May 9, 2019 • 23 mins
Dani Shapiro and Brian Koppelman of “Billions” talk about the extraordinary speech on secrets and shame that the character, Chuck, delivers on “Billions.” Find out how vulnerability and truth fuel creativity.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I
in my private life, in the confines of my happy
marriage with my consenting life practice it on masochism, bondage, dominance,
(00:20):
all the rest, masks, binds, ropes, fire. Wow. Even just
saying it like that, I can fill my shoulders. Listen
for the first time in decades, I am a masochist.
In order to achieve sexual gratification, I need to be
tied up, punched, pinched, whipped, kicked, or otherwise tortured by
(00:42):
my loving wife. And here's the bigger truth. All of
us needs something right now. I don't know what you
do in your bedroom with you a loved one, but
I do know this. You're probably a little embarrassed about it.
You probably don't want the rest of us looking at
you while you do it, unless that's your thing. And
if so, great, But wouldn't we'd be better off if
(01:05):
we didn't let shame win. This is probably a familiar voice,
that of the great actor Paul Giamatti, who plays the
character of Chuck Rhodes on the hit Showtime series Billions.
Chuck is, at the moment of this speech, a candidate
for New York State Attorney general since the start of
(01:26):
the show, he's been harboring a big secret. When I
heard Chuck's speech, as an avid fan of Billions, I
immediately wanted to sit down with the co creator of Billions,
Brian Koppelman for a special bonus episode. I'm Danny Shapiro,
(01:50):
and this is family secrets, Secrets that are kept from us,
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. One of the themes that keeps emerging
on this podcast is the sense that culturally and societally
we are experiencing the era of the end of secrecy.
(02:11):
Whether it's as a result of DNA testing or the Internet,
or of the Me Too movement, the explosion and revelation
of secrets all around us is allowing us to begin
to understand that we may trust others with our deepest
fears are most deeply held secrets, and one of the
first steps in trusting others in this way is the
(02:33):
realization that we're not alone. It turns out that Brian
and I are both a little obsessed with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
whose essay on self reliance is one I have quoted
time and again to my students. Emerson wrote, a man
should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light
which flashes across his mind from within. Yet he dismisses
(02:56):
without notice his thought because is his. Why do we
do this? Why do we dismiss our own thoughts and
assume there's something weak, second class shameful about them? So
first of all, I want to say, it's a great
person to talk to you. I'll say if I use
(03:19):
the word, I am talking about this. Um. The episode,
the speech, the whole thing was written by UM, my
partner and me, by David Lean and me. And so
if if I say I I'm, it's really we. It's
just annoying to say we all the time because it
sounds like you're saying the royal weak. So UM, and
I'll say, you know, Danny, you know my wife's Amy
a little bit. The novelist Amy compliment and Amy is
(03:41):
a genius at writing about shame and about secrets, and uh,
for three novels are are about that. And which is
to say that we talk about this a lot at home,
as you know, like if two writers are in a house,
they're they're talking about this stuff. And um, about the
reasons that characters and people allow themselves to be haunted
(04:07):
or imprisoned by their secrets, and and when they have
the key to let themselves out available to them pretty
much all the time. And so to the speech that
Chuck gave, it wouldn't be true to tell you that
we knew from day one we were pointed towards that speech. That's,
you know, one of the great things about a series
(04:28):
that runs for a long time, the sort of novelistic
sent you know, that this novelistic approach to television that
we're able to u practice if you can discover stuff
as you go. But we did know that at some
point we we had hoped that Chuck could let his
shoulders down, as he says in the speech about this
(04:49):
whole thing, that um, that it might come out, and
that if it came out, it would he would find himself,
if Lendy would find herself in some ways trapped by it,
Chuck would find himself in some ways freed. And um
and of course and and and uh. The episode that's
hearing this Sunday night and when this podcast goes up.
(05:10):
But but episode seven of the show, UM, Chuck tells
a story about where some of this came from in
a way, um, and uh, you know where where some
of this uh, this sense of shame. He doesn't say
it specifically in those words, but the two viewer will
understand that that's what he's talking about. And um, of course,
(05:34):
the reaction that we've gotten from that moment on the
show has been just so satisfying, because yes, people loved
the surprise of it and loved, as you said, like
the drama of it. But more than that, I think
they loved and related to and and and really got
a lot out of the You know what Chuck is saying,
(05:55):
which is, of course, don't allow these society don't as
long as your behavior doesn't harm anybody, don't allow these
societal constraints stop you from being who you need to be.
