January 26, 2022 • 27 mins
Welcoming Lili Anolik to The Pod Club! In this week’s episode, host Jo Piazza gets nostalgic with journalist and podcast host Lili Anolik. The two gossip about everything from porn stars to the drug-fueled eighties at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. As the host of podcasts that detail salacious scandals with Once Upon A Time… At Bennington College and Once Upon A Time… In the Valley, Lili leaves no topic off-limits. Her deep dive into the class of 1986 at Bennington college (a class that included literary great Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem and Bret Easton Ellis) is one of the best podcasts of last year and her pod recommendations are truly top notch.
Lili’s Shows:
Once Upon A Time… At Bennington College
Once Upon A Time… In The Valley
Shows mentioned:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A reporter from My Heart Radio. Can I ask you
a couple of questions? Sure? Um, so we're asking questions
about podcasts. Okay, do you guys listen to podcasts occasionally?
How do you find your podcast? Usually a reference from
friends unless you're really bored, Because if you're really bored,
how would you find a podcast? Probably just scrolled through? Correct,
(00:21):
Just so, would you listen to a podcast about podcasts?
Probably not so much out there. You just kind of
dive in on this. Typically one one wee click to
the next week, the podcasting to another podcasts right, yes, fantastic,
Thank you guys, actually starting a new show called The Club.
(00:43):
It's a podcast podcast podcast. By now, it is a
complete cliche to say that listening to a good podcast
is like having a chat with a friend. But I
love cliches, and there's a lot of true in this one.
There's also so many forms that that conversation with a
(01:04):
friend can take. Personally, I love it when one of
my friends tells me one great story, one great story
with a ton of selecious details, something dishy, a little shocking,
basically gossip, but like a big gossip story. And as
a former gossip columnist, myself. I just freaking live to
(01:24):
see people milking stories of the past for all that
they're worth. And that's why today we're talking to the
Great Lily Anelic. She is just as obsessed with these
dishy stories as I am, and her most recent podcast,
Once Upon a Time at Bennington College, really HiT's the spot. See.
It resurfaces old gossip from some key figures in Bennington's
(01:44):
class of They're really famous in some circles. Namely, they're
the literary greats Brett Easton, Ellis, Donna Tart, and Jonathan Leatham.
And in this oral history of their youth, we hear
all the dirty details that you would think would be
buried back in the eighties. We hear about the parties,
the relationships, and even the trio's own secret histories that
(02:07):
spilled over into their work. What Cafe the Dome was
to the Lost Generation, the dining Hall at Bennington College
was to the Lost Generation Revisited, otherwise known as Generation X.
The movable feast had moved ahead six decades and across
the Atlantic, and while of course Southwestern Vermont wasn't Paris, somehow,
(02:31):
in the early to mid eighties it was was just
as sly luge, low down and baroquely wicked. And speaking
of sly luge, low down and baroquely wicked, check out
the habitues seated around the table, Berets swapped for wayfarers
and ready to gorge in the conversation. If not the
(02:52):
food cocaine me pearnelt of its era is a notorious
appetite suppressing after all, Where Brett Easton Ellis future writer
of American Psycho and co leader of Literary brat Pack,
Jonathan Leatham, future writer of Fortresses Solitude and MacArthur Genius,
and Donna Tart, future writer of The Secret History and
(03:14):
Poetzer Prize winner, all three were in Bennington's class of
All three were a long way from home Los Angeles, California, Brooklyn,
New York, and Grenada, Mississippi, respectively. All three were at
various times infatuated and disappointed with one another, their friendships
(03:37):
stimulated and fueled by rivalry as much as affection, and
all three would mythologize Bennington in their fiction that, as
it turns out, wasn't quite and thereby become missed themselves.
So grab a tray, pull up a chair, and try
not to look like you're eavesdropping. I'm Lily Analyck and
(04:00):
this is Once upon a Time at Bennington College. Lily
has been deep into this story for years, and the
show has caused a major store among listeners. The buzz
about it actually reminded me of the good old days
of celebrity gossip, especially when it ended up in page six,
which reported that Donna Tart's lawyer sent letters to Lily
and the show's production company, Caden's thirteen, to cease and
(04:23):
desist the podcast. Those demands have since been dropped, but
it just shows you how committed to telling this story
that Lily actually was. Lily and I talked about all
of this the good old drug fuel days in the
nineteen eighties. What went into making this show? And she
even reveals a couple of new ten bits for us.
I hope you enjoy. I have a really loving Once
(04:50):
upon a Time at Bennington College, Don't I love to
hear that? I know? Right? Um, So tell me tell
me a little bit how the idea came about. So
it started as a piece for Esquire. I did an
oral history for Esquire on Bennington College class of eight six,
So this was like for their two thousand nineteen summer issue,
but it started earlier. So reddyston Ellis did a movie
(05:13):
called The Canyons, this kind of porno noir thriller, was
starring Lindsay Lohan and James Dean, the adult actor. Anyway,
I was in his apartment interviewing him, and this was
in two thousand thirteen, and I saw on the bookshelf
behind him, I saw he had a first edition copy
of The Secret History, which I had read, you know,
twelve times, so many times. So I started asking him
(05:35):
about it, and he mentioned that they had gone to college.
He mentioned this one day they'd been on Jonathan Leatham
was in that class, and um, maybe about a year
or so later, Rett and I started to become pretty friendly.
I was always asking him about Bennington. Just the confluence
of those three writers was totally fascinating to me, and
I was very into him, very into The Secret History.
(05:55):
And you know, I had read a ton of Jonathan's work.
