The Watch - Kanye’s Dropping Two Albums in June, ‘Atlanta’ Is the Best Show on TV, and Elwood Reid Discusses ‘The Last Good Kiss’ | The Watch (Ep. 250)

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the news that multiple Kanye West albums are coming out in June and what they’re expecting from them (02:30) before jumping into what makes ‘Atlanta’ so special (13:20). Then they are joined by Elwood Reid, executive producer of ‘The Chi,’ for a special Doubledown Book Club to talk about ‘The Last Good Kiss’ by James Crumley (21:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Microsoft Teams in Office 365, visit office.com slash teams to learn more. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. Podcaster sees Ghost. It's Andy Greenwald.

It's exciting time to be. be a culture podcaster. I guess it is, Andy. Breaking news. Before we get to the breaking news, I just want to tell you a couple things about the ringer.com and our various arms of media. Yeah. And what we've got going on. First of all, watch the Andre Dock if you haven't already on HBO. It's on demand. Great documentary. If you get some time today, catch up on all the things you need to know about Westworld. I highly suggest checking out Alyssa Bear's Westworld syllabus on the ringer.com. And if I may be so bold as to suggest two podcasts, that featured the same person in my life. Amanda Dobbins.

Wow. One of the best out. The queen. And she is the co-host of Jam Session with my office roomy, Juliette Lippman. And they had a great episode this week about the Tristan Thompson, Chloe Kardashian fiasco. Contra-Tomp, shall I say.

And then Amanda also hosts Recapables, Atlanta. So Recapables, Atlanta goes up after the Atlanta episodes every week. We're going to talk a little bit about Atlanta today. We've also got Recapables billions going. So everything you need in the world, the ringer.com's got it. Except we're not putting out two albums in June like Kanye West is.

Can we do it before we keep putting a couple before us before we get into that news? We should say that we're also doing book club today. I was going to get to the table of contents. We're doing book club. We're doing Atlanta. We've got a special guest joining us for book club. Yeah, Elwood Reed, showrunner extraordinaire,

is here to talk about James Crumley and the last good kiss with us. And then Monday we have a great show because we're talking about the first episode of Westworld. and then we're going to be joined. We were joined. We recorded it already, but it was one of our favorite pods

we've done in a really long time. Bill Hader, the creator, director, star of Barry, along with Alec Berg and a bunch of other talents of people working on that show, and his co-star Henry Winkler. The legend. The ledge.

I mean, this was a good one. We had a really good time with these guys. Gentlemen, both. Yeah. A very... I have to say, Henry Winkler really taught me

like, it's about what you put into the world. Henry Winkler is a positive and kind, person. We sat at a small wooden table with him for, you know, 40 minutes, and I could have stayed there all day. We're really excited for you to hear this podcast. We also recommend that in preparation for Monday's podcast, you catch up fully on Barry. If you started it and jumped off the train at some point, it's definitely time to jump back on. Episode four, which aired last week and episode five, which airs this Sunday, are by far the best of the season to date. And we talk heavily about the events of those episodes in this conversation. So we want you caught up. The God Hero Mariah directing Sundays. Really good one. Yeah, get back on the Barry wagon. Okay, let's get back on the Kanye wagon really quick.

I don't really know what to say other than... So Kanye's been tweeting for the last couple of days what he is calling his book. A philosophy book. It's like a philosophy book. He's also just like dumping the notes from his iPhone. Like, here's a tattoo that somebody designed for me. Here's a prototype for like a caterpillar boots. Some bootwork he's doing.

Yeah, I guess, you know. Light bootwork. Just in time for summer. and Kanye obviously is somebody who looms large over this podcast and over our collective imaginations and is a very seminal artist for both of us we've essentially grown up with him I mean this is one of those artists who is

he's our age right and is making records sort of about the time in his life exactly where we are in our lives although I would venture to say that we have sort of deviated from the electricity that he was feeling between Yeez and Pablo. But we're going to see what middle-aged Kanye is all about because he's got two records coming out in June.

The first one is a seven-song solo album that I don't think has been named yet, as of the recording. The other is a collaboration with Kid Cuddy called Kid C-Gy Ghost. He also announced that there is a push-a-tie record coming out on May 25th, so good music is back in the building.

I mean, I'll believe it when I see it, but we have been waiting for a push-a-album for a number of years. The rumors swore. from the minute the push announced it that Kanye was going to produce the whole record I mean his his lips to the good music

God's ears I hope so but hopefully we'll find out soon so I would put Pablo for me in the 808's bucket of Kanye records that I very infrequently revisit interesting so the last bit of Kanye that I got

is not my favorite Kanye also kind of a rocky couple months for the guy like a year and a half for the guy or however long it's been, including what people took as like a sort of tacit, if not an endorsement, at least a normalizing of Trump by appearing in a photo with him and obviously meeting with him. And some like questionable tweets about Bill Cosby.