And in fact, if you own who you need to be,
you'll find that you can float through life a little
bit easier. Uh. Now, of course you know he is,
(06:20):
by making the speech hurting some people, So it's it's
not um apolly, you know. Unburdening yourself in that way
is often like though these dangers you think are there,
but you have in real life. You better pick the
right spots. You better prepare the right people, and you
better make sure that you're not causing more harm. Oh yeah,
(06:40):
there's this moment. I mean, it's so layered, right, because
there's also the sense that he realizes it is tactical
for him, and it is from his soul um and
and both of those come together in that moment. But
I wonder whether part of what the really extraordinary response
(07:01):
to that speech has been among viewers is that, I mean,
there's this moment where Chuck says to the assembled reporters
and political people in the in the room, I'm asking
if I may trust you with my deepest fear. Brian
also has an awesome Twitter feed you can find him
(07:22):
at at Brian Coppelman, in which I've noticed over the
years just how generous he is with other writers and
sharing his creative process. Again, to go back to your
Twitter feed, you are giving people permission constantly to be like,
wait a minute, that's a scary thought. Um, maybe that
means it's a valuable thought. Oh I don't want to
touch that. Maybe it means I should touch that. Maybe
(07:46):
that's where the kernel of truth lies. Because we devalue,
we devalue our own private insights all the time. And
as as as people, we're we're so sort of trained. Yes,
(08:06):
I mean, you and I are of like the free
to be giving me generation in some way, but most
and you know, there was a brief moment in the
late sixties or early seventies where individual expression was um.
Really people tried to really stoke that in kids, but generally, you're, um,
(08:27):
we're all trained to check with the group think before
really giving our own deepest opinion and our and saying
our own deepest dreams and ideas very often. And the
more that we can learn that if in fact we
(08:48):
don't worry about the reaction, we will find that we
just steal better and sleep better. And and the older
I at the more uncertain that becoming comfortable in your
own skin is the answer to most personal problems, not
going to solve world problems. But um, I mean, you know,
(09:11):
unless you extrapolate that, everyone does that. But you know,
the more you're not faking the funk and the more
you're just living in who you are, it changes all
of your interactions. It enables the people who are with
you to just get the sense that you're calm, not
that you're lazy or too relaxed, but that you're calm
(09:34):
and open and available to them because you're not putting
a bunch of stuff up in front of who you
really are, in between you and them. And so that's
been a lot of what I've worked on myself for
the last fifteen years or so is just being the
person that I am, you know, hopefully the best version
of who I am. I find it when I'm not
trying to put on anything. It enables me to be
(09:56):
the most empathetic version, the most sympathetic version, and the
most giving because um, um, just kind of like living
in the present and in where I am and I
you know, and as I've had those insights, I've tried
to help other people get there to the extent that
I you know, to the extent that I can. Yeah, well,
that is just makes so much sense to me, and
(10:18):
is also the way that I have been living my
life for the last I'm gonna say, twenty years or
so and more and more and more so. And as
a writer, I find that when I go there, like
here's just a brief example from me. Um, there's a
moment in in my not my most recent book, but
(10:41):
the book before a memoir called Hourglass. There's a moment
where there's I'm having a sort of intense, intense kind
of exchange with my husband. Um, there's been an ice
storm in Connecticut, and we've headed off in a direction
to another house to to be in in a in
a safe space. And he's an explorer, a former journalist,
so he likes to explore, and he starts explore, exploring
(11:03):
the roads around us, and our kid is in the
back seat and his in his car seat, and I
turned him like, what are you doing? What are you doing?
It's like, we're not supposed to be out on the roads.
This is not the moment to be a journalist. And
I was furious with him. And we finally got to
the house and we settled in and he went back
out into the ice storm to help, you know, to
help people. And I wrote this scene and at the
(11:25):
end of the scene something was not entirely there. He
had come back in. His cheeks were ruddy and his
eyes were bright, and he said it's like a war
zone out there, and that was the end of the scene.
And then I had this thought. It was a sentence,
and the sentence was I hated him, and I thought
I can't write that. I cannot write that. And then
(11:46):
I wrote it, and then I deleted it, and then
I wrote it, and then I deleted it, and then
finally I wrote it and I left it in. It
was probably the last edit I made in my book.