I was a fan of his as well. So that's
just sort of how it's arted. So the podcast is
a deeper dive into this Esquire piece. Why the decision
to turn it into audio, because I think it's so
rich in audio. I actually I went back and read
the original piece, but I'm enjoying it much more listening
(06:17):
to it. Yeah, I had. I had done this podcast
last year called Once Upon a Time in the Valley,
which was on kind of the adult actress Tracy Laura's
and kind of the underage scandal. So I had worked
in the audio Forum. That was my first time doing
a podcast. But I loved it because I mean, I'm
a nonfiction writer and sometimes I feel my head bumping
(06:38):
up against the limits of the genre. I quote people,
you know, people say words to me like I have
a recorder and then I transcribe, but the words themselves
kind of only get across some of the meeting. There's
something in a sarcastic voice, or they put a certain
spin on the words, or there's kind of pauses in
between these words that's still revealing, that conveys half of
(06:58):
the meaning. I think. So when I had done this
story about the adult industry in the eighties, I interviewed
a lot of porn stars, and a lot of these
people kind of had huge charisma and had kind of
real forceful personalities. There was the force of intelligence and
what they were saying, but they weren't using sophisticated language.
So if I just wrote down what they said, they
wouldn't sound so smart. But if you could hear them,
you were persuaded by what they were saying, or you
(07:19):
were caught up in what they were saying. So I
felt like that was the only medium for that kind
of story. Then with Bennington, Um, the voices were kind
of so full of intelligence and kind of vitality and Jews.
It's just it's it's way better to listen to I feel, Yeah,
it's definitely definitely way better to listen to tell us
a little bit about once upon a time in the Valley.
So as I said, it's Tracy Lawrence, who kind of
(07:41):
was the biggest porn star in the business between six
and she was dominating that business. It turns out she
was underage, right, she'd gone in with yeah, the issued
fake idea. It was a kind of a complicated story
her back story. But a couple of weeks after she
turned eighteen, it was revealed that she had been under
age for her entire career, and she had only made
(08:02):
one legal adult movie called Tracy, I Love You, made
in France. I think she started shooting the day or
the day after her eighteenth birthday. Uh, And she was
a producer on that movie, one of the producers, and
the story is that she owned the rights to that movie.
So the adult industry maintained that she she she blew
(08:22):
the whistle on herself because it was going to mean
an enormous pay day. And she's always maintained she doesn't
know who did it um and that she was victimized
by the industry. So kind of I liked the tension
between these two points of view, both of which are
quite persuasive. So I always thought it was kind of
a great noir. It's July Night. Six Two months earlier,
in May six, two things had happened. Tracy had turned eighteen,
(08:48):
and Tracy had made the third of the three X
rated movies she was supposed to make with Scott and
the Tracy Lord's Company. That third movie was called Tracy
I Love You, and it was shot in France. When
the FBI pays its unexpected visit, she's in a darker
place as she's ever been. I was extremely suicidal when
(09:09):
the MBI actually rated my apartment. I was ninety pounds
and I'm five ft seven so, I mean, I was
pretty much wasting away. Tracy is handcuffed, dragged from her
apartment complex, and shoved into the back of an unmarked car.
They took me downtown to the Federal Building, and they
(09:30):
questioned me. I was, you know, wearing a long T
shirt and nothing else in bare feet, and I was
taking up this freight elevator in the Federal Building. It
feels to Tracy like a kidnapping. She's dazed, frightened, and
crashing from the coke. She's sure this is a drug bust,
but her certainty is misplaced. It isn't about the drugs.
(09:54):
It's about the underage movies. Even when she understands this though,
she doesn't understan and this. I didn't get what everything
was happening. My brain was pretty mushy, and I thought,
why now, Why would they be trying to help me?
Stop me? Now? Why after three years, does anybody even care?
(10:17):
I'll listen to or read anything about the porn industry.
It's fascinating, it's great, it's great. Think it was great,
and it's just totally and it's shadow Hollywood. And this
is kind of the shadow or the kind of the
dark brother of Hollywood. It's all fascinating. What I loved
about Once upon the Time of the Valley is that
it was so place specific. I mean, it was just
(10:38):
like gritty eighties, flashy l A. And then once upon
a time at Bennington College, you still get a taste
of that because we have brat Easton Ellis's l A.
But then we're also going to this very buttoned up
but also the wildest, wickedest college in America. There was
(11:05):
this rumor that Bennington was the only place in the
world where the four winds meet at once. These mists,
these thick, heavy mists would roll in there at night,
so thick that you couldn't see your hand when you
held it up to your face. Your head would spin.
(11:25):
When you were there, it was like it was a
different dimension, or it was a place where the veils
between the dimensions were so thin, Like there was this
energy coming up from the earth, and I'm sure it
tapped into all of our creativity and all because all
of us were intuitive, creative artists that were picking up
stuff and like little antennayes, and this place was so charged,
(11:50):
like polarically, I don't even know if that's a word.
It was crazy, and I think that having that kind
of ATMO sphere, we all pushed each other to the
limits and we end each other on and that kind
of creative competition and letting your mind go wild is powerful.
(12:12):
Ship tell us a little bit about the Bennington Class
of nine and why they're so fascinating for me. I come,
you know, I'm a I'm a what do you call it,
a bookworm? So I riteen I was a freshman in
(12:32):
high school when The Secret History came out, and I
just read it over and over. So to find out
from Brett that so much of the Secret History was
Romanta Clay was based on this very real college I
love that, you know, and I find him kind of
one of the most interesting people in the culture. Brett.
I mean, I think he's our Andy warhol Um and totally,
(12:55):
I totally agree with you. I love that joke because
I feel like I'm fighting an uptail battle on that one.
