate that.
Leah Jones 1:12:52
I missed the drum, way, way. Wait, it sounds can't wait. Where is it? I going to find it.
Matthew David 1:12:58
Tell me when it's queued up. I can't speak to Andy Partridges Synesthesia. All sounds purple to me.
Leah Jones 1:13:11
A little bit of a lag, doesn't need a one second.
Matthew David 1:13:15
We could have heard all of Making Plans for Nigel to get that time. But are we talking about purple? I like purple. Or do you guys know about purple? It's a big color.
Leah Jones 1:13:28
Yeah, a big fan of purple before I went to Northwestern, but like the more after.
Matthew David 1:13:32
It’s a charming color, it’s deep, deep purple. So Andy Partridge XTC, love them really sophisticated songwriting. And I think a few years ago, I started making a list of what I thought were the best pop or rock lyrics, song lyrics, and I came up with such gems as like, doo doo doo doo by the police, dadada. But I think, the first prize goes to Andy Partridge for a lyric in the song, The man who murdered love, which might have been on their last album, either their last or second to last. And the line is, it's the middle of the song. In the middle of the song right about at the instrumental break, he sings it's the middle of the song. Genius, songwriting genius. And it's subtle. It's not easy to hear. And once I realized that what he was saying, that was just that took it to a ticket to David my Mission proportions. David met Median levels.
Leah Jones 1:14:53
When we were kids, when we would our grandparents retired to Texas so we would drive from Indiana to Texas to see them.
Matthew David 1:15:01
Just to clarify, not our grandparents, yours and mine. We don't have any grandparents in common?
Leah Jones 1:15:07
Not that we know of.
Matthew David 1:15:08
Correct. So you and someone else used to drive to Texas to see your grandparents.
Leah Jones 1:15:14
To the Jones, drive to Texas.
Matthew David 1:15:18
Was everybody behind you trying to keep up with you?
Leah Jones 1:15:21
Especially in the years when we drove a hearse to Texas.
Matthew David 1:15:24
Really? You should have a podcast.
Leah Jones 1:15:28
And so we're looking at the Atlas. Because it was map, paper Atlas, You drove cross country at the time. And we kept joking that we were about to get to the staple. We're going to get to the staple in the map. And when we got there, we passed a ranch, whose gate looked like a staple. It was so we were like, we're at the staple . And we looked over and there was a gigantic staple in front of a ranch.
Matthew David 1:16:00
And if that's the sort of thing that you would do on purpose. If you knew that there was if there was one Atlas, or one map that most people had, the Rand McNally Road Atlas. And you saw that you had the property that was by the staple, I would have to do that. Like there's almost no amount of money that I wouldn't spend. There's no such thing as too much money to spend on that joke.
Leah Jones 1:16:26
It's a great joke. And we, I mean, it has been, I don't know how many years? So 30 years ago, I was 15. So, oh, my God, probably like 35 years ago.
Matthew David 1:16:44
Wow.
Leah Jones 1:16:47
It was really in that to me is at the level of it's the middle of the song, Where's this staple in the Atlas? And you'd look up and you see a literal giant staple, like it's
Matthew David 1:16:57
It’s the Swing line wrench. It's like you press button on patronizing laughter. Hit that clip. He's telling a joke here.
Leah Jones 1:17:16
Just keeps going. It goes too long. Like the drum joke starts too late. And the lighting just goes too long.
Matthew David 1:17:22
Did you pay for these? These sound clips?
Leah Jones 1:17:27
They came with it. I paid for Riverside as a service. And these are the bonuses. I feel like these are bonuses. Well, Matthew, this has been fun.
Matthew David 1:17:39
This has been a laugh riot. No, I've thoroughly enjoyed this. And I look forward to recording our next episode tomorrow. And our third one tomorrow afternoon.
Leah Jones 1:17:48
Great. In between, I will go vote. I tried to vote.
Matthew David 1:17:53
Oh, that's a good plan.
Leah Jones 1:17:55
I did try to vote.
Matthew David 1:18:01
Try harder now.
Leah Jones 1:18:02
I will. I got there. And it was an hour wait for early voting.
Matthew David 1:18:06
That's interesting. I was just talking to someone before this session about voting and waiting in lines. And I don't think in all my years of voting, I'm in my late 40s, so I've been voting for like two or three years. And in all my years of voting, I don't remember ever having to wait on election day. Maybe I've just gotten very lucky or I lived in very efficient places. But I know that of course, waiting in lines, and especially in rural places and other places around the country can be a significant problem and is a significant problem. And I realized that this is maybe just where I've lived on Long Island in New Jersey and Boston, but I've never had to wait, if there's ever been a wait, it was just a couple of people. And I've never felt like, it was a shore or I was going to be here for a long time. And I had to make a decision about, is this how I wanted to spend my time? And only recently have I been thinking about that as a problem for people like you've been waiting in line an hour, that's an hour out of your day. And a lot of people don't have an hour to just stand there waiting to do something that takes 30 seconds. As important as it is, there's an analysis you have to do and I've never factored that in. I've also never, I've also always thought of it as something that's so important that it doesn't matter if I have to wait. I'm going to wait.
Leah Jones 1:19:35
Yeah, I agree, if I have to wait, I'm going to wait. It's a beautiful sunny day in Chicago today, which is great. It's great weather for voting, it is great weather to get out of the house. And I went to an early voting site, and I was truly everybody who got there was like, Whoa, this is the Whoa, right? And so I can just get up early on Tuesday and go across the street to my precinct and just vote. Get in and out. 15 minutes. But it's also the first time, I voted since I have not. I can't. I can no longer stand for an hour like as I regain my strength after chemotherapy, like I can't actually stand in line for an hour, and I had my cane, but I have like, Birkenstocks on and I just like didn't think through. Like, do I have the best shoes on? Do I have like a little stool with me? Like, I didn't think through what I needed to have with me to safely wait in line for an hour?
Matthew David 1:20:37
Sure. I think at this point, we will wind up voting on Tuesday, because I believe, we're going to vote at our children's school. And we're going on for parent teacher conferences. I mean, this is all designed this way. The schools out kids will be with us. We're going in for two conferences. We vote there. It's all actually very convenient. And I don't imagine that we're going to have to wait. But if we do, we do. And we did. We meant to vote early. But we kept not voting early. But, that runs out on Tuesday anyway, so by Tuesday, we will have voted.
Leah Jones 1:21:23
Yeah, the good news is I did my cheat sheet because we have to vote for Judge Retention in Chicago and it's very confusing. And in general, retain him, except for these five. But it's five out of 40. So you like going to find their names.
Matthew David 1:21:40
Wow. We don't have that here in New York. At least I don't believe we do. Caller I might correct. No. So yeah, no, it's a little simpler. But that, I don't I've never needed to really prepare much in advance. I'm pretty much an across the board in a straight line.
Leah Jones 1:22:01
Yeah, I am to the things I want to understand are there's like an amendment on the ballot, like the things that are always written to, to make you vote the opposite way that you believe. So I wanted to make sure I knew the right. Yeah, the vote and correctly on those.
Matthew David 1:22:20
Yes, that's important. And that's not enough people take that time. That's exactly as you say, there's a way to work things so that it takes advantage of the fact that people are not preparing in advance. And, back of the ballot may not even like, my wife and I were just talking that there is one proposition on our ballot that we will need to remember to turn the piece of paper over for. And that's a lot of work. I mean, imagine having to wait in line and turn your piece of paper over. Come on. I could be doing other things. I could be watching Glengarry Glen Ross or listening to TLC.
Leah Jones 1:22:58
So Matthew David Brozik, The novel is Odder Space. It's available now on Amazon in print or digital. We want people to get print to see those nice, nice chapter headings. Do you want people to keep up with you online? How do you want people to know about you in the future?
Matthew David 1:23:16
I haven't been that. I don't know. I don't have that much to say or report on a day-to-day basis that most people would be interested in. Maybe if this book blows up as one of the spaceships does, then I'll need to. Funny thing is about two weeks ago, I had already shut down my personal Twitter account, not for to make any statement. I just got tired of it. And then about two weeks ago, in preparation for the launch of this book, I set up a new Twitter account. But I'm not even going to bother to tell you the handle because I literally have not posted one thing on it. So there's no reason to follow me in any meaningful way. I post on Facebook, I'm not doing anything on other social media. No, Insta, no TikTok. Because I'm not that interesting, If you don't know me. If you like to know more, you can always visit IMDB dot name and there's a link to send me an email. We can be email friends, and then they can become your birthday friend. And my phone number is 516. Now that's all you're getting. You already know I live on Long Island. So I got that. Tony 516 area code.
Leah Jones 1:24:55
Very fancy. Well, my cat cowboy has John Time to my computer to tell me, it's I believe dinnertime or something with the time change. But Matthew, this has been a delight. Thank you so much.
Matthew David 1:25:06
Likewise. Thank you.
Announcer 1:25:08
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.
Sunday Oct 30, 2022
Author Eden Robins loves the Neverending Story
Sunday Oct 30, 2022
Sunday Oct 30, 2022
Chicago-based author Eden Robins is celebrating the launch of her debut novel this week and came on Finding Favorites to discuss her favorite book - The Neverending Story. When Franny Stands Up will be available on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 and is available for pre-order.
Follow Eden Robins online @edenrobins on Twitter and MonkeyThumbs.com
Follow @findingfavspod on Instagram and Twitter. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts
53:00 We enter Spoiler Country
59:15 Exit Spoiler Country
Early 2 Bed
Tuesday Funk
Anne K Yoder
Robbie Q Telfer
Hardback Folio edition of The Neverending Story?
