October 24, 2024 • 50 mins
Bestselling authors William and Lara Bernhardt discuss the latest news from the book world, offer writing tips, and interview Glenn Plaskin, the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, includingHorowitz and Katie Up and Down the Hall, Glenn’s profiles of interview subjects, including Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, and Robert De Niro, have appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, among many others.
Chapter 1: Opening Thoughts
Everybody loves a good celeb interview...
Chapter 2: News
1) Brandon Sanderson is Opening His Own Bookstore.
2) Romantasy is Going to the Movies.
Chapter 3: Craft Corner
Jon Meyers and Emily Brooks address how to retain authenticity in your writing. Visit their website.
Chapter 4: Interview with Glenn Plaskin
Chapter 5: Parting Words
WriterCon has its own newsletter and you don’t want to miss a single next issue. www.writerconmag.substack.com
If you haven’t joined the WriterCon Facebook Group yet, do it today and join this wonderful community of writers. Click here.
You can find the video version of these podcasts on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@writerconpodcast1307
Until next time, keep writing, and remember: You cannot fail, if you refuse to quit.
William Bernhardt
www.williambernhardt.com
www.writercon.com
Chapter 1: Opening Thoughts
Everybody loves a good celeb interview...
Chapter 2: News
1) Brandon Sanderson is Opening His Own Bookstore.
2) Romantasy is Going to the Movies.
Chapter 3: Craft Corner
Jon Meyers and Emily Brooks address how to retain authenticity in your writing. Visit their website.
Chapter 4: Interview with Glenn Plaskin
Chapter 5: Parting Words
WriterCon has its own newsletter and you don’t want to miss a single next issue. www.writerconmag.substack.com
If you haven’t joined the WriterCon Facebook Group yet, do it today and join this wonderful community of writers. Click here.
You can find the video version of these podcasts on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@writerconpodcast1307
Until next time, keep writing, and remember: You cannot fail, if you refuse to quit.
William Bernhardt
www.williambernhardt.com
www.writercon.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the writer Con podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, the first piece of advice I'd say is if
you can avoid doing it, I would do so.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers to
share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of
the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, award
winning author the want Ln Files book series.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thank you, Jesse Ulrich, Hey, they're writers. Thanks for joining us, Lara,
good to see you again. Lara has raced back from
the Greek festival just so she can be here today.
How was the festival?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
It was so fun. We had a great time. We
had simple, delicious food made right there on site. We
heard music, we saw some Dan saying, we toured beautiful church,
got a little history lesson it was. It was fun,
but I didn't want to miss the podcast, so no, ame.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I'm back home and staying busy. I'm working on a
new book, but it's way too soon for me to
talk about that because I really don't have a fix
on what I'm doing yet. Is a little early, Jesse,
are you staying busy?
Speaker 5 (01:12):
I am staying very busy.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I keep getting more clients, which is great, except it
is a elimited amount of time in my day.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
So h Jesse's team is.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Growing, relatable, fantastic, Yes, so well. Our interview today is
with author and celebrity interviewer Glenn Plaskin. He's the author
of numerous New York Times bestseller including a biography of
Vladimir Horowitz and a beautiful book I highly recommend called
(01:42):
Katie Up and Down the Hall. You'll hear him talk
about that during the interview. He has profiled so many
interview subjects I don't even know where to begin, Meryl Streep,
Paul Newman, Robert de Niro, Carol Burnett, Dolly Parton, Who
am I'm forgetting? Laura Elizabeth Taylor, Yes, and Katherine.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Hepburn Hepburn both Aurey Audrey and Katherine Hepburn right.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
His interviews have appeared in The New York Times, The
San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, million other places. He's a
terrific guy and a fascinating storyteller, and I'm looking forward
to talking to him. But first the news. Our first
(02:43):
story concerns Brandon Sanderson, who the guy what my boy
oh right has pronounced his name or something that.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
He's just really excited.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I picked this for you, Jesse. He's still making waves
in the published world. You may remember an earlier story
when we talked about his Kickstarter in which he raised
over forty million bucks to publish several books that he's written.
And with those funds, he's now started his own publishing
(03:16):
and I don't mean just technically owns one. He's like
created a facility for publishing and distributing books near his home.
He's got his own conference that he does every year,
and that's where this new announcement, which shouldn't surprise us
at all, came about. He's going to start his own bookstore.
(03:39):
He's purchased land next to the former Evermore Park in
Pleasant Grove, Utah, which is designated for a book bookstore.
He also revealed that Dragon Steele that's what he's called
in the whole area. It's Dragon Steel Plaza. That's a
word that come that's book series, right, Jesse.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
No, it's it's like a reference to it. That's the
name of his company that he made after the forty
million dollars. And I think I think the I think
his conference is also called Dragon's Deal.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
But I thought it came from the books.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
No, yes, yes, it's not. It's not a name of
one of his books. It comes from one of his books.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Is that the name of the series because they're talking
about the fifth whatever? It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Listen, listeners, listen, I want you to know that I
know the name of the book series is the storm
Light Chronicles. Okay, no way, the storm Light Archives. Oh
my god, storm Light Archives. And the fifth book comes
down December.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Okay. And he had a pop up store at the conference, right,
but now he's going for a real bookstore. So Jesse,
I probably don't really even need to ask this, but
would you shop at the Sanderson bookstore? Are they gonna
stock everybody's books? Or just zillions of copies of his?
(04:55):
I don't know five's fantasy novel? How many is he got?
Speaker 5 (04:59):
U three?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
He's got like ten to twelve now in total. I
imagine he's gonna have other authors there, Knowing just the
way he likes to do things, I imagine he will.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
He will sell other peoples.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And I have no doubt his publishing armble Party start
publishing other people too well.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
And that's the next question for this. The bookstore given
the way this guy rolls, could this be the first
bookstore in a chain? Could we have fantasy focused national
bookstore chain? Because I think a lot of people would
welcome that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I know love industry insiders watch this podcast. I want
to be very clear, themed bookstores is a great idea,
like a science fiction only bookstore. One hundred thousand percent
fantasy only one thousand percent.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Love it right? And we're seeing a lot of romance
focused or romanticy focused bookstores opening, but not so much
with fantasy. So maybe this will fill a niche.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Why is there not a bookstore that feels like the
Green Dragon and hobbiton where I can buy fancy books?
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Why does that not exist?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well? But do we think is he thinking of expanding
into the former Evermore Park? Do we think maybe there's
going to be a transition that he'll have his bookstore
there and then maybe there will be a he'll theme
that park to his Dragon Parkers theme park.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
That would be incredible. Was he thinking, you know, for
probably when he.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Bought that land.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Yeah, I know he's been what I'm wondering.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Like, he's very I mean, he's written for video games,
he's done sort of the sort of cinematic side of storytelling.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
I think he would love to hire a.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Team to make a themed theme park for History's a
tactical land purchase.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
I believe we'll be watching if I remember this correctly.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
I think like he grew up in the area and
used to go to that park, and so he's got
like real, you know, nostalgic memories for it. And now
he's rich, so you know, just like the South Park guys,
he's like redoing his childhood.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
That's all right, Okay, Well, New Story number two then
is semi related because it's about romanticy, not so much fantasy,
but romanticy, the combination of romance and fantasy storming Hollywood. Specifically,
Entangled is launching its own production company Entangled again. If
(07:22):
you've listened to previous writer Con podcast, you know that's
the publisher of a lot of different things in the
fantasy and romance and romanticy genre. But they're big hit
right now. Of course, would be Rebecca Yaris's books like
the First the Fourth Wing, the first book in a
new series, which I believe is the best selling book
(07:42):
of twenty twenty three, and it's doing even better this year.
So their CEO and founder Liz Platier has partnered with
Cheryl Clark to launch this new company called Premeditated Productions,
which has a three year first Looked TV and film
deal with Amazon, which of course now calls its movie
(08:05):
branch Amazon MGM Studios, because they bought MGM, and you know,
there have been other attempts to do things like that.
I mean, they're not necessarily going to be limited to
Rebecca Yarros. I know a lot of people, including our
daughter Katie, who would love to see a series based
(08:26):
on Sarah J. Moss's books. But other than fantasy books
that have the phrase Lord of the Rings in them somewhere,
we haven't seen so much of that of the movies,
have we, Jesse. We've seen it on television, The Witcher,
the Wheel of Time and all those things, but not
(08:47):
so much of the theaters. Why is that? Or am
I No?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I think it's fantasy stories are usually too long and
too tense to be to be put into films, you know.
I mean, the Lord of the Rings works because it's
actually not that long of a fantasy series. It's three
five hundred page books, where like Brandon Samson's books, of
which there are four published ones. Each one's at least
a thousand pages. I can't you can't compressing that to
(09:12):
a two to two and a half hour movie.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
It's just going to cut out so much.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
I would be so disappointing.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yes, what do you think, j Lar, are you on
board to watch the Fourth Wing film? I assume at
this point, Uh, yeah, I can.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Put a try. Yeah, I would. I think that could
be that would be interesting. Is that the idea there?
They're hoping to turn that into something with a direct connection.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yes, I think they want to do several things. But
since the Fourth Wing is flying high right now, that's
in fact, I would think that deal was initiated before
they even formed this company. That might be where they
got the seed money. Who knows, but I think I
think that's the idea. You know, I read that book too,
and and there's a lot in it, but it's only
(10:03):
I'm going to guess, maybe four hundred or so pages.
