WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 562 - Larry Grobel

Episode Date: December 24, 2014

Larry Grobel has interviewed everyone. As the premiere profile writer for Playboy Magazine, Larry became a renowned chronicler of celebrity and culture. But not unlike Marc, interviewing famous people was not in Larry's plans. Marc finds out how Larry dealt with his unexpected career shift and learns how Larry's interviewing technique helped him connect with difficult subjects. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day.

They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck minster fullers what the fuckabillies merry christmas happy holidays i know if you're listening to this when it's released which is christmas morning i believe you must need some relief you must need some distraction from something, whether it's family or the fact that you're

alone or the fact that maybe you didn't get the presents you wanted or you're taking a walk or it's just one of those sad, quiet mornings. Look, I get it, man. There's part of me that really looks forward to the holidays in Los Angeles because it really quiets down here and you can drive with very little difficulty on the highways. That's what I'm going to do today. I'm just going to hit the highways and drive. I'm going to drive the 110. I'm going to just drive it up and down. Then I'm going to drive down to the 101 and drive 10 miles in either direction. And then I'm going to drive the 10 all the way to the beach and back with nobody on the highway. That's my plan. That's my gift to me for Christmas morning,

to drive on the L.A. freeways with no obstacles, to drive on the highways of America like they were meant to be driven on, with freedom, not with frustration. Merry Christmas to me and my quiet highway drives. Yeah, I'm going to probably do that. I think that actually sounds like a great idea. I don't know what you're up to. I do hope the holidays are going well.

I hope that you're there amongst the rapping and you've experienced some joy. Or you've maybe watched some of your children break the things you gave them already, knowing they would break it. Or perhaps they love what you gave them. knowing they would break it or perhaps they uh they love what you gave them or perhaps perhaps you're just you're you're now feeling a weird pang of sadness that your gift was not received properly but the bottom line is this season is about uh opening your hearts right i mean isn't what we're told giving does not necessarily mean it has to be an object. You get it, man. Right?

You get it, right? It's not about shopping. It's about love, about an open heart. Right? Look, or else it's just another day. It's vacation. Whatever. I can't even wrap my brain around what exactly it means.

I mean, I grew up with all this shit. I grew up surrounded by Christmas trees and Christmas carols and, you know, red and green and, you know, gingerbread candies and Santa hats and all that shit. I'll tell you, it's a lot more appealing than the Jewish version. I mean, it's a lot more exciting with the lights. We have a festival of lights,

but for some reason that festival of lights is not equal to the lights that are, you know, down on Karenga, which is a street a block and a half from me and these two houses where these uh these mexican folks live are just they they're in competition with the lighting and the holidays and uh whatever the festival of lights means can't compete with those two houses down on coringa and highland park that's what i'm telling you. Much more exciting. Less heavy, you know, the iconography and imagery of Christmas than that of Hanukkah.

Hanukkah, it was always like the eternal flames. There were Maccabees involved. There was an ancient battle. You know, with Christmas, it was, you know, this wizard kid was born. Some kings gave him some spices. And everything was changed forever. And that's why we have war. So, Merry Christmas.

Oh, before I forget, I want to say that I put a bonus episode up on the WTF Premium. So, if you get the free app and upgrade to Premium, there's a bonus episode waiting there for you. It's me taking a tour of a record pressing plant, United Record Pressing in Nashville, and learning about vinyl. I learned some things. You could learn some things. So go get the free app, upgrade to premium. I'm going to be putting more bonus premium content up as I feel inspired to do so.

All right. So today on the show, Larry Grobel is here. Larry Grobel, and I don't necessarily expect you to know him, but he was the guy, I met him through a friend of mine. He's the guy that did most of the big Playboy interviews back in the day. This is a guy that has interviewed everybody. Everybody. The list is insane. I'll give you a quick taste of the day. This is a guy that has interviewed everybody, everybody. The list is insane. Here's, here's, I'll give you a quick taste of the writers. Sal Bello, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote,

Roger Ebert, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Alex Haley, Elmore Leonard, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Bud Schulberg. I mean, those are just writers, actors, all of them. Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Warren Beatty, Marlon Brando, Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Sid Caesar, Nicolas Cage, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Jose Ferraro, Henry Fonda, Harrison Ford. On and on and on. Actresses. Lucille Ball, Kim Basinger, Marilyn Chambers. Yeah, okay.

Joan Collins, Jane Fonda, Zaza Gabor, Meryl Streep, Barbara Streisand. Crazy. This guy's interviewed everybody. So I figure why not interview the interviewer? Right. Wouldn't you figure that? And when I interviewed him in two parts, what's interesting about Larry is he came to this gig much like I did. It was not the plan, but is where, you know know that's what we ended up doing is talking to people he wanted to be a writer of a different type uh and he also wanted to write novels which he's writing now he's got he's got an extensive bunch of books that you can find if you go to uh if you do a google search on Larry Grobel it will take you to a place. LawrenceGrobel.com. Go to LawrenceGrobel.com.

And he's written a shitload of books. He wrote a very important and the book on the Houston family, as in John Houston, Walter Houston, Angelica Houston, and the son. I forget his name. He wrote a book on conversations with Brando. He wrote a book on Al Pacino. But the point is, is that when he was interviewing people, this would go over the course of weeks, maybe months for one interview.

I mean, he spent weeks and like months with Barbra Streisand. He went to Brando's Island. I mean, what you had to do back then, back in the old days, crazy. So what I did to honor his style, for whatever it's worth, is that I did one interview and then I realized, well, he's got to come back. Just to try it his way. All right? That's how this is structured.

So right now we're going to talk to Lawrence Grobel, Larry Grobel, about his extensive career as an interviewer for Playboy magazine and other outlets. And it's in two parts. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means.

I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction.

Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com Farts. I was a little intimidated coming up on this interview. Oh, please. No, but like, you know, I look at, you know, you've interviewed everybody.

You were the guy. No, but you were the guy that did the interviews of everybody. How many, did you primarily work for Playboy? Not primarily, but people think that. Yeah. Because it's been, I've done about 50 Playboy interviews and 50 television Playboy interviews, so about 100 total. So the Playboy interviews were specifically the, like I was just recently interviewed by Playboy.

Right. But not the 20 questions thing. You did the interviews, the Playboy interviews. I did the big interviews, not the 20 questions. I did a few 20 questions. It's a little different. I can find a Wikipedia page on you. I don't know how old you are.

You look like you're 50, but given who you've interviewed, unless you were interviewing when you were 12, you got to be older than that. I'm older than that, yeah. That's it? That's it. Yeah. Fuck, man. I don't get a number?

Oh, you want a number? All right, guess again. I won't be insulted. 62. Okay, I'm a little older than that. Really? Yes. Holy shit shit I know

and it's terrible because that's why you don't get work because people think you're too fucking old you don't look old well what can I do you should see my wife

she's Japanese she looks like she's like 35 40 years old thank god it went the same age thank god it went that way

I didn't know where you were going with that but like because I couldn't put it together when I saw you when when I met you, and I was like, how the fuck did that guy interview Marlon Brando at that time? How did he interview John Huston?

How did he write a book on James Michener? When did he do that? When did that matter? Look, I interviewed Lillian Gish, for God's sakes. You did? I did. But she must have been 100. She was pretty old.

She must have been in the 90s probably. But I was intimidated because I'm hesitant to call myself an interviewer. Oh, you are. You're a very good interviewer. Well, I appreciate that. But when people tell me, it's like, how do you do interviews? I'm like, I don't look at it that way. Well, look, you and I, I mean, what you do, you've done 400 or 500 of these things.

So you already, plus radio interviews you did before. So you know how to do it. You know how to talk to people. Right. That's really important. Right. I prepare probably more than anybody else. For instance, this morning I got an email from you and it says, you know, do you have a list of your interviews that you've done?

Yeah. And I went, oh, man, I do. But it's in paper. It's typewritten. I don't have it in the computer. So I got up and I typed it for you. And I put it out there. You just typed all this shit today?

Yeah, I did it all today. But the point is, I have read your book a month or two ago. I have watched your shows. I have listened to some of those interviews you do. And I prepared questions. See, I write down actual questions. For me? For you.

And we're doing this, the Saturday evening post. So I'm doing a three. For me? For you. And I wanted to, we're going to, we're doing this for Saturday evening post and this, so I'm doing a three question thing with you. You're talking to me. Right. And we'll have a good time with it. Right. But I prepared all this because that's how I work. I write, I have 50 questions.

I need three. But that's the proper way to work. Well, it might be the proper, but people don't do it anymore. I taught this thing. I taught the art of the interview at UCLA. And man, you don't realize when kids come in you know they're 20 22 years old they want to do this and I showed them how I think you should do it yeah I mean it's a 10-week intensive three hours a day

course is it a journalism course it's well I guess you'd call it that was in the English department uh-huh but it was it was you know I mean a lot of the students I did ended up doing you know I had one one of my assignments is i gave i used to give them uh go out and interview somebody who will help your career because as a student they'll talk to you as a journalist they might not right so pick you know you want to be a director steven spielberg is that who you like you know whoever who's going to turn down a kid? Exactly. Well, some do, but the most don't. So one day, one of my students says to me, do you have any good restaurants you want to recommend in New York?

I said, oh, you're going to New York? He says, yeah, I'm going just for the weekend. What are you going to do there? He says, I'm interviewing Tim Robbins. I said, Tim Robbins? No kidding. I said, what are you doing it for? He says, this class.

I said, are you kidding me? He said, yes, I've been trying to get to Tim Robbins for Playboy for years. And he says, no. And he's going in doing it. As a student. Because Tim's a sucker. And I said, sell the damn thing. Get it out.

We'll find a magazine. Is he tough to get? Why? He's a difficult interview? I don't know. I guess he's difficult to get. I interviewed him once live, and I never posted it. Because we did a live event.

I interviewed him in front of an audience. It was sponsored by somebody else. They asked me to do it. He asked me to do it. I knew him a bit when I was at Air America. The two of them were involved. And after we were done, he wanted me to take out this part

that I thought was the best part of the interview and I just didn't publish it. Well, you know, that's the thing. I've had people ask me. I had Brando come to my house. I've had different people come and ask me to see this thing. You know, Streisand thing. I've had people ask me. I had Brando come to my house. I've had different people come and ask me to see this thing. You know, Streisand fought to see it.

Brando did. I don't like to show anything. I think that's not journalism anymore. Then you're being a secretary. You know, it used to be the early years of Playboy, they did give it to the person. Sinatra, the interview, they gave it to him. He redid it. Because having him in the magazine was more important.

And the Paris Review still does that. redid it because having him in the the magazine was more more important yeah and the paris review still does that the interviews of the paris review are always given back to the author so he can go over it and refit i don't i never do that so i let people if people want to sit on stuff or they want to take it usually i have found that the only thing people ever want to take out of any of these shows and no not money when they say shit about other people oh okay yeah like if it could be misconstrued or- Well, Dolly Parton once asked me, and she said to me, and I said, Dolly, I really don't want to let you see it.

She says, just please, I promise you I won't insist on anything. And I really like Dolly. So I brought the galley with me, and I said, Dolly, here's the galleys, but I can't change anything major because it's already in galley form. She reads the whole thing, and she says, well, the only thing I'd ask you to do, if you don't mind, she says, is where I talked about Elton John, I said I didn't want to be like Elton John.

