The Watch - The Next Era of the DC Universe Is Here. Plus, ‘Lovecraft Country’ Episode 2, and an Interview With George Pelecanos.

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

The teaser trailer for ‘The Batman’ was released over the weekend, along with some other DC Universe news (1:57). It leaves us wondering what we want from the latest Batman property (16:55). After a strong pilot episode, ‘Lovecraft Country’ hit some snags in the second (29:30). Plus, Andy talks with George Pelecanos about his new anthology series, ‘DC Noir’ (39:57). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: George Pelecanos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, one of the great purveyors of riddles of my life. It's Andy Greenwald! I thought you said riddling.

No, I mean... You want to cop these pills? Let's go. What's up, man? Monday, we're going to be talking a little bit about Lovecraft Country. Andy's got an interview in the back half of this one. Andy, tell him who you're talking to. It's a big time get for you. We're talking to an OG friend of the pod, one of my literary heroes, one of Chris's literary heroes, the great George Pelicanos. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times for his wonderful novels that he's written, for his work with David Simon on shows like The Wire and the Deuce. And he came on today to talk about a film that he, a film, it's basically an anthology. I don't even how to describe it. It's a film, one movie called DC Noir that is itself an anthology of crime story set in Pelicanos's home district, the district of Columbia, all four stories

written by George, one directed by George, one directed by his son Nick, another directed by the great actor from The Wire and the dews Bangak and A Canabe. It's a really cool project for people who are interested in all the things that I mentioned, a really great distillation of what makes George so unique and great and special, and it's a pleasure to talk to him. Awesome. So we got George, but you know, we had to do it to him. I think I should mention a little bit of house cleaning. This week will probably have a lot of thematic overlap between the two episodes because today we're going to talk a little bit about the Batman trailer and the Snyder cut trailer.

It's actually, Chris, just sorry to nitpick. It's actually the, the Batman trailer. I'm already, I'm like, give me the Matt Reeves cut. Like, I'm on 2026 when I'm still like signing change.org petitions to get the real Batman. the real the Batman Chris, if that's the only change dot org petition you have to sign that year then we're doing fine.

Can't fucking wait, man. So we're going to be doing a little bit of that. We have Lovecraft and then I think on Thursday we're going to be doing a crossover episode with the big picture. So me and Andy and Amanda and Sean with the big picture

and I think we're going to be talking a lot about the fluid nature of movies on TV, TV and the movies, the mid-mov, idea that Andy had. I'm bringing them my idea, much like my childhood cat once brought a ripped of shreds dead mouse and dropped it at the foot of my bed. We're going to be doing that on Thursday. But today we wanted to talk a little bit about these trailers. Before we get into it,

because people love digressions. I just want to say, love doing this podcast. And especially during this time, especially this summer. And I just have two things I just wanted to point out to people. to let them know just why I'm loving it so much. One is, I know people who didn't take part in this probably want us to be done with it, but we did finish our summer of Dove last week, our four-part exploration of The Lonesome Dove, the book in the miniseries, and it was some of the most fun that I've had that we've had, I think, podcasting. We love doing it.

And if you were on the fence or you have yet to even dig into either of those things, pretty soon we're going to release a compilation episode with all four parts, and you can then listen to it at your leisure. So we're really proud and excited about that. But also, we talked about this on Thursday, Chris, how I made a return appearance to the rewatchables for a very special unwatchable episode about a formative movie in our life,

pump up the volume. And the thing I wanted to just point out to people is that, Chris, you are in phenomenal shape. Everyone knows that when they catch a glimpse on Zoom. Like, your body's a temple. I'm like Tony Goldwyn in Lovecraft, where it looks old up here and then it's just like straight LeBron down here, yeah. The conditioning is what's off the charts because when I did this podcast,

I forgot that an episode of the rewatchables tends to be longer than the movie itself. It can be. And I was winded. You know, I needed a little, I needed more than my usual, you know, Obama-style seven almonds after I finished that. And the thing that I think people don't realize is that when they hear you, you're cracking wise, you're doing your segways on this podcast. that you've been up getting after it.

Like, you've already done a rewatchables today. And so I just want to, in the spirit of our friendship, in the spirit of Woodrow Call and Gus McCray, just salute you for putting in the work. I already did the morning shift at Smart Tech. We did 40-year-old Virgin. When's the last time you've seen 40-year-old Virgin? Probably before I was 40 years old.

Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, it's been a minute for me, too, but it's still very funny. That movie made me laugh. lot. So, so, so, so thank you for your commitment to the podcast trenches. And now we can get back into what we do best, which is talking about things that don't exist yet in the form of trailers. Greenwald, do you think the Batman's going to have some lulls? I'd say no. You know, it didn't, I didn't get that same kind of like apatow like one for you,

five for me vibe. Like I didn't get a sense that Adam McKay was just off camera shouting Ron Burgundy lines to Paul Dano. You know, it just didn't have. that loose feel that I was expecting from the trailer. I'm so into this movie. Not only does it look really good and I'm definitely excited to see it and it seems as though we're going to get a finally like a year two Batman, which is not, you know, not rooted in, we have to go through Bruce Wayne's origin story in any way. Like it does seem to be, well, you don't think Thomas Wayne's getting God in this movie?

Maybe, maybe in like a quick moment. But I feel like when we meet Robert Pattinson's Batman, he will be Batmaning. Do you think there's like a pretty good, pretty good, like kind of off week, medium episode of Saturday Night Live sketch about the actor who gets the part but has no knowledge of the mythos? Yeah. It's just like, Thomas Wayne. My dad is dead? No, no, no, it gets the part of Thomas Wayne. Oh, yeah.

And it's just like, I'm going to eat off this movie forever. No, I definitely think it's like, it's basically like in Lovecraft where it's like the order of the ancient dawn, but instead it's the order of the Thomas Wains. All together? it's like Tony Goldwyn and Bruce Davidson and all the like like kind of like 59 but I get to play

Batman's dad for eight minutes Linus Roach I think played it anyway sorry so I'm cutting you off you're all in tell us why well I'm all in because this movie seems like a the great temple of director of bullshit that has ever been built you know so far

Matt Reeves has invoked Chinatown and taxi driver and the French connection and it's if you're going to make if you're going to put me in this position where I haven't left my house significantly in months and months and months and movies are perpetually being delayed and even tenant which is getting reviewed and seen but not seen and we're who knows when we're going to be able to see it if this is all just going to be in theory anyway right by all means just just dump all your

criterion collection on top of my head and so around this trailer is also all this conversation about how this is going to be the hard-hitting noir detective Batman. I'm all here for it. Keep dropping hints. Keep telling me all about how this is the Jake Giddish Batman. I'm loving it. And honestly, I think it looks pretty awesome. I'm not trying to be weird.

I want to be a little bit more skeptical and cynical about this. And there's a huge, huge question mark whether or not Patterson has this level to him and whether he has this range. But Jesus, this looks pretty good. I am struggling as I have to wrestle with my own legacy of bullshit here. Because, you know, one of the things that I like to say the most on this podcast, and we even said it, I think, the other day,

and we were talking about J.C. Chandor's cash grab, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is. Craven the Hunter. With Craven the Hunter for Sony. which is at a certain point, we have to kind of accept

that to be a director of a certain status and level and ambition, you probably have to get your feet dirty. If you want to tell a noir detective story in 20, I want to say 21, let's hope. Yeah. The question marks in there was good at the end of the trailer. Probably have to make it about Batman.