It's not Lord of the Rings length, so maybe.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
It's a little longer than that, but the second one
definitely jumps by a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yes, right, okay, all right, well enough with the news.
Let's move to craft corner. Our craft Corner segment comes
from John Myers, a screenwriter and longtime friend of Writer Con. John,
also with his friend Emily Brooks, hosts the terrific podcast
(10:34):
Write Better Together, and they've co authored a book called
I Love This, Write Anyway, giving yourself permission to write
no matter what. Today, he's going to address nonfiction, although
I think fiction writers may very well find it useful,
as he discusses the challenge of balancing authenticity and storytelling
(10:57):
in nonfiction and memoir. Take it away, Craft Corner.
Speaker 6 (11:06):
Welcome everybody to writer CON's Craft Corner. I'm John Myers
from Write Better Together. Hey, look everybody ass Emily Brooks,
Hello John Myers. How do you balance authenticity and storytelling
and memoir?
Speaker 7 (11:17):
The first thing that we do is we want to
focus on the small moments. So William Zincer says, look
for small, self contained incidents that are still vivid in
your memory. If you still remember them, it's because they
contain a universal truth your readers will recognize from their
own life.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Larry David talks about when you're packing a suitcase right
and you're getting ready to go on a trip. It's
a moment that everyone can relate to. Everyone's packed for
a trip in anticipation of something.
Speaker 7 (11:43):
And even if it's not completely universal, your emotions are
going to be universal. If you remember those moments vividly,
that means that there is something important about those moments
where you learned something and grew in some way. The
second thing we do is connecting with our reader emotionally
through authenticity.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
We just had on our podcast Renee Gutteridge from writer Con.
After all of these years, she still has a very
specific emotion about when you hit send on a script
or on a query. She's totally honest about it.
Speaker 7 (12:12):
The third thing is what can you fabricate?
Speaker 6 (12:16):
In a paper orchestra by Michael JamMan, there's a story
in there called the Yellow Belt. As a child, JamMan
would build these little structures out of twigs, and then
some bullies came by and crushed them all. His dad's
solution was to go to karate. Jammin passes the class.
He's in the first version of the story, he ends
(12:36):
it with sitting in the car and his dad's proud
of him and he passed the class. That's true, but
in this version that's actually in the book, it ends
with jam and going back home building the structures again,
and so that's a more compelling, more emotionally satisfying ending.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
Being honest doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be
accurate all the time. It may mean that you compress
timelines or you move dialogue from one moment to another
moment that the emotional impact is true to that story.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Thank you so much, John, that was terrific. Now let's
cut to this interview with celebrity interviewer and author Glenn Plaskin.
(13:28):
Glenn Plaskin, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm honored because
you're both such prolific authors yourselves.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Well, thank you. Okay, we have a traditional first question.
If you could offer writers one piece of advice, what
would it be.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Well, the first piece of advice I'd say is if
you can avoid doing it, I would do so. If
you've got it, if you've got any other marketable talent,
use it. Because I don't think being a writer is
a necessarily easy thing to do, and I view it
(14:07):
not so much as an art but as a business.
But also most of my projects have been tied to
a passion of mine. So what I'm saying is, if
you feel passionate about it, and you feel that you
just must do it and you can't think of anything
else to do. Then you know, but the chances of
success in this world as a writer are difficult.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
I think, well, I'm glad you added that last part,
because I was, you know, being an amateur ivory tickler
myself before we started this. I showed you by grand
piano right to my left. So I was totally impressed
to learn that you actually trained as a classical pianist. Right. Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In fact, my aspiration was never to be a writer.
I have no training as a writer. I never went
to college. I went to nine years of college to
become a concert pianist myself. And when I was around
twenty five or twenty six, I realized that I actually
didn't want to do that. Performing made me extremely nervous,
(15:09):
and so I was going to wind up being a teacher.
Didn't want to do that either. So I had an
idea for a book. I had never written a book.
I had never even written a college paper. In music school,
you don't write, and so I have this idea for
a book. I wanted to write a book about the
most famous pianist in the world. It had never been done,
(15:29):
and it just came to my mind. So I came
to New York and I went to fifteen publishers and
I got their interest, not because of me. I always
tell people, you're not selling yourself, you're selling your idea.
And then I went to the William Morris Agency and
I met with the chief agent, this guy who handled
James Mishner and all these and Presidents Nixon and all
these people. And he said, well, what have you written?
(15:51):
I said nothing. He said, well, what if you had published?
I just said, didn't it? I said nothing. He said,
then what are you doing here? And I said, here's
my idea, and I handed him a piece of paper
and on the paper were fifteen publishers, including Jacqueline Onassis,
who was a Double Day, an editor at Double Day. So,
to make a long story short, he said, where's your
(16:12):
book proposal. I didn't know what a book proposal was,
so I don't know how I did it. To this day,
I don't know how I did it. But I went
and wrote a book proposal, came back, and he sold
the book, and three years later, oh you can't stay here.
But the book came out and it was the first
book ever written about this person. And so what I
(16:32):
had basically done is take my passion and knowledge about music,
and I had used it in another medium, which was
writing a book. And when the book was published, it
was literally on the front page of the New York
Times and the Washington Post.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
And.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It was all over the world. And because no book
had ever been written about him, and because it had
a lot of information in it that had never been known,
so suddenly I found myself quote an author, which I
found very amusing because I never.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Thought of myself that way.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And then when the book was published, the agent said, well,
you'd like to write another book. I said, no, no,
I do.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Not want to write another book.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I had no interest in writing another book. I said,
I want to interview celebrities, because I had this weird
talent talking to famous people and getting them to open
up to me. So that's what I did for the
next ten years. The first one was Carol Burnett, then
Elizabeth Taylor, then Calvin Klein and Nancy Reagan and on
and on and on. And this turned out to be
(17:36):
my real talent, which was writing magazine and newspaper profiles
and a syndicated column that eventually came out of that,
and the collection of my interviews was ultimately in another
book that Oprah Winfrey did a whole show on. So
if you asked somebody, well, could you have planned this out?
Oh yes, Let's go to music school for nine years
(17:59):
only to quit, you know what I mean? And then
we'll write a book even though you've never written one.
Who would want you to write a book? And then
after the book, we'll interview celebrities for ten years. I
don't think you could have ever gone to school to
learn that if And honestly, my greatest talent was not writing,
(18:21):
even though I was good. My greatest talent is I
believe the greatest asset you have as a writer is
your tenacity.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Right, I agree.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I think you have to be determined. I think in
life you have to be determined about anything that you
want to do. You have to focus. And so I
was able to just drill down, almost obsessively, and focus
on this. So it wasn't like I wanted to be
a writer. That was never my dream. My dream was
(18:53):
more based in fame. As a child, I used to
sit at a newspaper Stan and look at Life magazine.
I liked looking at movie stars, and I liked looking
at the first lady and stuff. And so I never
thought ever in my life that years later I would
meet Jacqueline of Nassas and have lunch with her, or
(19:14):
I would meet Nancy Reagan at the White House twice
once after Reagan's assassination and attempt and meet her. So
what I'm trying to say is, I'm a firm believer
in visualization. I honestly believe that if you can do
a dry rehearsal in your mind and run and run
(19:34):
it over and over again, as I did, dreaming literally
dreaming of what you think you could make true, It's
been proven that if you can visualize it, you have
a much better chance of making it happen.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
I think that our younger generation calls that manifesting it
into existence, Like you stay focused on something and believe
in it long time, and eventually it will actually come
to pass. I'd like to talk some more about You
did more than just meet Jacqueline Annassis. Didn't you? I
(20:13):
understand that you worked with her. She was an editor
at Doubleday.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Well, yes, when we first met, we were trying to
talk Calvin Klein, the designer into writing a book. He
ultimately never did it, but she and I teamed up
to try to sign famous people up to write books.
Michael Jackson was another one, and he ultimately did write
a book, But more important to me, I didn't actually
(20:39):
work with her.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Ever.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Our relationship was more social, and I would connect. I
was a good connector. For example, Calvin Klein wanted to
meet the great actress Katherine Heppron now Katherine Heppron. I
had sent my first book as a gift to in
the mail, and one day the phone rang and I
heard something like this, Oh, oh, is this Missedublask And
(21:03):
I said yes, She said this this Catharine Hepron and
I said no, it isn't.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
You're a kidding.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I thought it was a friend of mine playing a
joke on remember this in a legendary film actress which
a lot of people may not even remember today. Oh,
surely not the younger generation. If you ask them, they
won't know who she is. But she invited me to
lunch Wow, and I went there for lunch, and then
(21:32):
we became very friendly. So for the next eight years
I interviewed her like four or five times, and one
day I said to her, would you like to meet
Calvin Klein? Because of all the famous people that he
could meet, he had.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Never met her.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And she really, honestly didn't care that much about meeting him,
but he really cared about meeting her. So I brought
him over there for lunch and it was a fascinating time.
And that was one of the funnest things about my
job is that I could meet these people, get to
know them, and then introduce them to each other. So
that was a memorable afternoon. And another afternoon, Peter Jennings.
