December 23, 2021 • 27 mins
The launch of Deep Cover Season 2 is just a month away. Until then, we bring you a conversation between host Jake Halpern and screenwriter/author James Coyne about the genesis of Ned’s novel and the role it played in Jake’s writing of season one. Also, in this episode–a sneak peek of Deep Cover season 2: Mob Land.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake here, and the launch of deep
Cover Season two is just over a month away. We're
hard at work putting it together for you. It involves
political corruption, a legendary hitman, an infamous murder trial, and
an undercover operative who's been on the run from the
(00:36):
Mob for decades. The moment I put the wire around
the first time, my life was over. I couldn't never
practice law anymore. I could never stay in the city anymore.
If it ever got out, they would kill me in
a heartbeat. So stay tuned for a season two of
deep Cover mob Land coming your way January twenty fourth.
(01:01):
In the meantime, I wanted to share a fun conversation
that takes us back to season one of deep Cover.
If you were a fan of the first season, I
think you're really going to like this behind the scenes story.
And if you haven't listened to deep Cover season one yet,
now is a great time to go back and catch
up on it. You might remember from episode one. Deep
Cover started when I got a hold of a novel.
(01:23):
The book had no cover, no copyright page. I mean,
not even a title or an author listed. It just
said Spring nineteen eighty two. And then it started. A
single sodium street light out on the far edge of
a parking lot, shown down on a pay phone. This,
of course, is the actor Walton Goggins, who did all
(01:44):
the voice over readings from Ned's novel. From that lonely
pool of light, the darkness of the parking lot reached
out a good twenty five yards before the glow of
Neon beer signs signaled the borders of another America. This
was the lawless America. This was the rebel yell. This
was easy money, fast bikes, and girls that were easier
(02:05):
and faster than both. Eventually, of course, I met the
guy who the novel was based on, Ned Timmins, and
he told me that this book, this novel about him,
had many different authors. Over the years, Ned worked with
at least four different writers. These were people he hired
to tell his story. What I had read apparently was
(02:28):
a mashup of all their efforts. Plus Ned himself worked
on it. He's still tinkering with it. In fact, if
there any book editors listening, give him a call. Anyway,
I always kind of wondered who these writers were, you know,
what their take on Ned was, Because in a way,
I kind of felt like they were my predecessors. And
(02:49):
then shortly after deep Cover was released, one of them
reached out to me. His name is James Coyne. He's
a screenwriter who lives out in southern California. He told
me he worked with Ned on and off over the years.
So one afternoon I called up James to hear all
about it. He started by telling me about the first
time he met Ned. I think he was much more
(03:13):
understated than I expected him to be based on the story.
You know, he's very kind of you know, he blends
right in right, it was sort of a standard Midwest
American and how he dresses and carries himself. And it's
not until you kind of see, you know, you start
looking him in the eye, that you start to sense
the depths there. But he stands out in Los Angeles
(03:34):
for being very normal kind of Midwest American, but in
any other place in the country, you know, you'd walk
right by him in the airport and never know who
he was. It's interesting, I think, you know, so he
had gone through he had worked with other writers, and
I knew that they had kind of come before me.
I really didn't know a lot of the details. I
(03:54):
had seen what it turns out was an early version
of your novel. It was kind of mysterious. It didn't
even have all the pages and whatnot. But I got this.
But I did understand that this is a guy who
had been trying to tell his story in one form
or another for a long time, like well over a
decade before I ever met him. I think his efforts
(04:16):
went back, you know, more than a decade before meeting me.
You know, yeah, because I saw I saw maybe a
chapter and a half of somebody else's work, which was
attempting to be a much more straightforward kind of um
you know piece. I can't remember the writer's name again.
It was you know, it came in a box with
you know, uh, some photographs of you know, shrunken heads,
(04:37):
and yeah, I think I saw the same box. We
both got the same box. So I sent the box
back to him at some point. It was it was
difficult to parse, um and didn't really have an organizational principle,
so it was it was hard to to get into.
But um, yeah, I was. I was certainly not the
first person to come in, you know. I the novel
(04:59):
was great, and it was it's interesting I'll share with you.
I did a first episode of the podcast without the
novel and it and it didn't quite it didn't work.
And so someone you know, and also there was like
not an obvious point of entry for me as the storyteller,
and I guess I was just telling someone how it
(05:19):
had come onto my radar, and I started talking about
the novel, and then someone said, why don't you just
say that, like you know, it's like, why don't you
just tell like the like the way it really began
and the most obvious point of entry. So then I said, okay,
I start telling the story of the novel. And then
we started reading it. I realized the novel was so
great because it was this one version of Ned, like
(05:43):
in a way, we all have the novel version of ourselves,
right like I have it, you have it. We all
have like the kind of you know, the way we
would like to see ourselves. And so and this was
just actually written out in novel form, and so it
ended up being like an important part of like the
layering of who of who Ned was. And it's clear
(06:04):
it was clear to me that that you would spend
a lot of time getting to know this guy and
also kind of channeling his voice. How how did you
channel his voice? Because you know, having spent a lot
of time with Ned, the voice in the novel often
does sound exactly like him. We're using tape recordings, you're
taking notes. How were you doing it? For me? The
(06:24):
joy of listening to Ned and and and hearing these
stories and and you know, the sort of there's a
there's a deep aspect of wish fulfillment in what Ned did,
right that from a certain point of view, right like
you know that you know he's he's like, he's like
tell me out of a Walter Hill screenplay, right Like
there's a you can you can feel the movie. You're right,
(06:48):
you know, Chimmans, I want your patche and your gun
on my desk, right like, you know, there's a um
And so I think for me in getting into writing
the book, and what was so much fun about writing
the book was was breathing into that aspect of the
wish fulfillment that is inherent to Ned's story anyway. And
so if I adopted some of his language, or if
I subconsciously picked up up on some of his tone,
(07:10):
I think that's just kind of naturally part of my process.