And I turned it in and my editor called me
a few days later after she had a chance to
read it, and she said, my favorite sentence in the
entire book, because I hated him. It was like a
live wire. And also, by the way, in retrospect a
(12:06):
few years later, I'm talking about this with you in
a podcast. The millions of people are going to hear
because I don't have any shame about that anymore, because
everybody hates their partners sometimes. But there was something about
that feeling in the moment of to expose, too vulnerable,
too real, too true, not okay. I mean you think
(12:28):
about the books that you've loved the most, that have
impacted that if you know, mattered to you the most,
and you it's rarely because the author was pulling punches.
It's rarely because the author was worried about what their
spouse or kids We're going to think of them. Also,
you know, write anything you want later, if you're really
sure it's gonna hurt somebody, you can always retacted, you
(12:50):
can always edited out, you can always find another way.
But often I find people stop and they're so scared
they're gonna hurt people in their lives that they don't
even pick up the pen. Right, you're special writer, You're
an accomplished writer, you're a famous writer, and still you
were worried about whether you could do it. So let
me ask you this, Um, to go back to Chuck's speech,
(13:11):
and there's also there are these great cutaways from his
speech where I mean there's one in particular where he
describes he uses the word unburdening, and then we cut
to his wife's face, and UM, you know, we know
that this is not an unburdening for Wendy. What thoughts
(13:34):
do you have about, um, you know, those two characters
and the ways in which Chuck is released by deciding
that he is going to shine a light and reveal
what's under all of that darkness. Um, Wendy has a
very different reaction. Can you talk about that a little bit?
(13:54):
I'll talk about it a bit. I don't want to
overtalk it because this is a work that's still going
you know what I mean, And so I don't overtalk it.
I would just say there, Well, their situations are different, right,
because it's actually the practice itself. Although it although it,
(14:19):
Wendy gets stuff out of it, it's it's not primal
to Wendy in the same way it as to Chuck.
And so for Wendy, even Wendy admitting it when it
doesn't carry it in the same way. For Wendy, it's
a different kind of shame or embarrassment. And I don't
want to talk too much about it. I would just
say yes, of course, That's what I was saying before
(14:41):
about Um, when one on burdens, one ought to be
aware of the consequences too. If there are direct consequences,
you should lift those people and talk through it and
figure it out. And you may so off to do
it anyway, but then know that certain relationships are going
to change as a result of that. Yeah, No, I
mean she is she is blindsided. Um. I guess I
(15:04):
was asking because I'm thinking about when we love a drama,
we see ourselves in multiple characters in that drama, right,
And and I see myself in both Chuck and Wendy. Um,
there's this moment um where Wendy gets into the elevator
after she's watched Chuck speech on television and she's she
(15:24):
looks mortified and like she doesn't even know where to look.
And um, and there's what I read into that. And
again this is just you know, me as a as
a as a viewer, was that there was pride there
that had just been I mean, Wendy is so put together. Um,
and you know, she looks great all the time, and
(15:45):
she she just navigates life in this way where she
helps people, but she doesn't need any help. And UM,
I don't know. I mean I I see pieces of
myself and Wendy and I kind of connected to what
I viewed as her. Um, she's just sort of stripped
a little bit by this, and she doesn't want she
didn't want to walk through life that way. David and
(16:06):
I of course have to be all these characters, as
you know, right, you can't write all these characters if
you can't find some piece of yourself and all these characters.
Um and so I UM. I also would say that
although we can work from place of intellect, I mostly
work from place of instinct. Which is why while it's
(16:27):
going on, I don't like to talk about it that
much because I'm not actually working from the top down.
I'm working from the inside out while i'm writing. And
although I'm aware of plot, like building plot, when it
comes to character dialogue, those little moments. I mean, the
thing I love the most about the creative process is
the ways in which I surprise myself when I'm doing
(16:49):
what I do and you know, I'm sitting on my couch,
I've got my headphones on, I'm blasting music, and I'm
in this other realm. I'm sort of you know, when
it's at it's as such as when Um, we're writing
that speech and the reactions, you know, you're in that
(17:09):
strange place, Manny, where you're hyper present but also sort
of barely tethered to the earth. And that's where I
hope to be when i'm writing. Particularly, we're writting the scenes, right,
so there's there's the outlining and that sort of structural piece,
but then the writing of the scenes, um, and the
(17:30):
discovery that you were talking about. For me, that has
to happen from the subconscious and from the gut, and
it's like all the stuff that you've ever learned in
your life somehow is suddenly the stuff you don't even
know you knew is suddenly there in your fingers. And
the more I talk it out, the less I feel
like I can just fly and dance. So that's why
(17:51):
I don't like to talk to stuff not that much.