(22:10):
I brought him over for lunch with her, and I
just loved her. She was so funny and sarcastic. The
last time I ever saw her, she looked up at
me after lunch and she said, you know, you look
better than you used to. And I said to her, oh,
I said, miss Hepburn, Is that a compliment? And she
(22:34):
and she said to me and she said, you can
take it however you like. That's great, which I thought
was funny. So I have to tell you I had
just a ton of fun, you know, with all these
celebrities that I interviewed. One of my favorite, one of
my favorites was Leona Helmsley. If you remember her, I
do known as the Queen of mean, but she was
(22:57):
never mean to me. She and I had a un
niaque connection. I did a cover story interview with her
in Playboy magazine and she was just absolutely riveting, one
of my most favorite.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Okay, now I want to fill in a few blanks
because I think you're being modest several times overs you
just you interviewed Katherine Hepburn, And in fact, there's some
footage from that in the Catherine Hepburn documentary that's streaming
right now. Correct, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
There's a new documentary called is it called Call Me Kate?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Let's go with that.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I'm not sure, okay, but anyway, there is a new
documentary on Netflix. And yes, they came here to use
me as the main journalist for the documentary because I
had known her well and I told a lot of
fun stories about her. And in fact, right above my
head you can see her sitting on the wall here.
(23:59):
That was one of the stories I did with her.
And there's another article up here. There's a story that
was once done about me. When I was younger, I
got all d's and f's in elementary school, and the
principal told my mom that she shouldn't feel bad because
garbage collectors can be happy too. Oh no, And he
(24:24):
told my mom I had a very low IQ. And
it's true that I tested badly, and it's true that
I got all d's and f's. And it wasn't until
years later I didn't have low self esteem. I had
no self esteem. And they you know that you should
never tell a child something so horrible, even if they
did have a low IQ. You should never tell them this.
(24:48):
And so years later I wrote an article that was
syndicated all around the country and it was called eighty
eight Keys to Confidence and there's a picture of me
at the piano and I talk about how you must
never let anyone define you. And after the article was published,
Catherine Hepburn wrote me a note and it's framed right
(25:09):
above here and it and it only has three words
on it. It says good for you.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
That's so inspirational. I mean, what a what a wonderful
example of believing in yourself and having that tenacity that
you mentioned leading to wonderful path.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Now you also mentioned go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, sure,
go ahead, Well, I was going to say, you said
your relationship with Jackie and Assas was mostly casual, and
yet right here, I've got a quote she said about you.
Glenn is witty, articulate, and has this uncanny ability to
draw people out and gain their confidence. So she clearly
(25:49):
had some respect for your work as well. Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yes, she was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
She was one of my idols. And I don't know
where I would ever have found the nerve to call
her on the phone, but she gave me all her
phone numbers, and I very rarely called her, but we
did talk, and we did have wonderful lunches sometimes, and
with all the pain and suffering that she experienced in
(26:17):
her life, when she was with you, you know, you
felt as if she was only talking to you. She
used to call me on the phone and you'd hear
something like, hello, Glenn, this is Jackie. Oh my lord,
and I said, oh, hello, Jackie, how you doing. But
it was a little It was one of the few
(26:38):
times in my life I was very intimidated, although I
must say I was intimidated by pretty much all of
them at the beginning, whether I was interviewing Meryl Streep
or Donald Trump, or Robert de Niro or Elizabeth Taylor.
I found Elizabeth Taylor was one of my most favorite.
(27:00):
Came down the stairs of this hotel suite looking just
as you would hope she would look. And the first
thing I noticed about her I said, oh, I said,
you have beautiful skin, and she said oh. She said,
would you like to know my secret? And I said okay.
She said sesame oil. She put sesame oil all over
her face, so she said, would you like to touch it?
(27:21):
I put my hands on her face and I thought,
g I'm touching Elizabeth Taylor's face. And then she showed
me a ring, this thirty three carrot Crupp diamond, and
she took it off her finger and threw it over.
Speaker 6 (27:32):
To me to hold.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I thought this was But then we got we got
down to business. And by the way, there's a brand
new documentary about Elizabeth Taylor that just came out. It's
produced by the BBC, and I'm in this particular documentary
and it opens with Elizabeth Taylor putting her makeup on,
and as a voice over under the picture is what
(27:57):
she said to me in the interview, which you can
listen to. It's kind of interesting, but she said that
if you want to hear from me, it's not going
to be about how to apply lipstick. I'm going to
thunder through your brain. And then she went into a
whole thing about the AIDS epidemic and how she felt
(28:17):
as if people were wrongly being blamed for something that
no one should be blamed for. So it was a
very emotional interview. And so it's this interview of mine
wound up now in two documentaries. One is on HBO
currently it's called The Lost Tapes, and the other one
is The BBC, which won't come out in the US
(28:39):
until next year. But for me, this has just been
so peculiarly surreal, because who am I? Nobody? And yet
I felt as if I somehow had this weird ability,
maybe because they didn't view me as intimidating, though I
(29:01):
could be quite strong in the interviews. People for some
reason just you know, warmed up to me, but they
didn't come to me. I always went to them, and
I found that it was fun for me to meet
these legends that I otherwise never could have met.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Well, to talk a little bit more about that, actually,
because you've mentioned Meryl Streep, you've mentioned Robert de Niro,
Katherine Hatburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and I've got on my list
that you interviewed Paul Newman as well. Oh my, arrange
interviews with these as you call them, legends, these these big,
(29:44):
major celebrities. How do you even start that process? By
your own admission, you're saying, who am I? I'm nobody,
And yet here you've managed to be involved in the
lives of all these people. And I have to know
how'd you do it?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Okay, I'll tell you. I interviewed literally hundreds of them,
all famous ones, including Dolly Parton and Meryl Streep and
you know many others. And the way I did it
was a variety of ways. Oftentimes I would go directly
through the publicist, but as I became more known as
(30:22):
a celebrity interviewer, one would lead to another. For example,
Calvin Klein, who knew me extremely well, picked up the
phone and called Diana Ross and told her about me
and said you should do the interview with him. So
I had lunch with Diana Ross or he called the
White House and literally spoke to missus Reagan. And when
(30:44):
she came up to me, the first thing she said
to me is she put out her hand. There were
Secret Service people all over the place and all these
people near us, and she looked right at my face
and she said, you have a great friend in Calvin Klein.
She was transmitting to me that she wouldn't have done
it otherwise. And same thing with Senator Kennedy. I knew
(31:09):
Jacqueline Kennedy. Same thing with Joan Kennedy. I got the
interview through a former husband and so oftentimes, but most
of the time it was through my own personal notes.
I'm a firm believer in writing notes, sending flowers, making
phone calls. I called Donald Trump and I said, I
(31:31):
want to interview your wife at the time, which was
Avonna Trump. I did two interviews with Havanna. Then after
he left Havanna, I said, I want to do the
first exclusive interview with Marlon Maples. And he said to
me on the phone, well, I'll make the introduction, but
it's up to her. If she likes you, she'll do it.
If she doesn't, she won't. So he said, well, arrange
(31:54):
a rendezvous for you at a restaurant with her. So
I just went and met her. And I never or
in any way pretentious about anything. I just come right
to the point, you know. And I often would give
my books as a gift. That was another thing that
people like when you give them a book. But the
(32:14):
most important thing, I think is that you need a
heart to heart connection. And I was known for doing
interviews that would be revealing, but not depositions. Yeah, I mean,
I'm not there to you know, to I'm there to
understand you better. I remember there was once an actor
(32:37):
who said to me, I didn't know we were doing
therapy today, and it's.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Like you were just very good at it, that it
was something that you wanted to do, you stayed focused
on it, and then you were very good at it.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Well, thank you. You mentioned Paul Newman, so I must
give you my Paul Newman story. I was invited up
to his apartment in Manhattan for an interview at his apartment.
So when I got there, it was a place on
Fifth Avenue, the door opened and there he is standing.
Usually the stars have a public sister of Mary Tyler
Moore had a butler or somebody answers the door, but
(33:14):
usually not the person. But he was just standing there
with those big blue eyes, and he looked at me
and he said, would you like to help me make
some ice cubes. Now I thought, what the hell is
he talking about? So I said to him, well, what
do you mean. He said, well, my daughter's birthdays tonight
(33:35):
and we're getting ready for the party, and I'm filling
up the trays in the kitchen. So there I stood
in Paul Newman's kitchen passing him ice cube trays. I
thought that was very sunny. And then I told him, listen,
mister Newman, I have a gift for you. My grandmother
has her own line of cookies at Bloomingdale's, which he did,
and I said, I brought you some of her favorite
(33:59):
Marie squares. They were called with apricot in them. Oh
my god. He grabbed those out of my hands so fast.
I said, I want you to taste it. So he
opened up the box. And this is the guy who
you know make the popcorn and the salad dress. What
nerve would I have to bring him some cookies? But
you see, I believe all the stars like cookies or candy,
(34:22):
so I would bring almost everybody chocolate or something. So
he ate the cookie and he really liked it. And
then guess who walked in the room. Joeanne Woodward she said,
I'm going to Bloomingdale's now to pick up a gift,
and she just kissed her husband and walked out of
the room. She never even said alone to me. She
was just saying goodbye to her husband. So I would
often have these surreal moments with these people where it's
(34:46):
like it just seems so odd to me, But there
I was. And then we Paul Newman and I eventually
sat at his kitchen table, and mostly what we talked
about was his summer camp for just for children who
have serious illnesses. It's called the Hole in the Wall Camp,
I believe, And that was what the interview was about.