You know, I think everything I write sort of tends
to have the tone of what it wants to be.
You try to find a tone that suits the material.
And I think, you know, Ned provided all of that
over he and I spending so many years together talking
about these things. You know, I love that you were
(07:31):
fascinated by the pig. You know that one of the
screenplays opens on the pig with the mush, with it
being fed the meth up onions, because that was just
such an amazing image, and you're like, I got see
that fucking pig on screen. The pig was great. Oh,
the pig's amazing. There's a big field and there's mountains
up each side, and there's some hillbility there at the gate,
(07:58):
and he meets us and gets as soon as gate
and it's you know, it's just a two track sage
brush cactus and just high mountain desert and we're getting
near the barn and outcomes this freaking five hundred pound pig,
I mean, a big pig. And he said, what the
(08:20):
fuck is it? You know that's the guard hogs. What mean?
He said, well, he smells people if they're you know,
and the mountains are trying to survey us or whatever hills.
And that's true a pig. He has one of the
best noses in the world. What really surprised Ned is
what these hillbillies are feeding their prized guard pig. They'd
soak a bug onion, sweet onion and math and throw
(08:43):
it to the pig. The pig lollved it. I mean,
he's like, you know, he wanted he wanted a fucking onion,
and you know, I didn't really trust him because he's
really fucking big and he's got tossling shit. And this
was Ned's life now, sneaking past a drugged up pig.
What a detail. What was really interesting is that the
moments you chose to use some excerpts from the book
(09:04):
and with the music, is that what what what I
found is that all of a sudden, like some part
of the story became very real and alive in a
way that you know, sort of the more journalistic approach
can get distant, right, like you can feel a step
removed when somebody is as clinically accurate as you were being.
(09:26):
And yet somehow when the music and the story and
all of that comes, it starts to become alive in
a way that I think nonfiction has a much harder
time being than fiction. No, And I'm so glad that
we got Walter Goggins to read it because originally, in
just early versions, I was reading it and it didn't
have the same effect because you really wanted it to
(09:48):
have kind of a distinct voice, and like, it was
just much more effective to have it removed from me.
He's fantastic. They'll kill us, Bruce, we fuck up and
they'll kill us. You understand, no one will even find
the bodies to shoot us and stuck us in a
Vada ascid of some shit. You have any idea how
fucking dangerous this shit is? I nodded, but Toby grabbed
(10:10):
him by the arm leaned in close, close enough he
could smell the ether, the cigarettes and the bo do you, brothers?
You fucking better because it's me and you out there, danglin,
right over the goddamn edge. Let me go back to
a question that I was getting at earlier, which is
that so you start working with them, and you're saying
that maybe as much as a decade before that, he
(10:33):
was working on telling the story, which seems possible to me,
which begs this bigger question of why was it so
important to Ned to tell the story? He went to
enormous trouble and enormous expense over decades to do it,
which is just really unusual. What was driving that? Why
(10:54):
was it so important to him? Do you not sense
from him that he wants a certain validation for his
role in this and that he did feel somewhat sidelined
and forgotten in an investigation that took so much from
him and cost him so much personally and professionally, that
(11:15):
somehow it would all be okay if if the story
was out there in the world and that he got
the credit and recognition that he felt he was due. Yes, yeah, no,
I think that's right. I think there's some of that.
And then I think, too he gets like, you know,
I think a lot of people around him say, holy shit,
this should be a movie, Holy shit, this should be
(11:37):
a book. You know, like, this is incredible, what a story?
You know, why doesn't anyone know this? And you know,
how many times do you hear that before you start
to think to yourself, you know, they're probably right. So
so what is he hired you to write the like?
How did that work? He had he had hired me
to work on the scripts, and then when we had
(11:58):
kind of hit the wall, he approached me about doing
a book. So just to be clear here, it starts off.
It starts off as you writing this script. So he
hired you initially to write a script for a future
and correct correct, which I did, you know again many
many versions of and worked with some pretty high level
people to get into a good position. And uh, you know,
(12:20):
I think the issue where our story kind of hit
a brick wall in Hollywood especially was, you know, it's
it's difficult with marijuana, right like, you know, these guys
are bringing in hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana,
They're doing billions of dollars worth of business. But it's
it's just it's an inherently less threatening drug than you know,
(12:41):
if if these guys have been importing, you know, bargeloads
of cocaine, you know, this story would I think have
been a movie ten years ago, because cocaine is somehow
so much more. You know, it's it's bigger, it's sexier,
it's more dangerous. You can turn it into crack and
ruin an entire community, right you know, you can, you know,
you can let loose the shitload of marijuana on an
(13:02):
entire community, and you know, fast food sales go up, right,
It's just not It just doesn't have the same impact
as as some of the dirty or nasty or drugs
that are out there. And I think that that really
harmed our ability to market the story. That's fascinating. Did
did did they? Were you told that explicitly we're people
going back to producers? Or I yeah, I heard that
(13:24):
explicitly in meetings. You know, could we could we up
the cocaine factor? You know, it's like, wow, not really right, like,
you know, if we're being honest to the story. After
the break, more on my conversation with James. Do you
(13:50):
guys then come up with a whose idea is it
to write a novel? You know, I think it was
Ned who came to me with that idea, and it
says like, let's just turn this into a book, or yeah,
let's turn this into a book. You know the story
better than anyone else at this point, you know, I
like you, you know, um, you know, what could you
what could we possibly do this for financially? And I
(14:12):
sort of looked at, you know, where I was and
what I was doing, and I said, you know, look,
I can give you about twelve weeks, right, and so
this is what I need to live for the next
twelve weeks, and if you can afford that, then I'll
write you the book. You wrote that book in twelve weeks. Yes,
that's crazy. That's like a full length novel and pretty
(14:32):
good shape. Well yeah, and that's well you have you
have the much bridge version. My first draft was I
think somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty five to ninety
thousand words. So you're working on the book when he's
when you're going over these like what do you like?