Could you just put an N in front of Elton John? And I said, like an Elton John. I said, you got it, babe. No problem with that. I have no problem with that. But what do you, I mean, how did you start out? I mean, so you're in your 60s now and you look like you're 50 which is good but where you come from long island uh well brooklyn and long island i've been in brooklyn for nine and a half years and jericho

long island and what what kind of where'd you come from your parents were first generation they were yes they they came my grandparents were out of Russia and Poland, my father. Me too, we're like the same person. Yeah, and I go to Poland all the time now. You do? Since 2007, I'm on there. Oh, for that cinema. For the Camera Image Film Festival, that's a really good story if you want to hear it.

I will, the Camera Image Film Festival, which somehow or another you created. You were responsible for it. Yeah, I'm fucking responsible for it. And it's 20 years, and it's among the 50 best film festivals in the country, but that a story yeah but so all right so you grow up in in brooklyn and in jericho now was it was the was he how many siblings you got i got one sister older okay so there's two of you and what's your what's your what's your father what were your parents my father my father was uh in the pharmaceutical business so first he was a sales manager salesman sales manager then he became vice president of uh one of the companies.

And that's when he moved to Jericho? Yeah. Well, Jericho at the time we moved in 1956, the house cost $23,900. I remember that, 23,900. Where is it now? Is it in your family still? No, no. My father died.

My mother recently died, but she sold it. She sold it for about $350,000, and now it's probably about $800,000 because Jericho is rated the top five schools in the country, the high school. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah, they're always highly rated, so that's kind of cool. But I had a great time in Jericho. I mean, it was really, you know, you had your bicycle,

you got out and you did your things. You had sex with the girls and, you know. You were doing that in high school? In high school, yeah. Good for you. Yeah, it was good. In what, in the 50 the what in the 50s 10th no come on 60s so it was starting to happen more yeah the 60s were were you know i sort of i mean like we didn't have any dope in high school i mean that that i didn't see till college you know i went to ucla

but but um in high school it was still you know beer people drank when did you go to college what year uh 64 to 68. So you're right at the beginning of it. Everything's changing. Yeah. Actually, when I applied to college, I had applied to go to Berkeley, and I got in. And so I decided I'll make that decision. Because nobody in my high school ever went further than Michigan.

So I thought, I'll go to California. Yeah, why not? And that was the year of Mario Savio and the free speech movement in Berkeley. But at the last minute, I thought, I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Los Angeles. Yeah. And I thought, well, it'd be nice. I'm going so far away. I may not get back home for a year.

My parents didn't have that kind of money. You know, if you go to California, you can't come home. Right. So I thought, maybe I get a home-cooked meal once in a while. So I said, why don't I go to UCLA instead? So at that time, they let me do it pretty easily. I said, you know, last minute. For what were you studying?

I was an English major. I started in poli-sci the first year, but I thought it was all bullshit. I worked for a congressman once. Which congressman? His name was Herbert Tenzer. He helped him get in. But Alan Lowernstein replaced him. So he got assassinated.

But the congressman, that was just a real learning experience. You know, I was a writer for him when I was like 16 years old, but, you know, we helped him get in. The young people did door-to-door, and we ended up in his office. And we used to meet with him, and he was the head of, I think, Barton's Candy. And so he was an older man. You know, the Vietnam War was going on johnson's in the president we used to meet in the backyard we say congressman now that you're here you know you'll vote against the war that's oh he says i don't think i can do that boys i said what are you talking about that's why we you know work yeah he says well

the president seems to know what he's doing i just got here i said look you got to go he says otherwise we're going to go work for somebody else to get you out of here in two years which we did yeah so um but we went ended up going to washington in his office and we got to look through his papers you know and file stuff and i got to see how he got the nomination and how he got the nomination was very interesting because uh at that time the democratic party said uh whoever wants nomination, how much money can you put up yourself? So one guy said he could put up 15 grand. Another said he could put 20. And Purbitans, I think, said he could do 30 or $35,000.

And that's how he got it. Yeah. Think about it today. But he bought it, basically bought the United States. It's a sad thing. He still had to get elected. When you're an idealist, and especially if you're a lefty idealist, it's a rough day or month or year when you get schooled on how it really works. It's a very difficult thing to do.

It's very mind-blowing. Because I thought Brando really understood it. Of all people. Yeah. Well, he was paranoid, but he had a right to be paranoid. He said to me, you know, I said, do you really think that they're watching you and all? He says, I know they're watching me, he says, because I've taken Dennis, what's his name? Hopper?

No, no, no, the Indian, the Indian. All right, right, right. Anyway, there was Russell Means, and he brought them to his island. He helped bail them out and all, Dennis Means, I think it was. But he said that, he says, look, Larry, he says, at 12 o'clock at night, there are guys working on the phone lines. He says, who works at 12 o'clock at night outside my house? Because he was a political activist for the indigenous people. Yeah.

And that was a big deal. And what year was that? Was it Nixon? It would have been Nixon. Yes, it probably would have been Nixon in the 70s. He looked at everybody. Nixon was crazy. And his abuses of power in terms of looking into people's business was, in retrospect, horrendous.

And he's very personal. He took everything very personal. John Lennon, he crushed. Well, look at Jay Aguhula. That's why he stayed in power for so long. I mean, why was he the head of the FBI? Because he had something on everybody. Every president, he said it all.

That's how politics, that's how power works. Power works. All right, so you go to UCLA. You're studying English. Yeah. So what do you want to be? A writer. I've always wanted to be a writer. Since I was 15 years old, I won a Newsday American History Contest when I was 15. I had to write about America's three

greatest presidents. Yeah. I got lucky. I won. Yeah. And the award was a watch, your name in the paper, and you get to meet the president of the United States, who was John F. Kennedy at the time, in Washington in June, at the end of the year.

So each month, two more winners would happen with different essays. So there was a boy and a girl selected each month. So there were 16 of us who ended up going to Washington. And unfortunately, John Kennedy at the time is in Berlin giving his Ich bin ein Berliner speech I'm not a donor I am a donor

I am a donor so they got us to meet Robert Kennedy the Attorney General so we sat and I got to meet Bobby Kennedy and you're 15

16 years old yeah I was just 16 at that time so I saw it writing paid basically 600 words and I'm meeting

the Attorney General of the United States and possibly the President. Everybody, all of a sudden, people treated me differently in school. You know, they announce you over the whatever. Yeah, sure. It's a big deal. The PA thing. So, yeah.

So, I still have the watch. You know, it's engraved. It really was a nice one. But was it always like you saw it as magazine or short pieces? Never. I always saw it myself. Look, James Joyce was what influenced me. You understood that?

As much as I could. I mean, I've written a book called Beginning in Finnegan, which is all about the search for Finnegan's Wake. It's a novel. It's a fun thing to do. So you want to be a novelist? Yeah, I wanted to be a novelist. My heroes were J.P. Donlevy, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer. I mean, the writers- The heavyweights.

Yeah. And I had, you know, Dostoevsky I read when I was young, you know, so I knew what great literature was. The hardest thing about Dostoevsky is remembering all the names. The names. They keep changing, you know? You got to keep going back. Got to make a list for yourself.

Well, you know how this happened? I mean, I had a friend named Paul and his father was a very famous bird artist, Arthur Singer, and he did Birds of the World and Field Guide to North American Birds. And I grew up watching this. So that wasn't my father who influenced me. It was Arthur Singer and a pianist named Ted Harris. The artists. Yeah.

Yeah. And because this is a guy who worked at home, and he painted, and he would go get from the Museum of Natural History. He was the only person allowed to take out the stuffed birds. You know, have it in his house, and I'd see these eagles and stuff, and I'd watch him just draw them. I'd go, wow, man. The commitment. Smoking his pipe, just living at home.

So the life of an artist. Yes, I really enjoyed seeing the life of the artist. So you go to UCLA, and everything's changing in the world, and you're laboring over James Joyce books. Yeah. Trying to crack the code. Portrait of the artist. Yeah, well, that's a little easier, right? Right.

Well, Ulysses is impossible no no Finnegan's Wake is impossible Ulysses is possible it's possible yeah it is but you need the guide

you need the Anthony Burgess guide to Finnegan's Wake or something like that you know that's good yeah it's like reading the sound and the fury

with the Clance Brooks guide to what's going on those stream of consciousness things well you know I just started reading Nicholson Baker have you ever read

no very good writer ready to recommend his first book called mezzanine is a novel that is about a guy going up at mezzanine an escalator that's it the whole book 160 i saw my page i've been curious about that book so i got to know him i met him at a signing for something else but i've read his later books i never read the early ones and i i i like the way his mind works and he's very original so now I'm reading Mezzanine. And he does, you know, the way he does a footnote, but a footnote that is four pages long about a phonograph needle and a groove, you know.

And I'm going, this is wild. How do you even read this? Do you stop mid-sentence to go to the footnote? Do you read it afterwards? But I love minds that work. Yeah, that's his. You know, David Foster Wallace did this infinite jest. But I like Gertrude Stein.

I like interesting writing. I like Thomas Pynchon. I knew I could never. See, here's where it fucked me up. And this is why I went into journalism. I always wanted to write. I tried writing a novel. I tried another one.

What do you mean you tried? You finished it. I wrote a novel, but I didn't give it to anybody because I didn't think it was good enough. It didn't compare to who I, I thought it was great when I wrote it.

Yeah. But then a couple of days later, How old were you? 17, 18, 19. What was your first novel? You wrote your first novel when you were 18 and you decided shit.

Yeah, shit. I needed experience. I said, I need experience. So that's why I joined the Peace Corps. You know, and I went to Africa for three years.

To live the life of the... Right. Something to write about. But I wasn't going in the army. See, that's the other thing I did is I avoided the draft. By going to the Peace Corps? No, they wouldn't let you out like that. By making a decision that if they took me, I was going to leave the country.

So you come back, you want to be a novelist, you got all this life experience. You didn't write the memoir for years though, right? Right. I started writing this memoir see the biggest problem i had is i have a lot of stories with famous people i mean i've been with you know the playboy interviews allowed me to spend 10 hours 20 hours i go to no but how does that but how quickly because obviously look as a guy like i talked to celebrities too and you know you made a life out of it but then i see you know after after all is said and done, you self-publish novels, you write these other books.

Right out of the gate, I'm like, well, where the hell did that dream die? Yeah. The novels never died. I'm still writing novels. I'm writing one now. But the thing is, what happened was, yes, you have to make a living somehow. So when I went back, when I came back from ghana i had a different perspective i spent a year seven months traveling around the world after i left ghana three years

in ghana and then you know i'm traveling around india and east africa and korea uh uh hong kong and and japan and all and i get back to the states and i have a i look at i look at what everybody has and i look what people are doing and i'm thinking man they don't realize it's this is the dream for every Ghanaian I knew they want to come to America they don't realize the you know what it was like people are jumping out airplanes doing you know skydiving that kind of stuff I said no Ghanaian would do that that's insane you know why would you risk your life once you got here so I had a that perspective and I he was able to use that perspective. You appreciate the bare essentials. I appreciated life in a different way. And so when I went to Newsday, I said, look,

I can write these articles. I'll do stuff. He says, well, what do you know about this? What do you know about that? I said, I can do it. And anyway, I got a couple of assignments. And one assignment about the history of aviation on Long Island led to me finding out people were building their own planes. Some of them built it in their kitchen and had to knock down a back wall to get the plane out. I mean, someone did it in an apartment in New York. They built a plane. How do you get – yeah, it's insane what was happening. Then I met a guy who jumped – was around Lindbergh's time, and he was fascinating.