So like the last few public forward-facing moments for Kanye were not good. And, you know, lesser artists and other artists, and other artists and other people have been called out, much more than Kanye probably was for those moments, whereas we kind of like brush those aside as Kanye being Kanye. I push back on that only to say that he was unwell. And I don't mean he's unwell in the sense that I dismiss the mental competence of anyone who willingly appears next to Donald Trump.

Sure. What I mean is the Pablo experience, and I rate that record a lot higher than you do, I think. I love it. I'm fascinated by it. I think it is in many ways his most revealing record because it is just pure id pouring out. I mean, he couldn't let go of it. He kept changing it and it kept mutating and it's a hundred different things at once. And it has some of his greatest music on it and some of his worst,

sometimes in the same song, like the opening of Father Stretch My Hands, which is maybe the most exciting beat drop of the last decade and the most appalling opening lyric of the century. So all in the same song. So it was a lot. It was a lot to process. It's a lot to process and it was also just unvarnished. It was, and I don't in any way mean to make light of mental illness because he, I think he admitted or people armchair diagnosed, but his behavior seemed bipolar. And he needed to go away to work on himself and not work on his tweets or his boots.

I think that people in his life would feel that way. I think people who feel themselves to be part of his life like we do felt that way. I will add though just purely as a fan this was the first time I was ready to take a break Yeah I've always wanted more Kanye music I've always wanted more Kanye content I'm just I'm a fan and I'm fascinated

But this time I was happy to take a break And I didn't listen to the records for a minute And I just tried not to think about it honestly Because I want to And this is a whole other conversation That maybe we'll have another time Or maybe we just always are having it That to be a fan of people's extreme

behavior, when the bill comes due, it's sometimes hard to remain a fan of it. Absolutely. And so I began to feel a little strange about my love of his envelope, boundary pushing him. He's a dad, you know, he has other responsibilities beyond entertaining or shocking us. So all that is to say, this is fascinating. It has not been that much time, but it feels like a lifetime. collaborating with people who appear to be important to him, both socially.

Is that how you're describing Kid Cuddy? Well, no, yes, but I ask me push it. Like people who seem to have been there for him, and he seems to have a connection to, I've only really liked Cuddy's music when he's collaborating with Canya, so I'm optimistic about that. But seven tracks to come back to that are the right seven tracks. That's the right size album for this moment, I think.

I'm very curious what Man of the Woods Kanye sounds like. like, because this dude has gotten, from everything we've seen, he's gotten blonder, he's gotten a little more swole in the middle-aged dad way, not in the working out at Equinox kind of way, and he's been in Wyoming. So I don't know, but I'm ready. Yeah, I'm going to separate this into two categories. One is that I think probably the reason why the conversation about Kanye is different than, say, the conversation about Taylor Swift is because Taylor Swift is to somebody who seems to be a lot of something. to never have an unguarded moment, whereas Kanye lives in all unguarded moments.

Now, I am completely open to the idea that Kanye's quote-unquote unguarded moments are, in fact, a diversionary tactic and are of themselves guarded. Sometimes. But I think the reason why some, you know, people might, and, you know, Charity's been tweeting a lot about this today, and it's really, it's a fascinating debate. But the reason why we've kind of litigated Taylor Swift and assigned her this, like, you are the valky of deplorable America. handle is because she omitted telling us how she really felt.

She eschewed the whole responsibility of saying, in this crucial time, I'm going to put it on the table. Kanye actually, I don't know, necessarily told us much more than Taylor Swift did, but because of who he showed up with and the moment that that was taking place in,

it felt like one of a hundred other things that were just chaos in his life. Well, that's what I... By showing up with Trump. I don't think he said anything politically. I think he was operating... I think he deeply believes in the idea of life as performance and life as art. And I think that a lot of what he was doing, or at least thinking he was doing during that era was... And also what he's doing with his life, frankly, finding what appears to be...

I don't want to judge or even presume knowledge, but apparently is romantic love with someone who is primarily a tabloid figure. to the larger world. He was commenting, I think he thinks he was commenting on celebrity, but he got too close to the third rail of actual life, both his life and the country's wounded life in that moment. Yeah. I don't think politics had anything to do with it.

So there's all that. And then there is the other thing, which is the undeniable feeling you get whenever a Kanye project feels imminent, which is actually, I can't think of another artist who is, I've felt this way for this long about, Which is what's it going to sound like?