Right? So I argue that and I say that. And I kind of believe it in abstract and in theory, I was gritting my teeth a little bit through the trailer for this because my desire, ultimately I think I'm mostly in because my desire to see a Matt Reeves movie is strong. I think he's really a talented guy. Like those Planet of the Apes movies shouldn't have been good and they were good.

You know, like that's kind of, it seems simple, but that's a pretty good way to judge modern blockbuster directors if they could just produce on that level and surprise you. The cast is so sick. I mean, this is an insane cast. And sometimes that's really all it takes. Like, especially in a world where no one can go to the movies. That's not just my thing anymore.

If you told me there was a movie with Patinson, Dano, Farrell, Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright. Andy Sergis. Yeah. I'll go see that movie. Yeah. So that ultimately wins. But it definitely was a little bit of a struggle for your boy, young good faith over here, because, God, I don't give a shit about Gritty Batman anymore.

You don't like Bobby Bad Hands? That shit has been done to death. And the idea that making it even darker and there was a lot of internet chatter like, oh, snap, does Batman kill people now? Cool. I'm going to assume because Matt Reeves, I think, has a firmer grasp on what, like, on some core element of these characters than, say, Zach Snyder does. He doesn't. I hope.

That man doesn't kill people. Like, that stuff kind of matters to me still. It does. And so if this is not just another, like, oh, you know, it would be better is if we took everything more seriously and made it less humorous, if it was, if that's just the trailer and the movie itself is the Darkne detective in a dark city, okay, okay. But honestly, I almost would write this, look, it almost made me miss the bat nipples and Schumacher because like at least grab the wheel of the badmobile

and turn it into a different lane. What is interesting about Batman to you? In 2020? That's a character. Nothing. Nothing. I mean, but truly nothing. Look, so that's why I'm the wrong message.

But is he ever held any interest to you? Of course. But the interesting thing is here, right? It's just that we've seen it. Like they've done it. And I don't know if every generation deserves a new Batman. What's interesting is this sort of broken person who is driven to become a detective and a vigilante because of what happened to Tom and Martha, right? Like that's that it's kind of a pure idea and it's interesting and the idea of this detective at night and blah, blah, blah, that's all cool.

It's just that maybe we've done it. You know what I mean? Like unlike the Marvel heroes, which I do think work, you can tell their individual stories, but then team ups are cool because they're kind of more open-ended. The DC characters are so totemic that why would Superman hang out with other people? Why would Batman hang out with other people? You know what I mean? Like tell that person's story. I just look, I'm not saying anything.

I'm not trying to just hate on it because I'm personally sick of it. I'm sure this is something that Matt Reeves and everyone involved in the DCU. train trust has considered, right? Like, why do we need to do this again other than we're going to make a billion dollars if we do it right? But that's where I'm at. I think that I've come to really appreciate the free jazz way that they're doing this at DC where they're just like, there can be the Todd Phillips Joker verse, or not even the Joker verse, but like you can just make these movies if you have good ideas for them and

maybe you can make sequels or whatever, but that there will be Ben Afflex, Batman, in a resurrected version of Justice League and possibly also in the Flash movie that there will be Robert Pattinson's Batman in the Matt Reeves movie and that there could even be like a Batman in the Joker movie at some point that Todd Phillips re-does.

And it just kind of is like what people want right now is a little bit more instant gratification rather than nine films leading up to a tenth Whopper. You know? Or three films that bring a conclusion to a trilogy, that they're just like, give me the hit, man. I'm not into comic book movies because I'm patient.

Here's what I would say. I hear that. And here's the other thing. I do want purely from a, you ask me what interests me about Batman. If I'm being honest about that, I definitely do want this movie to both be good and to succeed. Because what would be cool to me, if you have this, as I said, like totemic character, would be a version of Blockbuster movie making. where someone who's talented and has a like a, the way everyone talks, again, the way everyone talks about this, it's not like this is Robert Town's Chinatown script, but people were pretty hype on Matt Reeves's version of the story, right? And that it must be a pretty good script. And if it works, if they treated the character in the cinematic universe, the way they have treated it recently in the comic book universe, which is to say, this is an elite character and elite writers will get their turn. And the way that has played out is Grant Morrison, whom I

Ador took over Batman for a bunch of years and pushed him in all sorts of very Grant Morrison crazy directions where Batman now has a son and then he has a company and like it's just this huge world-spanning character redefining thing and then he was done and then Scott Snyder took over and now Tom King who's a brilliant comic book writer is doing his version of it right so if we could get that cinema and now John Ridley is is taking over so if there was a version of that in the movies that would be great and maybe you need the Matt Reeves it's kind of familiar there's a little bit of Nolan here, you know, there's a little bit of Joker version to then hand it to someone who might be radical, to get to the Olivia Wild version or whomever we're going to anoint,

then let's go. Let's do that. That would be cool. I'm pretty fired up for it. And I also think that this movie trailer made me miss movies. It made me miss going to the movies. It made me miss anticipating on film and going to see it on Friday night or Thursday night and talking with my friends about it that weekend and, you know. My version of that is going to see it at 10 a.m. on a Monday alone and then immediately recording a podcast with you about it. I missed that. Let's talk a little bit about Justice League. Wait, wait, wait. Let's stay positive. Let's talk about the Wonder Woman 1984 trailer that also

dropped at this DC fandom event. Yeah. I was living in the fandom this weekend. Is that how you describe yourself? Just a lot of cross currents of air coming across. Yeah. Um, yeah, Wonder Woman 1984. And this trailer was, uh, decidedly less 84 than the sort of teaser that they had released before, which was much more like kind of stranger things were in the mall, Jane Fonda workout videos, nostalgia. And maybe since, I mean, how many, this film has been, unfortunately delayed, I think, the most by, like the, by the pandemic, I think. Yeah, this movie was supposed to be out by now. And the reason I know this is not because, look, I'm not some Hollywood elite like pouring over the trades. I'm out in the trenches. I go to diners with people, not anymore. But the reason I know is because a bag of cool ranch Doritos I bought a month and a half ago had a big ad for Wonder Woman 1984 on it.

So that's how I learned about movies release dates. And I know we've blown past it. But I didn't blow past those delicious corn snacks. No free ads, but hit the spot. But this one looks a little bit more like a traditional superhero action movie. Well, they saved it. They saved the 80 stuff for the end. Yeah.

Little laugh lines at the end. So here's how I want to frame this. Because maybe this is just me being me. Maybe this is me being cranky. Maybe this is post-pandemmy me. But watching these two movies back to back, well, I've been affected by it. Watching these two trailers back to back, I think I had a lot more time for the Wonder Woman one. Because no one, I haven't seen it yet anyway.

Patty Jenkins has not gone on Twitter to be like, Wonder Woman 1984 is our version of Working Girl and Jonathan Demi's Something Wild and 9 to 5. You know what I mean? Like, he's not claiming, she's not claiming the mantle of great films the way it's become D.Rigour for DC filmmakers to say. Yeah, the director bullshit move, yeah.