What do you make of the stories? For example that
he tells you about Toby, For example, I was Toby
(14:53):
was a character that fascinated me. I couldn't actually talk
to him because he had passed away, as you know,
I talked to his son. I remember writing the motorcycles
with them with me on the back. He was just
kind of reckless and dangeroed. I was screaming holding on
for dear life, right, and he just thought it was funny. Um,
But that was him. It's he wasn't There wasn't anything
(15:16):
that that that he was afraid of nothing, nothing. What
was your take on I'm Toby. Well, you know, unlike you,
it was entirely through Ned's eyes, right, you know, for me,
a lot of that stuff was about like, you know, okay,
so Ned's given me some really. Ned has these great details,
amazing and the way he has tagged these details to people,
(15:40):
uh is a very natural storyteller's kind of instinct. Right.
You know, in a different world, Ned would be a
great screenwriter because of how he sort of sees detail
in people and what he chooses to associate with them.
I would ask him, especially early in the process, right,
you know, he's taking all these amazing risks and he's
you know, he's spending months and months, you know, stinking
(16:01):
like a biker and hanging out with these assholes who
clearly he doesn't like, you know, and uh and and
and putting himself in danger and wrecking his family for
this case. Right and why? Right? Like why what was
the what was the driving motivation? Again? If you think
about if you if you said to if you said
to me, you know, James, you know, I want you
(16:22):
to be a hero, and I want you to take
these drugs off the streets, right, you know, you go, Okay,
I can. I can buy into that on some level,
But what was the what was the reason that you
were so devoted to doing this and so willing to
kind of, you know, dig as deep as you did.
And I could never get a straight answer right like
it was, there was never a satisfactory kind of response
(16:44):
from Ned in any of that. Years go by and
I had flown out to Michigan to do sort of
my last round of interviews with him before getting started
on the book. And at that time he had a
home in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula, Uh,
this beautiful hunting cabin that he has um and he
took me around the whole property, and he had done
(17:05):
things like um, you know, like the woods had been
clear in these fairways almost like a golf course, and
then he would plant all of these different herbs and
flowers and seeds that would be perfect for deer. So
the deer would come out of the cover of the
woods and into these places that are basically like a
Schmoger's board for them, a buffet all you can eat
(17:28):
of their most favorite plants, and they'd be completely exposed
while they were eating them, and there'd be a little
hide built down at the other end of the fairway
so a hunter could kill the deer if they wanted to.
It was a hunter's paradise. And inside the lodge, which was,
you know, I'm going to be conservative and say it
was a five thousand square foot home, he had a
taxidermy of almost anything that has ever taken a breath
(17:50):
that you could shoot at. The bears, dozens of them,
these creatures with you know, beautiful horns that had killed
in Africa, lions, you know, just if he could kill it,
he had shot it. And I got up to Pea
in the middle of the night and it was like,
you know, it's like a horror film, like a Frank
Osman movie, right, like where these things are kind of
going to come alive in the darkness because every squares
(18:13):
surf at some point, like a bat had fucking died
in the gutter. And he had a taxi journey as
a joke, right. It was, it was, it was, it was,
you know, it was beyond creepy, it really was. And
what I suddenly realized is that this was why Ned
was an FBI agent, right That badge was his hunting
license for his favorite thing. To hunt, which is human beings.
(18:35):
And starting from the youngest age, some of his earliest memories,
Ned will tell you that his granddad would let him
stand up in a backpack while they would go out
bird hunting, right, Like, you know, Ned's very earliest memories
are you know, hunting. Wow. And the thing that you
know that being an FBI agent really meant to Ned
was this opportunity to go out and hunt the most
(18:57):
intelligent and the most dangerous animal on earth. And when
you listen to how he talks about the people that
he would, you know, go out and get right. What
are the words that you've heard one hundred times out
and as all, this guy's a killer. How many times
have you heard that? Yeah? That's he loves that. Yeah, yeah,
But I agree with you, you know, it's interesting. I
(19:18):
think it's insightful, and I agree that there's the challenge
of it as the hunter. But he also has this
side of him that he befriends these guys um you know,
Lee Rich being one of them. But also there was
a biker that I met that you describe in the
novel Who Who knew Toby who remains close to to
(19:38):
this day. I think he is he does have that
hunting instinct, but simultaneously he also some of these guys
he seems to form like a really intense and lasting
bond with um that's somewhat but only after he's only
after he's bagged him. You know, it's like now their
you know, their teeth have been pulled, their their declaude.