All editions of The Neverending Story on Amazon
Neverending Story IMDB
Save Bell Bowl Prarie
Good Night, Oscar
Why birds do what they do
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
Benjamin Niespodziany: Intro to Surrealism
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
Chicago-based poet Benjamin Niespodziany, aka Neon Pajamas, joined Leah to talk about Surreal art including TV, movies, books and paintings. On the fly he designed a four-week community class on surreal appreciation that I think we would all enjoy taking. (Please run it on Zoom, Benjamin!)
His debut collection NO FARTHER THAN THE END OF THE STREET is available through Okay Donkey and already showing up in mailboxes around the country.
Follow Benjamin online everywhere as Neon Pajamas.
NeonPajamas.com
Twitter @neonpajamas
Show Notes
Surreal films: Borgman, Holy Motors, The Truman Show
Surreal TV: Atlanta, Maniac, Perpetual Grace LTD
Surreal books: Zachary Schomburg, GennaRose Nethercott, CAConrad
Surreal artists: Leonora Carrington, Wenyi Geng, Rhea, Raysa Fontana
Smino
Farther vs Further
Affect vs Effect
Fewer vs Less
The Truman Show
James and the Giant Peach
Edward Scissorhands
Jasper Fforde
EDtv
The_Real_World_(TV_series)
Big_Brother_(franchise)
Survivor (franchise)
The_Truman_Show
WandaVision
House_of_Leaves
Lobster
The Patriot
The Act of Killing
Surreal Art Benjamin_mixdown
1:22:49
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Leah Jones, Benjamin Niespodziany
00:00
Hello, my name is Benjamin Niespodziany, and my favorite thing is to surrealism.
Announcer 00:05
Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.
Leah Jones 00:18
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones, and this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things without using an algorithm. It is fall, which means it's my favorite season, the season of new books and authors. So I am very happy this week to be talking with Benjamin Niespodziany. I'm so happy tonight to be talking with Benjamin Niespodziany ahead of his debut of his full-length collection No Farther Than The End Of The Street, which is releasing with Okay Donkey Press in November. Benjamin, how are you doing tonight?
Benjamin Niespodziany 00:58
Doing all right. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited, very nervous and terrified for my book to be out in the world. But I'm also equally as euphoric and giddy to see it out there. So yeah, thank you for having me and chatting with me tonight.
Leah Jones 01:10
Yeah. How long has this book been in the works?
Benjamin Niespodziany 01:15
Well, I think at this point, close to four years. I think the oldest piece in the book is probably 2018. And then a lot of them were written in 2019, and 2020. And then during lockdown, I was really able to sit with all of them, and fine tune them and tinker with them and make them all into one cohesive narrative. So, quarantined didn't allow for too much free writing, because I felt like my brain was mush. But I was really able to look at what I'd already written and work on some edits, and really fine tune and stuff. So it allowed for a lot of great editing practice. So, yeah!
Leah Jones 01:49
And this is a book of poetry and micro flash. Micro flash. That is, overall is a story together or are they of a theme?
Benjamin Niespodziany 02:01
Yeah, it's all one. I guess cinematic universe as the Marvel fans tend to say, but the idea of the book is taking a little bit off of inspiration from the movies The Truman Show and from Pleasantville, where it's this artificial container where you're boxed into this little area. So the whole entirety of the book takes place on one long street. Every poem is either in the front of the person's yard, or in the backyard, or in their basement or down the street, seeing a neighbor. But it never strays further than the one neighborhood city block. But each piece doesn't nest, it's not necessarily like chapter one and then chapter two, the next day, it's just a scatterbrain fragments and vignettes and little postcards and snapshots of this neighborhood happening. And by the end, you get a 360 idea of what's really going on. So there's a little bit of a of a narrative arc and a little bit of a thread through line. But it's also sparse and little short told and story short snippets. So, I don't know if it's a poem, or micro fiction, or flash fiction or prose poetry. It's all just everything rolled into one.
Leah Jones 03:09
That's really exciting. So did you realize during lockdown when you started to edit that these were all happening near each other? Or was there a point earlier in the writing process? When it came clear to you that these all these pieces were related geographically?
Benjamin Niespodziany 03:31
I think it did happen during lockdown. I think I had so many different drafts and so many different ideas and sketches. So I started clumping everything together, either by theme or by surroundings, or by tone of voice. So I started realizing, oh, there's a lot of pieces that take place in the house, there's a lot of pieces that take place in a front yard. I have a lot of faith-based pieces and faith-based poems and weird nuns and priests. So that's on a separate project. I have other ones that feel more like folkloric and woodland and fairytale style. So that was in a different folio. So these ones all started talking to each other, and I realized how they might work. And then once the idea blossomed after having them all together in 2020 - 2021, then I started really creating that restraint for myself and that constraint where, okay, let's have this be in a front yard. Oh, this one contains an airplane or an airstrip. So let's have that be in the backyard. I really wanted to make sure that I wasn't compromising and getting rid of certain pieces if they didn't fit. But I also wanted to make sure that I could move around the language and move around some of the pieces even if they've been published online, just changing the story a little bit to make sure that they all have that same voice throughout.
Leah Jones 04:43
Here's one of the big conversations I've had over COVID Just I had a lot of fire pits and a lot of weird conversations with my friends. Do you have an internal monologue. Do you hear your own voice in your head?
Benjamin Niespodziany 05:06
I think so. I think I do.
Leah Jones 05:09
And can you see images in your mind's eye?
Benjamin Niespodziany 05:13
Yes, definitely.
Leah Jones 05:14
So can you when you read this, you imagine a street that you walk down as you go through the poems?
Benjamin Niespodziany 05:21
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, by the time the book was finished, I really had an idea of what the area looks like. The backyard, it goes into some abstract depths where there's a well, and there's a whale inside of the well. And there's a really big backyard where there's a tarmac for planes to land. So the backyard is almost an infinity space. And then I have a very clear picture of the front yard and how long the street extends. But the inside of the house is very much a question mark. And I feel like each piece would be a weird morphing of that house where I think like halfway through the book, I mentioned something about the basement and the you character, the book is saying – “Oh, we had a basement?” Like didn't even know, until that point. So it's always morphing and changing. But I think with each piece, I really gravitate toward the visual and focus on that image driven piece. So I think my photographic memory are seeing that image, or like one of them is based around a hollow tooth. So I really wanted to focus in on the idea of there being something inside of a tooth, and it ends up being a little written down little message wrapped up in some scroll, like parchment inside of the tooth. But almost all my pieces start with a weird, strange, off kilter image. And then from there, maybe I developed a little bit more of the description, a little bit more than narrative, but very rarely do I have, dialogue or conversation that starts. It's almost always an image.
Leah Jones 06:41
If you want to ruin or make a dinner party more exciting, ask people that question. It just takes one person who either if everyone at the table has an inner monologue but one person, or everyone, nobody has like a mind's eye, but you're the only one with it, trying to understand how other people experience their inner world when it is silent or blank. Which doesn't mean they don't have feelings and thoughts and visions. It's like how they access them as different. We would talk about it for hours around the fire all of the pandemic.
Benjamin Niespodziany 07:29
That sounds very terrifying. The idea of there just being that endless silence when you think about the ongoing thoughts of your head. I mean, going for a walk and not taking your headphones and listen to anything, I automatically imagine that I'm going to start talking to myself or having some type of reflection and some type of conversation in my head. But the idea of it being completely silent is that's like a horror film, which I guess is perfect for mid-October. But it's like, oh my gosh, if it was just a vacant space of just nothingness. I feel like my brain is constantly talking to myself, I'm constantly, I can't get myself to shut up. So the other opposite would be really interesting.
Leah Jones 08:04
Yeah. But they don't feel. I also have like a very, you know, I have like, inner monologue. I'm working on my responses to you. I have a soundtrack. Sometimes it's a looping. Like sometimes it's four measures on loop and sometimes like it's a whole, like it's the whole Hamilton cast recording. Sometimes it's just one line. So I always have it's a cacophony and talking to people and trying to understand how they experience understanding their own emotions or how they think about even just like how do you know when it's time to go to the bathroom? I need to go the bathroom. I should. I should go to the bathroom soon. I'm feeling an urge, right? And they're just in my one of my best friends who lives upstairs. It's like, No, you just suddenly know that's what you need to do. And you do it and I'm like, I don't understand.
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:07
You read you read your own mind without any communication or conversation.
Leah Jones 09:11
Yeah. Cowboy has really [Not audible].
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:16
Maybe they have more of a self-awareness, I guess, than we do. Where we're constantly talking to ourselves and thinking. Can’t get ourselves to be quiet.
Leah Jones 09:25
Yeah, it's wild. So your publicist also told me that you run the site Neon Pajamas?
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:34
I do. Yes.
Leah Jones 09:35
Is that a collaborative site? Or is it this Is it where you share your work with people?
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:42
Yeah, it's where I share my work. It's completely me, 100% me. My last name, as you've noticed, is very difficult to pronounce. So I had a friend in middle school who his dad couldn't pronounce Niespodziany, so, Neon Pajamas was the alternative for some reason that was created. I don't know why. So my friend's dad is the one for that name. But I started, from a very early age, I was really into music and really into message boards. So I was constantly doing little movie review write ups and music, write ups, even like, 14, 15, 16 years old. And then as it progressed, my handle or my username that just continued throughout my years was Neon Pajamas. And I gave it a shot with SoundCloud, doing curated little mixes, trying to make instrumental projects, I had some projects where I would do long mixes under Neon Pajamas, or the occasional DJ set on Neon Pajamas. And all the while I was always blogging for other websites or doing interviews for another website or doing contract work for another platform. And there'll be so many pieces that would fall by the wayside, Oh, I really liked that book, or I really liked that movie. And it's not getting picked up, or I have too much to do on my own thing, I can't be pitching more and more stuff. So I just wanted to create a hub where I could share some of my own work, of course, but then also create this ongoing blog where I can talk to artists, and if there was a visual artist that I really liked, or if there was an author or musician, then I could had them on my platform to interview them as well. So the blog aspect of Neon Pajamas, it's fallen by the wayside a little bit, I still try to update it pretty frequently. But when I first started in maybe 2016, or 2017, it was about 90% music and then as the years have gone on, I got more into literature and more into poetry, more into collage art, more individual art. So there's a lot of coverage of multimedia as opposed to just music. Whereas I still cover music every once a while, but it's a lot more, I guess, diverse than it was five years ago when I started it.