It's not that. It's basically saying, you know those things that were really pretty good in the hit film Wonder Woman? Well, we're going to do them again. and it'll be fine. And honestly, that hit me as a little bit more honest trailers than the Batman being like,

coming to blow your mind and blow out the fucking Oscar stage. You know what I mean? It's just like, that's where I'm at right now, where I was like, I am more attuned to the simplistic, streamlined purity of Kristen Wiggs' CGI jumping as a Cuban cheetah than I am, you know, the great Colin Farrell and a fat suit with night sweats

being like, I'm coming for you in the sequel, Bruce Wayne. I think, yeah, it looks a lot more... I think that the 1984 trailer that I first saw seemed... I know that all these movies are relatively convoluted, but I was like, wait, what was really my reaction to the first one, whereas this one, it seems like a lot more clean lines, very understandable.

you can totally tell where it's going. And yeah, you know, I mean, like, these movies do not have to play by the same rules as like any other, you know what you have to do. Chris Pine can come back. You know what I mean? Just like... Sure.

Yeah, that was always like a thing with like those Captain America movies where I was just like, like, just bring Haley Adwell back. She's delightful. Yeah. And so... This movie, I mean, our biases are showing. But like, Wonder Woman was the old, has been the only DC movie that hit like a Marley.

Marvel movie did in the sense that it was just unequivocally adored by fans, made a ton of money, and also had that exact same critical vibe where, you know, even the New York Times like, hmm, well, I suppose I enjoyed part of it. You know, like it was fine. It, it, it crossed over in that way, but it also carried with it a sense of fun and escapism, carried mostly by the chrism of the lead performance. And so there wasn't too much overthinking of this one. It will be, it will be like a little like something wild. No, see, look at you. That. That's what we all wish that. If I wouldn't care about director bullshit

if I didn't fall for director bullshit. The entire point of this is that this is my drug. The only thing that is something wild in this movie is Kristen Wiggs performance. As a jungle cat or something. That was a very good imitation of a 1980s movie critic who's on like for eight seconds at the end of the local news. It's like, Wonder Woman, you'll be wondering

how you did without this movie for so long. Should we talk a little bit about the four-hour Justice League Snyder cut? Did your dad ever do local TV to talk about his movie reviews? Like, did he ever go on Good Morning, Philadelphia or whatever? Yeah, like I think he might. Evening magazine with Nancy Glass, remember that? I feel like he did, but not in like a major part of his career.

He was not like a, I don't think like he and Carrie Rookie and a bunch of people like did, did like any kind of evening magazine thing. I just kind of wish like Channel 29, like in between weather and traffic, Head your dad to explain why Wings of the Dove is a masterpiece. You wish Harry Callis would throw to my dad for the sixth inning movie review during the 19 days. So yeah, I can tell you just do not want to do Snyder with me, man. Let's do it. You said the two words that are like the bat signal for this conversation.

You said director and you said bullshit. So let's go. So we're about like this is one of the all time like, okay, I'm calling your, I'm calling your boss. That's what I love about this. Yes. is I actually, personally, could not give less of a shit, whether this movie exists or not.

But the fact that, like, so many of these guys, like, just, like, reply guys were, like, we need this thing that may or may not even exist. You better release it. You better free my man, Zach, to put out the four-hour version of this orgy of darkness that we think we want.

And now you are, going to get it. And now you're going to get the four fucking hour version, man. Like, you could do so much with your life, but you're going to watch Justice League, this four hour version. And I'm right here for you, man. I'm going to watch it. I'm going to be here right with you guys. I'll be your support system. I just can't wait to find out, like, whether or not he has the goods at all. If there's one thing the last 15 years of Hollywood. This is what my life has come to. Like, this is what I'm interested in. You could borrow one of my kids, like if you want to. That would be fine, too. For the last.

last 15 years, if there's one thing that we've learned is that Zach Snyder, artistically, I'm not, I don't mean this is a critical statement, has not learned to leave well enough alone, right? And so I just want to just purely from like a curating PR strategy, optics, retire a legend, not professionally, but this part of your life. Like, there is no better alternative for someone who spent years making something that was as atrociously received as the film Justicely was, then for it, the rumor to spread that no, actually, it's a masterpiece, but other people screwed it up. That is best case scenario. What you do when that happens is you tease and you wink and you soak up the adulation for something that doesn't exist. And then

you walk away and move on. You don't actually respond to the the bluff. Right? You don't do it because now you're going to make a four-hour miniseries about something that the majority of the world hated. And I can't imagine a good outcome here that's better than the legend. Like, look, I'm going to make this comparison now. This may be the last moment when we can laugh about this, if we can laugh about it at all. But like, wasn't QAnon more fun when you were just speculating about what was going on in the basement of a pizza parlor? And then the people who own the pizza parlor were like, yeah, now you got to be a fucking congressman. Now you have to be in Congress. Now you have to like move to Washington.

Not just that, but the people who own the pizza parlor were like, we just make pizza. Come see. Like, then there's no more, there's no more fun speculation. Enjoy the mystery. Justice League fans slash incels, enjoy the mystery. There's something about Justice League that is like our nostalgia factory collapsing on itself. I was thinking about this because like on Thursday or Friday, I saw about. bunch of tweets. I guess this is, I mean, I actually like Travis Scott, but I did not know that days before rodeo is something where we needed to mark its sixth year anniversary. And apparently it is. It was like, you know, like, and I get it. Like, there are random records out there and you

might just be like, man, seven years ago, this record drop. Is this era officially rodeo? Like, have we been in rodeo now since that was pre-roteo? Yeah. Because I'd like, I'd like days after a rodeo, please. So, but there was this like sort of nostalgia factory for this Travis Scott record. And it was a random, I mean, six years did not seem like a super significant anniversary to me, but whatever. And I was thinking about like, this, this is, Justice League is actually just like the nostalgia factory for Justice League itself, which was just released a few years ago.

You know what I mean? Like, and our need to kind of deify anything that we have actually participated in and revisit it and kind of celebrate it in that way is fascinating. I completely agree with that. And I think the other piece of it is is that because of the instant gratification culture of the internet or instant engagement, not always gratification, certainly, we collectively, and I certainly would put myself in this category as well, we're not okay with just being disappointed.

You know, it's just not okay. Part of the desire for this to be released or remixed or re-edited is the hope that then it might be good because there are people who do deeply care about these characters and the thought of getting an Avengers-like movie for the characters that they love because it, you know, there were Marvel people and there were DC people. The thought of that finally happening, it's something that people with legitimate other things going on in their lives have thought about and dreamed on for years and decades. And then it sucked. And so it's very hard to accept that. And it, you know, this weekend, I was thinking about it in terms of something else that

used to matter to us and maybe it still matters to other people like Star Wars. My older daughter is watching the movies now. The new ones are all of them? Well, no, she's watching the classics. So she's watched Empire Strikes Back. And first of all, it is taking every bit of my own

parental patience and everything I've learned for being a parent for this long, not to be like, those are the only movies. Like, because for her, she's like, which one is Ray in? Right, right. and when do I get to meet Luke and Leah's mom? I'd be like, pretend those never happen. But I don't say that.