But I really think he's totally compelling and he's not
even my type as a writer, but at any rate,
you know, those two were in the same class, and
Brett writes compulsively about Bennington. He calls it Camden less
than Zero is his first novel, The kiro Clay goes
to Camden, which is his Bennington. Then Rules of Attraction
(13:17):
is next novel is set at Camden. The next novels
American Psycho. Patrick Bateman, who is American psycho, goes to Harvard,
but he has a younger brother named Sean Bateman who's
at Bennington. It's just it's it's almost his um, like
the landscape of Bret's imagination Campden College. So I was.
I was so into it for these reasons. And then
of course Jonathan's greatest novel to me is Fortress of Solitude,
(13:40):
which has a long sequence set at Camden, you know,
Brett's Bennington. And then as I got deeper into it
the research, I've been out this for years, you know,
like I've been at the Bennington story for years. One
of the girls I interviewed, a young women women I
interviewed was Lisa Fader, who was class of eighty five,
and she told me she'd met the real Bunny cork
Grand who's the murderer in the Secret History. Oh my gosh, yes, yes.
(14:03):
And so for me it's like this, I guess this
kind of meta experience where these guys are not my friends.
I talked to them all the time, and it's like,
so it's almost like living in the novel for me.
Oh my gosh, that's awesome. It is, right, Yes, Like
imagine imagine being able to live inside your favorite your
favorite novel. That is the coolest thing ever. So, the
(14:25):
majority of the Bennington classmates have been pretty cooperative. It
sounds like people were excited to talk about this, this
class in their college. Yeah. I mean, look, it's it's
the long con. I mean, I'm teasing, but it's like
you have to get so deep in this world for
trust to be established. It's a real process. And I
can only I always say, like I would only ever
(14:46):
do this is something that I loved and was completely
obsessed by because it's just it's so absorbing. It's my
whole life. It becomes my whole life. Um, So everyone cooperated,
I happened. So the one thing I have to ask you,
everyone cooperated, but Donna Tart did not want to. And
Donna is apparently not the happiest that this is happening.
Can you walk us through what happened with her? Well, So,
(15:08):
like I'm in the dark for a lot of this
because I've never spoken. I've never had direct contact with Donna,
But when I was doing this as an Esquire piece,
of course, contacted her through her agent UM several times
and I never received a response, So I just so
she didn't want to be involved, right, So the piece
came out and people were into the piece, I mean,
people were into this topic. I could see that, and
(15:30):
I could I heard about that. UM. So then when
I decided to do it as a podcast, again contacted
her through her agent, and this time I got a
polite decline. But then kind of a couple of weeks later,
UM Cadence, the company I'm doing the podcast with. UM,
I think that maybe two letters from her lawyer, and
then a couple of letters from her publishing houses, various
(15:51):
publishing houses, and also from Paul mcloyn, who had been
her her boyfriend at Bennington, who was one of the
classic students, one of Claude Frederick's students. And then of
course there was a take down notice from Apple that
also we also received from Spotify, but those were dropped.
So I know, I'm assuming she is not not delighted,
but I actually don't don't actually know, right, I mean, frankly,
(16:13):
I think all press is good press. So many people
reach out and tell me that they downloaded the episode
after they heard that Donna Tartage, yes, page six, after
after they read it in page six. So I'm like, great, amazing.
If that's what it takes to get people listen to
a good podcast, I'm all bored. Can someone please sue me?
(16:33):
I will totally do it after we get out to
some it is perfect, perfect, Yeah, just file an injunction
that sounds like a legal term against Joe Piazza and
the pod club. Perfect. And then I'll drop and then
I'll and then I'll drop it in page six. I
still know some people over there. Yeah. And it's funny
because page six actually becomes a part of the story
because when when Brett publishes lesson zero, you know, it's
(16:55):
it's he's still a student at Bennington and he becomes
a page age six kind of cover boy or oh
yeahs kind of made bradies to us. It was amazing
the power of it, you know, it was it's pre
social media and this this kind of wonderful guy. I
interviewed for this, a guy named Brad Gooch who was
a poet and a novelist and kind of an avant
(17:16):
garde writer. But the reason I found brad Gooch was
because anytime I asked someone about a party that made
waves in New York in the eighties, kind of among
cafe society, literary society, they mentioned that brad Gooch was there.
But he's also a really totally brilliant person. And he
was describing what social life was like in the eighties,
like in New York, kind of among kind of famous people,
in literary people. And he said that page six was
(17:37):
kind of this dominant presence, and you'd be a bold
faced name in page six, so people would know each other,
not because of social media, which didn't exist, but because
they read. They'd read about each other in page six.
And he said, so you go to these parties and
it was like these bold face names interacting, you know,
bouncing off each other, and there was a lot of coke,
and there was a lot of drinking, and you'd have
these kind of wonderfully superficial encounters that were just personas
(17:59):
bouncing off the other. And he made this other really
great point, which is that the writers you tend to
think of that you associate with this period, like Breddison
l s. J. Mcinnernye, Candice Bush. Now, they were all
doing this kind of deep journalism. It was fiction, but
they were all. They had these kind of party personas
and going out was part of their literary life. I
know it's so fun. I mean because I was so.
(18:19):
I was a gossip columnist in the early two thousand
for the New York Daily News for Russian Life. But
I always said that I just I missed missed my era,
like the eighties when you were just running around doing
all the coke with Jay McInerney and Breddyston ls how
Florida it was. It was still fun when I was
there in the two thousands, but I think it was
(18:41):
probably much more fun in the eighties. No, probably, but
you still got that Golden age, it really if you're
at the tail end of it. I was at the
tail end of the Golden age I was. I was
at the Bungalow eight age, when like three social media,
three cell phones with cameras, when life was still fun,
when leife was still only god, oh my god. First
of all, I'm taking you out later so you can
tell me about Bungalow. Yes, yea, hope, Please don't have.
