Christopher Fryer, Author-Episode #381

Christopher Fryer is the co-author of the books Jack Nicholson: The Early Years; Bruce Dern: Things I Said, but Probably Shouldn’t Have, and Crane: Sex, Celebrity, and My Father’s Unsolved Murder.

Chris’s non-fiction work has also appeared in Conde-Nast Traveler, Playboy, and the New York Times.

I’ve read Crane: Sex, Celebrity, and My Father’s Unsolved Murder, and have chatted about it once before on StoryBeat with Chris’s writing partner, the outstanding author, Robert Crane.  I’ve also read Chris’s short story, Hunting License, which is a very entertaining tale about a hunter who doesn’t like to kill. You’ll need to read it to see how it twists in an unexpected way.  Hunting License is the first tale in the wonderful short story collection, Beyond Where the Buses Run, which was edited by another terrific StoryBeat guest, Theresa Griffin Kennedy.

Episode Transcript

Steve Cu (00:00):
On today's Story Beat.
And he dials the number and Jack Nicholson answersthe phone. Hello. I mean, you know, it's Jack. He
just launches into the spiel that we'd rehearsed ahalf a dozen times that were a couple film
students. We're doing this project. We'd like tointerview you. He said, well, yeah, I'll do it,
but, you know, I'm getting ready to leave to go dothis film in New Jersey and can't do it for a

(00:26):
month or two. And we said, no, that's fine.
Whenever you can do it, we're happy to wait. Youknow, he went off to do the King of Marvin
Gardens, and when he came back, called him and hesaid, all right, come on up. and he gave us his
address. And that's how it happened.
This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast forthe creative mind. Storybeat explores how masters

(00:48):
of creativity develop and produce brilliant worksthat people everywhere love and admire. So join us
as we discover how talented creators find successin the worlds of imagination and entertainment.
Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

(01:11):
Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We're comingto you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. My guest today, Christopher Fryer,is the co author of the books Jack Nicholson, the
Early Years, Bruce Things I Said But probablyshouldn't have and Sex Celebrity and My Father's
Unsolved Murder. I've read Sex Celebrity and MyFather's Unsolved Murder and have chatted about it

(01:35):
once before on Story Beat with Chris's writingpartner, the outstanding author, Robert Crane.
I've also read Kris's short story Hunting License,which is a very entertaining tale about a hunter
who doesn't like to kill. You'll need to read itto see how it twists in an unexpected way. Hunting
License is the first tale in the wonderful shortstory collection beyond where the Buses Run, which

(02:00):
was edited by another terrific story, beast guest,Teresa Griffin Kennedy. So for all those reasons
and many more, it's my great privilege to welcomethe author Christopher Fryer to Story Beat today.
Chris, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks, Steve. It's a real pleasure to be onwith you.
Well, the pleasure and privilege is mine. So let'sgo back in time just a little bit. At what point

(02:21):
in your life did you first start noticing writingand writers and books and that sort of thing?
Early on, I couldn't even pinpoint a time. I'vealways love books. I've always liked putting pen
to paper. Just the physical act of putting ink onpaper gives Me pleasure and always has. And from

(02:44):
early on reading the Hardy Boys, then moving on toEdgar Allan Poe and Rod Serling and things like
that, I've always been interested in writing andreading.
So I'm interested that you say that the act ofputting pen to paper makes you feel good or you
like it. does the same feeling for you when youtype in a. On a typewriter or a computer?

(03:06):
Oh, absolutely not. No, I'm. I'm basically aLuddite, and I use technology minimally, but the.
The actual physical writing for me helps withgetting ideas out. In a weird twist, I'm a very
good speller and always have been, but. But Ican't spell when I'm typing for some reason. If

(03:33):
I'm actually writing words for the first time onthe typewriter, I have a very difficult time
spelling.
That's interesting. So do you write everythinglonghand first?
Absolutely everything is written longhand. Then itgets typed, and I enjoy the process. So I write it
out longhand and then type it. And as I type it, Iedit it. I rewrite when I type, and then I'll

(03:58):
print that out and then take that printed page andthen go through it and write corrections, edits,
changes on the typescript, and then go back andtype it again. So essentially, when I. When I get
to the point where I have a manuscript, from pageone to the end, it's done. I don't. I don't try to

(04:20):
go back and rewrite after that point.
So your drafts tend to be two drafts, your initialhand draft, and then whatever you've typed?
Well, yes, that could actually be four, five, sixtimes. I will write it out, type it, then rewrite
it on the typescript, retype it back and forthuntil it has the right pace, music, whatever you

(04:44):
want to call it.
Well, Rod Serling's a pretty good influence. Andin fact, I think, as you say it, I now can see a
little bit of the Rod Serling influence in. InHunting License, which we'll talk about a little.
A little way down the road, because it's a littlebit in there. It's a little bit, offbeat, which I
think is what Serling was very good at, writing.
did you get formal training as a writer?
Anyway, I took a lot of writing courses incollege. my mom wanted me to go to a creative

(05:10):
writing course one summer when I was maybe 10 or11. And I went to this place in Encino, which you
probably know, on Ventura Boulevard. And I gotthere and, turned out it was A tap dance class. I
don't know. Somewhere in the transmission of whatwas going to happen. Didn't. Didn't get the right

(05:32):
connection with my mom. Anyway, so I had one tapdance class, but it was supposed to be a writing.
It was supposed to be a creative writing class.
But, in college I had a mentor of sorts of aprofessor named Patrick Morrow, who, encouraged me
a lot. And he was. He was really, very,influential for both Bob and I, because he was the

(05:53):
guy who went through our manuscript for JackNicholson Face to Face, as it was called in the
first go around. He gave us suggestions. He readthe manuscript before we submitted it to try and
sell it. And he was very influential as far as Iwas concerned. And I had him for several different
courses, both literature courses and creativewriting courses.