And that moment where you're just like, I can't wait to hear what he's been listening to and to hear what he thinks is interesting now. And that's been sort of the journey that we've been on with him since college dropout, since the mixtapes before college dropout. His greatest ability might be as a pop artist, but as a collage artist. I mean, he does have fascinating,

wide-ranging, often impeccable future-leaning taste, and he combines them in ways that surprises everyone and defines what comes next. And contrast that with the other major artist who's about to drop, which is Drake. Yeah, Scorpion. Nice for what, the single that came out two weeks ago,

is like a fucking silver bullet designed in some sort of super lab to slay every werewolf on the planet. It is so good, and it is so brilliantly good. And then the video is so, there's a certain point in the video, you know, when Misty Copeland, the ballerina is flexing. And I'm like, everything about this is so calculated, but I am in awe of its calculation. Everything about this was so brilliantly considered and designed and released on us. And it's a number one single and it should be.

Kanye doesn't do that. Yeah. Kanye is not focused. It's not that it's focus testing. Kanye is not really thinking about what we as a country are going to do in reactions. these seven songs, other than the fact that he knows, we're going to do something. Yes. And that is always going to be more interesting, even if the music isn't as brutally effective.

We were going to talk more about Atlanta today, Andy, but I figured we should at least do a couple minutes on it, and we can get deeper into it, maybe next Thursday. But we're almost towards the end of this season, right? I think there are only three episodes left. And I think the sort of even not knowing exactly how many episodes are left is a testament to this kind of ethereal nature of this. location. Yeah, I feel like this has been a very unique experience with a television show this season where I'm watching it week to week.

It is one of the highlights of my culture weeks every week. But at the same time, it feels like a step removed from the centrality that it had the first season. It's not a critique. It's just a commentary on maybe the ever-changing way in which we talk about and process television. I think Helen is still my favorite episode of the season. We didn't even talk about it for you to say that. I didn't realize that. it was just, it felt different than any other Atlanta episode in that way that great Atlanta

episodes always feel different than every other in Atlanta episode. Do you have a favorite this year? Is there anything that it's been jumping out at you? It's a great question. First, I want to push back a little bit on your point, which I think is right, but I would phrase it a different way. I think Atlanta is totally unique, not only because it is, as we said at the beginning of the season, essentially one of the last consensus shows. It has the belt. It's the best thing on TV by a large margin. And we're not alone in thinking that. What's fascinating to me about this season is the show is wildly digressive and disorienting and artistic and idiosyncratic. It is also still quite mainstream popular in as far as these things go these days. Sure. I mean, it's not getting

Roseanne numbers. No, I wasn't really talking about the numbers. No, but I think what you mean is that it's not carrying us through narrative in the way traditional belt shows have. What's amazing to me about it is that it is somehow still maintaining its quasi centrality to everyone's opinions or everyone's, most people agree, I think that this is the best show on TV from a large swath of the TV viewing public, but

it's doing so with willful strangeness and seemingly to delight in leading us astray. And I find that really encouraging, I mean, as someone who likes challenging things, but also really fascinating. If I have a criticism about

this season, it's that I wish they made more episodes. Maybe that would make them less special. Maybe that's not acknowledging how difficult it is to make these. Yeah. But the driving engine of the show does seem to be, this is what Donald Glover and Stephen Glover and their incredibly talented team of writers

aren't passionate about. This is where their muse is taking them week to week. And we're getting these small slivers of life that when you're up close don't necessarily seem to even link up with each other. But when watched together, create something larger. They have such talent and they have such just such natural resources in this incredible cast and this and Hero Marais's a directorial vision. And Amy Simons. And Amy Simons, who's directed the other episodes, I feel like I just feel hungry for more, which doesn't seem fair.

We should mention, I think a lot of people wanted us to weigh in on the Teddy Perkins episode, which was jaw dropping in every possible way. I think we recorded that day and we had been told that that episode would be presented without commercials and I think that we assumed that it would have some social element that was relevant that felt relevant to the moment

whether it was about Black Lives Matter or policing or something political. I don't know why we assume that because that's the 2018... There was a press release from FX that made it sound like it was a very special episode of Atlanta. I don't think we anticipated it being that, yeah. It's the 2018 version of a very special episode.

It's not about Jason Bateman losing his virginity. on Valerie's family or whatever, but Hogan family, but this is where we are. That was an episode that you could watch in the moment and thrill to

and think about for now two weeks and still not be settled with it, which is one of the more amazing things you can say about a random episode of a serialized TV show. What it had to say

about celebrity, identity, about blackness, about talent, about responsibilities to any of these things, I have not sorted out. I actually, people were saying, how can you guys not podcast about it right away? And actually, I feel like it's a testament

to the magnitude of that episode that I was relieved we weren't podcasting after it. It felt too rich to parse, including all this, the incredible meta reactions one could have to it. I'm still not over the Owls' Casket or whatever that thing was called. The what? The owl casket, the ostrich egg that he has to eat.

Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm still processing that. How about the fact that it's Keith Stanfield once again trapped in some nightmarish home where a flash disorient him, you know? I mean, knowing when they made this, I think they wrote this season before Donald went to film, Donald, like, repels, before he went to film Hans Solo. So the Get Out may have happened in between, I don't know. What other show can flex like that?