He had a whole museum in his downstairs basement. I met a woman learning how to fly. And then gliders, going up in a glider. So I did all, I went to the editor. I said, Lee, you know, besides this history, I could do this, this, this, this. And they said, do it all. We'll do a whole issue like this. So I do.

I jump out of airplanes. I go up in a glider. I get sick, you know. I mean, the whole thing. I mean, I was doing this new journalism, basically, all from my point of view. Like Gonzo. Yeah. It was Gonzo type journalism.

It was great. It was fun. And they were paying me 500 bucks an article. I did, I was living in my parents' basement. I had just come back from it was a Gonzo type journal. It was great. It was fun. And they would pay me 500 bucks an article. I was living in my parents' basement. I had just come back from, you know, I hadn't found a place yet. And I'm writing like crazy. Nine articles, I hadn't gotten paid yet.

I didn't give a shit. What are you, 20? 22, maybe. 21, 22. But you're living. You're doing things you would never have done. Yeah, I'm doing transcendental meditation. My girlfriend comes from Japan, you know,

and she comes and we live together. We got a place in Brooklyn. She thinks I'm doing transcendental meditation. My girlfriend comes from Japan, you know, and she comes and we live together. We got a place in Brooklyn. She thinks I'm a dilettante because I keep getting into things for three weeks. You know, TM. I started doing TM. Phone rings. I can't answer it. At the beginning.

And I write about it. That was the first wave of it. Yes. But I still have that word and I still do it when I'm on a plane and it's starting to go a little bumpy. Oh, so you lock it in. I lock into that. But it's starting to go a little bumpy oh so i use that i lock into that but it's interesting

so you come back from ghana with this appreciation of of sort of uh the extravagance of american culture but you know you get the gig and you're like i'm gonna do it all yeah yeah well why not yeah i mean i mean i i saw much uh how to do uh martial arts people doing that so i said well i'll take so i take these classes what is it 1970 69 what i came back in the 71 72 okay 72 so in 72 73 is when i'm doing all these crazy things so it's part i get strapped in a sulky to go around roosevelt raceways with the trotters so i can write a story about that i go with you know people doing demolition derby i say can i get in the car so i can feel what this is like and i was i'm doing all this crazy stuff. And it's working. And the articles are good.

So they're publishing. Right. So 72 is also like the 60s kind of like spread out into just a complete change of the culture. Everybody's a hippie. Everybody's pushing the envelope. Everyone's having a relatively drugged out good time. Right? Right.

So that's the environment. Right. The change had taken place. Right. And so, all right. So. Like the change had taken place. Right. And so, all right, so you're writing all these great articles. And then I decide I want to just write my novel. I just want to get into novels. That's what I want to do.

So I'm going to move to California. It's 1973. A friend of mine who I knew in college becomes the director of Antioch College West, which is part of Antioch and Yellow Springs, Ohio, but it's out here in LA. And he writes me. He says to me, would you be my assistant director on this? Antioch College West, which is part of Antioch and Yellow Springs, Ohio, but it's out here in LA. Right. And he writes me, he says to me, would you be my assistant director on this? I said, I'm not looking for a job, man. I just want to come out and do this stuff. He says, I think you could be really good at this.

I said, I'll do it part-time. I'll do it half-time. So I came out, and I started doing that for Antioch. And then I started, the minute I got an apartment in West Hollywood, I got this place in a garage, you know, over a garage. Yeah. And I get the phone installed. The next day, Stan Green from Newsday that I was writing all these articles for calls me up and says, we figured out a way to get off Long Island. I said, what do you mean? He says, all our articles are based on Long Island, you know, but if we want to do interviews with household names.

I said, okay. He says, yeah, so how about we'll do the first one with Mae West? I said, is she still alive?

And he goes, she goes, yeah. I said, how do I get to her? He says, we don't know. You're the one in Hollywood.

So I said, let me see what I can do. So I call up Paramount Pictures, I find, you know, and they give me a name, a publicist, whatever,

and I get to Mae West and she agrees because people knew Newsday so they would agree to it. So I go to see Mae West. I wear a sports jacket. I go to a flower place. First interview. First interview with the celebrity is with Mae West.

Besides, it's African. I did for African Arts Magazine when I was in Ghana, but Vincent Covey. So I go to buy flowers, and I said, well, this is for Mae West. And the guy says, oh, she doesn't like these flowers. She likes these flowers. Of course, they were the most expensive ones. So I said, oh, he must know. So the guy says oh she doesn't like these flowers she likes these flowers of course they were the most expensive ones so I said oh he must know so I bought them I got there right yeah and and and she comes out and she's she's Mae West she's got the hair yes

you know five inches high and the and the the wig on and and the highly healed shoes like a Dolly Parton before Dolly part yeah so we we go to sit down I take out my quite my my tape recorder I put it on and she goes oh no no no you before Dolly Parton. So we go to sit down. I take out my tape recorder. I put it on, and she goes, oh, no, no, no, you can't use that. And this is my first. I said, what do you mean?

She says, someone used that once, and they made a record out of it because her voice was very famous. I said, Miss West, I'll sign something that says I won't do that. But, you know, I wasn't, you know. Nope, no, she absolutely insisted I can't record it. So luckily, I'll sign something that says I won't do that. But, you know, I wasn't, you know. Nope. No, she absolutely insisted I can't record it.

So, luckily, I had a pad with me, and she spoke slowly. And so, I was able, you know, I'm writing everything. Okay. So, that's my first one. I come back. What are you open with? Oh, I don't remember then. No, but I mean, it's right there.

She was the richest woman in the United States. She made the most money she made 480 000 in 1932 or something more than any anybody uh around so i you know and then she got arrested you know she was she would because she she was she did this a very sexy uh show on broadway yeah and then they the warden used to want her panties that kind of stuff you know i mean it was like all these little famous things so there was a lot to talk to may west about and she was in Myra Breckenwich. And, you know, so she could talk about that and what have you. So W.C. Fields hated her.

She hated him because he was drinking all the time. So there was – and also she had – her secret was enemas and cocoa butter on her breasts. I mean, all sorts of shit I can tell you about Mae West. And she just volunteered this? As I talked to her about it. But Mae West was an interesting character. But what happened was, they get the article that I write, and the editor calls me up, and he says,

Larry, I got this Mae West thing. Listen, the next time you do an interview, use that photographer. Because he took a good picture of her. I said, uh-huh. Try to use him every time you do one of these i said okay um stan what do you think of the interview you know oh that was fine he says but that photographer use it so i realized right away what's important in life right picture so i don't care about the words who was the photographer rick meyer the late times he works for him oh you just wait you just called him why how did you get

that oh he worked for the well they got him they got him so that gets you rolling on this thing then i said you can i so i i did warren baity i did jane fund i did share you know a bunch of these people carol burnett lucille bull um and then i said this is all in the early 70s yeah and then i said you mean i can do anybody they said anybody i said how about linus? They said, I said, how about Linus Pauling? They said, okay. I said, how about Henry Moore? They said, okay. J.P. Donlevy.

They even said okay to that, although, you know, I was really surprised. but what you find though is that there are only a number of artists, writers,

you know, people outside the entertainment business that are household names. Very few. And then you get back to your movie stars and TV stars,

you know. But I always fought for the writers. I always wanted to talk to, you know, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. And you did. back to your movie stars and TV stars, you know. But I always fought for the writers. I always wanted to talk to, you know, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. And you did. I mean, you wrote your book with Truman Capote. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, anyway, but that's how it started. But they're more compelling, aren't they? But you see, Mark, just to, I'm sorry, I didn't fully answer your question, but what happened was I started doing these things. They started getting accepted. They were interesting. Elliot Gould was a real challenge.

I couldn't get through to him for a number of times because he was always a little bit stoned. And I'm going, Elliot, you know. And anyway, after five sessions, I send in the article. And they came back to say, we can't use this. It sounds too stoned. That's the first rejection I've gotten. And I refused to have a rejection. So I said, let me go back.

Let me go back. So I go back. And I told Elliot. And I said, listen, man, they think it sounded too stoned. Let me come over. So he says, OK. So I said, let me go back. Let me go back. So I go back and I call Elliot. And I said, listen, man, they think it's having the two stone. Let me come over. So he says, okay. So I go over there. And that day he has James Caan and these Playboy bunnies who are,

the girl introduces me and says, hi, I'm the popcorn girl. There was the cover of Playboy with a woman holding a popcorn with her hand down a popcorn thing. She's the popcorn girl. I mean, it's like, and Groucho Marx was there. Groucho Marx. Why didn't you just go,

I can't interview him? Well, we went to his house. To Groucho's house? Billy and I went to Groucho's house. So this is the mid-70s in Hollywood, so it's crazy. Yeah, a lot of crazy stuff going on. Well, I mean, but when you,

like, after meeting these people, I mean, because I've interviewed actors, a lot of them, not great. They're hard to interview, some of them. Why is that? Well, a lot of them don't have the education. A lot of them are insecure. Look, Al Pacino, he didn't even finish high school.

I met him. He was so nervous. I get to his apartment, and he says, I see shifting like this. So I said, Al, and I go to put on my tape recorder. He says, no, no, don't put that on yet. I said, listen, just put it on. Once it's on, we can forget about it. And he says, okay, you know best.

The reason I got to Al is because I did Brando. This is all backwards now. But he said he'll only do an interview with the guy who did Brando. I became the guy who did Brando for many years. Were you the only one or something? Yeah. Well, Truman Capote did Brando during the making of Sayonara. Right.

And Brando got pissed off at that article and didn't talk to anybody for 25 years. And then I get it. And you were the guy. Yeah. Who sent you on that assignment? Playboy. That was because of Streisand. I had been doing these Newsday interviews.

I had been doing these Newsday interviews, and then what happened was I started thinking, I'm only asking them 30 or 40 questions. I'm only in there for about an hour or two at the most. What if I could really go deeper in this? What if I could really spend a day with you, two days? I got curious about the form and the permission. If they allow me to ask them anything, that's amazing. I mean, I come in, I meet you, even on radio, we'll talk about things, but I'm not going to ask you about abortions you may have paid for or failures of sex or tax money you owed.

I'm not going to ask you that. Those are important questions. I don't know if they're important, but they may bring out something in you. I'm giving you examples of things you would never ask even in an hour. But if you get into conversations with somebody for days, weeks, or months, as I did with Streisand over nine months, you basically can ask almost anything, and you really get to know somebody. Because you build a relationship.

You're building a relationship. Are you still friends with her? I wouldn't say friends. I would say not friends. I just, you know, I mean, if I see I see her we talk but I don't go to her house but you spent nine months with Barbra Streisand nine months what year when the 70s that was what the my first playboy interview actually when I finally realized that interviewing in depth would be interesting yeah I said how can I do a long interview playboy was the only place

to do it so I said okay let me interview you He Hefner, for Newsday. Impress him, and he'll see what I can do. You're thinking. That actually worked. So now I get, Playboy says, what are you working on? I said, I'm trying to get to Barbra Streisand. They said, if you can get to Streisand, we're interested. So I got back in touch with Streisand's people, Lee Salters, and I said, look, if you talk to me, Playboy covers the world. They've got 19 publications around the world.