I'm like, oh, okay, well, hopefully you'll have your own opinions. And I will just, Daddy will be crying in the corner, clutching his Grito doll. But my point being, they did make the sequels to Star Wars, everyone. They made them. And they were the Force Awakens, and they were the Last Jedi, and they were Rise of Skywalker. They did it. and other than Last Jedi, they sucked. And that's it, right?

Like, we're not getting Han Solo back to, like, sacrifice himself in a different way. We're not getting the Leia sendoff that we wanted or whatever. That's it, man. They did it. And they were bad. And now we've got to move on. And that's tough. And look at the reaction to those movies.

It's still based on that, like, I wanted something for years and you did it wrong, and I will not accept that it's over. And frankly, maybe it's not because we get a Batman movie. every four years. Maybe they'll take another swing at it. But I think that it's just people may ding us for constantly talking about trailers or this Snyder thing that doesn't even exist yet

and we haven't even watched. Do people dig us for that? I don't know. I'm pre-dinging us. I just mean to say it almost doesn't matter what gets put on HBO Max next year. Because it's really, the meta-conversation about this is on some level, I think, more significant

than whatever it is that gets dropped on there. It's also pretty fascinating to watch like a fan-driven effort end up like this. And I, you know, as somebody, I may watch, I want Netflix to bring back the society. I don't know how much time I'm going to spend on making that happen. You know what I mean?

Kaya and I are devastated. But it's, it's going to be like something that I take the L on and move on from. And it's crazy to see what happens when people don't just take the L. Yeah. I think they can apply, we can apply that to more important parts of society. You know, that.

That lack of accepting L's, but we'll see. Before we get into your interview with George Palacanos, I want to talk briefly about the second episode of Lovecraft Country, Whitey's on the moon. I think that, you know, we had a conversation about the first episode. I talked with Misha Green. I think we were generally really positive about what this show had to offer. And I think that this second episode, to be fair, to me, felt like a little bit more

like it was a little bit patchier and like it was stitched together a little bit more which is something that I think I had been prepared for because of the long road this show took to get to the air in the first place. So I just felt like there was stuff missing from this episode, not like,

oh, I would have loved to have seen a moment where this happened. I mean literally, how did that person get from over there to over their moments? Which at the clip at which this show moves, which it uses its full 60, but is jamming stuff in there,

you can sometimes overlook. You can sometimes be like, I got it. I understand. And I think you were like, how come, like, Lettie gets in the car with them in the first place? And I was just like, whatever, she just gets in the car.

Still, oh, no, yeah. This episode had a few more things where I was just like, wait, what? Yeah, I want to talk about this, not necessarily critically, but just from the perspective of what often happens with TV seasons. in the way that they're made now.

And I should preface this by saying, I didn't even speak to Misha last week. I don't know her at all. I don't know anything about what's going on behind the scenes or what went on behind the scenes during the long gestation between script and pilot and then shooting the series. But from my own experience,

watching stuff as a critic and my own experience making something last year, it is a universal truism that second episodes are the hardest. And I don't want to basically make any grand pronouncements about anything based on the second episode. The reason second episodes are so hard is when you make, if you've made a pilot, is that separately, I mean, from the production is that basically it's two different restarts. I mean, it's two starts.

You start the whole thing twice. And a pilot is a sprint that's secretly a marathon in that you have to basically make an entire movie staff up and produce something in a relatively short amount of time. But it is a longer slog than you realize because it started before you realized you started when you were in development or writing the script. And then the long process afterwards of getting notes from a pod, from a studio, from a network, reshooting perhaps. It goes on and on and on. Making a series of television is a marathon that's actually a sprint. You know, you staff up.

You're in a writer's room for a long, long time writing scripts and getting notes. And then you go into pre-production and then production. And when you get to wherever you're shooting, you see the paperwork and you're like, in my case, you know, I got there for the first time in April or May. and it's like you're going to be here till just before October. And yet the demands never slow down. So that's just incredibly challenging and difficult. And often the result of that, because a second episode is kind of doing a pilot again, starting over,

often second episodes just literally just do the pilot again. Sure. They just make the pilot again, remind you of what the show is going to be, maybe with a little more confidence about where it's going and then hope for the best and then you get a feel for things going forward. In my case, that was almost entirely true because the first episode of Briar Patch and the second episode were, you know, basically broken and written by me alone,

and then I had the room for the rest of them. All of this is to say, they did not make the pilot again. So I have a lot of respect for that. It feels like it could be like episode seven. Yeah. For me, it feels like they made episodes two through seven and put them into one hour-long episode.

That's an interesting point, because I was kind of wondering whether or not, in my mind when I ended episode one, I was like, the rest of this season, will take place at this house. Exactly what I was going to say, yes. And it seems like they decided, nah, we're going to destroy the house in one episode,

which I respect. I mean, you can't have the body of commentary that we have for years on this podcast and then turn around for Lovecraft Country and say, you know what, it's too gonzo. They really went for it too much. Yeah. Much rather this than a throat clearing,

quiet reshuffling of the deck to set the tone. That said, the intensity and gonzo weirdness, which I respect the hell out of, veered into incoherence at times from my taste or my perception in this episode. And I struggled with that. But it's hard for me to draw too many conclusions from it because the episode opened with the Jeffersons, the theme music from the Jeffersons. and I did something that I didn't do during the 65 minutes of the pilot

which was just like laugh out loud and smile. Like I loved that. I thought that was bright and hilarious and clever and that was in the first second of this episode. You know, so they're going for it. Yeah. But I am not entirely sure what they're going for. Yeah, I just thought that there was a couple of points.

The specific one that I'm thinking of is the way that in the first trip from the lodge to the village, it seems like this very cautious, very perilous journey. It's also a sundown town because the woman with the dogs is like, you gotta get home before dark by sundown. It seems like it takes a while to get through the woods, which are also populated by monsters. Their car, I understand they get their car working again.

But it really is like they go from the lodge and then they're just like, have broken into the prison and have found the secret wall that Montrose is hidden behind and he is obviously escaped by that. I didn't understand anything that was happening in that whole run. I didn't know when they left the house,

where they were going, how they knew where to go, and how they found Montrose, but he was there in the ground. I didn't, like, and I think I'm fairly savvy at watching things, but I definitely struggled with that. It moves really, really, really fast. So I think that if you drop a

basically when it's like if you're going to play at that kind of speed there needs to be like a baseline level of like understandability I think because otherwise it just feels like you're almost witnessing an improv game what if they did this next and then they're here and then they're there oh keep going keep going keep going because we got to get to the port where the whole thing collapses on itself and I'm fascinated to see episode three actually because I want to know whether or not this is a huge

hard reset or whether it is somehow the Tony Goldwyn character and he's going to get out of his statue or whatever or is this show going to be more like an adventure of the week thing? There are two things. Obviously there's been a lot of conversation, overdue conversation and not enough, honestly, conversation in this industry and in many industries about diversity and storytelling. And I think that from the conversations that I've been having with people,

one of the main themes is there's kind of two versions of diverse storytelling, one that's surface and one that's a lot more holistic. One is take a story that is written, quote, colorblind and put a person of color in the lead. But everyone else behind the scenes and all the behavior of the character is quote unquote colorblind. Like their lived experience as a black person in America doesn't really affect the character. And this is sort of like the 24 reboot, right? Where it's just like, we'll just make a younger Kiefer Sutherland, but we're going to put a black actor in the lead. we'll just take it from there.