(19:59):
You know, I I you know, it's not a perfect metaphor,
and it never could be, but you know, I don't
I think there's a deep humanity to Ned. I don't
say that to say that he's some sort of sociopath
who just likes to go out and kill people or
hunt them down, but that the thrill of the chase
is the is everything to him. You know, even after
he leaves the FBI, he you know, there's that whole
(20:19):
second chapter of his you know, work in Columbia that
was you know, fascinating and done almost without any kind
of supervision or the ages and protection of any kind
of an agency. That he was working freelance because he
was so hooked on that adrenaline rush that he had
been you know, living for all of those years. Yeah,
if there's a part two of this, like you know,
(20:40):
we said that the novel ended it in kind of
a cliffhanger, with the woman showing up and saying, you know,
I need your help. I have someone down in Columbia
who's in trouble. What is that kind of the elevator
pitch for that sequel. Ned did go to Columbia to
start a fishing business after he left the FBI, and
once he gets down there, he ends up doing a
(21:00):
lot of sort of contract work for customs and sort
of falls very naturally back into being an FBI agent again,
or rather an undercover operative again, and is bombed at
the Hilton. He tells this amazing story of being out
on this little island off the coast of Columbia where
(21:21):
the bugs were so intense at night that you had
to like go to sleep in a hammock wearing a
wetsuit and uh and cover your face with a towel
so that bugs couldn't eat you. There was there was
a lot of detail in that post FBI part of
Ned's life which was really really interesting, and because it was,
you know, being done under his own auspices was infinitely
(21:42):
more dangerous and I think he must have reached a
point where, you know, what you and I would consider danger,
wouldn't even you know, wouldn't even get his heart rate up,
and he you know, I think that the adrenaline hit
that he was looking for was was probably going to
take him to get and killed down there until you know,
he kind of gets his ship together. And I thought
(22:02):
that would have made a very interesting follow up to
the first book. Is there anything else that I that
I didn't ask that you thinks worth mentioning, or that
occurred to you, you know, in the last little bit
while you heard the podcast or afterwards. I think the
thing that I found just so wonderful about the podcast
was the way you really dug in and went past
(22:23):
those those blocks that I never did. I'm so gratified
that I kind of get some of the answers on
a story that you know, I lived with so intimately
for so very long, three drafts of a script and
a novel. Is you know that's that's six eight months
out of my life spent, you know, in Ned's head.
To finally kind of see the larger perspective that you
(22:44):
delivered was intensely gratifying to me. I was able to to,
you know, kind of turn off any personal ego issues
and uh and and really just enjoy what you did.
So I thank you for that. Well, I mean, likewise,
I feel I feel grateful to you. I mean, I
it was the novel that that that drew me into
this story, and and as again as I said to
(23:06):
you earlier, I felt like it was just a faithful
and kind of almost uncanny channeling of Ned's psyche. There
were times I was working on the story and I
had thousands of pain I mean, the amount of transcripts
I have is crazy. But often when I want to
try to really get a sense of how Ned thought
about something, I would go to the novel. And I
(23:29):
think that's just a reflection of the fact that you
spent so much time talking to him and thinking about
him and kind of channeling his character. I was very
much appreciative to have it and to get a chance
to talk with you. Well, this has been a real
pleasure for me as well. After my talk with James,
I kept thinking back to what he said about Ned's
hunting lodge and the rows and rows of taxidermied animals.
(23:53):
That's all true. By the way, Ned told me. There
were eleven bears, two moose, two mountain lions, three caribou,
two Arctic wolves, five to six deer, and seventeen assorted
animals from a hunting trip in Africa. And that's just
to name a few he sent pictures. Actually, imagine the
Museum of Natural History in New York City, only a
(24:15):
lot more crowded. So look, I get why James picked
up on this, why he saw Ned as the hunter.
And I even pose this question straight to Ned, is
this why you did it? The thrill of the hunt?
And Ned, well, he kind of answered me in that
classic roundabout Ned way where he started telling one story
(24:36):
and then another about the bikers, how he spent years
with guys like this. I think Ned was reminding me that, Yeah, sure,
in the Hollywood version of this story, he might be
cast as the Count Zarov character you know from the
movie The Most Dangerous Game, the guy who hunts humans
for fun. In reality, Ned was more like, well, a babysitter,
(24:59):
That's how he put it, anyhow, because there was never
a moment where he could just breathe easy, fix a drink,
and stare into the glassy eyes of a head that
was mounted on his wall. This bonus episode of Deep
(25:22):
Cover was produced by Jacob Smith, Amy Gaines, and Jennifer
Sanchez and was edited by Karen Shakerji. Original music and
our theme was composed by Louise Gera. Mia Loebell is
Pushkin's executive producer. Special thanks to Heather Faine, John Schnarz,
Carli Mgliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano, Jason Gambrel,
(25:46):
Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin Industries. Additional thanks
to Jeff Singer at Stoway Entertainment. Deep Cover is a
production of Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you
can hear deep Cover ads free. You'll also be able
to binge all of season two at once find Pushkin
(26:07):
Plus on the deep Cover Show, payee in Apple Podcasts
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. To find more
Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jake Halpern And if
(26:35):
you've listened this far, here's one more clip from deep
Cover Season two. Mob Land launching January twenty fourth, So Nick,
can you just tell me like if I'm a guy
who owes you money for a juice loan and I
have not paid you. Can you just give me an
example of what you would say to me, Like I
tell you, Jake, you know you got twenty four hours
(26:57):
to come up with that money. If you don't come
up the money, I'm gonna come bust your fucking head
or pop your eyes out and eat him like grapes
Day
Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake here, and the launch of deep
Cover Season two is just over a month away. We're
hard at work putting it together for you. It involves
political corruption, a legendary hitman, an infamous murder trial, and
an undercover operative who's been on the run from the
(00:36):
Mob for decades. The moment I put the wire around
the first time, my life was over. I couldn't never
practice law anymore. I could never stay in the city anymore.