Leah Jones 11:34
I mean, that's it. The wonderful thing about when you own this space, where you're publishing is that it can grow with you. Versus “No, this is your beat”, “We hired you for this beat. We don't care about your other opinions. We don't care how you’re growing.” As a critic, we only want your music opinions.
Benjamin Niespodziany 11:55
I've done websites where it's yeah, just Hip-Hop blog, just hip-hop music. And that's great. For other we've done a little literary journals where it's just prose poems, and that's awesome. But my website is almost, I have no rules. I have no bosses, I have no one to report to if I want. If there's something that I'm reading on a Sunday, and I like to write about it, then three, four sentences, I post it, it's good to go. There's a lot less, not pressure, but it just seems a little bit more natural. Where there's nobody I'm not taking submissions. I'm not getting stuff where people are saying, hey, we'd really love to for you to cover us on your blog. It's more so like, oh, that book was good. I'd like to not only put it on Goodreads, but also put it on my blog, or oh, I can't stop listening to this album. I'd love to write a paragraph about it.
Leah Jones 12:37
Yeah. What have you had on repeat lately, for music?
Benjamin Niespodziany 12:43
Oh, my gosh. Everything.
Leah Jones 12:50
Stick iTunes and put it all on shuffle.
Benjamin Niespodziany 12:54
I really like the hip-hop space, as well as the instrumental Hip-Hop space. So I'm constantly listening to beats in the background. But I'm always looking for somebody new to listen to and some new projects. But another one that is actually not hasn't come out yet. So I can't say that I'm listening to it heavily. But there's a rapper from St. Louis, who came to Chicago and made it his own name -Smino. And his first project in four years comes out on the 28th. So I'm very, very excited for that project. It's been a long time coming. I feel like I'm still listening to his project from 2018. So I'm just really looking forward to him finally having some new music out. I think he was in a little bit of like label trouble and maybe there was some managerial stuff. But yeah, it's okay. We need something new. And finally, it's coming. So.
Leah Jones 13:37
Nice. Now are you a St. Louis or Chicago person?
Benjamin Niespodziany 13:41
I am in Chicago. Yes. I've been here for about nine years now.
Leah Jones 13:46
Oh, great. I'm here. I'm in Chicago too.
Benjamin Niespodziany 13:48
Oh, okay. Where are you in Chicago?
Leah Jones 13:51
Ravenswood.
Benjamin Niespodziany 13:52
Nice. Just a little bit north, I'm in Logan Square. So not too far further north from I guess too far farther north, the title of my book is “No Farther Than The End Of The Street”. And it was originally No Further Than The End Of The Street. And then we had to look up further versus farther to see which word was properly used. And I had no idea and it was always further but we learned that farther was actually more about distance. And further is more about after further investigation where it's a little bit more abstract. Whereas farther is down the street, down the way and further is, let's explore further whatever. Just made me think of that. I'm constantly correcting myself in my head now that I know the differentiation. I've gone this far in my life having no idea further versus farther. And I've talked to people about it, and no one really knew that unless you Google it.
Leah Jones 14:41
Yeah, and once you see it, you're like, right, there will be no further investigation. But yeah, you learn it by using it. But I couldn't have defined it. I would have looked at this and instead have been like ”No, I think this one should be farther” and I wouldn’t know why. The one I struggle with is fewer and less than. I think less than, less is if you can actually count the items and fewer is if you cannot count the items.
Benjamin Niespodziany 15:22
Oh, okay, so fewer would be more of a guess.
Leah Jones 15:26
I think so. Okay, or it's exactly the opposite. And sometimes I just avoid, I just find a third word altogether. It's like an affect and effect. I generally know. But if push comes to shove, I will just find it out to use a different word.
Benjamin Niespodziany 15:44
Right, exactly. It’s tricky. But yeah, the whole reason that I had no further than the end of the street. That was the initial title is that I was using a quote from The Truman Show. And in The Truman Show, let me have here, they said, “You can't go any further away before you start coming back.” So I like that that quote and that idea that you're stuck in this little loop, you can't really leave the street. But I even downloaded the screenplay to make sure and they just incorrectly had used further where it should have been farther. But I had it as an epigraph and I'm like, okay, well, they had it wrong. Do I let them like, do I acknowledge that there was a typo? Or do I just change my title? It was a very, very weird little surprise. I didn't expect when I first started writing this book.
Leah Jones 16:26
Well, you brought up the Truman Show, which to me is a great segue. Well, put a pin in that dear, when is the book available? And how can people buy it?
Benjamin Niespodziany 16:39
So, the book, thank you. So the book comes out November 1st . And if you've already done pre orders, or pre, if you pre purchase it, then it's already getting shipped out. So I guess they're arriving this week, people have already started posting, I've been seeing like photos of people with the book in their hand. It just feels very, we're talking about surrealism later. But it feels very surreal, just to something that you've spent so much time on in a Word document or you get the occasional feedback from a friend, but to have this complete book and you're like, wait a minute, that's in Connecticut right now and some guy’s reading it? It's just very strange. In a good way. But yeah, available November 1st through Okay Donkey Press and then it's directly through their website. They have like a big cartel website that you can just buy it directly through them.
Leah Jones 17:18
Amazing. Are you going to have any launch events in Chicago or anything? Curating?
Benjamin Niespodziany 17:25
You know, I've thought about it. Yeah, I've thought about maybe doing like a Zoom event and curating and having some friends read. I did a reading on Sunday that wasn't related to the book, but just reading with some friends. And then this upcoming Wednesday, which I guess is tomorrow, I'm doing an in person reading at Easy Does It, which is a wine bar in Logan Square. I've never been there before. I had a friend that just was like “Hey, we're doing open mic, we can write your name or your name down.” “If you want to just read for five minutes.” So, I'm trying to do like little things like this, but I haven't had an official like quote unquote book launch or reading event. But I had another friend that read his book front to back on YouTube Live. So I thought that could be an interesting thing. Maybe just set a nice ambiance, my backyard, have a nice drink. Just go through the book, and then maybe post it a few weeks after the release. Thinking about maybe doing that. But nothing's solidified yet.
Leah Jones 18:25
I asked people, as they're coming on to think about a favorite hobby, a favorite movie. Just an area topic that we can talk about and yours was surrealism, and almost more specifically surreal films, TV. Let's start. Can you start with a brief definition. I like surrealism, it's Dolly and Rene Magritte. But I think there's more than that, because you've included The Truman Show, which I didn't think about as being surreal and I'm very excited to talk about. So let's start with how do you define that something is surreal? When do you know it's surreal?
Benjamin Niespodziany 19:08
Anytime that reality is no longer the reality that we see when we walk down the street. So whether or not that means super in the future and post-apocalyptic or whatever it might be or somebody wakes up and instead of an arm, they have a tree branch. Or they wake up in their head falls off and rolls down the street. Or for Truman show’s example, everything's normal, everything's fine reality is as it seems, and then he realizes he's in a giant dome, and they're filming him. So it's not surrealism in the sense that it's artificial and fake. But it's surreal in the sense that what you think is reality is no longer your reality. So, anything that has people turning into different animals or people’s body parts turning into different objects, that’s always really fascinated me where you’re just the normal day to day is no longer there. If it's a book or a movie or a TV show, and it's, “Oh, this is exactly like how Chicago life feels”, then I have no interest in it because I can go walk down the street in Chicago. So those kinds of shows where it's hyper realistic have never really done much for my entertainment. But once I start to see like, oh, this person in a dream, or this person is really in this crazy rabbit hole of this weird investigation or whatever it might be, you know, a David Lynch film, for example, or Dolly, who you mentioned where these clocks are melting. That whole idea where something can always be a little bit off and a little bit strange, and your comfort level is not there and you're turning the corner expecting something weirder to happen. That's like, I'm hooked. I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm really interested. If it's like a, just a romance rom-com or something like that. That’s great. But it’s not going to like bring me to the page and get started writing or it’s not really going to inspire me or I don't know. But yeah, surrealism is always something that's just like the weird and the strange. I was thinking about having the word weird be my answer instead of surreal, but I think they both go back and forth where things are just a little bit not what they seem.
Leah Jones 21:15
I will admit, surreal is easier to wrap my head around than talking about weird. So let's time travel. Do you remember the first whether it was you’re in an art class and you're being introduced to surreal art? Is it The Truman Show? Do you remember your first brush with surreal media that you were like, that really got you?
Benjamin Niespodziany 21:49
Instantly, I'm thinking James in the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. I remember reading that book. And I remember that I think that was the first time that I can remember where I read a book and then I went and saw the movie. And it was the first time in my life where I'm watching the movie and I'm thinking, “Oh, that's not what the book did. Oh, this is different.” And for the first time, I'm like, finally, analyzing adaptation and maybe being really interested in that. But the overall idea just the idea of a Giant Peach and there being a bunch of people living inside of it, that, I mean, that's surrealism at its finest. All those movies Matilda, BFG when I was a child, those rolls on witches’ books were just huge Willy Wonka. All that stuff. Yeah.
Leah Jones 22:28
It never even occurred. I read all of those. I grew up on Roald Dahl. So and it never occurred to me that those are surreal. But they are absolutely!