(35:07):
That wasn't you ask how do I get interviews? Oftentimes
I would do interviews.
Speaker 5 (35:11):
About a cause.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, if there was something that interested me, I would
find That's how I would get interviews with people who
ordinarly wouldn't do interviews because it wasn't about them, it
was about something else.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Okay, good idea.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Two gaps I feel like we have to fill in here.
First of all, when you got that first contract book
contract you were talking about and I probably shouldn't even
bring this up because now some people who are aspiring
to write are just going to be bitter. But you
were twenty six, right, you're at twenty six years old.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I think I was twenty five. And when better and
when I got what would be equivalent to one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars advance and today's money, I remember
I had no money I had, I had very little.
So when the agent got me the advance and sold
(36:11):
it in the US and England, I honestly was quite
nervous because remember I was going to do something that
I didn't know how to do exactly. I did figure
it out. I did get a wonderful editor who was
the editor for the New York Philharmonic and Columbia Records,
(36:32):
and I did put together a team. But back then, yes,
I was intimidated. But I always tell writers, you know,
you have to remember you're worth a lot. I believe
that you have to know inside yourself that you're worth something.
And you know, you probably know that. I've written many
(36:53):
collaboration books now, you know, either ghost written or collaboration
with all kinds of mostly CEOs and net worth individuals
and some cause related books and some doctors. And I
think you just have to as a writer. One great
thing is that you could research and know about anything.
(37:15):
It's not like you have to specialize in anything. I mean,
it's true that I specialized in celebrity interviews, but then
I broadened out quite a lot because I found it
interesting to learn about, you know, other things, but human psychology, inspiration,
and motivation were my favorite topics.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
And so.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I liked the idea of that actualization or visualization thing
we talked about earlier, because I do believe that you
have to at least have a dream. Everybody's got a dream.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Should And that other detail that I think we still
haven't said aloud is the subject of this book. We're
talking about Vladimir Horowitz, right, probably the certainly the most famous,
probably the most accomplished pianist of the time, right right.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
And this is what the book looks like. It's a
six hundred page book with two thousand footnotes. And this
is the first one that came out. But I must
tell you my favorite book of all time is this one.
This is aw I wrote about my dog in the
process of getting this turned into a TV movie hopefully,
and it's not about the dog. People always misunderstand. They think, oh,
(38:31):
that must be a cute little story about a dog.
It isn't. It's about the concept of family and that
a family is anything you want it to be, young
and old, you know, human and canine. And it's about
what happened over a series of years between a little
three year old kid who had no mom, an eighty
(38:51):
five year old woman who had no children, and me
and my dog. And it takes place before, during, and
after nine to eleven. And it's a very emotional story
about how beautiful a little kid could find the grandmother
that he otherwise never would have had.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Sweet. Okay, you've mentioned you're on Oprah, and you've mentioned
a lot of interviews. Do you have one that stands
out in memory as a particularly happy or memorable one,
that one that you haven't already told a particularly favorite interview?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Well, I have a situation that comes to mind, but
I wasn't too happy. I was interviewing Leona Helmsley and
she had just it was tape recorded on a you know,
a real to reel tape recorder, not real to reel,
I mean a cassette tape recorder, and the red light
was on it was recording, and she was absolutely fantastic.
(39:50):
She went on for forty five minutes. Brilliantly, I discovered
the tape recorder hadn't recorded anything. It was the only
time in my entire career that I think I had
what could be called a panic attack. I started sweatings,
and I said to her, I have some bad news,
(40:11):
and I explained what happened to her. Remember she's supposedly
the queen of mean, right, you know what she said
to me. She said, let's get up, let's take a
walk around the terrace, and then we'll go back in
and record the whole thing all over again.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Wow, awesome, not the Queen of mean. Okay, flip side question.
Do you have any and if you don't want to say,
that's fine, but any interview subjects who were particularly difficult
or not forthcoming or whatever.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
You know, most of the people I met I really liked,
and nobody was rude or anything, but of course they
never would be. I've been thinking lately about Christopher Reed
because I interviewed him once before, yeah, once before his
accident when he it was fine, and then twice after
(41:02):
he was paralyzed. And I only mentioned him because I
thought he was so inspirational as a person. Yes, and
imagine you know, taking the time to do interview with
me when he couldn't walk, or you know, he was
tragically died far too young. So I something. Anyway, He's
(41:30):
someone that comes to mind. But if somebody said to me,
was there anybody you interviewed that you didn't like? I
couldn't even think of anybody, honestly.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
Now you mentioned that you talked to two of Donald
Trump's wives. Did you ever interview Trump himself?
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Oh? Yes, I interviewed him more than anybody. I interviewed
him for twelve twelve hours for one playboy interview. In fact,
my interview with Donald Trump is it's on the wall
behind me and he he hangs it in his office
at Trump Tower. It was an interview done many years ago.
(42:07):
But all the positions that he talks about in that
interview are ones that very consistently are reflected in a
lot of his positions today, especially about China and Japan
and the economy and stuff. So I've known Trump since
nineteen eighty eight and did a number of interviews with him,
(42:27):
and you know, that's all I can say. But I
have known him, and you know, obviously he's changed as
a person. When I first met him. He was really
just a rich, real estate charismatic New Yorker, you know,
but I never dreamed that he would one day be president.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Wow, when the interview is over, what is your writing process?
How do you turn that interview into an article, a book,
whatever the end result is.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, what I always used
to do is I would type the transcripts myself because
I wanted to listen again. And by the way, I
have all the original recorded interviews in here. That's why
these documentaries call me sometimes because even if the tape
is thirty years old, believe it or not, I like
Audrey Heppern, I did this in Switzerland. I still have it.
(43:24):
So I would I listen to the tape and I
like to type it as I'm listening, and then I
chunk it chunking for a writer's of important skill for
this kind of stuff. And then I would put a
subject category with an underline. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll
use the material in the order they said it, but
I have to know where it is. And then then
(43:46):
the hardest part for magazine or a newspaper article is
writing a lead, like how are we going to begin
this thing? So I got to the point where when
I was on deadlines, I would tell myself, the first
thing that comes into my mind, that's the lead. I
used to be more perfectionistic about it, like, oh, what
am I going to do? I decided, and this is
(44:07):
a good tip for writers. There's no such thing as
writer's block, as long as you're willing to settle for mediocrity.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
In the first draft at least, right, get something down
on paper.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Settle for whatever you can get. Just get something down
and then and then. I didn't mean you should ultimately
settle for mediocrity, but I would. I think you have
to trust some of your instincts. So I would first
do the lead, and then once I got into it,
it would start to flow, and somehow it would I
would instinctively know what to put where. But you know,
(44:49):
there's a certain art to it, and it varies. If
you're writing a book, it's different than if you're writing,
you know, a magazine article, but or a newspaper column.
But honestly, I admire people who say I went to
the school of journalism at such and such university. I thought,
aren't you lucky? Because I learned the whole thing literally
(45:12):
on the job. I never had anybody teach me, really,
so I apologize that I'm not better trained.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I think sometimes amateurs if you use that the root
word of which is m o meaning love. Right.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
So, well, you guys do something that I could never do,
which is I only do nonfiction, but you do fiction.
You make up stories and legal thrillers and novels. And
you know, the closest I ever came to that is
in this book. This is rather novelistic, even though it's
(45:48):
all true. But you know, one thing that we have
in common is you have to paint a picture. Anybody
can just write some sentences. But the thing is, how
could you write some sentences that would convey some emotion?
I mean, what would draw someone in where they would
want to literally, you know, they lose themselves in your
(46:11):
world that you, as novelists have created. That's a really
big skill.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Yeah, well, thank you. But you know what, it's all storytelling,
whether it's true or you're making it up. And when
you can't make it up, meaning you've got to have
sources and research that I think is challenging to Okay,
after this fabulous, all this illustrious work, what are you
working on? Now or what should be we be watching
(46:39):
for next?
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Well, I am in the midst of working on getting
this book made into a movie because I think it
could be inspiring for people because it has a message
about family connection and loss too, because you know, we
live through a series of losses throughout our lives. Eventually
(47:01):
we lose many things, and the idea of the book
was to give people hope. But that I'm also working
on a I have three new books coming out. One
of them is with a what would you call him,
a TV cable entrepreneur. He at one time owned r CN,
(47:24):
the big cable company, and so it's kind of like
a business memoir. And then I have another book coming
out that is How a successful entrepreneur Recovered from Addiction,
So it's about recovery from addiction and also about his
autistic son, so it has some big themes about survival.