(06:17):
So we'll get back to Nicholson in a bit. I want tocover a couple other things first. But you, know,
that's really good to know that you had not just amentor early on, but someone who you could trust
to look at your work and help you form, it. Whichis, I think, really important for a lot of newer
writers, sometimes even for more mature writers.
And by the way, in my years as a writer inHollywood, I did a lot of tap dancing, so I get

(06:41):
that connection quite a bit. So you've writtenquite a bit of nonfiction, biography and so on,
but you've also written fiction as well. Do youthink of yourself when you're writing nonfiction
as a storyteller?
No, I think of myself as a conduit. A conduit forthe storyteller because of the work that I've had

(07:01):
published, which are essentially other people'smemoirs, whether it's Bruce Dern or Jack Nicholson
or Before, when I was writing for WE and Playboy,Bob and I were interviewing people and we were.
They were telling their story. And my job, Ialways felt, was to be invisible. Which is maybe

(07:22):
why we had the success we did and have therelationships with the people that we've
interviewed is that they trusted us because wefelt that their words were their words and it
wasn't up to us to correct them, to change them.
Yes, we could do some editing for clarification,but we essentially wanted them to be them and to

(07:47):
sound like them.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were kind ofbeing a journalist who does not editorial.
Exactly. That would be exactly right.
You're reporting what you actually see and hear,and you don't try to put a slant on it of any
kind.
No, and even early on, when we put the Nicholsonbook together, which was collection of interviews

(08:07):
with Jack and with people that he worked with, upuntil, say, 1976, it was. It was to make all of
them individuals talking about Jack Nicholson, butto give them their own space, whether it's Karen
Black or Bruce Dern or Dennis Hopper, it wasalways to let them sound like them. So we didn't

(08:30):
editorialize at all. And even in our introductionsto the interviews in that book, we just kind of
laid it out. I know one review of the book saidthat it sounded like the introductions in a
playbill that you'd get, assuming that was a dig,that it was just kind of dry and matter of fact.
But that's what we wanted to do.
It's a bi. It's like a bio. You're tellinginformation.

(08:52):
Yeah. I mean, we said where it happened, how ithappened, how we got to these people, and that
was. That was the reporting.
Well, okay, so I know from doing these manyinterviews on Story Beat, and you've done a lot of
interviews, obviously, that you can slant the waythat a story comes out or your, reportage comes
out by the way that you ask a question, by how youcouch the questions. Were you very careful in the

(09:18):
way that you prepared your questions?
no, to be perfectly honest, no. We were too young,too enthusiastic, and too naive probably to even
think thoughts like that.
So. So when you would ask a question of any ofthese people, how did you know that the question

(09:39):
was not going to then get a negative, nasty, getaway from me, kid response? How did you know that?
We didn't. And. And that negative, nasty responsewould have been part of what we were after.
It actually would have been gold.
Yeah, in a sense. And we were 20 when we startedit. I was 19. In fact, when we started the

(10:01):
Nicholson book. We're film fans, and the people weinterviewed were people that we were interested
in. In fact, from my point of view, everyinterview I've ever done is because I was
interested in that person. So I wasn't interestedin talking to people that didn't. Didn't hold my

(10:23):
interest. So when we talked to Jack Nicholson andwe decided we were going to do a book, and he
okayed it and gave it his blessing, the firstthing Bob and I did was to make a list of
everybody that Jack had worked with to that pointand who we were interested in talking to. And then
we just started making thousands of telephonecalls.

(10:48):
So that was your standard. Your standard was ifyou're not interested, you're not doing the
interview.
Yeah. Which is why I didn't have a Playboy careerlike Bob did. Bob had worked for Playboy for 20
plus years, interviewing people from Coco theGorilla to, you know, professional golfers and
people like that. And I would have loved to haveinterviewed Coco the Gorilla, but some of the

(11:12):
other folks, you know, I would not have been thatkeen to do so.
I see. So I find that interesting because again,this is what I've done for a number of years now
as well. And I've talked to any number of peoplethat have been, brought to me by folks and I
didn't know of them, so I didn't have an interestin them to start. I found an interest in them by

(11:35):
researching who they are and what they've done.
Then I became interested in them. But I've had anynumber of guests on the show who I, frankly you
and I had never met before. but now that I.
And I may be one of those guests who you wish younever had met.
Oh, no, no, no. We're already having a good time,so I know that we're in good shape. The point
being that it's interesting to me that you managedto have a career in which you were able to only go

(12:01):
to people that you knew about and liked or wantedto talk to.
Well, I should say that I didn't make a living asa writer for past 40 years. It was not a
sustainable living. What I did, Bob did workingfor Playboy, I didn't. So I have come along and a

(12:22):
few projects that I've been interested in and I'vebeen lucky enough to be able to do them and the
royalties from the books that I've done are notgoing to support anybody.
That's so true for so many writers. You're notunique in that way. But yes, I understand real,
it's a real issue. Clearly we know that thecriterion is you have an interest in the, the

(12:43):
subject that you're going to interview. But whatmakes a subject interesting to you is it just
simply that they've had a big movie career or isthere something about that person that draws you
to them?
With regard to the, the books, it was the, the,they were the people. Jack Nicholson to begin with
in the late 60s, early 70s. We kind of have to setthis in context. No Internet, you know, none of

(13:07):
this modern stuff, no cell phones, nothing likethat. And what there was, was film and there was
this wave of new American cinema on the heels ofthe Nouvelle Vague, as it's called, in which
there's a new film out now, kind of glory,glorifying that period of French cinema from the

(13:28):
late 50s. But American cinema from the late 60sthrough the end of the 70s to me is unsurpassed in
filmmaking.

Steve Cuden (13:37):
I agree.
Just so many films. And, my wife and I go, we justwent the other night to a 50th anniversary
screening of all the President's Men. It's abrilliant, brilliant movie. There's five minutes
in the middle of the film. No music, just a, closeup, basically, of Robert Redford typing in a

(13:58):
newsroom. And it's the most suspenseful fiveminutes you've ever had.
I have, in my classes, when I've taught, I haveused that as an example of action does not have to
actually be people running or cars being drivenfast or bombs blowing up. Action can be somebody

(14:19):
typing in a room and you're giving the perfectexample of it. And how is. It's a miracle when you
see that, you know, that shouldn't work, but itworks incredibly well in that particular movie.
So, all right. So you find that, something has tobring you to it. Something has to compel you to
that.
Right. And in Those days, in 1970, 71, that thingwas Jack Nicholson. When Easy rider debuted in

(14:49):
1969, nobody had heard of Jack Nicholson for themost part. Even though he'd done 25 films, he'd
produced five films, he'd written several films,nobody knew who he was. Easy Rider opened at the
Fox Village Theater in Westwood, which was one ofthe premier movie palaces in the world at the
time. And the line went around the block and youwent in and you watched this movie. And everybody

(15:15):
that came out of that film had one thing on theirmind and that was, who was that guy? And they
weren't talking about Peter Fonda or DennisHopper. They were talking about this crazy guy
that played the Southern lawyer. So that's whatput him on my radar. And then, you know, Five Easy
Pieces came out. Carnal Knowledge came out. Drive,he said, and these were films that were just

(15:39):
unique and grabbed you and were about things. AndI still look for films that are about things,
about people.
And where do you find those these days?
We are blessed in Hudson Valley to have severalindependent cinemas. They're, they're mostly, non
profits and they're supported by the communitymemberships. And they're just. There's one called

(16:03):
Upstate Films which we go to all the time. We saw,we were there a week ago to see a preview of
Anemone, the new Daniel Day Lewis film. And DanielDay Lewis was there with his son Ronan, who. And
this is a 115 seat theater in the, in Saugerties,New York. And the fact that they get somebody like

(16:30):
Daniel Day Lewis to come and talk and do a Q and Aafter the film is extraordinary. And we're really,
really lucky to have that. So that's, that's wherewe see films and, and they get films that you
don't, you know, see at the multiplex. I haven'tbeen in a multiplex in years.
Yeah, I've stopped more or less going to movieswith people in the audience. and I used to love

(16:53):
it. It was a great thrill for me. And now I findit kind of demoralizing actually. And I'd prefer
to watch them in my home on a nice big screenwhere I can stop it when I want to stop it. But
yeah, that experience, what you're talking about,in a small space showing a unique movie, there's
nothing like it.
I love that experience. I like seeing films on abig screen. We often go at odd times, say four in

(17:19):
the afternoon, so that there aren't a lot ofpeople there because I get annoyed by people who
are looking at their phones, or crinkling, youknow, candy wrappers or crunching popcorn.
Absolutely. So let's talk about Nicholson. Theearly years. We were talking about him a bit. he
has inevitably what is called the it factor.