I can give a piece to Newsday. 350 people will, magazines around the country will do that. You can just talk to me and I'll saturate it. I don't hear back from Streisand for months and months and months. And then she gets pissed off at an article that Frank Pearson wrote in the New York magazine called My Battles with John and Barbara. So I get a call saying, Barbara Streisand wants to see you. Todd AO Studios.

I said, okay. Is this business or pleasure? And they go, just get there. They're really kind of curt. So I go there. And I'm outside waiting for her. And it takes a little while. And she finally comes out

with her entourage of four or five people. And she says, and she doesn't say hi or hello. It comes right to me, nose to nose. And she says, why does the press hate me? First question right off the bat. And I just took a step back.

And I said, I'll tell you why I hate you. And I started to tell her. You keep me waiting. You do this. You have to go through all your people. Well, that's ballsy. Yeah, it was. But you see, I immediately recognized when I saw her that she reminded me of my sister, you know, this Jewish American princess.

So I was able to zero in on that. You knew the language. Yeah. So anyway, the five people behind her go, I mean, they are shocked. Nobody talks to her. And this is when she's as big as you can be, you know, she's making a Star is Born at that time. So she looks at me for a second.

She says, okay, come with me. And we go in the room and she says, I have to watch the cut of A Star is Born. Yeah. Sit down next to me. So we sit in these two leather chairs. We're in this big studio. We're the only people there. And I'm going, God, please let me like this movie.

Let me like this movie. All the people are going to turn around. And I watch this movie and I don't care for it, right? And I know because I'm not a good actor. You'll see it in my face. And I'm thinking, what can I say? What can I say? What can say what can i say and sure enough the thing's over she turns to me goes well yeah and i said you're gonna make a lot of money yeah and that was enough and then john peters comes and he's going who's this guy and he starts yelling screaming she introduces me and he

backs away so then she says okay call to my publicist lee you know we'll arrange something i said no i'm not talking to your publicist i've been call to my publicist, Lee, and we'll arrange something. I said, no, I'm not talking to your publicist. I've been talking to your publicist for months and months, and I can't stand it anymore. If you want to really do this, give me your phone number. I'll call you directly. And she goes to a pad, yellow pad, and she writes B, and she writes her number. She cuts off the piece like this and gives me a piece of paper this big with her number on it. And I call her, and I go to do it.

Finally, that took more months. Now I finally get to do it finally that took more months now i finally get to do it i'm ready to see her all set to go and she comes down the steps of in in her home in home the hills and she gives me a paper and i look at the papers what is this she's just sign it and we can start and it says dear barbara and i look on the second page and signed by me yeah and it's a big letter saying you have the right to terminate this interview at any time once it's done you can you know that you will own the tapes you will do this you would then blah blah i'll make any chance and i said i'm not signing this just what are you talking about everybody signs it i said barbara i'm not a secretary i see myself

as an artist the way you see yourself if you can look at me that way and accept what i do as an art then we can do this otherwise we get now i'm not just saying it i'm yelling yeah and she's yelling back and we're sitting there with our fists like this yelling at each other and i finally said i'm not your fucking secretary you know so so she makes a determination she's you know and then she goes all right let's do it so we go in the other room to do it phone rings it's her lawyer did he sign she says no he didn't sign she's that hangs up next one side it's john peters did he sign yeah no he didn't sign what do you know then then marty ehrlichman the manager calls did he sign now this time barbara's pissed off too you

know so she says no he didn't sign here you talk to him and she gives me the phone i hear on the phone this yelling coming out i don't want to fucking talk to him so i said he don't want to talk to me i gave her back the phone yeah so she takes the phone she says i'm doing it and that's it she hangs up and then we go sit by the fireplace and within five minutes of me turning on the tape recorder she starts talking about sex i have prepared hundreds of questions i don't have a single question on sex. I never thought we'd get to sex. I mean, you know, or if I warmed up maybe later.

I didn't write any now. And I'm going, wow, what's she doing here, you know? And I realized it. She was committing. Because if I left, if all her lawyers and people told her, you can't do this anymore, she gave me material that I could use somewhere in the tabloid or something yeah so that was interesting um and you thought she was that calculating oh yeah barbara's barbara is very very very intelligent and she and and and yeah i look

she told me a story about i mean when i'm waiting for one time i said you know barbara one thing i will uh show that that's not right about, because everybody writes about how you're always late. You've got a problem. You haven't been late with me the two or three times I was with her. I was with her a lot. After I told her that, she was late every time afterwards, every single time. So late was part of her modus operandi. But one day I'm waiting for her, and I'm in the living room, and I notice she's got all this everything Sarah Bernhardt letters this every everything's beautiful everything's

expensive and then there are two Chinese pieces that look like coral but they're made of wax there that's like candles yeah so I said to her one time you know probably what I like I said you see all this reality real stuff about here and then you see these candles and they look real but they and she didn't say anything a couple of months later i come by and she says oh take a look at what i got up there she got two real ones amazing yeah she was an interesting woman she but okay so now you make this commitment to doing these long-form interviews that you invest your life in yeah so like in, like, and Streisand was the first. Streisand was the first of that ilk.

And nine months it lasted. And Playboy kept saying, where's the, I wasn't even getting paid until I finished it. But you call yourself an artist. What was it you were after? What defines the art of an interview?

Well, I think there's an art to biography. I think there are some great biographies that have been written. And I think the people, the writers, Leonel, I can understand that, but still, but still I mean, but I was doing 30, you know, you know 30,000 word pieces that were being run in Playboy That's 50 or a hundred thousand P words that I'm actually doing

I was really doing books on all these people would never publish him as books. I never thought of it I never thought of doing them as well. So the interviews were framed in You didn't do question and answer in a standard way. You would contextualize. You would add paragraphs, setting up everything. Because the biographer has to- Yeah, but the biographer, that's like my Houston book. I talk to John for hundreds of hours, and then you write a book.

So you're writing that. Interviewing, it's a different kind of art you can tell me honestly like right now i mean how well you're writing a book on somebody with a career the the size of john houston i mean i understand that but you know to spend nine months with barbara streisand for a 30 000 word piece you don't think you could have done that in a short time was there some learning curve that you had or did you just like building relationships well with barb here with barbara i said something that I, you know, this is, you're very good, Mark. You see, you are good at doing this, because that's a good question, you know, about that. But, and it's interesting, because there's an answer to it.

And the answer is, the answer is because Barbara, she would drive me crazy, you know. I mean, because she just, every time I saw her, it was as if she didn't trust me, you know. I mean, I had to regain her trust every time. Yeah, but what you're describing is a relationship. Yes. I mean, she just, every time I saw her, it was as if she didn't trust me. You know, I mean, I had to regain her trust every time. Yeah, but what you're describing is a relationship. Yes. I mean, ultimately what you're saying. It is a relationship. Absolutely.

But so what I'm saying is, I kept saying to Barbara, this is exhausting. Every time I come in here, I have to reestablish the fear. But you're like the Sunshine Boys. It sounds like you. You fight. You argue. Well, you created. It was a very familiar dynamic.

Yeah. You understood where she came from. You understood the language of, you know, middle was a very familiar dynamic. You understood where she came from. You understood the language of middle class Jewishness. She represented that to this culture at that time. And you grew up in it. So I'm just wondering, and it's obvious. I mean, there must have been something you were getting out of it other than an article. No, but I said to her, this is what I said to her.

Barbara, let me make a deal with you. I will not turn this into Playboy until you and I both agree we're finished because I can't take this distrust every time I see you. Just trust me until the end and then distrust me if you don't, you know, but I'm not, I give you my word on this. Now, had I said that to anybody else I have ever interviewed, I would have been out of there within the hour. They'd be finished. Thanks.

Very nice to meet you. Barbara wasn't that way. Barbara took this interview as seriously as she took a movie, as she takes changing the tile in her pool. She changed the tile. I came there once. She had three buckets full of chlorine. And she says to me, Larry, gray tile is do you like the best and i looked and they all look the same to me yeah i said barbara they i they've said there's shades it's very that i had to really look close and i

realized she said if she's already she said i already took the tiles out of the pool once because i didn't like the way they looked and it's summer and she wants to get it right this time. This is an obsessed woman on a degree that you very rarely meet. but it's still funny to me that you know, you're... And I,

so I had to, I was committed to doing it until we finished. I know, but it sounds like a movie. It is a movie. It is a movie. I've written a movie

called Conversations with Brando based on my getting to Brando and Streisand's in it. It's a great movie. I haven't seen it. No, because it hasn't been done yet. I need somebody to do it. Anthony Hopkins read it's in it. It's a great movie. And I haven't seen it. No, because it hasn't been done yet. I need somebody to do it.

Anthony Hopkins read it and loved it. He wanted to play Brando. And so did Rutger Hauer. He met with me. He says, if you ever want to do this, I'd like to do it. They're too old for it, you know? But it's just interesting to me

that you come out here, you're a kid from Long Island who's writing for Newsday. You get this freak opportunity you know, opportunity. Right. And it becomes your life. Yeah. But it's not, you know, you're-

My life is always a writer. In my mind, I'm writing novels. And that's how I see things. So this is an opportunity. I love this life, man. I mean, I was going into people's lives that you can't believe. I'd see George C. Scott at his home and, you know, I'd go to see Van Damme and he's in his pool.

He says, get in the pool with me. And i put the tape recorder on my my chest because this is how i begin an interview so you're still jumping out of planes i'm still jumping out of planes and it's been my whole life has been it's been fun i've had a good time no i get that so and i've been able to get paid to do it and but how much of it has to do with then i turn things into books novels but the juice of being in proximity to this, what is the American equivalent of royalty on some level and extravagance and sometimes incredible vapid shallowness. Right.

And you're up against these major talents who you're the guy. And when was the first time you realized that there's no there there? I have never quite got to that point brando said to me once when are you going to stop interviewing actors you know he says you know because you know after a while and i said you know the thing marlin is is that every one of these actors is different everyone surprises me in some way see when i used to go in i was always very nervous you know and i was always and i had an image of what i was going to get into and and i realized nobody was like they were lucille ball wanted to die never and you always assume that i have that same issue it's like you have an idea of them right and they're

never like they know because your idea is based on their public image how the fuck are you going to know exactly so that's what i what was lucille ball like lucilleille Ball was depressed. You know, everybody had died, all her friends. She didn't care. She didn't see her children, she said. You know, she's like, I want to die. She says, I just want to die. I wrote a poem about it called, I Love Lucy, Doesn't Love Life. I mean, I didn't know that.

She had great legs, by the way. She came down the stairs. I couldn't believe it. But everybody was different. You know, I mean, everybody's surprised. Sally Field tells me, never had a friend. Never had friends. I told that to Goldie Hawn.