If it ever got out, they would kill me in
a heartbeat. So stay tuned for a season two of
deep Cover mob Land coming your way January twenty fourth.
(01:01):
In the meantime, I wanted to share a fun conversation
that takes us back to season one of deep Cover.
If you were a fan of the first season, I
think you're really going to like this behind the scenes story.
And if you haven't listened to deep Cover season one yet,
now is a great time to go back and catch
up on it. You might remember from episode one. Deep
Cover started when I got a hold of a novel.
(01:23):
The book had no cover, no copyright page. I mean,
not even a title or an author listed. It just
said Spring nineteen eighty two. And then it started. A
single sodium street light out on the far edge of
a parking lot, shown down on a pay phone. This,
of course, is the actor Walton Goggins, who did all
(01:44):
the voice over readings from Ned's novel. From that lonely
pool of light, the darkness of the parking lot reached
out a good twenty five yards before the glow of
Neon beer signs signaled the borders of another America. This
was the lawless America. This was the rebel yell. This
was easy money, fast bikes, and girls that were easier
(02:05):
and faster than both. Eventually, of course, I met the
guy who the novel was based on, Ned Timmins, and
he told me that this book, this novel about him,
had many different authors. Over the years, Ned worked with
at least four different writers. These were people he hired
to tell his story. What I had read apparently was
(02:28):
a mashup of all their efforts. Plus Ned himself worked
on it. He's still tinkering with it. In fact, if
there any book editors listening, give him a call. Anyway,
I always kind of wondered who these writers were, you know,
what their take on Ned was, Because in a way,
I kind of felt like they were my predecessors. And
(02:49):
then shortly after deep Cover was released, one of them
reached out to me. His name is James Coyne. He's
a screenwriter who lives out in southern California. He told
me he worked with Ned on and off over the years.
So one afternoon I called up James to hear all
about it. He started by telling me about the first
time he met Ned. I think he was much more
(03:13):
understated than I expected him to be based on the story.
You know, he's very kind of you know, he blends
right in right, it was sort of a standard Midwest
American and how he dresses and carries himself. And it's
not until you kind of see, you know, you start
looking him in the eye, that you start to sense
the depths there. But he stands out in Los Angeles
(03:34):
for being very normal kind of Midwest American, but in
any other place in the country, you know, you'd walk
right by him in the airport and never know who
he was. It's interesting, I think, you know, so he
had gone through he had worked with other writers, and
I knew that they had kind of come before me.
I really didn't know a lot of the details. I
(03:54):
had seen what it turns out was an early version
of your novel. It was kind of mysterious. It didn't
even have all the pages and whatnot. But I got this.
But I did understand that this is a guy who
had been trying to tell his story in one form
or another for a long time, like well over a
decade before I ever met him. I think his efforts
(04:16):
went back, you know, more than a decade before meeting me.
You know, yeah, because I saw I saw maybe a
chapter and a half of somebody else's work, which was
attempting to be a much more straightforward kind of um
you know piece. I can't remember the writer's name again.
It was you know, it came in a box with
you know, uh, some photographs of you know, shrunken heads,
(04:37):
and yeah, I think I saw the same box. We
both got the same box. So I sent the box
back to him at some point. It was it was
difficult to parse, um and didn't really have an organizational principle,
so it was it was hard to to get into.
But um, yeah, I was. I was certainly not the
first person to come in, you know. I the novel
(04:59):
was great, and it was it's interesting I'll share with you.
I did a first episode of the podcast without the
novel and it and it didn't quite it didn't work.
And so someone you know, and also there was like
not an obvious point of entry for me as the storyteller,
and I guess I was just telling someone how it
(05:19):
had come onto my radar, and I started talking about
the novel, and then someone said, why don't you just
say that, like you know, it's like, why don't you
just tell like the like the way it really began
and the most obvious point of entry. So then I said, okay,
I start telling the story of the novel. And then
we started reading it. I realized the novel was so
great because it was this one version of Ned, like
(05:43):
in a way, we all have the novel version of ourselves,
right like I have it, you have it. We all
have like the kind of you know, the way we
would like to see ourselves. And so and this was
just actually written out in novel form, and so it
ended up being like an important part of like the
layering of who of who Ned was. And it's clear
(06:04):
it was clear to me that that you would spend
a lot of time getting to know this guy and
also kind of channeling his voice. How how did you
channel his voice? Because you know, having spent a lot
of time with Ned, the voice in the novel often
does sound exactly like him. We're using tape recordings, you're
taking notes. How were you doing it? For me? The
(06:24):
joy of listening to Ned and and and hearing these
stories and and you know, the sort of there's a
there's a deep aspect of wish fulfillment in what Ned did,
right that from a certain point of view, right like
you know that you know he's he's like, he's like
tell me out of a Walter Hill screenplay, right Like
there's a you can you can feel the movie. You're right,
(06:48):
you know, Chimmans, I want your patche and your gun
on my desk, right like, you know, there's a um
And so I think for me in getting into writing
the book, and what was so much fun about writing
the book was was breathing into that aspect of the
wish fulfillment that is inherent to Ned's story anyway. And
so if I adopted some of his language, or if
I subconsciously picked up up on some of his tone,
(07:10):
I think that's just kind of naturally part of my process.