And then have last week's episode, Champagne Poppy, which is just on the surface of very straightforward episode. Van goes out. That's basically what it is. But even within it, it's possible to just luxuriate in the attention to details and specificity of moment and person and character that this show does, that Van who in other episodes

is presented to us as the saint. She's the mother. She's the girlfriend. She's the steady things. And Earn is choosing a more fluid, let's say, life instead of her. In this one, she's just up in them Instagram filters.

She is not a saint. She steals Drake's jacket. Which, to be fair, it's a very nice jacket. I love that the show in seeming to do very little or to take a, not take a week off, but relax into something can still be Titanic. And I do think no one is calling this Atlanta Robin season, sorry, FX Marketing Department,

but I get why they flag that for us because this idea of what is being stolen week to week, whether it's something literal or whether it's dignity in another week is really compelling. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we are going to get into the book club with Elwood Reed talking about James Crumley's Last Good Kiss.

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Okay, I've added chips and salsa to your shopping list. Download the Google Assistant today. Chris, do you hear that music that we don't have? It's the book club music. This is one of our favorite parts of the podcast. And today especially, this edition of the Double Down Book Club, we are thrilled because we're talking about one of our favorite books, one of our formative books,

and one of our favorite authors. The book is The Last Good Kiss. The author is James Crumley. And our guest is Elwood Reed, who loves this book and this lifestyle as much as we do. I've seen how that lifestyle ends with Jim Crumley. It's not. Yeah. It ends about as happily as this book ends.

Elwood, we should reintroduce you. You were a guest in this podcast a couple years ago when you were show running one of my favorite shows. That's right. Yeah. The Bridge on FX. You recently show ran The Shy before Showtime. Congratulations on a successful first season. And, but you are also, you're a book guy.

You're a crime fiction guy. Yeah, I am. And you're an American guy because you've been to these towns. You've done these drives. I still have a house of Montana. I have a great affinity for this, just that West that he writes about it, which still exists, by the way, when you go into weird pockets of the West. Well, I think that's a good place to start as any.

And we will get in a little bit into the plot of this book and what makes this book particularly special. But can, I think we should open up the conversation by talking about the world and the world that Cromley came from and created. Because I think for both Chris. and myself, when we picked up this book, we had not done all-night Dexedrine Fuel Drives from Salt Lake City to Missouri. I mean, now we have, sure. But at the time we had, and this book written in 78, I think,

it creates, it doesn't feel like it exists. And it's almost shocking and jarring to realize that this effort did exist. And to dive into it, the way you do in this book, was literally intoxicating in multiple levels. So let's start there. So how do you introduce this world? I mean, you used to teach English.

Well, I mean, it's funny because you brought up so many things. Like, I forgot about the travel in the book. Yes. Which is something, I mean, I drive, this is something about myself, I drive from Los Angeles to Livingston, Montana, which is the fastest I've done it is 14 hours. The average time, depending on how many kids I take and vomiting pets, is about 20 hours.

And depending on whether, but I do it probably four or five times a year, I do not stop. Sometimes there are things that help me drive that fast. Right. Yeah. How many road beers? I can't do that.

I'm an up guy. Yeah, that would be in the opposite direction. It's like, listen to black metal really loud and like, you know, grind my jaw and drive. So when you physically connect the distance between these totally disconnected places, what does that do? You know, it's funny because the other thing about this book that I was thinking about is, because, you know, he travels very quickly in some of these places in the book. And he's very good at landscape crumbling. is in the book, I think.

He doesn't get enough credit for that. But those towns that he talks about, there are pockets in Idaho and particularly in Montana where the mini-malling of America has not entered yet. There's still the little weird diners and the off-name bars and stuff like that. And it's funny. Every time I go by, I kind of, that romance of the Crumley sort of like creeps in when I'm driving. I'm going to stop off at the – I have – I go to pawn shop sometimes.

You know, but there's those towns that have not changed, I think, since Crumley was bopping around there. And it is – the West is a bar culture. It really is because some of these towns have way more bars than they have, you know, hospitals or restaurants or anything like that. It's crazy what they have in some of these towns because there's nothing to do in the winter. And I think that's the place to sort of like whenever I drive through those places, I'm reminded of one of the things that drew me out west, which was reading James Crumley, reading Jim Harrison. You know, also the poetry of Richard Hugo, who he talks about a lot is a big influence in him. Those things I'm reminded of a lot when I drive out there.