I think this is really useful for listeners to hear
because many people who don't do this kind of word
have the misunderstanding that it's manufactured in some way that
they're you know, like as you say, from the top down,
that there is I can tell you the only times
(18:12):
in my writing life that I've written myself right into
a corner or where I've had to throw away hundreds
of pages or just put something in a drawer never
to come out again, has been when I've started with
an idea. It's when I when I when I've had
a big idea. Of course, Yeah, it's like you have
to lead like I always lead from the way I
talked about is from curiosity and obsession. Right, if I'm
(18:33):
incredibly curious to the point where I'm obsessed, then I
can write about something. But that's the only way that
it works. And so if it can be a world,
so you could say, oh, there's a world I'm fascinated by,
and then you can have the intellectual notion, hey, I
think other people might be fascinated by that too, Maybe
this is worth my time. But then immediately what has
to pull you into it is curiosity and obsession and fascination.
(18:56):
Those are the things that have to just grab hold
if you would, yank you into it so that you
you you can't be released from it. That reminds me
of something that I, UM also say to my students
is that, you know, theme is just a fancy literary
word for obsession, you know, like, show me a writer's
themes over the course of a lifetime, and I can
(19:18):
tell you what obsesses that writer. UM, And I think
to go back to from the top down. You know,
so many of us, um you were taught literature in
a certain way. Some of us were taught it in
a very dry way, in terms of thinking about metaphor,
thinking about similarly, thinking about foreshadowing, and all the kinds
of things that they teach in UM less evolved English
(19:42):
literature classes. And the thing about metaphor is that it
does spring from the unconscious. It never springs from the
conscious mind. So do do you and David worked together
in a room or do you do you work separately
and then come to it. I'm so curious and frankly
envious at the idea of partner a ship in that
way where um, you have that sounding board. Well, when
(20:04):
we're outlining, we're together and we're writing scenes were separate,
So um, you know, because that intellectual part of it,
the part where you're grinding, is much better with another
person because you're able to really throw ideas and challenge
each other, and it's like you know, it's when it
starts getting a flame. It's great because you both can
sort of add kindling on, add logs under the fire.
(20:26):
But the writing of the soil will outline us Well,
we'll talk through a story and put the cards up
on the board together, but then and then one of
us will do a first pass alone at at taking
the cards and putting it into an outline. Then the
other one will rewrite that, ask questions. The other guy,
I'll ask questions and rewrite. Then we have an outline,
(20:47):
and then we just split the outline up, like I'll
pick these bunch of scenes. You take these bunch of
scenes and then we write the scenes separately. We put
him in one document, and one of us goes through
first re writing the whole thing, and then the other
goes through, and we just go back and forth, and
then at the end we sit together and solve whatever
remaining sort of problems there are together. I mean, if
(21:09):
you're gonna collaborate, because you have to love that what
the way the other person works, and you have to
be the kind of person who can celebrate when the
other person comes up with a great line. And from
the very beginning, right because writers can get jealous and
petty and miserable, but from one of the things that
Dave and I have always had as we love when
the other guy comes up with something great. We just
(21:30):
that's just the way we were made, you know. Um,
Rather than getting annoyed, we get happy. So that's a
big part of it. Right. If if David writes a
hilarious couplet, I mean, all I want to do is celebrated,
and like, it just makes me, I don't know, it
just makes me happy. And he's the same. When you know, basically,
when we're split the document and we're writing, we're just
(21:52):
trying to make the other guy laugh and smile because
we've been best friends with kids, you know, so we've
been having this dialogue back and forth. Should then Brian
and David's working relationship points to the same exact thing
Brian's talking about here, just in the way that Haruki
Murakami's cats spring from the well of his unconscious. So
(22:14):
do our obsessions drive us, whether we're artists or not,
and take us to places we couldn't have predicted or
dreamt of. The trick I think is to trust the journey,
to give ourselves permission to follow Emerson's gleam of light.
I know that it's true in the work, and I
know that I could go through the movies that David
(22:37):
and I made and you could definitely find the things
that have obsessed us and the reasons and and really
you're talking about the questions you've been asking yourself the
whole time, and those those questions of course exist in
any in any artist body of work, right exactly. Well, Brian,
this has been such a treat. I'm a fan and
(23:00):
of both your generosity and your art. Thanks so much.