I said, you know, Sally Field says she never had friends. Goldie Hawn became a friend. They became friends. I mean, really, because I was interacting with a lot of these people. But, you know, look, with Goldie and Kurt, we got to be friends with them. You know, I mean, Al Pacino and I became very, very close, almost like brothers, you know, for over 30 years. I mean, you know, and so, I mean i became very very close almost like brothers you know for over 30 years i mean you know and so i mean how does that happen i don't know i don't know how i mean i realized friendships are exhausting with stars so i would when i felt one that could you know i said well this potentially could lead to something i backed away from it because i didn't

have the time well because i don't have the time you know you always you know if it would foul would call i'd be on the phone with him for a long time. Marlon, I would talk to Brando on the phone. You know, we would just talk. And I loved it. How could you not? Exactly. How could you not?

But, you know, you don't get paid for these calls. You're not their psychiatrist. You know, you are their psychiatrist. They've done, you know, basically you're one of their therapists in a way. And I didn't get paid for it. So what I've done, I write books about it. I have a journal that's got 20,000 pages, single-spaced, since I started with Streisand, since 76. Yeah.

Now, one day that journal, part of my memoir that goes up to my time with Brando, it's called You Show Me Yours. That comes from, a lot of it comes from the journal. But when you asked me earlier, I mean, talk about going all the way around in circles. The memoir stops in 1980, but how did I get to write it? Because I felt guilty. I can't just write about my relationships with a lot of these people. And I remember Truman Capote, how much problems he had with answered prayers. And he said, what did they think I was, a jester, a court jester? I'm a writer. He hung out with all these people. I was in that kind of position. I was hanging out with these people. I was going their parties you know without if he was taking a bath i'd you know i could go upstairs and just i didn't have to knock but how do you but how do you get to

a point where you know i i have to imagine there would have been some you know crisis of of identity around that's a novel i wanted to write about a guy who loses his own identity because he folds into all the others you got to be a chameleon to be an interviewer. No, you've got to be a chameleon, but also, especially with the incredible neediness of some of these talents that you dealt with, is that it's very hard to fight the urge of becoming a lackey. Yes, and I don't think I ever was, and that's why I've had fights with a lot of them. I mean, I've had fights with a number of these people

those are fights for your own those are fights for your autonomy well it's the idea of respect you know I mean you know

look I go see Bobby Knight and he you know he's late at his house this is a big big interview

Bob Knight because this is after he got thrown out of the university and everything and he's gone and I'm surprised he's even talking to me

and I go to see him you know and he's he's out hunting and i'm sitting there with his wife in his house and i'm waiting you know for hours and he finally comes in and he's he's not nice you know and he just goes let's says i'll get something to eat i said okay so we go to get something to eat he orders his wife orders i order in the cheap little mexican restaurant he gets his food he eats it doesn't wait she gets her food she's polite she starts to wait i said no go ahead my food came late knight wants to leave you know i mean it's like what what kind of treatment is this what kind of is this i've done this with robert mitchum where you walk in and he does he eats a sandwich he eats his drink he doesn't offer you anything you know you they

treat you sometimes like uh you're an encyclopedia salesman but also how do you avoid you know i mean that's the challenge though though. I know. The challenge is to get them from there to respect me and then to see how well prepared I am and then I'm in charge. Right. Respect you or at least use you as a vessel or at least have a comfort level to where, you know, it becomes an easy symbiotic thing. You try.

With Knight, it never came easy. He hit me. He tried to throw me out of the car twice. I mean, I had a lot of problems with Knight. But how also do you get past the fact i mean obviously if you're spending nine months with barbara streisand you're going to marlon brando's island and you're spending 100 hours with john houston you know these are well brando may well streisand too but that you know and houston yes one of the most interesting men in the world yeah but like i could see that i could see spending 100 hours with john houston but you know if you were you know interested right but but there there comes an issue when when you're an interviewer and that's your career is that you know you've also got to fight the the calculations

of being used you know to you know and but you're aware that you're aware that's going immediately of course of course you're i mean the point is i is, what I try to do is get beyond all of that. Get beyond being used. Get them to talk about things they've never talked about before. No, I get that. And eventually it happens. But you need time. The only way this works is if you need time.

You know? I mean, you and I, I think, can cut through a lot of bullshit and talk very seriously. Because I think we both appreciate that. But do you think you still need time now? You know, it's like everything moves so quickly. No, no, but you don't get the time now. It's over. That's over.

But also people are more forthcoming now. There's a different language. They might be more forthcoming. I don't know. But no, I don't know if it's that much forthcoming. I just think people don't say things because they do it on their own. They say they get out what they need to get out

through the internet, through their own websites, through these podcasts, through, you know, doing an hour here, half hour there, getting on TV. The long interview that I did, I don't see that happening. It'll happen in books. If you get someone to really talk and wants to do a book, you'll be doing long interviews. But the long Playboy, even the Playboy interview is only 4,000 or 5,000 words at the most. And it used to be 30,000 words.

So then how does that explain your compulsion to spend months with people? It doesn't happen anymore. That's gone. I mean, we're talking about a part of my life where I did that. Yeah. And it was fun. And I always said to myself, no matter how much money I ever made, no matter how successful I might be in other forms, I always would like to do two Playboy interviews a year because

I liked doing it. It gave me permission to enter a life that I can never get anywhere else. So tell me about this time you spent with Brando. Ultimately, in any interview, I don't really know what I'm going to get. And my agenda is not to get necessarily something no one else has gotten or to get them to say something no one else has heard or they may not have said. But my goal, because it's audio, is to at least engage in authentic conversation. And I think that resonates.

So the emotional impact of what i do is different than like i can't look at what the look at what the look at this article you know brando said this right because you can feel what we're doing right so it's different it's different so uh when when after all is said and done when you have this life i mean what was that is was it what is this as simple as that you know you spend all this time with marlon brando on this island you're telling me all you wanted him to do was say something that hadn't been said before? Or was there something you were looking for something? You must have been looking for something.

Well, I'm looking for insight into the man. Every interview I do is what I'm looking for is to show you what's beyond the superficial. That's what I do. But emotionally, and I know that's what i do but but emotionally and and and i i know that's what you're doing and you wait it out and you wait it out and you and you keep talking you keep talking and obviously you know even in an hour eventually people's guards drop you know in this situation hopefully yeah hopefully but but but ultimately you must have been on some journey you know as a guy that you wanted to be a novelist wanted to

be an artist you know you had to justify this this undertaking that you were involved with as art which it is and i i like the biography framing of it i think that makes sense right but what sort of truths you know did you ultimately i mean when you you know you got robert de niro georgy scott henry fonda jerry lewis steve martin robin williams obviously you're spending more time with some of these people than others and you know you've got this amazing list of writers. I can't even go through all the names. Some of these are probably shorter than others. But it seems to me that John Huston, Truman Capote, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino were

the guys that you did a lifetime's work with. Yes. So after interviewing all these people, what do you find is the common thread once you get through all the bullshit? What do you find is the common thread once you get through all that, all the bullshit? What do you find out about humanity? If you're an artist, you know, what are your conclusions? That's a very tough question, Mark, to answer. You know, I mean, basically summing up, I guess my answer would be I've written books about all the people you just mentioned.

I've got a book out on, two books on, I've got three books on Pacino. One is called I Want You in My Movies because I was on his movie for wild sound i did a thing on it and it's an e-book i did another book that's out uh that he did an introduction to which is a collection of all the interviews i did with him and it's interesting to see the progression there of a of a interview that turns into a friendship basically that's what that is um and then i did a book called well i'm saying it for the first time here, but I wrote a novel called Begin Again, Finnegan. And I took as the premise, a relationship I have with someone like that as a novel. And I said, what if a major star killed the woman, the mother of his children,identally or not accidentally? What if he just did something wrong?

What would he do if he wants to get an alibi? And I said, well, the best person to talk, to do would be a person like me, a person he became friends with who was an interviewer. And he could, because you could do an interview at any time of the day or night. So what if he calls him, the star, and he calls him up, it's midnight,

or one in the morning, and he calls him up, it's midnight, or one in the morning, and he says, I want to see you. Okay, you know, I'll be over in a half hour, let me get dressed. No, no,

I'll come to you. Why is he coming to him? He doesn't know. That's the premise, that's the opening. And then he comes and says, I did something, I killed her.

Okay. So this was a fear you had. It's a scenario that has played through my mind. I've played through a lot of scenarios. I mean, you know, I got fiction. It's a fiction i always say it's one of the things but i but i wrote a novel based on this it was you know it was really interesting and it it explored

me and my thoughts and whatever anyway there it is now but the premise of that novel about you right is is about you know being used yeah yeah not just yes yes exactly exactly being used being this guy's alibi and every fucking thing that goes wrong goes wrong to the guy not to him he's the star he's oj simpson he's gonna get off but this poor schnook who's done all this stuff he's gonna have a big town is filled with those portions yeah and the studios used to have one of those schnooks man that's the bottom line i'm a bunnilo schnooks but i use my schnookiness to make a living out of it and for a while i've made a fairly good living you know i mean if you can get paid six figures to write for magazines that's

amazing so you spend all this time with brando at a very odd time in his life you know just on apocalypse now but i hadn't seen it yet it hadn't come out yet so you spent how long with him? I was on his island for 10 days, and then he came to my house afterwards. Now, what did you come away with in terms of who he was as a man? I liked him very much. I thought he was a – I saw him in a certain way as a hero. Look, I read his book, which is a terrible – I mean, he was sleeping with every friend's wives and all that stuff. I mean, he wasn't a good guy in a lot of ways he wasn't good to his children

his son called me up Christian once he wanted to write a book about his father because his father was so bad to him and I had a lot of conversation with Christian then Christian died at 49 pneumonia so I knew there were problems

with a lot of what he did you know but I found him totally, totally interesting. I mean, we would go on his island. We would take long walks. We would go out on the pier. He would always have something like, if you had a straw here, how deep do you think you could take the straw? How many feet before you couldn't suck up anything?

And he knew these answers. Now, he's 35 feet, he would say, or a fly would be out in the boat with us, you know. And he'd say, Cheyenne was there, you know, the girl who ended up killing herself. But she was eight at the time. And Tehutu was 16. And we'd be out on this boat. And he'd say, how fast do you think we're going, you know. Or how fast do you think flies can fly?

And he says, well, they can only go about 15 miles an hour because that's what we're doing now. And he would catch the flies, pop them in his mouth, look at the kid, open his mouth, you know. And that would come to fly or something um but he had a a a thing that for your for your strength he says larry let me see how strong you are and he would give me this thing you know and i and i would push and push and the red button would go you know like a thermometer would go up to a certain point and then he's give it to who to who's this guy right into to her all the way to the top you know and he was a player. He liked to play chess. So I played chess.

I wasn't that good. So he could beat me. So then he would take a cardboard thing and put it between the pieces. And he'd say, okay, you arrange your pieces your way. I'll arrange mine this way and we'll play like that. So we did that kind of stuff. He was a practical joker.

One time I go to have dinner. Now I'm the only person on the island besides his secretary, Caroline, and her kid, and Marlon, and the workers. So the lunch, the gong goes off, and I go there, and I say, and I'm waiting 15 minutes. Nobody shows up.

Marlon comes with her, with Caroline, and he says, What are you doing here, Larry? I said, The gong went off. It's a hollow-out log. So he says, Oh, yeah, for lunch. So he turns to Caroline and he says, why are you doing it, Larry? I said, the gong went off, you know, it's a hollow out log. So he says, oh yeah, for lunch. So he turns to Caroline and says, up you go. He had made a bet with her.