Everyone who made the show was still the same people for the most part. The other version of that is what is happening here where we're telling a very wacky at times genre,

campy story, but not only are the leads black, but they are, it's with intention. It's coming from black creators and their point of view and their lived experience is central to their experience

in this elevated world. It's really hard to do do when the world is this elevated. You know, so I have a lot of time for the project, and I have a lot of admiration for the attempt. There's a piece up on the ringer today that I enjoyed reading a recap of episode two that really calls out the essential act of gaslighting that the family that Atticus and his uncle George and Letty are, have to experience in this house.

Lex wrote it. Lex prior wrote the piece of it. Yes. And I admired that perspective, and I think that that's a really worthwhile and line of inquiry for the show. From my own experience watching it, I guess it's all so intense and elevated that I found the experience in the experiences that Atticus and his family had in Chicago or even in that Midwestern town en route where there weren't also, you know, visions of snakes emerging from people's phantom crotches. a lot more visceral.

Yeah. It's like so many layers are happening now. Yeah, I talk to Misha about that. Yeah, exactly. That I feel emotionally unmoored a little bit. And I think being emotionally unmoored, that can happen early when a tone isn't set. But it's something that echoes throughout the episode where at the very end, near the end, you know, two beloved main characters are gut shot.

And so we experience the trauma of Letty bleeding out and dying. and Atticus experiences and and Ledy seems to experience it too and then it's wiped away and she's fine. And so we learn we're taught in that moment as audience of the show that death doesn't count. There's magic. So death can, you know,

like Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman 1984, people can come back from the dead. And yet, two and a half minutes later, the show suffuses us in the anguish and agony of Uncle George being dead. And I'm like, hmm, okay. But we just learned that he's probably

coming back. So it's it's a tough balance to kind of have it to have it both ways. And when we don't really know what's up, is it is it 1950s America with its, you know, absolutely true and horrific history of racial violence? But there's also magic and there's also wizards and people eat their own liver or serve their own liver at dinner parties. It's just, it's a lot. It's a lot. And the show now seems to be rebooting itself for the third time in as many episodes. And that is a wild place to be. Yeah. It'll be really interesting to see how,

whether in three weeks we're like, oh, it found its footing. The show found it's the rhythm it wants to operate at. And I would say the sheer, I mean, the audacity of the project demands that attention and time. Sure. You know, without question.

I honestly, I can't wait until we can have that conversation and look backwards with some hindsight as to what path we've been on because I totally have no idea right now. We'll wrap it up there and get into your interview with George and then reminder that we'll be back on Thursday and we're doing a crossover episode with Sean and Amanda on the big picture to talk about the current state of TV and movies and the way in which they mingle. Greenwald, it was great to see you. Great to see you too, man.

Check out this talk with our great, with the great George Pelicanos. Let's get into it. We'll talk to you all soon. So I'm so excited to be joined now by a longtime friend of the pod, one of my literary heroes in an all-around great. guy George Pelicanos. He's a novelist, screenwriter, film and television producer. He's written 21 novels set in and around Washington, D.C. I'm proud to say I think I've read all of them. And you've probably also seen his work as a contributor and writer and producer on the wire and Tremay and the Deuce. Joining us from what I have to imagine must be Washington, D.C. is George

Pelicanos. George, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Andy. How you doing that? I'm doing okay. How are you? How is your family holding up? everybody's good I mean my sons are in production business too they work on film crews so they're not working yet but thankfully I've been able to write I got some writing gigs because

the studios need intellectual property once they start getting going again so I've been working thank goodness it's because it actually it changed my life to this year to start working again I just found that everything got better

once I started writing again. That's the thing. I mean, that's what it's like out here in L.A. too. I'm sure you know, the one part of the business that can happen is the writing. And it can give people real structure back in their lives when there otherwise isn't one. Yeah. So I'm blessed. I mean, everybody's healthy.

That's the only thing that I can say about all this is I can't complain. I start by saying that. And then I say, well, if you know me, you know I could complain. And I offer people the option. they don't often take me up on it. So I want to turn right away to this film. Congratulations on the film. It's called DC Noir.

It should be available when you're hearing this on online streaming services. You can rent and buy the film. It is a four-part anthology film. All the stories are written by you with a host of great performers and directors. And could you just talk a little bit about the history of the project? Because I noticed that the final installment, the confidential informant, may have predated the film, right? It was a short that was based on a story you wrote way back in 2005 or six for the DC noir collection published by Akashik.

How did this whole project come together? Well, you're right. We shot that first, and I just, I was at a time. I was in between seasons of the deuce, and I just wanted to make a little film. So I enlisted this young man from Baltimore, Stephen Kinnigopoulos. because he had made a bunch of shorts that I saw and he was pretty good and I worked with him and I knew his mom from Janice

worked on the wire and all these shows with us. So it was a family friend. And we made it and it was pretty fun. It was a good experience. And then the producer, the guy that was the onset producer, Kyle Crosby came to me and he said, let's keep going. You know, let's make a few more and we'll make a feature.

And I had all these stories. I knew I could adapt pretty quickly. And so we enlisted Ginny Grenum from D.C. who helped us raise the money. And we went out and made the film. And we shot them all, you know, one after the other. I think we were shooting probably three or four days each one, if I remember correctly.

So that's really run and gun. Yeah. It's pretty exciting as someone who's read your work for so long to see your work. You know, I think people who even only have a passing familiarity with your books know that the, I mean, it's in the first line of almost every review is that in your work, you present a vision of a great American city, Washington, D.C. that just isn't the version that the tourists see, isn't the version that people might imagine when they even hear the name.

Still, as someone who's never walked Georgia Avenue, like, it got to see it. And to feel the tone of your books brought to the screen was pretty, it was pretty, exciting. What was that like for you to have that control and say, well, no, people are going to say the lines this way. This is where they would get the coffee. This is the way the cops would walk. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I'm sort of a control freak. You know, and I started out writing novels and where you're sort of God, you know what I mean? You can do whatever you want. And then when I got into TV, I deliberately wanted to work myself up to a position of showrunner because I wanted to continue to control everything. And including, you know, I'm really into the way that

the cars that we use and the costumes and all the stuff. So, but we've never shot in D.C. And all the shows that you see that are set in D.C. are not shot in D.C. for the most part. And so I was really focused on that. We shot 100% in the city. No, we didn't go to Northern Virginia or Maryland or anything like that. We used local crews. We had 60 students from Howard University. We let them be interns on the set. Some of those kids, I call them kids. You know, they're not, they're adults, but they've gotten jobs since then because of their credit on the show. And when we went into the neighborhoods, we used local people as extras. We had some of these guys were security for us. We asked them if they wanted to work and kind of control.