(17:42):
There's something about him when he's on thescreen.

Christopher Fryer (17:45):
You're.
You can't watch anything else but him or ifthere's someone else you can watch. He's a very
big factor in your watching them. And so what doyou think it is about Jack Nicholson or Bruce Dern
or any big star that makes, gives them that itfactor. Can you figure that out?

(18:05):
Well, for me, it's the fact that they're, they'rethinking, the characters are thinking. They're not
just quoting lines that were written on a scriptpage. And with Nicholson and with Dern, both,

(18:25):
there's this sense of unpredictability that at anymoment they're either going to go off the rails or
they're going to say something. Especially withBruce, they're going to say something just
completely unexpected or do something that'sunexpected. Bruce has this saying that he likes

(18:48):
to. It's, actually his philosophy is that everyday he goes to the set, he wants to do something
that's never been done before. And you get thatfeeling when you're watching Bruce Dern in a film
is that something might happen that you've neverseen before. And the same is true with Nicholson.
And it's, it's what makes them interesting asactors. And there's a certain edginess to them

(19:15):
that gives them a little bit of, dangerousqualities, especially with Dern, because he played
so many psychos. I mean, nobody, nobody plays a,character on the edge of the abyss better than
Bruce. It's, It's. It's a marvel to watch. I'lltell you a story about actors. And one of the
things about actors that I find fascinating is howthey. How they kindle this. This emotion that we

(19:42):
get through the screen. It comes from some innerfurnace that most of us don't have. And I was on
the set of the Great Gatsby when Bruce was filmingGatsby in England, with Robert Redford and Mia
Farrow. And they were doing a scene that tookplace in the Plaza Hotel. The scene essentially

(20:04):
has Daisy coming in. She's all bubbly and cheery,and over the course of about five or six minutes,
it seemed she goes from that bubbly, effervescentcharacter to breaking down in tears and being
distraught and destroyed by what's going onamongst these characters. I watched her do this,

(20:27):
and at the end of the scene with the tears runningdown her face and the makeup running and
everything else, and she did it. And Jack Clayton,the director, would yell, cut. And they'd say,
okay, we're going to go again. And eight takes,which she'd have to have her makeup all redone.
And each time she. She brought up that furnaceagain to kindle those emotions. And it was the

(20:52):
most extraordinary feat of both acting and staminaand emotion. I've never really seen anyone else do
something quite like that. It really wasextraordinary.
So. All right, so let's go to. Or talk about for amoment about how in the world you ever got. You
and Bob ever got Jack Nicholson to talk to you inthe first place?

(21:15):
Again, luck, naivete and just perseverance and notunderstanding what the word no means.
Did. How many times did he say no to you?
He never did. But, Bob and I had a class at USCwhere we were in a film school. He was in a film
school. I was an English major, but I took a lotof film courses. And we had this class called the

(21:40):
Film heroes of the 30s and 60s. It was taught byStephen Karpf, who, with his wife Eleanor, had

written. Just written a fi (21:47):
00am which was a, ah, pretty big hit. It was Michael
Douglas's first big film. So for my thesis forthe, the class, I had just seen Easy Rider a
couple of years before, but, ah, Five Easy Pieceshad just come out and that movie just blew me
away. 1971. And I said, I went to the professor,Stephen Karp, and I said, listen, I want to do my

(22:16):
thesis paper about antiheroes, not film heroes,but anti heroes. And I want to do it about Jack
Nicholson and I'm going to interview him as partof this paper. And he looked at me because he knew
way better than I did that that's not going tohappen. And at that point Bob had transferred into

(22:38):
this class. We said, well, we'll do it togetherbecause that'll help. And he said, go to it. So we
said, well, how are we going to do this? And, mysister in law, her father was this wonderful
gentleman named John Strauss, who's a partner ofMcFadden, Strauss & Irwin, which was one of the

(23:00):
two or three biggest PR firms, publicity firms inHollywood. And I called John and I said, john, do
you have any kind of a contact for Jack Nicholson,Anybody we could call to see if he would do an
interview with us? And he said, I don't know. Andhe gets out his Rolodex and he's flipping through
his Rolodex and he goes, I've got a number here, Idon't know what it is. He said, you can call it.

(23:24):
Might be his publicist, might be his manager. Hesaid, I don't know, I've never spoken to him. I
don't have anything to do with him. His clientlist was Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart,
people like that. Real, you know, a list typepeople. Jack Nicholson was not on John Strauss's
radar in 1971. So I took the number. Bob and I, wewent to Bob's house out in Tarzana. I said, well,

(23:49):
you call it. I'm not going to call. You know, youcall it. So he's standing with the phone like
this, between us, you know, it's a wall phone, noton a cord. And he dials the number and Jack
Nicholson answers the phone, you know, it's Jake.
Hello. I mean, you know, it's Jack. And Bob says,yeah, can I speak to Jack Nicholson? And he says,

(24:09):
yeah, who's calling? And he just launches into thespiel that we'd rehearsed a half a dozen times
that were a couple of film students. We're doingthis project, we'd like to interview you. He said,
well, yeah, I'll do it. But, you know, I'm gettingready to leave to go do this film in New Jersey
and can't do it for a month or too. And we said,no, that's fine. Whenever you can do it, we're

(24:33):
happy to wait. And that's. That's when he went offto do the King of Marvin Gardens, Bob Raphaelson's
film that he did with Bruce Dern and EllenBurstyn. And when he came back, that was like
November of, I'm gonna say 71. And, we called himand he said, all right, come on up. And he gave us

(24:54):
his address, and that's how it happened. So it's.
It was luck, you know, I'll do this, but I don'twant you to publish it because you then as now, he
doesn't do interviews very often. He's. He's, Hethinks doing interviews destroys the ability for
an audience to accept him as a character, which Ithink is pretty true. Because if you've just seen