He said the gong went off, she said it didn't. And the bet was that the loser had to stand in front of me on a table and pat their head and rub their stomach and sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow to me. So she had to do it. I would have loved her to lose. If I would have known that bet, I would have said the other to me. So she had to do it. I would have loved her to the last. If I would have known that, I would have said the other way, you know, Marlon doing it. But he knew a sure thing.

You know, he had heard it. So anyway, so she gets up and she just says Somewhere Over the Rainbow. And she does the first verse and gets down. And it's kind of, it's funny for a second, but then it got a little embarrassing. And then Marlon says, no, you didn't finish the song. He made her go back up and do it. You know, so the cruelty was there. It's interesting that you know like you know in the face

of all these you know having dealt with some you know how we would personalities at different points in my life and being vulnerable and being sucked in by by by the charisma of certain people uh because some people are are almost mythic that it's it sounds to me that you know you know what must have driven you at some point was some sort of selfish need to know that, you know, you stood outside these people. That and the challenge to do something better than anyone has ever done before. That was always a challenge for me.

But you must have had some spite for some of these people. No, I don't. No, I wouldn't use the word spite at all. Only Robert Mitchum that I dislike. And that was because he was an anti-Semite. But other than that, I walked out on Mitchum. But there was never a part of you that thought like, all right, so this is the big deal? No, sure.

Charlie Sheen. I went to his house once, right? And I pull into, it's a Malibu colony, and I pull in with my little, I had a Fiat. And there's this beautiful black Mercedes and another one over there. And I'm looking. I say, what has he got to deserve this? I'm driving this car. You didn't ask that question a lot.

Just try what you can. Probably. Well, but, you know, you sort of see this, and you start wondering. Freddie Prinze, I'm upstairs in his bedroom, and I'm looking at the bookshelves. We're talking in his bedroom, and there's nothing on the book. There's no books. I said, where's your books? He says, I don't read books.

I said, really? I said, I collect first editions. You don't read books? He says, what's a first edition? Blew my mind. So now I'm thinking, how do I reach this guy? How do I get to him? So I said, what do you collect?

Comic books and um animation you know from the 50s or something you know okay let's talk about that you know and we'll so we'll go there you know you look for some kind of i get it but some people are vapid some people you know but everybody look i i chris o'donnell i interviewed him when he was 25 years old before he you know he doesn't have scent of a woman but he's still new so i'm i'm talking to him and i'm asking him questions and he would say gee you know my father could answer that question that's kind of a philosophical question i don't think i can answer and i thought about that i said you know i'm talking to people who aren't fully developed yet that

happens sure yeah but but like i you like i don't find that i have spite and what i what i've learned from talking to people is you know the human experience is what it is. And people process what they're going to process. And usually there's an amazing story or struggle there. And I'm always moved by it. But almost always, even if somebody's difficult. But what's interesting to me in terms of how much you've done is that idea of, and I think it sounds like that novel sort of covers it,

that, you know, really that, you know, who's got your back? Yeah. No, the only person who has your back is your wife and your kids. Nobody else. Nobody else. Not even your friends. I mean, my friends don't read my books, you know. I mean, they want me to give it to them.

They don't want to buy them. You know, I mean, this is the reality. If I had a thin skin, I'd never be in this business you know looking back at somebody like john houston and knowing knowing full well that i mean that must do an amazing experience with human capability with marlon brando al pacino to a certain degree but houston i mean you know as time goes on you know that's you know that might be assigned in film classes do you feel like there was a futility to to you know to this mountain of accomplishment to you know and a lot of these and a lot of these people that you interviewed, just like I do, it's like you got down at a certain time.

Right. And if they don't die, who the hell knows what's going to happen? What did you capture? What's the portrait? Well, that's the thing. I mean, that's what I think I did do. I did capture them. I mean, look, I wrote a book called The Art of the Interview about all this stuff.

How am I doing? You're doing great. But The Art of the Interview is used in journalism classes now. You know, that's wonderful. But I've been told that I'm very unorthodox. Well, look, you look for the personal in a lot of what you talk about. And I think, you know, you talk, you ask about your parents, your subject's parents, where they go back to.

And that's, you know, these days you don't get that on television. You don't get it. You know, you don't get people looking for the mention of person, let's say, or, you know, these days you don't get that on television. You don't get people looking for the mention of a person, let's say, or whatever. Whatever serious problems a person has, the psychology of a person. You know, like Roy Fireson was very good at this, too. He did this with sports figures. They're the hardest people in the world to interview, sports figures. And he was able to do that, but he's not on the air anymore.

He doesn't have a show anymore. Nobody wants that. I don't know if that's true that nobody wants it. They tell him that. He's trying. No, I know that, but they that nobody wants it. They tell him that. He's trying. No, I know that, but they tell us all that. But you do your own thing. You've created a niche that allows it.

Well, give me some pointers that make me better. Oh, well, I don't have any. Let me ask you these questions, though. If you could choose a career path, and you had these three choice figures to compare yourself to, would it be Johnny Carson, Mark Twain, or Woody Allen?

Mark Twain. That's the one I would have chosen. But that's very telling, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's like where do you want to go if you could be a talk show host? I wish I had the discipline as a satirist that he had and he's ultimately a writer but he became an orator and and you know was somebody who enjoyed speaking to crowds and and and doing a stand-up

routine basically and you know he's an incredibly sophisticated thinker i think that if i have any fault now it's that i've i've really sort of rationalized my need to to stay specifically within existential um predicaments uh either you know as opposed to sort of you know you know cast my eye on on broader issues of political or cultural nature you know john usin once said to me he was telling me about says if you think you think these people are cynical or whatever he says mark twain wrote a book i think it's called the mysterious stranger yeah yeah and he said and he said and as we talk about he says larry let's go get that book i feel like reading it again we went to his store got it i loved him you know he says this is where you just want to you know but that was that was a different time where

you know you know talents like john houston these guys who they were boxers they fought in the war the weird thing about the culture we live in is that when you were doing most of your writing you know there were three networks there was like four or five studios you know everybody was on the same page playboy had a tremendous amount of cachet you know on a literary level and everybody was there you know that the people that were interested the things that they were interested in what there was a common ground there and there was a lot more because like i remember barbara said the reason i said how come you're doing playboy she says well playboy is the bible right you know i mean that was the way they looked at that it's a very it's a very interesting time now where you there's no bible there's no bible but also this idea that you know people

don't want long-form stuff or in-depth things right is that you know they've successfully let you know leveled the adult attention span to something you know uh akin to a child and and that's the way that they're going to feed it because the hunger for content is so extreme you know i get on stage and people are like well i already heard that story i'm like you didn't hear it here you didn't hear it on stage i've told it two times in my life and already you want me to move on i'm not a machine i mean so the the real the credibility of of of authentic life experience or sharing on a human level has been diminished by this craving, almost an addictive-like craving for new content. Right. prolific people that, you know, that, you know, that fought in wars, that, that, that did things in a dramatic way that aggressively, you know, like you said, you know, and whatever inspired

you to join the Peace Corps, you know, to, to get some life experience. I mean, that had some credibility. No one gives a fuck anymore. You know, it just, it, it doesn't add up to much for, for people today that the, you know, that life experience and, and wisdom gleaned from, for people today. That life experience and wisdom gleaned from really living it, it doesn't have the premium it used to.

It doesn't, but thank goodness there's still a Peace Corps out there. There's still people who are doing it. I wasn't condescending to the Peace Corps.

I was just saying that you're- But it's true. I mean, when I first started teaching at UCLA, it was 2001. And for five years, I told them about the life of

a freelancer this is the way to go if you can be a freelance writer you not just a writer freelance anything you do you have your own hours you're your own person it's a great life yeah the last few years i couldn't do that anymore you couldn't talk about because i i saw you just everything was drying up you just well you got no great writers because it's drying up alongside of the the printed industry that's right the whole book industry is a and that's why i'm a dinosaur because i'm still writing books yeah it's sort of like oh well listen i know you have a two o'clock so we went over that so i appreciate but i you know i have more questions too let's continue this because i do that so let's let's you, let's pick up where we left off and think about stuff.

Okay. Thanks, Mark. Okay. That was part one. And then I stewed on it for a month before I did part two to do it his style. So let's see if we get the full picture or let's see what happens. Well, see, here's the interesting thing about, you know, what we chose to do here, which is I am sort of honoring your style of interview.

Yeah. That was my idea. Like I sat and talked to you last time and you told me that you would spend months with people and in my brain i was like what could you i mean how is that gonna you know what like there's a couple of questions i have about that is that i'm a guy that does an interview in an hour so what i have is i have the gift of audio is that you know you can sense emotion you can sense uh uh you know where someone's at you can hear their struggles you can hear their tone of voice so so the portrait i'm creating is very specific to audio

in a lot of ways because it's emotionally loaded right and you can't do that really in print without you know without elaborating so in the sense that unless you're going to every other line you're going to say he said with weighted you know breath or way and it's still not going to be the same right so the impact that i can have with an audio podcast in terms of who people are is easier. It is easier, absolutely. Look, a really good interview, and you look at some of the best, are because their writers were really good. Truman Capote really captured Marlon Brando in the way, in the Duke and his domain.

Brando wouldn't talk to anybody for 25 years until I saw him. Right. That's a really good piece of writing. Right. I mean, if you look at that, so it's hard. That's why the majority of interviews are dry. Right. They're not that interesting.

Right. There are a handful that are really good because the writer has somehow figured out a way to bring you, the reader, into it. So you get to feel the personality get to feel the joke if it's a joke okay the sarcasm of sarcasm easier on radio because if i say a joke and i laugh haha okay you know we know what that is but sometimes someone says something and it doesn't come off funny in print and and also there's the the issue of relevance is that you know like you know like if i look at the list of interviews here you know the dead well it's not even but see that's not necessarily an issue but you know we live in a time where they're really you know context in history is is sort

of been obliterated and and certainly you know how much people are going to go you know dig up print interviews you know again i'm looking at sort of this list and i'm trying to sort of frame this and i know this was your job and you're very good at it and all of these interviews that you've done with all these people are available. Whether people go to them or not, I don't know. Really. And I think that the books in terms of the history

of film and the history of creativity, these are important books or they would have been the books you spent your life writing about the Houstons. They're huge. I mean, there's a resource there. Obviously, it's limited to students of film and fans of that era in a way.

So it's hard to figure out. Well, listen, Mark, I do not write for an audience in my mind. No, I know. But I'm talking about who is the audience. Who is the audience? I get that asked a lot. A lot of times when I've just finished two novels and but I'm talking about who is the audience? Who is the audience? I get that asked a lot. A lot of times when, you know,

I've just finished two novels and then the question becomes, who's the audience? Before anybody even reads them, who's the audience? That's an American publisher. Yeah. That's who asks that question. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. But to me, it's like, I'm just writing stories. I'm just, you know, I guess my audience is me.