You know, I think everything I write sort of tends
to have the tone of what it wants to be.
You try to find a tone that suits the material.
And I think, you know, Ned provided all of that
over he and I spending so many years together talking
about these things. You know, I love that you were
(07:31):
fascinated by the pig. You know that one of the
screenplays opens on the pig with the mush, with it
being fed the meth up onions, because that was just
such an amazing image, and you're like, I got see
that fucking pig on screen. The pig was great. Oh,
the pig's amazing. There's a big field and there's mountains
up each side, and there's some hillbility there at the gate,
(07:58):
and he meets us and gets as soon as gate
and it's you know, it's just a two track sage
brush cactus and just high mountain desert and we're getting
near the barn and outcomes this freaking five hundred pound pig,
I mean, a big pig. And he said, what the
(08:20):
fuck is it? You know that's the guard hogs. What mean?
He said, well, he smells people if they're you know,
and the mountains are trying to survey us or whatever hills.
And that's true a pig. He has one of the
best noses in the world. What really surprised Ned is
what these hillbillies are feeding their prized guard pig. They'd
soak a bug onion, sweet onion and math and throw
(08:43):
it to the pig. The pig lollved it. I mean,
he's like, you know, he wanted he wanted a fucking onion,
and you know, I didn't really trust him because he's
really fucking big and he's got tossling shit. And this
was Ned's life now, sneaking past a drugged up pig.
What a detail. What was really interesting is that the
moments you chose to use some excerpts from the book
(09:04):
and with the music, is that what what what I
found is that all of a sudden, like some part
of the story became very real and alive in a
way that you know, sort of the more journalistic approach
can get distant, right, like you can feel a step
removed when somebody is as clinically accurate as you were being.
(09:26):
And yet somehow when the music and the story and
all of that comes, it starts to become alive in
a way that I think nonfiction has a much harder
time being than fiction. No, And I'm so glad that
we got Walter Goggins to read it because originally, in
just early versions, I was reading it and it didn't
have the same effect because you really wanted it to
(09:48):
have kind of a distinct voice, and like, it was
just much more effective to have it removed from me.
He's fantastic. They'll kill us, Bruce, we fuck up and
they'll kill us. You understand, no one will even find
the bodies to shoot us and stuck us in a
Vada ascid of some shit. You have any idea how
fucking dangerous this shit is? I nodded, but Toby grabbed
(10:10):
him by the arm leaned in close, close enough he
could smell the ether, the cigarettes and the bo do you, brothers?
You fucking better because it's me and you out there, danglin,
right over the goddamn edge. Let me go back to
a question that I was getting at earlier, which is
that so you start working with them, and you're saying
that maybe as much as a decade before that, he
(10:33):
was working on telling the story, which seems possible to me,
which begs this bigger question of why was it so
important to Ned to tell the story? He went to
enormous trouble and enormous expense over decades to do it,
which is just really unusual. What was driving that? Why
(10:54):
was it so important to him? Do you not sense
from him that he wants a certain validation for his
role in this and that he did feel somewhat sidelined
and forgotten in an investigation that took so much from
him and cost him so much personally and professionally, that
(11:15):
somehow it would all be okay if if the story
was out there in the world and that he got
the credit and recognition that he felt he was due. Yes, yeah, no,
I think that's right. I think there's some of that.
And then I think, too he gets like, you know,
I think a lot of people around him say, holy shit,
this should be a movie, Holy shit, this should be
(11:37):
a book. You know, like, this is incredible, what a story?
You know, why doesn't anyone know this? And you know,
how many times do you hear that before you start
to think to yourself, you know, they're probably right. So
so what is he hired you to write the like?
How did that work? He had he had hired me
to work on the scripts, and then when we had
(11:58):
kind of hit the wall, he approached me about doing
a book. So just to be clear here, it starts off.
It starts off as you writing this script. So he
hired you initially to write a script for a future
and correct correct, which I did, you know again many
many versions of and worked with some pretty high level
people to get into a good position. And uh, you know,
(12:20):
I think the issue where our story kind of hit
a brick wall in Hollywood especially was, you know, it's
it's difficult with marijuana, right like, you know, these guys
are bringing in hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana,
They're doing billions of dollars worth of business. But it's
it's just it's an inherently less threatening drug than you know,
(12:41):
if if these guys have been importing, you know, bargeloads
of cocaine, you know, this story would I think have
been a movie ten years ago, because cocaine is somehow
so much more. You know, it's it's bigger, it's sexier,
it's more dangerous. You can turn it into crack and
ruin an entire community, right you know, you can, you know,
you can let loose the shitload of marijuana on an
(13:02):
entire community, and you know, fast food sales go up, right,
It's just not It just doesn't have the same impact
as as some of the dirty or nasty or drugs
that are out there. And I think that that really
harmed our ability to market the story. That's fascinating. Did
did did they? Were you told that explicitly we're people
going back to producers? Or I yeah, I heard that
(13:24):
explicitly in meetings. You know, could we could we up
the cocaine factor? You know, it's like, wow, not really right, like,
you know, if we're being honest to the story. After
the break, more on my conversation with James. Do you
(13:50):
guys then come up with a whose idea is it
to write a novel? You know, I think it was
Ned who came to me with that idea, and it
says like, let's just turn this into a book, or yeah,
let's turn this into a book. You know the story
better than anyone else at this point, you know, I
like you, you know, um, you know, what could you
what could we possibly do this for financially? And I
(14:12):
sort of looked at, you know, where I was and
what I was doing, and I said, you know, look,
I can give you about twelve weeks, right, and so
this is what I need to live for the next
twelve weeks, and if you can afford that, then I'll
write you the book. You wrote that book in twelve weeks. Yes,
that's crazy. That's like a full length novel and pretty
(14:32):
good shape. Well yeah, and that's well you have you
have the much bridge version. My first draft was I
think somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty five to ninety
thousand words. So you're working on the book when he's
when you're going over these like what do you like?