This has been really fun day. I'd like to thank
my guest Brian Compleman, if you haven't already, check out
Billions on Showtime, airing on Sundays at nine pm Eastern
(23:22):
Standard Time, and you can find Brian on Twitter at
at Brian Compliment. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio,
(23:43):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I
in my private life, in the confines of my happy
marriage with my consenting life practice it on masochism, bondage, dominance,
(00:20):
all the rest, masks, binds, ropes, fire. Wow. Even just
saying it like that, I can fill my shoulders. Listen
for the first time in decades, I am a masochist.
In order to achieve sexual gratification, I need to be
tied up, punched, pinched, whipped, kicked, or otherwise tortured by
(00:42):
my loving wife. And here's the bigger truth. All of
us needs something right now. I don't know what you
do in your bedroom with you a loved one, but
I do know this. You're probably a little embarrassed about it.
You probably don't want the rest of us looking at
you while you do it, unless that's your thing. And
if so, great, But wouldn't we'd be better off if
(01:05):
we didn't let shame win. This is probably a familiar voice,
that of the great actor Paul Giamatti, who plays the
character of Chuck Rhodes on the hit Showtime series Billions.
Chuck is, at the moment of this speech, a candidate
for New York State Attorney general since the start of
(01:26):
the show, he's been harboring a big secret. When I
heard Chuck's speech, as an avid fan of Billions, I
immediately wanted to sit down with the co creator of Billions,
Brian Koppelman for a special bonus episode. I'm Danny Shapiro,
(01:50):
and this is family secrets, Secrets that are kept from us,
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. One of the themes that keeps emerging
on this podcast is the sense that culturally and societally
we are experiencing the era of the end of secrecy.
(02:11):
Whether it's as a result of DNA testing or the Internet,
or of the Me Too movement, the explosion and revelation
of secrets all around us is allowing us to begin
to understand that we may trust others with our deepest
fears are most deeply held secrets, and one of the
first steps in trusting others in this way is the
(02:33):
realization that we're not alone. It turns out that Brian
and I are both a little obsessed with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
whose essay on self reliance is one I have quoted
time and again to my students. Emerson wrote, a man
should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light
which flashes across his mind from within. Yet he dismisses
(02:56):
without notice his thought because is his. Why do we
do this? Why do we dismiss our own thoughts and
assume there's something weak, second class shameful about them? So
first of all, I want to say, it's a great
person to talk to you. I'll say if I use
(03:19):
the word, I am talking about this. Um. The episode,
the speech, the whole thing was written by UM, my
partner and me, by David Lean and me. And so
if if I say I I'm, it's really we. It's
just annoying to say we all the time because it
sounds like you're saying the royal weak. So UM, and
I'll say, you know, Danny, you know my wife's Amy
a little bit. The novelist Amy compliment and Amy is
(03:41):
a genius at writing about shame and about secrets, and uh,
for three novels are are about that. And which is
to say that we talk about this a lot at home,
as you know, like if two writers are in a house,
they're they're talking about this stuff. And um, about the
reasons that characters and people allow themselves to be haunted
(04:07):
or imprisoned by their secrets, and and when they have
the key to let themselves out available to them pretty
much all the time. And so to the speech that
Chuck gave, it wouldn't be true to tell you that
we knew from day one we were pointed towards that speech. That's,
you know, one of the great things about a series
(04:28):
that runs for a long time, the sort of novelistic
sent you know, that this novelistic approach to television that
we're able to u practice if you can discover stuff
as you go. But we did know that at some
point we we had hoped that Chuck could let his
shoulders down, as he says in the speech about this
(04:49):
whole thing, that um, that it might come out, and
that if it came out, it would he would find himself,
if Lendy would find herself in some ways trapped by it,
Chuck would find himself in some ways freed. And um
and of course and and and uh. The episode that's
hearing this Sunday night and when this podcast goes up.
(05:10):
But but episode seven of the show, UM, Chuck tells
a story about where some of this came from in
a way, um, and uh, you know where where some
of this uh, this sense of shame. He doesn't say
it specifically in those words, but the two viewer will
understand that that's what he's talking about. And um, of course,
(05:34):
the reaction that we've gotten from that moment on the
show has been just so satisfying, because yes, people loved
the surprise of it and loved, as you said, like
the drama of it. But more than that, I think
they loved and related to and and and really got
a lot out of the You know what Chuck is saying,
(05:55):
which is, of course, don't allow these society don't as
long as your behavior doesn't harm anybody, don't allow these
societal constraints stop you from being who you need to be.