(25:18):
somebody on Johnny Carson or, you know, nowColbert or Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel, and you
see them the next night in a movie, you say, oh,that's. Yeah, I get it. Okay. That's the guy I saw
last night. And.
He. It's an act. They see the.
Act. And. And they. And Jack never wanted that. Sowe said, no, this is for our paper. And, But then

(25:40):
here's where the serendipity and the luck kind ofcomes into it is we started bumping into him
around town. Bob bumped into him at a RollingStones concert, and I ran into him at an anti
Vietnam war protest at UC UCLA. We saw him at aMcGovern rally. And, you know. And meanwhile, his

(26:00):
career is moving along a pace. We said to him oneday, you know, we'd like to do a book about you.
What do you think? Just about your films. Notabout, you know, your personal life or anything,
just about your movies. And he said, all right. Hesaid, but I'm not gonna help you. And we said, no,
it's fine, as long as you don't say no. And M.
Stand in our way. And, everybody we called thatgoes back to that list we made. The first question

(26:26):
everyone asked us was, does Jack know about this?
And when we said, yeah, he gave us his blessing.
Doors opened. We were given the keys to thekingdom.
Wow. Yeah, well, that's what it would take with aguy like him. So he's notorious for being a bit
aloof or keeping people at bay. and obviously helet you into The Castle. at least for a short

(26:51):
period of time. Did you find him to be difficultto talk to when you were.
Interviewing? Oh, not at all. No. It was great. Imean, he. After three hours, he got a little fed
up, you know, and. But as everybody would. But he,He. He was very open and good with us. But again,
our interest was filmmaking in. In the book Faceto Face, or the Early Years, as it's called now.

(27:20):
We thought the first question that we had to,Which says maybe more about us. But the question
that was burning in our minds that we asked firstand foremost was who edited Easy Writer? Because
Easy Writer was this big hit and everybody talkedabout how brilliantly it was edited, and there was

(27:40):
all this talk about, well, Hopper edited it. Thenhe brought somebody else in and Peter Fond did
some editing, and Jack claimed he did someediting. So our mindset was, well, we have to
resolve this issue of, the editing of Easy Rider.
And it seems pretty silly now, but at the timethat's what we were really interested.

Steve Cuden (28:03):
In. What did he.
Say? He said that a lot of people worked on it. Heworked on it. You know, Dennis did the first cut.
Henry Jaglum did some editing on it. There werequite a few people that had a hand in the editing
of.
It. M. Were there any other challenges that youfaced in putting that book together? Was it

(28:23):
getting to any of these other people? Just gettingthem to talk to you.
Period? there were some. Bob Rafelson, theaforementioned Bob Raphaelson, who directed Jack
in several films in Five Easy Pieces, and theFortune. We called him, and he was, one of the,
three heads of BBS Productions in Hollywood. Andwe called him. He said, does Jack know about this?

(28:45):
We said, yes. And he said, I won't do aninterview, but I will help you in any other way I
can. He let us use offices at BBS to dointerviews. He did screenings for us. We saw a
screening of the King of Marvin Gardens. Not arough cut, but not the final cut. He invited us to

(29:06):
come see it. he gave us 16 millimeter prints ofHead, a film that he and Jack did with the Monkeys
to screen for ourselves. He loaned that. That tous. He was incredibly generous. He just didn't
want to do an interview. So we didn't, you know,and we took. We. We. We didn't press him. We

(29:27):
didn't. We didn't want to wreck our relationshipwith him. So we said, okay, fine, you know, and we
just took the help we could.
Get. Well, that's. That seems to be your thing, bythe way, that you're not salacious in any real
mean spirited way like some authors are. You wantto get to the bottom of the truth of whatever
they're.
Saying. No. And, and I guess the primary exemplarof that is, and I'm sure you know Jack's family

(29:53):
history. Everybody seems to know now. He wasraised by his grandmother who he thought was his
mother. And he lived with his sisters who wereactually one. June was, was actually his mother
and the other sister was Lorraine and she wasactually his aunt. Well, Jack didn't know that in

(30:15):
1971, 72, 73. And it only came to light when aNewsweek reporter brought it up in 1974. Bob and I
knew about it in 1973 when we sold the manuscriptfor the book. There, was some pre publication
publicity, I forget where, but I got a letter inthe mail from a woman who was married to Jack's

(30:42):
biological father. And she said that he was alwaysportrayed in the press as a deadbeat and a drunk
and he was nothing like that. And he was a verydecent man. And would we please not do that in our
book if we brought it up? And this was all news tous, by the way. So we had, Bob and I had a

(31:08):
conference and we said, what do we do with thisinformation? It's 1973. Jack has never spoken
about this publicly. We didn't even know if heknew that his grandmother was not his mother. And
we decided that it was not our place to bring itup. It wasn't our story to tell, it wasn't our

(31:34):
information to ask him about because he's aprivate person and he obviously didn't talk about
it if he knew about it because he didn't want totalk about it. So we didn't bring it up to this
day. I think that was the right.
Decision. Well, I think the listeners should payattention to what Chris just said because it

(31:57):
demonstrates this little funny thing calledscruples or Morals and that you, there are lines
that you can cross and they can be crossed, butthat doesn't make them right to cross.
No. And yes, we could have scooped Time magazineand you know, it might have made our book a best
seller, you know, but that wasn't the point. Ourbook was about Jack and his films. It wasn't about

(32:20):
Jack's family and what happened to him. You know,the serendipity that brought him into the world.
That wasn't our focus. We weren't after that andwe didn't do that. With anybody that we spoke.
To. So did you do a bunch of research, on hisearly career where there were all those things
that he did where he was completely unknown whenhe was working for Hanna Barbera, for instance.

(32:43):
Did you go back that.
Far? Well, we knew that he had started in themailroom at Hanna Barbera. but we did go back and
see. I think we saw all of his early films, fromthe Crybaby Killer to the Monty Hellman.
Existential westerns, you know, Riding theWhirlwind. And.
Did you. Did you get in there? Little Shop ofHorror.
Yeah. Little Shop of Horrors. I loved it. I loveNicholson. And Little Shop of Horrors. He was

(33:07):
doing Peter Lorre, which. I don't know whetherpeople knew it or no. Novocaine, please. You know,
he's. He. He, He was hilarious in the role. Itwas. It.
Was. He was hilarious in the role and over thetop. And it was. And that was a precursor to
everything else that he did, more or less, becausehis performances are very real while being over

(33:28):
the top. It's almost, I don't know how you achievethat, but. Because if you're that over the top, in
some cases, it's not watchable. But he makes itvery.
Compelling. It's like his role as the Joker in theBatman film. exactly. He's been quoted as saying
that he looks at that performance as a piece ofpop art, and it is. It's brilliant. But sadly, in

(33:51):
my estimation, it was the beginning of the end asfar as his acting goes, because he kind of became
a caricature of himself, I think, from then.
On. But he's still. He's still pretty good atdoing all of that. I mean, you can go all the way
up to the Departed and then the Departed. He'sstill over the top, but yet it's pretty amazing.
The Shining. He's completely over the.