What do you make of the stories? For example that
he tells you about Toby, For example, I was Toby
(14:53):
was a character that fascinated me. I couldn't actually talk
to him because he had passed away, as you know,
I talked to his son. I remember writing the motorcycles
with them with me on the back. He was just
kind of reckless and dangeroed. I was screaming holding on
for dear life, right, and he just thought it was funny. Um,
But that was him. It's he wasn't There wasn't anything
(15:16):
that that that he was afraid of nothing, nothing. What
was your take on I'm Toby. Well, you know, unlike you,
it was entirely through Ned's eyes, right, you know, for me,
a lot of that stuff was about like, you know, okay,
so Ned's given me some really. Ned has these great details,
amazing and the way he has tagged these details to people,
(15:40):
uh is a very natural storyteller's kind of instinct. Right.
You know, in a different world, Ned would be a
great screenwriter because of how he sort of sees detail
in people and what he chooses to associate with them.
I would ask him, especially early in the process, right,
you know, he's taking all these amazing risks and he's
you know, he's spending months and months, you know, stinking
(16:01):
like a biker and hanging out with these assholes who
clearly he doesn't like, you know, and uh and and
and putting himself in danger and wrecking his family for
this case. Right and why? Right? Like why what was
the what was the driving motivation? Again? If you think
about if you if you said to if you said
to me, you know, James, you know, I want you
(16:22):
to be a hero, and I want you to take
these drugs off the streets, right, you know, you go, Okay,
I can. I can buy into that on some level,
But what was the what was the reason that you
were so devoted to doing this and so willing to
kind of, you know, dig as deep as you did.
And I could never get a straight answer right like
it was, there was never a satisfactory kind of response
(16:44):
from Ned in any of that. Years go by and
I had flown out to Michigan to do sort of
my last round of interviews with him before getting started
on the book. And at that time he had a
home in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula, Uh,
this beautiful hunting cabin that he has um and he
took me around the whole property, and he had done
(17:05):
things like um, you know, like the woods had been
clear in these fairways almost like a golf course, and
then he would plant all of these different herbs and
flowers and seeds that would be perfect for deer. So
the deer would come out of the cover of the
woods and into these places that are basically like a
Schmoger's board for them, a buffet all you can eat
(17:28):
of their most favorite plants, and they'd be completely exposed
while they were eating them, and there'd be a little
hide built down at the other end of the fairway
so a hunter could kill the deer if they wanted to.
It was a hunter's paradise. And inside the lodge, which was,
you know, I'm going to be conservative and say it
was a five thousand square foot home, he had a
taxidermy of almost anything that has ever taken a breath
(17:50):
that you could shoot at. The bears, dozens of them,
these creatures with you know, beautiful horns that had killed
in Africa, lions, you know, just if he could kill it,
he had shot it. And I got up to Pea
in the middle of the night and it was like,
you know, it's like a horror film, like a Frank
Osman movie, right, like where these things are kind of
going to come alive in the darkness because every squares
(18:13):
surf at some point, like a bat had fucking died
in the gutter. And he had a taxi journey as
a joke, right. It was, it was, it was, it was,
you know, it was beyond creepy, it really was. And
what I suddenly realized is that this was why Ned
was an FBI agent, right That badge was his hunting
license for his favorite thing. To hunt, which is human beings.
(18:35):
And starting from the youngest age, some of his earliest memories,
Ned will tell you that his granddad would let him
stand up in a backpack while they would go out
bird hunting, right, Like, you know, Ned's very earliest memories
are you know, hunting. Wow. And the thing that you
know that being an FBI agent really meant to Ned
was this opportunity to go out and hunt the most
(18:57):
intelligent and the most dangerous animal on earth. And when
you listen to how he talks about the people that
he would, you know, go out and get right. What
are the words that you've heard one hundred times out
and as all, this guy's a killer. How many times
have you heard that? Yeah? That's he loves that. Yeah, yeah,
But I agree with you, you know, it's interesting. I
(19:18):
think it's insightful, and I agree that there's the challenge
of it as the hunter. But he also has this
side of him that he befriends these guys um you know,
Lee Rich being one of them. But also there was
a biker that I met that you describe in the
novel Who Who knew Toby who remains close to to
(19:38):
this day. I think he is he does have that
hunting instinct, but simultaneously he also some of these guys
he seems to form like a really intense and lasting
bond with um that's somewhat but only after he's only
after he's bagged him. You know, it's like now their
you know, their teeth have been pulled, their their declaude.