It would be people like me, people who went to college. I don't know. I don't know. I guess my audience is me. It would be people like me, people who went to college. I don't know. I just feel that my job is to put it out the way I can. I'm not a stand-up comedian. I'm not an actor. So I don't have great talent. I grew up, I watched Arthur Singer, the most important bird artist in America at the time. And he died. But he and Roger Torrey Peterson were the two. And I grew up watching this guy draw his birds and being home smoking a pipe and just drawing. And I saw my father driving into work and driving back at seven o'clock tired. And I said, hmm, do I want to do that or do I want to do this? I want this. Yeah. But I don't have the talent to draw, you know, and I didn't have the, you know,

the musical ability. I tried playing the piano for a while, you know, I just didn't have it. So I found I could write, you know, I mean, I could write stuff. And at 15 years old, I was writing stuff that was getting published. So okay, there was my end to the creative freelance world. And that's the path I chose and thank God I have made it all my life fairly successfully as a freelance writer. You can't do it anymore. But the interesting thing is that now you've got this novel published in Poland, which we'll talk about.

But see, so that was the original idea. So you're going to be a writer and you are a writer, but now you spent your entire career talking to geniuses, many of them geniuses right so you were you know you sort of you have the same thing i have you have the capacity to sort of connect symbiotically with a creative person you know build their trust you know however long it took you i think i can do it quicker if we were going to have a contest yes but you know some of these people you talk to must have had an impact now obviously you know you're a fanboy like I am. And, you know, when you say, you know, Brando was our greatest actor.

I mean, that's probably true. But most people don't have real context for Brando anymore. That's true. Even when he died, which is really sad. Yeah. He didn't get the respect when he died. Well, yeah, there's a lot of people that it happens to. It's not even that time passes them by.

Sometimes what they become later in life sort of starts starts to eat away well it's not a myth of who they were because i i interviewed lauren bacall and i did james garner and i did robin you know so the three people who recently died you know i said gee i was with all of them you know but robin really caught the imagination of the world in a way that he was always there yeah i mean it's like weird that you know his energy like i mean that's a career thing yeah i mean robin almost didn't age and i think you know recently he has and obviously his career was in a different place when when he decided to take his own life but but the truth of the matter is the energy of robin williams was almost uh primal in a way it was like archetypical it was you know it was sort of always this thing there was a there

was a vibration that he operated at no matter what but like you know it was sort of always this thing there was a there was a vibration that he operated at no matter what but like you know you talk to somebody like miles davis and you talk to somebody like um uh well you know steve martin whoever all these great people but like someone like miles davis i mean you guys couldn't be more different yeah and you couldn't come from a different world and he was this cryptic wizard and and you know fairly opinionated and kind of wrong-minded in some ways about women and whatnot. But I've dealt with that.

And ultimately, you just have to not argue with them and then let them unfold. And that's the honesty of it. But when you talk to these geniuses as somebody who secretly is harboring this desire to write a novel, what are you thinking? What did you learn from them? To write a novel. What are you thinking? What did you learn from that?

What I was thinking with Miles is, damn, I made one huge mistake by not asking him to write his biography. His autobiography. Sorry. I wanted to write a bit more. I wanted to spend more time with him. I mean, he was amazing. The guy was amazing. He sat there for three hours.

I have it all on video. We did it for cable TV. He spent the whole time, he was drawing. He had all these colored pencils and stuff like this. And he would be drawing stuff and never would look up. video we did it for cable tv he spent the whole time he had the oldies uh he was drawing you know he had all these colored pencils and stuff like this and he would be drawing stuff and never would look up and i'd ask him stuff and the cameras are on him and he's talking about race and he's talking about feeling uncomfortable among whites he's talking about strangling a white man all that shit you know and it was great yeah and and and he you know and he was kind of me made me laugh

even though he was saying things like i don't want want to go to a movie, go see some white girl have fun in a movie. He says, you know, I want to, you know, and he's just, my wife can't get a job, you know, and he's talking about Cicely Tyson. So I just found perhaps one of the, I mean, he is the Brando of the music world. I mean, but, you know, Miles Davis was really important, like Pavarotti was. I mean, I've had a great life in talking to these people. You keep wondering, what the fuck am I doing talking to these people? Or why do I do it?

What do I get out of it? I get a lot out of it. Yeah, of course. If I didn't get a lot of it, I wouldn't be doing it. Of course. And I miss doing, I haven't done the Playboy interview in a few years because the editor doesn't like me anymore. Same guy, new guy.

Same guy. And it's a terrible situation they my boy boy interview they fucking they got a fact wrong yeah well i could see that you know their interviews haven't been that good lately i mean you said how do you just make up facts what happened to fact checking good question good question it used to be something you could rely on nowadays especially book publishing they don't fact check i mean i have books coming out and i see stuff, mistakes. Oliver Stone called me up and said, you got my academy wrong, wrong, you know, who I got, which I got it from. I said, oh God, I'm so sorry, Oliver. But what the hell is it? That's a fact checking thing that should have been done. That's right. But I can't rely on that. Was there some through line to the creative spirit or to people that captured

the public imagination that you were able to identify? Well, I try to, you know, I don't think that way. So I don't, I'd have to really think about it. But you've had time to reflect, Larry. Yes, well, but that's, but yes, the third, look, I put a book out called Icons. I took 15 of the people that I think are, that we can legitimately call icons. Maybe not, what's her name? Paltrow, Gwyneth Paltrow right but i put her in the book because i wrote about it and i just yeah but meryl streep's in there robert de niro jack

nicholson uh tom waits uh-huh you know you interviewed tom no i can't get him i love him i love tom wait so i wrote it i wrote an article as if you know i and how did i how to figure out how to write that one that's the only one I've ever written like that. Without even talking to them. Without even talking to them. So how did you do it? Well, there's a thing called esoteric tours in L.A. And I saw that one day I saw something in one of the, like L.A. Weekly,

it said that they're going to do a Tom Waits tour, you know, where Tom grew up and what he did in L.A. So I got in touch with them. I said, listen, I'm interested in writing a piece on something. And they said, oh, yeah, come on. So I got on a bus and I go on this tour. Okay. That gave me my idea to write the article.

So what, did you go to Cantor's? Yeah, basically. You go past Cantor's. You go to, on Hollywood in Las Palmas, there's a place. So this is a tour based on Tom Waits' life. Yeah. Interesting. And the guy who talks about it a tour based on Tom Waits' life. Yeah. Interesting. And the guy who talks about it

wrote a book about Tom Waits or something. So he's on mic and he's talking about stuff. So I said, okay, I can start a thing where I'm going to go do this

and then I can have people on the bus arguing about his stuff. And so I make up these people and I give you all my opinions about Tom Waits through their voices. It was just so much fun to write.

And they liked it. They put it on the cover, right? And now I'm putting it out in my book. Did you hear from Tom? No. Where can people get your books? They got to go to Amazon. And look under?

Lawrence Grobel. Lawrence Grobel. Right. And that's it. Okay. Okay. Still, I'm not getting the answer I want from you. I know.

You can't get my answer. And I don't know why I can't get it from you. The answer is that you're a creative guy that has taken this long to sort of manifest what you really wanted to do, because it wasn't a detour. It was a living, talking to creative people. Was there anything you learned? I learned how to live a life. I've learned how to be a person. I learned how to communicate with people.

There's no philosophical gems. No. There's no sort of like one of them. Well, that's different. You say, okay, what were the main things I learned from certain people? I had four mentors, right, I would say. Bernie Wolf was one of them. He was a novelist.

He was at UCLA. I got to be one-on-one with him for two or three years. So I never had to take a class. And I gave him the ending of a novel called Lies at one time. We used to meet in his place, and we used to watch him smoke his cigars and all that. And we talked about literature. And he always had people over and stuff. Alex Haley.

I remember when that book was coming out, there was a lot to talk about that and stuff. I lent him money while I was a student. He never paid me back. Then I once asked him for the money and it was 500 bucks and he gave me back 200. And then I hired him once. He fucked me over. I hired him.

I hired him. He's your hero. Yeah. No, no, no. What is your hero? I've learned, man. You learn that with certain people, who they are, not necessarily what you're reading i've learned man i you know you learn that's with certain people uh who they are not necessarily who you know what you're reading you know i mean i don't know i don't know

if james joyce and i would have been close friends i don't know but but you know he probably is it was a real bastard but you know so okay so that's one thing you learn is that sometimes you know the the public image or the image that you have as somebody who is uh enamored or taken with them can very easily be diminished you learn yes and it happens all the time al pacino and i look al pacino and i are very close for 30 years we had a falling out you know so now okay we're we're we're at a distance of each other and i i i realized that he cannot apologize. It's because it's not in the stars gene to be able to apologize. And I knew this for a long time about these people. I learned this about stars.

They don't, you know, no matter how wrong they may be. And one time Anthony Hopkins, who was going to do a script of mine, based on the conversation with Brando book, and he was excited about doing it. based on the conversation with Brando Book. And he was excited about doing it. And we even met. And his agent at the time at CAA, he was going to be my agent.

Everything was really going nicely. And all of a sudden, I get a call from the agent, Rick Nesita, saying, Tony's going to back out if he doesn't want to do it I said why? he says he's afraid he's afraid to play Marlon I didn't believe it I said

this guy has played Picasso he's played Hitler he's played some of the presidents I mean Nixon Hopkins is an amazing actor he was afraid

so I said I don't think that's probably the reason but okay and I felt bad I never showed it to anybody Pacino said to me he'll come back don't show it's probably the reason, but okay. And I felt bad. I never showed it to anybody. Pacino said to me, he'll come back. Don't show it to anybody.

He'll come back. So I didn't do anything. He goes off and does the Wolfman Hopkins, and he comes back. And then one day I'm home, and I get a phone call. Yeah. Anthony Hopkins. Yeah. I said, oh, hi, Tony.

How are you? And he goes, Larry, he says, listen, I did a terrible thing to you. A terrible thing. I'm really, I'm just so sorry, I said, you know, that I didn't call and I didn't tell you why. I didn't want to do the Brando thing. I just held you up and I led you on. And I'm thinking, this is impossible, right?

It's impossible. Anthony Hopkins cannot be apologized. Right. Because it's against everything I have learned, you know, with the stars. And then I'm thinking, he's interested in the script, but he doesn't want to say it because it's been everything I have learned with the stars. And then I'm thinking, he's interested in the script, but he doesn't want to say it because it's been up over a year.

So I said, Anthony, I haven't shown that to anybody since. Oh, really? No, no, I wasn't calling about that. I wasn't calling you about that at all. I said, okay. I said, but let me give you my cell number and why don't we have lunch?

Let's get together. I said, terrific. So he gives me the number and I wait a little while and I called him and we meet. We meet for lunch. And it's all about, for him though, it's all about the script and all. Okay, that's, you know, a story you learn about, you know, apologies in a sense. So I find that a sincere apology doesn't exist among stars.

That's one of the things I'm sorry to say, but it's a rare thing. But also, doesn't that also put into question that sometimes, no matter how much time you spend with these people, or no matter how much they reveal to you, it's not necessarily that you have an emotional relationship with that person. Exactly. And I think I do. And I often don't. That's right. I'm fooled over and over again.

That's right. Goldie Hawn. Goldie Hawn and I, and Kurt Russell, because of Goldie, were very close. Shared dinners. We went to dinner at her house. She would come to our house and everything. Yeah. And then what happened was, I'm telling you stories.