things for us. And then I got Brendan Canty from Pugazi to score the movie. Oh, that didn't slip past me. That was the most DC thing possible. That was respect to that. That was incredible. Yeah. And we had a go, you know, we had backyard band, which is the premiere gogo band in D.C. They're on camera playing. And also Anwan, Glover, who leads the band, is an actor in the show. So we did everything we can to keep it local and real. on back to his villain roots that he played on the wire. We got distracted from him being a sweetheart on the deuce, and now he's back up to mischief on this. Yeah, he's pretty good at that. What was it like for you to, I imagine some of the places that you shop, maybe even, I'm thinking,

the bookstore that we were talking about before we started recording, I imagine these are places that you frequent in your life. What was that like for you coming back to them saying, I'm usually a customer, but now I'm going to have to ask you to rearrange this and display this book and et cetera, et cetera. Well, I think because some of these people knew me as a customer, customer. It was a sort of a method to that because I knew that it would be easy to get in there and get permission to do it and the sole food place and the bookstore and all these locations that I like a lot. They managed them. The coffee store on Rhode Island Avenue, Zeeks coffee. We finesse all of that. I have no doubt. The idea of having a God complex so you can, you know, and that's why

you write novels and then become a showrunner. That rings true because not only did you write these stories, you directed the first installment of the film, The Lovers, and this is of great interest to me, you act in the third installment. Now, those of us who enjoyed your cameo in the last season of the Deuce as a bar patron, we thought maybe that itch had been scratched, but no, now you're a high-flying defense attorney.

Is this where we're headed? Is there a one-man show coming as well? I just like to, I feel like why not? You know what I mean? I only got one trip here, and I might as well try and do everything that I want to do, you know. And so, yeah, you'll see me again. That was in my son's movie, too. That was the next thing I wanted to bring up.

You know, you understandably, and I respect this a lot, you're generally quite quiet about your private life and your family life. So it was kind of exciting to see that the third installment is directed by your son, Nick. After I learned that he was a director, I went on his IMDB page and I saw that he's put in years of doing some of the most unglamorous work on sets, both sets that you've worked on and films shot. It would appear to be all over the country as a PA and then doing it being a second second assistant director. And suddenly that rang true. That reminded me of a Pelicano style character learning a craft, learning a trade, the way your great heroes often do. Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. He worked really hard.

like you said, you know, he started out emptying trash cans. And it took them, it took them almost 10 years to get into the DGA, the Directors Guild of America. And they make it really tough, but, you know, then it's an honor when you're in there. Unlike the WGA, you just read one script in your hand. Yeah, exactly. And I thought, not just because he's my son, but also because he's my son, I just thought he did a terrific job. but it's a really good addition to this. And I was proud of him not just because of what, you know, how he did technically,

but also the way he talked to people on set and treated people. It was, it was great. The other, we mentioned the other two directors. And then Benga, Aquino was directed the fourth one. And people know him as, I guess, Chris Partlow on the wire. He was also Larry Brown on the Deuce. And he played Tom Robinson on Broadway in, in Kila Mockingbird.

And this is his directorial debut. What was it like working with both Bango, who's someone you've become friendly with and worked with for many years? But probably more importantly, your son in this capacity where, you know, I'm going to harp on it since you said a god complex in terms of having creative control, directors like to rule the roost when they're on set. So were there moments, particularly with your son, where you thought the music should be playing at this volume?

And he said, no, no, it's got to be this volume or whatever the particular knit he wanted to pick was. I think he, I mean, I only remember him getting annoyed with me once. We were shooting in an apartment and there was like a ton of candles lit. And I said, you know, it looks like they're trying to burn the place down or something stupid like that. And I think the look in his face was, I wish you weren't here, basically. And I tried to keep that at a minimum with all the directors as I do on TV because, as you well

know, you've got to have a level of respect there. Yes, it's your show, but the director, if you're just going to stand over their shoulder and tell them what to do, they get to start feeling like, what am I here for? You know, if I can't be an artist in this space. So I tried to do that on this as I do on the television shows. I mean, that was the thing that that kind of broke my head open in the best possible way when I had the experience to produce something is the idea that you think of writing as such a solitary act and it is, but then when you get to a set or even in pre-production, you have to unlock the thing that you wrote and let everyone else come in and play on the playground. And, you know, the joy that can come for what you expect to be a solitary life

to suddenly being surrounded by dedicated professionals and people who have abilities that you could never, ever imagine being able to do, that spirit is so, I mean, it's incredible, it's also kind of intoxicating. And it's what I think a lot of people, probably you're mentioning your sons, miss the most about production during this awful time. Well, Andy, isn't that what you really ended up enjoying about it most is working with all these talented people that I consider them to be artists, the crew. And then in the end, you know, you hold this thing in your hand, let's say it's a DVD, you know, even though that's not that prevalent anymore.

But you have this object and you think, you don't think, well, I did this. you think we did we did all we did this together you know we made something together and it's something that you carry with you the rest of your life you know i i had spent three years in new Orleans on tremay and i i will never forget it and all those people i work with same thing with the wire in baltimore um it's a different artistic experience than writing a novel or a short story which is a very solitary existence and there are great things about it. But I think if I only did that, I would be, I'd be socially retarded, basically. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because the skill set required to sit alone in a room and dream up

everything and control it is very specific. And it's not at all the same skill set required to be on set and juggle egos and passions and enthusiasm and, you know, bear yourself in the details of the smallest thing, whether it's candles or whether it's, you know, camera setups. But you're absolutely right. I mean, that's what I love the most and that's what I miss the most. You just miss the camaraderie. You miss the people because you're not, you're not just doing something alone. You're building something together and it becomes less about then, in my experience anyway, less about the result and more about the incredible collaborative process that helps kept, it helped keep me more present more so than anything else I'd ever done in my life.

By the way, I know this is my interview, but what do you got coming up next? Are you going to continue to do what you did? I hope so. Yeah, the goal is, and this is where you've been, I'm Sure, you know, you get through the door and you get to work with all those great people. And then you got to start back up at the bottom of the hill and start pushing the boulder again. But yeah, and I'll be happy to let you know more specifics once we're not talking about your movie. But thank you for asking. Yeah, man. One of the things that also struck me in watching this movie, you know, after having read you for so many years, your characters, and we get a little taste of it here, but not a ton.

But your characters, when you're in their heads in the books, they generally look. love escapist things, you know, whether it's high-flying athletes, and that's what I was thinking of that we saw a taste of in the confidential informant story, or the cars that you also love so much, or westerns, or just movies in general, the characters who are living, you know, much more day-to-day existences love those things. But when you're writing the stories, their lives are not those things, right? Their lives are not over-the-top cinematic necessarily. They're hardscrabble. They're more lived in. And that's evidence in the TV that you've made. and in this.

I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit because you are absolutely a fan of more escapist genres, but there is a day-to-day realism that runs through everything and runs through this film that is consistent and really admirable and noteworthy. Well, I guess if I like all kinds of,

I like watching all kinds of things. But when it comes to my own work, I really prefer the sort of the doctor documentary style realism of what you see that I've done. And on this one, I was working with the DP was Francisco, Bulgap, and we talked about it just being, I wanted to feel that we were eavesdropping on all these people's lives and that you don't bring attention to the camera, you know, or shooting up at the sky when you, what you want to do is let the camera. find the story. And it's always about,

it's always about people, you know. And he did a wonderful job, which this is a micro budget project. It was really, really low budget. The only one that looks like a movie, movie,

really, I think is mine because I was going for that film noir sort of, you know, kind of widescreen look, a little bit more beautiful. But it's not my favorite of all the movies that we did in this.