And in fact, if you own who you need to be,
you'll find that you can float through life a little
bit easier. Uh. Now, of course you know he is,
(06:20):
by making the speech hurting some people, So it's it's
not um apolly, you know. Unburdening yourself in that way
is often like though these dangers you think are there,
but you have in real life. You better pick the
right spots. You better prepare the right people, and you
better make sure that you're not causing more harm. Oh yeah,
(06:40):
there's this moment. I mean, it's so layered, right, because
there's also the sense that he realizes it is tactical
for him, and it is from his soul um and
and both of those come together in that moment. But
I wonder whether part of what the really extraordinary response
(07:01):
to that speech has been among viewers is that, I mean,
there's this moment where Chuck says to the assembled reporters
and political people in the in the room, I'm asking
if I may trust you with my deepest fear. Brian
also has an awesome Twitter feed you can find him
(07:22):
at at Brian Coppelman, in which I've noticed over the
years just how generous he is with other writers and
sharing his creative process. Again, to go back to your
Twitter feed, you are giving people permission constantly to be like,
wait a minute, that's a scary thought. Um, maybe that
means it's a valuable thought. Oh I don't want to
touch that. Maybe it means I should touch that. Maybe
(07:46):
that's where the kernel of truth lies. Because we devalue,
we devalue our own private insights all the time. And
as as as people, we're we're so sort of trained. Yes,
(08:06):
I mean, you and I are of like the free
to be giving me generation in some way, but most
and you know, there was a brief moment in the
late sixties or early seventies where individual expression was um.
Really people tried to really stoke that in kids, but generally, you're, um,
(08:27):
we're all trained to check with the group think before
really giving our own deepest opinion and our and saying
our own deepest dreams and ideas very often. And the
more that we can learn that if in fact we
(08:48):
don't worry about the reaction, we will find that we
just steal better and sleep better. And and the older
I at the more uncertain that becoming comfortable in your
own skin is the answer to most personal problems, not
going to solve world problems. But um, I mean, you know,
(09:11):
unless you extrapolate that, everyone does that. But you know,
the more you're not faking the funk and the more
you're just living in who you are, it changes all
of your interactions. It enables the people who are with
you to just get the sense that you're calm, not
that you're lazy or too relaxed, but that you're calm
(09:34):
and open and available to them because you're not putting
a bunch of stuff up in front of who you
really are, in between you and them. And so that's
been a lot of what I've worked on myself for
the last fifteen years or so is just being the
person that I am, you know, hopefully the best version
of who I am. I find it when I'm not
trying to put on anything. It enables me to be
(09:56):
the most empathetic version, the most sympathetic version, and the
most giving because um, um, just kind of like living
in the present and in where I am and I
you know, and as I've had those insights, I've tried
to help other people get there to the extent that
I you know, to the extent that I can. Yeah, well,
that is just makes so much sense to me, and
(10:18):
is also the way that I have been living my
life for the last I'm gonna say, twenty years or
so and more and more and more so. And as
a writer, I find that when I go there, like
here's just a brief example from me. Um, there's a
moment in in my not my most recent book, but
(10:41):
the book before a memoir called Hourglass. There's a moment
where there's I'm having a sort of intense, intense kind
of exchange with my husband. Um, there's been an ice
storm in Connecticut, and we've headed off in a direction
to another house to to be in in a in
a safe space. And he's an explorer, a former journalist,
so he likes to explore, and he starts explore, exploring
(11:03):
the roads around us, and our kid is in the
back seat and his in his car seat, and I
turned him like, what are you doing? What are you doing?
It's like, we're not supposed to be out on the roads.
This is not the moment to be a journalist. And
I was furious with him. And we finally got to
the house and we settled in and he went back
out into the ice storm to help, you know, to
help people. And I wrote this scene and at the
(11:25):
end of the scene something was not entirely there. He
had come back in. His cheeks were ruddy and his
eyes were bright, and he said it's like a war
zone out there, and that was the end of the scene.
And then I had this thought. It was a sentence,
and the sentence was I hated him, and I thought
I can't write that. I cannot write that. And then
(11:46):
I wrote it, and then I deleted it, and then
I wrote it, and then I deleted it, and then
finally I wrote it and I left it in. It
was probably the last edit I made in my book.
And I turned it in and my editor called me
a few days later after she had a chance to
read it, and she said, my favorite sentence in the
entire book, because I hated him. It was like a
live wire. And also, by the way, in retrospect a
(12:06):
few years later, I'm talking about this with you in
a podcast. The millions of people are going to hear
because I don't have any shame about that anymore, because
everybody hates their partners sometimes. But there was something about
that feeling in the moment of to expose, too vulnerable,
too real, too true, not okay. I mean you think
(12:28):
about the books that you've loved the most, that have
impacted that if you know, mattered to you the most,
and you it's rarely because the author was pulling punches.