Yeah. And I don't know if I should be talking out loud, I guess. Right. But Entertainment Weekly asked me to do a cover story on kurt russell and i did and uh you know and kurt and i had a great time we went out and flew in his plane and at one point he gave me the controls he says you fly i'm going down i can't do this you know and he's laughing you know so we had a good relationship and it's a it's going to be a positive article about him whatever so i write

the article and give it to entertainment weekly now entertainment week is part of time magazine which means that they go through editors one two three four five editors sign off an editor who just signs off without putting his two cents in isn't making money in his mind isn't doing his job his job is he's got to find something so you got five editors finding things throughout this story and it comes back and then they send me the galleys. And I looked at the story, and I said, this is not what I wrote. I said, it's another story. I don't want it.

I said, go back to whatever. Show me why what I wrote is no good. So they go back, okay, and we change things back and forth. But this is timely because something's going on. Okay, so now I didn't see the second galley after that. The article comes out and it's a decent article but it's it cut out a lot of nice little things between us but on the second paragraph it said that uh kurt russell who's looking to become an a is a b actor looking to

become an a actor something like that terrible line i didn't write that i didn't write that whole paragraph okay and i i didn't i felt oh Kurt's going to call me up and ball me out and I'll just have to tell him. I didn't do it. Well, instead what happened was we lost contact. I never heard from them. And then it was our time to have dinner. I called her, left a message, didn't call back. I called again, didn't call back. So I said, well, something's happened. My wife says, we had stayed their um malibu house once with my kids yeah so but but i i forgot the the password to get in so i had the i mean the the people came and i said and i think it was with it was some kind of animal so i i got close enough

that they said okay so my wife was saying maybe you just screwed up their alarm system and said they're mad at you. I said, no, no, that doesn't make any sense because we got it. So I said, maybe it was the article, but it's too petty. It's only that one paragraph, right? So I don't hear anything.

Then a half a year go by, maybe Al Pacino, who did not know Goldie or Kurt, ran into them at the Oscars or the Emmys or whatever it was. And he's just talking to them. And he came back and we were having lunch. He says,

oh, I saw a good friend of yours. He says, at the thing. I said, well, I said, you know, yeah,

I said, Goldie and Kurt. I said, well, they're not really friends anymore. I said, what's the matter? What happened?

I said, I don't know. I said, for some reason, they're not getting back to me. So something went wrong. So, and it was Al who said, I want you to write, I said, I don't know. I said, for some reason they're not getting back to me, so something went wrong. And it was Al who said, I want you to write, he said, you can never leave something like this

unexplained. You have to come to a conclusion. If you did something wrong, find out about it. If you didn't, whatever. So I want you to write her one more time, for me. I said, I'm not doing it. He says, no, write and say in the opening line, Al told me to write this or else I wouldn't be writing. Whatever.

So I did. I wrote one more time. To Goldie. To Goldie. And Goldie writes me back. And she says, I have to tell you. She says that the person, she says, I thought that we had person i was living with or the person i knew so if you could be get it be so off on that then i didn't know what to say so you know we just dropped back

and i said goldie i wrote back to her i said said, Goldie, this is like a Guy de Maupassant story because it's like the necklace. I said, I gave her, I sent the 17-page article that I had written in manuscript. I sent it to her. And I said, I want you to read the article. And I also made a copy of the piece because I figured she probably wouldn't have it. I said, look at the two of them.

Okay, so I do. And the piece was really very favorable of Adam. So anyway, she writes me back another note, and she says, I'm down on my knees in apology. I am so sorry. She says, what you wrote is so beautiful, and why don't you come for dinner? And, you know, whatever.

So I said to my wife, do you want to go? She says, yeah, okay, so we go. And, you know, at that time, Kate wasn't acting yet. She was so small. She didn't sit around the table. So we go. And Kurt says, well, I guess we, he brings it up. And I said, Kurt, let's have dinner first. Let's have a nice dinner first. Because I got a lot of things I want to talk about too, because it's a nature of friendship. To me, what what it was was I thought we were friends if I annoy

if I did something that upset you why don't you call me on it that's what a friend would do why did you write that and I would say

I didn't do it I'm sorry I had no control over that so we had a very nice evening we had that whole talk and everything

but what really happened is we don't get together anymore once it happens it happens you know what I mean there's a cut

I ran into her somewhere else in front of CEA once and we just hugged and kissed and everything was terrific but we haven't seen them. I'd like to,

you know, but I haven't gone out of my way either, you know? Well, sometimes, you know, life gets in the way. You know,

here's a really interesting one. Yeah. Dolly Parton. Right. Dolly and I got along famously. We did a great, you know,

they came out in Playboy in the 78 or so, or 79. One day, Playboy thought they could get to Charlie Manson, and they called me up. They said, Larry, would you, we want you to consider this. We don't want you to answer yet, but I want you to consider doing Charlie Manson. I said immediately, why wouldn't I do it? He says, well, you know, you live up in the hills where that happened

you just had a baby and there are still some crazies out there and the members of the family so it might be something you want to discuss with your wife about doing for us and that's interesting because I never would have thought of that I wanted to do EDM in once and nobody would let me because they thought that he would kill me so there I am thinking about it and I call all the guys I knew, said, you got to do it. You got to do it.

Larry Schiller, who had gotten involved with Squeaky Fromm once or something, he says, yeah, I said, anything happen with you when you were involved? He says, yeah,

they blew up my mailbox. I said, they blew up your mailbox. I said, Larry, they blew up your mailbox? He said, yeah, we've been to the house. This is where he is coming from, right? So I'm thinking, okay, every woman I knew said, don't do it, right? Stay away from the energy. Okay. So on, it's a Saturday night.

I'm thinking about doing it. You know, this is where my head's at. I've got a call on Monday. Phone rings out of the complete blue because I don't have this kind of relationship with her, but it's Dolly Parton. Hey, guy, how you doing? I was just thinking about you. She goes, you know, I said, what you been up to?

I said, Dolly, it's funny that you called now. I said, I'm making a decision. And what's you thinking about? And I said, well, you know, they asked me to do Charlie Manson. What? She says, hold on, stop this thing. If you see him, if you talk to him, if you have anything to do with him, I will never talk to you again. you have anything to do with him, I will

never talk to you again. That has nothing to do with your decision, she says. I just want to tell you to be upfront about it. That man has got bad energy, very evil. You're very sensitive. His evil will get onto you. I don't want that to get to me. I have nothing to do with you again.

So I said she's right God Dolly I think you just made up my mind for me so I said I said I didn't do it you know and but what happened

I didn't see Dolly for three or four years and then I got an assignment from like McCall or something to do Dolly and I said great so I meet her in a French restaurant and you know she hugs me

it's like we're old friends I said Dolly I said why haven't I talked to you in the last four years? And she looked at me. I said, it's Manson, isn't it? She said, yes. She says, just that you considered it put me off about you because you just even considered it.

I said, but I'm a writer. This is an assignment. I said, I would do Hitler. I would do Mussolini if I had a chance to get to him. But this is another thing. Is this, I would do Hitler. I would do, you know, Mussolini if I had a chance to get to him. But, you know, this is another thing. Is this what I learned? Yeah, I learned how to deal with people through life, but I'm never right about it. You know, I mean, it just, everybody surprises me. And that's another thing. I used, you know, I used to really think, what was Warren Beatty like? You know, what was it? You know, and so, if they throw you, if they come in with somebody else,

well, with a friend, or if they just something else happens, it's a different person. No, you can't do it. So I've just realized that these people are different. They're all individual. They all have their own, you know, quirks. Some of them are very depressed. Some of them aren't. I like to be, my challenge is just to get to them.

You know, the fact that I could get to Christopher Walken and to get to, you know, Linus Pauling or, you know, Linus Pauling or Joyce Carol Oates or Norman Mailer. I mean, it's fascinating to me to be able to try to get into their minds. What's interesting because that dynamic is that they are who they are because of their work, but also because they've been celebrated somehow. And they're cultural icons and they've done something amazing. And I think that what drives me and that might drive you on some level is, yeah, it's compelling to be close to this power, but it probably reveals some fundamental insecurity on behalf of yourself.

No. I don't feel insecure. But you accept the fact that they are more talented, let's say, in their field than I am. But you want to be a writer. I don't want to be a writer. I am a writer. I've been writing for 50-some odd years. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to insult you. That's not an insult. That's okay. You are a writer. But I'm saying in this process, you want to write novels. All right? And it's just in my mind. I know the thrill of being want to write novels. All right. And it's just in my mind. I know, you know, there's I know the thrill of being close to, you know, to famous people.

And, you know, no matter how much you want to humanize them, it's still daunting and it's still exciting. And, you know, as a guy that's going to go in there and have this access and then sort of figure out where they're coming from and how they're doing and develop this relationship and where they are emotionally and why they are who they are that's a powerful position i guess i guess i guess it is but i don't i don't do you how i guess my point is is that you you have been you have been hurt you know by you know the the assumption that you had relationships yeah i mean you know and and listen but then i write about it. The thing is, is that, you know, you survived through all this and I think what's interesting is that, you know, it's a challenge now, but conversely, you're actually doing exactly what you wanted to do. Exactly.

Finally, you've come to realize that. I have been doing what I wanted to do my whole life. I have always felt like somehow I've never worked. I've worked hard, but I've never worked because I loved it. I loved when I interviewed Mae West the first time, my first love. I loved when I got to Truman Capote. I mean, Saul Bellow. I'm going to talk to Saul Bellow.

I read this guy when I was in my life. It's so wonderful. You're doing it. You don't hate it. You love it. I know, but see, there's still that thing like, I want to write and play music. But you've written a book. Well, that's different.

Music is a different story. I want to be like, there's things I want to do in comedy that, you know, there's some part about living your life through other people, even if it's interviewing, as compelling as it is, that there's some part of you, and I can hear it in the way that you talk about your acceptance in this country, that, you know, now, you know it's not the interviews right that you want to be necessarily known for that was your job and you had a great time right but now you're writing books exactly exactly but you're on tv you're doing your show you're right you're all over right i i can't believe every time i turn on you a podcast it says hey folks i'm going to be in here here here here i'm doing this

finally hell he's all over the place. He's in the magazines now. For 25 years. All right. Well, hey, listen, it's taking me 40. But you were making a good living before. I'm making a decent living, yes. All the way through it?

Yeah. Not me so much. Yeah. So now, okay, so let's do business. Yeah, okay. You all right? So if they, Lawrence Grobel is where they can get your books on Kindle. Do you have a website? I have a website

LawrenceGrobel.com Because I think it's a tremendous resource and I have a lot of respect for what you've done and what you do. I do. And I'm glad that our friend Janine put us together because I wouldn't have thought of it. And I was resistant at first. I don't blame you. It was great talking to you larry you too i guess i could go for weeks i could interview him again there i'm sure there's no end to the

stories perhaps perhaps there's uh one day i'd get to the truth of whatever i was looking for with larry grobell which was you know how he really felt about having that proximity to celebrities. I didn't feel like I got deep enough with him. Maybe that's why you gotta interview somebody over and over again. Maybe not. So Merry Christmas to you, and Happy Holidays.

I just put up a premium, a bonus episode on the WTF Premium app. So you can go get the free app. Upgrade to Premium. Get that bonus episode where I took a tour of a vinyl

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