And Hugo's the guy who introduced James Crumley to Raymond Chandler and sort of set him along this path. And you mentioned Crumley's good at landscapes. Yeah. And when I read this book, which came after reading a lot of the books that I think were influenced by this, like Pelicanos, the thing you really pick up on is how different he is almost contemporaneously to guys like Elmore Leonard, to guys like Ed McBain, to guys like Ross Thomas. To guys like Carl Hyacin. Whoever you think is popular around that late 70s, early 80s, mid-80s time is just this is a

completely different kind of crime fiction that I was ever used to. This is more like a lyrical kind of Thomas McGuane novel that also happens to have kidnapping in the porn industry and mobsters and everything else. And this one is compared to his later books, which I also wholeheartedly recommend, this one is actually kind of tight. Even though upon rereading it, I'm like, it's still pretty far-fetched. But this one, this is, people listening to this podcast who have read the book won't believe it when I say this, but this is one of his more sober books in all senses. but even so it is so deeply,

and I think you feel this from the first page, it's really not about the specifics. It's not about the TikTok. It's about the journey. It kind of turns into a Hitchcock movie, the last act, and it has those kinds of twists. But before that, it doesn't feel like that. I never read for plot.

Yeah. I mean, and I was reminded that when I read this, I was like, because I had completely forgotten the plot, but I remembered all the fucking crazy weird scenes. He too, yeah. The ashtray scene. I mean, I remember all that stuff. You know, I mean, and it's, you brought up some of his contemporaries.

And I always think of this guy, Crumley, is there's this sort of these sort of writers, Edward James, either Edward Lee or Edward James Hurley, who wrote Midnight Cowboy, Newton Thorneberg wrote to Dine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a super underrated book. And Cutter and Bone. And Dreamland, one of my favorites. I've not read Dreamline. And Darrell Ponixan, who did like the last detail.

There's all these sort of like, they, I think, were more what, what, what, and they were, and they're completely fucking forgotten. Yeah. Do you mean? Because there's a sort of, I know, I was very taken. when I read this book again, how much tarnish he puts on every single thing. Even when he describes something beautiful that he loves, there's always that sort of gloom or the clouds or the pollution or the, you know, it's just, it's sort of a very cynical way of looking at the world. Without it being, you know, almost in the way sort of that Elroy would do, the cynicism doesn't come through as a pose. Yeah.

Elroy is constantly like, I'm showing you my hair here. Yeah, it feels like it's right here in the shoulder all the time. Yeah. I don't get that since then. Well, one of the great pleasures, and I think this is, you know, an umbrella statement for the project of this book club. One of the great pleasures of reading crime fiction or whatever genre we decide this falls into is watching people comment on the degradation of the American dream or the post-word dream in real time. Another writer I love, John D. MacDonald, who wrote the Travis McGee books. The Travis McGee books span three decades with one character.

And if you read them all the way through, which I pre-kids did, even he gets cynical. He sees Florida die all around him and the violence becomes too much for him and the stakes and the drugs. It's just much more than the world he was born into. We talk about that with Crumley, but we should also contextualize the author himself who came out of the war

and had hopes and dreams of being a respected novelist or a great American novelist. And he wrote, his first book was this war book called One to Count Cadence, which I will cop to on this podcast. I've never been able to finish. I have it on my shelf. It just didn't grab me.

He basically fell backwards into crime fiction because he wasn't selling, right? He wasn't publishing. And he found a way in. And we always, I think Chris and I, it doubled our passion for this stuff. And we realized that these secretly were the great American novels in many ways of the era. As there was this bifurcation of the literary scene from paperbacks to the MFA program, you know, with nothing in the middle. this stuff was actually talking about things but his own disappointment with his career

and where he ended up is runs through every page and it's impossible to separate that. There's a bridge book in there too. I was thinking about too and he talked about it. I love Robert Stone, but dog soldiers is another one. It's very much in that vein.

And it's sort of like there's something, you know, I've met him a few times and he's a very interesting guy. This is one of the reasons you're here is to tell us these stories. You know, I don't want to say I felt like a, you know, a kindred spirit, but like there's this thing you have when you're not to the manner born

of the book world. And I feel very much like him when I started out as a writer. I didn't know anything about writers. I had read feverishly, but I had no intentions. And I didn't, you know, it was not part of my culture, really. It was interesting. He felt the same way. And he was embarrassed by all the knowledge that he had.

He was very well read. And I find that case to be with a lot of writers. Like, you know, once I brought Elmer Leonard in, I was at an MFA program. And he knew more about literature and narrative tropes. Going all the way back than any of the academics there did. He didn't just, he didn't vomit it out. It was there just at this sort of baseline of. And Crumley was the same way.

Deeply well-read guy. Very shy and sort of quiet in person. He was a guy who, you know, I grew over in France together. And it did not matter. Written these sort of literary festivals they call him Big Jim, big gym. They'd follow him around. He was parked at the bar in this little tiny place in San Malo. It didn't matter what time you went down there.

and he was parked at the bar in this sort of black sweatpants with cigarette ash all over his belly and he could not really move like his big move was to get up from the bar to go to his room to go to the bathroom or they would cart him to sort of one of the literary book signing events

he's more like Fireball Roberts in the book and that was another thing I had thought about when I read the book I was like he became that bulldog in the book limping around and it was like but he was very quiet and soft-spoken and he loved to engage

he didn't really give a shit about fans so to speak and he and he and he seemed almost ashamed of the books he'd written. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that like, and I did them, yes, but let's talk about something else. And anything. Yeah.