(19:04):
That's that's a date happening. And that's why That's part
of why I love listening to Once upon a Time
at Bennington, because it reminds me of just how fun
life was pre social media and pre phones on cameras.
And I know that I might be idolizing it a
(19:25):
little bit, but it still seems just like so much
freaking it seems so I only I like the joke
is that like I moon walk into the future, like
I'm always yes, time is passing when I'm always looking back,
because you know, you could have a private life. Now.
(20:05):
I want to move on a little bit from Once
upon a Time at Beddington. What do you listen to?
What kinds of podcasts have you in? Too? Well? So,
when I did UM once upon a Time in the Valley,
I did it with a guy named Ashley West. That's
his nom de porn. That's the joke. Actually has a
real identity in a real life UM. But but he
(20:25):
did the Realta Report. Do you know what that is? No,
Oh my god, it's interviews. So he's British, incredibly well mannered,
a real straight job, like a straight straight job, like
you would be shocked if you knew what it was
and he but he has this like Corn podcast. He's
like he interviews everybody from the Golden Age Corn and
(20:47):
he's been doing it since the nineties. Hello and welcome
to the Realty Report podcast hosted by Michael Bowen and myself,
Ashley West. This podcast is dedicated to the Golden age
of adult phil in New York and we'll feature interviews,
profiles and features of the actors, directors, distributors, cinema one as,
(21:07):
crew members and anyone else who was interviews and stories
of that world. And I just love it, right, I
listened to it always, The Rialta Report, Rialta Report is
so it's just it's great. And then I of course
listen to Brett's podcast because bred obsessive. I didn't I
didn't know that a podcast. God, yeah, he and right,
(21:28):
I love that he did his newest novel on the podcast.
He didn't he hasn't published it yet. He would read
a chapter every week, which I just I'm so into. Um.
So it's the Brett Easton Ellis show. It's like on Patreon. Um.
I am scrolling through the Brett Easton Ellis podcast right now,
and there's an episode with Andrew McCarthy where they talk
about less than Zero and the ending of Britian Pink
(21:51):
and I just want to hang up on you right
now and listen to It's totally great. And then I
listened to Kreina long a lot. Yeah, she's amazing, she's great.
And I actually, probably the biggest honor of my wife.
I played Elizabeth Taylor in Love as a Crime. Really,
(22:12):
this is the story of one of old Hollywood's wildest scandals.
A story about male violence and female silence, a story
about my grandparents, Hollywood film producer Walter Wager and actress
Jone Bennett. I'm Vanessa Hope and I'm Corina Longworth, host
and creator of You Must Remember This, and together with
(22:35):
Vanity Fair and Cadence thirteen, will tell the untold story
of the Bennett Wager romance and professional partnership, a film
noir played out in real life. Introducing Love is a Crime.
And I thought, like what she did was so clever.
I mean, because like John Hamm is playing Walter, and
(22:58):
she's got like all these kind of great actor is
acting it out. I mean, it's just it's like she's
she's she's doing new things with the form, it was
just great. I mean, I guess that's like an old
fashioned radio show kind of, but that's what I was
just gonna say. I feel. And so this podcast Love
is a crime, which she did it for Vanity Fair,
and it's essentially a radio play. What is it? Totally
(23:19):
but it's new, it's like new, it's so old it's new.
Ranger's suspicions were confirmed. Taylor and Burden were in fact
having an affair, even as Liz and her then husband
Eddie Fisher presented a united front to Walter's face, even
as Richard's wife Sybil arrived in Rome to lay claim
(23:41):
to her man. As shaken as Walter was and concerned
about finishing the film, a visit to Elizabeth's villa put
everything in perspective. Interior Elizabeth Taylor's Villa, Rome. I feel dreadful, Sybil,
it's such a wonderful woman. There are tides to life
(24:03):
and love. They ebb and flow. It sounds corny, I guess,
but it's hard to swim against the tides. Funny you
should say that Richard calls me ocean. But I really
love Eddie. I hate feeling so confused. We all love you, Liz.
I promise you'll get everything you want, but what do
I want? My heart? It feels as though it's hemorrhaging,
(24:27):
believe me, I know. So yeah, no, no, she's She's great.
So it's just it feels fresh and new in a way,
in a way that I don't know. I mean, I write,
I write for magazines, but that form just feels like
it's like getting smaller and smaller. It is intimate. It's
like you're whispering in their ear exactly. And and I
(24:48):
think the audience feels like a fire ball in these converts,
in these conversations that they would never otherwise be purty too.
So yeah, I think that you are. That you're doing
that so well in in Once upon a Time, um,
when you essentially transport us to Bennington in which is
and then take us inside the pages of the Secret History,
(25:11):
which is just awesome. Yes, I love you saying all that.
I have your email. I really am going to make
you hang out with me anudience. I'm gonna go, well,
we were Breton Bosciat did coke in the bathroom? We
can't yea yeah yeah, and we'll just really fresh fries
because we're you know we're adults speaking to friends. We're
(25:31):
middle aged. And that is it for the pod Club
this week, my friends. If you haven't already, please listen
to literally shows. They're wonderful, Once upon a Time at
(25:53):
Bennington College and Once upon a Time in the Valley.
You also have to hear her amazing with Taylor Impression
in Love as a Crime, which is also a podcast
that you should be listening to, like right now, download it,
do it. We also talked about The Realta Report, which
you can find wherever you get your podcasts, and Bratt
Easton Ellis's podcast, which you can find on Apple Podcasts,
(26:16):
plus some exclusive episodes on his Patreon. Well, a lot
more for you next week. As always, until then, happy listening.