Benjamin Niespodziany 22:38
yeah, if you looked at your window right now and saw a Giant Peach rolling down the street and a bunch of talking bugs living inside you think to yourself hey, that's not my normal reality.
Leah Jones 22:47
It's not normal, right. It's either a Roald Dahl invasion or a Richard Scarry invasion either which I want to investigate.
Benjamin Niespodziany 22:57
But yeah, those Roald Dahl books are great examples of surrealism. And then I think when it was turned into a movie, I think it was the production company that had done like a brain saying, Yeah, my brain was saying Nightmare on Elm Street, but it's.. What's the Christmas?
Leah Jones 23:11
Oh, Nightmare Before Christmas.
Benjamin Niespodziany 23:12
Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton. Yeah, Edward Scissorhands. Exactly.
Leah Jones 23:19
I guess like Edward Scissorhands would be surreal also. Absolutely. Yeah. So highly stylized. And he has scissors for hands, right? Yeah. And it's set in this like, very, it's such a beautifully styled movie
Benjamin Niespodziany 23:35
It's like perfect pastels and soft colors. And then just a strange Gothic man cutting edge clippers with his hands. I do think that a large part of surrealism, at least in the narratives and the books that I gravitate toward is that rarely is the main character, or rarely are the central figures recognizing this as being strange. So it's not like “Oh, my gosh, there's a giant thing rolling down the hill, there's a Giant Peach.” It's not, there's no way that could happen. They're thinking, oh, there's a weird peach, this'll probably be on the news. Or someone wakes up and their arm is a tree stump. They're not saying there's no way this isn't possible, I'm dreaming. They're saying “Oh, my gosh, how can I fix this?” So the acknowledgement of the strange is often not there, you're often just accepting what's happening as reality and trying to either solve it or fix it, or embrace it. But a lot of these shows and movies where surrealism is really well done. It's almost like the surrealist element is seen as normal through the person's perspective. And then it's the audience that's saying, “Oh my gosh, this is so weird.” But the main character on a show like Atlanta, for example, is saying, this is perfectly normal. This is maybe weird, and I might be dreaming, but this is very much reality. And how do I get out of the situation? Or how do I monetize off this or whatever the episode might be about.
Leah Jones 24:52
So with that lens, is Metamorphosis by Kafka surreal or not? Because he knows right away something's wrong and he's trying, he doesn't want to be turning into a cockroach.
Benjamin Niespodziany 25:05
Right. But yeah, it's definitely surrealism because there's no way that that could ever actually happen or maybe, right years and years in the future that get some weird science labs. But yeah, I think that Colin often they, you know, at least in like some of the prose poetry workshops I've done and some of the stuff where I’ve worked with other writers, they often encourage you to not draw too much attention to the surreal element because you’re over emphasizing and then it loses its magic. But I think with his example it’s such a shocking morning after reveal that you have to pay freak out so it’s a great attention getter, but from the rest for the rest of the time that’s the reality and he has to accept it. But it's a fine middle ground between calling too much attention to and freaking out or acting like it's perfectly normal and seeing other reader response.
Leah Jones 25:55
I want to talk about Truman Show, which maybe I've only seen once in the theater. I don't know, it was before reality TV really existed. Truman Show for people who aren't haven't seen it yet. Spoilers. We’re entering spoiler country.
Benjamin Niespodziany 26:22
24 years after the release date.
Leah Jones 26:25
So is The Truman Show. Did you get to see it in the theaters? Or is it something you got on you rented or you saw on TV for the first time?
Benjamin Niespodziany 26:35
Yeah, I saw it in theaters. I remember seeing the commercial when I was, I was 10 years old and the movie came out in 1998. If anyone doesn't know what that when the movie came out. So, I was 10 years old and I remember thinking that Jim Carrey was just the funniest person on earth. I really liked Dumb and Dumber at the time. I loved The Mask. I loved Ace Ventura, I thought he was just hysterical. And then for anyone that seen The Truman Show, it's not that comedy, it's a little bit darker, it's a little bit more surreal as we're talking. And he just plays a little bit more of a straight roll character, where he's not going off the rocker and doing crazy stuff. He's much more this domestic, almost like a Stepford wife, but for a guy, where he's just going through the motions of this monotony and trying to escape. All the while, he thinks everything's perfectly normal. He's just down and out on his luck and suburbia, but all the while he's inside of this giant, manmade dome, and every single waking moment that he or even when he's sleeping, every single moment is being filmed. And people at home are able to watch him sleep, or watch him go to a restaurant or watch him talk to his friends. It's 24/7 reality TV, of the life of Truman. And obviously the conflict becomes when he starts to try to escape this area, he tries to go on a vacation, and his plane keeps getting delayed, he's not able to leave. And he starts to slowly realize, okay, this might actually be a simulation, or this might be something is being put up, you start seeing the same car goes down my street every week at the same exact time. And he starts losing his mind a little bit, because you're wondering, "am I dreaming? Is this real?” And that's where the surrealism seeps in. Because everything's perfectly fine. You're walking down the street, the neighborhood's normal, but under the surface, it's a complete, it's a complete production to complete Hollywood setup. And there's the quote unquote, director is playing God, essentially. And it just gets more and more bizarre until the climax at the end. I don't want to give it away. I mean, I guess it's been 24 years, so maybe you shouldn't. But he does reach the limits of this quote, unquote set where he got it was his, you know, this is his whole world. He was born here. He knows nothing else besides a set. And it's maybe the size of maybe like a city, a city block or not a city block, but yeah, maybe the size of the city.
Leah Jones 28:42
But literally every other person is an actor knows they're an actor. That comes and goes right?
Benjamin Niespodziany 28:52
Right. So they're encouraging him like, Oh, you don't need to take a trip to stay here. Or his wife is really getting him to change the flight so that he never actually realizes that they can't leave because you're in a dome. But ever get everyone's in. They know their roles. They know when they're supposed to be in the cafe. They know when his schedule is to be at work. So they have to be acting. Yeah, it's all everyone's in on it but Jim Carrey's character.
Leah Jones 29:14
There's an author, I reference a lot in this podcast, and that's Jasper Ford. You’ve ever read his books?
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:23
I have not, no.
Leah Jones 29:25
So, he's got one series called The Thursday Next series. Thursday Next is a she's a book cop. She's the book police and she goes in and out of book world to solve crimes that happened to manuscripts. So the original book, the first book in the series is called the Air Affair. The manuscript of Jane Eyre has been stolen, and whatever edits are made to the manuscript impact all copies of Jane Eyre on the planet. But also, in book world, all characters live in the library, the Cheshire Cat is the librarian. And when your book is not being read, you can do whatever you want in book world. But as soon as someone gets to your page, you've got to be in the book.
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:19
Oh, wow. And so if you have a really popular book, and you're really famous, then you're constantly working?
Leah Jones 30:25
Yes. But if your book is hasn't been read in 20 years, like you're a nosy neighbor,
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:32
Yeah, quote unquote, retired. Yeah. You're a nosy neighbor.
Leah Jones 30:37
Or you're at risk of being recycled into a new book.
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:38
Oh, right. Like a reboot?
Leah Jones 30:42
Yeah. But I don't, I'm gonna have to rewatch the Truman Show. Because one, right, I saw it in 1998 and never revisited it. Reality TV, live streaming, what has gone from being very difficult. Like we watched reality TV and real world in those early seasons because that was the only way you could access that sort of information. But now everyone has a tiny computer that can live stream in their pocket. And access to people's created realities has shifted so much since 1990, since 98.
Benjamin Niespodziany 31:32
Very true. And I think at the time, the only shows that were really getting off the ground running were Survivor and Big Brother, I think those are the only reality shows that were really I don't even know what year those started. But they had to have been around the same time. And then I know that that when the Truman Show came out around the same time was a Matthew McConaughey movie called EDtv. That one I haven't seen since theater. So that one, my remembrance of it is very minimal. But I know it was very similar. I think with that one, he knew what he was getting into. So he's signed up to be filmed 24/7. And then obviously, things get out of hand, he decides he regrets it. He does want to be on TV all the time. But he sells his soul to these reality television stations. The Truman Show and EDtv. I think they were ahead of their time. But they were trying to hop on the bandwagon of the Big Brothers slash Survivors. Reality TV coming into the into the mainstream for the first time.
Leah Jones 32:22
So as Truman Show is that a comfort watch for you is that when you revisit regularly?
Benjamin Niespodziany 32:28
I revisited for the first time in college, and then I think I've seen it once or twice since. But I really liked the screenplay. I've downloaded the screenplay, I've read through the screenplay, I just really liked the idea of creating a constraint and boxing yourself in and then seeing what you can do in this area. So oftentimes, I'll open a blank page and try to do a writing session and I just get so overwhelmed by all the possibilities, or okay, I don't even know what I'm going to write about today, because there's so much that can cover. So I started thinking to myself, Okay, what if this is only on one street, or what if this is just, I have another manuscript in progress, where everything is on stage, and I tried to only have two or three props, and two or three characters. So it's like, once my brain can acknowledge that I only have a few objects, I only have a few characters, then I can run wild with those options, as opposed to being like, well, actually, I should have 5000 characters, and there's 10,000 objects, and let's write about all these different things. It's like, okay, let's just have a guy and a girl, a baseball bat, on the stage with a gallon of water and a pinata. And we're gonna scrap it's like, once I boxed myself in like that I can really run wild. And I think The Truman Show is a great example of that, because it's doing the exact same thing where you're in this little suburbia, you can't leave and here's all the possibilities. Another that The Truman Show is one of the two epigraphs in the beginning of my book and Pleasantville is the other one, which also came out in 1998. And it's also the same idea where you're trapped in a television series. But you can't leave. And once you try to go back further beyond the main street, it just loops you right back to the beginning of the street, because you're trapped in this old-fashioned sitcom. They have no idea what the outside world is. So there's me, there's Main Street, there's the school, there's a police officer and the department and that's it. So that boxed themselves in. And I really liked the idea of working with a constraint and not running wild and having this whole giant universe and just saying, “Okay, let's just focus on this little, hyper little area, and then nothing more, so I don't get too overwhelmed.”