We talked about a fucking, you know, why were you in a bar eating olives off of toothpicks? Because all the French, you know, they eat the olives off of toothpicks in this one place. And it really bothered him that they did that. And they didn't have peanuts from at the bar, you know. And so it was like he was just a very interesting guy, very soft-spoken. And it's always hard when you meet your idols like that. you, you know, I'm sure you guys have had that opportunity many times. But he surpassed it because he didn't, he wasn't pretending to be anything. There was no pose. There was no act. And he was

very sweet and well read. And he, you know, we just talked about books and we talked about Richard Hugo a lot because Richard Hugo wrote a book that I love called Death in the Good Life, which is sort of the sort of sloppy mystery, but it's really fun. And he loved that book. He couldn't figure out why people, no one read that book. And it really bothered him that no one had read that book. So in the context that you're laying out for us, and I think there may be people listening who picked up the book and had a similar experience. What did this book the first time you read it? When did you read it for the first time?

And what did it snap into focus for you on your journey to being a writer? I just think it's always about voice because it's the same thing. It's the same thing with television. It's voice and character and tone. And those three things are very, very evident in all of his books from the very opening paragraph. And it's really hard to read the opening paragraph of this book or even the wrong case or dancing bear and not want to know more about the person telling you the story. And he had talked to me one time, this is a weird conversation.

This is a writerly conversation. But he'd been very bothered by third person. He tried books in third person and failed with them. And that's something you go through when you're trying to write novels a lot is that third first person decision. And I think for him, it had to be right there. It had to be him on the page. And you did get that sense when you talked to him. Like there was a part of him in all these books.

And that guy was there. Yeah. I mean, one thing that's interesting to read his catalog going forward, he never wrote a book or published a book that wasn't. a crime book after this. They alternate between his two detectives, between Shigrew, who you meet in this book, and Shigrew refers to his ex-partner, and that partner is Milo,

who is the star of Dancing Bear in the wrong case and Final Country, and there's Bordersnakes, which is switches between the two, that's a personal favorite. But one thing I was realizing when reading this is there's no difference between these two guys, really. I mean, later on, after Sugar has some stuff

happened to him in the Mexican tree ducks, suddenly Milo is a little bit bigger and older and sugar is a little more wiry and nastier. But the description of Sugaroo in this book is, it seems it's all crumbly. Well, we don't often talk about the like commercial concerns of these books. It's actually kind of part of the fun of them, right? It's like we talk a lot about with Ross Thomas,

he starts out with the fools in town around our side. I don't know where in the chronology of his books. He was in the middle, but it was when he, it was a pinnacle of his ambition. It was his big swing, though, right? And then it's like he realizes that what he really needs to do is, right, these 207-page novels that come out every 18 months, and that's what's going to pay the rent in his bar bill. And that probably is the case for Crumbly, too.

I mean, Final Country is pretty sweeping and is a pretty, like, epic look at the West, you know, but is obviously more of the outlier than something like this, which I bet is like it's kind of like a jab to the chin, you know, like this one. And then the very last one, the right madness, is the only one I haven't reread because that was the one. It was interesting to hear you say it, oh, that he, I felt like there was some.

shame in that book almost. That it was like, okay, I'm putting on the suit again. Yeah, like he needs Tommy John surgery. There's some violence in the beginning of that book that is so over the top and horrific and you almost feel him showing you that he can still do this. This is what you want for me. It's always fascinating in any medium. It happens in music, too.

I'm sure it happens in every art form. People who feel resentful or trapped by the thing they are most celebrated for. But, you know, it's possible to read these books in particular at different stages in your life and find different things in them. I think when Chris and I were reading them, and maybe you as well, when you read Cromley for the first time, we were younger, and we were definitely getting

high on books that got high. You know what I mean? To realize that there's, like, not just a fifth gear, but there's like an 11th gear of drunkenness possible, and then you get in the car and drive. I don't recommend anyone does that, but to have that kind of adventure on the page is thrilling.

This is a theme with you, this day drinking. Yeah. I wish I was drunk right now. I'm going to be honest with you. It's just to get through it. But then you read it now, and it's, it's, it's, there's sadness in it that you don't notice when you're younger. Yeah, it's funny because I think, I don't about you guys, like when I read this, it was the perfect marriage for me. When you're trying to be a writer and you're trying to read the great books, so to speak.

And I don't want to, you know, I think all, all books are of some use is, I felt like this was the first book that sort of straddled the line. I go, there's really good fucking writing in this book. And things happen. And this character isn't sitting there staring at their belly button. It's not the, you know, sort of Henry James approach, you know, like come to this room. Life of the mind. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, but, and, you know, Elmer Lennon is the same way.