(47:49):
And now there's a new one coming out with a
woman executive who had a rather difficult childhood. And it
seems like at a certain point in life, people want
to share their you know, their stories, right.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, absolutely, Well, Glenn, this has been a real pleasure
and a delight talking to you, and I hope maybe
we can do it again sometime in the future.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Oh, it was great talking to both of you, and
thanks for having me on your show.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Thank you so much. Bye bye, now bye. Just a
few parting words. The writer Con Cruise is fairly far
in the future. It's at the end of the end
of May. We're going to Alaska this year, and the
(48:41):
writer conor Retreat is in the middle of July. But
if you're interested in and you cannot book too early
because they tend to sell out, there's more information on
our website, which is writercon dot com. Let me also
remind you we've got our own newsletter. In fact, just
today as we record this, we sent out the latest
(49:02):
issue of writer Con magazine. But whether there's a magazine
or not, the newsletter comes out regularly and it's free
and you don't want to miss it because it's got
all kinds of cool stuff in it that's directed specifically
for writers. So go to sub stack and search for
writer Con. And if you haven't joined the writer Con
(49:23):
Facebook group, please do. We've got a wonderful, thriving online community,
very positive, very supportive, and that's the best way to
get day to day information about what's going on in
the publishing world. Okay, until next time, keep writing and
remember you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. See
(49:47):
you next time.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Spens By first the
This week on the writer Con podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, the first piece of advice I'd say is if
you can avoid doing it, I would do so.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers to
share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of
the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, award
winning author the want Ln Files book series.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thank you, Jesse Ulrich, Hey, they're writers. Thanks for joining us, Lara,
good to see you again. Lara has raced back from
the Greek festival just so she can be here today.
How was the festival?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
It was so fun. We had a great time. We
had simple, delicious food made right there on site. We
heard music, we saw some Dan saying, we toured beautiful church,
got a little history lesson it was. It was fun,
but I didn't want to miss the podcast, so no, ame.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I'm back home and staying busy. I'm working on a
new book, but it's way too soon for me to
talk about that because I really don't have a fix
on what I'm doing yet. Is a little early, Jesse,
are you staying busy?
Speaker 5 (01:12):
I am staying very busy.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I keep getting more clients, which is great, except it
is a elimited amount of time in my day.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
So h Jesse's team is.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Growing, relatable, fantastic, Yes, so well. Our interview today is
with author and celebrity interviewer Glenn Plaskin. He's the author
of numerous New York Times bestseller including a biography of
Vladimir Horowitz and a beautiful book I highly recommend called
(01:42):
Katie Up and Down the Hall. You'll hear him talk
about that during the interview. He has profiled so many
interview subjects I don't even know where to begin, Meryl Streep,
Paul Newman, Robert de Niro, Carol Burnett, Dolly Parton, Who
am I'm forgetting? Laura Elizabeth Taylor, Yes, and Katherine.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Hepburn Hepburn both Aurey Audrey and Katherine Hepburn right.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
His interviews have appeared in The New York Times, The
San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, million other places. He's a
terrific guy and a fascinating storyteller, and I'm looking forward
to talking to him. But first the news. Our first
(02:43):
story concerns Brandon Sanderson, who the guy what my boy
oh right has pronounced his name or something that.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
He's just really excited.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I picked this for you, Jesse. He's still making waves
in the published world. You may remember an earlier story
when we talked about his Kickstarter in which he raised
over forty million bucks to publish several books that he's written.
And with those funds, he's now started his own publishing
(03:16):
and I don't mean just technically owns one. He's like
created a facility for publishing and distributing books near his home.
He's got his own conference that he does every year,
and that's where this new announcement, which shouldn't surprise us
at all, came about. He's going to start his own bookstore.
(03:39):
He's purchased land next to the former Evermore Park in
Pleasant Grove, Utah, which is designated for a book bookstore.
He also revealed that Dragon Steele that's what he's called
in the whole area. It's Dragon Steel Plaza. That's a
word that come that's book series, right, Jesse.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
No, it's it's like a reference to it. That's the
name of his company that he made after the forty
million dollars. And I think I think the I think
his conference is also called Dragon's Deal.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
But I thought it came from the books.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
No, yes, yes, it's not. It's not a name of
one of his books. It comes from one of his books.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Is that the name of the series because they're talking
about the fifth whatever? It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Listen, listeners, listen, I want you to know that I
know the name of the book series is the storm
Light Chronicles. Okay, no way, the storm Light Archives. Oh
my god, storm Light Archives. And the fifth book comes
down December.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Okay. And he had a pop up store at the conference, right,
but now he's going for a real bookstore. So Jesse,
I probably don't really even need to ask this, but
would you shop at the Sanderson bookstore? Are they gonna
stock everybody's books? Or just zillions of copies of his?
(04:55):
I don't know five's fantasy novel? How many is he got?
Speaker 5 (04:59):
U three?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
He's got like ten to twelve now in total. I
imagine he's gonna have other authors there, Knowing just the
way he likes to do things, I imagine he will.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
He will sell other peoples.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And I have no doubt his publishing armble Party start
publishing other people too well.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
And that's the next question for this. The bookstore given
the way this guy rolls, could this be the first
bookstore in a chain? Could we have fantasy focused national
bookstore chain? Because I think a lot of people would
welcome that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I know love industry insiders watch this podcast. I want
to be very clear, themed bookstores is a great idea,
like a science fiction only bookstore. One hundred thousand percent
fantasy only one thousand percent.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Love it right? And we're seeing a lot of romance
focused or romanticy focused bookstores opening, but not so much
with fantasy. So maybe this will fill a niche.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Why is there not a bookstore that feels like the
Green Dragon and hobbiton where I can buy fancy books?
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Why does that not exist?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well? But do we think is he thinking of expanding
into the former Evermore Park? Do we think maybe there's
going to be a transition that he'll have his bookstore
there and then maybe there will be a he'll theme
that park to his Dragon Parkers theme park.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
That would be incredible. Was he thinking, you know, for
probably when he.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Bought that land.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Yeah, I know he's been what I'm wondering.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Like, he's very I mean, he's written for video games,
he's done sort of the sort of cinematic side of storytelling.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
I think he would love to hire a.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Team to make a themed theme park for History's a
tactical land purchase.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
I believe we'll be watching if I remember this correctly.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
I think like he grew up in the area and
used to go to that park, and so he's got
like real, you know, nostalgic memories for it. And now
he's rich, so you know, just like the South Park guys,
he's like redoing his childhood.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
That's all right, Okay, Well, New Story number two then
is semi related because it's about romanticy, not so much fantasy,
but romanticy, the combination of romance and fantasy storming Hollywood. Specifically,
Entangled is launching its own production company Entangled again. If
(07:22):
you've listened to previous writer Con podcast, you know that's
the publisher of a lot of different things in the
fantasy and romance and romanticy genre. But they're big hit
right now. Of course, would be Rebecca Yaris's books like
the First the Fourth Wing, the first book in a
new series, which I believe is the best selling book
(07:42):
of twenty twenty three, and it's doing even better this year.
So their CEO and founder Liz Platier has partnered with
Cheryl Clark to launch this new company called Premeditated Productions,
which has a three year first Looked TV and film
deal with Amazon, which of course now calls its movie
(08:05):
branch Amazon MGM Studios, because they bought MGM, and you know,
there have been other attempts to do things like that.
I mean, they're not necessarily going to be limited to
Rebecca Yarros. I know a lot of people, including our
daughter Katie, who would love to see a series based
(08:26):
on Sarah J. Moss's books. But other than fantasy books
that have the phrase Lord of the Rings in them somewhere,
we haven't seen so much of that of the movies,
have we, Jesse. We've seen it on television, The Witcher,
the Wheel of Time and all those things, but not
(08:47):
so much of the theaters. Why is that? Or am
I No?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I think it's fantasy stories are usually too long and
too tense to be to be put into films, you know.
I mean, the Lord of the Rings works because it's
actually not that long of a fantasy series. It's three
five hundred page books, where like Brandon Samson's books, of
which there are four published ones. Each one's at least
a thousand pages. I can't you can't compressing that to
(09:12):
a two to two and a half hour movie.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
It's just going to cut out so much.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
I would be so disappointing.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yes, what do you think, j Lar, are you on
board to watch the Fourth Wing film? I assume at
this point, Uh, yeah, I can.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Put a try. Yeah, I would. I think that could
be that would be interesting. Is that the idea there?
They're hoping to turn that into something with a direct connection.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yes, I think they want to do several things. But
since the Fourth Wing is flying high right now, that's
in fact, I would think that deal was initiated before
they even formed this company. That might be where they
got the seed money. Who knows, but I think I
think that's the idea. You know, I read that book too,
and and there's a lot in it, but it's only
(10:03):
I'm going to guess, maybe four hundred or so pages.
It's not Lord of the Rings length, so maybe.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
It's a little longer than that, but the second one
definitely jumps by a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yes, right, okay, all right, well enough with the news.
Let's move to craft corner. Our craft Corner segment comes
from John Myers, a screenwriter and longtime friend of Writer Con. John,
also with his friend Emily Brooks, hosts the terrific podcast
(10:34):
Write Better Together, and they've co authored a book called
I Love This, Write Anyway, giving yourself permission to write
no matter what. Today, he's going to address nonfiction, although
I think fiction writers may very well find it useful,
as he discusses the challenge of balancing authenticity and storytelling
(10:57):
in nonfiction and memoir. Take it away, Craft Corner.
Speaker 6 (11:06):
Welcome everybody to writer CON's Craft Corner. I'm John Myers
from Write Better Together. Hey, look everybody ass Emily Brooks,
Hello John Myers. How do you balance authenticity and storytelling
and memoir?