Leah Jones 34:25
And then Pleasantville? Is it like, I'm trying to because again, saw it in the theater. Is it that everything's in black and white and one person gets in and they're in color? And that's like, they're from outside of TV and they're in color? Or is it reverse?
Benjamin Niespodziany 34:44
It is Reese Witherspoon and whoever the first SpiderMan was I forget his name.
Leah Jones 30:49
Tobey Maguire.
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:50
Tobey Maguire. So they come from the outside world into this television into black and white sitcom TV, and they're in black and white, everything's in black and white, the entire show is in black and white. But as soon as these two outside characters start calling attention to how they're in a TV show and start calling attention to the beauty beyond this little box in space, then the color starts to form. So I think one of the more iconic scenes is that everything's black and white, and a girl is blowing bubblegum, and it's pink. Or someone finally has red lipstick, because they found love. And they're so used to just being this one sided character within the sitcom. And then as the show progresses, I think by the end, it's almost entirely in color, because everyone is, quote unquote, woke, because they've been shown the way and they've been realizing that it's more than just this one black and white street with the same lines and the same character and the same repetition. But yeah, that's one that I haven't seen since theaters. I should probably watch that one again, because I remember thinking that it was so. so strange and so interesting, even back then. And then that was one where I redownloaded the screenplay, and I was reading it, but I haven't actually seen the movie since ‘98.
Leah Jones 36:02
So I opened up the IMDb page and then I was thinking, Oh, I wonder if that I guess WandaVision, at some level is has some things that are surreal.
Benjamin Niespodziany 36:15
I've heard about this. I've heard it's like very meta and strange. Yeah, but I haven't seen it.
Leah Jones 36:21
And then right away the two clips on the IMDb page for Pleasantville. One is the trailer and the other one is “What to watch if you love WandaVision”.
Benjamin Niespodziany 36:32
So you're on the right, you're on the right wavelength.
Leah Jones 36:34
So, in WandaVision, every episode is a different era of television. Perfectly recreated. So the first episode is like an I Love Lucy or Dick Van Dyke Show like that feel the jokes, the constructs, it is a perfect reimagination of the Dick Van Dyke Show. But with Marvel superheroes in it. And then there's like a 1970s show, there's even the one where they do that the 1990s sitcom, where I was like, oh, yeah, the word Trump and the 90s. Like, that's not just like normal TV. So I you don't have to know anything about Marvel to watch and enjoy WandaVision.
Benjamin Niespodziany 37:27
Nice. Which I don't so that's good.
Leah Jones 37:29
Yeah. Just, if you if you've watched enough TV of different eras, you will appreciate the costume design, how they shot it. They changed the format of the screen to match like what TVs were in different years. So it does not become a full screen. It doesn't take up your whole screen until like the fourth or fifth episode.
Benjamin Niespodziany 37: 54
Wow, that's really interesting.
Leah Jones 37: 55
Yeah. Because they're doing the aspect ratios of
Benjamin Niespodziany 38:02
Yeah, screen progression. Which I haven't really heard of. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I might, I might check that out. I knew about the old sitcom Dick Van Dyke style, but I thought that was what they stuck with for the entire season. I didn't realize that they're jumping around decades and jumping around eras. That's really fascinating.
Leah Jones 38:16
Yeah. And it's just so well done.
Leah Jones 38:31
So all I know about Atlanta again, spoiler country. It's fine. I know he's the Childish Gambino and he's all and Donald Glover, Donald Cooper's actor name. That's his name name. Right. So he's an actor. He popped on Community. He's a rapper. And then I just know that Atlanta is his TV show. But now you're telling me it's surreal. So I think one obviously have to watch it. Tell me more.
Benjamin Niespodziany 39:12
So the show begins with Donald Glover's character fun finding out that his cousin is becoming a big rapper, and he is struggling with money and struggling financially. So he tries to pitch it that he could be his manager. So normal narrative, normal setup, right? And it's just Donald Glover coming out of his slump and trying to get his finances back while helping out his cousin. But from that part, from that initial setup, everything is just a little bit off. Every episode, there's always some element where you're like, wait a minute, is this a dream sequence? There's standalone episodes where side characters go on these little quests just to pick something up that they found on Craigslist, and it turns into like a horror episode and you're like, I thought this was like an Atlanta rap comedy show. You never know when you press play, you never know what genre you're about to get into. You never know what's going to happen or who's going to pop out. It could be completely straight-laced normal Atlanta story, or it could be completely off the rails where by the end of the episode, they're eating human hand, which is one of the spoilers, spoilers. But it's very much it's been compared to like David Lynch and Twin Peaks, while still having like, you know, obviously more of like a modern hip hop aesthetic, but it's very surreal and strange and maniacal and full of political commentary and full of hysterical moments. And then the next scene, you'll start crying and then the next scene, you'll stay up overnight, because it haunted you and then the next scene is back to laughing. So it's, I'm not, I've never seen anything like that on television where you watch an episode and you're like, I just get done watching a movie, like that was perfect. That wasn't even Atlanta by the time it's done. You know, they have certain episodes where the entire cast and the entire setup is none of the reoccurring characters. There's nobody in the show. It's just like a standalone side short film, basically. But they really think outside the box, while still keeping you in this really interesting atmospheric tone. And it can be very by what sort of thing and very polarizing for people. Because some people really love it. And they love that weirdness. And they love not really knowing what's going on. And other people like just can't handle it, because it's too much.
Leah Jones 41:26
They just wanted their empire but led by Donald Glover.
Benjamin Niespodziany 41:29
Right? Exactly, yeah. Or they want to be like, Oh, I just want to go back to him being in the studio and making a big or I really want him to win a Grammy. And it's like, that's not what the show is about. It is what that's about. But it's much more about their inner turmoil, inner psyche. And I guess also just playing off of how strange Atlanta can really be from the day to day. But the idea I think initially with them was to have three seasons, they had the idea of start to finish, it was like a perfect story arc, and they were going to be done. And FX, I guess FX was like, because of COVID. And because of financial, whatever, and because of all the new attention that Donald Glover was getting, they settled on doing four seasons. And the final two seasons, both happened this year. So Season Three was in the spring. And then season four is happening right now. And it's about finished. But it's so rare to see a show that has two seasons in one year. And this is after like a three-year break. But it's almost like they have like this perfect narrative arc. And then Donald Glover has obviously probably as 100 other things to do. So he's probably trying to get this out, but also doesn't want the fourth season to struggle, because often a third, fourth, fifth seasons can get a little stale. But every episode reinvents the wheel and just really, really throws me for a loop every time which is what I'm always looking for.
Leah Jones 42:40
Did you start watching Atlanta because say you mentioned you're into hip hop. So did you watch it because you're like, oh, it's gonna be a show about hip hop? Or did other people watch it and come to you and say, there's this new surreal show on and you are gonna love it.
Benjamin Niespodziany 42:58
It was I think it was much more of the former, I think it was the angle that I think that I heard it pitched was there's a hilarious new show on TV called Atlanta, or there's a really cool new rap show called Atlanta, it was definitely pitched as more of a comedy and I thought it was going to be much more grounded and much more comedy focused. And it was almost, I think in the initial episodes, I was almost looking at it like entourage, but for a rapper, whereas you're seeing him from the earliest stages and then become the superstar. That's what I thought going into it. And that's I couldn't have been more wrong. And I think but even if you rewatch the first season, I think the first couple episodes give you that idea. You know, he's trying to read he's trying to reignite a flame with his cousin, they're trying to go back in the past or trying to make some money. They're trying to figure out their plan. And then things just get weirder and weirder and weirder, or there's like vision quests in the woods. And there's other ones that are complete dreams where the character wakes up at the end. It's really, really fascinating.
Leah Jones 43:52
Absolutely, 0% of people have said any of that to me.
Benjamin Niespodziany 43:56
I was even gonna say the third season, they're doing like a European tour. And they're going to all these very strange places. And there's one episode that almost feels like watching midsummer, where there's this weird, European cult, murder tradition. And you're like, where is this episode going? You know, this is not in with the story arc at all. It just throws you for a loop every time which is wonderful. Atlanta. 100 out of 10. 10,000.
Leah Jones 44:23
Now what about so the three surreal TV shows you listed were Atlanta, Maniac and Perpetual Grace limited Ltd. I've heard a perpetual grace. But I've never heard of maniac and I don't think I know anything about Perpetual Grace. So tell me a little bit about these shows.
Benjamin Niespodziany 44:46
So I think Maniac actually ties in perfectly to one division that you were talking about where it was just a one-off season that was pitched as a miniseries on Netflix, and it's with Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, and they start just guess they're both struggling trying to get their lives together. So they sign up for this dream survey, I guess, where they monitor your dreams. That's all they really know. And they're just trying to they're trying to make some extra money. So they don't really know each other in the real world. But there starts to be some type of spark. And as they're sitting next to each other in these like dream pods, they're like tied up in their monitor and all this stuff. There's some type of haywire situation and their setup start to mingle together. So every single episode is a new dream sequence. But where they're trying to monitor Jonah Hill's dreams and Emma stones dreams, they're jumping into each other's dreams and talking to each other, and falling in love while they're in their dreams. And then they're coming out of it. And they're so distraught because it's so strange. And then every episode takes you deeper into those dreams. And it could be like Miami Vice style 1980s episode in their dreams or it could be a bank robbery. Every episode has a new genre and a new style. And yeah, it's just one season so they knew going into it. It wasn't canceled or anything. It was just almost like a miniseries. But really, really surreal. Very dreamy, very strange. And also pretty funny as well.