It's rarely because the author was worried about what their
spouse or kids We're going to think of them. Also,
you know, write anything you want later, if you're really
sure it's gonna hurt somebody, you can always retacted, you
(12:50):
can always edited out, you can always find another way.
But often I find people stop and they're so scared
they're gonna hurt people in their lives that they don't
even pick up the pen. Right, you're special writer, You're
an accomplished writer, you're a famous writer, and still you
were worried about whether you could do it. So let
me ask you this, Um, to go back to Chuck's speech,
(13:11):
and there's also there are these great cutaways from his
speech where I mean there's one in particular where he
describes he uses the word unburdening, and then we cut
to his wife's face, and UM, you know, we know
that this is not an unburdening for Wendy. What thoughts
(13:34):
do you have about, um, you know, those two characters
and the ways in which Chuck is released by deciding
that he is going to shine a light and reveal
what's under all of that darkness. Um, Wendy has a
very different reaction. Can you talk about that a little bit?
(13:54):
I'll talk about it a bit. I don't want to
overtalk it because this is a work that's still going
you know what I mean, And so I don't overtalk it.
I would just say there, Well, their situations are different, right,
because it's actually the practice itself. Although it although it,
(14:19):
Wendy gets stuff out of it, it's it's not primal
to Wendy in the same way it as to Chuck.
And so for Wendy, even Wendy admitting it when it
doesn't carry it in the same way. For Wendy, it's
a different kind of shame or embarrassment. And I don't
want to talk too much about it. I would just
say yes, of course, That's what I was saying before
(14:41):
about Um, when one on burdens, one ought to be
aware of the consequences too. If there are direct consequences,
you should lift those people and talk through it and
figure it out. And you may so off to do
it anyway, but then know that certain relationships are going
to change as a result of that. Yeah, No, I
mean she is she is blindsided. Um. I guess I
(15:04):
was asking because I'm thinking about when we love a drama,
we see ourselves in multiple characters in that drama, right,
And and I see myself in both Chuck and Wendy. Um,
there's this moment um where Wendy gets into the elevator
after she's watched Chuck speech on television and she's she
(15:24):
looks mortified and like she doesn't even know where to look.
And um, and there's what I read into that. And
again this is just you know, me as a as
a as a viewer, was that there was pride there
that had just been I mean, Wendy is so put together. Um,
and you know, she looks great all the time, and
(15:45):
she she just navigates life in this way where she
helps people, but she doesn't need any help. And UM,
I don't know. I mean I I see pieces of
myself and Wendy and I kind of connected to what
I viewed as her. Um, she's just sort of stripped
a little bit by this, and she doesn't want she
didn't want to walk through life that way. David and
(16:06):
I of course have to be all these characters, as
you know, right, you can't write all these characters if
you can't find some piece of yourself and all these characters.
Um and so I UM. I also would say that
although we can work from place of intellect, I mostly
work from place of instinct. Which is why while it's
(16:27):
going on, I don't like to talk about it that
much because I'm not actually working from the top down.
I'm working from the inside out while i'm writing. And
although I'm aware of plot, like building plot, when it
comes to character dialogue, those little moments. I mean, the
thing I love the most about the creative process is
the ways in which I surprise myself when I'm doing
(16:49):
what I do and you know, I'm sitting on my couch,
I've got my headphones on, I'm blasting music, and I'm
in this other realm. I'm sort of you know, when
it's at it's as such as when Um, we're writing
that speech and the reactions, you know, you're in that
(17:09):
strange place, Manny, where you're hyper present but also sort
of barely tethered to the earth. And that's where I
hope to be when i'm writing. Particularly, we're writting the scenes, right,
so there's there's the outlining and that sort of structural piece,
but then the writing of the scenes, um, and the
(17:30):
discovery that you were talking about. For me, that has
to happen from the subconscious and from the gut, and
it's like all the stuff that you've ever learned in
your life somehow is suddenly the stuff you don't even
know you knew is suddenly there in your fingers. And
the more I talk it out, the less I feel
like I can just fly and dance. So that's why
(17:51):
I don't like to talk to stuff not that much.