Speaker 7 (11:17):
The first thing that we do is we want to
focus on the small moments. So William Zincer says, look
for small, self contained incidents that are still vivid in
your memory. If you still remember them, it's because they
contain a universal truth your readers will recognize from their
own life.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
Larry David talks about when you're packing a suitcase right
and you're getting ready to go on a trip. It's
a moment that everyone can relate to. Everyone's packed for
a trip in anticipation of something.
Speaker 7 (11:43):
And even if it's not completely universal, your emotions are
going to be universal. If you remember those moments vividly,
that means that there is something important about those moments
where you learned something and grew in some way. The
second thing we do is connecting with our reader emotionally
through authenticity.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
We just had on our podcast Renee Gutteridge from writer Con.
After all of these years, she still has a very
specific emotion about when you hit send on a script
or on a query. She's totally honest about it.
Speaker 7 (12:12):
The third thing is what can you fabricate?
Speaker 6 (12:16):
In a paper orchestra by Michael JamMan, there's a story
in there called the Yellow Belt. As a child, JamMan
would build these little structures out of twigs, and then
some bullies came by and crushed them all. His dad's
solution was to go to karate. Jammin passes the class.
He's in the first version of the story, he ends
(12:36):
it with sitting in the car and his dad's proud
of him and he passed the class. That's true, but
in this version that's actually in the book, it ends
with jam and going back home building the structures again,
and so that's a more compelling, more emotionally satisfying ending.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
Being honest doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be
accurate all the time. It may mean that you compress
timelines or you move dialogue from one moment to another
moment that the emotional impact is true to that story.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Thank you so much, John, that was terrific. Now let's
cut to this interview with celebrity interviewer and author Glenn Plaskin.
(13:28):
Glenn Plaskin, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm honored because
you're both such prolific authors yourselves.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Well, thank you. Okay, we have a traditional first question.
If you could offer writers one piece of advice, what
would it be.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Well, the first piece of advice I'd say is if
you can avoid doing it, I would do so. If
you've got it, if you've got any other marketable talent,
use it. Because I don't think being a writer is
a necessarily easy thing to do, and I view it
(14:07):
not so much as an art but as a business.
But also most of my projects have been tied to
a passion of mine. So what I'm saying is, if
you feel passionate about it, and you feel that you
just must do it and you can't think of anything
else to do. Then you know, but the chances of
success in this world as a writer are difficult.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
I think, well, I'm glad you added that last part,
because I was, you know, being an amateur ivory tickler
myself before we started this. I showed you by grand
piano right to my left. So I was totally impressed
to learn that you actually trained as a classical pianist. Right. Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In fact, my aspiration was never to be a writer.
I have no training as a writer. I never went
to college. I went to nine years of college to
become a concert pianist myself. And when I was around
twenty five or twenty six, I realized that I actually
didn't want to do that. Performing made me extremely nervous,
(15:09):
and so I was going to wind up being a teacher.
Didn't want to do that either. So I had an
idea for a book. I had never written a book.
I had never even written a college paper. In music school,
you don't write, and so I have this idea for
a book. I wanted to write a book about the
most famous pianist in the world. It had never been done,
(15:29):
and it just came to my mind. So I came
to New York and I went to fifteen publishers and
I got their interest, not because of me. I always
tell people, you're not selling yourself, you're selling your idea.
And then I went to the William Morris Agency and
I met with the chief agent, this guy who handled
James Mishner and all these and Presidents Nixon and all
these people. And he said, well, what have you written?
(15:51):
I said nothing. He said, well, what if you had published?
I just said, didn't it? I said nothing. He said,
then what are you doing here? And I said, here's
my idea, and I handed him a piece of paper
and on the paper were fifteen publishers, including Jacqueline Onassis,
who was a Double Day, an editor at Double Day. So,
to make a long story short, he said, where's your
(16:12):
book proposal. I didn't know what a book proposal was,
so I don't know how I did it. To this day,
I don't know how I did it. But I went
and wrote a book proposal, came back, and he sold
the book, and three years later, oh you can't stay here.
But the book came out and it was the first
book ever written about this person. And so what I
(16:32):
had basically done is take my passion and knowledge about music,
and I had used it in another medium, which was
writing a book. And when the book was published, it
was literally on the front page of the New York
Times and the Washington Post.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
And.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It was all over the world. And because no book
had ever been written about him, and because it had
a lot of information in it that had never been known,
so suddenly I found myself quote an author, which I
found very amusing because I never.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Thought of myself that way.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And then when the book was published, the agent said, well,
you'd like to write another book. I said, no, no,
I do.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Not want to write another book.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I had no interest in writing another book. I said,
I want to interview celebrities, because I had this weird
talent talking to famous people and getting them to open
up to me. So that's what I did for the
next ten years. The first one was Carol Burnett, then
Elizabeth Taylor, then Calvin Klein and Nancy Reagan and on
and on and on. And this turned out to be
(17:36):
my real talent, which was writing magazine and newspaper profiles
and a syndicated column that eventually came out of that,
and the collection of my interviews was ultimately in another
book that Oprah Winfrey did a whole show on. So
if you asked somebody, well, could you have planned this out?
Oh yes, Let's go to music school for nine years
(17:59):
only to quit, you know what I mean? And then
we'll write a book even though you've never written one.
Who would want you to write a book? And then
after the book, we'll interview celebrities for ten years. I
don't think you could have ever gone to school to
learn that if And honestly, my greatest talent was not writing,
(18:21):
even though I was good. My greatest talent is I
believe the greatest asset you have as a writer is
your tenacity.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Right, I agree.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I think you have to be determined. I think in
life you have to be determined about anything that you
want to do. You have to focus. And so I
was able to just drill down, almost obsessively, and focus
on this. So it wasn't like I wanted to be
a writer. That was never my dream. My dream was
(18:53):
more based in fame. As a child, I used to
sit at a newspaper Stan and look at Life magazine.
I liked looking at movie stars, and I liked looking
at the first lady and stuff. And so I never
thought ever in my life that years later I would
meet Jacqueline of Nassas and have lunch with her, or
(19:14):
I would meet Nancy Reagan at the White House twice
once after Reagan's assassination and attempt and meet her. So
what I'm trying to say is, I'm a firm believer
in visualization. I honestly believe that if you can do
a dry rehearsal in your mind and run and run
(19:34):
it over and over again, as I did, dreaming literally
dreaming of what you think you could make true, It's
been proven that if you can visualize it, you have
a much better chance of making it happen.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
I think that our younger generation calls that manifesting it
into existence, Like you stay focused on something and believe
in it long time, and eventually it will actually come
to pass. I'd like to talk some more about You
did more than just meet Jacqueline Annassis. Didn't you? I
(20:13):
understand that you worked with her. She was an editor
at Doubleday.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Well, yes, when we first met, we were trying to
talk Calvin Klein, the designer into writing a book. He
ultimately never did it, but she and I teamed up
to try to sign famous people up to write books.
Michael Jackson was another one, and he ultimately did write
a book, But more important to me, I didn't actually
(20:39):
work with her.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Ever.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Our relationship was more social, and I would connect. I
was a good connector. For example, Calvin Klein wanted to
meet the great actress Katherine Heppron now Katherine Heppron. I
had sent my first book as a gift to in
the mail, and one day the phone rang and I
heard something like this, Oh, oh, is this Missedublask And
(21:03):
I said yes, She said this this Catharine Hepron and
I said no, it isn't.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
You're a kidding.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I thought it was a friend of mine playing a
joke on remember this in a legendary film actress which
a lot of people may not even remember today. Oh,
surely not the younger generation. If you ask them, they
won't know who she is. But she invited me to
lunch Wow, and I went there for lunch, and then
(21:32):
we became very friendly. So for the next eight years
I interviewed her like four or five times, and one
day I said to her, would you like to meet
Calvin Klein? Because of all the famous people that he
could meet, he had.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Never met her.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And she really, honestly didn't care that much about meeting him,
but he really cared about meeting her. So I brought
him over there for lunch and it was a fascinating time.
And that was one of the funnest things about my
job is that I could meet these people, get to
know them, and then introduce them to each other. So
that was a memorable afternoon. And another afternoon, Peter Jennings.
(22:10):
I brought him over for lunch with her, and I
just loved her. She was so funny and sarcastic. The
last time I ever saw her, she looked up at
me after lunch and she said, you know, you look
better than you used to. And I said to her, oh,
I said, miss Hepburn, Is that a compliment? And she
(22:34):
and she said to me and she said, you can
take it however you like. That's great, which I thought
was funny. So I have to tell you I had
just a ton of fun, you know, with all these
celebrities that I interviewed. One of my favorite, one of
my favorites was Leona Helmsley. If you remember her, I
do known as the Queen of mean, but she was
(22:57):
never mean to me. She and I had a un
niaque connection. I did a cover story interview with her
in Playboy magazine and she was just absolutely riveting, one
of my most favorite.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Okay, now I want to fill in a few blanks
because I think you're being modest several times overs you
just you interviewed Katherine Hepburn, And in fact, there's some
footage from that in the Catherine Hepburn documentary that's streaming
right now. Correct, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
There's a new documentary called is it called Call Me Kate?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Let's go with that.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I'm not sure, okay, but anyway, there is a new
documentary on Netflix. And yes, they came here to use
me as the main journalist for the documentary because I
had known her well and I told a lot of
fun stories about her. And in fact, right above my
head you can see her sitting on the wall here.