The pod Club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
executive producers are Me Again and Emily marinof our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
(26:39):
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
special thanks to Nikki Tour. He was just a wonderful
human being where had to think at the end of
episodes two,
A reporter from My Heart Radio. Can I ask you
a couple of questions? Sure? Um, so we're asking questions
about podcasts. Okay, do you guys listen to podcasts occasionally?
How do you find your podcast? Usually a reference from
friends unless you're really bored, Because if you're really bored,
how would you find a podcast? Probably just scrolled through? Correct,
(00:21):
Just so, would you listen to a podcast about podcasts?
Probably not so much out there. You just kind of
dive in on this. Typically one one wee click to
the next week, the podcasting to another podcasts right, yes, fantastic,
Thank you guys, actually starting a new show called The Club.
(00:43):
It's a podcast podcast podcast. By now, it is a
complete cliche to say that listening to a good podcast
is like having a chat with a friend. But I
love cliches, and there's a lot of true in this one.
There's also so many forms that that conversation with a
(01:04):
friend can take. Personally, I love it when one of
my friends tells me one great story, one great story
with a ton of selecious details, something dishy, a little shocking,
basically gossip, but like a big gossip story. And as
a former gossip columnist, myself. I just freaking live to
(01:24):
see people milking stories of the past for all that
they're worth. And that's why today we're talking to the
Great Lily Anelic. She is just as obsessed with these
dishy stories as I am, and her most recent podcast,
Once Upon a Time at Bennington College, really HiT's the spot. See.
It resurfaces old gossip from some key figures in Bennington's
(01:44):
class of They're really famous in some circles. Namely, they're
the literary greats Brett Easton, Ellis, Donna Tart, and Jonathan Leatham.
And in this oral history of their youth, we hear
all the dirty details that you would think would be
buried back in the eighties. We hear about the parties,
the relationships, and even the trio's own secret histories that
(02:07):
spilled over into their work. What Cafe the Dome was
to the Lost Generation, the dining Hall at Bennington College
was to the Lost Generation Revisited, otherwise known as Generation X.
The movable feast had moved ahead six decades and across
the Atlantic, and while of course Southwestern Vermont wasn't Paris, somehow,
(02:31):
in the early to mid eighties it was was just
as sly luge, low down and baroquely wicked. And speaking
of sly luge, low down and baroquely wicked, check out
the habitues seated around the table, Berets swapped for wayfarers
and ready to gorge in the conversation. If not the
(02:52):
food cocaine me pearnelt of its era is a notorious
appetite suppressing after all, Where Brett Easton Ellis future writer
of American Psycho and co leader of Literary brat Pack,
Jonathan Leatham, future writer of Fortresses Solitude and MacArthur Genius,
and Donna Tart, future writer of The Secret History and
(03:14):
Poetzer Prize winner, all three were in Bennington's class of
All three were a long way from home Los Angeles, California, Brooklyn,
New York, and Grenada, Mississippi, respectively. All three were at
various times infatuated and disappointed with one another, their friendships
(03:37):
stimulated and fueled by rivalry as much as affection, and
all three would mythologize Bennington in their fiction that, as
it turns out, wasn't quite and thereby become missed themselves.
So grab a tray, pull up a chair, and try
not to look like you're eavesdropping. I'm Lily Analyck and
(04:00):
this is Once upon a Time at Bennington College. Lily
has been deep into this story for years, and the
show has caused a major store among listeners. The buzz
about it actually reminded me of the good old days
of celebrity gossip, especially when it ended up in page six,
which reported that Donna Tart's lawyer sent letters to Lily
and the show's production company, Caden's thirteen, to cease and
(04:23):
desist the podcast. Those demands have since been dropped, but
it just shows you how committed to telling this story
that Lily actually was. Lily and I talked about all
of this the good old drug fuel days in the
nineteen eighties. What went into making this show? And she
even reveals a couple of new ten bits for us.
I hope you enjoy. I have a really loving Once
(04:50):
upon a Time at Bennington College, Don't I love to
hear that? I know? Right? Um, So tell me tell
me a little bit how the idea came about. So
it started as a piece for Esquire. I did an
oral history for Esquire on Bennington College class of eight six,
So this was like for their two thousand nineteen summer issue,
but it started earlier. So reddyston Ellis did a movie
(05:13):
called The Canyons, this kind of porno noir thriller, was
starring Lindsay Lohan and James Dean, the adult actor. Anyway,
I was in his apartment interviewing him, and this was
in two thousand thirteen, and I saw on the bookshelf
behind him, I saw he had a first edition copy
of The Secret History, which I had read, you know,
twelve times, so many times. So I started asking him
(05:35):
about it, and he mentioned that they had gone to college.
He mentioned this one day they'd been on Jonathan Leatham
was in that class, and um, maybe about a year
or so later, Rett and I started to become pretty friendly.
I was always asking him about Bennington. Just the confluence
of those three writers was totally fascinating to me, and
I was very into him, very into The Secret History.
(05:55):
And you know, I had read a ton of Jonathan's work.