I think this is really useful for listeners to hear
because many people who don't do this kind of word
have the misunderstanding that it's manufactured in some way that
they're you know, like as you say, from the top down,
that there is I can tell you the only times
(18:12):
in my writing life that I've written myself right into
a corner or where I've had to throw away hundreds
of pages or just put something in a drawer never
to come out again, has been when I've started with
an idea. It's when I when I when I've had
a big idea. Of course, Yeah, it's like you have
to lead like I always lead from the way I
talked about is from curiosity and obsession. Right, if I'm
(18:33):
incredibly curious to the point where I'm obsessed, then I
can write about something. But that's the only way that
it works. And so if it can be a world,
so you could say, oh, there's a world I'm fascinated by,
and then you can have the intellectual notion, hey, I
think other people might be fascinated by that too, Maybe
this is worth my time. But then immediately what has
to pull you into it is curiosity and obsession and fascination.
(18:56):
Those are the things that have to just grab hold
if you would, yank you into it so that you
you you can't be released from it. That reminds me
of something that I, UM also say to my students
is that, you know, theme is just a fancy literary
word for obsession, you know, like, show me a writer's
themes over the course of a lifetime, and I can
(19:18):
tell you what obsesses that writer. UM, And I think
to go back to from the top down. You know,
so many of us, um you were taught literature in
a certain way. Some of us were taught it in
a very dry way, in terms of thinking about metaphor,
thinking about similarly, thinking about foreshadowing, and all the kinds
of things that they teach in UM less evolved English
(19:42):
literature classes. And the thing about metaphor is that it
does spring from the unconscious. It never springs from the
conscious mind. So do do you and David worked together
in a room or do you do you work separately
and then come to it. I'm so curious and frankly
envious at the idea of partner a ship in that
way where um, you have that sounding board. Well, when
(20:04):
we're outlining, we're together and we're writing scenes were separate,
So um, you know, because that intellectual part of it,
the part where you're grinding, is much better with another
person because you're able to really throw ideas and challenge
each other, and it's like you know, it's when it
starts getting a flame. It's great because you both can
sort of add kindling on, add logs under the fire.
(20:26):
But the writing of the soil will outline us Well,
we'll talk through a story and put the cards up
on the board together, but then and then one of
us will do a first pass alone at at taking
the cards and putting it into an outline. Then the
other one will rewrite that, ask questions. The other guy,
I'll ask questions and rewrite. Then we have an outline,
(20:47):
and then we just split the outline up, like I'll
pick these bunch of scenes. You take these bunch of
scenes and then we write the scenes separately. We put
him in one document, and one of us goes through
first re writing the whole thing, and then the other
goes through, and we just go back and forth, and
then at the end we sit together and solve whatever
remaining sort of problems there are together. I mean, if
(21:09):
you're gonna collaborate, because you have to love that what
the way the other person works, and you have to
be the kind of person who can celebrate when the
other person comes up with a great line. And from
the very beginning, right because writers can get jealous and
petty and miserable, but from one of the things that
Dave and I have always had as we love when
the other guy comes up with something great. We just
(21:30):
that's just the way we were made, you know. Um,
Rather than getting annoyed, we get happy. So that's a
big part of it. Right. If if David writes a
hilarious couplet, I mean, all I want to do is celebrated,
and like, it just makes me, I don't know, it
just makes me happy. And he's the same. When you know, basically,
when we're split the document and we're writing, we're just
(21:52):
trying to make the other guy laugh and smile because
we've been best friends with kids, you know, so we've
been having this dialogue back and forth. Should then Brian
and David's working relationship points to the same exact thing
Brian's talking about here, just in the way that Haruki
Murakami's cats spring from the well of his unconscious. So
(22:14):
do our obsessions drive us, whether we're artists or not,
and take us to places we couldn't have predicted or
dreamt of. The trick I think is to trust the journey,
to give ourselves permission to follow Emerson's gleam of light.
I know that it's true in the work, and I
know that I could go through the movies that David
(22:37):
and I made and you could definitely find the things
that have obsessed us and the reasons and and really
you're talking about the questions you've been asking yourself the
whole time, and those those questions of course exist in
any in any artist body of work, right exactly. Well, Brian,
this has been such a treat. I'm a fan and
(23:00):
of both your generosity and your art. Thanks so much.
This has been really fun day. I'd like to thank
my guest Brian Compleman, if you haven't already, check out
Billions on Showtime, airing on Sundays at nine pm Eastern
(23:22):
Standard Time, and you can find Brian on Twitter at
at Brian Compliment. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio,
(23:43):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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