Because I think, because it is the most, most noir, I felt like I have to give people something that they're a little familiar with when you call it noir. Yep. But the other stories to me are actually more noir because they're absent the artifice of the spider woman and all that kind of thing that those signposts. It's just to me, noir is, what's more noir than a kid that's born in a neighborhood through no fault of his own is trapped in that neighborhood. which is what string music is about. That guy's just a high school kid

who just wants to play basketball and talk to girls and stuff like that. But because of where he lives, he's in danger. And there's that claustrophobia there that somebody once said the definition of noir is nothing is going to be all right ever.

Well, it's also, I think, a really smart updating of the idea and the concept, because if you think of like a classic noir hero like Philip Marlowe, what distinguished him was his ability to cross between layers of society, to go to the bottom and to go to the high and he's sort of our tour guide through those worlds. But because he was a white man himself in that time, he could pass in all of those worlds and he could go to the lowest bottom, the lowest rung of society at the time. and then he could climb back up again to a safer middle place. And I think what's kind of powerful about the stories that you've chosen is, as you said, the characters don't have the luxury of affectation or of mobility. And that makes it a lot more powerful. Yeah, and it's especially, I think, obvious in the last one, the confidential informant.

Yes. Which is all about the inevitability of fate. But counts in a universal story about that everybody feels, which is you want to be loved by your father or your mother you know what I mean that's what that's what that's what that story is about us that it's the guy searching for that for that love and and the blessing of the of the dad which he never he never gets until he sees him in the afterlife I thought since we're talking about that that story I do want to shout out that he as smart is the actor in that and and who I recognize from the role of black frankie on the deuce and is someone who

just drew my eye every time he was on the screen on that show. And he's outstanding in this. He's a real, he's a real talent. That he's Street, yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah. Did I say Thaddy is Young, but I think he had the former 76er small forward.

I can fix that. That's a good story. I mean, we, Pat Moran was our casting director, and she did The Wire, and she did all John Waters movies. She's really good. So when we were casting that, she found him,

he had been doing community theater and stuff, Baltimore. And then because of the strength of what he did in the confidential informant, I cast him in the deuce. And I just love the guy. He's a really good actor. He's a good human being. And he's on his way now. So that's a good story from this. He's one to watch. Since we're talking about writing and style and genre, one thing that I was thinking about was just the evolution of your own writing. And, you know, your writing was never overly flowery. No one would ever say that. But I think that as you've matured, the writing has become almost more taught, more sparse. The last novel you published in 2018, The Man Who Came Up Town, which is just excellent

book. Just to read it, it's like, it's kind of a masterclass and character and plot. There's nothing wasted there. There's no, there's no fat on the bone. And I was wondering, do you think that evolution, well, I guess the first part was if you even, you know, feel that's a valid observation, but I wonder if you think that is something to do with your TV work, you know, where there's certainly even less room for Fad and a TV story that's driven by plot, or is it more a reflection of where you've ended up in life and in what interests you? I guess both. I mean, the television writing has disciplined me in the way that you're talking about

to not waste any space in the script on things that are never going to be on screen. and so there's that and also I think my sort of love for a certain type of writing which I call populist fiction or you know Steinbeck John Fonte A. A. Bezoridis, they're all coincidentally. It's all Californians, but they just, I love that period. Horace McCoy. of newspaper men that became writers and which you know that there's a definite transition there from writing for newspapers to fiction right you know and it's very spare of the noirists like david goodis you know which is my favorite more writer it's totally down down like you say down to the bone and even somebody like in the man who came up town i talk about valdez's coming by elmore leonard which to me is a perfect novel it's very short no wasted work words at all and beautifully done. Just perfect. I think, I don't know if we've discussed this on this

podcast in a previous appearance or if Chris and I have done it when we've talked about your writing. But I often think also about where you are in your life and the characters you're writing about because you would have no reason to remember this. But the first time that we met was when Chris and I came to see you read Drama City, like it must have in 2004 in New York City in Barnes and noble. And I think we've talked about on this podcast how generous you were in signing the book that we brought to you. But the thing I don't know if we've talked about before is that Chris and I, it was March Madness when you were in town. And Chris and I were very excited to basically invite Nick Stefanos out with us to watch March Madness, you know, to go to some bar and stay there to

the last basket went in or didn't. And you so politely said, I think I'm going to go back to my hotel room and maybe have a bottle of beer and go to bed. And now that I am officially, I'd like to go back to my room and have a bottle of beer and go to bed years old, I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that distinction. Yeah, well, I should have gone out with you guys, but I probably did go home and just watch the game in my room. I like to stay focused when Marsh Madden's comes around. That's the other part of it, right?

It's more about how much we would be watching the game and how much would we have been just yelling questions about Caros and Clay in your ear. A question that came up in my mind when I was watching it, and obviously it takes on it even, you know, a darker relevance today. We're speaking on Monday. I was thinking a lot about the ways that you've explored the concept of policing in your work from your earliest books to today. One constant has been that there is an example set sometimes in your books of good policing.

It's an example that is, you know, rarely followed by other cops in books. But there are cops who behave the way, I'm going to call them the nickname in the section. of the film, Sergeant Dad behaves in string, is it string music? Is that the name of the piece? You know, he has a relationship to the community into the neighborhood that he's policing. He knows people's names. He knows their history. He's friendly with people. And as he drives and we're with him, it is not a predatory vision of the place. It's just he likes to know where people are. The problems with policing in this country obviously aren't new to you. But I wonder about how your own of how you convey policing in your fiction has been affected if it has been by the tumultuous year?

Well, my convictions have always remained constant. You bring up that guy, that character, and that to me is the idealization of what a police officer should be. And it's what many of them were before the drug war came and changed everything. cops used to work a beat or get out of their car and they'd get to know the people in the neighborhood. And then when there was a murder, let's say, people in the neighborhood would talk to the police. But what happened was that as the years went on and this phony drug war continued, people were getting locked up left and right for things like marijuana possession, parole violation. And then the people in the neighborhood actually had people in their families. family or friends who were all doing time.

And they could no longer, in good conscience, talk to the police because the police had become the enemy, which is not how it should be. We're doing it. My next project is for, I haven't talked about it. So this is like exclusive, I guess, but for HBO, it's a, it's about the Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore, which was a squad of corrupt policemen who got sought to federal prison and and it was it went on for years they were robbing drug dealers and you know false overtime and planning evidence all kinds of stuff but it's really about the the failure of a

police force to connect with its citizenry and we're working on that now and hopefully we're going to we're going to shoot it early next year it's a limited series and when i say we I was approached to do it and I said, well, I will do this if I can bring in the guys from the wire and we can do a for karma. You know, they'll do Alaska Rock. So we've got, it's David Simon and I and Ed Burns and Bill Zorsi, all wire veterans. And we got a writer Dee Watkins from Baltimore. And it's based on this source material is a Baltimore son reporter, Justin Fenton,

has a book coming out called We Own This City, which is all about the, this gun trace task force. That is extremely exciting to hear. And you're able to drag Simon away from Twitter long enough to contribute? It's hard, but yeah. Does it make him calmer in the room since he's expending all of that rage and bile towards Pierce Morgan and internet trolls? I mean, eventually you've got to go to work.