I was a fan of his as well. So that's
just sort of how it's arted. So the podcast is
a deeper dive into this Esquire piece. Why the decision
to turn it into audio, because I think it's so
rich in audio. I actually I went back and read
the original piece, but I'm enjoying it much more listening
(06:17):
to it. Yeah, I had. I had done this podcast
last year called Once Upon a Time in the Valley,
which was on kind of the adult actress Tracy Laura's
and kind of the underage scandal. So I had worked
in the audio Forum. That was my first time doing
a podcast. But I loved it because I mean, I'm
a nonfiction writer and sometimes I feel my head bumping
(06:38):
up against the limits of the genre. I quote people,
you know, people say words to me like I have
a recorder and then I transcribe, but the words themselves
kind of only get across some of the meeting. There's
something in a sarcastic voice, or they put a certain
spin on the words, or there's kind of pauses in
between these words that's still revealing, that conveys half of
(06:58):
the meaning. I think. So when I had done this
story about the adult industry in the eighties, I interviewed
a lot of porn stars, and a lot of these
people kind of had huge charisma and had kind of
real forceful personalities. There was the force of intelligence and
what they were saying, but they weren't using sophisticated language.
So if I just wrote down what they said, they
wouldn't sound so smart. But if you could hear them,
you were persuaded by what they were saying, or you
(07:19):
were caught up in what they were saying. So I
felt like that was the only medium for that kind
of story. Then with Bennington, Um, the voices were kind
of so full of intelligence and kind of vitality and Jews.
It's just it's it's way better to listen to I feel, Yeah,
it's definitely definitely way better to listen to tell us
a little bit about once upon a time in the Valley.
So as I said, it's Tracy Lawrence, who kind of
(07:41):
was the biggest porn star in the business between six
and she was dominating that business. It turns out she
was underage, right, she'd gone in with yeah, the issued
fake idea. It was a kind of a complicated story
her back story. But a couple of weeks after she
turned eighteen, it was revealed that she had been under
age for her entire career, and she had only made
(08:02):
one legal adult movie called Tracy, I Love You, made
in France. I think she started shooting the day or
the day after her eighteenth birthday. Uh, And she was
a producer on that movie, one of the producers, and
the story is that she owned the rights to that movie.
So the adult industry maintained that she she she blew
(08:22):
the whistle on herself because it was going to mean
an enormous pay day. And she's always maintained she doesn't
know who did it um and that she was victimized
by the industry. So kind of I liked the tension
between these two points of view, both of which are
quite persuasive. So I always thought it was kind of
a great noir. It's July Night. Six Two months earlier,
in May six, two things had happened. Tracy had turned eighteen,
(08:48):
and Tracy had made the third of the three X
rated movies she was supposed to make with Scott and
the Tracy Lord's Company. That third movie was called Tracy
I Love You, and it was shot in France. When
the FBI pays its unexpected visit, she's in a darker
place as she's ever been. I was extremely suicidal when
(09:09):
the MBI actually rated my apartment. I was ninety pounds
and I'm five ft seven so, I mean, I was
pretty much wasting away. Tracy is handcuffed, dragged from her
apartment complex, and shoved into the back of an unmarked car.
They took me downtown to the Federal Building, and they
(09:30):
questioned me. I was, you know, wearing a long T
shirt and nothing else in bare feet, and I was
taking up this freight elevator in the Federal Building. It
feels to Tracy like a kidnapping. She's dazed, frightened, and
crashing from the coke. She's sure this is a drug bust,
but her certainty is misplaced. It isn't about the drugs.
(09:54):
It's about the underage movies. Even when she understands this though,
she doesn't understan and this. I didn't get what everything
was happening. My brain was pretty mushy, and I thought,
why now, Why would they be trying to help me?
Stop me? Now? Why after three years, does anybody even care?
(10:17):
I'll listen to or read anything about the porn industry.
It's fascinating, it's great, it's great. Think it was great,
and it's just totally and it's shadow Hollywood. And this
is kind of the shadow or the kind of the
dark brother of Hollywood. It's all fascinating. What I loved
about Once upon the Time of the Valley is that
it was so place specific. I mean, it was just
(10:38):
like gritty eighties, flashy l A. And then once upon
a time at Bennington College, you still get a taste
of that because we have brat Easton Ellis's l A.
But then we're also going to this very buttoned up
but also the wildest, wickedest college in America. There was
(11:05):
this rumor that Bennington was the only place in the
world where the four winds meet at once. These mists,
these thick, heavy mists would roll in there at night,
so thick that you couldn't see your hand when you
held it up to your face. Your head would spin.
(11:25):
When you were there, it was like it was a
different dimension, or it was a place where the veils
between the dimensions were so thin, Like there was this
energy coming up from the earth, and I'm sure it
tapped into all of our creativity and all because all
of us were intuitive, creative artists that were picking up
stuff and like little antennayes, and this place was so charged,
(11:50):
like polarically, I don't even know if that's a word.
It was crazy, and I think that having that kind
of ATMO sphere, we all pushed each other to the
limits and we end each other on and that kind
of creative competition and letting your mind go wild is powerful.
(12:12):
Ship tell us a little bit about the Bennington Class
of nine and why they're so fascinating for me. I come,
you know, I'm a I'm a what do you call it,
a bookworm? So I riteen I was a freshman in
(12:32):
high school when The Secret History came out, and I
just read it over and over. So to find out
from Brett that so much of the Secret History was
Romanta Clay was based on this very real college I
love that, you know, and I find him kind of
one of the most interesting people in the culture. Brett.
I mean, I think he's our Andy warhol Um and totally,
(12:55):
I totally agree with you. I love that joke because
I feel like I'm fighting an uptail battle on that one.
But I really think he's totally compelling and he's not
even my type as a writer, but at any rate,
you know, those two were in the same class, and
Brett writes compulsively about Bennington. He calls it Camden less
than Zero is his first novel, The kiro Clay goes
to Camden, which is his Bennington. Then Rules of Attraction
(13:17):
is next novel is set at Camden. The next novels
American Psycho. Patrick Bateman, who is American psycho, goes to Harvard,
but he has a younger brother named Sean Bateman who's
at Bennington. It's just it's it's almost his um, like
the landscape of Bret's imagination Campden College. So I was.