And I think when you're younger and you're looking for that, so you're looking for it's like, is it okay for me to like this stuff? And I never, ever question it from the beginning sentence when you read this book, there's no fucking question. You love it. You're in, you're in for the ride, you're in for the voice. And I think that's because of that voice and because of those descriptions we're talking about. And I, that's funny, you talk about the differences between the two characters. I went back and looked because I had this sort of working theory about the two. Milo is a little bit more able to see nicer things out his window.

CW is not. Like, it's very dark. Like, this is a troubled, trouble guy. Yeah, he's nastier. And he has the war, the different, I mean, they're from different wars. Oh, yeah. Is that what emerges? Yeah, I never thought of that.

And it's echoed in the relationship with Trahearine, too. And worth noting, for everything we're saying about Crumley's own chip on his shoulder, he's written this book where a nasty, messed up alcoholic guy also got a master's in literature, by the way. And he ultimately has the moral high ground over this literary giant who is nothing but a child, who's nothing but a pampered baby and a hypocrite and a total mess. And yet to read these books, this happens more again in the later books. as I think I've said before in this podcast, I've read the Final Country three or four times.

I have no fucking idea what happens to know what it's about. But God, I love it, is one of my favorites. In this one, you feel him almost change his mind constantly. It's not like he was seat of his pants because he had all these papers and drafts and their versions of some of these books that ended up in other places. But even as Shogru changes his mind on Trahir

and we learn more about him in this book, some of these turns are on a dime. He's like, he loves him. He's wonderful. Oh, no. he's actually complicit. It's all over the place. I was wondering whether or not

you found, as somebody who works obviously, as it worked in the past, in movies and now in television, more like if you saw him drawing from any cinematic influences. Because I think that I know that he had like a sort of tangential relationship doing some Hollywood stuff, doing some script writing.

I was really fascinated by guys from that era. I was reading some John Gregory Dunn stuff a little while ago. And it's just like the lifestyle of like kind of like picking up a $2,000 check here and there seemed to go a hell of a long way. Like I know there's a lot of family money in different places, but like the idea that these guys could do like

one polish on a Western and then just be like and I lived for 18 months on that. William Montana maybe. Yeah, right. But did you see him drawing from any, whether it's Chinatown or things from that there's echoes of hardcore in it of... I never thought of that, but yeah, it's funny because I think

maybe I just assumed maybe perhaps incorrectly as he came from that generation of writers that viewed Hollywood work as somehow sort of beneath. I don't say beneath them, but like, why do I have to do this to write my books? And the truth is, a lot of those guys had to do that. I mean, I'd be this writer I love more than anything else. Barry Hanna had, like, one screenwriting job, and he talks about it all the time, but he just felt so ashamed that he was out there doing it and why he was doing it to go back

and write books that people weren't reading. Yeah, because he thinks he's supposed to be in Oxford, Mississippi. Yeah. But they all chased it for one degree. another, whether because they love movies or because they appreciated the paycheck or, you know, like all of us, they had egos. And, you know, obviously I've been thinking a lot about Ross Thomas and he lived in Malibu for the last half of his life and had a real relationship with cinema. He wanted to work in it. And his credits, if you were only to know him by his

IMDB page, he wrote a movie, which was an adaptation of a crime book called Hammett by Joe Gores. Yeah. He's basically imagining Hammett as a detective. And he wrote an, co-wrote an episode of Tales from the Crypt. Didn't Vinders direct that? Who directed that? He had Vinners directed it. He wrote an episode of Tales from the Crypt. And he also wrote a movie called Bad Company that I think

came out just before he died or just after, which Lawrence Fishburn and Ellen Barkin. And it's fine. And meanwhile, turn around, there's 25 sparkling books. But it's a very different ledger. But when do you say it's, I mean, I think your question, Chris, is

there's a cinematic quality to the writing. It feels like an extension of my romantic idea of New American cinema of the late 70s. Yeah, guys, you know, in the dark with their hand on a wheel and a cigarette burning. Yeah, of Robert Town and Robert Altman, some of those directors and screenwriters, even Hal Ashby, some of the ways in which he views, you know, and there are the thematically, I think there, you could call this book out of the past, you could call this book Lost in America.

You call this book like a lot of things that it feels like a picture of America right before that Reagan page turns. and right before I think we get industrialized in a very technologically savvy way and the idea that somebody like Betty can kind of disappear into another life is hard to fathom now. I mean, I'm sure there are viral stories out there

or stuff like that, but it's hard to imagine and yet it still feels incredibly relevant. Everything, every place that he visits feels impossibly close and impossibly far away. He can get there overnight by driving, yet Rosie lives in Sonoma and has never set foot out of Sonoma to look for her daughter for 10 years.