(34:11):
Top. I look at the Shining as a comedy. I thinkit's.
Hilarious. Was there anything that you were tryingto get during the course of your creating that
book, writing that book that you wish you hadgotten but were completely unable to get anywhere.
Near? We wanted very badly. We wanted to interviewMike Nichols, and he was shooting Day of the
Dolphin at the time. And, we had correspondencewith him, and he had agreed to do it, but there

(34:36):
was just not a. Not a time. Because we had come togive. We had given ourselves a deadline. We had
been working on it for three years, and we said,we've got to. We gotta wrap this baby up. And we
just ran out of time, couldn't wait any longer.
But we did get. We wrote him a letter. We got avery nice letter back from Mike Nichols. if you

(34:59):
remember in the Graduate, in the opening scene,the party scene, when Benjamin is at home and his
parents are having a party for him, his mom saysto him, oh, you've got to go over and say hello to
so and so. They've come all the way from Tarzanabecause our envelope to Mike Nichols had a return
address of Tarzana. He wrote back and he said, I'mso happy. I've never actually spoken to anybody

(35:23):
from.
Tarzana. Well, that you had no idea that you wereusing an.
In. No, no, no. But it would have been great. Wewould have loved to have had an hour or so with
Mike Nichols. That would have been wonderful. Andthe only other, really, that I wish we'd had was,
Normally when we'd sit down with someone for aninterview, we would have them sign a release

(35:49):
before we did the interview, or at least at theend of the interview when they knew we weren't out
to get them. We just have them sign a releasesaying we could use a photo, an image of them, and
the contents of the interview that we had justrecorded. And, we forgot to do that with Sally
Struthers, who was in Five Easy Pieces with Jack.

(36:13):
And, she was quite famous for being on all in theFamily and as the meathead's wife. And, when I
called her, she lived actually down the block fromme in, in Westwood. When I called her to say, oh,
we forgot to get you to sign a release. It's justa formality that we're. That we can use the

(36:34):
information that we taped. And she said, well, Iwant to read it first. We said, well, we don't
normally let anybody read, you know, the finalversion. I said, it's okay. We're not out to get
you. And we gave her a copy of the finishedinterview. And in the interview, she'd been in a
film called the getaway with Steve McQueen. Andevidently, Steve McQueen was not a very pleasant

(37:00):
person. not a. Not a helpful partner as an actor.
And she. And she kind of ripped him while in theinterview when I went to pick up the release, she
said, you have to take this out or I'll never workagain in Hollywood. And I, you know, I cajoled.
And I said, oh, Sally, come on, you know, I said,nobody's gonna see this, you know, and. And she.

(37:28):
She said, She said, I Can't. And so I agreed totake it out. And I'm sorry that that happened. I
would have liked to have had that in.
There. But I'm sure it didn't help on the set ofthe Getaway that it was being directed by Sam
Peckinpah, who I think is one of the great, butallegedly an impossible man to work.
With. Yeah. And the two of them, I, mean, McQueenevidently had quite an ego and would his. From

(37:55):
what I understand, and I don't. I never met him.
I, you know, I don't really know anything abouthim on a level, but the stories I've heard is that
his way of working was attack before you get.
Attacked. So let's talk for a moment about Crane.
Sex, celebrity, and my father's unsolved,obviously. You've written several books with Bob,

(38:15):
Crane. And this is. Bob Crane is Robert Crane'sfather. And the book is a very intense telling of
this untimely and, well, the life of. And then theuntimely notorious murder of Bob Crane from
Hogan's Heroes fame. I'm just curious. Bob wasyour friend for a long time. At the point that you
sat down to work on that book with him. Howchallenging was it for you to deal with clearly

(38:41):
what has to have been a very deeply personal issuefor Bob while writing together on that.
Book. It might have been difficult. You have toget it from him. It wasn't difficult for me, my
job on that. And I had been encouraging him to dothat book for years. We had talked for many, many
years about doing some kind of book about hisdad's murder. it's more than just his dad's

(39:06):
murder. It's about his relationship with JohnCandy and John Candy's death. It's about his first
wife, Kari, and Kari's early demise from breastcancer. It's a book about life and tragedy and
renewal and just getting through it. I thought itwas a great story. And Bob, as you may or may not

(39:28):
know, having spoken to him, he, like Nicholson, isa really private person, and he always has been.
And part of what makes our friendship work is thatwe respect that, privacy of the other person, but
we understand that we've been let in to that innerroom. So my job, as I saw it on the book, was to

(39:52):
kind of open that door a crack and get Bob to talkabout his feelings about what had happened.
Because the real impact of the book is that in thecourse of the book, he loses his father, he loses
his wife, he loses his job. And his employer andhis friend in relatively short span of time. So

(40:19):
it's a roller coaster ride of both highs and lows,in a lifetime and maybe in more than one.
Lifetime. Well, it's a testament to his, thestrength of his personal.

Christopher Fryer (40:30):
Character.
Exactly. Because he survives quite a bit, as yousay, a very short period of time. And, a bunch of
it is with people that are famed with celebrity.
You've got celebrity right there in the title. Andso it's not in, it's not in the background. It's
not, you know, unknown. It's unknown. So that'swhy I wondered how challenging it was for you. But
you're saying that it was relatively easy for.

(40:51):
You. You will know this because you do yourresearch before you interview somebody. But for
me, I was there for most of it. I was there whenhis dad was murdered. I wasn't in Phoenix
obviously, but I was with him the next day. I was,we. I was with him when his parents were getting

(41:14):
divorced. I was, which was pretty traumatic forhim and his family. I, you know, we have a shared
history. and likewise, he's been with me throughsome trials and tribulations and so we have that
shared history, which makes it easy, made it easyfor me to say, here's what we're going to talk

(41:37):
about. And I would just have to like a jockey. Hewas the horse and I was the jockey. And I had to
know when to give him the whip and, you know, whento give him his head, when to pull him up.
Pulling, him up was not never an issue, but it wasthe goading to get him to go, which was the hard.