(23:59):
That was one of the stories I did with her.
And there's another article up here. There's a story that
was once done about me. When I was younger, I
got all d's and f's in elementary school, and the
principal told my mom that she shouldn't feel bad because
garbage collectors can be happy too. Oh no, And he
(24:24):
told my mom I had a very low IQ. And
it's true that I tested badly, and it's true that
I got all d's and f's. And it wasn't until
years later I didn't have low self esteem. I had
no self esteem. And they you know that you should
never tell a child something so horrible, even if they
did have a low IQ. You should never tell them this.
(24:48):
And so years later I wrote an article that was
syndicated all around the country and it was called eighty
eight Keys to Confidence and there's a picture of me
at the piano and I talk about how you must
never let anyone define you. And after the article was published,
Catherine Hepburn wrote me a note and it's framed right
(25:09):
above here and it and it only has three words
on it. It says good for you.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
That's so inspirational. I mean, what a what a wonderful
example of believing in yourself and having that tenacity that
you mentioned leading to wonderful path.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Now you also mentioned go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, sure,
go ahead, Well, I was going to say, you said
your relationship with Jackie and Assas was mostly casual, and
yet right here, I've got a quote she said about you.
Glenn is witty, articulate, and has this uncanny ability to
draw people out and gain their confidence. So she clearly
(25:49):
had some respect for your work as well. Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yes, she was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
She was one of my idols. And I don't know
where I would ever have found the nerve to call
her on the phone, but she gave me all her
phone numbers, and I very rarely called her, but we
did talk, and we did have wonderful lunches sometimes, and
with all the pain and suffering that she experienced in
(26:17):
her life, when she was with you, you know, you
felt as if she was only talking to you. She
used to call me on the phone and you'd hear
something like, hello, Glenn, this is Jackie. Oh my lord,
and I said, oh, hello, Jackie, how you doing. But
it was a little It was one of the few
(26:38):
times in my life I was very intimidated, although I
must say I was intimidated by pretty much all of
them at the beginning, whether I was interviewing Meryl Streep
or Donald Trump, or Robert de Niro or Elizabeth Taylor.
I found Elizabeth Taylor was one of my most favorite.
(27:00):
Came down the stairs of this hotel suite looking just
as you would hope she would look. And the first
thing I noticed about her I said, oh, I said,
you have beautiful skin, and she said oh. She said,
would you like to know my secret? And I said okay.
She said sesame oil. She put sesame oil all over
her face, so she said, would you like to touch it?
(27:21):
I put my hands on her face and I thought,
g I'm touching Elizabeth Taylor's face. And then she showed
me a ring, this thirty three carrot Crupp diamond, and
she took it off her finger and threw it over.
Speaker 6 (27:32):
To me to hold.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I thought this was But then we got we got
down to business. And by the way, there's a brand
new documentary about Elizabeth Taylor that just came out. It's
produced by the BBC, and I'm in this particular documentary
and it opens with Elizabeth Taylor putting her makeup on,
and as a voice over under the picture is what
(27:57):
she said to me in the interview, which you can
listen to. It's kind of interesting, but she said that
if you want to hear from me, it's not going
to be about how to apply lipstick. I'm going to
thunder through your brain. And then she went into a
whole thing about the AIDS epidemic and how she felt
(28:17):
as if people were wrongly being blamed for something that
no one should be blamed for. So it was a
very emotional interview. And so it's this interview of mine
wound up now in two documentaries. One is on HBO
currently it's called The Lost Tapes, and the other one
is The BBC, which won't come out in the US
(28:39):
until next year. But for me, this has just been
so peculiarly surreal, because who am I? Nobody? And yet
I felt as if I somehow had this weird ability,
maybe because they didn't view me as intimidating, though I
(29:01):
could be quite strong in the interviews. People for some
reason just you know, warmed up to me, but they
didn't come to me. I always went to them, and
I found that it was fun for me to meet
these legends that I otherwise never could have met.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Well, to talk a little bit more about that, actually,
because you've mentioned Meryl Streep, you've mentioned Robert de Niro,
Katherine Hatburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and I've got on my list
that you interviewed Paul Newman as well. Oh my, arrange
interviews with these as you call them, legends, these these big,
(29:44):
major celebrities. How do you even start that process? By
your own admission, you're saying, who am I? I'm nobody,
And yet here you've managed to be involved in the
lives of all these people. And I have to know
how'd you do it?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Okay, I'll tell you. I interviewed literally hundreds of them,
all famous ones, including Dolly Parton and Meryl Streep and
you know many others. And the way I did it
was a variety of ways. Oftentimes I would go directly
through the publicist, but as I became more known as
(30:22):
a celebrity interviewer, one would lead to another. For example,
Calvin Klein, who knew me extremely well, picked up the
phone and called Diana Ross and told her about me
and said you should do the interview with him. So
I had lunch with Diana Ross or he called the
White House and literally spoke to missus Reagan. And when
(30:44):
she came up to me, the first thing she said
to me is she put out her hand. There were
Secret Service people all over the place and all these
people near us, and she looked right at my face
and she said, you have a great friend in Calvin Klein.
She was transmitting to me that she wouldn't have done
it otherwise. And same thing with Senator Kennedy. I knew
(31:09):
Jacqueline Kennedy. Same thing with Joan Kennedy. I got the
interview through a former husband and so oftentimes, but most
of the time it was through my own personal notes.
I'm a firm believer in writing notes, sending flowers, making
phone calls. I called Donald Trump and I said, I
(31:31):
want to interview your wife at the time, which was
Avonna Trump. I did two interviews with Havanna. Then after
he left Havanna, I said, I want to do the
first exclusive interview with Marlon Maples. And he said to
me on the phone, well, I'll make the introduction, but
it's up to her. If she likes you, she'll do it.
If she doesn't, she won't. So he said, well, arrange
(31:54):
a rendezvous for you at a restaurant with her. So
I just went and met her. And I never or
in any way pretentious about anything. I just come right
to the point, you know. And I often would give
my books as a gift. That was another thing that
people like when you give them a book. But the
(32:14):
most important thing, I think is that you need a
heart to heart connection. And I was known for doing
interviews that would be revealing, but not depositions. Yeah, I mean,
I'm not there to you know, to I'm there to
understand you better. I remember there was once an actor
(32:37):
who said to me, I didn't know we were doing
therapy today, and it's.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Like you were just very good at it, that it
was something that you wanted to do, you stayed focused
on it, and then you were very good at it.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Well, thank you. You mentioned Paul Newman, so I must
give you my Paul Newman story. I was invited up
to his apartment in Manhattan for an interview at his apartment.
So when I got there, it was a place on
Fifth Avenue, the door opened and there he is standing.
Usually the stars have a public sister of Mary Tyler
Moore had a butler or somebody answers the door, but
(33:14):
usually not the person. But he was just standing there
with those big blue eyes, and he looked at me
and he said, would you like to help me make
some ice cubes. Now I thought, what the hell is
he talking about? So I said to him, well, what
do you mean. He said, well, my daughter's birthdays tonight
(33:35):
and we're getting ready for the party, and I'm filling
up the trays in the kitchen. So there I stood
in Paul Newman's kitchen passing him ice cube trays. I
thought that was very sunny. And then I told him, listen,
mister Newman, I have a gift for you. My grandmother
has her own line of cookies at Bloomingdale's, which he did,
and I said, I brought you some of her favorite
(33:59):
Marie squares. They were called with apricot in them. Oh
my god. He grabbed those out of my hands so fast.
I said, I want you to taste it. So he
opened up the box. And this is the guy who
you know make the popcorn and the salad dress. What
nerve would I have to bring him some cookies? But
you see, I believe all the stars like cookies or candy,
(34:22):
so I would bring almost everybody chocolate or something. So
he ate the cookie and he really liked it. And
then guess who walked in the room. Joeanne Woodward she said,
I'm going to Bloomingdale's now to pick up a gift,
and she just kissed her husband and walked out of
the room. She never even said alone to me. She
was just saying goodbye to her husband. So I would
often have these surreal moments with these people where it's
(34:46):
like it just seems so odd to me, But there
I was. And then we Paul Newman and I eventually
sat at his kitchen table, and mostly what we talked
about was his summer camp for just for children who
have serious illnesses. It's called the Hole in the Wall Camp,
I believe, And that was what the interview was about.
(35:07):
That wasn't you ask how do I get interviews? Oftentimes
I would do interviews.
Speaker 5 (35:11):
About a cause.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, if there was something that interested me, I would
find That's how I would get interviews with people who
ordinarly wouldn't do interviews because it wasn't about them, it
was about something else.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Okay, good idea.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Two gaps I feel like we have to fill in here.
First of all, when you got that first contract book
contract you were talking about and I probably shouldn't even
bring this up because now some people who are aspiring
to write are just going to be bitter. But you
were twenty six, right, you're at twenty six years old.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I think I was twenty five. And when better and
when I got what would be equivalent to one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars advance and today's money, I remember
I had no money I had, I had very little.