San Francisco is a continent away, culturally, in all aspects. Since you have the personal first-hand experience, Elwood, can you tell us about Montana in the way, because it does sound like you have found things there that would have also drew Crumley there. Crumley wrote mostly about Montana and Texas and all the land in between

and the connections between them. I think people who are essentially fly over coastal people lump Montana and some of these Middle West or I don't even know what you would call Montana, lump it in

with the other states that they don't think about and not thinking about it. But Montana has a richer cultural footprint than people might realize. I mean, it's interesting because there's a fair amount

of Hollywood in pockets of Montana, but like one thing that drew me there. I mean, I live on the other side of the hill, I have a house. What drew me out there was I wanted to do an article out there on grizzly bears. It's tracking grizzly bears

and mount lions or something like that. And when I, in the town, I had some friends who were writers. I knew Jim Harrison spent time there, and I had known him, and we had spent time together. And a friend of mine, Walter Kern, who's, you know, one of the smartest people who met in my life, was there. And just, you know, in like 10 minutes in a bar where McGuane and Harrison and Cromley had all sat, you know, sitting there talking to Walter about having the most elevated conversation about books that I had anywhere, anywhere, and includes, you know, I'm not very well educated, but even in college, was that I was like, holy, shit, I'm in this town of fucking 5,000 people, and I'm having a conversation that I have never had.

And then I would go fly fishing or go mushroom hunting or, you know, go get drunk in the bar at night. And it was, it's just this weird juxtaposition. It really, really appealed to me because it felt like I could draw on both of those worlds. And you'd sit down next to a guy who, you know, who worked for the railroad, but was also a reader. There's that sort of working class reading mentality. It's probably fading and almost gone now, but it still existed out there when I first moved out there. for sure was out there when Crumley was out there. Because in Missoula, because the writing program kind of bled through that whole area.

There was a lot of writers that sort of, you know, bled out into Montana and stayed there because of the lifestyle. Yeah. But that ability to go in and have a conversation about, I mean, I just want to stop against it. It's awesome that you guys do podcasts about books. Don't stop. I mean, it's just, I just feel like no one, I don't know, I get real sort of emotional I think about books because of how much they mean to me. And like, and we're out in this, you know, in Hollywood here and be able to have a conversation about a crime novel that makes no sense that probably not many people, have read is just an awesome thing.

It's still such a singular experience to read something like this when you, when it really hits, it hits like unlike any other thing. And not to think about it as IP to be mined. Sure. I mean, with the asterisk that we're someone out there. Exactly. We always text each other. I remember when you came out here, it was like, can we redo this?

And I've brought this book, these books up to so many people at studios and they kind of just look at you because I think it requires reading it. You can't read the back cover. Yes. There's no elevator pitch for it. There is five. Which I also think dooms it in a good way maybe from never being adapted because it's so internal and it's so experiential. Yeah.

There are books that you can, even really good, vivy books that you can strip the plot from. Yeah. Just use the plot and then transplant it. Well, not to play, not to argue for the IP, but something you said, Chris really sort of, you know, sort of jogged something when I read the book again is what I think is even more resonant now than when I read it the first time is that historical snapshot of sort of the hippie hang. over in America in the West. Which remember, the West is, that area in the West is 10 years behind the rest of the country. Sure.

So when he's writing about the 70s, he's really sort of writing about that sort of just coming out of the 60s. But it's still there. And it's almost sort of, it was even stronger now. It didn't feel dated at all. Really? Yeah.

For me, it just is a snapshot. I think Corey, which is a TV show that I loved. I loved. That no one fucking watched or talked about. That's what Corey was. The DNA of Crumbly is in Quarry somehow. I completely agree with you.

Before we wrap up, Elwood, since we have you here, we're obviously going to suggest another book for the Double Down Book Club soon. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's Every Man of Metis by Patrick Hoffman. Chris is up on this. Yeah. I'm excited. It's incredible.

It's basically it's Jesus' son meets the global ecstasy trade. I'm in. Yeah. So Elwood's going to read along. I hope everyone joins us. As a side note, Oh, if you were designing, if you were still teaching, if you were designing the syllabus for this course, your students have read the last good kiss

do you want to plug a book that makes a logical a logical next step obviously we would recommend more crumly but is there another writer or two you've mentioned some feel free to repeat them just I mean I'll stay in the noir genre I think to die in California is a really underrated lost book and it has potential for other things too

but like it's I really love Newton Thorneberg I think he's a guy that just it just got to have him me too in his book Dreamland also he writes about I have to read that it's faded crumbling post hippie just yeah, it's dark. We're the Post-Hippie podcast.

That's what we are, Post-Hippie. Elwood, thank you so much for giving us your time, man. Thank you. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Thomas's English Muffins. Here is a breakfast. I always get out of bed for Thomas's original nux and crannies, English muffins. There's nothing quite like that irresistible knucks and crannies texture, perfectly toasted, crispy edges with a soft, warm center.

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