(41:58):
Part. What was your process in putting ittogether? Did you sit down and decide you're going
to do it in this particular order? We're going todo it chronologically. We're not going to do it
chronologically. How did you make those.
Decisions? we had kind of a rough outline to gochronologically, but when we got, when we finished
and we, we then had all the, we taped everythingand then had the transcripts done and then we

(42:24):
worked from paper as, as we're want to do. We had,you know, maybe a thousand pages of transcript
and, and cut the sections together and then westructured the book and the book is kind of, you
know, up to date moment, then a flashback up todate or it starts with a flashback at the, the
murder of his father. And then we come up, to dateand then back and forth and back and forth. And we

(42:46):
like that process so that was. That was more of anediting thing. And Bob's a terrific editor when it
comes to putting the collage together that willbecome a book. We work really well that way
together because I'm more concerned about the paceand the language and the momentum of the

(43:06):
sentences. And he's very good about putting thestructure of the. The outside architecture of it.
Together. Did you have to obtain any, clearancesor rights to. To include.
Things? No, because, it was. It's Bob's story.
He's telling it from his perspective. It's in thefirst person. And the people that would have sued

(43:28):
us were dead. And, so we were free to, you know,badmouth them if we wanted.
To. I think the listeners need to pay attention tothis. I get asked this question frequently by
writers and other people in the arts. And that isa rights issue, which can be very, very difficult
if you don't have rights to something, but you'resaying something that's very truthful. If it's

(43:50):
your story that you're writing. And as long as Ithink, and you correct me if you think I'm wrong,
as long as you're not slandering someone ordefaming them in some way, it's your story. So you
can tell that story and not worry about whether ornot you need to obtain rights to tell.
It. Well, exactly. I'm not well versed about theslander laws or libel laws, but if you're

(44:14):
expressing an opinion, you're perfectly withinyour rights to do that. And if you're telling your
story, you know, you are perfectly allowed to say,wow, I interviewed Chris Fryer. What a jackass.
You know, that's within your rights to do that.
Now. If I did that, it wouldn't be my.
Show.
Chris, no matter what I'm thinking, what was yourfavorite moment from the book? What stands out for

(44:44):
you from that book? That was like, wow. That's awow.
Moment. Oh, I don't think I could pinpoint one.
For me, the wow was the process of doing it. Itwas just like everything Bob and I have done. It
was. The process is fun. We. We have just anincredibly great time when we're together, whether

(45:04):
we're on the phone or we're in the same room. Ifwe go out to eat, we laugh a tremendous amount, we
entertain each other. Everybody else might thinkwe're just idiots, but we. We just get a big kick
out of each other and we. We have a great time. Sodoing the book, to me, was the highlight that it's

(45:27):
not the content. It was the.
Process. Got it. Well, that's, you know, that's awonderful thing, when the work itself is at least
equally, if not more so fun and enjoyable than thefinished.
Product. It goes back to what I was saying aboutonly wanting to interview people I was interested
in. I'm very much a. I'm not that ambitious, andI'm very much interested in the things I'm

(45:52):
interested in. So that's my.
Impetus. So you write this great title of a book,Bruce Things I've Said but Probably shouldn't
have. I'm guessing that's a quote of.
His. Yes, that is a quote of his. And in allfairness, we didn't decide on that as the title.
As with many great titles, that was the editor,Eric Nelson, at John Wiley and Sons, who said, oh,

(46:16):
this is the.
Title. It's catchy. It's a good title. It's a. Itgrabs your eye. Give us an example of something
that Bruce Dern said that he shouldn't.
Have. He says a lot of things that he might not orshouldn't have said, about people. Bruce is very
forthcoming. Bruce will tell you one of the thingsthat makes him so great is an interview. He'll

(46:36):
tell you how much he made on a film. He'll tellyou what his salary was. He'll tell you what the
other people were making. He'll tell you whetheror not he actually had sex with Maude Adams during
the sex scene on Tattoo. He doesn't have agovernor on the motor there, between his ears for
most of the time. But having said that, I wouldn'tlike to say what he said that he shouldn't have

(47:00):
said. That would be more something that he wouldhave to be the.
One. Well, give us an example of something that hesaid that you found truly remarkable. Was it the.
The idea of sex with Mod Adams or.
Not? Again, with Bruce Stern stories, there couldbe a little bit of exaggeration going on there.
There's a little bit of. There's a littleembroidery going on. You never know. And if Bruce

(47:26):
tells you the story, it's a. It's a sure bet thatyou're going to hear the same story again maybe
the next day or three days later. I mean, we. Boband I spent 88 hours with Bruce Dern.

Steve Cuden (47:38):
And.
Wow. And we. We heard many stories multiple times,and they always had a little different twist on
them. well, there's always that little embroiderythat goes on, and that's part of what makes Bruce
Dern an unforgettable actor is. You.
Get. Do you think he knows he's doing that, or ishe just. Is that just.
Happening? Yeah, I think he does. One of thestories that he told us was he was doing a film

(48:02):
called Middle Aged Crazy with Ann Margret. It'sabout, you know, a guy going off the rails when he
hits, I don't know, 40, which seems laughable tome now, but, he, you know, buys a Porsche. You
know, he goes through the midlife crisis. Anyway,he's got this sex scene with Ann Margaret, and
when they're. They get into the bed and he'swearing his underwear, and she gets into the bed,

(48:27):
and of course, she's naked, and she says to him,get those off. What are you doing? And so he says,
you know, I'll. I'll take them off. But he says,I'm going to apologize beforehand if I get hard or
if I don't get hard, you know, so it's. Thingslike that. I don't know if he should have said

(48:49):
that, but it's in.
There. That's a great line. I apologize inadvance.

Christopher Fryer (48:56):
Right. All.
Right. So I have to ask you about your. Yourfictional work, your short story that I've read,
Hunting License, I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
You've not written a ton of. Of fiction, have.

Ch (49:08):
You? Well, I have written a.

Steve Cuden (49:09):
Ton.
Just. It's never seen the light of.
Day. It's.
Unpublished. It's unpublished work for the mostpart. Although I do have a pretty impressive stack
of New Yorker.
Rejections. You could publish.
Those. Yeah, I joke with Bob. I said, I've got astory I'm gonna. I was gonna send to the New
Yorker, but I got the rejection before I put it inthe mail, saying, please don't send.

(49:33):
This. So which do you. Which do you prefer,writing fiction or not.
Fiction? I do that. For me. It's. It's. It goesback to what I was saying about just the physical
act of writing, the just putting the pen on thepaper and using words in what, like Bruce Dern
says, maybe in a way that's never quite been donebefore, although I think everything's been done

(49:59):
before. But to get a metaphor or a simile, that isperfect, that sounds good, that has the right
rhythm or to. It is just. There's something just,heartwarming about it to me. And I'll tell you an
interesting thing that I learned when I HuntingLicense was published. I've gone back over the

(50:20):
years, and I have a stack of short stories quite Aquite a pile. And I go back periodically and,
well, I'll pull one out and read it and I'll makea few little corrections or I'll change something,
rewrite something because it doesn't work or Ifind that I can do it better or more succinctly.
Usually is the case, I enjoy them. I go back and Iread them again and I still get, get a certain

(50:46):
pleasure out of reading it. But once HuntingLicense was published, it's like it wasn't mine
anymore. It was gone. And I don't get the samepleasure. I read it once in the book itself and I
thought, nah, I'm not going to read this.
Anymore. Well, it's the only fiction of yours thatI've read. I found it to be very poetic and in a

(51:10):
very interesting way with characters that are veryfascinating and compelling. I'm just wondering,
where did the story come from? It's not from yourreal life, is.
It? Well, it is and it isn't. we live in thewoods. we have bears regularly out, outside the
house trying to take down our bird feeders. And wespend a lot of time hiking in this reserve that's

(51:33):
just down the road from us called the Black RockForest. The essence of that story, which is the
nature of the world, the wild world, that part ofit is, true. That part of it is my experience of
the world. It's the way I feel about the world,the natural world. And I'm much more at home

(51:59):
amongst the trees than I am amongst.