Leah Jones 46:12
I just feel like I'm I'm in an episode of pop-up video where I'm like, this thing you liked was surreal. This thing like the movie lobster that surrealism, right?
Benjamin Niespodziany 46:24
that's definitely surreal. Absolutely. That's a great example.
Leah Jones 46:28
Not just a rom com.
Benjamin Niespodziany 46:30
No. Oh, when you when you were talking about one division, I was like, that sounds just like Maniac. Yeah, we're each episode has a new aesthetic and a new style. I don't think mainly, I definitely doesn't go full on where they're messing with the ratios for the cameras and they're not completely crazy. But in one of the dreams like, Jonah Hill as a mole ladies wearing like a football jersey, and he looks like he's straight out of the 80s. So there's stuff like that where he's like, calling attention to like, what is going on? What Okay, where am I? What's this new dream? Yeah, it's really fascinating. Definitely one worth checking out. It should still be on Netflix, I think.
Leah Jones 47:03
I'm sure. Well, I'm never sure about anything, but hopefully, it'll still be there. And what about Perpetual Grace? saying it out loud. Feels like it's probably churchy. It's like religious.
Benjamin Niespodziany 47:18
You would think it's almost like it's such a hard show to describe and now I am even questioning whether it's surrealism. So this show is created by a Chicago director and writer Steve Conrad. I'm so glad I remembered his name, Steve Conrad, and he's best known for doing like he did the screenplay for that Ben Stiller movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And he's done a bunch of other like, pull at your heartstrings feel good films. And he has two shows that both swept and went under the radar of most people. One was the Patriot which just lasted for a couple of seasons on Amazon Prime. And then he had Perpetual Grace, which just lasted for one season on like Epix with an X it was some platform that no one even really watched completely went under. But the whole idea is that a son is struggling financially. So he faked his own death, so that his parents go to the funeral and that while the parents are at the funeral, his body double can go back and rob his parents basically. So there isn't surreal elements where anything's out of the ordinary in the actual real world, USA. But what they're doing and the mind games that they're playing, and the way that the story goes, it all just feels very, like it's equally poetic and equally like a little bit just off kilter, like the quotes are very, like lyrical and abstract, and no one really talks like that. And every character just is like this stoic, meta-Western character. It's such a weird show, and it's really hard to explain, but I think because it was so obscured just lasted for one season. But Ben Kingsley is absolutely wonderful on the show. And it's just like a really, really dark humor. It's a show that I've nothing I've seen is like that. It's like a Western mystery, dark comedy surrealist. Yeah, it's bizarre.
Leah Jones 49:18
So they're on Wikipedia, which is the arbiter of all things surreal. They say it's an American Neo noir thriller.
Benjamin Niespodziany 49:28
Oh, okay. Definitely. Neo Noir. definitely has that the LA Confidential Dick Tracy style, but you're out in like the Nevada desert or New Mexico desert wherever it's filmed.
Leah Jones 49:41
Yeah, that is, I mean, I guess from the title my assumption was going to be more along the lines of upload, where it's how do you have Perpetual Grace? So like, where does your soul go? How can you guarantee your soul goes somewhere that it has Perpetual Grace.
Benjamin Niespodziany 50:05
Sounds like you just wrote your own surrealist TV show.
Leah Jones 50:08
But it wouldn't be like that often it would be like a in The Office or Parks and Rec sort of style like a straight to camera mockumentary about the place where you go to register for your perpetual grace.
Benjamin Niespodziany 50:24
Oh, okay. It's like a almost like a DMV type place. I was looking up Stephen Conrad's Discogs or filmography right now. So, he did The Secret Life Of Life of Walter Mitty, which is obviously huge. And then the Pursuit Of Happyness with Will Smith, which obviously, if you've watched that movie, by the end, you're bawling your eyes out. And then the Nick Cage film, The Weatherman is another one. So he just has a lot of really strong, quirky movies. And then it seems like with that income, and with those, that money, he has these little side projects that he's on TV shows, and they never really last too long, but they're just stunning and really beautiful and just unlike anything you really see on TV or film.
Leah Jones 51:04
I heard about the Patriot a lot during peak quarantine. Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer would talk about it a lot on How Did This Get Made? Like they both really super got into it and we're just trying to beg anyone to watch it to try and get a third season.
Benjamin Niespodziany 51:22
Yeah, I would almost I would praise that show just as much as Perpetual Grace. I think it's less surreal and a little bit more down to earth. But it's also it's absolutely hysterical. It's so weird, and so funny. And it's one of those shows where every single character, you just want to hug them and tell them like, everything's fine. And you're wonderful. Whereas I feel like there's so many shows where I'm watching like, I hate all of these characters. Why am I still watching?
Leah Jones 51:45
There's no I was here for there's no, like, yeah,
Benjamin Niespodziany 51:48
What was Steven Conrad show Perpetual Grace the same way like I love every single character, he gives these personalities and you just there's like an added warmth that really isn't there too often in TV.
Leah Jones 52:00
This is going to be I can already tell this episode is going to fill my cue and, I'm sure.
Leah Jones 52:20
Let's talk about surreal books for a minute because also here you've got a list of authors that are not I so this is gonna I think this is really gonna you're gonna know exactly how old I am by the two books I think of when I think of the surreal books, which are Infinite Jest and House of Leaves. So the first one is by David Foster Wallace. Thank you. And then the second one is Luke Danielewski, I think, no, that's not right.
Benjamin Niespodziany 52:54
Hi, Mark Z Danielewski. Yep.
Leah Jones 52:56
Thank you. I got some of the letters Correct?
Benjamin Niespodziany 53:02
Yeah, House Of Leaves is a perfect example where you have this strange happening, you wake up one day, and you realize your house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. That's very surreal. And that was one of the first books, I don't think it's actually I don't know if it is still influential in my writing. But it's one of the first books where I read where I was like, oh, my gosh, this is what you can do inside the confines of a book. You can have pages where somebody has to look up into a mirror to read what's happening. You can have footnotes on top of footnotes. I was reading that book in high school, and I was just floored. And I think what he's done since it's been trying to replicate that initial invention hasn't been as successful. But that first book, really groundbreaking. And that's another polarizing piece of literature where people either love it or hate it. But it really got me into like, Okay, what was he reading? When he wrote this book? And what where did this come from? And how you know, and I'm finding 10 other artists and 15 other authors and 10 other books to read. So yeah, that's a that's a good one. That's a good one to bring up because it feels very similar to that, Pleasantville or Truman Show where you're boxing yourself in and then when you're in that box, weird shit happens.
Leah Jones 54:07
I think it got too spooky. I don't I know. I didn't finish it. I think it got spooky. I think that really spooky and I couldn't handle it anymore.
Benjamin Niespodziany 54:17
Yeah, it gets very spooky. It's a strange one. Definitely good for late October as we're talking.
Leah Jones 54:22
So what about so on the list that you sent me. Zachary Schoenberg, GennaRose Nethercott and CAConrad or so? Talk to me a little bit about these authors. Are they poets? Are they fiction? I mean, I guess can't really have a surreal documentary, can you?
Benjamin Niespodziany 54:43
Maybe you'd have to stretch the boundaries. There's a movie that I haven't seen a documentary called The Act of Killing or the Art of Killing. In 2012, documentary film about individuals who participated in the Indonesian mass killings, and they replicated how they did all of these, where they had these really large sculptures and really large stage setups, that they would make these theatrical killing fields. So the entire premise of the documentary is horrifying. And I guess it's very hard to watch. But the settings that they're creating look like these Alice in Wonderland dream lands where they're doing these horrific things, but they're turning it into like a presentation. So I guess that's when they came to mind as far as surveillance on the documentary scale, but I haven't seen that one. Well, yeah, for the books, Zachary Schomburg is both a novelist and a poet. So I think he has if six or seven books of poetry, and then he has one novel, and all of his stuff is very surreal. It's very tender, sensitive surrealism where he's often heartbroken and looking for his heart that is buried in the ground somewhere. Or he's there's often this attachment to love and sensitivity, all the while weird things are happening. So it's like, very tender, touching surrealism, which I absolutely adore. And he was one of the people that was able to blurb my book. So that was like, icing on the cake.
Leah Jones 56:14
Oh, how exciting. Yeah, your first it was that your first interaction with him was going, I was asking for the blurb or had you been able to meet him at conferences or readings in the past?
Benjamin Niespodziany 56:25
Yeah, I think it would have been more daunting if I just cold called him, but I'd met him before. AWP, the writers conference was up in Portland in 2018 or 2019. And I was able to meet him there. And I'd interviewed him on my blog before. And then he had this. He called them two by four workshops, where it was four weeks, and then he worked with two people on his workshop. So I just signed up for like a Skype, it was Skype, even before Zoom was big. Yeah, there's workshops with me. And that was first when I was really trying to work on my poetry and work on my writing. So he was not only an early inspiration and influence, but he was also giving me suggestions and feedback on my own poems and saying, like, Oh, really lean in here, or you can make this even weirder or oh, have you read this book? So a lot of the poems that were written in this book, no farther than the end of the street, were early in conversation with Zack Schomburg poetry and he was also helping me out along the way as well. Huge influence. Huge inspiration. And actually, if you don't mind, I wouldn't mind reading the very first poem from his book.
Leah Jones 57:29
Oh, that'd be wonderful.