(19:59):
You know, I I you know, it's not a perfect metaphor,
and it never could be, but you know, I don't
I think there's a deep humanity to Ned. I don't
say that to say that he's some sort of sociopath
who just likes to go out and kill people or
hunt them down, but that the thrill of the chase
is the is everything to him. You know, even after
he leaves the FBI, he you know, there's that whole
(20:19):
second chapter of his you know, work in Columbia that
was you know, fascinating and done almost without any kind
of supervision or the ages and protection of any kind
of an agency. That he was working freelance because he
was so hooked on that adrenaline rush that he had
been you know, living for all of those years. Yeah,
if there's a part two of this, like you know,
(20:40):
we said that the novel ended it in kind of
a cliffhanger, with the woman showing up and saying, you know,
I need your help. I have someone down in Columbia
who's in trouble. What is that kind of the elevator
pitch for that sequel. Ned did go to Columbia to
start a fishing business after he left the FBI, and
once he gets down there, he ends up doing a
(21:00):
lot of sort of contract work for customs and sort
of falls very naturally back into being an FBI agent again,
or rather an undercover operative again, and is bombed at
the Hilton. He tells this amazing story of being out
on this little island off the coast of Columbia where
(21:21):
the bugs were so intense at night that you had
to like go to sleep in a hammock wearing a
wetsuit and uh and cover your face with a towel
so that bugs couldn't eat you. There was there was
a lot of detail in that post FBI part of
Ned's life which was really really interesting, and because it was,
you know, being done under his own auspices was infinitely
(21:42):
more dangerous and I think he must have reached a
point where, you know, what you and I would consider danger,
wouldn't even you know, wouldn't even get his heart rate up,
and he you know, I think that the adrenaline hit
that he was looking for was was probably going to
take him to get and killed down there until you know,
he kind of gets his ship together. And I thought
(22:02):
that would have made a very interesting follow up to
the first book. Is there anything else that I that
I didn't ask that you thinks worth mentioning, or that
occurred to you, you know, in the last little bit
while you heard the podcast or afterwards. I think the
thing that I found just so wonderful about the podcast
was the way you really dug in and went past
(22:23):
those those blocks that I never did. I'm so gratified
that I kind of get some of the answers on
a story that you know, I lived with so intimately
for so very long, three drafts of a script and
a novel. Is you know that's that's six eight months
out of my life spent, you know, in Ned's head.
To finally kind of see the larger perspective that you
(22:44):
delivered was intensely gratifying to me. I was able to to,
you know, kind of turn off any personal ego issues
and uh and and really just enjoy what you did.
So I thank you for that. Well, I mean, likewise,
I feel I feel grateful to you. I mean, I
it was the novel that that that drew me into
this story, and and as again as I said to
(23:06):
you earlier, I felt like it was just a faithful
and kind of almost uncanny channeling of Ned's psyche. There
were times I was working on the story and I
had thousands of pain I mean, the amount of transcripts
I have is crazy. But often when I want to
try to really get a sense of how Ned thought
about something, I would go to the novel. And I
(23:29):
think that's just a reflection of the fact that you
spent so much time talking to him and thinking about
him and kind of channeling his character. I was very
much appreciative to have it and to get a chance
to talk with you. Well, this has been a real
pleasure for me as well. After my talk with James,
I kept thinking back to what he said about Ned's
hunting lodge and the rows and rows of taxidermied animals.
(23:53):
That's all true. By the way, Ned told me. There
were eleven bears, two moose, two mountain lions, three caribou,
two Arctic wolves, five to six deer, and seventeen assorted
animals from a hunting trip in Africa. And that's just
to name a few he sent pictures. Actually, imagine the
Museum of Natural History in New York City, only a
(24:15):
lot more crowded. So look, I get why James picked
up on this, why he saw Ned as the hunter.
And I even pose this question straight to Ned, is
this why you did it? The thrill of the hunt?
And Ned, well, he kind of answered me in that
classic roundabout Ned way where he started telling one story
(24:36):
and then another about the bikers, how he spent years
with guys like this. I think Ned was reminding me that, Yeah, sure,
in the Hollywood version of this story, he might be
cast as the Count Zarov character you know from the
movie The Most Dangerous Game, the guy who hunts humans
for fun. In reality, Ned was more like, well, a babysitter,
(24:59):
That's how he put it, anyhow, because there was never
a moment where he could just breathe easy, fix a drink,
and stare into the glassy eyes of a head that
was mounted on his wall. This bonus episode of Deep
(25:22):
Cover was produced by Jacob Smith, Amy Gaines, and Jennifer
Sanchez and was edited by Karen Shakerji. Original music and
our theme was composed by Louise Gera. Mia Loebell is
Pushkin's executive producer. Special thanks to Heather Faine, John Schnarz,
Carli Mgliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano, Jason Gambrel,
(25:46):
Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin Industries. Additional thanks
to Jeff Singer at Stoway Entertainment. Deep Cover is a
production of Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you
can hear deep Cover ads free. You'll also be able
to binge all of season two at once find Pushkin
(26:07):
Plus on the deep Cover Show, payee in Apple Podcasts
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. To find more
Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jake Halpern And if
(26:35):
you've listened this far, here's one more clip from deep
Cover Season two. Mob Land launching January twenty fourth, So Nick,
can you just tell me like if I'm a guy
who owes you money for a juice loan and I
have not paid you. Can you just give me an
example of what you would say to me, Like I
tell you, Jake, you know you got twenty four hours
(26:57):
to come up with that money. If you don't come
up the money, I'm gonna come bust your fucking head
or pop your eyes out and eat him like grapes
Day
Host
Jake Halpern
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