Steve Cud (52:03):
People. The concrete.
Giant. Yes. As the character Purdy is. He seems tobe able to read the signposts in the forest, but
when he gets back to town, he's kind of lost. AndI can understand that.
Sensibility. Well, I can understand thatsensibility too. did you. So in other words. But

(52:30):
the underlying plot, which I don't want to giveaway, that was not anything that happened to.
You. No. You mean, you know, bears packing.

Steve Cuden (52:39):
Heat?
No, no, no. That, that, that's never happened. Butthe whole idea of that has kind of fascinated me.
I mean I've always. I think there's even a line inthe story, when, when the character puts on his,
his vest, his high visibility vest, with thehunting license pinned to the back of it, which

(52:59):
you see a lot of guys dressed like that aroundwhere we live. And coming up, actually hunting
season starts in a couple of weeks. We'll see alot of guys dressed like that. And I've Always
thought, oh, that's a perfect bullseye if theanimals could shoot.
Back. So that's where. Is that where the ideacame.
From? Yeah, basically I was in a little, deciccosupermarket, and there was a guy in front of me

(53:21):
waiting to check out, and he had his. All hishunting gear on and his. His numbered, hunting
license on his back. And I thought, that's abullseye for.
Somebody. Is your process in writing fictionsimilar to your process in non writing,
nonfiction? That is to say, you sit down, youwrite it out longhand, you type it, you revise it

(53:43):
once or twice, and it's good to go. Is that your.
Process? That is absolutely the process. Onlythere are probably six or seven, eight or nine
rewrites along the way before it goes on the.
Stack. Do you tend to outline your work before youstart to write it.
Or do you just write? No, I just write it. I havea good, idea of the story and where it goes. But

(54:03):
part of what's fun for me in the writing is notknowing everything, not knowing where it's going
to go and letting the story and the characterskind of tell you or lead you in that direction.
And that's the interesting part. Things will comeup in the course of the writing that, that you had

(54:25):
no idea about. So I'm not, I'm not a big outliner.
I just kind of have an idea about it. And I do alot of work in my head, in the forest, when I'm.
Walking. And so you actually are trying to besurprised as a, As the reader might be.
Surprised. Exactly. Yeah. It is a discovery. It'sa voyage of.

(54:46):
Discovery. And how often have, in your writingfiction have you come to this discovery, you've
written it and then realized it didn't work atall, and I've got to change it totally. Has that
happened for.
You? If I believe in the story, which is the mostimportant, if the through line of the story or
where I think it's going to go, if that works,then somehow make it work. And that might take

(55:10):
ages. I have a story that I've been working on, anovel, in fact, although I hate to even talk about
it. But, it started as a contemporary piece andit's now historical fiction. To give you an idea,
I mean, I. I literally started writing it in theearly 1980s, and I am still working on it. There

(55:31):
was a long period of time where I just stoppedbecause I couldn't make it work in my head.
Recently I kind of worked it out and I'VE beenmoving along for me at a fairly good pace and hope
to have it done in the next 40.
Years. Well, I. I certainly hope you get it donethe next 40 years too. and. And by the way, today,

(55:59):
I. It's quite obvious today, one doesn't reallyneed a publisher anymore to get it out in the
world. You can do it.
Yourself. For me, it doesn't count if you throw itup on Amazon. It doesn't count. Somebody said once
you might call yourself a writer, but you're neverreally a writer until somebody else calls you a.

(56:20):
Writer. Well, until someone else pays you for.
It. Exactly. To me, the legitimization of thisthing that I'm working on would be a legitimate
publishing house saying, yes, we will pay you forthis, because this is valuable for me. To put that

(56:41):
out on Amazon doesn't do anything for me, and Idon't care whether anybody reads it or not. So
that isn't why I write. I write for.
Me. because it has not been. This is interestingto me. It has not been your main source of income

(57:02):
for your.

Christopher Fryer (57:02):
Life.
No. So the writing has never been driving you towrite it, to get it out, to make money with it.
You write because it does something for your.
Soul.
Exactly. Well, I think that's fascinating. I'vebeen having so much fun having this tremendous
conversation that we could go on for hours, withChris Fryer about his writing and his process and

(57:23):
all the things that he's done and people that he'smet. I think it's fascinating the people you've
met as well. We're gonna wind the show down alittle bit. I'm just wondering in what all of your
experiences. You've told us a lot of very funnystories already and a lot of, kind, of quirky
stories too. I'm wondering, do you have a storyyou can share with us that's either weird, quirky,
offbeat, strange, or just plain.
Funny? Well, there is a story. There's a storyfrom the Nicholson book going back to that early

(57:49):
era. And again, I would remind your listenersthat, we're talking about the early 1970s, so no
Internet. If you wanted to do research about JackNicholson or a film that he did, you had to really
hustle. We spent hours at the Margaret HerrickLibrary at the Academy going through old

(58:12):
information, old magazines, old Hollywoodreporters to get background or, information about
early films of Jack Nicholson's. There was noInternet to dial up Crybaby Killer and see who the
cast was. We had to track down lobby cards, we hadto track down stuff like that. We went, we spent

(58:33):
untold hours at Larry Edmonds Cinema Bookshop. Ithink it was on the Sunset Strip, going to
Hollywood Boulevard. Hollywood Boulevard, Yeah,yeah. Going through these bins of old, you know,
publicity photos and things like that. So that wasthe era we were in. And we tracked down these
photos and we were really lucky. As I mentionedearlier on, Bob Raphaelson was really helpful

(58:58):
getting us, you know, just what one would callmerch now, but you know, one sheets posters from
the films, lobby cards. Henry Jaglum, who directedJack in a film called A Safe Place with Orson.