I was so into it for these reasons. And then
of course Jonathan's greatest novel to me is Fortress of Solitude,
(13:40):
which has a long sequence set at Camden, you know,
Brett's Bennington. And then as I got deeper into it
the research, I've been out this for years, you know,
like I've been at the Bennington story for years. One
of the girls I interviewed, a young women women I
interviewed was Lisa Fader, who was class of eighty five,
and she told me she'd met the real Bunny cork
Grand who's the murderer in the Secret History. Oh my gosh, yes, yes.
(14:03):
And so for me it's like this, I guess this
kind of meta experience where these guys are not my friends.
I talked to them all the time, and it's like,
so it's almost like living in the novel for me.
Oh my gosh, that's awesome. It is, right, Yes, Like
imagine imagine being able to live inside your favorite your
favorite novel. That is the coolest thing ever. So, the
(14:25):
majority of the Bennington classmates have been pretty cooperative. It
sounds like people were excited to talk about this, this
class in their college. Yeah. I mean, look, it's it's
the long con. I mean, I'm teasing, but it's like
you have to get so deep in this world for
trust to be established. It's a real process. And I
can only I always say, like I would only ever
(14:46):
do this is something that I loved and was completely
obsessed by because it's just it's so absorbing. It's my
whole life. It becomes my whole life. Um, So everyone cooperated,
I happened. So the one thing I have to ask you,
everyone cooperated, but Donna Tart did not want to. And
Donna is apparently not the happiest that this is happening.
Can you walk us through what happened with her? Well, So,
(15:08):
like I'm in the dark for a lot of this
because I've never spoken. I've never had direct contact with Donna,
But when I was doing this as an Esquire piece,
of course, contacted her through her agent UM several times
and I never received a response, So I just so
she didn't want to be involved, right, So the piece
came out and people were into the piece, I mean,
people were into this topic. I could see that, and
(15:30):
I could I heard about that. UM. So then when
I decided to do it as a podcast, again contacted
her through her agent, and this time I got a
polite decline. But then kind of a couple of weeks later,
UM Cadence, the company I'm doing the podcast with. UM,
I think that maybe two letters from her lawyer, and
then a couple of letters from her publishing houses, various
(15:51):
publishing houses, and also from Paul mcloyn, who had been
her her boyfriend at Bennington, who was one of the
classic students, one of Claude Frederick's students. And then of
course there was a take down notice from Apple that
also we also received from Spotify, but those were dropped.
So I know, I'm assuming she is not not delighted,
but I actually don't don't actually know, right, I mean, frankly,
(16:13):
I think all press is good press. So many people
reach out and tell me that they downloaded the episode
after they heard that Donna Tartage, yes, page six, after
after they read it in page six. So I'm like, great, amazing.
If that's what it takes to get people listen to
a good podcast, I'm all bored. Can someone please sue me?
(16:33):
I will totally do it after we get out to
some it is perfect, perfect, Yeah, just file an injunction
that sounds like a legal term against Joe Piazza and
the pod club. Perfect. And then I'll drop and then
I'll and then I'll drop it in page six. I
still know some people over there. Yeah. And it's funny
because page six actually becomes a part of the story
because when when Brett publishes lesson zero, you know, it's
(16:55):
it's he's still a student at Bennington and he becomes
a page age six kind of cover boy or oh
yeahs kind of made bradies to us. It was amazing
the power of it, you know, it was it's pre
social media and this this kind of wonderful guy. I
interviewed for this, a guy named Brad Gooch who was
a poet and a novelist and kind of an avant
(17:16):
garde writer. But the reason I found brad Gooch was
because anytime I asked someone about a party that made
waves in New York in the eighties, kind of among
cafe society, literary society, they mentioned that brad Gooch was there.
But he's also a really totally brilliant person. And he
was describing what social life was like in the eighties,
like in New York, kind of among kind of famous people,
in literary people. And he said that page six was
(17:37):
kind of this dominant presence, and you'd be a bold
faced name in page six, so people would know each other,
not because of social media, which didn't exist, but because
they read. They'd read about each other in page six.
And he said, so you go to these parties and
it was like these bold face names interacting, you know,
bouncing off each other, and there was a lot of coke,
and there was a lot of drinking, and you'd have
these kind of wonderfully superficial encounters that were just personas
(17:59):
bouncing off the other. And he made this other really
great point, which is that the writers you tend to
think of that you associate with this period, like Breddison
l s. J. Mcinnernye, Candice Bush. Now, they were all
doing this kind of deep journalism. It was fiction, but
they were all. They had these kind of party personas
and going out was part of their literary life. I
know it's so fun. I mean because I was so.
(18:19):
I was a gossip columnist in the early two thousand
for the New York Daily News for Russian Life. But
I always said that I just I missed missed my era,
like the eighties when you were just running around doing
all the coke with Jay McInerney and Breddyston ls how
Florida it was. It was still fun when I was
there in the two thousands, but I think it was
(18:41):
probably much more fun in the eighties. No, probably, but
you still got that Golden age, it really if you're
at the tail end of it. I was at the
tail end of the Golden age I was. I was
at the Bungalow eight age, when like three social media,
three cell phones with cameras, when life was still fun,
when leife was still only god, oh my god. First
of all, I'm taking you out later so you can
tell me about Bungalow. Yes, yea, hope, Please don't have.
(19:04):
That's that's a date happening. And that's why That's part
of why I love listening to Once upon a Time
at Bennington, because it reminds me of just how fun
life was pre social media and pre phones on cameras.