You know what I mean? Shut off the Wi-Fi. Time to get to work. That's extremely exciting. And, you know, as with a lot of these projects we're hearing about it, it feels, you know, almost prescient. But it sounds like this is something that you were drawn to even before what policing ought to mean became a national conversation. Yeah, it was. I mean, we've been working on this for a while.

The pandemic interrupted us, obviously. But, you know, we were talking about this for a couple of years. and then after the Freddie Gray uprishing in Baltimore, it's all going to tie in. I don't, you know, I don't agree with everything that the, that people are protesting about. For example, I don't think that, I think that defund the police is a, is a dumb idea, in my opinion. They should be talking about demilitarizing the police and reforming the police, but it takes money to actually do police reform. and nobody wants the streets less safe.

I just think that we can come to some sort of place where the police and the citizens are working together again instead of in opposition to each other and that everybody gets a fair shake no matter your economic condition or your race, you know, just everybody should be treated the same way by the police. And hopefully we'll get to. get somewhere. Look, this thing that happened just this week or yesterday in Wisconsin,

it triggered immediate protests up there and around the country. People aren't going to be complacent anymore about this stuff. They're just not. And that's one of the good things that has come out of all this. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I hope you're right about that. Just to wrap up, so as you know, I'm, I am tempting to fall in your footsteps, writing TV for a living and still watching a lot of TV for the podcast. But during this pandemic, especially, the thing that has really sustained me more than anything else has been reading and reading widely and deeply and just devouring as many books as I can or, you know, writers hold Uvras or whatever in my spare time. I don't know if Ginny mentioned this to you in

our emails, but Chris and I just had the most fun we've had all year doing a four-part deep dive on Lonesome Dove And it was just the most fun we've had podcasting and most fun reading experience. And I guess I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. It sounds like it's been similar to you, a similar experience for you. You know, there's just something that still, despite all the options I have at my disposal, there's something about the total escape that's possible only in a book that still gets me. And I know that you've done work volunteering in prisons and the man who came up town was one the main characters as a prison librarian. You've obviously been a great booster of authors and books

through your whole career. I guess I just curious your perspective on the role reading can and should play in the lives of young people today or even the not so young like yours truly. Well, I think, you know, I often talk about this with reading in jail and prisons, is that if a guy, a man or a woman takes a book into his cell at night, he can get out of that cell by opening that book and going into that world. So right now, we're all locked up a little bit. And it's never been more evident how important books are to just get away, man. You know, like, it takes you out of this pandemic too. If you just quietly read, and I've been reading, I've been reading some books that I felt like I didn't have the time to read before.

You know, right now I'm reading from here to eternity. It's a thousand pages long. And I couldn't be more happy to get into that thing every day. I recently read the tree grows in Brooklyn, which I'd heard a lot about over the years. But it was kind of dawning to read a 700-page novel, but I did it. And I've been enjoying the books of Rachel Kushner this year.

I think she's unbelievable. She's like the one as far as I'm concerned. I have the current writers. Yeah, I agree. The Flamethrowers is just an out-of-body experience. It's great. It's great. So it's been, you know, there's been good things that have come out of this.

I mean, I've had time again to read a lot of books where I don't think I would have, for the rest of my life, I wouldn't have had this opportunity to read so many books in one year. And it's been great. The same thing happened to me where just early on. I had a bookshelf behind me where I was doing the first round of Zoom calls me and you sort of learn about it. And there were books on there that I've been carrying around with me since college. And I just took down, I took down Thomas Mons, the Magic Mountain.

And I figured, you know, 900 pages about sickness and being trapped in a place, that seems about right. And it was as much about reading it as it was the sort of lessons it was teaching me about being patient, that maybe if I only read, you know, a certain number of pages a night or whatever, you keep chipping and you get there. And so it was operating on a number of levels. It definitely didn't change my mind about, it didn't make me want to live on the Alps for seven years,

but it did take me out of the moment in a way that I appreciated. Yeah, and you went to the Alps. I mean, that's what the book does. And then Lonesome Dove, which was just like, and now I've just not, I think I've read six McMurtries this summer. I can't stop. Lonesome Dove is a classic. It's an American classic, you know.

Yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts on it just because we've just finished this conversation and it just hits a sweet spot that I can't recover from of just it is a deeply literary and intellectual book, but it's also the most purely pleasurable page turning experience I can remember. Yeah, I think he, he, I don't know Larry McMurtry, even though he had a bookstore in D.C. for a while. And but I got the impression as a writer, I mean, these sort of things kind of resonate. I got the impression that this was, A, the book that he wanted to write his whole life, and B, he put everything into it, and he knew, you know, when he was writing it, that this was the one. And it is. And all the other book, I've read a lot of his books. They're very good books, but this one stands out as, as it was worth a life, you know, it's worth a life, a writer's life just to have this one book. And it's incredible, man. Do you, do you feel that as in your experience

writing books? Do you, you know, when you when you read interviews with basketball players and, and they're like, no, I knew. I knew I was on. I wasn't going to miss for the rest of the game. Do you ever get in that zone? Do you do you do writers talk about when the doors are closed? Do they say like, well, the book that everyone loves yet, I was feeling that one. Yeah, I think so. And I, and there's times when I, it's, it's a challenge, you know, And I know it's a challenge. When I wrote Hard Revolution, I wanted to write about the 68 riots my whole life because it was such a big deal when I was a kid. But I waited until it was my 12th book to tackle it because I didn't think I was good enough until then.

And then I put everything I had into it. I knew that there was like a certain responsibility to it. And I bet that's the way McMurtry felt about Lonesome Dove. if we're keeping that image of you know the video game player from like NBA jam in the 90s when the when shekel o'neal was the video game character was literally on fire because he's so he's so hot what is there a book where you felt that way when you were writing it just in your own mind in your own experience writing the books i remember when i wrote king's sucker man it was it was like all i had to do was sit down and the book was coming out of me yeah and it's a period book but i never even did any research for it really because I was 19 years old when that book was set. And I remember everything. It just came so easily.

But it reads that way too. And that also probably, as you're saying that, it reminds me of McMurtry writing Lonesome Dove. He didn't do research because he just remembered his grandparents and uncles talking about the way things used to be. And then only later did someone point out that he had forgotten that trains existed. And he admits it now. He just forgot about trains because he wasn't doing any research.

And you haven't said anything, but the TV series is monumental too. Yeah, we did. When we did our podcast, we did both in tandem. So we did four parts talking about the book in the sections that the TV show broke it into. That kind of invented a lot of where TV ended up too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, George, it's such a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you for taking this time. Yeah, totally. And so now we have something new to look forward to. People have a reading list to look to. in the short term, DC Noir, you can rent it, you can buy it, and can't recommend it more highly. If you just Google DC Noir the movie, you'll find out how to see it. If you don't Google it as the movie, if you just Google DC Noir, they might also see the book, which is still in print and they could get that too.

Yeah, I wouldn't either way. Either way, as long as they're consuming DC Noir, we're good. All right, my best of your family and everyone, George. Thank you. Thanks, man. Talk to you later. Bye.