Benjamin Niespodziany 57:31
It's called “Scary, no scary.” He has so many books, but Scary, No Scary. I thought it would be good for October vibes. Very short. You'll return to your childhood home, after a lifetime away to find it abandoned, its red paint will be completely weathered. It will have a significant westward lead, there will be a hole in its roof that bats fly out of the old man hunched over at the front door will be prepared to give you a tour. But first he'll ask scary or no scary, you should say no scary. And that's the opener of his book. So you just know that it's going to be a little bit interesting, a little bit off. But really, really beautiful and very touching too. And then yeah, with the other artists, they're also a similar style. So GennaRose Nethercott just released her debut novel called Thistlefoot, which I actually haven't been able to read yet. It's like a 400, page mammoth. But she has a really great book of poetry called The Lumberjack Stuff. And it's one long book length poem. And it's broken up into little prose blocks. So it's, you know, you could see it almost as micro fiction or short fiction, or you could also see it as poetry. But the entire premise of the book in the whole premise, I guess, was based off of a prompt that someone had given her where take one object in your everyday life, replace it with another object and go from there. So the idea of this book is that a lumberjack is chopping wood out and about accidentally cuts off his arm, and in replacement of that arm is a dove. So because he doesn't want his arm to fly away and needs to get help, he ties a string to his arm that ties to the dove. And then he's trying to find a witch doctor to get his arm back. All the while, you know, he's losing a lot of blood and losing his mind. But the entire book is one long poem. And it's taking you through the process of this folkloric fairytale strange dream. Really, really beautiful book.
Leah Jones 59:35
Wow. That's such an interesting prompt to just replace an item.
Benjamin Niespodziany 59:43
So simple, right? And I love the idea to create an entire book as opposed to like, oh, I was able to get a poem out of that. It's like no, I was able to get my debut collection out of that, right?
Leah Jones 59:52
It really feels like these poems can start at the same place of like stepping off the wall and an improv show.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:00:11
Totally.
Leah Jones 1:00:12
You’re just going to step off the show and see it, commit to it and see what happens. But also because it's improv, maybe there's chairs on the stage, literally anything can happen. And it's whether or not you allow anything to happen, and how you react and how your fellow improvisers react to it.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:00:38
A hundred percent. And there could easily be an evening where you're driving home that night, you say, oh, okay, improv was okay, and nothing really happened. Or you can be driving home and say, oh, my gosh, I totally wrote, it led to this joke, which led to this joke. And now I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna I have a whole movie in my head. One little sliver can really create this giant, or I guess a thread can really create this giant article of clothing or something like that.
Leah Jones 1:01:00
Also the question of, I was certainly you were gonna say, replaces arm with an axe. But instead of an axe, which can be a violent tool is replaced with a dove, which is like a symbol of peace. And right there, like you're just off and running. And I just really haven't thought deeply or even shallowly, about surreal art and a long time. So this is really so interesting. And what about CAConrad?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:01:35
CAConrad is another one who was able to blurred my book, another really early influence. They have a book called The Book of Frank, which is their first book and every single page and every single, I guess sliver is like a retelling of Frank. So you think of shows like, Adventure Time, or even like Family Guy where absurdities happen, and then the next episode, it starts from scratch, and you're back to the beginning or on Southpark, Kenny dies every episode every other. And the next episode, Kenny is back. So, with Frank, the book of Frank, Frank could explode, he could chew dynamite, he could go through the gamut of horrible things and then the next page, he’s back up going to school, doing some weird stuff. So, it just made me realize that it's like episodic, but you don't necessarily have to have it be a narrative through line. It's not like the next day, Frank woke up and the bomb no longer bothered him. And he was no longer exploded. It was just like, keep up with me as I continue to go down this really weird parallel of Frank. So with this book, when I was working on it, I realized I had all these different pieces. And I'm like, in one particular piece, it's like, oh, the main characters fall into a well, so the next page, they need to be soaking wet, or they need to be drying off. And I was like, no, it can just be completely different episode. It has doesn't have to connect that way. You just need to know that there's these two characters. And every page is almost like an episode of WandaVision or an episode of Maniac where it’s a new reworking of what you're already have available.
Leah Jones 1:03:06
I think there are a lot of cartoons. Where right, they just reset like Bob's burger. burger of the day. And they are always at risk of going out of business. Like those are the stakes, the stakes are that they're gonna lose the business. And Bob will always have a burger of the day. The injuries don't stick around the fire, like the damage, nothing is permanent. But the menu, and the stakes.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:03:38
Exactly. When you know what you're getting into every episode, you know that it can go as far as it wants to go, and then you know that the next episode is going to be right back to square one. The end of CA Conrad's, the book of Frank is Frank road, the dandelion seed floating above the street. So, you know, that's not never gonna happen. That's not a realism. But, after all this stuff that happens to Frank, it's a really long, beautiful book, and it's very violent and grotesque and strange. And then at the end, Frank just rides a dandelion off into the sky, it's just like a, like a cleansing. It's a very, very strange book, but it's like a deep personality study. It's really, really cool.
Leah Jones 1:04:19
And CA also blurred your book?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:04:22
Yes, they did, thankfully. And yes, since that first book CAConrad's poetry has gone in the direction of like, more meditative and like channeling like an inner spirit. So some of the poems are a lot more autobiographical, a lot more lyrically driven, whereas this first book almost feels like it's like a completely different project, completely different voice and I love the stuff that they're doing now, but the debut book of Frank is just like, it's just my bread and butter where I just know that things are just strange from start to finish, and you're never going to no matter what page you turn to, you'll never be in your comfort zone because you never know what’s gonna happen.
Leah Jones 1:05:03
Can I ask did you study writing in, like college or get an MFA? Or are you a self-studied, self-taught poet and writer?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:17
I guess a mixture of both. I went to Butler University for my undergrad in Indianapolis. I'm Indiana born and raised so I'm from my parents are from like, right outside of Notre Dame area.
Leah Jones 1:05:28
Okay. I'm from Terre Haute.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:33
Oh, okay. Which is mainly known …
Leah Jones 1:05:33
Crossroads of America
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:34
I was gonna say, Terre Haute’s mainly known for the high security prison, right?
Leah Jones 1:05:39
Yep. That shows your age.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:44
I was thinking of like the Oklahoma City bomber. I think he was in terror at the Terre Haute.
Leah Jones 1:05:48
Timmothy McVeigh was executed at Terre Haute. But we also it's where Larry Bird played college ball. And where the coke bottle was invented.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:58
Okay. Putting it on for better things than Oklahoma City.
Leah Jones 1:06:02
Yeah, there's also a Steve Martin had a long running fight with Terre Haute like a what's it called when two people like grudge or two people don't –
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:06:10
a beef?
Leah Jones 1:06:10
A beef. Had a long-standing beef with the with Terre Haute and there's an end of a movie, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid where the evil character tries to set off a nuclear bomb, fails. And one of the last lines of the movie is at least I got Terre Haute.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:06:36
Was there a reason for the original hate? Or was it just a bit that he was leaning into?
Leah Jones 1:06:41
It was a bit that he leaned into that then Terre Haute leaned back and like, invited him to come and get a copy of the city and a tour. So then maybe The Jerk premiered in Terre Haute at the Indiana theater. So, it was an escalating bid where when Vigo County had a better sense of humor. Before the prison. So so you're so you're from the region?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:07:09
So I went to undergrad at Butler and I studied journalism and Spanish as my double majors. And then I had my minor in English. So I always knew that I like to write I just never knew like what direction I was really gonna go. And the idea of English major felt very daunting. So I was like, Okay, I'll do journalism. There's at least newspapers and magazines, right. I've never worked for a newspaper my life. So that didn't really pay off.
Leah Jones 1:07:28
There were, there used to be?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:29
Yeah, there used to be. But yeah, right after college. Then I went to Ecuador for two years for Peace Corps. And I was just a community volunteer, I was helping out at a local library, always reading and writing the entire time that I was there. And then when I came back to the States, I really just wanted to do music, journalism and focus on Chicago's hip hop scene and focus on the music. So that's when I really got into blogging and writing and blogging. But never during any of this was I thinking surrealism and creative writing. And then I was working all along, when I got back to Chicago at the University of Chicago's library. And I just started learning about more and more writers, more and more authors and their books were just right upstairs. So, I'd go grab 10 books, 20 books, I guess my own self-taught education because I was in that environment where everyone's learning and everyone's studying and I felt like I needed to be doing something else as well. I was able to discover all these new artists and all these new authors, Zachary Schomburg, for example, Richard Brautigan, for example, who has really short, very tiny, little poems, and there isn't really an ending, and it just stops. And I'm reading them, I'm thinking, I can do that, oh, my gosh, I can try and do that. It doesn't need to be a 400 page, bestselling novel, I can write these little sparse flash fictions. I was just opening my ideas to all my possibilities, as opposed to just like, I can't write a book that's 400 pages, and it has to have the same story. And I have the attention span for that, where it's like, oh, wait, I can write two paragraphs and then tomorrow, I can write something completely different and doesn't have to be connected. So no MFAs is nothing like that. Nothing further, but a lot of Zoom readings I tune in on a lot of little online workshops. And I'm constantly either in conversation with other writers or sending poems back and forth, or finding out about a new book that I just checked out. So, there's constantly that need to be self-educated. And as soon as I find out about one author, I want to read 10 other ones, so there's always like, just a giant stack of books of new people that I might find out about.
Leah Jones 1:09:30
Well, if you haven't read him, Josh Bell. He's got two books of poetry out one called Alamo Theory, and one called No Planet Strike. He's from Terre Haute. And growing up he had the best Star Wars collection. But he's a he's a professor and a poet and one of these days I'm gonna get him on the podcast. So my mom will ask his mom and she'll pass along the news.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:02
Is he still in the Midwest?
Leah Jones 1:10:06
No, I think he's at he teaches at like an Ivy League school.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:11
Oh okay, so he's a big shot.