So when the agent got me the advance and sold
(36:11):
it in the US and England, I honestly was quite
nervous because remember I was going to do something that
I didn't know how to do exactly. I did figure
it out. I did get a wonderful editor who was
the editor for the New York Philharmonic and Columbia Records,
(36:32):
and I did put together a team. But back then, yes,
I was intimidated. But I always tell writers, you know,
you have to remember you're worth a lot. I believe
that you have to know inside yourself that you're worth something.
And you know, you probably know that. I've written many
(36:53):
collaboration books now, you know, either ghost written or collaboration
with all kinds of mostly CEOs and net worth individuals
and some cause related books and some doctors. And I
think you just have to as a writer. One great
thing is that you could research and know about anything.
(37:15):
It's not like you have to specialize in anything. I mean,
it's true that I specialized in celebrity interviews, but then
I broadened out quite a lot because I found it
interesting to learn about, you know, other things, but human psychology, inspiration,
and motivation were my favorite topics.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
And so.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I liked the idea of that actualization or visualization thing
we talked about earlier, because I do believe that you
have to at least have a dream. Everybody's got a dream.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Should And that other detail that I think we still
haven't said aloud is the subject of this book. We're
talking about Vladimir Horowitz, right, probably the certainly the most famous,
probably the most accomplished pianist of the time, right right.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
And this is what the book looks like. It's a
six hundred page book with two thousand footnotes. And this
is the first one that came out. But I must
tell you my favorite book of all time is this one.
This is aw I wrote about my dog in the
process of getting this turned into a TV movie hopefully,
and it's not about the dog. People always misunderstand. They think, oh,
(38:31):
that must be a cute little story about a dog.
It isn't. It's about the concept of family and that
a family is anything you want it to be, young
and old, you know, human and canine. And it's about
what happened over a series of years between a little
three year old kid who had no mom, an eighty
(38:51):
five year old woman who had no children, and me
and my dog. And it takes place before, during, and
after nine to eleven. And it's a very emotional story
about how beautiful a little kid could find the grandmother
that he otherwise never would have had.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Sweet. Okay, you've mentioned you're on Oprah, and you've mentioned
a lot of interviews. Do you have one that stands
out in memory as a particularly happy or memorable one,
that one that you haven't already told a particularly favorite interview?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Well, I have a situation that comes to mind, but
I wasn't too happy. I was interviewing Leona Helmsley and
she had just it was tape recorded on a you know,
a real to reel tape recorder, not real to reel,
I mean a cassette tape recorder, and the red light
was on it was recording, and she was absolutely fantastic.
(39:50):
She went on for forty five minutes. Brilliantly, I discovered
the tape recorder hadn't recorded anything. It was the only
time in my entire career that I think I had
what could be called a panic attack. I started sweatings,
and I said to her, I have some bad news,
(40:11):
and I explained what happened to her. Remember she's supposedly
the queen of mean, right, you know what she said
to me. She said, let's get up, let's take a
walk around the terrace, and then we'll go back in
and record the whole thing all over again.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Wow, awesome, not the Queen of mean. Okay, flip side question.
Do you have any and if you don't want to say,
that's fine, but any interview subjects who were particularly difficult
or not forthcoming or whatever.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
You know, most of the people I met I really liked,
and nobody was rude or anything, but of course they
never would be. I've been thinking lately about Christopher Reed
because I interviewed him once before, yeah, once before his
accident when he it was fine, and then twice after
(41:02):
he was paralyzed. And I only mentioned him because I
thought he was so inspirational as a person. Yes, and
imagine you know, taking the time to do interview with
me when he couldn't walk, or you know, he was
tragically died far too young. So I something. Anyway, He's
(41:30):
someone that comes to mind. But if somebody said to me,
was there anybody you interviewed that you didn't like? I
couldn't even think of anybody, honestly.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
Now you mentioned that you talked to two of Donald
Trump's wives. Did you ever interview Trump himself?
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Oh? Yes, I interviewed him more than anybody. I interviewed
him for twelve twelve hours for one playboy interview. In fact,
my interview with Donald Trump is it's on the wall
behind me and he he hangs it in his office
at Trump Tower. It was an interview done many years ago.
(42:07):
But all the positions that he talks about in that
interview are ones that very consistently are reflected in a
lot of his positions today, especially about China and Japan
and the economy and stuff. So I've known Trump since
nineteen eighty eight and did a number of interviews with him,
(42:27):
and you know, that's all I can say. But I
have known him, and you know, obviously he's changed as
a person. When I first met him. He was really
just a rich, real estate charismatic New Yorker, you know,
but I never dreamed that he would one day be president.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Wow, when the interview is over, what is your writing process?
How do you turn that interview into an article, a book,
whatever the end result is.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, what I always used
to do is I would type the transcripts myself because
I wanted to listen again. And by the way, I
have all the original recorded interviews in here. That's why
these documentaries call me sometimes because even if the tape
is thirty years old, believe it or not, I like
Audrey Heppern, I did this in Switzerland. I still have it.
(43:24):
So I would I listen to the tape and I
like to type it as I'm listening, and then I
chunk it chunking for a writer's of important skill for
this kind of stuff. And then I would put a
subject category with an underline. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll
use the material in the order they said it, but
I have to know where it is. And then then
(43:46):
the hardest part for magazine or a newspaper article is
writing a lead, like how are we going to begin
this thing? So I got to the point where when
I was on deadlines, I would tell myself, the first
thing that comes into my mind, that's the lead. I
used to be more perfectionistic about it, like, oh, what
am I going to do? I decided, and this is
(44:07):
a good tip for writers. There's no such thing as
writer's block, as long as you're willing to settle for mediocrity.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
In the first draft at least, right, get something down
on paper.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Settle for whatever you can get. Just get something down
and then and then. I didn't mean you should ultimately
settle for mediocrity, but I would. I think you have
to trust some of your instincts. So I would first
do the lead, and then once I got into it,
it would start to flow, and somehow it would I
would instinctively know what to put where. But you know,
(44:49):
there's a certain art to it, and it varies. If
you're writing a book, it's different than if you're writing,
you know, a magazine article, but or a newspaper column.
But honestly, I admire people who say I went to
the school of journalism at such and such university. I thought,
aren't you lucky? Because I learned the whole thing literally
(45:12):
on the job. I never had anybody teach me, really,
so I apologize that I'm not better trained.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I think sometimes amateurs if you use that the root
word of which is m o meaning love. Right.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
So, well, you guys do something that I could never do,
which is I only do nonfiction, but you do fiction.
You make up stories and legal thrillers and novels. And
you know, the closest I ever came to that is
in this book. This is rather novelistic, even though it's
(45:48):
all true. But you know, one thing that we have
in common is you have to paint a picture. Anybody
can just write some sentences. But the thing is, how
could you write some sentences that would convey some emotion?
I mean, what would draw someone in where they would
want to literally, you know, they lose themselves in your
(46:11):
world that you, as novelists have created. That's a really
big skill.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Yeah, well, thank you. But you know what, it's all storytelling,
whether it's true or you're making it up. And when
you can't make it up, meaning you've got to have
sources and research that I think is challenging to Okay,
after this fabulous, all this illustrious work, what are you
working on? Now or what should be we be watching
(46:39):
for next?
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Well, I am in the midst of working on getting
this book made into a movie because I think it
could be inspiring for people because it has a message
about family connection and loss too, because you know, we
live through a series of losses throughout our lives. Eventually
(47:01):
we lose many things, and the idea of the book
was to give people hope. But that I'm also working
on a I have three new books coming out. One
of them is with a what would you call him,
a TV cable entrepreneur. He at one time owned r CN,
(47:24):
the big cable company, and so it's kind of like
a business memoir. And then I have another book coming
out that is How a successful entrepreneur Recovered from Addiction,
So it's about recovery from addiction and also about his
autistic son, so it has some big themes about survival.
(47:49):
And now there's a new one coming out with a
woman executive who had a rather difficult childhood. And it
seems like at a certain point in life, people want
to share their you know, their stories, right.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, absolutely, Well, Glenn, this has been a real pleasure
and a delight talking to you, and I hope maybe
we can do it again sometime in the future.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Oh, it was great talking to both of you, and
thanks for having me on your show.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Thank you so much. Bye bye, now bye. Just a
few parting words. The writer Con Cruise is fairly far
in the future. It's at the end of the end
of May. We're going to Alaska this year, and the
(48:41):
writer conor Retreat is in the middle of July. But
if you're interested in and you cannot book too early
because they tend to sell out, there's more information on
our website, which is writercon dot com. Let me also
remind you we've got our own newsletter. In fact, just
today as we record this, we sent out the latest
(49:02):
issue of writer Con magazine. But whether there's a magazine
or not, the newsletter comes out regularly and it's free
and you don't want to miss it because it's got
all kinds of cool stuff in it that's directed specifically
for writers. So go to sub stack and search for
writer Con. And if you haven't joined the writer Con
(49:23):
Facebook group, please do. We've got a wonderful, thriving online community,
very positive, very supportive, and that's the best way to
get day to day information about what's going on in
the publishing world. Okay, until next time, keep writing and
remember you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. See
(49:47):
you next time.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Spens By first the
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.