Steve Cuden (59:12):
Wellesley.
he took us to his house and showed us home moviesthat he'd made with Jack Nicholson. He gave us
photos that we could use in the book that were hisphotos that he had taken. And he said, no, you can
use them, go ahead. And so it was this, you know,scavenger hunt of collecting material. And we got

(59:36):
somewhere, a photo. I'm going to show you the.
Photo. Of course our listeners won't be.
Able to see it, but they won't be able to see it.
But if they go out and buy Jack Nicholson theEarly Years from the University Press of Kentucky,
available online or wherever you get your books,it's on page, it's in the photo group in the
middle. But I'm going to show it to you, Steven,if you can see. I can't really see, but that See

(01:00:01):
that photo? It's Roman Polanski. I'll describe it.
It's Roman Polanski, Bob Evans who producedChinatown, and a woman holding a cigar who looks
incredibly like Faye Dunaway, who was the co starof Chinatown. And we came across this photo and we
loved this photo. It's just a great photo of BobEvans and, and Roman Polanski. And we wanted to

(01:00:28):
use it and we said, well, what are we going to do?
Is that Faye Dunaway? Is that not Faye Dunaway?
And I was in it's the Faye Dunaway Camp. And Bobsaid, I don't think that's Faye Dunaway. And I
said, I think it is. and we argued, we literallyargued for three years before the book was
published, up to and including the final edit withm. Evans & Co. Who published it in New York when

(01:00:51):
they wanted the captions for the films. And weargued about that photo. And I said, look, here's
the bottom line. Either we identify the woman asFaye Dunaway or we have to say Bob Evans, Roman
Polanski and a Woman who looks incredibly likeFaye Dunaway in the caption. And we can't cut her
out. There was no Photoshop in those days. Wecan't cut her out because her hand's in the way

(01:01:15):
with this cigar. And so we'd have to explain whythere's a hand there. Anyway, we decided to go
with Faye Dunaway, and we identified it, andthat's the way it's in the. In the book, in the
original book. Anyway, cut to. The book's beenpublished. We call Jack, and at this point, Jack

(01:01:35):
hasn't seen us in a. In a year or year and a half,something like that. And we call him up and we go,
jack, we've got the book. It's coming out nextweek. We want to bring you a copy. And yeah,
Chris, what is this book? He says to me, you know,the book we were working on with you and all the
people that you worked with? It's finally beenpublished. It's coming out. We go up to the house.

(01:01:57):
All right, come on up. we race up to his house,and it's like we're presenting our firstborn,
which in a way we were. And we give it to him andhe. And he opens it up. We're standing in his
living room and he's. You know, he was pretty. Ithink he was impressed. He was flattered, just
pretty impressed that these two 20 year oldsmanaged to do this. Or as Bruce Dern always

(01:02:21):
referred to us, the two guys from the Texacostation managed to do this. And he's looking
through the book, and literally within, I'm goingto say 30 seconds, he stops, he looks, he goes,
yeah, that isn't Faye Dunaway. And Bob just givesme one of these looks and shakes his.

Steve (01:02:45):
Head and do we know who.
It was? No, no, it's not Faye Dunaway. It's not.

Steve Cuden (01:02:54):
Faye Dunaway.
That's hilarious. You know, ever since then. Sogoing on, what, 50 plus years, I'll say to Bob,
oh, I saw, you know, I saw Daniel Day Lewis theother night. Yeah, and you probably saw Faye
Dunaway too, right? I'm notorious for, you know,seeing people that aren't there. It's. It's a.

(01:03:19):
Celebrity hallucination. that's hilarious. Allright, so last question for you today, Chris.
You've given us a huge amount of advice all alongthe way in this show, and I'm wondering if you
have a single solid piece of advice that you liketo give to those who are just starting out or
maybe they're in a little bit and trying to get tothe next level as a writer.

(01:03:39):
Or whatever. My advice, is to practice the craft.
Just put words on paper, read things. It doesn'thave to be fiction, doesn't have to be non
fiction. Just read the New York Times every day.
It's, it's amazing what information I get everyday from the New York Times. And the writing is

(01:04:00):
brilliant for the most part. and it is a craft.
It's a craft of putting one word after another.
The other thing I would say is get the hell out ofthe house. If it's just go walk in the woods or
get on a plane, go somewhere. To me the greatestthing you can do is to travel and to get a sense

(01:04:22):
of the world and to see the world and people fromdifferent perspectives. Because Americans in
particular are unbelievably blinkered in theirview of the world. And I'm fortunate that, ah, my
wife and I have had years of traveling around theglobe. But that perspective allows you to let your

(01:04:48):
mind expand. Literally. I mean, even being a childof the 60s, I wasn't into mind expansion of the
chemical kind. But that kind of mind expansion isinvaluable if what you want to do.
Is right. I agree, I totally agree. I think that'stwo truly valuable pieces of advice. One is

(01:05:10):
there's only one way to get to be a, writer ofsubstance and that's to write. That's the first
piece. And the second piece is if you don't gofind the world, go look at the world and
experience it, how are you supposed to then,translate anything.
Onto paper? There's an old cliche that you hear inevery writing class that you should write what.
You.
Know. But if you don't know anything because youhaven't been anywhere and you haven't done

(01:05:34):
anything, then that's not going to make for veryinteresting writing. And that's not to say that
you should write your own experience and let thatpose as fiction. I have a real pet peeve about
reading about novels that are about, oh, a youngwoman who's a daughter of a diplomat who, you

(01:05:55):
know, grows up in an embassy on another part ofthe world. And then the author's bio is, you know,
so and so is the daughter of a diplomat and grewup in, you know, an Addis Ababa. That, that
doesn't cut it for me. it's not so much write whatyou know as it is write what you're feeling. And

(01:06:15):
that feeling only gets expanded because of whatyou know and where you've been and what.
You'Ve seen. I tell people to write what they knowin.
Their heart. Exactly. Exactly. Right. That's thatit sit in.
A nutshell.
There's a. There's a wonderful book, one of myfavorite books. It is called west with the Night.
And it was. Oh, do you.

Steve Cu (01:06:34):
Know it? I. I've read.

Christopher Fryer (01:06:36):
It, yeah.

Steve Cuden (01:06:36):
Barrel Markham.
Barrel Markham. Nobody knows Beryl Markham, butBeryl Markham was the first woman to fly solo from
east to west across the. The Atlantic. Everybodyknows Lindbergh did it going from west to east,
and Amelia Earhart was the first woman to do it inthe same direction. But Beryl Markham did it

(01:06:58):
against the wind coming the other direction. Andshe had this extraordinary life growing up, in
Kenya. And I was in Kenya in 1985, and she wasstill alive and managed through, again, this silly
combination of perseverance and luck to find out,where she lived, get in touch with her people, and

(01:07:23):
go out and talk to Beryl Markham, who was in her80s at the time. And it. Was amazing.
Chris Fryer, this has been a tremendous almost anhour and a half on Story Beat today. I can't thank
you enough for your time, your energy, and yourwisdom, and for sharing all these great stories. I
thank you kindly.
Well, it's been my pleasure, Steve.

(01:07:44):
And so we've come to the end of today's StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won't you please
take a moment to give us a comment, rating, orreview on whatever app or platform you're
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(01:08:07):
iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until nexttime, I'm Steve Cuden and may all your stories be
unforgettable.