And I know that I might be idolizing it a
(19:25):
little bit, but it still seems just like so much
freaking it seems so I only I like the joke
is that like I moon walk into the future, like
I'm always yes, time is passing when I'm always looking back,
because you know, you could have a private life. Now.
(20:05):
I want to move on a little bit from Once
upon a Time at Beddington. What do you listen to?
What kinds of podcasts have you in? Too? Well? So,
when I did UM once upon a Time in the Valley,
I did it with a guy named Ashley West. That's
his nom de porn. That's the joke. Actually has a
real identity in a real life UM. But but he
(20:25):
did the Realta Report. Do you know what that is? No,
Oh my god, it's interviews. So he's British, incredibly well mannered,
a real straight job, like a straight straight job, like
you would be shocked if you knew what it was
and he but he has this like Corn podcast. He's
like he interviews everybody from the Golden Age Corn and
(20:47):
he's been doing it since the nineties. Hello and welcome
to the Realty Report podcast hosted by Michael Bowen and myself,
Ashley West. This podcast is dedicated to the Golden age
of adult phil in New York and we'll feature interviews,
profiles and features of the actors, directors, distributors, cinema one as,
(21:07):
crew members and anyone else who was interviews and stories
of that world. And I just love it, right, I
listened to it always, The Rialta Report, Rialta Report is
so it's just it's great. And then I of course
listen to Brett's podcast because bred obsessive. I didn't I
didn't know that a podcast. God, yeah, he and right,
(21:28):
I love that he did his newest novel on the podcast.
He didn't he hasn't published it yet. He would read
a chapter every week, which I just I'm so into. Um.
So it's the Brett Easton Ellis show. It's like on Patreon. Um.
I am scrolling through the Brett Easton Ellis podcast right now,
and there's an episode with Andrew McCarthy where they talk
about less than Zero and the ending of Britian Pink
(21:51):
and I just want to hang up on you right
now and listen to It's totally great. And then I
listened to Kreina long a lot. Yeah, she's amazing, she's great.
And I actually, probably the biggest honor of my wife.
I played Elizabeth Taylor in Love as a Crime. Really,
(22:12):
this is the story of one of old Hollywood's wildest scandals.
A story about male violence and female silence, a story
about my grandparents, Hollywood film producer Walter Wager and actress
Jone Bennett. I'm Vanessa Hope and I'm Corina Longworth, host
and creator of You Must Remember This, and together with
(22:35):
Vanity Fair and Cadence thirteen, will tell the untold story
of the Bennett Wager romance and professional partnership, a film
noir played out in real life. Introducing Love is a Crime.
And I thought, like what she did was so clever.
I mean, because like John Hamm is playing Walter, and
(22:58):
she's got like all these kind of great actor is
acting it out. I mean, it's just it's like she's
she's she's doing new things with the form, it was
just great. I mean, I guess that's like an old
fashioned radio show kind of, but that's what I was
just gonna say. I feel. And so this podcast Love
is a crime, which she did it for Vanity Fair,
and it's essentially a radio play. What is it? Totally
(23:19):
but it's new, it's like new, it's so old it's new.
Ranger's suspicions were confirmed. Taylor and Burden were in fact
having an affair, even as Liz and her then husband
Eddie Fisher presented a united front to Walter's face, even
as Richard's wife Sybil arrived in Rome to lay claim
(23:41):
to her man. As shaken as Walter was and concerned
about finishing the film, a visit to Elizabeth's villa put
everything in perspective. Interior Elizabeth Taylor's Villa, Rome. I feel dreadful, Sybil,
it's such a wonderful woman. There are tides to life
(24:03):
and love. They ebb and flow. It sounds corny, I guess,
but it's hard to swim against the tides. Funny you
should say that Richard calls me ocean. But I really
love Eddie. I hate feeling so confused. We all love you, Liz.
I promise you'll get everything you want, but what do
I want? My heart? It feels as though it's hemorrhaging,
(24:27):
believe me, I know. So yeah, no, no, she's She's great.
So it's just it feels fresh and new in a way,
in a way that I don't know. I mean, I write,
I write for magazines, but that form just feels like
it's like getting smaller and smaller. It is intimate. It's
like you're whispering in their ear exactly. And and I
(24:48):
think the audience feels like a fire ball in these converts,
in these conversations that they would never otherwise be purty too.
So yeah, I think that you are. That you're doing
that so well in in Once upon a Time, um,
when you essentially transport us to Bennington in which is
and then take us inside the pages of the Secret History,
(25:11):
which is just awesome. Yes, I love you saying all that.
I have your email. I really am going to make
you hang out with me anudience. I'm gonna go, well,
we were Breton Bosciat did coke in the bathroom? We
can't yea yeah yeah, and we'll just really fresh fries
because we're you know we're adults speaking to friends. We're
(25:31):
middle aged. And that is it for the pod Club
this week, my friends. If you haven't already, please listen
to literally shows. They're wonderful, Once upon a Time at
(25:53):
Bennington College and Once upon a Time in the Valley.
You also have to hear her amazing with Taylor Impression
in Love as a Crime, which is also a podcast
that you should be listening to, like right now, download it,
do it. We also talked about The Realta Report, which
you can find wherever you get your podcasts, and Bratt
Easton Ellis's podcast, which you can find on Apple Podcasts,
(26:16):
plus some exclusive episodes on his Patreon. Well, a lot
more for you next week. As always, until then, happy listening.
The pod Club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
executive producers are Me Again and Emily marinof our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
(26:39):
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
special thanks to Nikki Tour. He was just a wonderful
human being where had to think at the end of
episodes two,
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