Leah Jones 1:10:14
Yeah, he's a big shot, but he shares a name with like that famous violin player. Josh Bell. He's not like yo, yo ma famous, but he's a famous violin player. So he's often I think for while his website might have been like, Josh Bell, not the violin player.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:35
I was gonna say what's more of an obscure passion and hobbies are more of a more obscure career to have either being a well-known violinist or well-known poet. I feel like both of them like you really have to know the scene to know any violinist and you really have to know your poetry not any other poets.
Leah Jones 1:10:50
Any other poet.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:53
It's like, oh, man, I'd be more well known if this violinist wasn't around. That's pretty good. Whereas there's probably like a baseball player named Josh bell as well. That's like, 10 times more famous.
Leah Jones 1:11:04
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. There's a track runner. There's a bunch of there's a bunch of when I first got on the internet, there are only two Leah Jones is on the internet. And now there's a lot of them. And they're all high school athletes. So my Google Alerts are like, the winning pitcher Leah Jones. I'm like, not me. Running hurdles? No.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:11:31
Podcast extraordinaire. There we go. Okay.
Leah Jones 1:11:33
Yes, that's the goal. So if someone came to you, and said if you are going to do, let's say, a community class on surrealism, that would be every week would like it four weeks, and every week as a different media or like media appreciation of surrealism? What would go in your curriculum?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:12:11
Oh, that's a great question. I think I would definitely put in The Truman Show, we've talked about it enough. And I think that that's a great one to go into, because, like you said, a lot of people don't really look at it as being surrealist. But I think it's very, very strange. And I love going into depth with that idea. Another movie that I had listed on here is Holding Motors. And that's one that really flabbergast me, and I still don't necessarily understand. And that's one that would, if you're trying to have a class on surrealism, and you're trying to confuse your audience, and you're trying to make your students outraged at what they just saw, I think that's a great one, because everyone's going to have a different interpretation to the ending, everyone's going to have a different, they're going to come away with something different. So it's a very experimental French film. And it's about a character who is playing, fill in roles for other lives. So he will dress up like a dad and then come home and talk to his wife and tuck his kids into bed. And then he'll go back outside to this limousine, and he'll change characters, and he'll be an actor on a romance film. And then he'll do that, and then he'll go back into his limo and change characters. And then he'll be a chauffeur. He's like playing all these different roles. But every single life that he walks into, is either unaware of what's going on, or there's already like a pre-arranged agreement, and that's not really discussed, I guess. It's very similar in tone to The Lobster, where it's like, so deadpan and so serious. But what you're watching is so strange that you're like, What the hell is going on? So yeah, that Holy Motors is completely off the walls bonkers very strange movie. But really, it's almost like told up in little sparks short films, because every time he gets out of the limousine to do another job, it's like its own little side story. So it's really interesting. But that would be one, if I had a four-week class that would put that when I think as the final of the class, just to have a really heavy mic drop for like, I'm gonna leave you with this maybe not for discussion, right? I think Zachary Schomburg would be a great one to include, if we're going to talk about literature. I think his work is so sparse and short that you can get through it really quickly. So you can cover three or four of his poems and have enough time to discuss and talk go into segments of his novel. And apparently, is working on a second novel, so I'm excited to hear about that as well. And then two movies and a book that I've mentioned. And then I think, I mentioned here, Leonora Carrington for artists. And I think we haven't really discussed much of the surrealism behind Visual Arts and by no means am I like, educated in fine art or anything like that. But her work is very, very strange and very dreamy she writes beautiful short stories as well. She passed away quite a while ago. But she was roaming with the early surrealist and a lot of her stories are her own take on surrealism, and they're usually disgusting and foul and grotesque and beautiful. But all the while she's doing these paintings that are accompanying her works or paintings off on the side. I just bought a tarot deck of some of her illustrations. Her style is really, really interesting. And she’s the grandmother of surrealist, I guess. But yeah, she has a short story where she is in love with a warthog, and they have like 15 warthog children. And it’s just all very, very strange. There’s one where this princess doesn’t want to go to like a really high end charity ball or whatever it is. So, hyena swaps places with her by ripping off her face, putting it over the hyena’s face, and then going to the ball pretending to be her. And no one at the ball thinks otherwise other than there's a weird smell. So like, her stuff is really great. I mean, she's known for I think, being more of a visual artist, but her stories are just as strong as her visual work.
Leah Jones 1:16:10
I Googled her quickly. And I was trying to figure out what I have heard, as I might have recognized, and I don't know if I've ever seen some of it like a little bit tickles a memory, but not really.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:16:29
She's very interesting. And I think as after she passed, which is probably about 10 years ago, at this point, she had a resurgence and attention and people revitalizing her life and publishing books that had been out of print for years. But she was, I think, married to or at least involved with Max Ernst, who's one of the founders of the surrealist movement. I think her stuff is miles ahead of what he was doing. But he got all the credit for the early surrealist movement. And she was seen as, like, oh, that's just Max Ernst’s partner. It's like, but you know, 100 years later, it's like, oh, she was providing like, such stronger imagination. And she was bringing so much more to the table in the, in the surrealist movement and that now, I feel like people are talking more about her than maybe they were with Max Earnst. There needs to be like a, I don't know, a biopic or something about her life. As she traveled all over the world. She went from rags to riches back to rags back to riches. Really interesting person. You can't really talk about surrealism without Leonora Carrington.
Leah Jones 1:17:34
That's a solid four week class.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:17:38
Right? As long as you participate, you get an A. Because every answer is open to interpretation, right?
Leah Jones 1:17:46
Well, I really appreciate that you brought. I mean, other than the Truman Show, and Atlanta, all new films, TV artists, writers, people, nothing I have ever been exposed to. I love that. And that there are Salvador Dali had a film that involved cutting an eyeball. And I'm gonna say that turned me off from ever wanting to see anything called, identified as a surreal film, because that was that is just seared on my brain.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:18:29
Yeah, and I think a lot of surrealism, it's always there's that hesitancy or that warning, where it's like, okay, this could go grotesque and graphic and even some body horror films where someone gets infected, and they're turning into a bug or whatever that's an example of surrealism. But yeah, some of those Dali films are a little bit too close to seeing, like, is this real? Did he actually cut that in half?
Leah Jones 1:18:53
Yeah. So I really appreciate that. It also is, you know, I'm sure there's plenty written about compare, the difference between surrealism and magical realism when you look at Latin American authors, but this has just been a delight, Benjamin, I've really enjoyed getting to know you.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:19:13
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show and talking to me for a while about my love of all things weird and all things entertainment. I was trying to think of one particular item to bring as my favorite and I was if I just talked about surrealism, I can talk for hours. I was trying not to box myself in.
Leah Jones 1:19:30
That is a good plan. Also, the things that didn't make the list won't be upset with you. Which is sometimes people have a hard time picking their favorite because they're like well, but my second might the thing that I don't pick will be upset. And I'm like I promised you mostly the hobby you didn't pick doesn't know you didn't pick it. Unless it does, in which case I apologize.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:20:00
And all we can hope for is that the previous writers and workers of The Truman Show hit us up and say, hey, we’d love to talk about this project. I don’t even know who that screenplay author is. But yeah, 20 some odd years ago wonder if anyone’s like oh, people are still talking about The Truman Show.
Leah Jones 1:20:15
Oh, I’m sure they are. I'm sure they still have Google Alert setup. I would. So your debut full length collection No Farther Than The End Of The Street. Available Now, technically November 1, but we're hearing now from Okay Donkey Press. We'll link to that in the show notes. Where can people find you on the internet?
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:20:37
So you can find me, my handle for everything is neon pajamas. So Instagram, Twitter and neon pajamas.com. And I think that's everything. I've thought about getting a TikTok, but I haven't done it yet. But yeah, neonpajamas.com and I tried to keep it updated in the blog, you can find all my poetry publications there as well as some of my electronic resources. There's some free writing prompts you can download, as well as the links to my books as well.
Leah Jones 1:21:05
Outstanding. I don't recommend TikTok because it's so good.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:21:12
You won't be able to look away.
Leah Jones 1:21:14
Yes, I had to put limits on it if a timer is on it, but then I just kept breaking the timer. So I'm getting better boundaries with it. But it's so strange. The ways that people are coming up with if you think about the comedy of Vine, and how clever people got with comedy on Vine. Watching jokes evolve, and the speed at which a memes evolve on TikTok and the way that their visual and our oral is so interesting. But also very hard to look away from.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:21:57
Very entertaining but very time consuming.
Leah Jones 1:21:59
Yeah. Great. Well, Benjamin, this is this has been great. You can follow Finding Favorites appreciate if you let's not smash that subscribe button. That's what you do on YouTube. But subscribe, download, tell your friends, tell your families, tell your enemies. And if you've got time review it on Apple podcasts formerly known as iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you are listening to podcasts. Thank you so much, Ben.
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:22:30
Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time means a lot.
Announcer 1:22:34
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
Plia Kettner loves Kfar Saba and Cats
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
While host Leah Jones was visiting Israel, she met with long-time Facebook friend Plia Kettner to talk about Plia's lobbying to open the skies of Israel during Corona, her love of Kfar Saba, and her love of cats.
Plia collaborated with other citizens with partners or family abroad who were stuck abroad during Corona and is now part of an international team who shares information on how to organize around the theme "Love is not Tourism."
Plia Chetner on Facebook
Burial Alternatives in Kfar Saba
Qalqilya
Kfar Saba
Supreme Court case
We Want to Meet Each Other
Love Is Not Tourism
Feral cats in Israel
Lion in the Living Room
Kfar Saba and Ranana love animals
transcript follows
Finding Favorites with Leah Jones
Everyone loves something. A hobby, a musician, an artist, a book genre - everyone has a favorite thing and this is the podcast where we hear the stories.
How did you discover your favorite thing? What do you love about it? Who have you met through it? How would someone sample your favorite thing?
At Finding Favorites, we get recommendations without using an algorithm.
Hosted by Leah Jones